1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,120
Hope you're okay, TJ Melly. Sorry about that. Next up, we have the best path for
scaling Bitcoin. And this is going to get pretty technical, folks. This should be
interesting.

2
00:00:09,840 --> 00:00:26,000
We've got David Siroy joining us. Obi, who I'm sure you all know. Come on up, guys.
We've got Paul Sztorc and also Ryan Gentry. And I'm excited. This panel is moderated
by our very own Nam Kios from UTXO management.

3
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:38,000
Come on up, guys. Give them a round of applause. Let's go. This is the best path for
scaling Bitcoin. Thank you.

4
00:00:38,000 --> 00:01:07,600
All right, everyone. Welcome. We're here today to talk about what we think or what
these guys, the big brains, think the best path for scaling Bitcoin is.

5
00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:34,160
Each one of these guys, and I'll give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves
before we jump right into the content, but each one of these guys is working on a
different set of tools that seek to increase the realm of possibilities with
Bitcoin, that seek to make Bitcoin appealing for more people, and to increase the
pool of users of Bitcoin.

6
00:01:34,320 --> 00:01:45,360
So, before we start talking about the pros and cons and what these solutions are,
please introduce yourselves and talk a little bit more. Paul, you want to?

7
00:01:45,360 --> 00:02:11,760
Yeah, sure. My name is Paul Sztorc. I'm a proponent of this idea, the Drivechain.
And basically, I think if we had 12, 13, 14 of these, we would be able to actually
have the Bitcoin network in all of its layers, inclusive, process every single
transaction on earth by the year 2030, which would be about 9 trillion transactions,
and that would be about $900 billion a year in revenue for miners.

8
00:02:12,240 --> 00:02:24,800
So, the Drivechain is this merge mine to L2 chain, and my idea is much more
miner-centric than the other ideas represented up here. So, that's what I think we
should do.

9
00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:46,880
And let me just get in here that this is very important that we want people to be
using Bitcoin, of course, but we need to be very proactive about looking at the tech
stack, because if we don't want to be in a situation where the tech stack can
support planetary scale, and then we don't do this and someone else does it, we
don't want to be in that position. So, that's why that's important to me.

10
00:02:47,280 --> 00:03:12,240
Okay, my name is David C. Roy. I'm with Oppenlabs, and we're building ZK rollups on
Bitcoin. It's probably most similar to a sidechain, except the peg, the ability to
go from the Bitcoin layer one into this ZK rollup is trustless. And in many ways,
that's kind of considered the holy grail that a lot of people have been working on
in the Bitcoin community for a long time. And only recently is that technology kind
of catching up and making it possible for us to pursue today.

11
00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:32,160
My name is Obi Nwosu. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Fedi. And we are promoting the
use of a scaling solution called FediMint. It's a form of federated eCash protocol.
Now, eCash was the first suggested scaling solution for Bitcoin.

12
00:03:32,160 --> 00:03:56,480
In fact, nine days after Bitcoin was put forward as an idea by Satoshi, it was
suggested to use Charmian eCash as a way to scale Bitcoin to potentially billions
of users. And it's a 40-year-old, mature, simple way of scaling Bitcoin. It allows
incredible features. You can scale privacy, you can scale transactions, and it works
today.

13
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:11,520
Hi, everybody. I'm Ryan Gentry. I'm the head of business development at Lightning
Labs. Lightning Labs is the premier developer of the open-source software powering
the Lightning Network, which has been live on mainnet since 2018.

14
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:41,440
We recently, this past Tuesday, announced a new release to our suite of software
tools, the Tapered Assets Protocol on Lightning. Tapered Assets is a new protocol
that allows for arbitrary asset issuance on the Bitcoin blockchain in a very
scalable manner, with the goal being bringing stable coins back to Bitcoin and
bringing their tens of trillions of dollars of annual volume to the Lightning
Network and to the Bitcoin network to help them scale.

15
00:04:41,520 --> 00:05:00,880
So we're very excited to be here today to talk about the best path for scaling
Bitcoin and kind of improving upon and extending the work that's already been done
by the Lightning community.

16
00:05:01,280 --> 00:05:02,720
Are you saying that Lightning's working?

17
00:05:03,040 --> 00:05:05,360
I'm saying that Lightning's working. Lightning's working very well.

18
00:05:06,320 --> 00:05:29,200
Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that, Toby, because that was exactly what I had
in mind to ask, is that I think out of all of the tools that are being worked on
here, Lightning is perhaps the one that we know more about and the one that we all
use more, and even despite claims to the contrary, right?

19
00:05:29,520 --> 00:05:43,760
And so on another point that you brought up about bringing stable coins back to
Bitcoin, I think that part is important because a lot of people miss or forget that
stable coins started on Bitcoin.

20
00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:51,280
And a lot of the developments, a lot of the use cases that we see now thriving
outside of Bitcoin started on Bitcoin.

21
00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:55,520
So I think this also, I can see you agree, Paul, that...

22
00:05:55,760 --> 00:05:56,400
Oh, yeah, of course.

23
00:05:56,480 --> 00:06:06,640
Yeah, we really don't want to be having more conferences where later on people come
up on stage in three years or five years and we're talking about, oh, how do we
bring something back to Bitcoin?

24
00:06:06,720 --> 00:06:13,840
We just, it's much easier to just proactively grow and make sure that we're always
growing and we have more people, more people coming.

25
00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:19,200
Growth is not just about, scalability is not just about transactions.

26
00:06:19,200 --> 00:06:25,280
It is about getting a lot of people in this conference to get politicians to pay
attention to us and stuff.

27
00:06:25,280 --> 00:06:26,640
We want the growth.

28
00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:28,400
That's much better than...

29
00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:34,560
I mean, from my perspective, Bitcoin is growing.

30
00:06:35,520 --> 00:06:40,400
The other cryptocurrencies have raised a lot of money through things called ICOs.

31
00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:46,720
They've used a lot of that to advertise a market and convince people to use their
cryptocurrency.

32
00:06:47,280 --> 00:06:56,160
However, Bitcoin has no marketing team and it's continued to grow and extend its
lead against every other cryptocurrency.

33
00:06:56,480 --> 00:07:03,040
So the reality is, if you just look at the reality and look at the numbers, it is
growing by itself.

34
00:07:03,600 --> 00:07:11,600
Now, very early on, it was said by a number of people in this space, including
Satoshi, but other people said this.

35
00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:20,720
They said that anything that would be needed to add to Bitcoin at the appropriate
time, once proven in the market, can be added.

36
00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:28,640
And that is what we are seeing happening now with technologies like Lightning, with
technologies like Fedimit and eCash.

37
00:07:28,640 --> 00:07:36,640
I certainly don't think it's just like a magical fact that the right technology will
be added at the right time, like in an infallible process.

38
00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:48,160
But in general, I do agree that building a social and political movement is actually
more important and more difficult than building a scalable piece of technology.

39
00:07:48,160 --> 00:07:58,560
So I do think that we could ask everyone here, if there was a different coin that
was more scalable than Bitcoin, would you immediately sell all of your Bitcoin and
buy that coin?

40
00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:06,000
And everyone would say no, because you want to be in a club that other people are in
and you want to be part of something that works.

41
00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:11,760
Although I do think the end game, it will be a matter of life or death at the very
end of the game.

42
00:08:11,760 --> 00:08:22,160
If there is something that doesn't scale and something that does, for whatever
reason, either by choice or for some other reason, the non-scalable one will be
defeated.

43
00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:25,840
Yes, that boogeyman would be a bad end state. But that's not the reality.

44
00:08:25,840 --> 00:08:33,840
You're looking around this set of seats right now, and we have multiple, very
different approaches.

45
00:08:34,000 --> 00:08:42,800
Each one of them has the potential to scale to billions of users. Each one. And
we've got four here. Three are more advanced than one.

46
00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:45,760
And we should be pluralist and we should try them all.

47
00:08:45,760 --> 00:08:47,280
Sorry about that.

48
00:08:48,080 --> 00:09:05,280
I guess to your point that yes, Bitcoin works, right? And it's not the most scalable
or the fastest that is going to necessarily have people just going and using them,
right?

49
00:09:05,280 --> 00:09:16,400
And so I would, as people that are working towards that goal of bringing millions or
billions of people to Bitcoin, why do we need to scale Bitcoin?

50
00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:24,800
I think that's a great question. And I think, you know, the idea here is what
Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin represents.

51
00:09:24,800 --> 00:09:31,120
And I thought, you know, Blue Matt did a really nice job earlier, emphasizing and
talking about trustlessness, right?

52
00:09:31,120 --> 00:09:41,680
And talking about the idea that, you know, the true value of Bitcoin is that you can
hold and transact without needing to trust any third party, just relying on
yourself.

53
00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:49,360
Right. And so I think what we want to do is we want to be able to provide that
capability to as many people as possible that we can.

54
00:09:49,360 --> 00:09:55,600
We want to be able to, you know, let anybody who is willing to do the work to run a
node.

55
00:09:55,600 --> 00:10:01,840
We want to lower the barrier entry so that you can transact trustlessly in this new
world that we're in.

56
00:10:02,560 --> 00:10:08,480
And so obviously, though, Bitcoin, to be the system that it is, has to have a cap
block size.

57
00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:10,480
It has to have 10 minute blocks.

58
00:10:10,720 --> 00:10:14,080
There are these things, these aspects of the design of the system that are
non-negotiable.

59
00:10:14,400 --> 00:10:20,640
So many years ago, as everybody's here is well aware, you know, the decision was
made to scale the system in layers.

60
00:10:20,880 --> 00:10:27,680
And kind of the Lightning Network was the first layer that was added into the
capabilities design.

61
00:10:27,680 --> 00:10:34,480
The network was added in in 2017, you know, with a series of soft works ending in
SegWit.

62
00:10:35,120 --> 00:10:44,160
And, you know, that has allowed us to, you know, theoretically completely demolish
the specific limit on transactions.

63
00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:55,520
Right. Well, what Lightning does is you can, you know, with as many channels as you
could open, in theory, you could be doing, you know, hundreds of millions of
transactions per second if everybody was just sipping, you know, between each other.

64
00:10:55,520 --> 00:11:04,240
Right. So that limit of, you know, instead of the 3,000 transactions per block now,
you know, 3,000 transactions for 10 minutes.

65
00:11:04,480 --> 00:11:08,720
Now we can send, you know, essentially an unlimited amount of transactions off chain
if we wanted to.

66
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:21,280
And so I think kind of the next step for, you know, scaling this trustless
transactional capacity is how many people can hold the assets themselves without
having to trust a third party.

67
00:11:21,600 --> 00:11:30,240
Right. And, you know, with Lightning, right, like with anything, right, on Bitcoin,
to hold it trustlessly right now, you have to own your own UTXO.

68
00:11:30,720 --> 00:11:36,400
Right. There's like, I think, what, 150 million UTXOs, something like around that
order of magnitude right now.

69
00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:44,880
We have a long ways to go to get to the ability for 8 billion people to do that, or
at least a significant percentage of that.

70
00:11:45,040 --> 00:12:04,560
And I think that's what a lot of these, you know, further looking ideas and a lot of
these proposals here are, how can we expand access to self-custodial ownership so
that you can, you know, be a first class Bitcoin citizen making trustless
transactions as designed?

71
00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:11,440
I'll just add that I think if we don't scale, then probably the most important
attribute of Bitcoin, 21 million, is really just a meme.

72
00:12:11,600 --> 00:12:13,680
It's like completely undermined.

73
00:12:13,920 --> 00:12:19,360
And as much as we want to say that Bitcoin only has 21 million and we can all
self-custody and no one can ever debase the currency.

74
00:12:19,520 --> 00:12:30,240
Like if you don't have these venues for people to go out and use their Bitcoin in a
trust-minimized or trustless manner, then people will artificially inflate the
supply of Bitcoin.

75
00:12:30,560 --> 00:12:43,520
A spicy take is I was talking to somebody, some frankly big whales out in Singapore,
and they were telling me that a lot of these whales are being approached by these
Bitcoin L2s that are fake and not actually decentralized and trustless.

76
00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:54,800
And they're essentially giving the whales Bitcoin IOUs on these Bitcoin sidechains,
but not actually requiring them to go into the multi-sig of the bridge.

77
00:12:54,880 --> 00:13:01,360
So imagine a whale that has 100,000 Bitcoin, they're just getting a free 50,000
Bitcoin that's minted on this chain.

78
00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:09,840
If we don't have these kind of verifiable and trustless sidechains and ability to
scale, you're going to have these games that are actually played.

79
00:13:10,080 --> 00:13:22,160
And for me, it's like the 21 million, the fundamental human property rights of
Bitcoin, it is in fact being undermined because we don't have fully successful
scalable solutions yet, in my opinion.

80
00:13:22,880 --> 00:13:28,960
So we're here in the West, and so you'll tend to have Western viewpoints on these
things.

81
00:13:29,360 --> 00:13:38,880
But the reason why we need to scale is there are certain people who will not be able
to access Bitcoin at the base layer at the cost of on-chain transactions.

82
00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:48,800
And you're excluding billions of people by being able to insist on these extreme
views on what is required with no level of pragmatism.

83
00:13:49,040 --> 00:13:52,000
In the real world, we need this balance, and we need this pragmatism.

84
00:13:52,240 --> 00:14:00,800
And with that pragmatism, you're able to service people who either are unbanked
because the banking options they have don't exist,

85
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:06,640
they're underbanked because the banking options they have are incredibly, almost
criminally expensive,

86
00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:11,600
or they're debanked because they live under the yoke of authoritarian regimes and
dictatorships.

87
00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:16,560
These are the people that we are already working with, and we serve today, right
now.

88
00:14:16,880 --> 00:14:20,160
This isn't theory, this isn't philosophy, this is reality.

89
00:14:20,160 --> 00:14:22,480
And that's why we need to scale today.

90
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:28,800
And I admire a lot of what Obi is saying, because it's very true and it's very
legitimate.

91
00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:32,560
But there is a world where this technology is emerging where we can have the best of
both worlds.

92
00:14:32,560 --> 00:14:37,760
We can service all of these underbanked people, we can have the microtransactions,
we can have very scalable stuff,

93
00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:44,160
but we don't have to take on the trust assumptions, and we can actually
mathematically prove the validity of these things happening on layer 2s.

94
00:14:44,160 --> 00:14:46,800
Is it there yet? I would say no.

95
00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:50,480
But do we see this light at the end of the tunnel where we could get there?

96
00:14:51,520 --> 00:14:52,160
Possibly.

97
00:14:52,160 --> 00:14:55,840
And I think what we're doing at Alp, and some of these other people building the ZK
Rollups,

98
00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:58,080
it's like, we're kind of taking this shot at a home run.

99
00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:02,800
And I love why we have all these people on the stage, because we have these multiple
varying approaches.

100
00:15:02,800 --> 00:15:05,280
And what we're doing may fail.

101
00:15:05,520 --> 00:15:08,240
And so I think we need these different alternative solutions.

102
00:15:08,240 --> 00:15:12,960
But there is a potential path for us to get there, to have that holy grail of what
we want,

103
00:15:12,960 --> 00:15:19,440
of all the stuff that Obi was just mentioning, with the actual Bitcoin ethos of
credible decentralization.

104
00:15:19,440 --> 00:15:23,520
And I think that's, by the way, that's the thing that excites me the most.

105
00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:25,200
There's a ton of different ideas.

106
00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:29,600
And Feddy, although we are very much focused on FeddyMint,

107
00:15:29,600 --> 00:15:33,600
it's what we create is this community super app that's run by and for communities.

108
00:15:34,160 --> 00:15:38,480
Anytime someone solves that magical sort of Rubik's Cube,

109
00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:42,400
and is able to create something which is as simple to use as what we have,

110
00:15:43,040 --> 00:15:46,000
as private as what we have, as scalable as what we have,

111
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,600
with lower trust assumptions, we'll just add support for that as well.

112
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:50,720
It's not an either or.

113
00:15:51,440 --> 00:15:57,280
And that should continue at the base layer, at the lightning layer, and at any other
layer as well.

114
00:15:57,280 --> 00:16:03,280
And then we as an organization, as a community, add this into whatever we do, and we
go forward.

115
00:16:03,680 --> 00:16:07,280
And I think similarly along those lines, one thing that's been really, really cool,

116
00:16:08,640 --> 00:16:12,000
and I would commend the Feddy team for being one of the first to

117
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:17,360
glom onto this idea, is using lightning as an interoperability layer

118
00:16:17,360 --> 00:16:19,040
for many different scaling solutions.

119
00:16:19,040 --> 00:16:22,560
So if you think of the internet as a network of networks,

120
00:16:23,440 --> 00:16:26,800
patching them all together so it's all one contiguous system,

121
00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:32,560
that's how with FeddyMints being able to transact over the lightning network

122
00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:37,920
with existing, either if it's a non-custodial wallet or a custodial wallet,

123
00:16:38,880 --> 00:16:43,760
you could think of the same exact thing happening where if I have funds in a
sidechain,

124
00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:47,120
we have this live today on the liquid sidechain,

125
00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:52,640
being able to hold funds on liquid and transact over the lightning network through
submarine swaps,

126
00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:58,320
being able to use lightning as a universal connective tissue

127
00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:02,960
for all the various Bitcoin layer 2s and Bitcoin connected companies,

128
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:09,440
I think makes it easy for new projects to join the community.

129
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:13,120
You would much rather, if you're starting a new project,

130
00:17:13,120 --> 00:17:17,840
just have one lightning service provider provide you access to the entire lightning
network

131
00:17:17,840 --> 00:17:22,160
than have, go and do the BD individually with every single exchange

132
00:17:22,160 --> 00:17:24,880
and every single wallet to get them to support your new project.

133
00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:29,040
I think that leveraging lightning as an interoperability layer

134
00:17:29,040 --> 00:17:34,240
and letting many, many different attempts at scaling Bitcoin connect to that one
common tissue

135
00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:38,320
is really powerful and something that we're going to see a lot of as more projects
come to market.

136
00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:43,760
I think the fragmentation issue is definitely one to watch,

137
00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:50,560
especially with the layer 2s that you mentioned, David, that there's a lot of them
popping up.

138
00:17:51,360 --> 00:17:57,760
If there's this possibility to use lightning to be this interoperability layer,

139
00:17:58,960 --> 00:18:00,400
I think that's very positive.

140
00:18:00,400 --> 00:18:05,520
I wanted to touch back on a point that many of you discussed

141
00:18:05,520 --> 00:18:08,480
and I think that is central to Bitcoin, which is custody.

142
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:16,240
I know we usually see it as self-custody or third-party custody,

143
00:18:16,960 --> 00:18:22,720
but Obi, you have a very interesting idea of this second-party custody

144
00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:26,320
that you're able to achieve with FedEments.

145
00:18:27,280 --> 00:18:29,280
I wanted you to talk a little bit about that.

146
00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:36,080
Prior to being at FedE, I ran a Bitcoin exchange for nearly a decade,

147
00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:38,080
the UK's longest running Bitcoin exchange.

148
00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:45,040
That was third-party custody, or nowadays I call it stranger custody.

149
00:18:45,120 --> 00:18:47,360
You're giving your money to a stranger, effectively.

150
00:18:47,360 --> 00:18:49,600
They wear a suit, they've got a really nice flashy website,

151
00:18:49,600 --> 00:18:51,280
but it's someone you don't know.

152
00:18:52,080 --> 00:18:55,600
The gold standard or the Bitcoin standard is self-custody,

153
00:18:55,600 --> 00:18:59,120
where you are custodying your own money yourself,

154
00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:02,560
but it's most complex for most people.

155
00:19:02,560 --> 00:19:05,040
You have to figure out where you're going to...

156
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:08,640
You have to make a backup, which involves recording a number of words,

157
00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:10,400
12 words, we call it seed.

158
00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:12,880
You have to find out that that's when your problems start.

159
00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:15,600
You have to find out where to store it, who to trust to hold it,

160
00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:16,560
because guess what?

161
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:18,640
Most people will give it to a friend,

162
00:19:18,640 --> 00:19:21,840
then effectively you've given it to someone else, your money.

163
00:19:23,360 --> 00:19:26,240
Or you dig a hole in the ground and hope no one finds it.

164
00:19:27,040 --> 00:19:30,640
Then we have something in the middle, which is second-party custody,

165
00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:34,880
where you're holding your money with trusted friends and family,

166
00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:39,680
the people that you've known and trusted through your lived-in experience.

167
00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:45,760
It can be significantly simpler than first-party custody,

168
00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:50,080
but provide the user experience of third-party custody.

169
00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:52,000
And so understanding that,

170
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:55,600
and after many years of trying to get people to self-custody

171
00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:57,120
from running an exchange,

172
00:19:57,120 --> 00:20:01,280
and being told by very intelligent people

173
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:03,680
who knew the value of self-custody

174
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:06,960
that, unfortunately, they trusted me more than they trusted themselves,

175
00:20:07,520 --> 00:20:11,360
we realized that they could actually trust second-parties,

176
00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:12,400
friends and family,

177
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:17,040
more than they trusted me as the CEO of an exchange.

178
00:20:17,040 --> 00:20:21,200
And that sort of nib of an idea led down the line

179
00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:23,120
to meeting my co-founder, Eric,

180
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:27,200
and he introduced this idea, which was FediMint,

181
00:20:27,200 --> 00:20:30,000
which is this community custody protocol

182
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,560
which was built on top of eCash and Bitcoin,

183
00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:34,480
the first eCash protocol run on Bitcoin.

184
00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:39,120
And it uses second-party trust from your community.

185
00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:41,040
So it could be a small or still family,

186
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:43,120
all the way up to a village or town.

187
00:20:43,120 --> 00:20:45,120
And you're using the existing trust relationships,

188
00:20:45,120 --> 00:20:46,880
and we're leveraging that.

189
00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:50,560
At some point, if we can make that even more trustless,

190
00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:51,280
that's even better,

191
00:20:51,280 --> 00:20:53,840
but that's way better than trusting a stranger.

192
00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:54,880
It's somewhere in the middle.

193
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:59,120
Yeah, I think the self-custody point is just so important.

194
00:20:59,120 --> 00:21:00,960
I think it's going to be very difficult

195
00:21:00,960 --> 00:21:02,880
for a lot of people to learn this skill,

196
00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:06,480
but I don't think, if you can learn to drive a car,

197
00:21:07,120 --> 00:21:12,160
you should be able to learn the BIP39 12-word seed or something.

198
00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:14,080
And I think we just have to,

199
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:17,680
because you were saying before about if we lose

200
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:19,920
too much ground on this,

201
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:23,280
then the Bitcoin will just be a name.

202
00:21:23,280 --> 00:21:27,600
It will just be paint over something that is tough.

203
00:21:27,600 --> 00:21:28,880
Let's take the car metaphor.

204
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:30,260
Good.

205
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:33,280
Most of the people on the planet are children.

206
00:21:33,280 --> 00:21:36,000
So how would you deal with them?

207
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:38,640
I think the children will learn just fine.

208
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:40,880
But of course, children don't have bank accounts.

209
00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:45,120
Do they have to learn at three years old to self-custody?

210
00:21:45,120 --> 00:21:45,680
Three or four?

211
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:47,680
Well, you know, I think you...

212
00:21:47,680 --> 00:21:49,200
I mean, like, compared to what, right?

213
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:50,880
Most children don't have a bank account.

214
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:53,920
But are you suggesting that they should learn how to self-custody?

215
00:21:53,920 --> 00:21:55,120
I think when I say self-custody,

216
00:21:55,120 --> 00:21:57,360
I mean, like, they roll their own randomness,

217
00:21:57,360 --> 00:22:00,400
so they know, like, how to use the wallet generator,

218
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:01,520
and which can be, you know,

219
00:22:01,520 --> 00:22:02,800
like, someone could be like the Apple,

220
00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:04,240
the Steve Jobs of that or whatever,

221
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:05,120
make that much easier.

222
00:22:05,120 --> 00:22:07,120
I would suggest that's not a pragmatic solution.

223
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:09,360
I mean, but something like FedEx,

224
00:22:09,360 --> 00:22:13,200
like, if you have these more expressive layers,

225
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:14,480
like, you could build any of these solutions.

226
00:22:14,480 --> 00:22:15,680
Like, you would have the trustless solution

227
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:17,280
where somebody takes on the personal sovereignty.

228
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:18,960
You could have the federation solution.

229
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:20,640
It's like giving people all of the options.

230
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:22,240
And so, like, one that I'll say is,

231
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:23,680
if we have these things like ZK Rollups

232
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:25,440
and we have these trustless sidechains

233
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:27,280
that have, you know, any form of expressivity

234
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:28,160
that you want on them.

235
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:29,440
Like, one thing is, like, this phone,

236
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:30,560
like, most people don't know,

237
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:32,400
it has a hardware wallet inside of it.

238
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:34,000
It basically has a ledger inside of it

239
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:35,520
called a secure enclave.

240
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:36,720
It's like, well, why can't we use this

241
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:38,160
to store our private keys in there?

242
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:40,240
And those private keys are inaccessible by Apple

243
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:42,480
or anybody else in the operating system.

244
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,600
It's because, you know, you can't currently do it

245
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:49,600
with the curve that's used in Bitcoin transactions.

246
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:50,960
But if you can move these, again,

247
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:53,280
into this trustless expressivity layer,

248
00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:54,080
like, you could have this

249
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:55,680
where any single person in the world

250
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:57,040
that has one of these phones,

251
00:22:57,040 --> 00:22:58,560
this can be their hardware wallet.

252
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:00,640
No more seed phrases, no more 12 words.

253
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:02,400
Like, my parents or anybody could actually,

254
00:23:02,400 --> 00:23:04,000
like, securely store their Bitcoin.

255
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:06,080
If they want to add multi-sig to that, great.

256
00:23:06,080 --> 00:23:08,160
If they want to go back to the Bitcoin layer one, great.

257
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:10,160
If they want to have a federated model, great.

258
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:12,160
But giving all of this optionality

259
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:14,320
in the most trust-minimized manner possible,

260
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:15,680
like, that's the solution.

261
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:17,920
You kind of let this free market of solutions decide.

262
00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,800
That is a pragmatic solution.

263
00:23:21,360 --> 00:23:23,840
Fundamentally, if you are technically

264
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,040
strong enough, if you are comfortable enough

265
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:28,800
with your own competence,

266
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:31,120
and if you are financially capable enough,

267
00:23:31,120 --> 00:23:33,280
you should absolutely self-custody.

268
00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:35,760
It is the best option, there's no question.

269
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:37,120
But being pragmatic,

270
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:41,280
babies and many other people in between

271
00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:43,520
are not going to meet all of those criteria.

272
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,120
And that's just the reality of the world.

273
00:23:47,120 --> 00:23:49,440
And we should offer options for everybody.

274
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:51,600
Trying very hard to move them up

275
00:23:51,600 --> 00:23:53,840
the technical competence journey,

276
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:57,920
so that we aim for always everybody self-custodying,

277
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:01,520
but recognize that we don't do nothing until that point.

278
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,120
Yeah, I think the overall theme is that

279
00:24:05,120 --> 00:24:07,280
different people need different solutions, right?

280
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,960
And so that's why we have so many people,

281
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:13,680
so many great people like you guys,

282
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,960
building these different options

283
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:18,160
for these different people.

284
00:24:18,800 --> 00:24:22,960
I think one question that I have for you, Paul,

285
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,560
is that oftentimes, and correct me if I'm wrong,

286
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:29,280
but oftentimes Drivechain is touted as

287
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:33,360
the upgrade to end all the upgrades, pretty much.

288
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:38,000
How would you see a world with Drivechains?

289
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:41,440
How would these other solutions

290
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:43,680
play a role in that ecosystem?

291
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:46,720
Or how do you envision if that comes true?

292
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:49,040
What happens to these other options?

293
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:51,920
Do they come into Drivechains as Drivechains, or do they...

294
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:53,760
I think we should be pluralist,

295
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:55,280
and we should try all things.

296
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:58,000
I do think that...

297
00:24:58,162 --> 00:25:09,162
I do think that Drivechain would already work very well. I mean, you might think of
it as a meal, where you have appetizer, then the main course, and then desserts, or
maybe hors d'oeuvres that are before the appetizer.

298
00:25:09,162 --> 00:25:21,162
I do think of Drivechain as the main course. I may be wrong about that, of course. I
think that there's not as much of a marginal improvement over...

299
00:25:21,162 --> 00:25:32,162
For example, the ZK-SNARK trustless bridge, every proposal requires that it be
supported, at least indirectly, by the L1 miners.

300
00:25:32,162 --> 00:25:46,162
Because they can shut down and destroy any L2 by either just blocking how you get in
or out, or even in much more direct ways, often, since they often rely on some kind
of thing being put back on L1, the unilateral exit.

301
00:25:46,162 --> 00:25:56,162
The unilateral exit is never unilateral, because it's gated by the miners. So I
think that often, the miners already have this kind of veto power.

302
00:25:56,162 --> 00:26:07,162
So either the miners hate your project, and it's dead, and nothing can save it, or
the miners are enjoying the project, and they're earning money, they're earning the
transaction fees from the L2.

303
00:26:07,162 --> 00:26:19,162
And in that case, BIP300 is sufficient to make it trustless, since there's no
additional assumption needed. So I think that it already offers quite a bit.

304
00:26:19,162 --> 00:26:29,162
I'm skeptical that other things improve upon that, but of course, people should
absolutely be free to do whatever they like.

305
00:26:29,162 --> 00:26:36,162
I think you're implying that ZK-rollups are incompatible with miner incentives,
because they can censor the ZK-proof.

306
00:26:36,162 --> 00:26:47,162
But in the same way that miners collect fees from Drivechains, you have all these
transactions and all this activity that happens on the L2, it's compressed into a
zero-knowledge proof, it's posted onto the Bitcoin L1.

307
00:26:47,162 --> 00:26:58,162
So the miners are, in fact, benefiting hugely from these ZK-rollups. I would argue
that ZK-rollups would be the primary reason why the security budget is not an issue
moving into the future.

308
00:26:58,162 --> 00:27:10,162
I think we definitely agree that the merge-mined L2s, or any L2 that passes the
transaction fee revenue down to miners, will eventually be 99% or more of the
miners' revenue.

309
00:27:10,162 --> 00:27:21,162
And I said in my little opening statement about hundreds of billions of dollars a
year. And of course, this is actually growing, it doubles about every 11 years, as
far as I can tell, the total number of transactions on Earth.

310
00:27:21,162 --> 00:27:37,162
So I completely agree with that. I just think it's easier to just have... I mean,
Satoshi already invented merge-minings, a lot of this stuff already exists, and
we've been merge-mining Namecoin, which is very, very small, but we've been doing
that continuously since 2010.

311
00:27:37,162 --> 00:27:49,162
And in 2010, Satoshi had a very interesting saying that I wanted to remind everyone
here. He said, I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction
volume or zero transaction volume.

312
00:27:49,162 --> 00:27:58,162
And he said that in 2010, so 2030 would be when he, you know, if you take that very
seriously, that would be the time when it would either go big.

313
00:27:58,162 --> 00:28:12,162
I mean, if we want to live in a world where everyone is using Bitcoin, that is how
we maximize the chance of getting to this tens of millions of dollars per coin
price, and we don't want to go the other way, to zero.

314
00:28:12,162 --> 00:28:29,162
One additional point that is a meta point, you know, regardless of the specific path
the community decides to pursue, the key to then actually scaling that solution and
using it to bring users on board to Bitcoin is by making really user-friendly
software, right?

315
00:28:29,162 --> 00:28:53,162
That is kind of table stakes, especially now in a world with, you know, well-funded
competition. And so I think, you know, making software that's very friendly for
developers, getting developers to start building products, making sure that those
products are user-friendly for users, and, you know, allow kind of a simple and
intuitive interface for whatever layer of Bitcoin that they're operating at is, you
know, table stakes.

316
00:28:53,162 --> 00:29:19,162
And I think that's one thing that, you know, we have always been blown away and
amazed at the Bitcoin development community. I mean, we launched this new Taproot
assets upgrade on Tuesday and already have people tweeting out, you know, new
projects that they're building, you know, new additions to the protocol that they're
making and, you know, ways to kind of, you know, bring the protocol itself to the
world in a user-friendly and easily digestible way.

317
00:29:20,162 --> 00:29:37,162
And so just want to make sure, and I know all the folks up here are well aware of
that, that that's something that the community always keeps top of mind because, you
know, the best technology doesn't always win. But, you know, the technology that
solves the best pain points that users are asking for has a much better chance.

318
00:29:38,162 --> 00:29:58,162
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, Feddy as a company, as I say, we make this
community super app. What we've done is try to make something which is incredibly
simple to use, but uses all these technologies. It uses Lightning, it uses
FeddyMint. And if in future, when you launch and it reaches adoption, we'll be using
those as well. It also uses Nostra, etc.

319
00:29:59,162 --> 00:30:15,162
But there's another thing that's really important beyond making an incredible
experience. It's actually having users who are not just in the Bitcoin ecosystem,
but it's the 99% of people on the planet who are not in the ecosystem and getting
them into the ecosystem using this technology.

320
00:30:15,162 --> 00:30:35,162
Which is why, for example, we're about to announce there's a major international
NGO, Save the Children, for example, who is a 100-year-old company, an organization
who we are partnering with to trial and roll out these technologies like Lightning,
Bitcoin, Nostra, etc.

321
00:30:36,162 --> 00:30:44,162
And they are using FeddyMint, of course, and they are using it because after
analyzing all other blockchains, they realized that this is the one that solves the
problems for them.

322
00:30:45,162 --> 00:30:59,162
Awesome. Yeah, we are already running a little bit over here. So I wanted to thank
you, our panelists here for an amazing panel. And thank you everyone who showed up
and enjoyed the rest of the conference.

323
00:31:00,162 --> 00:31:01,162
Thank you.

324
00:31:06,162 --> 00:31:13,162
Next year, we are bringing the Bitcoin conference to the American West, Las Vegas.

325
00:31:17,162 --> 00:31:22,162
The brightest minds in the world will converge to deliver Bitcoin history.

326
00:31:22,162 --> 00:31:37,162
Buy your tickets now at b.tc slash conference slash 2025.