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Welcome to Drivechain Twitter Spaces. Today is Friday, June 16th. We are delighted to have

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another conversation about this exciting upgrade for Bitcoin. Welcome to those who've joined in

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the audience. Everyone is welcome to raise your hand and come on up to the stage. If you have a

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question or a comment about Drivechain, come on up to the stage, raise your hand in the app,

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and share with us your thoughts on this exciting upgrade for Bitcoin. Drivechain

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is an idea to bring peer-to-peer sidechains to Bitcoin, sidechains that are more decentralized,

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more permissionless than the sidechains we have today. Right now on Bitcoin,

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all the sidechains are federated with a 15-party multisig controlling the pegout from the sidechain.

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But with Drivechain, the sidechains can be more decentralized, more permissionless,

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more peer-to-peer, superior, stronger, more reliable, better, more like Bitcoin.

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And this would strengthen Bitcoin immeasurably, we believe. We believe it would make Bitcoin

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have a multitude of interesting innovations built on top of it. There could be a sidechain for

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privacy using Zcash technology. There could be a sidechain for scaling called Thunder with large

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blocks. There could be a sidechain called HiveMind that uses a peer-to-peer oracle network

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to enable human beings to make predictions on the future without any limit on what kinds of

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things they might bet on. And this could even improve society in many ways. And there have

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been many people who are excited about HiveMind in particular, such as Fiatjaf, the creator of

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Nostr, has written on Twitter that he would like to see Drivechain adopted mainly because he's

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excited about HiveMind. But Drivechain also is exciting to many people such as Adam Back

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and others because of the scaling solution that it can bring to Bitcoin

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with large blocks on the sidechain. Welcome to our first guest.

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Thanks for joining. Hey, how are you? I'm very well. I think this is your first time speaking

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up here. I see that you're interested in Zcash. What interests you today about

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sidechains and Drivechain? Honestly, I just was looking for Bitcoin mining groups and I just

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joined, I believe it's your Telegram group, Drivechain talk and I just saw the link to the

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spaces. So I figured I'd come in and listen. I got to hop on a call here in about five minutes.

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I've been dealing more with miners and I've been dealing more with bulk buyers.

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So I'm really just trying to sharpen my sword on these conversations. I'm also dealing with

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a group that wants to buy a mining operation in Montana. They want to do a real estate play,

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data play slash Bitcoin mining play. So I'm really just I've always been in the space of

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crypto since 2016. Big proponent of Zcash and zero knowledge proofs because one of the roadblocks to

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these large transactions is who's going to show each other first, right? Who's going to get naked

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first? Who's going to show proof of funds first? And there's a big stalemate that occurs when

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people are showing, you know, north of $30 million in a wallet. Nobody wants to show a

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public key or a public ledger. So the light bulb is kind of going off in my head, right? Only 5%

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of the world is using crypto right now. Once the masses come on, once institutions come on,

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once offshore wealth and the trillions comes on, these entities are going to need encryption.

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They're going to demand privacy. A lot of deals are getting

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shelved because no one wants to show their public key or public address. So

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just how the Internet evolved from HTTP to HTTPS, you know, the Internet was just computer programmers

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kind of analogy to us right now, right? We're kind of just the crypto guys who love it. But

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when the masses come on, they're going to require encryption. They're going to require privacy.

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And I think the masses don't even realize, you know, most people think Bitcoin is a private

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thing. Most people think it is. But now with chain analysis, our common intelligence,

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Nancy and AI, addressable. Addressable just linked 17 million Twitter accounts to their

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real life wallets. So things are getting pretty real. And I'm just

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looking to learn as much as possible that that makes sense.

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About privacy in particular? Privacy, yes. Bitcoin mining as well.

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By no means am I against Bitcoin. I just am starting to look at it like the prototype

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and the beta test run. And I'm starting to see conversations come into play.

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I'm having trouble getting certain deals done because people don't want to show proof of

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funds with a with a public wallet. So it's like, OK, the problem solver in me is like,

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well, how can we use zero knowledge proofs? Right. How can I get these guys to prove they

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have what they say they have without revealing what they have to a third party? In this case,

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not just a third party, but it could be any party right in the world. So when we have this

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conversation of turning cryptocurrency into digital money that everyone can use,

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how can we if people are at a stalemate in these conversations where they don't want to

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get naked in the room, you know, to the world? Yeah, we have to all get naked. Everyone has

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to be naked in the same room. That's the only way it will work. Right. And then people,

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and people, not everyone is a nudist. So, you know, for us, it's cool, right? I got to take

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this call, guys. I'll be I'll be right back. I'm sorry. But for us, it's a great day. Nice meeting

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you right now. I'll be back a little bit. Great meeting you guys. I'm going to follow you. Cool.

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All right. Interesting. It seems there's only a few people here for today. Maybe it's just such a

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beautiful summer solstice Friday. Who wants to be on a Twitter space? Summer Fridays. That's where

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I used to work. Oh, someone is waving. We should move them up. I used to work at a place that had

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it was a white collar office job, but it had, you know, summer Fridays, which was like, you can

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either leave at noon or you can take every other Friday off in the summer. That was in New York

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City. Summer Fridays, they called it. Did shiny cake or shiny whatever cakes want to

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wave to come up? Or are they just waving? Maybe they're just waving to wave.

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Welcome to the stage. Shiny cakes. Hello. Nice to meet you. Hi.

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Hello. I would like to ask. I mean, I'm not sure if it's the right place for this kind of question,

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but how do you see what drivechain benefit from maybe some kind of forks? I don't know,

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some kind of forks, like copying drivechain. How could it affect the drivechain community as its

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own? Well, but when you say other forks, you mean like different cryptocurrencies that aren't

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Bitcoin because the project is designed for Bitcoin. But of course, there actually is a

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funny one, which I kind of like because it doesn't take itself very seriously. I have no involvement

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personally whatsoever. But there is a guy who had made a coin, which I think is called Sky Doge,

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which is if you're going to do something, then do it like that. Give it a funny name.

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So I think I would like the idea to get out there and be used and tested. I believe in the idea. I

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think this segment activated on Litecoin before it was on Bitcoin. I think that that drivechain

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is going to help Bitcoin realize its goal of changing the world and that it will play a

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hugely central or important role in doing that. And I think, yeah, it should. I think the technique

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should be used the same way that Wi-Fi is used everywhere or long division is used by students or

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something. So I think that that's I think that's a good thing. Certainly what I would not prefer

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is for Bitcoin to never, ever activate BIP301, never activate drivechain and then have some

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other currency do a drivechain like thing and then be succeeding against Bitcoin on that basis.

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But I would have to think that, of course, in such a scenario, it would just be obvious to everyone

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that that is not the time to activate BIP300. Does that answer your question or no?

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Yes, definitely. But it's also interesting how it will also affect the reach, I mean, that people

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get to know to BIP300 or 301 if other projects like this succeed. I mean, it seems like you make

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it very step by step and you don't want to push it too far, but they have already the opportunity

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to launch it somehow and to do this kind and make this kind of experience how it would work on

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mainnet. And I think it could be maybe also interesting for you to see your product already

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some kind of working. And it's very exciting what's going on. And also I'm asking myself if it

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also if this kind of development which is being done there also is like a value for you, for your

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kind of community, if they solve some, for example, some kind of bugs, if it's also maybe a value for

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you. I think it is honestly a good idea. I mean, you know, for a very long time, you know, I

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identify as a Bitcoin maximalist and I've been in the Bitcoin community for a very long time,

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so long I don't even want to say how long. But, you know, for a while every other project was

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really just completely terrible and it was just so undignified and shameful to be a part of any

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other project. But lately, the maximalism is more of like out of, you know, like fear and

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coercion of what is like peer pressure where people mean things people will say about, which is not a

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very good reason. So to, you know, be Bitcoin only. So even though I am personally Bitcoin only, I am

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actually kind of getting tired of the XY attitude and I actually think that it would be more

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people should just do whatever they want and have fun and not just do this for its own sake.

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So I think it's good. It's healthy for the project to get more attention. Attention is very scarce,

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as you say. It's very difficult to get attention for things. Attention is a scarce resource. So

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if people like something, then that is a way of proving that demoing that it works. And, you know,

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that is. I like that, so I actually think that that's a good thing. People can't really have it

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both ways, of course, you know, like Bitcoin claims, of course, you know, I've been a member

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of the technical Bitcoin community for a long time, but, you know, Bitcoin claims like it has

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there used to be this joke about like the varsity team versus like the JV team or the freshman team

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or something where it's like Bitcoin claims to have the best tech, the best developers,

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everyone else isn't serious. And then they say, if you want to do something experimental,

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then you have to launch, you know, fork off and launch your own project. And then, of course,

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if you do that third thing, fork off, then everyone agrees that they hate you, which

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obviously is kind of like, you know, these are overlapping criteria that don't really make any

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sense. So I think it's great for people to experiment with the idea. I think it's good.

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Again, Litecoin did SegWit before Bitcoin. A lot of people say that helped SegWit get

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activated on Bitcoin. I don't know if it did, but people say that.

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Nice, nice. And just one more question regarding scalability. I mean,

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it hasn't been tested like for on mainnet yet. And I don't know if you already did some kind

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of stress tests, but I'm wondering how it would compete to other products which are at the moment

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out there in terms also of it's a typical thing what people ask, but also like a transaction

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speed. I was talking to MLG, like the developer of SkyDoge, and he was telling me that it would

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be the opportunity to run maybe Lightning or something like that on top. But I'm just asking

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myself if this wouldn't be too much, like it could maybe make it too complicated. I'm not like

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a coder or something like this. I really would like to know what you think about it.

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Yeah, no, it's an excellent question. I think it's one of our primary advantages, to be honest

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with you. Out of every scaling thing that has ever been proposed, almost all of them will collapse.

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They will actually stop functioning if the layer one fee rate is high or even just volatile. So

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the Lightning Network channels will close if the two parties don't even agree on what the current

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prevailing fee rate is. And of course, every time they close, they further clog the mempool with a

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transaction that is much larger than just a normal regular on-chain Bitcoin transaction, because it's

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the uncooperative close, which is very... So even everything, even ARK, all these weird ideas, they

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all have this property that they are vulnerable to high layer one fees or even just volatile fees.

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Lightning in particular cannot, you know, there's a big onboarding problem, which is kind of a

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special flavor of that first problem. They rely on the layer one block space. But this scaling

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via sidechains actually does not. It has important trade-offs. It has a security trade-off and it has

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like transactions still require confirmations if they're just a large block sidechain. But if

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there is lightning on the large block sidechain, then it then goes back to being instant.

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So it's actually a pretty good situation because you can re-architect like a large block

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optional layer two is completely a night and day difference from a mandatory layer one

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large block. So you have large blocks on layer two, and then you can have many different block chains

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for scaling that are geographically distributed. Some would be in like, you know, whatever, like

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North America, Southeast Asia, whatever, Europe. So they would kind of naturally cluster up and

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in that way you can achieve more or less unlimited amount of transacting. And in fact, we have done

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a little bit of stress testing, which is extremely encouraging. Again, there's an important difference

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between layer two block and layer one, which is the layer two block. You have the problem of

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expensive nodes and a very difficult, a large blockchain that requires a lot of processing.

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But the main attack vector for these nodes would be to shut the nodes off or disable the network.

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In the case of an optional layer two, it really just means the whole network is on pause

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until the attack ends, and then the network just comes, picks up right where it started. So it really

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has no, it's very unlikely that actually anything bad can even happen to the, but it is an important

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trade-off because the larger blocks means it's harder to run a node. It's harder to conceal the

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physical location of the computer that is running the node. You know, nodes are more expensive,

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fewer nodes possibly. Depends on supply and demand, of course. But scaling is actually pretty

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big. As time goes on, the rival attempts to scale Bitcoin have looked worse and worse and worse.

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And this particular way with BIP300, I think, just looks kind of better and better and better.

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It just looks more and more reasonable. Most people are not going to care about this weird risk

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that three to six months from now, miners will take all of your coins. You can have like a

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checking account, savings account type of situation. Even for many transactions, people will not care

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about the loss of decentralization because even though, like when you buy coffee, it's quite

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different than when you buy, if you were going to do something very politically subversive or,

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you know, even legal or whatever you want to call it, like if you're going to donate to Julian Assange.

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That would require decentralization and privacy. But if you are going to just buy coffee,

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then you don't. And so since many people make many transactions, there's, you know, maybe only,

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even in the case of someone who is a political activist, like Cody Wilson or whatever,

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more than half of their transactions will not really be like, most of them are not like

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some kind of transaction where you would really need the full, fully robust decentralization

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and censorship resistance of Bitcoin. So I think the scaling is very, we have a completely new

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rewrite of the sidechain template in Rust and the performance is very good, but we haven't,

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I don't know the latest benchmark, otherwise I would actually give it to you.

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But we have, but the main problem is not even really the software performance. It is the,

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do you actually want to download a blockchain that is, you know, of this certain size? Because

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it's a thousand blocks a week. So if the blocks are a one gigabyte, which is, you know, that's

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not going to happen anytime soon, but that would be one terabyte every week of new space, which is,

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that's a lot of hard drive space and bandwidth usage. So, but that's, you know, even that though

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I have, we have like benchmarked such a thing and just having 10 of those would more than cover the

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entire transacting capacity of the world, cash, non-cash, basically everything. And even that

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I've benchmarked is not really even costing that much money. It's affordable for hundreds of

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millions of people, at least, even if that's a small percentage of the 8 billion people.

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So I think that's actually, I think scalability is honestly the, at this point is looking like

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the biggest advantage of BIP300. The other projects are, various flaws in them are being

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kind of like unearthed, whereas this has like these two flaws that are kind of upfront and

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obvious to everyone, but they kind of, they just don't look bad. One, another thing is that the,

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supposedly the large block idea suffered from something, fraud proofs being impossible.

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But now more and more people agree that fraud proofs actually are possible and I wrote about how to do them.

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And so that objection is also gone. So actually that would make the large, that would make a light client,

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that coupled with like U3XO and some other things, that would make a light client, which is only 4.4 megabytes per year,

191
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more or less equal in security to a full node, as long as there are some full nodes that exist.

192
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Thanks a lot. I mean, I have so many questions, but I don't want to take over the whole stream,

193
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but for next time I will maybe notice some more and I'm happy to be here and it's really exciting to see what you're doing.

194
00:20:59,264 --> 00:21:04,264
Okay, great. Well, there's only a few people here, so feel free to ask as many questions as you like.

195
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Yeah, I think I will think about it well, because I don't want to destroy it.

196
00:21:15,264 --> 00:21:22,264
We're having a very free form, open conversation. We do this every week and everyone is welcome to come up,

197
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especially someone like you, ShinyCakes, who is informed and interested and has a good understanding of the inspiration for this project.

198
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So feel free if you'd like to just share any comments or thoughts.

199
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I'm also wondering how many devs are really capable at the moment, like really developing the project further.

200
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I mean, for example, MLG, as I heard, is a long time in the community and he's really interested and it's really his passion.

201
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For me, it seems very passionate and I'm not sure how many people are really able to do this, what he's doing right now for you.

202
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Who did you say? I did a glitch, so I don't know when you gave the name.

203
00:22:05,264 --> 00:22:07,264
Excuse me? I didn't understand.

204
00:22:08,264 --> 00:22:11,264
You didn't say a person's name, he and I didn't hear the name.

205
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From SkyDodge, the developer.

206
00:22:14,264 --> 00:22:16,264
Oh, the SkyDodge guy. Yes, yes, yes.

207
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That's such a great name, very funny name.

208
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Yeah, I think part of the SkyDodge strategy is that we don't actually need, we have like a way of cloning the altcoin.

209
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So you can either write something from scratch using like our template, which is great.

210
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Like a lot of people like that because they're technical.

211
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But also we can clone an altcoin and where it's like you just take this altcoin full node software and you like add this library

212
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and you make a few modifications that you like deposit withdrawals and merge mining instead of whatever the mining and that's it.

213
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And then you have turned the altcoin into a BIP300 sidechain.

214
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And so, and that way we would, and that's uncopied as Zcash and Ethereum.

215
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And so in that way, we don't need to have that too many people understand this whole process.

216
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So it's pretty rare at the moment somehow.

217
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Well, yeah, I think things go in fads.

218
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I think that it certainly is rare right now.

219
00:23:24,264 --> 00:23:32,264
But the point I was trying to make is this isn't something where the strategy relies on a lot of developers being interested.

220
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It could really just be five or six developers total would be able to, because you copy any altcoin that people like that works.

221
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You build anything from scratch that you want.

222
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And then that's it.

223
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Now you have a coin that can do everything that every other coin in the whole world can do.

224
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So you have the developer communities, the entire crypto development community.

225
00:23:57,264 --> 00:24:11,264
The strategy doesn't rely on being popular with developers in a way that lots and lots and lots of, certainly like every other L1 and Lightning Network and those other things do rely on that.

226
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If they did not have the interest of the technical community, they would basically be dead.

227
00:24:17,264 --> 00:24:22,264
Are you also a little bit scared that it could be maybe somehow misused, the tech?

228
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That I mean, some people are just building like some kind of pump and dumps with it and that people get really hurt?

229
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Or is it like a natural thing?

230
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Yes. Well, you know, one thing is, this type of thing used to really bother me and I was very active in whatever you might call the Bitcoin Uncensored community in 2016.

231
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And we did what we call the scam busting, doing the Lord's work and trying to get people to stop.

232
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The older I get, though, actually, I really reflect on how few people we probably actually saved versus the enormous number of people who like, you know, would have bought into something like EOS or whatever, just because there's a Times Square ad for 24 hours.

233
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So I kind of get the older I get. I also think a fool, his money are soon parted.

234
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And I kind of like, I think it is wrong. Sometimes a lot of what these people do is not the right thing.

235
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But I also think that I think the only real practical thing to do is it's like when we have forest fires and it burns out, like you have to actually let a few scams take people's money.

236
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Because I just I would like to I would like to live in a world where these scams don't exist.

237
00:25:42,264 --> 00:25:56,264
So the thing is sidechains actually help the scam problem a lot because they have no there's no way of making money by like pumping a coin via sidechain since it's just the one underlying coin that is shared by every piece of technology.

238
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So it doesn't matter if you have this piece X technology X or technology not X. It's totally independent of whatever the technical choices made.

239
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So no one can ever say like, oh, Bitcoin has this, but Ethereum has smart contracts and it's like everything just has everything.

240
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And so that actually helps with that. I do think that something interesting has happened with the whole tokens ICO thing.

241
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All of that was like even NFTs. All that was like a kind of a grift to make money.

242
00:26:30,264 --> 00:26:38,264
But at the same time, I just don't believe that it was all I don't believe the project was illegitimate.

243
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Like even though all the ICOs were terrible, the way I see it is if we like what the real enemy is how confused everyone was.

244
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So if we could just put what my goal is to have there be a sidechain where all the transaction fees are paid in BTC and all the assets are trade other price pairs are traded against the BTC.

245
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It is like a DEX centralized exchange and you can buy and sell these assets and create them.

246
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And when you create the assets, you spend BTC to broadcast the message that creates these assets.

247
00:27:16,264 --> 00:27:21,264
And I think if we did that, it would just be clear like Bitcoin is money.

248
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These assets are other things like stocks, bonds or just membership coupons or raffle tickets or whatever they are, arcade tokens.

249
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You do whatever you want over there. And again, like the only real way to protect people from being scammed is, I think, with knowledge.

250
00:27:40,264 --> 00:27:47,264
I just think there is nothing else like there's people when they look at something, their brain needs to figure out what it is.

251
00:27:47,264 --> 00:27:58,264
So if we just set it up the right way, then everyone will know, OK, this is like I'm buying stock in a corporation or this is like I'm getting arcade tokens.

252
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And if people think about it like in that correct way, then there might be a few high profile scams at the beginning, despite everyone not wanting it to happen.

253
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But then people, culture will evolve and people will learn and then it will finally at that point be in a place that everyone wanted to get to,

254
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which is a place where there really is decentralized finance, where literally anyone anywhere in the world like that joke, no one on the Internet knows if you're a dog.

255
00:28:28,264 --> 00:28:39,264
On the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog. Anyone could really like issue, they could make crypto art or they could just give out tokens for things.

256
00:28:40,264 --> 00:28:49,264
It's just like a club membership or issue stocks or bonds or whatever, just like in a kind of fully decentralized future.

257
00:28:49,264 --> 00:29:05,264
And yeah, with this organized in a nice and tidy way, if you have BTC as the asset, that's money that pays the transaction fees, that is the asset that's used to conjure the assets and move them around.

258
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I think that is by far the best, fastest, most effective, most sustainable way to actually protect people from all the scams.

259
00:29:14,264 --> 00:29:20,264
Right now they scam because there's an opportunity to take advantage of people's ignorance.

260
00:29:20,264 --> 00:29:33,264
So it's only by teaching people is the actual. This is my point of view, but maybe there are criminologists and legislators or whatever, people out there who may disagree.

261
00:29:34,264 --> 00:29:35,264
If so, they're probably right.

262
00:29:38,264 --> 00:29:39,264
OK, thanks.

263
00:29:41,264 --> 00:29:42,264
Yeah, of course.

264
00:29:42,264 --> 00:30:03,264
What's also exciting, I heard about the switchboard. I can imagine it. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm wondering how you think could look the drivechain in the future, maybe in five years or something like this, for example.

265
00:30:07,264 --> 00:30:08,264
Please continue. Sorry.

266
00:30:09,264 --> 00:30:18,264
If, for example, it really gets accepted, how would like the switchboard would look like? I mean, so it's a very futuristic kind of thing.

267
00:30:20,264 --> 00:30:29,264
Yeah, the switchboard is really cool. I'm happy to hear that other people know about it. We were only calling it the switchboard for like a couple days.

268
00:30:30,264 --> 00:30:33,264
And then I thought we would just rename it DriveNet to stop confusing people.

269
00:30:33,264 --> 00:30:39,264
But the switchboard is kind of like this. It's supposed to be like a Steam games launcher thing where it's like it's this small thing you download.

270
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It has a graphical user interface.

271
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And then you open it and it will let you either just download the binaries and it will check the binaries for you or lets you go to GitHub.

272
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It gives you the build instructions. It gives you the instructions how to build everything from source.

273
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And then it will launch everything and it does all the RPC access and stuff for you.

274
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So it's this nice user interface front end thing that just does a little launch of the little sidechain demons in the background and connect them for you.

275
00:31:13,264 --> 00:31:15,264
And I think this is great because it's just clicking a button.

276
00:31:16,264 --> 00:31:22,264
And very soon we had a very primitive version which someone just threw together.

277
00:31:23,264 --> 00:31:29,264
But we just hired a front end person and they couldn't start until basically Monday.

278
00:31:30,264 --> 00:31:31,264
So this is just their first week.

279
00:31:32,264 --> 00:31:34,264
But already they have made it look very nice.

280
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And so I think that we'll finally get to the point where it will be actually user friendly for people.

281
00:31:41,264 --> 00:31:44,264
For a while it was only like Linux. It was only command line or whatever.

282
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And then we had the GUI but the GUI you had to type in RPC passwords.

283
00:31:50,264 --> 00:31:53,264
And then we had that down to clicking a random button and then restarting.

284
00:31:54,264 --> 00:31:55,264
And now you don't even need to restart.

285
00:31:56,264 --> 00:32:00,264
And now pretty soon it will just be clicking buttons and it will be every platform.

286
00:32:01,264 --> 00:32:04,264
So we are finally getting to that stage.

287
00:32:04,264 --> 00:32:05,264
And the switchboard thing is very nice.

288
00:32:06,264 --> 00:32:07,264
The switchboard should be able to...

289
00:32:08,264 --> 00:32:13,264
It should be a very, very small program with very few lines of code.

290
00:32:14,264 --> 00:32:18,264
And you open it up and it just tells you about the health of all your different nodes.

291
00:32:19,264 --> 00:32:20,264
The mainchain node, the sidechain nodes.

292
00:32:21,264 --> 00:32:25,264
And it should be able to handle the deposits and withdrawals for you without you having to do anything complicated.

293
00:32:26,264 --> 00:32:28,264
You just click a little button and it will do it there.

294
00:32:29,264 --> 00:32:30,264
And this is a very excellent...

295
00:32:30,264 --> 00:32:35,264
This is a big improvement because the sidechain developer,

296
00:32:36,264 --> 00:32:39,264
they should only be focused on their unique thing.

297
00:32:40,264 --> 00:32:42,264
So if you want a sidechain for like zk-SNARKs,

298
00:32:43,264 --> 00:32:46,264
you should just write the zk-SNARK thing into the sidechain template

299
00:32:47,264 --> 00:32:49,264
and you should not really have to worry about deposits and withdrawals,

300
00:32:50,264 --> 00:32:52,264
BIP300, line merge mining or these other things.

301
00:32:53,264 --> 00:32:56,264
So together if we have mainchain Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core,

302
00:32:56,264 --> 00:32:59,264
you have mainchain Bitcoin Core, you have the launcher app.

303
00:33:00,264 --> 00:33:01,264
The launcher app...

304
00:33:02,264 --> 00:33:04,264
There's another thing that I actually hope the launcher app will be able to do

305
00:33:05,264 --> 00:33:07,264
is help people run the correct node.

306
00:33:08,264 --> 00:33:10,264
So you first launch the launcher app.

307
00:33:11,264 --> 00:33:13,264
We haven't gotten to this point yet, but it should be like SPV at first.

308
00:33:14,264 --> 00:33:20,264
SPV is only a small amount, 4.4 megabytes per year, which is nothing.

309
00:33:21,264 --> 00:33:23,264
And so it should start with that

310
00:33:23,264 --> 00:33:26,264
and then it can like gradually maybe become a full node.

311
00:33:27,264 --> 00:33:31,264
Maybe it can become a full node like from 3.30 a.m. to 6.00 a.m.

312
00:33:32,264 --> 00:33:33,264
when you're asleep or something like that.

313
00:33:34,264 --> 00:33:36,264
We can maybe use this launcher idea to just constantly improve

314
00:33:37,264 --> 00:33:39,264
the user experience is my hope.

315
00:33:40,264 --> 00:33:42,264
But yeah, in general, the launcher is supposed to be this very small,

316
00:33:43,264 --> 00:33:46,264
very minimal thing, helps you run the node, helps you see the nodes.

317
00:33:47,264 --> 00:33:52,264
And it also helps make it so that the sidechain is totally modular.

318
00:33:53,264 --> 00:33:54,264
And the person can just do...

319
00:33:55,264 --> 00:33:56,264
We have specialists who are just...

320
00:33:57,264 --> 00:33:58,264
We live in a world where we...

321
00:33:59,264 --> 00:34:00,264
The goal is to live in a world where we have specialists

322
00:34:01,264 --> 00:34:03,264
who just care about their specific sidechain type thing,

323
00:34:04,264 --> 00:34:05,264
working on that.

324
00:34:06,264 --> 00:34:08,264
And then especially the clones is also good

325
00:34:09,264 --> 00:34:11,264
because we want the clone to have as many lines of code

326
00:34:12,264 --> 00:34:14,264
identical to the altcoin as possible.

327
00:34:15,264 --> 00:34:16,264
So we want it to be really, really similar.

328
00:34:17,264 --> 00:34:18,264
So we really don't want there to be as much stuff in there

329
00:34:18,264 --> 00:34:24,264
about deposits, withdrawals, whatever, RPC access,

330
00:34:25,264 --> 00:34:26,264
any kinds of other confusing stuff,

331
00:34:27,264 --> 00:34:28,264
including a graphical user interface.

332
00:34:29,264 --> 00:34:30,264
You see, there has to be a graphical user interface somewhere

333
00:34:31,264 --> 00:34:33,264
for deposits and withdrawals if everyone is going to use it.

334
00:34:34,264 --> 00:34:37,264
But the question is, should that be in the Zcash sidechain?

335
00:34:38,264 --> 00:34:41,264
Because the Zcash, the altcoin doesn't have a GUI

336
00:34:42,264 --> 00:34:43,264
for deposits and withdrawals.

337
00:34:44,264 --> 00:34:45,264
So the question was kind of like, where do we put that?

338
00:34:46,264 --> 00:34:47,264
And so this launcher thing, I think, is a good idea.

339
00:34:48,264 --> 00:34:49,264
It's a switchboard, which is basically, again,

340
00:34:50,264 --> 00:34:53,264
like a Steam games launcher type idea.

341
00:34:54,264 --> 00:34:55,264
So I'm actually very optimistic about this.

342
00:34:56,264 --> 00:34:58,264
And actually, for some reason, in Bitcoin Core,

343
00:34:59,264 --> 00:35:00,264
people don't, they live in a parallel,

344
00:35:01,264 --> 00:35:02,264
they live in two, they're of two minds.

345
00:35:03,264 --> 00:35:04,264
And in one sense, they don't care about the GUI at all.

346
00:35:05,264 --> 00:35:06,264
And they think that caring about the GUI

347
00:35:07,264 --> 00:35:11,264
is for a lesser breed of people.

348
00:35:12,264 --> 00:35:13,264
And we should care about making it

349
00:35:14,264 --> 00:35:16,264
a high-performance industrial, which I respect that opinion.

350
00:35:16,264 --> 00:35:18,264
But on the other hand, they kind of admit

351
00:35:19,264 --> 00:35:22,264
that the interface isn't very good.

352
00:35:23,264 --> 00:35:26,264
And they are making a new one kind of from scratch

353
00:35:27,264 --> 00:35:29,264
that is not using the old QT.

354
00:35:30,264 --> 00:35:32,264
This explanation is just rambling on and on and on now.

355
00:35:33,264 --> 00:35:38,264
But the point is, we should have more front-end competition.

356
00:35:39,264 --> 00:35:41,264
And someone out there should be trying to say,

357
00:35:42,264 --> 00:35:43,264
okay, what's the best user experience

358
00:35:43,264 --> 00:35:45,264
we can possibly offer?

359
00:35:46,264 --> 00:35:49,264
Which I really, I just disagree with.

360
00:35:50,264 --> 00:35:51,264
The current approach is like, on day one,

361
00:35:52,264 --> 00:35:55,264
you just ask someone to download like 600 gigabytes.

362
00:35:56,264 --> 00:35:57,264
And most people will just be like, what?

363
00:35:58,264 --> 00:35:59,264
And just kind of close the application

364
00:36:00,264 --> 00:36:01,264
at that point and give up.

365
00:36:02,264 --> 00:36:03,264
But we should try to give them, we should try to ramp them.

366
00:36:04,264 --> 00:36:05,264
I'm fully in favor of ramping people up.

367
00:36:06,264 --> 00:36:08,264
We should ask, just ask them right now.

368
00:36:09,264 --> 00:36:10,264
On day zero, they're not running any full node at all.

369
00:36:10,264 --> 00:36:13,264
So I say, well, let's just, we'll take what we can get.

370
00:36:14,264 --> 00:36:16,264
We'll give them the FPV node for a little while.

371
00:36:17,264 --> 00:36:20,264
We'll try to give them reasons to upgrade the full node.

372
00:36:21,264 --> 00:36:23,264
So I think managing the front-end experience,

373
00:36:24,264 --> 00:36:25,264
not only is it excellent for,

374
00:36:26,264 --> 00:36:27,264
in the context of sidechains and BIP300,

375
00:36:28,264 --> 00:36:29,264
but actually I think it's long overdue

376
00:36:30,264 --> 00:36:31,264
that someone does that in general.

377
00:36:32,264 --> 00:36:33,264
And there's stuff like Umbral and stuff

378
00:36:34,264 --> 00:36:36,264
that tries to do that, but we also want to do it.

379
00:36:37,264 --> 00:36:39,264
I met the same experience with downloading it.

380
00:36:40,264 --> 00:36:43,264
I was thinking, I think three times it was like frozen,

381
00:36:44,264 --> 00:36:47,264
but I just let continue it going on.

382
00:36:48,264 --> 00:36:49,264
And then some when I got succeed,

383
00:36:50,264 --> 00:36:52,264
but I was really in the first time when I installed it,

384
00:36:53,264 --> 00:36:54,264
I was pretty scared, of course,

385
00:36:55,264 --> 00:36:59,264
because it's like not a certified software from Apple yet.

386
00:37:00,264 --> 00:37:03,264
But after it succeed and it went well,

387
00:37:03,264 --> 00:37:06,264
then it was like a very interesting experience

388
00:37:07,264 --> 00:37:08,264
to see it working.

389
00:37:09,264 --> 00:37:11,264
But I'm also wondering if it could be for you interesting

390
00:37:12,264 --> 00:37:13,264
in the future.

391
00:37:14,264 --> 00:37:16,264
I'm just talking about the adoption from Bitcoin side.

392
00:37:17,264 --> 00:37:20,264
If they want to integrate you, would be great, of course.

393
00:37:21,264 --> 00:37:22,264
And I hope that will succeed some when,

394
00:37:23,264 --> 00:37:26,264
but if not, you ever considered maybe

395
00:37:27,264 --> 00:37:28,264
to do something by your own

396
00:37:29,264 --> 00:37:31,264
or also in case of offloading speed,

397
00:37:31,264 --> 00:37:34,264
it would be much faster for the entrance for people

398
00:37:35,264 --> 00:37:39,264
if they don't have to load so many data like from Bitcoin.

399
00:37:40,264 --> 00:37:42,264
Of course, Bitcoin would be great.

400
00:37:43,264 --> 00:37:44,264
Yeah, I mean, of course,

401
00:37:45,264 --> 00:37:46,264
when I first proposed this idea,

402
00:37:47,264 --> 00:37:50,264
and Aragmus is here listening, I noticed,

403
00:37:51,264 --> 00:37:52,264
when I first proposed this idea a long time ago,

404
00:37:53,264 --> 00:37:55,264
he posted about it to our Bitcoin

405
00:37:56,264 --> 00:37:57,264
and it made it to the top.

406
00:37:58,264 --> 00:37:59,264
This was like November 2015.

407
00:37:59,264 --> 00:38:00,264
And I do sometimes ask myself like,

408
00:38:01,264 --> 00:38:03,264
oh, it has been, now it has been like almost,

409
00:38:04,264 --> 00:38:05,264
it's been seven and a half years.

410
00:38:06,264 --> 00:38:09,264
So will it be another seven and a half years?

411
00:38:10,264 --> 00:38:12,264
Like when will this?

412
00:38:13,264 --> 00:38:14,264
I do kind of think, I think,

413
00:38:15,264 --> 00:38:17,264
look, I don't really want to do that,

414
00:38:18,264 --> 00:38:19,264
but I do think that,

415
00:38:20,264 --> 00:38:24,264
I think it hasn't really reached that point yet

416
00:38:25,264 --> 00:38:27,264
because we have not opened a pull request,

417
00:38:27,264 --> 00:38:31,264
but I have to write one email to Bitcoin dev

418
00:38:32,264 --> 00:38:34,264
and then open a pull request.

419
00:38:35,264 --> 00:38:36,264
And I think at that point,

420
00:38:37,264 --> 00:38:38,264
like if we reach the point where I say literally

421
00:38:39,264 --> 00:38:40,264
like there is nothing additional

422
00:38:41,264 --> 00:38:42,264
that can possibly be done

423
00:38:43,264 --> 00:38:45,264
in order to bring this project to Bitcoin,

424
00:38:46,264 --> 00:38:48,264
I do think it would be okay to just experiment

425
00:38:49,264 --> 00:38:51,264
on an altcoin actually.

426
00:38:52,264 --> 00:38:53,264
If you actually go the full Bitcoin path

427
00:38:54,264 --> 00:38:55,264
and then you just say,

428
00:38:55,264 --> 00:38:56,264
here's the pull request,

429
00:38:57,264 --> 00:38:59,264
like here's all the explanations.

430
00:39:00,264 --> 00:39:01,264
It's kind of like,

431
00:39:02,264 --> 00:39:03,264
at a certain point it would definitely become

432
00:39:04,264 --> 00:39:05,264
like a take it or leave it.

433
00:39:06,264 --> 00:39:07,264
I don't know when that point would be.

434
00:39:08,264 --> 00:39:09,264
I actually have always regretted,

435
00:39:10,264 --> 00:39:11,264
so like I had this prediction markets project

436
00:39:12,264 --> 00:39:15,264
and I knew Ricardo Fluffy Pony

437
00:39:16,264 --> 00:39:20,264
back in the ancient days of like 2015 or earlier.

438
00:39:21,264 --> 00:39:22,264
And yeah, he launched,

439
00:39:23,264 --> 00:39:24,264
I mean he didn't launch Monero,

440
00:39:25,264 --> 00:39:27,264
but it came up after it went through

441
00:39:28,264 --> 00:39:29,264
some trials and tribulations.

442
00:39:30,264 --> 00:39:31,264
And he kind of took it up

443
00:39:32,264 --> 00:39:33,264
and people were like, oh, he's an altcoiner,

444
00:39:34,264 --> 00:39:35,264
but it didn't end up being that bad.

445
00:39:36,264 --> 00:39:37,264
Similarly with Namecoin,

446
00:39:38,264 --> 00:39:40,264
Namecoin is not really a super successful project per se,

447
00:39:41,264 --> 00:39:42,264
but they at least have something

448
00:39:43,264 --> 00:39:44,264
that they actually use

449
00:39:45,264 --> 00:39:46,264
and they actually get to work on.

450
00:39:47,264 --> 00:39:48,264
And so I actually think

451
00:39:49,264 --> 00:39:50,264
in the absence of sidechain,

452
00:39:51,264 --> 00:39:52,264
certainly if Bitcoin Core

453
00:39:53,264 --> 00:39:54,264
is like not going to be pro sidechain,

454
00:39:55,264 --> 00:39:57,264
it's actually anyone who wants Bitcoin to succeed

455
00:39:58,264 --> 00:39:59,264
should launch their other projects

456
00:40:00,264 --> 00:40:01,264
so that they can do the R&D.

457
00:40:02,264 --> 00:40:03,264
Like I think that...

458
00:40:04,909 --> 00:40:09,469
Bitcoin will probably benefit for the R&D that is done,

459
00:40:09,469 --> 00:40:13,669
the ZK R&D that is being done by Ethereum and Zcash.

460
00:40:14,629 --> 00:40:16,669
And I actually think that will benefit Bitcoin.

461
00:40:16,669 --> 00:40:17,749
But yeah, I think for now,

462
00:40:17,749 --> 00:40:19,629
I will try to take it to the pull requests.

463
00:40:19,629 --> 00:40:20,468
And then after that,

464
00:40:20,468 --> 00:40:21,949
I don't think anything can really be done.

465
00:40:21,949 --> 00:40:23,229
I've already done quite a bit.

466
00:40:23,229 --> 00:40:25,189
I've already done almost everything that could humanly,

467
00:40:25,189 --> 00:40:29,309
possibly, anything that can be done

468
00:40:31,349 --> 00:40:33,468
is mostly what I have already done.

469
00:40:33,468 --> 00:40:34,829
But not the pull requests yet.

470
00:40:34,829 --> 00:40:38,069
We have our own test software that we have cluttered it up

471
00:40:38,069 --> 00:40:41,789
with a lot of just custom stuff

472
00:40:41,789 --> 00:40:44,028
just for our own personal enjoyment, you know,

473
00:40:44,028 --> 00:40:45,069
such as our write.

474
00:40:46,109 --> 00:40:48,868
But it's not appropriate for pull requests to Bitcoin Core

475
00:40:48,868 --> 00:40:50,069
and I just merge everything that we did,

476
00:40:50,069 --> 00:40:54,309
which is also our software is a fork of Bitcoin 1699,

477
00:40:55,188 --> 00:40:57,508
which is very old now.

478
00:40:57,508 --> 00:40:59,429
They were coming up on version 25.

479
00:41:01,749 --> 00:41:03,149
So, but yeah, the answer to your question is I think,

480
00:41:03,828 --> 00:41:07,389
yes, eventually there would be once,

481
00:41:07,389 --> 00:41:08,949
I think, yeah, after like the pull request

482
00:41:08,949 --> 00:41:11,069
in like a couple months after that,

483
00:41:11,069 --> 00:41:13,669
I would just be like, okay,

484
00:41:13,669 --> 00:41:15,309
the idea is there if you want it.

485
00:41:18,309 --> 00:41:19,949
Okay, interesting.

486
00:41:19,949 --> 00:41:20,909
I will follow you.

487
00:41:23,309 --> 00:41:24,269
Okay, great, cool.

488
00:41:24,269 --> 00:41:25,108
Thank you.

489
00:41:32,629 --> 00:41:34,029
Excellent questions.

490
00:41:34,029 --> 00:41:35,989
Thank you so much, Shiny Cakes.

491
00:41:35,989 --> 00:41:37,788
Welcome everyone who's joined.

492
00:41:37,788 --> 00:41:39,788
Come on up to the stage, raise your hand

493
00:41:39,788 --> 00:41:44,788
if you'd like to chat with us on this delightful Friday

494
00:41:44,868 --> 00:41:49,188
about sidechains, drivechain and the future of Bitcoin.

495
00:41:50,909 --> 00:41:52,548
You can raise your hand in the app

496
00:41:52,548 --> 00:41:53,669
and come on up to the stage.

497
00:41:54,069 --> 00:41:56,069
We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments.

498
00:42:11,309 --> 00:42:14,188
Paul, you mentioned the rebasing that's going on.

499
00:42:16,828 --> 00:42:18,388
Is that work?

500
00:42:18,388 --> 00:42:20,869
Are there decisions in that realm such as like,

501
00:42:20,869 --> 00:42:23,989
could the code that's offered to Bitcoin Core

502
00:42:23,989 --> 00:42:27,588
be reduced to the bare bones

503
00:42:27,588 --> 00:42:29,828
of the drivechain architecture

504
00:42:29,828 --> 00:42:32,269
in a way that would greatly reduce the amount of code

505
00:42:32,269 --> 00:42:35,509
that's involved in the rebasing?

506
00:42:35,509 --> 00:42:37,308
Yeah, the goal with the pull request

507
00:42:38,349 --> 00:42:40,308
would be to make it as easy to review,

508
00:42:40,308 --> 00:42:41,709
to be like a mixture of things.

509
00:42:41,709 --> 00:42:43,588
Number one, it would have to work,

510
00:42:43,588 --> 00:42:46,149
but number two, you would want it to be as easy

511
00:42:46,149 --> 00:42:50,588
to review as possible and really as easy to revert later

512
00:42:50,588 --> 00:42:53,629
or as easy to refactor later if it was like,

513
00:42:55,909 --> 00:42:58,108
if it was like you could like merge the pull request

514
00:42:58,108 --> 00:43:01,828
and then refactor it after it's merged too.

515
00:43:01,828 --> 00:43:05,588
So yeah, there's a lot of these technical details.

516
00:43:13,429 --> 00:43:17,828
Maybe, sorry if I'm just jumping in again.

517
00:43:17,869 --> 00:43:21,229
Maybe also SkyDot, I don't want to show anything,

518
00:43:21,229 --> 00:43:23,468
could be also an opportunity for you together

519
00:43:23,468 --> 00:43:24,789
to work together somehow.

520
00:43:24,789 --> 00:43:28,429
I mean, if you really do this kind of pull request somewhere,

521
00:43:29,509 --> 00:43:31,229
maybe it could be also an opportunity.

522
00:43:31,229 --> 00:43:35,468
It's still time to work together.

523
00:43:35,468 --> 00:43:38,349
I mean, yeah, or not?

524
00:43:40,588 --> 00:43:42,149
Oh yeah, maybe, sure, yeah.

525
00:43:46,069 --> 00:43:47,548
Certainly there are a lot of people out there

526
00:43:48,229 --> 00:43:50,989
who think that, there are a lot of,

527
00:43:50,989 --> 00:43:54,509
many people think that, I think some people have to think

528
00:43:54,509 --> 00:43:57,349
that BIP300 will be merged soon,

529
00:43:57,349 --> 00:43:59,388
and then more people think that it will,

530
00:43:59,388 --> 00:44:01,748
more than that, think it will never be merged.

531
00:44:01,748 --> 00:44:06,748
And then much more than that is a huge group of people

532
00:44:07,548 --> 00:44:10,989
will think something like, well, if this idea

533
00:44:10,989 --> 00:44:14,269
is really good, then eventually it will be merged,

534
00:44:14,269 --> 00:44:18,869
but not until everyone takes their sweet time.

535
00:44:18,869 --> 00:44:20,509
So there are people out there who think

536
00:44:20,509 --> 00:44:22,509
it will just never be merged.

537
00:44:22,509 --> 00:44:23,549
There are some people out there who think

538
00:44:23,549 --> 00:44:26,509
that nothing will ever be merged at all.

539
00:44:28,349 --> 00:44:31,789
Nothing at all, like BIP300 nor anything else.

540
00:44:31,789 --> 00:44:32,629
Does it make sense?

541
00:44:32,629 --> 00:44:34,028
And for those people also?

542
00:44:35,868 --> 00:44:37,229
Well, I think that'd be a big mistake.

543
00:44:37,229 --> 00:44:40,268
I think Bitcoin is currently not ready to actually,

544
00:44:40,708 --> 00:44:45,868
like if the entire financial system collapsed tomorrow,

545
00:44:45,868 --> 00:44:50,868
would Bitcoin be able to just step in and replace it?

546
00:44:52,069 --> 00:44:55,229
The answer is clearly no, in my opinion.

547
00:44:55,229 --> 00:44:58,229
So while the answer to that question is no,

548
00:44:58,229 --> 00:45:00,509
it is an unfinished project.

549
00:45:02,229 --> 00:45:07,229
And do you understand why they decide not to integrate it?

550
00:45:08,229 --> 00:45:11,669
Do you, can you also understand their point of view?

551
00:45:13,308 --> 00:45:16,629
Well, I know what a lot of people,

552
00:45:16,629 --> 00:45:20,988
I think a lot of people don't understand the idea.

553
00:45:20,988 --> 00:45:22,909
So in that sense, I'm not capable

554
00:45:22,909 --> 00:45:23,868
of understanding their point of view

555
00:45:23,868 --> 00:45:25,389
since I already do understand it.

556
00:45:25,389 --> 00:45:29,549
I have tasted the forbidden fruit

557
00:45:29,549 --> 00:45:30,708
from the tree of knowledge.

558
00:45:30,708 --> 00:45:33,509
But I think I know what,

559
00:45:34,468 --> 00:45:38,588
so like a lot of people won't look into it at all

560
00:45:38,588 --> 00:45:40,349
because their attention is scarce.

561
00:45:40,349 --> 00:45:41,748
It has nothing to do with the idea.

562
00:45:41,748 --> 00:45:45,509
They just think, I'm working on a lot of things.

563
00:45:45,509 --> 00:45:49,389
People think, how can I rise on the totem pole in Bitcoin?

564
00:45:49,389 --> 00:45:52,829
Or how do I stop myself from slipping down the totem pole?

565
00:45:54,109 --> 00:45:55,669
And people think, oh, the way we do that

566
00:45:55,669 --> 00:45:59,268
is to care about the approved things,

567
00:45:59,268 --> 00:46:01,949
is to, you know, whatever, care about lightning,

568
00:46:01,949 --> 00:46:03,748
or even take the Michael Saylor view

569
00:46:03,748 --> 00:46:08,748
that everything is, the project's already worth 300 trillion

570
00:46:08,909 --> 00:46:10,188
and it's already a finished project.

571
00:46:10,188 --> 00:46:14,708
And so that's what,

572
00:46:16,028 --> 00:46:17,669
that's where a lot of people are coming from.

573
00:46:17,669 --> 00:46:19,629
So they haven't even read it, you know.

574
00:46:21,389 --> 00:46:23,708
I don't know like if this is,

575
00:46:23,708 --> 00:46:26,428
so like at Baltic Honey Badger last year,

576
00:46:26,428 --> 00:46:28,148
Don Carvalho was supposed to do a debate with me,

577
00:46:28,148 --> 00:46:31,109
which he did, and it was a perfectly good debate.

578
00:46:31,109 --> 00:46:33,468
But the moments before going on the stage,

579
00:46:34,708 --> 00:46:35,949
he asked me which one was,

580
00:46:35,949 --> 00:46:39,308
what was the difference between BIP300 and BIP301?

581
00:46:40,268 --> 00:46:43,988
He didn't know the names of the two BIPs.

582
00:46:43,988 --> 00:46:45,268
And so that's like, you know,

583
00:46:45,268 --> 00:46:46,829
the debate opponent doesn't know the names.

584
00:46:46,829 --> 00:46:49,949
I mean, how important is, what's in a name, right?

585
00:46:49,949 --> 00:46:51,188
But it's kind of like,

586
00:46:52,909 --> 00:46:54,109
the critics don't really know.

587
00:46:54,109 --> 00:46:55,708
They don't really know anything.

588
00:46:55,708 --> 00:46:56,549
They haven't looked into it.

589
00:46:56,549 --> 00:46:57,829
They just kind of think,

590
00:46:57,829 --> 00:46:58,829
they just kind of think,

591
00:46:58,829 --> 00:47:01,389
they associate it with complaining about Bitcoin.

592
00:47:01,389 --> 00:47:02,748
Because if you like sidechains,

593
00:47:02,748 --> 00:47:05,188
it's because you really want to leave Bitcoin Core.

594
00:47:05,188 --> 00:47:07,549
You want to own Bitcoin, BTC,

595
00:47:07,549 --> 00:47:09,509
but you want to leave the Bitcoin Core software

596
00:47:09,509 --> 00:47:10,389
and go somewhere else.

597
00:47:10,389 --> 00:47:12,949
So I think that's one of the many,

598
00:47:12,949 --> 00:47:13,868
I wrote an article called

599
00:47:13,868 --> 00:47:15,468
Why Drivechain is Hard to Understand.

600
00:47:15,468 --> 00:47:17,748
And I give six reasons in there.

601
00:47:17,748 --> 00:47:20,868
And I think that that's one of the six, so.

602
00:47:23,868 --> 00:47:25,109
Welcome, Alex.

603
00:47:25,109 --> 00:47:25,949
Thanks for joining.

604
00:47:25,949 --> 00:47:27,428
Hi, Andrew. Hi, Paul.

605
00:47:27,509 --> 00:47:29,028
Paul, what do you think about the idea

606
00:47:29,028 --> 00:47:34,028
that there's a second civil war coming in Bitcoin?

607
00:47:34,188 --> 00:47:36,509
In other words, we're in the time of peacetime Bitcoin,

608
00:47:36,509 --> 00:47:38,468
but there will be a wartime Bitcoin

609
00:47:38,468 --> 00:47:41,308
once one of the crises hits.

610
00:47:43,829 --> 00:47:44,868
I completely agree with you.

611
00:47:44,868 --> 00:47:47,588
I don't know which sense you're asking the question of,

612
00:47:47,588 --> 00:47:52,468
will there be like a government versus Bitcoin war

613
00:47:52,468 --> 00:47:55,028
or just inter-Bitcoin split, but I think both.

614
00:47:55,028 --> 00:48:00,028
Well, I'm more interested in the civil war inside Bitcoin.

615
00:48:00,428 --> 00:48:01,708
Yeah.

616
00:48:01,708 --> 00:48:03,669
Yeah, it will happen again.

617
00:48:03,669 --> 00:48:04,789
This is an interesting thing

618
00:48:04,789 --> 00:48:07,268
because the main problem that BIP300 solves

619
00:48:07,268 --> 00:48:10,949
is the, what I, you know, disputes,

620
00:48:10,949 --> 00:48:14,308
is the block size war was a dispute.

621
00:48:14,308 --> 00:48:18,069
And you can argue about technical this, technical that,

622
00:48:18,069 --> 00:48:19,868
but at the end of the day, it was just,

623
00:48:19,868 --> 00:48:23,428
some people are willing to pay more in fees,

624
00:48:23,468 --> 00:48:26,389
but they don't want to pay as much for their node.

625
00:48:26,389 --> 00:48:30,188
And other people are willing to pay more for their node,

626
00:48:31,349 --> 00:48:33,829
but they're not willing to pay as much in fees.

627
00:48:33,829 --> 00:48:36,189
And it was just a dispute between these two people.

628
00:48:36,189 --> 00:48:37,948
And the resolution was to try

629
00:48:37,948 --> 00:48:38,989
to give everyone what they want,

630
00:48:38,989 --> 00:48:40,749
which is exactly what sidechains does.

631
00:48:40,749 --> 00:48:43,749
And it's the same thing when you come with respect to,

632
00:48:43,749 --> 00:48:46,109
like Zcash or something,

633
00:48:47,148 --> 00:48:48,189
where you have a situation

634
00:48:48,189 --> 00:48:50,148
where some people want the privacy,

635
00:48:50,148 --> 00:48:50,989
but other people say,

636
00:48:50,989 --> 00:48:52,508
well, this will interfere with our ability

637
00:48:52,508 --> 00:48:55,789
to audit the 21 million coin limit.

638
00:48:55,789 --> 00:48:58,229
And so it's really all about disputes.

639
00:48:58,229 --> 00:48:59,708
And that is what BIP300 solves.

640
00:48:59,708 --> 00:49:02,669
BIP300 doesn't necessarily solve any particular thing.

641
00:49:02,669 --> 00:49:05,948
BIP300 says, hey, right now your alternative,

642
00:49:05,948 --> 00:49:09,189
and you have this dispute is you can either one, give up,

643
00:49:09,189 --> 00:49:11,588
not very satisfying, because who wants to lose?

644
00:49:11,588 --> 00:49:12,429
Who wants to give up?

645
00:49:12,429 --> 00:49:13,708
If you care about something, then, you know,

646
00:49:13,708 --> 00:49:14,708
you care about it.

647
00:49:14,708 --> 00:49:15,948
So you one, give up,

648
00:49:15,948 --> 00:49:18,508
two, launch some kind of altcoin or fork,

649
00:49:19,429 --> 00:49:21,789
hard fork or whatever.

650
00:49:21,789 --> 00:49:25,268
And then three, just like continue to fight,

651
00:49:25,268 --> 00:49:27,828
but unsuccessfully for your thing.

652
00:49:28,708 --> 00:49:31,309
So BIP300 gives you an alternative to that.

653
00:49:31,309 --> 00:49:33,429
And that's the problem that it solves.

654
00:49:33,429 --> 00:49:35,948
And so in a way, as long as we don't have BIP300,

655
00:49:35,948 --> 00:49:38,869
there will be more disputes and civil wars.

656
00:49:38,869 --> 00:49:40,909
We already kind of see where one is going.

657
00:49:40,909 --> 00:49:42,268
One, you know,

658
00:49:43,909 --> 00:49:45,669
Michael Saylor's listed reasons

659
00:49:45,669 --> 00:49:47,669
for caring about Bitcoin are that it will,

660
00:49:47,669 --> 00:49:50,388
you know, he's convinced that it will eventually be

661
00:49:50,388 --> 00:49:52,189
regulated into existence,

662
00:49:52,189 --> 00:49:54,268
whereas other things will be regulated out of existence.

663
00:49:54,268 --> 00:49:57,708
So he thinks he's pro regulation.

664
00:49:57,708 --> 00:50:02,588
He is pro like, you know, tax, et cetera, compliance.

665
00:50:02,588 --> 00:50:04,628
We don't really know like exactly what, you know,

666
00:50:04,628 --> 00:50:06,388
which is not to say that he,

667
00:50:07,349 --> 00:50:10,749
what I'm getting at is he is very different

668
00:50:10,749 --> 00:50:12,068
from Amir Taki.

669
00:50:12,068 --> 00:50:14,708
So there's going to be like an Amir Taki

670
00:50:14,708 --> 00:50:17,068
versus Michael Saylor dimension.

671
00:50:17,909 --> 00:50:21,388
And I think privacy will probably take on a big role

672
00:50:21,388 --> 00:50:22,669
in this because you have like, again,

673
00:50:22,669 --> 00:50:26,948
like a Matt O'Dell or people who like,

674
00:50:28,708 --> 00:50:31,268
they use the phrase like no KYC Bitcoin a lot

675
00:50:33,028 --> 00:50:37,588
versus people who are just determined to be compliant.

676
00:50:37,588 --> 00:50:42,588
And they want to have their mining corporation do an IPO

677
00:50:42,588 --> 00:50:44,189
and they have audited financial statements.

678
00:50:44,189 --> 00:50:46,749
It's a very different world.

679
00:50:47,429 --> 00:50:50,148
The exchanges may delist privacy coins.

680
00:50:50,148 --> 00:50:52,309
The exchanges have the liquidity,

681
00:50:52,309 --> 00:50:57,309
but the privacy supporting factions

682
00:50:58,669 --> 00:51:01,989
would have what you might call a better end game

683
00:51:01,989 --> 00:51:03,789
because the end game, if you don't have privacy,

684
00:51:03,789 --> 00:51:05,229
is that you compete with Venmo,

685
00:51:05,229 --> 00:51:08,708
which is going to be very difficult to do technologically

686
00:51:08,708 --> 00:51:10,549
and user interface wise.

687
00:51:10,549 --> 00:51:14,148
And the end game, if you take the privacy leg

688
00:51:14,148 --> 00:51:18,109
is that you end up competing with the laws

689
00:51:18,109 --> 00:51:22,789
of various nations, which also is difficult.

690
00:51:23,789 --> 00:51:25,708
So I think that's already the split.

691
00:51:25,708 --> 00:51:27,309
I mean, what do you think the split?

692
00:51:27,309 --> 00:51:28,749
I think you have something in mind.

693
00:51:28,749 --> 00:51:30,349
Do you think that is good?

694
00:51:30,349 --> 00:51:32,468
I basically, I understand the difference

695
00:51:32,468 --> 00:51:33,948
between Saylor maximalism

696
00:51:33,948 --> 00:51:36,989
and hyper-Bitcoinization maximalism.

697
00:51:36,989 --> 00:51:40,549
The hyper-Bitcoinization maxis are basically people

698
00:51:40,549 --> 00:51:43,909
who believe this idea that either Bitcoin is going to zero

699
00:51:44,669 --> 00:51:46,388
or it's going to be worth all the money in the world.

700
00:51:46,388 --> 00:51:48,948
And it's like a total hyper-Bitcoinization of everything.

701
00:51:48,948 --> 00:51:51,109
And there's no other currency remaining.

702
00:51:51,109 --> 00:51:54,189
Saylor's position is more nuanced in that he says

703
00:51:54,189 --> 00:51:57,189
that local fiats will survive for a very long time,

704
00:51:57,189 --> 00:51:58,268
probably even forever.

705
00:51:58,268 --> 00:51:59,948
And there will be regulation,

706
00:51:59,948 --> 00:52:01,508
but Saylor is willing to settle

707
00:52:01,508 --> 00:52:04,189
for Bitcoin being a reserve asset,

708
00:52:04,189 --> 00:52:06,028
which is to say that, you know,

709
00:52:06,028 --> 00:52:08,749
it sort of starts competing with US treasury bonds,

710
00:52:08,749 --> 00:52:10,388
but it's like highly regulated

711
00:52:10,388 --> 00:52:13,429
and mostly custodial at that point, right?

712
00:52:13,989 --> 00:52:15,789
But when I'm talking about the civil war,

713
00:52:15,789 --> 00:52:19,028
I'm actually talking about a different split.

714
00:52:19,028 --> 00:52:22,508
I'm talking about a civil war that will be catalyzed

715
00:52:22,508 --> 00:52:24,828
by some sort of a crisis.

716
00:52:24,828 --> 00:52:28,229
And there's like probably three crisis scenarios

717
00:52:28,229 --> 00:52:29,068
I can come up with.

718
00:52:29,068 --> 00:52:32,068
One is what I call Fipocalypse, right?

719
00:52:32,068 --> 00:52:36,708
Which is imagine fees going above $10 and staying there.

720
00:52:36,708 --> 00:52:38,869
That basically disables a lightning network

721
00:52:38,869 --> 00:52:41,268
and that eliminates the whole narrative

722
00:52:41,268 --> 00:52:43,429
of Bitcoin for plebs altogether.

723
00:52:44,068 --> 00:52:46,148
Because, you know, plebs in the global South

724
00:52:46,148 --> 00:52:50,028
will abandon Bitcoin if it costs them 10% of their savings

725
00:52:50,028 --> 00:52:52,349
to move their money on chain, right?

726
00:52:52,349 --> 00:52:53,948
So that's the kind of crisis

727
00:52:53,948 --> 00:52:56,828
that will create another civil war,

728
00:52:56,828 --> 00:53:01,109
just like we saw in 19, I'm sorry, in 2017

729
00:53:01,109 --> 00:53:03,309
with the Block Size War, right?

730
00:53:03,309 --> 00:53:04,948
I mean, you remember the Block Size War,

731
00:53:04,948 --> 00:53:09,189
the factions were, the SegWit faction

732
00:53:09,189 --> 00:53:12,109
was trying to do the last soft fork

733
00:53:12,109 --> 00:53:13,429
and then stop changing, right?

734
00:53:13,948 --> 00:53:16,989
That was kind of the idea that as long as we

735
00:53:16,989 --> 00:53:21,468
remove malleability and enable the lightning network

736
00:53:21,468 --> 00:53:23,148
while at the same time, you know,

737
00:53:23,148 --> 00:53:25,429
increasing the de facto block size

738
00:53:25,429 --> 00:53:28,749
by introducing the bytes instead of bytes,

739
00:53:28,749 --> 00:53:32,148
that should do, that should be the last soft fork.

740
00:53:32,148 --> 00:53:35,909
And after that, we should not have to change Bitcoin again.

741
00:53:35,909 --> 00:53:37,869
But it hasn't worked out, right?

742
00:53:37,869 --> 00:53:40,749
Because now we know that the lightning network

743
00:53:40,749 --> 00:53:42,628
is never gonna be adopted by the plebs.

744
00:53:42,628 --> 00:53:46,708
It just cannot work in a non-custodial way

745
00:53:46,708 --> 00:53:48,068
for millions of people, right?

746
00:53:48,068 --> 00:53:51,068
And we saw that when the fees spiked in May

747
00:53:51,068 --> 00:53:54,909
to above $10, we saw basically that, you know,

748
00:53:54,909 --> 00:53:57,869
lightning network started to fray.

749
00:53:58,749 --> 00:54:02,869
Like, for example, there's a statistic that on Nostr,

750
00:54:02,869 --> 00:54:04,909
93% of all the zaps happened

751
00:54:04,909 --> 00:54:07,909
from custodial lightning wallets.

752
00:54:08,549 --> 00:54:11,749
And Nostr is, of course, where hardest,

753
00:54:11,749 --> 00:54:16,068
hardcore hyper-Bitcoinizers, you know, hang out.

754
00:54:16,068 --> 00:54:20,789
So even among them, there's 93% custodial lightning usage,

755
00:54:20,789 --> 00:54:24,028
which, you know, basically it's the failure

756
00:54:24,028 --> 00:54:26,828
of the lightning network to scale Bitcoin to the plebs.

757
00:54:28,789 --> 00:54:32,068
It's also a, like, the word lightning

758
00:54:32,068 --> 00:54:33,869
has kind of lost all of its meaning.

759
00:54:34,828 --> 00:54:38,549
It's unclear, like, it's just a thing you say.

760
00:54:38,549 --> 00:54:40,628
Oh, actually, it does mean something.

761
00:54:40,628 --> 00:54:42,549
I kind of, I'm beginning to think

762
00:54:42,549 --> 00:54:46,628
that I understand its meaning now more than I ever did before

763
00:54:46,628 --> 00:54:49,229
and I think it means strike.

764
00:54:49,229 --> 00:54:52,468
I think it means three or four giant providers like Strike

765
00:54:54,028 --> 00:54:58,588
that just use wholesale lightning between continents

766
00:54:58,588 --> 00:55:02,109
to move large amounts in private channels.

767
00:55:02,148 --> 00:55:06,468
And that's the only thing that lightning's actually good for

768
00:55:06,468 --> 00:55:08,229
is basically institutional lightning

769
00:55:08,229 --> 00:55:12,388
with large hidden channels between institutional providers.

770
00:55:14,429 --> 00:55:15,948
I mean, some people would say

771
00:55:15,948 --> 00:55:17,828
that the whole heart and soul of Bitcoin

772
00:55:17,828 --> 00:55:20,588
has been ripped out if you cannot, you know,

773
00:55:20,588 --> 00:55:24,708
uncooperative close your channel with Strike,

774
00:55:24,708 --> 00:55:26,109
but if it's a custodial channel,

775
00:55:26,109 --> 00:55:29,109
then it never exists in layer one as a multiple output.

776
00:55:29,109 --> 00:55:32,148
You know, we know this is like an empirical fact

777
00:55:32,148 --> 00:55:36,388
that, you know, the hyper-Bitcoinizing maxis,

778
00:55:36,388 --> 00:55:39,989
93% of their payments on Nostr are custodial lightning.

779
00:55:39,989 --> 00:55:41,628
So they don't, they're not bothered

780
00:55:41,628 --> 00:55:46,588
by keeping $10 or $20 inside their Strike apps

781
00:55:46,588 --> 00:55:48,549
and paying zaps with those, right?

782
00:55:48,549 --> 00:55:51,189
Like, in other words, so what?

783
00:55:51,189 --> 00:55:55,189
Right, let lightning go all custodial, who cares?

784
00:55:55,189 --> 00:55:57,388
The real problem is that if the fees go high,

785
00:55:57,388 --> 00:55:59,388
which I expect to happen,

786
00:55:59,388 --> 00:56:02,468
then it essentially takes us

787
00:56:02,468 --> 00:56:04,388
to this third alternative for Bitcoin

788
00:56:04,388 --> 00:56:06,948
because this whole idea that Bitcoin goes to zero

789
00:56:06,948 --> 00:56:08,789
or becomes all the money in the world,

790
00:56:08,789 --> 00:56:11,229
that's like a false dichotomy in my mind

791
00:56:11,229 --> 00:56:12,508
because there's a third,

792
00:56:12,508 --> 00:56:14,549
I mean, a fourth possible outcome.

793
00:56:14,549 --> 00:56:18,109
The third outcome is that Bitcoin goes to a million dollars

794
00:56:18,109 --> 00:56:20,028
but fixes nothing.

795
00:56:20,028 --> 00:56:23,148
It just becomes like this sterile store of value asset,

796
00:56:23,148 --> 00:56:26,309
kind of like gold, where even big institutions and banks

797
00:56:26,309 --> 00:56:28,789
will have one or 2% of their balance sheet in Bitcoin,

798
00:56:28,789 --> 00:56:29,749
but so what?

799
00:56:29,749 --> 00:56:31,189
It will fix nothing.

800
00:56:31,189 --> 00:56:33,869
And in that world, right,

801
00:56:33,869 --> 00:56:36,429
with the 50 or $100 fees on base chain

802
00:56:36,429 --> 00:56:38,909
and Bitcoin being worth a million dollars,

803
00:56:38,909 --> 00:56:42,028
it's only available to whales and institutions, right?

804
00:56:42,028 --> 00:56:45,989
So the plebs are completely eliminated from Bitcoin

805
00:56:45,989 --> 00:56:47,429
in that kind of scenario.

806
00:56:48,429 --> 00:56:50,309
And that would be a civil war.

807
00:56:50,309 --> 00:56:55,309
That would be kind of a pleb uprising at that point, right?

808
00:56:55,909 --> 00:56:59,068
I agree, especially because in a situation

809
00:56:59,068 --> 00:57:00,549
where it's all open source software

810
00:57:00,549 --> 00:57:02,268
and anyone can just launch something,

811
00:57:02,268 --> 00:57:06,068
we've already seen how many people will launch an altcoin

812
00:57:06,068 --> 00:57:07,588
even like for no reason.

813
00:57:07,588 --> 00:57:09,669
So the idea, if there was actual,

814
00:57:10,748 --> 00:57:14,429
real demand from actual customers for something,

815
00:57:14,429 --> 00:57:16,829
well, you bet that that thing would be launched.

816
00:57:18,028 --> 00:57:21,348
Well, but there is real demand from global south plebs

817
00:57:21,348 --> 00:57:23,189
to have Bitcoin.

818
00:57:23,189 --> 00:57:27,028
However, once the fees go above $10 and stay there,

819
00:57:27,028 --> 00:57:29,388
all those tens of millions of global south plebs

820
00:57:29,388 --> 00:57:30,829
will be rugged essentially

821
00:57:30,829 --> 00:57:34,909
because they will be forced to either exit Bitcoin

822
00:57:34,909 --> 00:57:36,589
because they can never afford fees again.

823
00:57:36,589 --> 00:57:38,709
They don't have just enough savings, right?

824
00:57:38,709 --> 00:57:39,988
Like essentially it's a rug.

825
00:57:39,988 --> 00:57:42,348
Yeah, I mean, what you're saying is that

826
00:57:42,348 --> 00:57:44,628
there'll be like a hard fork in there,

827
00:57:44,628 --> 00:57:46,868
which you have acquired block.

828
00:57:46,868 --> 00:57:48,789
No, no, I'm not, actually,

829
00:57:48,789 --> 00:57:50,429
I'm not, I don't think there will be a hard fork.

830
00:57:50,469 --> 00:57:54,028
I think Bitcoin will exit its peacetime mode,

831
00:57:54,028 --> 00:57:55,148
which we're in right now

832
00:57:55,148 --> 00:57:58,108
and it will enter like a different civil war mode.

833
00:57:58,108 --> 00:58:00,469
And in this different civil war mode,

834
00:58:00,469 --> 00:58:03,388
soft forks all of a sudden become not just possible,

835
00:58:03,388 --> 00:58:06,949
but inevitable, like it changes the whole game.

836
00:58:06,949 --> 00:58:10,228
Oh yeah, I think we would just go to the miners

837
00:58:10,228 --> 00:58:12,789
and basically force the miners

838
00:58:12,789 --> 00:58:15,709
to use a soft fork extension block.

839
00:58:15,709 --> 00:58:19,669
Well, I think you won't need to go to miners.

840
00:58:19,669 --> 00:58:24,268
I think under the conditions of the civil war

841
00:58:24,268 --> 00:58:26,508
where like millions of labs are crying out

842
00:58:26,508 --> 00:58:28,108
like scale Bitcoin now

843
00:58:28,108 --> 00:58:30,829
because our savings are trapped on chain

844
00:58:30,829 --> 00:58:32,388
and we can't move it.

845
00:58:32,388 --> 00:58:37,388
I think that disables the whole sort of a cult of podcasters

846
00:58:38,348 --> 00:58:43,108
who just keep chanting ossify now all day and night, right?

847
00:58:43,108 --> 00:58:44,909
Because that's the kind of a crisis

848
00:58:44,909 --> 00:58:48,709
where you cannot keep chanting ossify now

849
00:58:48,709 --> 00:58:52,309
while millions of plebs are abandoning.

850
00:58:52,309 --> 00:58:54,348
You're like your audience will leave, right?

851
00:58:54,348 --> 00:58:55,549
Like in other words,

852
00:58:55,549 --> 00:58:57,669
what I'm saying is that under those conditions,

853
00:58:57,669 --> 00:58:59,669
it gives cover to people in the core

854
00:58:59,669 --> 00:59:03,309
to merge pull requests that otherwise they wouldn't dare do

855
00:59:03,309 --> 00:59:05,909
because otherwise they could always say,

856
00:59:05,909 --> 00:59:09,069
well, I don't wanna lose my core prestige

857
00:59:09,069 --> 00:59:11,228
and privileges to have other people review my code

858
00:59:11,228 --> 00:59:13,309
if I merge something that's controversial, right?

859
00:59:13,309 --> 00:59:15,549
But under the conditions of the civil war,

860
00:59:15,549 --> 00:59:17,868
somebody will push the merge button

861
00:59:17,868 --> 00:59:21,469
because that will be the only way to resolve the civil war.

862
00:59:21,469 --> 00:59:25,709
Like some kind of scaling will have to be allowed, right?

863
00:59:25,709 --> 00:59:26,829
And it's no longer,

864
00:59:26,829 --> 00:59:30,069
it will not be a tenable position to stall it any longer.

865
00:59:30,069 --> 00:59:33,148
In fact, it will be sort of the opposite, right?

866
00:59:33,148 --> 00:59:37,868
It's sort of the bankruptcy of the ossifier cult

867
00:59:37,868 --> 00:59:42,868
and kind of the moral bankruptcy of the ossifier cult.

868
00:59:43,628 --> 00:59:46,549
Like, because even Saylor has a sort of a nuanced position.

869
00:59:46,549 --> 00:59:48,829
He says that Bitcoin should never be changed

870
00:59:48,829 --> 00:59:53,268
except when there is like a crisis or catastrophe.

871
00:59:53,268 --> 00:59:58,108
Like sort of like an example he gives is that inflation bug.

872
00:59:58,108 --> 01:00:00,388
But what do you call a situation

873
01:00:00,388 --> 01:00:04,108
where tens of millions of plebs in the global South are wrong

874
01:00:04,108 --> 01:00:06,309
because they can't move their savings anymore?

875
01:00:06,309 --> 01:00:08,508
But to me, that sounds like a catastrophe.

876
01:00:09,898 --> 01:00:12,398
All right, so some kind of change might be catalyzed.

877
01:00:20,398 --> 01:00:23,898
Well, yeah, I mean, I think I would actually agree with you.

878
01:00:23,898 --> 01:00:30,398
It's hard to know exactly because with the lightning question for me raises many questions

879
01:00:30,398 --> 01:00:35,398
because it speaks to how far people are willing to go.

880
01:00:35,398 --> 01:00:42,398
There's a saying that the biggest problem in any organization is the one that everyone is afraid to talk about.

881
01:00:43,898 --> 01:00:50,398
And with lightning, it does seem like people are just kind of like really crossing their fingers

882
01:00:50,398 --> 01:00:54,398
and hoping that this will work, you know, Thomas Edison light bulb style.

883
01:00:55,398 --> 01:00:57,398
They're like, we'll just get to work later.

884
01:00:57,398 --> 01:01:00,398
So lightning has to die in order for Bitcoin to survive.

885
01:01:00,398 --> 01:01:05,398
Like the idea of lightning scaling Bitcoin is going to be the first victim of the apocalypse, right?

886
01:01:06,398 --> 01:01:13,398
Because once the fees go high and lightning essentially is exposed as inappropriate for plebs,

887
01:01:14,398 --> 01:01:19,398
and even if the lightning was not fee dependent, it would still be inappropriate for plebs

888
01:01:19,398 --> 01:01:25,398
because no protocol has ever succeeded on the Internet where the retail users have to run their nodes.

889
01:01:25,398 --> 01:01:27,398
Like that's never happened.

890
01:01:27,398 --> 01:01:37,398
So this idea that people will be running their own lightning nodes online as a way to get cheaper fees to move Bitcoin around,

891
01:01:37,398 --> 01:01:45,398
that was always going to fail anyways, but it will be shown to be like a terrible idea once the fees go high.

892
01:01:46,398 --> 01:01:53,398
Like the illusion that lightning scales Bitcoin for the plebs must be destroyed before real change happens.

893
01:01:53,398 --> 01:02:00,398
And I actually don't think that the maintainers in the core are opposed to changes.

894
01:02:00,398 --> 01:02:05,398
I think they're just held hostage by the ossifier, you know, podcasters.

895
01:02:06,398 --> 01:02:13,398
I think it's more of a kind of like, don't you dare merge anything that's controversial or else, right?

896
01:02:14,398 --> 01:02:19,398
So it's sort of like last time, I think the good proof of this was what happened to CTV, right?

897
01:02:19,398 --> 01:02:28,398
Because CTV was a very small change that from a technical perspective, everybody can see is safe and this strictly improves Bitcoin.

898
01:02:29,398 --> 01:02:38,398
But there was the oldest outcry among the ossifier called on Twitter, you know, don't change Bitcoin no matter what.

899
01:02:38,398 --> 01:02:52,398
And that provided like both cover and it essentially forced the veto by the maintainers in the core not merging and yet not saying why they're not merging.

900
01:02:53,398 --> 01:02:59,398
I don't know if you remember, you know, Jeremy Rubin was complaining that there was like this wall of silence, right?

901
01:03:00,398 --> 01:03:07,398
So the wall of silence basically means to me, I read the wall of silence as I would push the merge button, but that's the end of my core career.

902
01:03:07,398 --> 01:03:10,398
So I'm not going to do it because there's just too much heat.

903
01:03:11,398 --> 01:03:18,398
And I'm saying that under the conditions of the Civil War, the heat will be to merge as opposed to to prevent merging.

904
01:03:19,398 --> 01:03:23,398
Because, you know, once you have millions of plebs.

905
01:03:23,398 --> 01:03:24,398
Yeah, I think it was right.

906
01:03:24,398 --> 01:03:36,398
I think there's another there's another way to retell that story, which is maybe even simpler, which is just that we had the block size war, the more conservative side loss.

907
01:03:36,398 --> 01:03:41,398
Like so like SegWit2x was tried, but it was very hamfisted and very embarrassing and it didn't work at all.

908
01:03:41,398 --> 01:03:44,398
And it ultimately failed completely and was withdrawn.

909
01:03:44,398 --> 01:03:48,398
And then Bitcoin Cash was tried and it also basically failed completely.

910
01:03:48,398 --> 01:03:53,398
So it was also withdrawn or more or less, you know, skirting over many details.

911
01:03:54,398 --> 01:03:55,398
But that was basically what happened.

912
01:03:55,398 --> 01:03:57,398
And so people took one look at that.

913
01:03:59,398 --> 01:04:09,398
It's like the people who are now like, you know, like I fully support all gay rights, but it's like people today think like gay rights is about the rainbow flag.

914
01:04:10,398 --> 01:04:11,398
And it was like before it was like about.

915
01:04:11,398 --> 01:04:14,398
So there's like a cosmetic and like a fundamental.

916
01:04:15,398 --> 01:04:19,398
So in this in the case of Bitcoin, the more conservative side won.

917
01:04:19,398 --> 01:04:21,398
And so everyone just decided, oh, OK.

918
01:04:21,398 --> 01:04:27,398
So being conservative is the way to preach the gospel of Bitcoin.

919
01:04:27,398 --> 01:04:29,398
And they just decided that.

920
01:04:31,398 --> 01:04:32,398
It's making sense.

921
01:04:32,398 --> 01:04:34,398
What I'm saying is where I think people.

922
01:04:35,398 --> 01:04:37,398
It's making total sense.

923
01:04:37,398 --> 01:04:44,398
You can say that like Saylor is the leader of the don't change Bitcoin unless there is a catastrophe called.

924
01:04:44,398 --> 01:04:48,398
And that's like he's he's nuanced about his hyper Bitcoinization idea.

925
01:04:48,398 --> 01:04:53,398
Like he doesn't see hyper Bitcoinization, but he's also in the camp of don't make any changes.

926
01:04:53,398 --> 01:04:59,398
Or, you know, because if you do, then you're messing with the definition of money, which you should never do.

927
01:04:59,398 --> 01:05:05,398
The only problem logically with that is that Bitcoin is not money yet and probably will never become if it's left unchanged like it is.

928
01:05:05,398 --> 01:05:16,398
Right, because it's on a trajectory to converge to this sterile, exotic store of value for whales and institutions where no pleb can afford to transact on chain.

929
01:05:16,398 --> 01:05:17,398
And that's not what I call money.

930
01:05:17,398 --> 01:05:19,398
That's not what anybody would call money.

931
01:05:19,398 --> 01:05:25,398
The problem is that they're putting the carriage before the horse like they need to like money needs to be ossified.

932
01:05:25,398 --> 01:05:27,398
But like it's clearly not money yet.

933
01:05:28,398 --> 01:05:38,398
Right. And if you want it to become money, then you have to allow people to use it as more than just this volatile digital gold for institutions and whales.

934
01:05:38,398 --> 01:05:45,398
Right. Because then it's it's like this is the outcome where Bitcoin does go to a million dollars, but it fixes nothing.

935
01:05:45,398 --> 01:05:54,398
Right. That's like that's the death of the Bitcoin dream altogether, even though the price goes to a million dollars.

936
01:05:54,398 --> 01:06:06,398
Yeah, well, I think what you're saying that I agree with is that someone should take out a stopwatch and we should measure how long it takes.

937
01:06:06,398 --> 01:06:19,398
Like the lightning narrative, again, similarly to what I was just trying to say about how that one side wanted to change in the block size war and lost the winning side.

938
01:06:19,398 --> 01:06:22,398
I always said like, OK, the lightning network, well, whatever.

939
01:06:22,398 --> 01:06:28,398
Lightning network, lightning network, lightning network was like the big phrase, the big counter argument.

940
01:06:29,398 --> 01:06:35,398
And the important sociological thing is to study.

941
01:06:37,398 --> 01:06:45,398
Exactly what happens to that narrative, because that is the difference between how rational is everyone versus is this just the.

942
01:06:46,398 --> 01:06:50,398
You know, is the Bitcoin community just as political as.

943
01:06:53,398 --> 01:06:58,398
Name your thing, just as political as the Houses of Congress or whatever.

944
01:06:59,398 --> 01:07:09,398
It's both right. There's a highly political sort of podcasters faction and they're basically chanting ossify now day and night.

945
01:07:10,398 --> 01:07:17,398
And because they have to project this extremist religious view, because that's how they engagement farm on Twitter.

946
01:07:17,398 --> 01:07:22,398
Right. Like they all have to have many, many subscribers on Twitter and elsewhere.

947
01:07:22,398 --> 01:07:32,398
And the best way to engagement farm for that is to adopt the most extreme kind of theological positions and condemn in moralizing tones everything else.

948
01:07:33,398 --> 01:07:39,398
So they're essentially using this kind of fiery preacher type kind of old routine.

949
01:07:39,398 --> 01:07:52,398
And so it's like a self-reinforcing cult of if you want a large audience for your podcast, then you have to be extreme and you have to moralize about everything other than your faction being immoral and shit corners and everything else.

950
01:07:52,398 --> 01:07:57,398
Right. But that whole cult falls apart once there is like a real crisis.

951
01:07:57,398 --> 01:08:01,398
Like once the plebs cannot move their Bitcoin, they have to exit the cult.

952
01:08:01,398 --> 01:08:03,398
They have to abandon it. Right. Because that essentially.

953
01:08:04,398 --> 01:08:10,398
I completely agree. Right now, there's a simple cost benefit analysis because it's a cheap talk, as we say.

954
01:08:11,398 --> 01:08:15,398
It's just like, well, they're on a podcast. You can just go along with it.

955
01:08:15,398 --> 01:08:20,398
And I'm going along. And then if I don't, then I'm going to be kicked out of the Bitcoin community.

956
01:08:20,398 --> 01:08:23,398
And then where would I go? Where would I go? You know, who would I turn to?

957
01:08:23,398 --> 01:08:28,398
Would I join an altcoin community? Would I start my own thing? Those don't seem like they'll work.

958
01:08:28,398 --> 01:08:32,398
So there's a lot of pressure to stay in. Pure pressure.

959
01:08:32,398 --> 01:08:39,398
And the pressure to ossify is actually a derivative of this religious idea of immaculate conception.

960
01:08:39,398 --> 01:08:44,398
Because you only ossify Bitcoin if you assume that it's already perfect in a sense.

961
01:08:44,398 --> 01:08:48,398
And it will hyper-Bitcoinize the world if you just don't mess with it.

962
01:08:48,398 --> 01:08:52,398
And so this is like a purely religious idea. And that has to be exposed as a failure.

963
01:08:52,398 --> 01:08:58,398
Because if Lightning Network actually is exposed as a failure to scale Bitcoin for the plebs.

964
01:08:59,398 --> 01:09:03,398
And also plebs can't move their coins in the global South. Right.

965
01:09:03,398 --> 01:09:08,398
Then that exposes Bitcoin as flawed. Right. And that essentially rug pulls the cult.

966
01:09:08,398 --> 01:09:11,398
Because the cult is based on the idea that Satoshi came.

967
01:09:11,398 --> 01:09:17,398
You know, the alien came from a thousand years in the future and gave us this immaculate technology.

968
01:09:17,398 --> 01:09:22,398
So all we have to do is just not change it. And then it will be all the money in the world.

969
01:09:22,398 --> 01:09:25,398
That's sort of the apocalyptic vision of it.

970
01:09:27,398 --> 01:09:33,398
Yeah. Well, of course, this is a type of belief where, like a lot of people said,

971
01:09:33,398 --> 01:09:41,398
Bitcoin is number one. The number one coin is going to grow at a faster rate than any other.

972
01:09:41,398 --> 01:09:43,398
Like, you know, the number three coin or the number five coin.

973
01:09:43,398 --> 01:09:49,398
So therefore, let's fast forward. And number one will just take over everything.

974
01:09:50,398 --> 01:09:55,398
People have also had the view that's like, if Bitcoin were to ever hard fork or change,

975
01:09:56,398 --> 01:10:03,398
that would permanently discredit it. That would open the door to endless changes.

976
01:10:03,398 --> 01:10:09,398
And then what would we have? An endless slippery slope into this chasm of defeat.

977
01:10:09,398 --> 01:10:11,398
And so therefore, it will never happen.

978
01:10:13,398 --> 01:10:16,398
The problem with belief, these are the type of beliefs that are like,

979
01:10:16,398 --> 01:10:19,398
it's true until it's not style belief.

980
01:10:19,398 --> 01:10:22,398
And then as soon as it's not, like as soon as you aren't number one,

981
01:10:22,398 --> 01:10:29,398
now not only are you not number one, but you were wrong about something big before.

982
01:10:29,398 --> 01:10:33,398
Kind of like, you know, like when people go through a bad breakup or something

983
01:10:33,398 --> 01:10:40,398
where they have to like revisit the whole last couple months or weeks or whatever

984
01:10:40,398 --> 01:10:43,398
and like re-figure out what really happened.

985
01:10:44,398 --> 01:10:46,398
It was like, not only were you wrong about this,

986
01:10:46,398 --> 01:10:50,398
but you thought it was going a completely different direction or something like that.

987
01:10:51,398 --> 01:10:57,398
What I'm trying to say is that I agree with you that there are these sacred cows

988
01:10:57,398 --> 01:11:02,398
that are all interlocking. And it's kind of like, this happens a lot in finance

989
01:11:02,398 --> 01:11:05,398
where these little beliefs pile up.

990
01:11:05,398 --> 01:11:09,398
Like for example, there was that 1987 crash or whatever,

991
01:11:09,398 --> 01:11:13,398
where everyone had programmed their computers a certain way based on the stock market,

992
01:11:13,398 --> 01:11:17,398
just never crashing 15% or whatever it was.

993
01:11:17,398 --> 01:11:19,398
And so since everyone had their computer programmed that way,

994
01:11:19,398 --> 01:11:23,398
it just like inevitably happened one day.

995
01:11:24,398 --> 01:11:28,398
So what would the cascading failure of Bitcoin look like?

996
01:11:28,398 --> 01:11:32,398
It would be like flippening followed by the apocalypse,

997
01:11:32,398 --> 01:11:34,398
or the apocalypse followed by flippening.

998
01:11:34,398 --> 01:11:38,398
I mean, I suspect the flippening will be rationalized away

999
01:11:38,398 --> 01:11:41,398
because like the moment the flippening possibly happens,

1000
01:11:41,398 --> 01:11:43,398
let's say next year or two years from now,

1001
01:11:43,398 --> 01:11:48,398
then the new rationalization will be, well, Ethereum is just a big tech company,

1002
01:11:48,398 --> 01:11:51,398
you know, Apple is $3 trillion market cap, so what?

1003
01:11:51,398 --> 01:11:54,398
And Gensler is going to shut it down any day now.

1004
01:11:54,398 --> 01:11:57,398
So we don't need to worry about Ethereum flippening Bitcoin.

1005
01:11:57,398 --> 01:12:01,398
It's not necessarily one near flippening, but yeah,

1006
01:12:01,398 --> 01:12:06,398
I think like if the Bitcoin price is going down,

1007
01:12:06,398 --> 01:12:08,398
Ethereum price is going up and flippens BTC,

1008
01:12:08,398 --> 01:12:10,398
and then BTC starts going down the list,

1009
01:12:10,398 --> 01:12:12,398
like number one, number two, number three, number four,

1010
01:12:12,398 --> 01:12:15,398
I think absolutely that would be the –

1011
01:12:15,398 --> 01:12:18,398
that would be, you know, people would immediately –

1012
01:12:18,398 --> 01:12:21,398
that would immediately cause everyone to think,

1013
01:12:21,398 --> 01:12:24,398
okay, something we're doing is wrong and we need to rethink everything.

1014
01:12:24,398 --> 01:12:28,398
And they would then say which idea do we put on the –

1015
01:12:28,398 --> 01:12:32,398
you know, in the guillotine and just decapitate first.

1016
01:12:32,398 --> 01:12:35,398
And it would be the first and most important idea that would go

1017
01:12:35,398 --> 01:12:39,398
would be the idea that Bitcoin success is predetermined

1018
01:12:39,398 --> 01:12:44,398
and that it's in fact inevitable that Bitcoin succeed

1019
01:12:44,398 --> 01:12:46,398
if the price is going down and other things are going up.

1020
01:12:46,398 --> 01:12:48,398
So that would be one thing.

1021
01:12:48,398 --> 01:12:52,398
I think that – I kind of lament that –

1022
01:12:52,398 --> 01:12:57,398
any real competitor to Bitcoin to actually emerge on its own terms

1023
01:12:57,398 --> 01:13:02,398
with the exception of Bitcoin Cash, which did a terrible job

1024
01:13:02,398 --> 01:13:06,398
and it did, you know, mostly lots of things wrong.

1025
01:13:06,398 --> 01:13:09,398
It, you know, we could put them on a big list,

1026
01:13:09,398 --> 01:13:13,398
but the timing, the idea, the idea was not a good idea.

1027
01:13:13,398 --> 01:13:17,398
You know, larger layer one blocks is not a good idea

1028
01:13:17,398 --> 01:13:22,398
since you can do larger blocks on top of smaller blocks but not vice versa.

1029
01:13:22,398 --> 01:13:25,398
The timing, you know, just like the name,

1030
01:13:25,398 --> 01:13:28,398
everything was just not – the replay protection,

1031
01:13:28,398 --> 01:13:30,398
the fact that it launched during SegWit2x.

1032
01:13:30,398 --> 01:13:32,398
You could just like do a big list.

1033
01:13:32,398 --> 01:13:35,398
And so it actually would have been better for us to have like, you know,

1034
01:13:35,398 --> 01:13:41,398
a two-party system where we had like red Bitcoin, blue Bitcoin,

1035
01:13:41,398 --> 01:13:46,398
and then we would be more self-critical because as you have just said,

1036
01:13:46,398 --> 01:13:51,398
as it stands now, most of the stuff is just rationalized away.

1037
01:13:51,398 --> 01:13:53,398
Most of the internal criticism is rationalized away.

1038
01:13:53,398 --> 01:13:58,398
Whereas if we had two things that people both recognized as Bitcoin,

1039
01:13:58,398 --> 01:14:01,398
that would have been easier for stuff to break out

1040
01:14:01,398 --> 01:14:05,398
and one of those things would have merged CTV and BIP300 by now

1041
01:14:05,398 --> 01:14:07,398
and then that thing would have crashed.

1042
01:14:07,398 --> 01:14:12,398
Well, I think there's a new fact, which is appearance of something like ARK

1043
01:14:12,398 --> 01:14:17,398
and, you know, other protocols that promise to scale Bitcoin on layer 2

1044
01:14:17,398 --> 01:14:18,398
that are not Lightning.

1045
01:14:18,398 --> 01:14:24,398
So, for example, ARK raises the stakes because if there is an apocalypse

1046
01:14:24,398 --> 01:14:27,398
and like plebs are essentially eliminated from Bitcoin

1047
01:14:27,398 --> 01:14:30,398
and it's clear that Lightning is never going to bring them back,

1048
01:14:30,398 --> 01:14:35,398
that, you know, the outcry of scale Bitcoin now can be fixed by –

1049
01:14:35,398 --> 01:14:39,398
because ARK requires CTV and, you know, other protocols require CTV.

1050
01:14:40,398 --> 01:14:42,398
Well, why don't we merge CTV, you know,

1051
01:14:42,398 --> 01:14:49,398
if it can make layer 2 Bitcoin scaling affordable again for plebs, right?

1052
01:14:49,398 --> 01:14:53,398
As you say though, that is a psychologically difficult thing

1053
01:14:53,398 --> 01:14:56,398
because it forces people to confront the reality that it's possible

1054
01:14:56,398 --> 01:15:00,398
for a problem to show up, which is later fixed by a merge

1055
01:15:00,398 --> 01:15:06,398
and that means that we'll always be beholden in the view of these other people.

1056
01:15:06,398 --> 01:15:11,398
We'll be beholden to the software merger people or something.

1057
01:15:11,398 --> 01:15:13,398
But I agree with you 100%.

1058
01:15:15,398 --> 01:15:20,398
It's not that the maintainers at the core are the evil villains

1059
01:15:20,398 --> 01:15:23,398
that are vetoing all the useful soft boards.

1060
01:15:23,398 --> 01:15:29,398
I think they're more hostages to the Ossifier cult than the other way around.

1061
01:15:29,398 --> 01:15:35,398
Like once there's a real crisis, which is going to happen fairly soon,

1062
01:15:35,398 --> 01:15:38,398
maybe, you know, in the next bull market the fees will go high

1063
01:15:38,398 --> 01:15:39,398
or the flippening will happen.

1064
01:15:39,398 --> 01:15:41,398
One of those two things happens, right?

1065
01:15:41,398 --> 01:15:46,398
And the whole idea that Bitcoin is perfect and doesn't need to change

1066
01:15:46,398 --> 01:15:48,398
is exposed as not working.

1067
01:15:48,398 --> 01:15:52,398
At that point, right, there will be this wartime, civil wartime Bitcoin

1068
01:15:52,398 --> 01:15:57,398
where you could have two or three soft forks merged in, you know,

1069
01:15:57,398 --> 01:16:01,398
within a few months just as a kind of an emergency measure to save Bitcoin.

1070
01:16:01,398 --> 01:16:04,398
So it's like any soft fork that's been sufficiently small,

1071
01:16:04,398 --> 01:16:07,398
well-understood, and well-reviewed as a pull request

1072
01:16:07,398 --> 01:16:09,398
and sitting there for a long time.

1073
01:16:09,398 --> 01:16:13,398
In fact, like there's nothing stopping the CTV pull request

1074
01:16:13,398 --> 01:16:15,398
from being reopened and merged, right?

1075
01:16:15,398 --> 01:16:18,398
It's been reviewed to death and same is true about APO and others.

1076
01:16:18,398 --> 01:16:24,398
And the same would apply to BIP300 if it was a small kind of narrow change

1077
01:16:24,398 --> 01:16:26,398
that has gotten in the way of the civil war.

1078
01:16:26,398 --> 01:16:28,398
Yes, we are working on that.

1079
01:16:28,398 --> 01:16:30,398
We're working on it right now, yes.

1080
01:16:30,398 --> 01:16:32,398
We're working on the minimal pull request.

1081
01:16:32,398 --> 01:16:34,398
Of course, the problem with the pull request is, as you know,

1082
01:16:34,398 --> 01:16:36,398
they do age badly.

1083
01:16:36,398 --> 01:16:41,398
And in fact, I think even CTV would have to be like redone slightly,

1084
01:16:41,398 --> 01:16:43,398
slightly, you know.

1085
01:16:43,398 --> 01:16:45,398
You mean like because it would need to be rebased?

1086
01:16:45,398 --> 01:16:46,398
Is that the problem?

1087
01:16:46,398 --> 01:16:47,398
Basically, yes.

1088
01:16:47,398 --> 01:16:48,398
Yes.

1089
01:16:48,398 --> 01:16:51,398
I'm not – I think it would.

1090
01:16:51,398 --> 01:16:54,398
But that's not a big deal.

1091
01:16:54,398 --> 01:16:57,398
But – well, especially because like the ideas from like whatever,

1092
01:16:57,398 --> 01:17:00,398
the code, the ideas from like 2017 and the ideas from like 2019.

1093
01:17:00,398 --> 01:17:01,398
So, I don't know.

1094
01:17:01,398 --> 01:17:04,398
You've been – you blink and four years have passed.

1095
01:17:04,398 --> 01:17:07,398
It's actually – I don't know the exact dates.

1096
01:17:07,398 --> 01:17:08,398
What?

1097
01:17:08,398 --> 01:17:10,398
And APO is an idea from 2015, right?

1098
01:17:10,398 --> 01:17:11,398
Very old.

1099
01:17:11,398 --> 01:17:13,398
It's on the lightning white paper, yes.

1100
01:17:13,398 --> 01:17:15,398
A version of it is mentioned.

1101
01:17:15,398 --> 01:17:16,398
So, like –

1102
01:17:16,398 --> 01:17:18,398
March 2015, I think.

1103
01:17:18,398 --> 01:17:23,398
What can possibly stop somebody, one of the maintainers from hitting the

1104
01:17:23,398 --> 01:17:28,398
merge button on APO if it, quote-unquote, fixes the lightning network while also

1105
01:17:28,398 --> 01:17:33,398
enabling a whole bunch of things like maybe ARK and others under the civil war

1106
01:17:33,398 --> 01:17:39,398
conditions when you have basically this sudden complete 180-degree turnaround in

1107
01:17:39,398 --> 01:17:42,398
public opinion where everybody is screaming like Bitcoin is dying.

1108
01:17:42,398 --> 01:17:43,398
Save it now.

1109
01:17:43,398 --> 01:17:46,398
I mean we saw this kind of civil war in the Ethereum world, right?

1110
01:17:46,398 --> 01:17:50,398
Because the millions of plebs cried out in the Ethereum world of, you know,

1111
01:17:50,398 --> 01:17:51,398
scale Ethereum now.

1112
01:17:51,398 --> 01:17:56,398
We can't afford, you know, $50 protocol fees to execute a smart contract in

1113
01:17:56,398 --> 01:17:57,398
Ethereum, right?

1114
01:17:57,398 --> 01:17:59,398
And that focused their minds over there.

1115
01:17:59,398 --> 01:18:02,398
Why wouldn't it focus their minds here?

1116
01:18:02,398 --> 01:18:03,398
Well, yeah.

1117
01:18:03,398 --> 01:18:09,398
I mean I completely agree with you about – this is a good story which is that

1118
01:18:09,398 --> 01:18:13,398
people would – they could say with some justification.

1119
01:18:13,398 --> 01:18:17,398
They could say, well, we're already number one.

1120
01:18:17,398 --> 01:18:19,398
There is no crisis.

1121
01:18:20,398 --> 01:18:22,398
So why do we need to do anything?

1122
01:18:22,398 --> 01:18:26,398
And that, you know, there's some logic to that.

1123
01:18:26,398 --> 01:18:31,398
But I think ARK is key because ARK is a thing where it's technically

1124
01:18:31,398 --> 01:18:32,398
sophisticated.

1125
01:18:32,398 --> 01:18:38,398
It's done by someone who is like associated with Blockstream who is to have,

1126
01:18:38,398 --> 01:18:41,398
you know, like enough clout.

1127
01:18:41,398 --> 01:18:47,398
And Barack, creator, he really doesn't like the lightning network.

1128
01:18:47,398 --> 01:18:48,398
He doesn't like it at all.

1129
01:18:48,398 --> 01:18:49,398
He thinks it's not good.

1130
01:18:49,398 --> 01:18:56,398
So because the meta, you know, the cultural meta for the longest time has

1131
01:18:56,398 --> 01:19:00,398
just been the tech elite thinks lightning is good.

1132
01:19:00,398 --> 01:19:06,398
They kind of convinced the VCs that lightning is good.

1133
01:19:06,398 --> 01:19:10,398
The problem is they convinced Saylor and Saylor is the biggest influencer,

1134
01:19:10,398 --> 01:19:11,398
right?

1135
01:19:11,398 --> 01:19:14,398
Like Saylor has to abandon his belief that lightning scales Bitcoin.

1136
01:19:14,398 --> 01:19:18,398
And then, you know, we already saw beginnings of that because Saylor was all

1137
01:19:18,398 --> 01:19:21,398
excited about Ordinals creating higher fee pressure.

1138
01:19:21,398 --> 01:19:25,398
So there's like one more step for him to abandon the belief that lightning is

1139
01:19:25,398 --> 01:19:27,398
the scaling future of Bitcoin.

1140
01:19:27,398 --> 01:19:31,398
Once he abandons that belief and starts talking about like we need ARK now,

1141
01:19:31,398 --> 01:19:34,398
otherwise, you know, Bitcoin is in danger.

1142
01:19:34,398 --> 01:19:35,398
Yeah, but see, here's the thing.

1143
01:19:35,398 --> 01:19:37,398
I mean, I 100% agree with you.

1144
01:19:37,398 --> 01:19:40,398
This is what I'm trying to bring up is won't this be like a watershed?

1145
01:19:40,398 --> 01:19:43,398
I mean, maybe for people who are new, they won't care as much.

1146
01:19:43,398 --> 01:19:50,398
But for anyone who joined in like the 2017 to 2021 class, I think those people

1147
01:19:50,398 --> 01:19:55,398
will just, they will be done with Saylor like forever, don't you think?

1148
01:19:55,398 --> 01:20:01,398
They'll think like Saylor was like this guy full lightning and now he's just at

1149
01:20:01,398 --> 01:20:02,398
the drop of a hat.

1150
01:20:02,398 --> 01:20:04,398
He's going to switch to ARK.

1151
01:20:04,398 --> 01:20:10,398
No, I think Saylor will have a conversion experience when he sees high sustained

1152
01:20:10,398 --> 01:20:15,398
fees and he realizes, which will be obvious to everyone, that this basically.

1153
01:20:15,883 --> 01:20:26,883
Kills Bitcoin's dream of fixing anything, even if Bitcoin goes to a million dollars, it just becomes institutional and will sterile store value asset because nobody else can transact with it, right?

1154
01:20:26,883 --> 01:20:31,883
So Saylor will have a conversion experience. I mean, I don't think he's a fool.

1155
01:20:31,883 --> 01:20:47,883
But don't you think that will open the floodgates is what I'm saying. Then everyone will say, okay, now we can finally question things. Before we could not question the lightning network, nor any of the secret cows, but now we can finally question things.

1156
01:20:47,883 --> 01:21:03,883
Right. I mean, and if Saylor doesn't do it quickly, then other influencers like Saylor, like Peter McCormick and others, one of them will have conversion experience before the others once they see the failure of lightning to scale Bitcoin.

1157
01:21:03,883 --> 01:21:28,883
I mean, from my perspective, I don't know if you guys know about this, but in Ordinal's world, they released this beta, which created this additional fee pressure. But the key feature is still not implemented, which is hierarchical Ordinals, where you can have an Ordinal that owns other Ordinals, which allows you to put the whole file system of data in there and own it all recursively by a single Ordinal that represents your identity.

1158
01:21:28,883 --> 01:21:48,883
When that goes in, that enables whole NFT collections to go in, owned by one creator. What I'm trying to say is that that project could actually catalyze real crisis and change, because all you need is fees of $10 per transaction and higher staying for a few months.

1159
01:21:48,883 --> 01:22:01,883
And that basically means that the feepocalypse is upon us, and nobody can ignore the fact that lightning doesn't scale it for plebs, and regular plebs have no chance other than ARK. So something needs to be done.

1160
01:22:02,883 --> 01:22:24,883
Well, okay, let's talk about this, then. Let's talk about feepocalypse. I may be wrong, but I don't think that feepocalypse actually will happen, which is unfortunate for your point of view, because in your paradigm, the high fee sends a signal to everyone that they must sober up.

1161
01:22:25,883 --> 01:22:51,883
And in that way, it is healthy. But in my way, we just kind of limp along in denial forever, for a long time. Because what happens is, the fees fill up, and then people either, like demand goes down, like people either just stop transacting as much, or someone, they use Litecoin or something, or they use custodial lightning, which doesn't pay any fees, because it's not Bitcoin.

1162
01:22:52,883 --> 01:23:07,883
And so if we do this, then there will never actually be this sobering up signal, and it will just be this kind of like limping along. And I think that is what we've already had. And we've already had Peter McCormack interview Tadge Dreiser, and Tadge Dreiser wanted to only talk about uTreeXO.

1163
01:23:08,883 --> 01:23:28,883
And Peter McCormack was like, Oh, I thought this would be at the Lightning Network. And Tadge was like, Yeah, he like kind of basically said that. That was like 2019. And he was saying like, well, you know, he said, sort of what you're saying. He said, well, a world where everyone pays a small fee looks a lot more reasonable than a world where there's a couple people paying a really high fee.

1164
01:23:29,883 --> 01:23:40,883
He was saying all this stuff. And then, you know, he's saying like, you know, he didn't want it to be a pro lightning. What Bitcoin did interview. And that was 2019. Or if I remember correctly, maybe I misremember.

1165
01:23:41,883 --> 01:23:52,883
I disagree with your ideas about fees. And I've read your blog posts about them. I think there's a counterexample theory, which is Ethereum itself, for example.

1166
01:23:53,883 --> 01:24:06,883
Ethereum never really had a fee market until the last time its mempool cleared, which happened like in 2018 or 2019. And only the last time that the mempool in Bitcoin clears, that's the beginning of the fee market.

1167
01:24:07,883 --> 01:24:21,883
Because block space is a highly perishable commodity. And therefore, it has this race to the bottom dynamics for providers where if there is any available block space, it must be sold off for nothing. Otherwise, it goes unused.

1168
01:24:22,883 --> 01:24:39,883
So therefore, what happened in Ethereum is that once there was the last time when the mempool cleared in something like 2017, 2018, the fees assumed this plateau level, which was high. And that caused the spillover into scaling technologies on Ethereum.

1169
01:24:39,883 --> 01:24:47,883
They tried state channels, they tried sidechains, like the early version of QualPolygon, and eventually they sell on these roll-ups.

1170
01:24:48,883 --> 01:25:03,883
So your idea of people choosing to go elsewhere is true, but only after the fees. The spillover happens only in the full cup. In other words, there has to be a certain sustained high level of fees before the spillover happens.

1171
01:25:04,883 --> 01:25:16,883
And the spillover will happen in Bitcoin, but where that high level of fees is, we don't really know. But maybe we'll find out soon enough. Because last time I checked, the mempool cleared sometime in April.

1172
01:25:17,883 --> 01:25:32,883
The story you tell seems to support my view, which is that Ethereum had low fees, no one cared about scaling, then the fees went up, and then Ethereum viewed this as a problem to be solved, and they set to work.

1173
01:25:32,883 --> 01:25:50,883
They used their scarce time on this earth to do R&D, and they were like, we're gonna bring these fees down, and then also, let me just, and then I'll let you reply, but something else that happened undeniably was all the EVM clones, you know, whatever, Avalanche, Solana, Cardano, whatever.

1174
01:25:50,883 --> 01:26:10,883
I don't even know if these are EVM clones, I don't even care. Solana. But the point is, what, Binance Smart Chain? The point is, the high fees stimulated the search for alternatives, and then the fees did go back down, and the point of Ethereum is to, the fee rates go back down.

1175
01:26:10,883 --> 01:26:32,883
That's the thing is, they never went back down to clear the mempool, that's my point. So in other words, once the fees go high enough, right, it does stimulate search for alternatives, so all these Ethereum killer EVM clones appeared, and Binance Smart Chain, and then Ethereum has its own scaling things such as sidechains and rollups, but the fees never went down enough.

1176
01:26:32,883 --> 01:27:00,883
They never went low. In fact, like, transacting on Ethereum L1 has stayed fairly expensive, but those people who can't afford the expense, they now have this escape hatch. So it's kind of like, imagine that there's a super popular restaurant that is always full of people, but if it can't fit any more people, it has like a cheaper restaurant down the street, so it sends cheaper people down to it, but it stays full all the time anyway.

1177
01:27:00,883 --> 01:27:29,883
So the appearance of all the Ethereum clones actually refutes your idea that competition and fees will eventually cause fees to fall, because despite all the Ethereum killers creating all this 100 times more block space, they're all lost to Ethereum, because the network effects of Ethereum have proven strong enough to sustain the high fee pressure, despite Avalanche offering 100 times lower fees.

1178
01:27:29,883 --> 01:27:43,883
And all the same protocols copy pasted to Avalanche. That hasn't caused the Ethereum fees to fall, and I don't expect that once Bitcoin fees go high, that there will be any kind of spillover that will lower them again, right?

1179
01:27:43,883 --> 01:28:08,883
They can only go higher, from my perspective. Why? Because, well, simply there's like a fixed limit on block space, and even if ordinals were not there, even if inscriptions were not there, you would still see ongoing adoption by global self clubs transacting more and more, and just the number of payments per day, that long-term moving average of like 365-day moving average of payments per day is always gradually rising.

1180
01:28:08,883 --> 01:28:37,883
So eventually, the block space is exhausted and has a non-linear response in the cost per V-byte, right? So the fees would spike with or without ordinals. I think the ordinals just created a new use case that allows rich people to pay for luxury file storage in Bitcoin, which is now, you know, scouting out the clubs from the global south even more, and it just brought forward the whole hypocalypse, which would have happened in my mind.

1181
01:28:41,303 --> 01:28:46,843
It's a different the

1182
01:28:47,503 --> 01:28:51,783
the reason why I resist the high fees thing is I think

1183
01:28:51,883 --> 01:28:56,363
that the type of person who, it's a different type of person who uses it, this is my

1184
01:28:56,363 --> 01:28:58,823
conjecture. I have no idea.

1185
01:28:59,043 --> 01:29:04,823
But when just being involved in the Bitcoin community, people don't find the

1186
01:29:04,823 --> 01:29:05,883
idea of paying

1187
01:29:05,883 --> 01:29:08,486
for a transaction.

1188
01:29:08,883 --> 01:29:30,883
Paying more than $2 or $3, it does not – that is the most anyone has ever paid for a transfer of money, unless it's like a wire transfer, but most people aren't sending big wire transfers, are they?

1189
01:29:31,883 --> 01:29:56,883
Wire transfer is like how you buy a house or something weird like that, and so cash is check. But with Ethereum, it's a little bit more like – I would imagine the average person who uses Ethereum is actually wealthier than the average person who uses Bitcoin because the average Ethereum person is like a software developer, and they probably make more than $50,000 a year or whatever the U.S. average is.

1190
01:29:57,883 --> 01:30:24,883
I don't know. To me, it just feels like they can't really go that high, but I could easily be mistaken. It's intriguing to me that the exception that kind of proves the rule is really the ordinals where it says something like you have to do something sidechain-like or something Ethereum-like in order to get the Bitcoin fees up. I find that to be an interesting turn of events.

1191
01:30:25,883 --> 01:30:42,883
Well, you don't have to. It just brought forward additional fee pressure that would have appeared with organic adoption anyways. You're saying that you find it hard to believe that somebody would pay more than $3 to $5 to do a Bitcoin transaction. It just starts feeling expensive, but it's not expensive.

1192
01:30:42,883 --> 01:30:55,883
It's not expensive. We know this because there were periods when the average transaction was above $10 for weeks like in May last year, and then in bull markets, there's longer periods of time.

1193
01:30:56,883 --> 01:31:12,883
You've already read my article about the bull markets. We can kind of carve that out. It doesn't really count. I think, again, also when it's people's first time with Bitcoin, they embark on it as a kind of R&D project.

1194
01:31:12,883 --> 01:31:32,883
They say, I'm going to dedicate this weekend to learning about Bitcoin. They're already investing a lot. It's worth much more than everyone will pay $20 to $30 worth of transactions for the first time just because they're already investing and learning about this. They're investing their time and their spirit in learning about this. But yeah, I don't know. You might be right.

1195
01:31:32,883 --> 01:31:46,883
Also, I can tell you this, that if Saylor's theory is right that Bitcoin is good enough to become a store of value and go to a million dollars, even if you don't touch it, he should be careful what he wishes for because he might just get it.

1196
01:31:46,883 --> 01:32:12,883
Because as price of Bitcoin goes higher, existing holdings appreciate and people become much less fee sensitive. So therefore, hey, if you need to move $50,000 of Bitcoin to some other cold storage, you will pay $50. Who cares? Because you would care before when this $50,000 worth of Bitcoin was $5,000 worth of Bitcoin. That would have been pricey. But as the price goes up, fee sensitivity goes down.

1197
01:32:13,883 --> 01:32:14,883
Right.

1198
01:32:14,883 --> 01:32:18,883
So it's just a matter of…

1199
01:32:23,058 --> 01:32:28,218
wouldn't really, I wouldn't really, I would protest anyone who held that against me.

1200
01:32:28,358 --> 01:32:29,658
This is what I'm saying about the bull.

1201
01:32:29,738 --> 01:32:32,558
As you know in my article, I write this about the bull market.

1202
01:32:32,778 --> 01:32:36,578
say, listen, a lot of this is just there's a bull market and everyone thinks they're

1203
01:32:36,578 --> 01:32:38,838
going to get rich very soon.

1204
01:32:38,938 --> 01:32:41,538
So they say, I'll pay a $50 fee because

1205
01:32:41,618 --> 01:32:45,478
I think I'm about to make $800,000.

1206
01:32:45,883 --> 01:33:04,883
… by buying my one millionth of a Bitcoin. And so if that actually happens, then I would still say that it was really the bull market that did it and their actual demand for… I'm trying to talk about the equilibrium, final demand, sustainable demand for actual transacting with the block space.

1207
01:33:04,883 --> 01:33:23,883
That's like my kind of leading light. And if there's a – because I write an article, we cannot count on a bull market to just make everyone ultra, ultra, ultra wealthy forever. Eventually, it will just hit the line of the value of all the currency involved.

1208
01:33:23,883 --> 01:33:37,883
This bear market stopped clearing the mempool during the bear market, which is kind of a counterexample to this theory that only during the bull markets the mempool stops clearing. It's kind of the opposite.

1209
01:33:38,883 --> 01:33:50,883
That's true. But again, the ordinal thing is because – that's not because of demand for actually transacting. I agree with you. Certainly, it's demand for block space.

1210
01:33:51,883 --> 01:33:54,883
Right. It's just a novel demand for block space.

1211
01:33:55,883 --> 01:34:07,883
Saylor would say that wouldn't you want some important document like your will, like forever immortalizing Bitcoin blockchain? Wouldn't you pay $100 for it? Hey, why wouldn't people put 100 million wills there?

1212
01:34:07,883 --> 01:34:20,883
Some people would, and I actually support that. I think that's actually – I think that's fair game. I think that's fine. I think that we should not have tried to censor. People like to move that out, and they say it's spam.

1213
01:34:21,883 --> 01:34:27,883
They make some good points, but ultimately at the end of the day, anyone could invent it.

1214
01:34:28,883 --> 01:34:41,883
I can see another use case that hasn't been tried that could have a huge source of demand. Imagine everybody is so excited about Nostr adoption. Imagine Nostr adoption has gone through the roof and tens of millions of people are using Nostr.

1215
01:34:42,883 --> 01:34:48,883
Why can't you use Bitcoin blockchain as a relay for encrypted Nostr messages that are super high value?

1216
01:34:49,883 --> 01:34:50,883
I agree.

1217
01:34:51,883 --> 01:34:53,883
So you can have encrypted messages.

1218
01:34:54,883 --> 01:35:12,883
I have a Namecoin kind of shaped idea that is along those lines, which is that you have a Namecoin sidechain that does the human readable names and also is the fallback if for some reason you get basically deplatformed. You can send one message to replatform yourself everywhere.

1219
01:35:12,883 --> 01:35:34,883
It's kind of like the real weakness of Nostr is that your data is kind of ephemeral. You never know if it will survive on these relays long term. But let's say you want to send out a message that's more important than average. Why don't you send that message also to the Bitcoin blockchain as kind of like the forever eternal storage in case your messages get deleted from all these relays?

1220
01:35:35,883 --> 01:35:36,883
I agree with all that.

1221
01:35:36,883 --> 01:36:01,883
So that's a use case that we're talking about, but nobody's tried. But it's clearly an attractive place to back up super important Nostr messages, right? As long as other Nostr clients sniff around among ordinals or inscriptions looking for Nostr clients, all of a sudden you might have more demand than for ordinals block space, right?

1222
01:36:01,883 --> 01:36:03,223
ordinal block space, right?

1223
01:36:06,143 --> 01:36:10,983
So you, by apocalypse, include all of stuff?

1224
01:36:11,343 --> 01:36:16,163
When I call the apocalypse, it's attaining the same state that happened to Ethereum in

1225
01:36:16,163 --> 01:36:17,550
in 19 or 18 right

1226
01:36:17,730 --> 01:36:22,650
other words, apocalypse is when the apocalypse happens by definition.

1227
01:36:22,970 --> 01:36:27,190
don't know what the level of fees will be, but I do know that the apocalypse is this

1228
01:36:27,190 --> 01:36:33,130
equilibrium state where the block where the mempool hasn't cleared for like a

1229
01:36:33,216 --> 01:36:36,616
year or more, and it's become clear that it will never clear again.

1230
01:36:37,196 --> 01:36:40,816
So then you will have this equilibrium level of fees that may be low or high, but the

1231
01:36:40,816 --> 01:36:46,176
point is that whatever it is, we will finally have the fee market that's clearing at a

1232
01:36:46,176 --> 01:36:48,816
fair price, and we will see, you know, what the

1233
01:36:48,883 --> 01:37:03,883
Like we know what the supply of block space is, but essentially that will immediately tell us that, hey, the fees will never average below, say, two, three, five, ten dollars, whatever it is. And it immediately cuts out a whole bunch of pleb use cases in the global south, right?

1234
01:37:06,883 --> 01:37:16,883
Yes. And as is now becoming common knowledge, it also puts a limit on the size of an HTLC or PTLC. Take your pick.

1235
01:37:16,883 --> 01:37:27,883
And it basically makes any Lightning-routed payment whose value is below the average fee essentially, you know, not trustless.

1236
01:37:30,883 --> 01:37:43,883
And then there's an intriguing aspect that the way Lightning is set up, the miners basically have sort of an incentive to uncooperative…

1237
01:37:44,883 --> 01:37:52,883
There is an interesting dynamic in ARK that might be relevant to the Fipocalypse in the future. And like we have Moonsetter here, maybe he'll come up to the stage and talk about it.

1238
01:37:52,883 --> 01:38:07,883
But from what I heard that ARK is also privileging higher payment amounts and lower payment amounts because in the environment of high fees, ARK is biased in favor of larger UTXOs versus smaller UTXOs.

1239
01:38:07,883 --> 01:38:27,883
So ARK might itself be insufficient to scale Bitcoin in a really high fee environment. Or, you know, in other words, like there will be no way for you to exit your ARK service provider if you only have like 20 or $30 worth of Bitcoin if the fees are $10 because the only way for you to exit unilaterally will be to lose half of your stash.

1240
01:38:28,883 --> 01:38:37,883
But the ARK service provider might allow you to exit through a Lightning payment to your own custodial Lightning wallet or something like this.

1241
01:38:38,883 --> 01:38:50,883
So ARK also has these dynamics where I think it's biased in favor of larger transacting amounts as opposed to smaller transacting amounts that might play a role in the Fipocalypse as well.

1242
01:38:50,883 --> 01:38:58,883
I think we're seeing Moonsetter do a thumb up on that. Maybe he'll speak about it on stage or something.

1243
01:38:59,883 --> 01:39:09,883
May I maybe ask why Alex, you support Drivechain? I saw it in your Twitter and I'm just curious how you came here and what's your kind of view?

1244
01:39:10,883 --> 01:39:25,883
Well, I guess I would encapsulate. I'm more of a Paul style maximalist where I don't believe that Bitcoin is perfect, but I do believe it should be used in every possible way, not just as a sterile store of value.

1245
01:39:25,883 --> 01:39:35,883
That's sort of like the original version of maximalism before it became sort of hijacked by the Ossifier's cult.

1246
01:39:36,883 --> 01:39:53,883
And I see that if Bitcoin doesn't change, then I see this third outcome as sort of my baseline scenario where it becomes institutional sterile store of value and only institutions can transact and Bitcoin fixes nothing.

1247
01:39:54,883 --> 01:40:02,883
It doesn't fix inflation. It doesn't give you sovereign property rights. There's actually nothing that it fixes, even if it does go to a million dollars.

1248
01:40:03,883 --> 01:40:08,883
In fact, going to a million dollars will make it more institutional and custodial in that scenario.

1249
01:40:08,883 --> 01:40:24,883
So the higher the price goes, the less Bitcoin fixes is the way it's designed right now, because there's more centralizing tendencies for it to pull up inside large custodians in both Lightning and on-chain.

1250
01:40:25,883 --> 01:40:33,883
And can you imagine that Drivechain really will have an impact and that people will be able to see the potential of it?

1251
01:40:34,883 --> 01:40:50,883
Drivechain is like one of these super safe, should never be controversial tweaks. I hope it will get enabled during the next civil war, which hopefully as soon as, as long as the fee pressure continues rising, the civil war is inevitable.

1252
01:40:50,883 --> 01:40:59,883
And I'm hopeful that it can, well, it can definitely scale Bitcoin for plebs in the global south if nothing else, right?

1253
01:40:59,883 --> 01:41:09,883
Because you can have, you can have, you know, thunder chains that allow very cheap transactions for small amounts, etc.

1254
01:41:10,883 --> 01:41:23,883
So me, Drivechain is something that will avoid the otherwise inevitable, in my mind, outcome of this institutional, sterile store of value, which fixes nothing.

1255
01:41:29,883 --> 01:41:30,883
Okay, interesting.

1256
01:41:37,883 --> 01:41:47,883
Excellent. This has been a great conversation so far. Paul, do you think we should continue or should we adjourn for next week?

1257
01:41:48,883 --> 01:41:53,883
I guess we could adjourn. Let's see if anyone has anything they want to say. Don't be shy.

1258
01:41:54,883 --> 01:41:55,883
Yeah, don't be shy.

1259
01:41:56,883 --> 01:42:02,883
It's only going to be recorded forever and probably AI will transcribe it eventually and then match it to your voice.

1260
01:42:03,883 --> 01:42:09,883
And then there will one day be a website where you can type in anyone's name and learn everything they ever said, including the dumbest thing.

1261
01:42:10,883 --> 01:42:11,883
Right, don't be shy.

1262
01:42:12,883 --> 01:42:16,883
Your enemies will find that and then they'll play it and they'll try to make your kids unpopular at school.

1263
01:42:17,883 --> 01:42:23,883
But, you know, just because there's an AI that will probably do that with like two clicks of a button in the future.

1264
01:42:24,883 --> 01:42:25,883
Don't let that stop you.

1265
01:42:26,883 --> 01:42:30,883
Don't let certain doom stop anyone from coming on up to the stage.

1266
01:42:31,883 --> 01:42:36,883
Share your question or comment, whether you're a fan or a critic of Drivechain or just an observer.

1267
01:42:37,883 --> 01:42:40,883
If you have a question or comment, come on up and speak.

1268
01:42:41,883 --> 01:42:44,883
We meet every Friday and everyone is welcome to come on up.

1269
01:42:44,883 --> 01:42:48,883
You know, Paul, there's one question I think some people are interested in.

1270
01:42:49,883 --> 01:42:50,883
They'd love to hear you.

1271
01:42:51,883 --> 01:43:10,883
You've answered this before, but could you explain if I were someone in the Bitcoin Cash or BSV community and I was wondering, what is the point of enabling small blocks so that people can validate layer one when most people will be using layer two a lot of the time?

1272
01:43:11,883 --> 01:43:22,883
What is the point of enabling everyone in the world to have a convenient Bitcoin note on their phone if it isn't validating their entire experience?

1273
01:43:23,883 --> 01:43:34,883
Can you explain that in simple terms for the large blockers who are curious about that kind of layered architecture of Bitcoin that's not familiar to them?

1274
01:43:36,883 --> 01:43:37,883
Sure.

1275
01:43:38,883 --> 01:43:42,883
The case for small blocks is that the small blocks is a cost.

1276
01:43:43,883 --> 01:43:48,883
That is, each person must pay his minimum cost in order to join the network.

1277
01:43:49,883 --> 01:43:57,883
In fact, I think a much better way of reframing everything is to merge the idea of a wallet and a node.

1278
01:43:58,883 --> 01:44:08,883
Because really what your wallet must do is it either must access a full node or it must talk to someone else who is a full node.

1279
01:44:09,883 --> 01:44:18,883
That's a detail, but basically to run a wallet, running a wallet is the cost of running a node in this small blocker conception.

1280
01:44:19,883 --> 01:44:25,883
And the only way of actually knowing whether or not you've been paid without asking someone else is to run the node.

1281
01:44:26,883 --> 01:44:28,883
And so the more expensive the nodes are, just the fewer, it's a fixed cost.

1282
01:44:29,883 --> 01:44:31,883
It's the entry fee into Bitcoin.

1283
01:44:32,883 --> 01:44:37,883
So some people say, well, the entry fee isn't that high.

1284
01:44:38,883 --> 01:44:47,883
Or they say, well, I don't really pay because my friend is in the club and he tells me about what's going on in there, whether or not I'm being paid.

1285
01:44:48,883 --> 01:44:49,883
And that's good enough for me.

1286
01:44:50,883 --> 01:44:54,883
And so I don't mind paying a higher full node cost.

1287
01:44:55,883 --> 01:44:57,883
I don't like the transaction fees being high.

1288
01:44:57,883 --> 01:45:00,883
And so really it's just kind of like who's custodial.

1289
01:45:01,883 --> 01:45:05,883
It's the custodial problem looked at from two different angles.

1290
01:45:06,883 --> 01:45:10,883
One angle is like, am I paying high fees to use the block space?

1291
01:45:11,883 --> 01:45:18,883
And the other is, where am I getting my information on whether or not my transaction is being included in a block?

1292
01:45:19,883 --> 01:45:25,883
Satoshi tried to – he has an enormously clever way of getting around this, which is the SPV mode.

1293
01:45:25,883 --> 01:45:35,883
But the SPV mode, what that does is it makes it so that it is very difficult for a full node to lie to a light client.

1294
01:45:36,883 --> 01:45:37,883
So this is very good.

1295
01:45:38,883 --> 01:45:41,883
So it's a huge upgrade on custodial because it costs almost nothing.

1296
01:45:42,883 --> 01:45:47,883
But the issue is you still need – someone out there has to be the full node.

1297
01:45:48,883 --> 01:45:50,883
If there's no full nodes, there's no network.

1298
01:45:50,883 --> 01:45:57,883
And it's kind of like asking if you open a restaurant but you're not buying any food.

1299
01:45:58,883 --> 01:45:59,883
You're not buying any ingredients.

1300
01:46:00,883 --> 01:46:07,883
Someone out there needs to make – someone needs to write the first version of the Bible before people can photocopy it.

1301
01:46:08,883 --> 01:46:09,883
And so there is a free rider problem.

1302
01:46:10,883 --> 01:46:13,883
There's 1,000 blocks every week.

1303
01:46:14,883 --> 01:46:18,883
So whatever the block size is, multiply that by 1,000 times every week.

1304
01:46:18,883 --> 01:46:29,883
So if there's 1 megabyte blocks and they're all full, it's another gigabyte every week, 52 weeks in a year, 52 gigabytes.

1305
01:46:30,883 --> 01:46:35,883
Adding to the pile and initial block download, you have to start from scratch when you restart.

1306
01:46:36,883 --> 01:46:41,883
So it's just a bigger and bigger – it's like that Futurama joke about global warming.

1307
01:46:42,883 --> 01:46:46,883
They need to put a bigger and bigger ice cube into the ocean every year.

1308
01:46:46,883 --> 01:46:49,883
Thus solving the problem once and for all.

1309
01:46:50,883 --> 01:47:03,883
Okay, so knowing that you've been paid is something that's achieved even though the transaction is on Thunder and the person only has a layer one node.

1310
01:47:04,883 --> 01:47:05,883
But you would say that they can know they've been paid.

1311
01:47:06,883 --> 01:47:07,883
Can you help me understand that further?

1312
01:47:08,883 --> 01:47:11,883
Well, Thunder is a different case than – Thunder would have the larger block.

1313
01:47:11,883 --> 01:47:16,883
So it would be more difficult to run full node of Thunder, but Thunder might also be more popular.

1314
01:47:17,883 --> 01:47:18,883
So there may be more nodes overall.

1315
01:47:19,883 --> 01:47:21,883
No one has ever – this is kind of an empirical question.

1316
01:47:22,883 --> 01:47:23,883
Hard to say.

1317
01:47:24,883 --> 01:47:25,883
Okay, thank you.

1318
01:47:26,883 --> 01:47:27,883
That was great.

1319
01:47:28,883 --> 01:47:29,883
All right.

1320
01:47:30,883 --> 01:47:31,883
I don't see anyone with their hand up.

1321
01:47:32,883 --> 01:47:35,883
There's a hand up button, but no one seems to be pressing it.

1322
01:47:36,883 --> 01:47:37,883
All right.

1323
01:47:38,883 --> 01:47:44,883
Thank you everyone who's listened, and hello to our listeners who follow along on demand in the recorded version.

1324
01:47:45,883 --> 01:47:52,883
Follow LayerTwo Labs for these spaces every Friday, and we're excited to see you all next week.

1325
01:47:53,883 --> 01:48:04,883
And you can find out more by going to layer2labs.com, as well as our Drivechain Talk Telegram group, our YouTube channel for LayerTwo Labs, and drivechain.info.

1326
01:48:05,883 --> 01:48:06,883
Lots of information there.

1327
01:48:07,883 --> 01:48:11,883
Download our software and run it for yourself to understand more.

1328
01:48:12,883 --> 01:48:22,883
And discuss Drivechain, which is BIP300 and BIP301 at your local Bitcoin meetup, and bring your questions and comments to our spaces.

1329
01:48:23,883 --> 01:48:24,883
Thanks for all who spoke.