1
00:00:00,440 --> 00:00:05,320
Is Bitcoin for data transmission and storage, or is it for money?

2
00:00:05,560 --> 00:00:11,340
There are so many dimensions to the argument that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what the crux of the issue is.

3
00:00:11,540 --> 00:00:16,640
There's a massive amount of mistrust on Bitcoin Core development as a whole right now.

4
00:00:17,140 --> 00:00:21,380
It looks corrupt. I don't want to say it is corrupt, but it definitely looks corrupt.

5
00:00:21,600 --> 00:00:28,300
If you make a change and no one is willing to run your software, then you might as well have just not done it because it has zero effect.

6
00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:30,800
I think the nation state adoption is coming.

7
00:00:31,260 --> 00:00:33,280
These things happen very quickly.

8
00:00:33,520 --> 00:00:36,340
It's like literally gradually and then suddenly.

9
00:00:36,560 --> 00:00:44,160
It's simply a matter of time before we see a massive run up and we see a massive nation state FOMO panic.

10
00:00:44,540 --> 00:00:47,380
Everyone has a sense in their head that something is off.

11
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:53,680
It puts the suddenly very close to now and it could trigger at any time.

12
00:00:53,680 --> 00:00:58,520
Bitcoin price is definitely on the verge of Omega.

13
00:01:01,700 --> 00:01:02,640
Welcome to the show.

14
00:01:02,820 --> 00:01:04,440
First time on the new What Bitcoin Did.

15
00:01:05,080 --> 00:01:05,900
Good to see you, man.

16
00:01:05,940 --> 00:01:06,380
How are you?

17
00:01:06,960 --> 00:01:08,380
I'm hanging in there, Danny.

18
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:09,460
Good to be on the new show.

19
00:01:09,540 --> 00:01:11,400
My first episode on the new one.

20
00:01:12,320 --> 00:01:13,480
I know, I'm excited.

21
00:01:13,700 --> 00:01:16,600
And this is the most requested topic at the moment by a long way.

22
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:20,820
Under every single video that I post, the first comment is always, when are you going

23
00:01:20,820 --> 00:01:21,660
to talk about knots?

24
00:01:21,660 --> 00:01:28,320
um i did cover this with mechanic on a show and i had shinobi on the show maybe six months ago now

25
00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:35,860
but the the whole conversation has kind of got worse i think the the level of discourse has got

26
00:01:35,860 --> 00:01:42,180
worse um it's devolved into something that i've been kind of a bit nervous to to kind of get into

27
00:01:42,180 --> 00:01:46,840
um and i tried to set up a debate with a few people from the not side a few people from the

28
00:01:46,840 --> 00:01:52,240
core side, try and have like a very honest, calm conversation about this. But no one wants to talk

29
00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:55,940
to each other anymore. So I'm glad that we can do this, Samson. I think you're a voice of reason

30
00:01:55,940 --> 00:02:01,160
in this. So we're going to get into it. All right, let's do it, Danny. So should we start? I think

31
00:02:01,160 --> 00:02:05,240
it would be good. There's obviously we spend all our time on Bitcoin Twitter. We follow this stuff,

32
00:02:05,420 --> 00:02:08,580
but there'll be a lot of the listeners that maybe don't know exactly what's going on. So

33
00:02:08,580 --> 00:02:12,360
can we start by just adding some context? Can you explain what's happened here over the last

34
00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:17,720
six, 12 months. Well, why don't you take a stab at it and I can tell you if you got it right.

35
00:02:18,140 --> 00:02:22,880
That's a good barometer for, you know, the average person's understanding. Not that you're average,

36
00:02:22,980 --> 00:02:30,000
but you're, you know, you're less in it. I'm slightly below average. So obviously I can't

37
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:33,760
remember the exact date, but Core came out and said they're going to remove the op return limit.

38
00:02:34,540 --> 00:02:39,800
Then this other faction of Bitcoiners have been very annoyed about that because they're worried

39
00:02:39,800 --> 00:02:44,640
about spam on Bitcoin, what could be put into the Bitcoin blockchain. And I think this kind of

40
00:02:44,640 --> 00:02:50,880
comes down to a sort of a hearts versus minds debate where people ideologically don't want

41
00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:56,020
Bitcoin to become something, even if technically you can already do all that stuff on Bitcoin.

42
00:02:56,020 --> 00:03:00,680
And the reason that Core are implementing these changes is to try and make Bitcoin more efficient

43
00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:04,640
than not necessarily trying to just allow spammers on chain would be my take.

44
00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:23,820
Yeah, I mean, it's a very convoluted thing. And there are so many dimensions to the argument that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what the crux of the issue is. There's the whole debate about, you know, is it spam? And can we stop spam? Should we stop spam?

45
00:03:24,660 --> 00:03:29,460
There's the debate upon, is Bitcoin money or is it arbitrary data?

46
00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:35,560
And do we want Bitcoin to be just a cryptographic blob, a cryptographic accumulator in Adam

47
00:03:35,560 --> 00:03:36,200
Back's words?

48
00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:38,280
And, or do we want to say it's money?

49
00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:45,600
And then there's the whole facet of, you know, just core versus nots, developers being against

50
00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:48,660
nots and nots against core.

51
00:03:48,660 --> 00:03:55,180
and that goes into another rabbit hole of, you know, what is a bug even.

52
00:03:55,320 --> 00:03:59,480
Because if you go back in time to where it kind of kicked off,

53
00:03:59,540 --> 00:04:02,480
it is really the ordinal's inscription spam, right?

54
00:04:02,620 --> 00:04:09,580
And that was when Luke logged a bug, CV202350428,

55
00:04:10,020 --> 00:04:15,240
basically saying that these new protocols are bypassing data carrier size.

56
00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:20,380
and a lot of core developers just said nope not a bug it's a feature so they kind of changed

57
00:04:20,380 --> 00:04:28,280
documentation to fix the bug and i think that is kind of where in my mind the schism happened

58
00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:37,180
and the fallout now over knots versus core and opera turn is downstream of that moment in time

59
00:04:37,180 --> 00:04:47,320
so it's a big can of worms i would say overall but the net effect is really um maybe it's a battle

60
00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:54,680
over the core repo because core core is kind of uh booted luke now yeah you know like when they

61
00:04:54,680 --> 00:05:01,180
were first proposing the change shop return they kind of were banning people and locking the thread

62
00:05:01,180 --> 00:05:07,300
to prevent people from knacking and then unlocking it to act it and then relocking it. It's just

63
00:05:07,300 --> 00:05:13,800
an incredibly childish thing that they were doing. But, you know, Luke is kind of excommunicated from

64
00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:21,920
the Church of Cornell. And that's probably, you know, a major factor in the ongoing battle. You

65
00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:28,540
know, he's got knots gaining traction, a lot of traction. And I would say Ocean is overall gaining

66
00:05:28,540 --> 00:05:36,740
a lot of hash rate too. So the whole situation is kind of a really bad situation that we got into

67
00:05:36,740 --> 00:05:43,780
that could have been avoided, I believe, if there were more people listening to Luke at that time

68
00:05:43,780 --> 00:05:50,100
and we nipped the spam issue in the bud early on. But, you know, here we are.

69
00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:54,700
I mean, this is such a minefield. Even in everything you said there, there were a few

70
00:05:54,700 --> 00:05:59,060
things that i wanted to pick out and and just quickly because we i want to get into the core

71
00:05:59,060 --> 00:06:03,600
of the debate and i don't want to get into these little minutiae bits but you talked about how core

72
00:06:03,600 --> 00:06:08,660
were banning people from commenting on github and this is something that i spoke again both to

73
00:06:08,660 --> 00:06:13,180
shinobi and mechanic about and um i think mechanics take on it's more interesting because he was on the

74
00:06:13,180 --> 00:06:18,620
side that was getting you know kicked out and not allowed to comment yeah github maybe isn't the

75
00:06:18,620 --> 00:06:23,280
place to have the debates about what bitcoin ideologically should be it should be more the

76
00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:28,420
place you have technical debate. And I think Mechanic even conceded that, that maybe that

77
00:06:28,420 --> 00:06:33,460
is not the correct forum to have those conversations. It's difficult to say. I mean,

78
00:06:33,900 --> 00:06:39,380
where is the forum to discuss what is a bug, right? If you go back to what I pointed out as

79
00:06:39,380 --> 00:06:45,420
the origin of the split, then, you know, where was that place to discuss it? You know, that was,

80
00:06:45,420 --> 00:06:52,900
it was technical forums or GitHub and the mailing list, but that didn't really result in a good

81
00:06:52,900 --> 00:06:59,120
outcome, I think. But, you know, it comes down to the, what is the governance? And we like to say

82
00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:03,260
there's no governance, but there really is governance, right? There are leaders and core,

83
00:07:03,680 --> 00:07:09,180
the maintainers, you know, have a big weight in, you know, what happens, what gets merged,

84
00:07:09,640 --> 00:07:14,200
and their acts and nacks carry more weight, whether they believe it or not,

85
00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:20,540
than, you know, just your ordinary contributor. So it comes down to, I think, governance and

86
00:07:20,540 --> 00:07:26,340
And the question of where these broader topics are hashed out is definitely something that

87
00:07:26,340 --> 00:07:27,500
is not yet answered.

88
00:07:27,500 --> 00:07:28,900
And I don't really have an answer.

89
00:07:28,900 --> 00:07:30,400
Is it on X?

90
00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:31,900
It seems to be.

91
00:07:31,900 --> 00:07:36,080
I don't know, but that seems to be where it is right now.

92
00:07:36,080 --> 00:07:41,220
Before we get into the kind of crux of the issue, should we lay out our biases?

93
00:07:41,220 --> 00:07:44,540
Because I think then everyone who's listening knows what side of this we're coming from.

94
00:07:44,540 --> 00:07:48,340
And so for me personally, I don't think core is without fault.

95
00:07:48,340 --> 00:07:49,340
Don't get me wrong.

96
00:07:49,340 --> 00:07:54,020
The big issue has come from the communication of what they're doing and why they're doing it, I think.

97
00:07:54,920 --> 00:07:58,440
But I wouldn't feel comfortable myself running NOTS.

98
00:07:58,520 --> 00:07:59,860
And we're going to get into the reasons why.

99
00:08:00,780 --> 00:08:05,500
But like really, it just comes down to the fact that it's maintained and run by a single person.

100
00:08:05,640 --> 00:08:09,180
Even if Luke's brilliant, like I can, he's done amazing things for Bitcoin.

101
00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:10,300
That's still an issue for me.

102
00:08:11,140 --> 00:08:14,600
And like the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is you really don't have to do anything.

103
00:08:14,760 --> 00:08:17,280
Like if you don't like the change that's happening, just don't upgrade.

104
00:08:17,280 --> 00:08:23,340
And so that's probably where I'm at, where like running Core 29 is my most likely path

105
00:08:23,340 --> 00:08:24,020
after this.

106
00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:25,280
I don't know where you stand.

107
00:08:26,260 --> 00:08:26,380
Right.

108
00:08:26,540 --> 00:08:29,240
So I'm kind of in the middle.

109
00:08:30,220 --> 00:08:37,860
I probably lean more towards not, but I also see the value in Core as a whole.

110
00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:43,260
I think there are a lot of problematic individuals in Core and a lot of structural problems with

111
00:08:43,260 --> 00:08:44,560
the organization itself.

112
00:08:44,560 --> 00:08:49,420
and I don't want to get into it, but eventually, Danny, you're going to have someone on and they're

113
00:08:49,420 --> 00:08:55,680
going to air a lot of dirty laundry, you know, dealing from backstabbing, internal politics,

114
00:08:56,300 --> 00:09:02,580
brigading, canceling people. There's a laundry list of stuff and, you know, you'll get it

115
00:09:02,580 --> 00:09:07,620
eventually, I think. It'll come to light. But, you know, there are problems there, but there are good

116
00:09:07,620 --> 00:09:12,660
developers. There are talented developers that know a lot and have worked on it a lot. But at the same

117
00:09:12,660 --> 00:09:19,900
time you have a lot of newer developers that seem to have ulterior motives or have different goals

118
00:09:19,900 --> 00:09:28,360
and are doing things that people can perceive to be conflicted and potentially bad for Bitcoin.

119
00:09:29,020 --> 00:09:36,460
And I agree with your feedback on not. Those are very common resistance points to running it,

120
00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:40,480
that it is mostly Luke. I think there are more contributors and there will be more,

121
00:09:40,480 --> 00:09:48,960
but you know it is a project largely owned by a Luke so I'm kind of in your camp I would say I'm

122
00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:56,200
going to stick with 29 not even 29.1 but 29 and I won't upgrade and this is generally the

123
00:09:56,200 --> 00:10:02,320
recommendation I'm making which is let's not upgrade let's just wait and see and I think

124
00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:08,680
there's an opportunity for a third major Bitcoin client fork or branch whatever you want to call

125
00:10:08,680 --> 00:10:16,260
fork kind of triggers people, but just like another benign clone of Bitcoin Core that is kind

126
00:10:16,260 --> 00:10:22,720
of the middle road, removing some of the more contentious changes that Core did and maintaining

127
00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:28,660
security fixes. Because you can say you don't have to upgrade. And that's often a counterpoint

128
00:10:28,660 --> 00:10:33,080
from the Core side. Like, oh, you don't like what we're doing? Don't upgrade then or run something

129
00:10:33,080 --> 00:10:38,120
else. But then, you know, when people run something else, they go, you're stupid for running that

130
00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:45,340
other thing, right? But you know, you also cannot not upgrade indefinitely. You have to upgrade at

131
00:10:45,340 --> 00:10:52,040
some point, maybe one year, two years. If you're a mining pool or an exchange, I think, you know,

132
00:10:52,120 --> 00:10:58,360
probably in the one year mark because there will be optimizations and bug fixes. So yeah, I think

133
00:10:58,360 --> 00:11:02,920
I'm in the middle ground and there is a middle path through some of this mess.

134
00:11:03,560 --> 00:11:07,140
What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time?

135
00:11:07,140 --> 00:11:09,600
Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware, you can.

136
00:11:10,100 --> 00:11:16,740
New tax guidelines from the Big Beautiful Bill allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year.

137
00:11:17,060 --> 00:11:18,860
That's right, 100% write-off.

138
00:11:19,320 --> 00:11:24,780
If you have 100k in capital gains or income, you can purchase 100k of miners and offset it entirely.

139
00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:30,320
Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining Bitcoin right now without lifting a finger.

140
00:11:30,880 --> 00:11:35,900
Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low-cost power to configuring the mining pool.

141
00:11:35,900 --> 00:11:36,660
They do it all.

142
00:11:37,140 --> 00:11:41,960
You get to stack Bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season.

143
00:11:42,560 --> 00:11:47,440
Get started today by going to mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD

144
00:11:47,440 --> 00:11:51,540
and for every hosted miner purchased, you get one week of free hosting and electricity.

145
00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:53,760
Of course, none of this is tax advice.

146
00:11:53,980 --> 00:11:59,140
Speak with Blockware to learn more at mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD.

147
00:11:59,140 --> 00:12:02,260
This episode is brought to you by the massive legends, Iron,

148
00:12:02,500 --> 00:12:06,400
the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy.

149
00:12:06,400 --> 00:12:13,000
IREN are not just powering the Bitcoin network, they're also providing cutting-edge computing resources for AI, all backed by renewable energy.

150
00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:17,960
We've been working with our founders, Dan and Will, for quite some time now and have been really impressed with their values,

151
00:12:18,120 --> 00:12:21,740
especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power.

152
00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:26,600
So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power, IREN is setting the standard.

153
00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:31,080
Visit iren.com to learn more, which is I-R-E-N dot com.

154
00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:34,580
If you're already self-custody of Bitcoin, you know the deal with hardware wallets.

155
00:12:34,580 --> 00:12:39,540
complex setups, clumsy interfaces, and a seed phrase that can be lost, stolen, or forgotten.

156
00:12:40,160 --> 00:12:44,980
Well, BitKey fixes that. BitKey is a multi-sig hardware wallet built by the team behind Square

157
00:12:44,980 --> 00:12:50,160
and Cash App. It packs a cryptographic recovery system and built-in inheritance feature into an

158
00:12:50,160 --> 00:12:55,880
intuitive, easy-to-use wallet with no seed phrase to sweat over. It's simple, secure self-custody

159
00:12:55,880 --> 00:13:01,620
without the stress, and time named BitKey one of the best inventions of 2024. Get 20% off at

160
00:13:01,620 --> 00:13:08,640
bitkey.world when you use code WBD. That's B-I-T-K-E-Y.world and use code WBD.

161
00:13:10,020 --> 00:13:14,920
Okay. And I think, to be honest, out of this, with more people running NOTS, hopefully more

162
00:13:14,920 --> 00:13:19,000
developer eyes on NOTS, that seems like a good thing. I've got no problem if people want to go

163
00:13:19,000 --> 00:13:23,640
run a different implementation. That's completely their choice. I'm not going to scream at people

164
00:13:23,640 --> 00:13:27,560
and tell them they're being dumb. It's just not what I'm choosing to do. But there's a problem

165
00:13:27,560 --> 00:13:32,960
with that. There's a problem with that, Danny. So I don't know if you noticed, but the core faction

166
00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:41,800
is getting more agitated and it has to do because of the increase in Knot's node runners and their

167
00:13:41,800 --> 00:13:47,620
impact on the network itself. So what you're seeing is the mempool fragmenting because people

168
00:13:47,620 --> 00:13:53,660
are filtering and that has downstream implications on the network. Like compact blocks are affected

169
00:13:53,660 --> 00:14:01,320
and you have the more increased likelihood that mining pools will have private pools

170
00:14:01,320 --> 00:14:09,040
and that has additional impacts too like rbf can be impacted as well because you know you don't see

171
00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:14,620
the all the transactions or you're not able to estimate fees as accurately and that can lead to

172
00:14:14,620 --> 00:14:22,000
some things like lightning pinning attacks too so my feeling is like they realize that there's a

173
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:27,840
problem now, but their toolkit generally involves yelling at people and saying, you know, just listen

174
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:33,420
to Core. And that doesn't really work either. So there is a crisis, I believe, in the Core camp.

175
00:14:34,040 --> 00:14:39,240
I see a lot of the comments and a lot of people on Twitter who genuinely believe that Core 30 is

176
00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:44,700
going to destroy Bitcoin. That's something I wholeheartedly disagree with. I want to know

177
00:14:44,700 --> 00:14:48,140
your kind of take on that. I think the whole conversation has got too inflammatory.

178
00:14:48,140 --> 00:14:59,260
Yeah, I would disagree with the Notskamp in that it's going to end things, but I also think it is not a good idea to remove all of these defaults.

179
00:14:59,260 --> 00:15:05,560
Because, you know, if pools upgrade blindly, then they're going to have an impact on the network.

180
00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:15,080
So you'll have larger op returns and you'll encourage other projects to build on this new Bitcoin because there is no deterrent.

181
00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:26,740
There is no disposition from the developers of the main Bitcoin client to resist these external protocols and resist spam.

182
00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:30,280
So I think there needs to be a detriment.

183
00:15:30,640 --> 00:15:35,180
But again, if everyone did upgrade to 30, I don't think it's the end of the world.

184
00:15:35,180 --> 00:15:44,520
But I also see the increasing adoption of knots is causing problems for how the core developers view the network should be.

185
00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:47,080
All right, we've kind of set the table there.

186
00:15:47,640 --> 00:15:49,980
I want to get into kind of the actual details of this.

187
00:15:50,140 --> 00:15:52,800
I think probably the best place to start is with spam,

188
00:15:53,200 --> 00:15:56,260
because that is where this whole conversation came from.

189
00:15:56,540 --> 00:15:58,060
In your mind, what is spam?

190
00:15:58,440 --> 00:15:59,700
What counts as spam on Bitcoin?

191
00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:05,020
Well, spam is non-native data to the Bitcoin network.

192
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:10,260
So you can say that you don't know what spam is,

193
00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:13,280
but what is a Bitcoin transaction?

194
00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:26,880
If you download the Bitcoin client and you get some Bitcoin, like someone sends you Bitcoin and you send someone else Bitcoin, that is, you know, that's the main use case of the network, sending and receiving Bitcoin.

195
00:16:27,660 --> 00:16:31,260
And that is not sending pictures and other things.

196
00:16:31,420 --> 00:16:38,080
Like there is arbitrary data and that's usually stored in OpReturn, like 83 bytes of data.

197
00:16:38,080 --> 00:16:44,860
And it's been like that for a very long time because you can store a hash of something or a double hash.

198
00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:47,260
Open timestamps uses it.

199
00:16:47,860 --> 00:16:50,240
Various other protocols might embed a little bit of data.

200
00:16:50,940 --> 00:16:59,300
But that's been generally deemed safe and acceptable with general consensus slash agreement.

201
00:17:00,060 --> 00:17:01,880
Consensus seems to be a trigger word these days.

202
00:17:02,060 --> 00:17:04,200
People like to argue, oh, that's not a consensus rule.

203
00:17:04,700 --> 00:17:07,460
But we're not saying it in that meaning.

204
00:17:07,460 --> 00:17:12,480
we're meaning like, do people agree? And people agree, Opratern at 83 bytes is generally accepted

205
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:21,380
as okay. But when you start moving towards larger blobs of data, I think that's a slippery slope.

206
00:17:21,600 --> 00:17:26,580
And you'll come to see like most of this discussion is really about slippery slopes.

207
00:17:26,740 --> 00:17:32,960
There are slippery slopes everywhere. So this is one of the things that I've not fully,

208
00:17:32,960 --> 00:17:43,733
like when it comes to what is spam So a company like Simple Proof for example they using open timestamps put election data in bitcoin that not a bitcoin transaction but it seems like at

209
00:17:43,733 --> 00:17:49,233
least a decent proportion of the knots crowd are okay with that so what i want to know is why that

210
00:17:49,233 --> 00:17:55,773
is not spam but say someone puts like wikileaks cables on the blockchain that might be spam like

211
00:17:55,773 --> 00:18:00,973
how do you draw the line and where do you draw the line yeah it's a difficult line so i would say

212
00:18:00,973 --> 00:18:03,653
like something small, like 83,

213
00:18:04,352 --> 00:18:06,572
you could convince me 160 bytes.

214
00:18:06,993 --> 00:18:08,373
But, you know, when you go past that,

215
00:18:08,413 --> 00:18:09,993
I think it's obvious that you're trying to store

216
00:18:09,993 --> 00:18:12,193
large blobs of data.

217
00:18:12,352 --> 00:18:14,713
And it could be images or it could be other things.

218
00:18:15,092 --> 00:18:18,453
I think even in ordinals, inscriptions,

219
00:18:18,713 --> 00:18:20,092
things like that are also spam

220
00:18:20,092 --> 00:18:22,253
because they're not sending Bitcoin.

221
00:18:22,393 --> 00:18:24,753
They're using Bitcoin to send something else.

222
00:18:24,932 --> 00:18:27,172
I mean, you can go back and look at color coins,

223
00:18:27,253 --> 00:18:27,953
but same thing.

224
00:18:27,953 --> 00:18:30,953
But I think as long as you're not harming the network,

225
00:18:30,973 --> 00:18:37,253
and I think we can generally agree that bloating the UTXO set is harming the network,

226
00:18:37,473 --> 00:18:42,432
then it's okay. So if you're timestamping, you're putting very little data, you're paying fees,

227
00:18:42,432 --> 00:18:50,793
that's good. But you can pay fees and bloat the UTXO set or embed data and images and whatnot.

228
00:18:51,213 --> 00:18:59,393
And I think that is spam, but it really comes down to a blend of harm and what exactly is your intent.

229
00:18:59,393 --> 00:19:04,913
okay so we should probably talk about why core are doing this why they're moving the limit on

230
00:19:04,913 --> 00:19:09,713
op return because you can already fill a four megabyte block with a single transaction that

231
00:19:09,713 --> 00:19:15,273
is not a bitcoin transaction like we saw this happen last year i think it was i think luxor

232
00:19:15,273 --> 00:19:18,873
maybe with a mining pool i can't exactly remember but they included a block there was a single

233
00:19:18,873 --> 00:19:24,852
transaction and it was just one image so i think core's argument for doing this is that it's a less

234
00:19:24,852 --> 00:19:29,053
harmful way of putting data in the Bitcoin blockchain rather than using the witness

235
00:19:29,053 --> 00:19:38,893
data or something else? Yeah, I mean, it's a difficult topic. So you can remove the limit.

236
00:19:39,273 --> 00:19:44,693
And I think the rationale there is that this is something that can be done already. Therefore,

237
00:19:45,473 --> 00:19:52,432
you know, the filters don't work. And if you remove the filter, then I believe you're encouraging

238
00:19:52,432 --> 00:19:59,413
more of it, especially because there has typically historically been resistance to this type of

239
00:19:59,413 --> 00:20:05,873
behavior. And, you know, when Luke was more influential in core and less, you know,

240
00:20:06,453 --> 00:20:12,813
ostracized off to the side, ostracized, then I think we would have seen a different scenario play

241
00:20:12,813 --> 00:20:19,453
out. But yeah, I would say that stuff is spam and all of the other protocols that are kind of

242
00:20:19,453 --> 00:20:25,893
leveraging Bitcoin in an affinity scam type of way. Like, you know, this is on Bitcoin. No,

243
00:20:25,932 --> 00:20:29,233
it's not on Bitcoin. It's a separate thing that points to Bitcoin and points to,

244
00:20:29,233 --> 00:20:34,753
you know, arbitrary data stuck on Bitcoin. But so this kind of comes down to the

245
00:20:34,753 --> 00:20:39,413
monetary maximalist argument. That's the way that someone like Rizzo would frame it. And

246
00:20:39,413 --> 00:20:43,473
this is where I said to Mechanic, like, ideologically, I agree. Like, I want Bitcoin

247
00:20:43,473 --> 00:20:48,193
to be money. Like, I agree that pictures on Bitcoin is absolutely not what it was intended

248
00:20:48,193 --> 00:20:53,873
for and I don't like to see it. My issue is whether there is like a reality to that, that

249
00:20:53,873 --> 00:20:59,753
this is something we can't stop. And like filters, do they even work? Like if we can just get around

250
00:20:59,753 --> 00:21:05,713
them, why not have something that is the least harmful way of doing them as the sort of common

251
00:21:05,713 --> 00:21:12,393
way of doing them? Right. So, I mean, filters do work. I mean, they've worked for a long time.

252
00:21:12,973 --> 00:21:17,913
It's just recently what we see is people are bypassing the filters, right? Do you have a

253
00:21:17,913 --> 00:21:24,253
Libra Relay. And, you know, that's, it's kind of meant to show the Nodz guys, your filters don't

254
00:21:24,253 --> 00:21:30,193
work. But it's not necessarily a good thing, because you're kind of showing that all of these

255
00:21:30,193 --> 00:21:38,352
standardness features are bypassable. And they are all there for a reason to maintain Bitcoin as money,

256
00:21:38,352 --> 00:21:46,432
not as arbitrary data, and to also keep the Bitcoin network usable for the purpose of money,

257
00:21:46,432 --> 00:21:48,793
like transacting between you and I.

258
00:21:49,352 --> 00:21:51,793
So it's kind of bad in a way

259
00:21:51,793 --> 00:21:53,233
and you can view it as an attack.

260
00:21:53,633 --> 00:21:55,033
I think the core side likes to say

261
00:21:55,033 --> 00:21:57,393
private mempools are bad and harmful

262
00:21:57,393 --> 00:22:00,533
but, you know, bypassing the filters

263
00:22:00,533 --> 00:22:02,453
is also a bad thing

264
00:22:02,453 --> 00:22:04,553
because they are there for a reason.

265
00:22:05,092 --> 00:22:06,053
I'll give you another example.

266
00:22:06,293 --> 00:22:07,612
Like you can't say filters don't work.

267
00:22:07,733 --> 00:22:09,572
There's another filter called Dust Relay Fee

268
00:22:09,572 --> 00:22:13,612
which was implemented to prevent spam on a network

269
00:22:13,612 --> 00:22:15,553
like from Satoshi Dice back in the day.

270
00:22:15,553 --> 00:22:21,352
that is still there and that is what's holding back the network from being inundated by spam

271
00:22:21,352 --> 00:22:29,612
but you know someone could for kicks for shits and giggles you know start relaying spam and then

272
00:22:29,612 --> 00:22:35,513
convince some miner somewhere to start mining the spam and then guess what the filter doesn't work

273
00:22:35,513 --> 00:22:41,713
because you weakened it so it's not like something to be proud of that yeah you can bypass the filter

274
00:22:41,713 --> 00:22:59,493
It's more of a politeness. It's more of a standard. It's more of a way to operate that's not in consensus, at least not yet. And it should be respected in general because it is better for the network.

275
00:22:59,493 --> 00:23:01,733
Another example I'd like to give is traffic.

276
00:23:02,193 --> 00:23:09,092
If you go to the third world, you know, you see congestion in the intersections because everyone's trying to get to where they're going a bit faster.

277
00:23:09,352 --> 00:23:12,352
They're cutting people off, running lights, running signs.

278
00:23:13,233 --> 00:23:18,072
And in Western countries, generally that's not the case because people generally follow the rules.

279
00:23:18,193 --> 00:23:21,993
But that doesn't mean you can't run a red light.

280
00:23:22,473 --> 00:23:24,013
Mechanically, you can run a red light.

281
00:23:24,133 --> 00:23:25,233
You can cut someone off.

282
00:23:25,473 --> 00:23:27,813
But if everyone does that, then guess what?

283
00:23:27,813 --> 00:23:30,873
it degenerates into this messy blob of traffic.

284
00:23:31,893 --> 00:23:33,813
So I guess that's my point.

285
00:23:33,953 --> 00:23:35,253
Like there was another example.

286
00:23:36,072 --> 00:23:38,133
I think Steven Rivera posted it.

287
00:23:38,213 --> 00:23:43,793
It was Matt Corallo saying, you know, Peter Todd and this other guy are smart cows that

288
00:23:43,793 --> 00:23:46,473
show the other cows how to bypass the filters.

289
00:23:46,713 --> 00:23:48,293
You know, like they can, you can open the gate.

290
00:23:48,793 --> 00:23:51,173
So, you know, it's always been the case.

291
00:23:51,352 --> 00:23:53,173
You could always bypass these things, right?

292
00:23:53,173 --> 00:24:01,713
But I don't think we would agree that we should bypass dust relay fee and start seeing a massive amount of dust clog up the network.

293
00:24:02,313 --> 00:24:04,352
But here we are.

294
00:24:05,533 --> 00:24:09,193
So in your analogy, could you argue that fees are the filter?

295
00:24:09,592 --> 00:24:16,453
And the reason that in the West we don't run red lights and speed is because you'll get fined and you'll get points on your license?

296
00:24:17,493 --> 00:24:19,133
That's one part of it, I think.

297
00:24:19,233 --> 00:24:22,453
But generally, there's that shopping cart example.

298
00:24:22,453 --> 00:24:24,953
Like the shopping cart is the ultimate test of civilization.

299
00:24:25,332 --> 00:24:27,653
Do you put it back or do you just leave it there?

300
00:24:27,893 --> 00:24:29,612
There's no punishment, right?

301
00:24:29,673 --> 00:24:33,973
But generally people put it back or they try to aggregate them in one spot, right?

302
00:24:34,572 --> 00:24:36,612
But that's a good example.

303
00:24:36,773 --> 00:24:43,693
You have to follow some, you know, level of good behavior if you want what's good for the network.

304
00:24:44,193 --> 00:24:47,773
And I think another example would be something like immigration.

305
00:24:48,033 --> 00:24:51,713
So, you know, I can also, you're from the UK, right?

306
00:24:51,713 --> 00:24:52,313
Mm-hmm.

307
00:24:52,453 --> 00:25:05,612
So I can also show you, you can bypass legal immigration by taking a rubber boat across the English Channel and, you know, just landing there and you have all these benefits and you bypass the whole system.

308
00:25:05,813 --> 00:25:07,913
But is that necessarily a good thing?

309
00:25:08,753 --> 00:25:21,713
Because if you look at immigration or illegal immigration as a parallel to spam on the network, eventually there is so much illegal immigration that you have systemic societal problems.

310
00:25:21,713 --> 00:25:24,313
and further down the road,

311
00:25:24,553 --> 00:25:27,832
maybe the illegal migrant population

312
00:25:27,832 --> 00:25:30,173
eclipses that of the local population.

313
00:25:30,832 --> 00:25:33,173
So where do you draw the line?

314
00:25:33,313 --> 00:25:36,713
Because, you know, you don't want to torpedo the boats coming in,

315
00:25:36,773 --> 00:25:39,852
but you have to try to enforce those rules

316
00:25:39,852 --> 00:25:41,693
or else eventually, you know,

317
00:25:41,693 --> 00:25:44,173
the migrant population becomes the new population.

318
00:25:44,393 --> 00:25:45,852
And you could say the same for spam.

319
00:25:46,332 --> 00:25:49,332
Eventually, the network is just all dust and spam

320
00:25:49,332 --> 00:25:51,933
and you and I can no longer transact.

321
00:25:52,793 --> 00:25:54,153
That's, you know, hyperbole,

322
00:25:54,273 --> 00:25:56,773
but you get the general directional tracking

323
00:25:56,773 --> 00:25:58,153
of where this is going, right?

324
00:25:58,233 --> 00:25:59,233
It's a slippery slope.

325
00:26:00,273 --> 00:26:01,493
So do you disagree with the idea

326
00:26:01,493 --> 00:26:02,893
that fees are the filter then?

327
00:26:03,092 --> 00:26:04,072
In the sense that like,

328
00:26:04,112 --> 00:26:06,173
obviously blocks are pretty empty at the moment anyway,

329
00:26:06,173 --> 00:26:08,713
but if enough monetary transactions come online,

330
00:26:08,832 --> 00:26:10,893
they will just price out the rest of this stuff anyway.

331
00:26:12,313 --> 00:26:13,713
Well, fees are a filter,

332
00:26:14,133 --> 00:26:16,913
but it's not the only filter, right?

333
00:26:16,913 --> 00:26:30,592
So you can have perverse external incentives whereby you have some external protocol to Bitcoin that can pay for the fees and can spam the network, right?

334
00:26:30,612 --> 00:26:31,893
If you look at Ordinal, that's one.

335
00:26:32,493 --> 00:26:41,013
It's kind of like an ICO, but with pictures, you know, they're selling these PFPs or whatever, wizard images and cat images.

336
00:26:41,293 --> 00:26:44,092
And then they have a war chest and they don't care.

337
00:26:44,092 --> 00:26:49,913
they can print more stuff. Or more adversarially, you could have a company that launches an ICO,

338
00:26:50,092 --> 00:26:55,813
raises a few billion dollars, and fees are already low, and they can create a new protocol called

339
00:26:55,813 --> 00:27:00,033
Proof of Empty Blocks. I talked about this on the pod with Cedric, and now they're going to pay

340
00:27:00,033 --> 00:27:05,253
miners to mine empty blocks because that is how they designed their mechanism to generate coins

341
00:27:05,253 --> 00:27:11,633
on their chain. So there's a lot of things that you have to kind of think that it is an attack

342
00:27:11,633 --> 00:27:17,893
and mitigate it. You can say fees are the filter, but it's not always a filter. And the other angle

343
00:27:17,893 --> 00:27:24,332
to this is we are weakening the fees as a filter mechanism because we increased the block size

344
00:27:24,332 --> 00:27:31,873
during the block size war. So you have less fee pressure. And in 29.1, you lowered the minimum

345
00:27:31,873 --> 00:27:38,513
fees to 0.1 sats per vbyte at a time in which fees are already historically low and declining

346
00:27:38,513 --> 00:27:44,352
for miners. And you can argue, well, the miners could set it higher, but, you know, that's not

347
00:27:44,352 --> 00:27:50,793
necessarily how it always goes. A lot of pools will run defaults and some of them may be more

348
00:27:50,793 --> 00:27:57,413
interested in short-term economics and getting, you know, $100 more in fees versus the long-term

349
00:27:57,413 --> 00:28:02,773
economic outlook. And, you know, that can be self-sabotaging because now you just lowered

350
00:28:02,773 --> 00:28:08,393
fees by a factor of 10-ish. And it's going to be hard to build that up even back to one sat

351
00:28:08,393 --> 00:28:16,033
per V byte, much less higher at a time where you have more L2 traffic than ever before with

352
00:28:16,033 --> 00:28:23,612
Lightning, Liquid, and you have ETFs that take even more transactions off chain. So there's a lot

353
00:28:23,612 --> 00:28:30,633
of nuance and dimensionality to all of this. I actually think the miners taking transactions

354
00:28:30,633 --> 00:28:36,173
under one sat per V byte is a really interesting and useful comparison here because you were

355
00:28:36,173 --> 00:28:40,733
talking about the dust limit before and I think this has only really happened over the last few

356
00:28:40,733 --> 00:28:45,092
months but miners have been including transactions that are under a sap of e-byte and they've done

357
00:28:45,092 --> 00:28:51,433
that while probably I'm guessing here but 99 plus percent of nodes would not have that as policy

358
00:28:51,433 --> 00:28:58,852
so is that not another example of filtering not necessarily working well filters only work if we

359
00:28:58,852 --> 00:29:04,373
generally agree that these should be the filters right if you are bypassed and Libre Relay can

360
00:29:04,373 --> 00:29:09,373
bypass that and some miners mining it others might figure out okay well why don't we get that

361
00:29:09,373 --> 00:29:14,673
too and maybe they didn't do the economic analysis and see well it's only like 100 bucks or even if

362
00:29:14,673 --> 00:29:20,332
i'm mining ordinals it's like marginally nothing but overall these kind of behaviors are detrimental

363
00:29:20,332 --> 00:29:26,973
to the network as a whole so it's kind of like bringing down and making it harder for miners

364
00:29:26,973 --> 00:29:32,313
if there was a downturn in price that they would be able to survive right because they're getting

365
00:29:32,313 --> 00:29:38,953
less money. But it's also when you normalize it through the Bitcoin Core client, that's even worse

366
00:29:38,953 --> 00:29:44,433
because you have some people showing that, okay, this can be done. And Core has said, you know,

367
00:29:44,433 --> 00:29:52,092
we generally try to align to network usage and, you know, what people are actually doing. So you

368
00:29:52,092 --> 00:29:58,053
show this can happen and then Core drops the limit. And you could say the same for dust, right? Like,

369
00:29:58,053 --> 00:30:06,553
you know start mining dust and start relaying dust and then core will adjust it in 30.1 and

370
00:30:06,553 --> 00:30:10,773
you know remove that limit because i've said that in the past like all of these things are

371
00:30:10,773 --> 00:30:15,273
guardrails and we should be removing these guardrails do you know why the miners are actually

372
00:30:15,273 --> 00:30:20,293
including these because i can't quite figure that out in the sense that if someone's willing to pay

373
00:30:20,293 --> 00:30:25,493
you know 0.1 sap of ebuy or whatever for a transaction and miners just say no are they

374
00:30:25,493 --> 00:30:29,553
not eventually just going to pay one SAP of eBuy. I don't understand their economic incentive to do

375
00:30:29,553 --> 00:30:34,173
it. I don't know either. Maybe they're not looking at it closely enough. Maybe they're not doing

376
00:30:34,173 --> 00:30:38,173
analysis. Maybe they're just following what others are doing and they're seeing, oh, it's a little

377
00:30:38,173 --> 00:30:43,233
bit more revenue and they're hoping it becomes more revenue. But when you have a sizable drop

378
00:30:43,233 --> 00:30:48,393
like that, it's difficult to build back up the pressure. And it's even worse if it becomes a

379
00:30:48,393 --> 00:30:55,133
default, I believe. Okay. So I'm sounding very like anti-knots here and I'm not. It's just,

380
00:30:55,133 --> 00:30:58,033
I'm trying to steel man this to get to the kind of the bottom of it.

381
00:30:58,572 --> 00:31:03,993
But if what we saw the sub-one-sap-v-by transactions going through 99% of nodes

382
00:31:03,993 --> 00:31:06,773
or whatever it was not running that as policy,

383
00:31:07,213 --> 00:31:10,072
what kind of proliferation does nodes have to get to

384
00:31:10,072 --> 00:31:12,533
to actually make these filters impactful?

385
00:31:14,413 --> 00:31:16,513
I've seen some people do a calculation,

386
00:31:16,973 --> 00:31:19,473
even if they're at 80%, it doesn't matter.

387
00:31:19,953 --> 00:31:21,793
But I think this is beside the point.

388
00:31:21,793 --> 00:31:25,033
The point is you can always bypass a lot of these standardness rules.

389
00:31:25,133 --> 00:31:26,813
All of them, they can all be bypassed.

390
00:31:27,193 --> 00:31:29,973
So it's just a question of, can we get some alignment

391
00:31:29,973 --> 00:31:33,352
to put some of them back into place

392
00:31:33,352 --> 00:31:36,453
and, you know, bring some sanity back?

393
00:31:36,453 --> 00:31:40,332
And I think it goes back to fixing the data carrier bypass bug.

394
00:31:41,092 --> 00:31:45,592
And I don't know, it's difficult, I think, at this point to reconcile

395
00:31:45,592 --> 00:31:48,393
because everyone's really entrenched in their position.

396
00:31:49,473 --> 00:31:52,852
Okay, so why do you think Core have done this?

397
00:31:55,133 --> 00:32:16,033
I don't know. Like their argument is that you can do it anyway, so we should not get in the way. Right. And they're thinking, I believe, is that at least they've said it. They want they don't want private mempools. So they want to kind of unify policy across the network.

398
00:32:16,033 --> 00:32:22,092
and they hope i'm kind of steel manning for steel manning for them but they hope that

399
00:32:22,092 --> 00:32:28,933
the people spamming will stop using utxos and go to opertern because now they've removed some

400
00:32:28,933 --> 00:32:35,072
of these defaults and it also reduces the risk that you need to go to a miner directly

401
00:32:35,072 --> 00:32:41,893
to broadcast the transaction because the network as a whole will accept these larger operterns

402
00:32:41,893 --> 00:32:49,813
Do you think there's kind of a disconnect between Bitcoiners and Bitcoin Core at this point? And is that the widest that disconnect's ever been?

403
00:32:49,813 --> 00:33:12,653
I would say so. I mean, there's a massive amount of mistrust on Bitcoin Core development as a whole right now. And I can definitely see that perspective. If you look at what's going on, they're kind of antagonistic to users. And you see this in a lot of their communication.

404
00:33:12,653 --> 00:33:19,693
it's almost like they look down on users and actually you can find quotes and in posts on x

405
00:33:19,693 --> 00:33:25,873
if you want to look for those but there's also the fact that it looks corrupt i don't want to

406
00:33:25,873 --> 00:33:31,893
say is corrupt but it definitely looks corrupt because they're rewriting documentation to avoid

407
00:33:31,893 --> 00:33:39,653
fixing bugs and there are people that have interest in these spammy projects like ordinals

408
00:33:39,653 --> 00:33:40,953
and Tapper and whatnot.

409
00:33:41,112 --> 00:33:42,612
And they're all over

410
00:33:42,612 --> 00:33:44,733
and they're in the mailing list

411
00:33:44,733 --> 00:33:45,653
discussing stuff

412
00:33:45,653 --> 00:33:46,832
and very friendly

413
00:33:46,832 --> 00:33:48,173
with the core developers

414
00:33:48,173 --> 00:33:48,832
and maintainers.

415
00:33:48,973 --> 00:33:50,933
So I can definitely see

416
00:33:50,933 --> 00:33:53,153
why there's this massive mistrust

417
00:33:53,153 --> 00:33:54,612
of core development.

418
00:33:55,112 --> 00:33:56,832
And then there's the resistance

419
00:33:56,832 --> 00:33:59,352
to undoing their changes

420
00:33:59,352 --> 00:34:02,533
and not changing these defaults.

421
00:34:03,213 --> 00:34:06,393
So it kind of altogether adds up

422
00:34:06,393 --> 00:34:09,232
and people kind of feel like,

423
00:34:09,232 --> 00:34:16,573
you know, they're being gaslit. Communications on X compound that, but the refusal to not undo

424
00:34:16,573 --> 00:34:27,153
something and their refusal to, you know, slow down or pause is all reasonable for the average

425
00:34:27,153 --> 00:34:32,752
person to assume that, you know, there's some ulterior motive going on. I think probably the

426
00:34:32,752 --> 00:34:36,173
reason that they're reluctant to go back on what they've said they're going to do is because they

427
00:34:36,173 --> 00:34:42,533
think technically it's the correct solution. But again, is that them just missing some of

428
00:34:42,533 --> 00:34:49,613
the ideological arguments against what they're doing? Well, I mean, here's the thing. Like,

429
00:34:49,893 --> 00:34:56,052
I was just chatting with Adam back before I came on and I told him my position is not to upgrade.

430
00:34:56,052 --> 00:35:00,212
And this is what I will recommend to people. And he's saying, you should just upgrade. Like,

431
00:35:00,212 --> 00:35:03,433
just go to 30 and you can always change the defaults back.

432
00:35:03,953 --> 00:35:06,752
So then I countered back and said,

433
00:35:06,852 --> 00:35:09,973
well, then why not just not have those changes

434
00:35:09,973 --> 00:35:23,985
if people can change them back you know We kind of in this cyclical argument He saying they don matter and you can change them back And I saying well you can just not change them if they don matter Right So this is this that we stuck in this cycle here

435
00:35:24,265 --> 00:35:29,325
So there's no really good end to it because at the end of the day, you can bypass filters.

436
00:35:29,445 --> 00:35:30,545
They are not absolute.

437
00:35:30,545 --> 00:35:37,285
So it's more of a attitude of what Bitcoiners have.

438
00:35:37,285 --> 00:35:45,965
is bitcoin for data transmission and storage or is it for money and this is where the divide is

439
00:35:45,965 --> 00:35:53,305
you know there are additional angles on slippery slopeness here because the discussion around

440
00:35:53,305 --> 00:36:00,325
filtering out the um the spam leads people to think well if you can filter that you set a

441
00:36:00,325 --> 00:36:05,465
precedent and governments can also tell you to filter other things too down the road potentially

442
00:36:05,465 --> 00:36:16,305
But I don't think that's necessarily true because a lot of these spammy things, they're embedding data in envelopes and they sort of self-identify themselves by these envelopes.

443
00:36:16,345 --> 00:36:21,865
So you can tell like, okay, this is a BRC, this is an inscription and yeah, it's spam.

444
00:36:21,985 --> 00:36:22,625
So filter.

445
00:36:23,285 --> 00:36:26,025
But that's not the path that we've chosen.

446
00:36:26,025 --> 00:36:33,205
and knots is doing that but core seems to be trying to implement more things to make it

447
00:36:33,205 --> 00:36:39,945
more easy for them to spam because they think that is the deterrent to you know spamming utxos

448
00:36:39,945 --> 00:36:46,405
but if if they're trying to deter people from running private mempools their argument for that

449
00:36:46,405 --> 00:36:49,285
would be because that increases minor centralization so we should do anything that

450
00:36:49,285 --> 00:36:56,305
sort of prevents that. Is that correct? Well, mining centralization is a common talking point

451
00:36:56,305 --> 00:37:01,125
that's always brought up, right? Like we're doing this because we want to mitigate mining

452
00:37:01,125 --> 00:37:07,225
centralization. So you don't, but so then why don't you think that mining centralization is an

453
00:37:07,225 --> 00:37:12,265
issue in that sense? Well, I do think mining centralization is an issue, but I think it's

454
00:37:12,265 --> 00:37:19,145
just being used to justify actions that they've decided to take, but they don't need to take those

455
00:37:19,145 --> 00:37:23,425
actions. They can roll it back. But I think the prevailing argument from the core side is they

456
00:37:23,425 --> 00:37:31,905
think we cannot be forced to undo something that the community wants, right? Like for them, that's

457
00:37:31,905 --> 00:37:37,665
a slippery slope. If there is backlash and they change something, it means they're not following

458
00:37:37,665 --> 00:37:45,085
through on the most absolute technically correct solution. But I think they're missing a point here,

459
00:37:45,125 --> 00:37:48,625
which is delivered security. And again, this is something Adam has brought up. If you

460
00:37:48,625 --> 00:37:55,045
make a change and no one uses it, then did you actually deliver any security to the network or

461
00:37:55,045 --> 00:37:59,885
improvement or anything? And I think the answer there is no. If you make a change and no one is

462
00:37:59,885 --> 00:38:04,765
willing to run your software, then you might as well have just not done it because it has zero

463
00:38:04,765 --> 00:38:09,705
effect or negative effects in this case, because now you have a lot of mempool fragmentation.

464
00:38:10,425 --> 00:38:14,265
One of the things that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my Bitcoin cold

465
00:38:14,265 --> 00:38:19,145
storage. This is where AnchorWatch comes in. With AnchorWatch, your Bitcoin is insured with your own

466
00:38:19,145 --> 00:38:23,925
A-plus rated Lloyds of London insurance policy, and all Bitcoin is held in their time-locked

467
00:38:23,925 --> 00:38:28,365
multi-sig vaults. So you have the peace of mind knowing your Bitcoin is fully insured while not

468
00:38:28,365 --> 00:38:32,205
giving up custody. So whether you're worried about inheritance planning, wrench attacks,

469
00:38:32,365 --> 00:38:36,885
natural disasters, or just your own mistakes, you're fully protected by AnchorWatch. Rates for

470
00:38:36,885 --> 00:38:41,325
fully insured custody start as low as 0.55% and are available for individual and commercial

471
00:38:41,325 --> 00:38:46,485
customers located in the US. Speak to AnchorWatch today for a quote and for more details about your

472
00:38:46,485 --> 00:38:52,585
security options and coverage. Visit anchorwatch.com today. That is anchorwatch.com. Do you wish you

473
00:38:52,585 --> 00:38:57,245
could access cash without selling your Bitcoin? Well, Ledin makes that possible. Ledin are the

474
00:38:57,245 --> 00:39:02,205
global leader in Bitcoin-backed lending and since 2018 they've issued over $9 billion in loans with

475
00:39:02,205 --> 00:39:07,325
a perfect record of protecting client assets. With Ledin you get full custody loans with no credit

476
00:39:07,325 --> 00:39:13,325
checks, no monthly repayments, just easy access to dollars without selling a single sat. As of July

477
00:39:13,325 --> 00:39:18,405
1st, Ledin is Bitcoin only, meaning they exclusively offer Bitcoin-backed loans with all collateral

478
00:39:18,405 --> 00:39:23,205
held by Ledin directly or their funding partners. Your Bitcoin is never lent out to generate interest.

479
00:39:23,645 --> 00:39:26,885
I recently took out a loan with Ledin and the whole process couldn't have been easier.

480
00:39:27,185 --> 00:39:30,865
It took me less than 15 minutes to go through the application and in just a few hours I had

481
00:39:30,865 --> 00:39:35,305
the dollars in my account. It was super smooth. So if you need cash but you don't want to sell

482
00:39:35,305 --> 00:39:41,585
Bitcoin, head over to leden.io forward slash WBD and you'll get 0.25% off your first loan. That's

483
00:39:41,585 --> 00:39:49,105
leden.io forward slash WBD. Bitcoin is absolutely ripping and in every bull market there's always a

484
00:39:49,105 --> 00:39:53,265
new wave of investors and with it a flood of new companies, new products and new promises.

485
00:39:53,825 --> 00:39:56,765
But if you've been around long enough you've seen how this story ends for a lot of them.

486
00:39:57,145 --> 00:40:01,705
Some cut corners, take risks with your money or just disappear. That's why when it comes to buying

487
00:40:01,705 --> 00:40:06,285
Bitcoin the only exchange I recommend is River. They deeply care about doing things right for

488
00:40:06,285 --> 00:40:11,105
their clients and are built to last with security and transparency at their core. With River you

489
00:40:11,105 --> 00:40:15,325
have peace of mind knowing all their Bitcoin is held in multi-sig cold storage and it's the only

490
00:40:15,325 --> 00:40:20,025
Bitcoin only exchange in the US with proof of reserves. There really is no better place to buy

491
00:40:20,025 --> 00:40:25,705
Bitcoin so to open an account today head over to river.com forward slash wbd and earn up to $100

492
00:40:25,705 --> 00:40:33,225
in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com forward slash WBD. So you certainly don't sound like you're

493
00:40:33,225 --> 00:40:39,505
pro not sorry pro core in any way here. So why aren't you running Noughts? Well, I don't think

494
00:40:39,505 --> 00:40:45,145
I should have to run Noughts because I've been running Core for a long time. So I think I should

495
00:40:45,145 --> 00:40:50,245
be able to stick on an older version of Core. And, you know, I'll run a third one if there is a third

496
00:40:50,245 --> 00:40:57,005
one that is more reasonable and conservative. But do you think that Notts is a safe node

497
00:40:57,005 --> 00:41:01,525
implementation to be running? Or do you think the risk of the single maintainer is too high?

498
00:41:02,725 --> 00:41:07,725
Well, I don't necessarily think the single maintainer is an issue. The issue is more that

499
00:41:07,725 --> 00:41:15,025
there's a large difference in code, like 25,000 some odd lines of code between core and Notts.

500
00:41:15,025 --> 00:41:18,245
And this is because Luke is cherry picking things to merge.

501
00:41:18,345 --> 00:41:19,345
It's not a rebase.

502
00:41:19,945 --> 00:41:26,105
I think you might have some things that could be merged for security reasons that may have

503
00:41:26,105 --> 00:41:26,565
been missed.

504
00:41:26,685 --> 00:41:27,165
I don't know.

505
00:41:27,245 --> 00:41:31,325
I haven't looked at it closely enough, but for me, that would be a reason why I would

506
00:41:31,325 --> 00:41:32,605
choose not to use knots.

507
00:41:32,745 --> 00:41:38,445
But I don't think it's because it's just one maintainer because, you know, Luke is very,

508
00:41:39,225 --> 00:41:40,485
Luke is a very skilled engineer.

509
00:41:40,645 --> 00:41:42,205
He knows the code base in and out.

510
00:41:42,205 --> 00:41:49,645
He was the one that figured out that Segwit could be done as a soft fork when nobody else in all of Bitcoin Core thought it could be done.

511
00:41:49,765 --> 00:41:50,965
They all thought it was a hard fork.

512
00:41:51,265 --> 00:41:54,245
So he knows the ins and outs of the code base like the back of his hand.

513
00:41:54,765 --> 00:42:02,765
And I think I could trust his judgment on developing Bitcoin software because he's been here since the earliest days.

514
00:42:04,425 --> 00:42:05,125
So I agree with that.

515
00:42:05,265 --> 00:42:06,525
Like Luke is clearly brilliant.

516
00:42:06,745 --> 00:42:07,925
He's done some great things for Bitcoin.

517
00:42:07,925 --> 00:42:13,425
But I still think there's an issue with a single person having eyes on the code before anything's merged.

518
00:42:13,505 --> 00:42:21,585
Because with Bitcoin Core, there's five or six lead maintainers and then, I don't know, 50 or 60 devs that look at this thing consistently.

519
00:42:22,865 --> 00:42:28,605
Surely that is a way more robust system than one where Luke can just merge code whenever he wants to.

520
00:42:28,685 --> 00:42:31,145
Even if he's brilliant, surely you need more eyes on the code.

521
00:42:31,905 --> 00:42:33,505
Yeah, definitely. More eyes is better.

522
00:42:33,885 --> 00:42:36,045
So I think that's a valid point.

523
00:42:36,045 --> 00:42:38,745
People should want more review of Noughts.

524
00:42:39,045 --> 00:42:40,825
And I think they will get there.

525
00:42:40,945 --> 00:42:47,605
I mean, there are people putting together, I think, a new organization to fund Noughts

526
00:42:47,605 --> 00:42:48,005
development.

527
00:42:48,205 --> 00:42:49,125
So that will help with that.

528
00:42:49,285 --> 00:42:51,705
I mean, it's really a question of funding, right?

529
00:42:51,745 --> 00:42:55,745
Like Luke is doing it himself without any funding.

530
00:42:56,105 --> 00:42:58,405
So that can all be fixed.

531
00:42:58,805 --> 00:43:02,545
But I think overall, it's healthier that we have multiple implementations, especially

532
00:43:02,545 --> 00:43:08,665
multiple robust implementations because then there's no risk of core just ramming something

533
00:43:08,665 --> 00:43:14,205
through that people don't like because it is the reference implementation right now and people do

534
00:43:14,205 --> 00:43:20,505
blindly follow it so there is a risk that something could go through that is detrimental to the

535
00:43:20,505 --> 00:43:27,945
network and you know there was cv you know 17144 which was the inflation bug and that went through

536
00:43:27,945 --> 00:43:30,965
with all the review of all the different developers

537
00:43:30,965 --> 00:43:34,245
and all the big names that you would expect,

538
00:43:34,745 --> 00:43:36,285
they all waved it right through.

539
00:43:36,465 --> 00:43:37,745
So there is a risk there too,

540
00:43:37,905 --> 00:43:40,025
even in core itself that, you know,

541
00:43:40,105 --> 00:43:41,165
people will miss things.

542
00:43:41,365 --> 00:43:44,225
So the risk is really the echo chamber.

543
00:43:44,225 --> 00:43:46,965
And I think that is another systemic issue in core,

544
00:43:47,105 --> 00:43:50,165
which is they kind of give each other a free pass

545
00:43:50,165 --> 00:43:52,865
and they have their in-group and the out-group

546
00:43:52,865 --> 00:43:55,025
and the in-group can kind of wave things through.

547
00:43:55,345 --> 00:43:56,525
And that's also a risk,

548
00:43:56,525 --> 00:44:02,005
just as big of a risk as just one maintainer or a few maintainers is for knots.

549
00:44:02,405 --> 00:44:07,425
The thing that I can't quite get my head around with the multiple implementations idea, though,

550
00:44:07,485 --> 00:44:12,565
is that are we not diluting developer mindshare with that? So there's probably only,

551
00:44:12,885 --> 00:44:17,125
I don't know what the number is, 100 people in the world that are capable of actually working

552
00:44:17,125 --> 00:44:21,425
on something like Core or Knots or whatever it might be. If we have multiple implementations,

553
00:44:21,425 --> 00:44:26,565
Do we not just remove eyes from core, take them over to knots and then to whatever the third

554
00:44:26,565 --> 00:44:30,525
implementation is? And instead of having one really robust reference client, you have three

555
00:44:30,525 --> 00:44:35,665
that are all slightly less robust. Well, it depends. I think if you have one client that's

556
00:44:35,665 --> 00:44:43,305
rebasing off the latest core version, then it's far less risky than just cherry picking changes

557
00:44:43,305 --> 00:44:49,605
and merging, which is the knots method. But I don't necessarily think that's an issue. Like what

558
00:44:49,605 --> 00:44:54,565
we need is more testing than development. So the question is, Danny, why do we want so many

559
00:44:54,565 --> 00:44:59,925
developers developing so many features? You know, there's a clip of Sailor on the old What Bitcoin

560
00:44:59,925 --> 00:45:04,185
Did pod that's going viral right now, where Sailor is saying, you know, we don't want to

561
00:45:04,185 --> 00:45:07,985
change things. Like you don't want more and more complexity. You don't want more rules.

562
00:45:07,985 --> 00:45:13,525
You know, you generally want to be very conservative for Bitcoin because, you know,

563
00:45:13,525 --> 00:45:16,325
It was a $1.3 trillion asset.

564
00:45:16,485 --> 00:45:20,945
Now it's $2.0 something trillion, right?

565
00:45:21,045 --> 00:45:23,545
So it's getting more and more valuable.

566
00:45:23,685 --> 00:45:25,925
I think we need to become more and more conservative.

567
00:45:25,925 --> 00:45:31,645
Like, do we even want multiple releases of Bitcoin Core a year?

568
00:45:31,845 --> 00:45:34,845
Or do we want one a year or one every two years?

569
00:45:35,165 --> 00:45:39,645
I don't know, but I'm okay with like a one to two year release cycle cadence,

570
00:45:39,645 --> 00:45:44,185
barring any urgent bug fixes for critical vulnerabilities

571
00:45:44,185 --> 00:45:48,825
because there don't need to be that many features added to Bitcoin at this time.

572
00:45:49,945 --> 00:45:54,865
I don't disagree with that at all, but there's still going to be bugs in Bitcoin.

573
00:45:55,165 --> 00:45:58,625
There's also, there's things that we know are going to need changing at some point,

574
00:45:58,685 --> 00:45:59,925
like there's the timestamp issue.

575
00:46:00,485 --> 00:46:03,545
So like this can't ossify yet.

576
00:46:03,545 --> 00:46:06,045
There are things that we absolutely have to change at some point.

577
00:46:06,445 --> 00:46:08,165
But do you think the time warp attack, right?

578
00:46:08,165 --> 00:46:11,325
No, it may not be called a time stamp bug.

579
00:46:11,325 --> 00:46:12,605
Isn't there a problem with like,

580
00:46:14,205 --> 00:46:17,845
is it like the fact that it's 24 bits or something like that?

581
00:46:18,505 --> 00:46:19,685
Let me find out.

582
00:46:19,685 --> 00:46:20,005
I don't know.

583
00:46:20,005 --> 00:46:23,085
There's a time warp attack that's being worked on.

584
00:46:23,085 --> 00:46:27,085
Right. But I mean, there's a problem here too,

585
00:46:27,085 --> 00:46:31,925
which is the current state of things is making it very difficult

586
00:46:32,125 --> 00:46:36,565
for getting consensus to upgrade the network, especially with core

587
00:46:36,565 --> 00:46:37,965
the way it is now.

588
00:46:37,965 --> 00:46:41,885
Like, as you said, trust in Bitcoin Core is at an all time low.

589
00:46:42,765 --> 00:46:47,245
Will they be able to push a soft fork through to fix something?

590
00:46:48,045 --> 00:46:49,685
So I just had a quick look.

591
00:46:49,825 --> 00:46:55,345
There's a timestamp bug that will break Bitcoin Core in 2038

592
00:46:55,345 --> 00:46:58,365
because it was written in 32-bit integer rather than 64.

593
00:46:58,605 --> 00:46:59,625
Okay, right, right, that one.

594
00:47:00,105 --> 00:47:03,585
So there are things that we know are going to come up

595
00:47:03,585 --> 00:47:06,645
that will require developers working on Bitcoin Core to make some changes.

596
00:47:06,985 --> 00:47:07,085
Yes.

597
00:47:07,085 --> 00:47:10,385
But so like, how much ossification do you want to see?

598
00:47:10,505 --> 00:47:12,705
Like in terms of things like covenants

599
00:47:12,705 --> 00:47:14,185
and these more out there

600
00:47:14,185 --> 00:47:15,605
and potential upgrades to Bitcoin,

601
00:47:15,765 --> 00:47:17,485
are you just like wiping the board?

602
00:47:17,545 --> 00:47:18,705
You don't want to see that come to Bitcoin?

603
00:47:20,845 --> 00:47:23,045
I'm open to it, but not right now.

604
00:47:23,105 --> 00:47:24,445
I mean, there's no need for it.

605
00:47:24,565 --> 00:47:26,625
Like people pushing for covenants,

606
00:47:26,965 --> 00:47:28,565
you can do that on Liquid right now.

607
00:47:28,825 --> 00:47:30,185
You know, yes, you don't like Liquid.

608
00:47:30,285 --> 00:47:31,785
Probably you want it on the main chain,

609
00:47:31,905 --> 00:47:34,425
but prove out the use case and get some adoption.

610
00:47:34,425 --> 00:47:40,265
like have people using it for some wallet somewhere for some reason but you can't just

611
00:47:40,265 --> 00:47:45,785
say we need this and i don't think we're at a stage in bitcoin's life cycle where that should

612
00:47:45,785 --> 00:47:50,065
be the case where someone comes to the table and say says i need something and let's change

613
00:47:50,065 --> 00:47:57,705
something like that's just completely unreasonable for an asset that is the size of bitcoin and

614
00:47:57,705 --> 00:48:02,585
you know i agree that we do need bug fixes like there are things that we can fix but

615
00:48:02,585 --> 00:48:10,465
like that bug is in 2038 we have time right where there's no urgency we can spend more time analyzing

616
00:48:10,465 --> 00:48:18,465
the current state of bitcoin looking for more bugs fixing issues and fixing these longer term bugs

617
00:48:18,465 --> 00:48:27,725
that you know can wait for a decade um is it fair to use liquid as a comparison there like i i like

618
00:48:27,725 --> 00:48:31,925
liquid i think it's going to be useful i think there's obviously very real use cases for it but

619
00:48:31,925 --> 00:48:36,325
it is a custodial model. It's not the same as these things coming to Bitcoin.

620
00:48:37,125 --> 00:48:42,925
Well, I don't like the word custodian for anything like eCash because custodian is a legal term. It's

621
00:48:42,925 --> 00:48:47,805
like you have a legal responsibility to someone because you're taking care of something for them.

622
00:48:48,345 --> 00:48:55,985
It is a definition. I would call things like liquid, eCash, affetiments, and the like,

623
00:48:55,985 --> 00:49:02,305
you know, cypherpunk asset pools or caps. And, you know, you're just pooling and unpooling

624
00:49:02,305 --> 00:49:08,945
together. And there are different security models around these things, but it's not a custodian. So

625
00:49:08,945 --> 00:49:15,085
you want liquid because you want the benefits of the liquid chain. You can't expect to have

626
00:49:15,085 --> 00:49:20,505
your Bitcoin and have the liquid BTC at the same time, right? It doesn't work that way.

627
00:49:20,505 --> 00:49:25,445
So you have to make a trade-off and take one over the other, but you can always swap back.

628
00:49:25,445 --> 00:49:26,805
and there's utility there.

629
00:49:26,985 --> 00:49:27,905
But my point is,

630
00:49:28,285 --> 00:49:29,985
if you wanted to build something with Covenants,

631
00:49:30,085 --> 00:49:32,105
there's simplicity now activated on Liquid.

632
00:49:32,945 --> 00:49:35,585
Go and build a commercial project on Liquid

633
00:49:35,585 --> 00:49:39,105
that is in demand and people want it, right?

634
00:49:39,185 --> 00:49:41,125
Like Aqua is a good use case.

635
00:49:41,225 --> 00:49:43,565
We're seeing a massive amount of Aqua usage,

636
00:49:43,805 --> 00:49:44,725
transaction volumes,

637
00:49:44,905 --> 00:49:47,305
because people want to use Liquid

638
00:49:47,305 --> 00:49:50,265
and being able to use Liquid as a base

639
00:49:50,265 --> 00:49:51,165
for Lightning payments

640
00:49:51,165 --> 00:49:53,365
or aggregating smaller Lightning payments

641
00:49:53,365 --> 00:49:55,225
to swap to Bitcoin main chain.

642
00:49:55,445 --> 00:50:01,585
consolidate their UTXO. So the onus is on the people asking for the thing to prove that there

643
00:50:01,585 --> 00:50:06,485
is a real use case for it. And it's not just theoretical that they themselves want. Because

644
00:50:06,485 --> 00:50:10,805
if you look at Taproot, like we rushed to activate Taproot. It was a major emergency

645
00:50:10,805 --> 00:50:17,305
because we want to have signature aggregation. Where's the signature aggregation? I don't know.

646
00:50:17,425 --> 00:50:21,345
I don't see it. Do you? No. And do you think Taproot was a mistake?

647
00:50:21,345 --> 00:50:30,305
not necessarily but rushing it through maybe i mean we could have packaged up a software proposal

648
00:50:30,305 --> 00:50:35,665
that did a lot of different things and activated all at the same time right there is no rush here

649
00:50:35,665 --> 00:50:41,545
i think the monetary maximists are trying to build a bitcoin for the next thousand years

650
00:50:41,545 --> 00:50:46,865
and if you work back from that timeline you don't need a release every few months

651
00:50:46,865 --> 00:50:53,325
you know a release every couple years is good enough yeah i don't disagree with that so where

652
00:50:53,325 --> 00:50:57,985
do you think we go from here then because when this debate all started up i thought this was

653
00:50:57,985 --> 00:51:01,805
going to be something that was a talking point on twitter for a few weeks and then would die down

654
00:51:01,805 --> 00:51:07,525
and if anything it's ramped up like the vitro from both sides has got to insane levels um

655
00:51:07,525 --> 00:51:13,265
call 30 is going to be out in i don't know three or four weeks what do you think will happen

656
00:51:13,265 --> 00:51:20,105
well i don't think a lot of people will run it i think there is sort of a shelling point here

657
00:51:20,105 --> 00:51:27,445
um there is a faction that won't run it they'll stick with 29 and there's a faction that will run

658
00:51:27,445 --> 00:51:35,245
not and i really don't see a lot of people keen to run 30 unless they're just a devoted core

659
00:51:35,245 --> 00:51:41,505
supporter and they want to signal that they're loyal to core and they support the devs or they're

660
00:51:41,505 --> 00:51:46,525
running it to spite the knots people because they don't like them. So that's generally the lay of

661
00:51:46,525 --> 00:51:53,905
the land. Like if you look at the entire landscape, it is very fragmented. Then there are these camps

662
00:51:53,905 --> 00:51:58,885
that have their entrenched beliefs. But to answer your question about where we go from here,

663
00:51:59,045 --> 00:52:08,285
I'm really not sure. It definitely feels like everyone has their side and that's it right now.

664
00:52:08,285 --> 00:52:26,805
So I posted a sort of bait post on X about the UTXO size growing from 11 gigabytes now to 128 in like 10-ish years, and then maybe to one terabyte.

665
00:52:27,185 --> 00:52:31,985
And if you look at the responses to that, everyone kind of missed the mark.

666
00:52:32,265 --> 00:52:37,505
Everyone was like, they missed the mark on a number of levels because there's a lot of nuance to this.

667
00:52:37,505 --> 00:52:40,745
Can I tell you what I thought and you can tell me where I missed the mark.

668
00:52:40,745 --> 00:52:42,005
Yeah, go, go, go for it.

669
00:52:42,005 --> 00:52:48,845
Because when I saw that, like, the few things I thought is, it's 11 gigabytes right now,

670
00:52:48,845 --> 00:53:01,058
you can still run a node with a machine with 4 gigabytes of RAM So like I didn necessarily know why it was an issue One because like storage capacity is going to get cheaper and easier And like I don

671
00:53:01,157 --> 00:53:05,877
you don't need to keep the entire UTXO set in RAM. Like I didn't know why it was an issue.

672
00:53:06,657 --> 00:53:11,357
Yeah. So I was trying to kind of try to do what Adam was doing. So Adam posted a tweet

673
00:53:11,357 --> 00:53:17,677
saying he's running Bitcoin 30. And you know, that triggered everyone in the usual way that

674
00:53:17,677 --> 00:53:21,998
you would expect them to be triggered. But he left out the word core because what he was implying

675
00:53:21,998 --> 00:53:29,438
was he'll run a Bitcoin 30, not necessarily core 30. So it could be a knots 30, a knobs 30,

676
00:53:29,758 --> 00:53:36,457
another implementation based off of 30. But it goes to show like on his thread, you get the

677
00:53:36,457 --> 00:53:42,837
people that are in their camp pushing their view. So the core camp was like, hey, Adam is on our

678
00:53:42,837 --> 00:53:48,477
side you know suckers and then you know the the knots guys are angry like how dare you run you

679
00:53:48,477 --> 00:53:55,957
know bitcoin core 30 right but for my post i was trying to get to the the the point of you if you

680
00:53:55,957 --> 00:54:02,677
care about real decentralization and if you care about uh miners small miners which is the argument

681
00:54:02,677 --> 00:54:09,637
that core is giving for their changes then you definitely want to constrain the utxo set size so

682
00:54:09,637 --> 00:54:12,857
So a lot of people first got wrong.

683
00:54:12,938 --> 00:54:14,238
They think it's just on disk.

684
00:54:14,438 --> 00:54:16,398
Oh, hard drive space is getting cheaper.

685
00:54:16,798 --> 00:54:17,977
What are you talking about?

686
00:54:18,097 --> 00:54:19,857
But I was referring to RAM.

687
00:54:21,357 --> 00:54:25,357
And I was referring to people that want to mine.

688
00:54:25,698 --> 00:54:27,117
Because if you want to mine,

689
00:54:27,418 --> 00:54:30,438
you have to load the entire UTXO set in RAM.

690
00:54:31,157 --> 00:54:32,258
So that it's fast access.

691
00:54:32,778 --> 00:54:33,117
Yes.

692
00:54:33,238 --> 00:54:33,918
If you're a miner,

693
00:54:34,498 --> 00:54:36,337
whether you're a small mining operation

694
00:54:36,337 --> 00:54:38,018
with a couple S9s

695
00:54:38,018 --> 00:54:46,298
or you're a BidAx user, then you should be, you know, running Bitcoin Core with all UTXOs in RAM

696
00:54:46,298 --> 00:54:51,477
so that you're competitive. And this has been an argument about, you know, mempool policy and why

697
00:54:51,477 --> 00:54:55,077
it's bad to have divergent mempool policy because you're slowing yourself down. But it's the same

698
00:54:55,077 --> 00:55:01,538
thing. You want to have the entire UTXO set in RAM if you're a miner, regardless of your size.

699
00:55:01,538 --> 00:55:09,117
and if it's in RAM it's not 11 gigs it's 50 something gigs because 11 is compressed so if

700
00:55:09,117 --> 00:55:18,457
you have that linear-ish growth of UTXO size you know in a decade it's not 128 gigs it's you know

701
00:55:18,457 --> 00:55:27,538
five times that and in you know 2040 something it'll be you know five terabytes at the max not

702
00:55:27,538 --> 00:55:32,457
that's the worst case scenario but you get my point if you care about mining and you care about

703
00:55:32,457 --> 00:55:37,278
decentralization you should realize these things but everyone just said okay you're wrong you missed

704
00:55:37,278 --> 00:55:42,558
it and you know it doesn't matter but it does matter and if you care then you should have come

705
00:55:42,558 --> 00:55:48,018
to that conclusion and added one plus one plus one and figured out oh it's three and it does

706
00:55:48,018 --> 00:55:53,798
actually matter because the utxo set is huge now and it's it's going to be a problem for anyone

707
00:55:53,798 --> 00:55:57,817
trying to run their own node. And if you want decentralization, they should be running their

708
00:55:57,817 --> 00:56:04,798
own node, not just running, you know, running with a pool and relying on a pool's templates and node.

709
00:56:05,877 --> 00:56:10,998
So help me understand this. Does putting all of this information on Operator not reduce

710
00:56:10,998 --> 00:56:15,477
or not reduce UTXO bloke because people aren't using unspendable UTXOs?

711
00:56:16,157 --> 00:56:22,278
It could, but I mean, it's cheaper to do UTXOs versus Operator, right? And I think people have

712
00:56:22,278 --> 00:56:24,058
kind of homed in on that,

713
00:56:24,177 --> 00:56:25,778
and this is why they're resisting core,

714
00:56:25,877 --> 00:56:27,637
because it doesn't make sense.

715
00:56:27,817 --> 00:56:30,558
Like, you're trying to encourage people

716
00:56:30,558 --> 00:56:33,518
with thoughts and prayers to use Operatorn instead of UTXO.

717
00:56:34,317 --> 00:56:37,117
And again, this is probably where some mistrust is brewed,

718
00:56:37,218 --> 00:56:39,278
because why would they think that?

719
00:56:39,278 --> 00:56:40,817
That makes zero sense at all.

720
00:56:41,398 --> 00:56:43,738
So, why is it cheaper to do it in UTXOs?

721
00:56:44,718 --> 00:56:45,857
Because of the discount.

722
00:56:47,018 --> 00:56:47,457
Okay.

723
00:56:48,418 --> 00:56:49,477
Because of the Segre discount.

724
00:56:49,998 --> 00:56:52,157
Yeah, but at the same time, I don't think you want...

725
00:56:52,278 --> 00:56:58,117
necessarily to encourage more people shoving stuff in the opera turn too. Because it's true

726
00:56:58,117 --> 00:57:02,898
that you can prune opera turn, but then you're running a pruned node. You can't just prune only

727
00:57:02,898 --> 00:57:07,938
the opera turn. And if everyone is running a pruned node, then there is no more full node

728
00:57:07,938 --> 00:57:12,078
to boot up the network and help other people, you know, spin up new nodes in the future.

729
00:57:13,718 --> 00:57:17,837
So if we put Samsung now in charge of core, you're the dictator of core today,

730
00:57:17,837 --> 00:57:24,097
what would you do? I don't know I would roll back some of the more contentious things and

731
00:57:24,097 --> 00:57:30,698
I don't think there's much we can do to undo the damage that's been done but I would say let's be

732
00:57:30,698 --> 00:57:36,058
very conservative and very cautious on what happens in the future but if you were to ask me

733
00:57:36,058 --> 00:57:42,918
like you know how do we fix this whole divide I don't think you'll like the answer like you have

734
00:57:42,918 --> 00:57:50,998
to be able to bring Luke back into the fold. I think Bitcoin Core has to remove a lot of people

735
00:57:50,998 --> 00:57:56,977
that are maintainers and have been driving the project. And I don't think that will happen either

736
00:57:56,977 --> 00:58:03,337
because there's economic incentives to be a maintainer. You get paid more, right? And you

737
00:58:03,337 --> 00:58:09,078
get prestige from it. So the only way that someone would step down is because of honor. Like, yes,

738
00:58:09,078 --> 00:58:15,617
we messed up, we caused a massive clusterfuck, and I'm stepping down because of that. And I'll

739
00:58:15,617 --> 00:58:20,977
continue to work on Bitcoin, but I won't be in that position anymore. And I don't see that

740
00:58:20,977 --> 00:58:25,637
happening either. And I don't see them welcoming Luke back either. And I don't see them willing to

741
00:58:25,637 --> 00:58:31,597
roll back the changes. But if you wanted to repair the divide, that's how I would see it happening,

742
00:58:31,738 --> 00:58:35,258
that some people in core step down and there's kind of a house cleaning there.

743
00:58:35,258 --> 00:58:43,597
so i was only around for the very end of the fork war the block size wars in 2017 obviously that

744
00:58:43,597 --> 00:58:50,238
culminated then but it'd been going on for a long time beforehand do you think that this does risk

745
00:58:50,238 --> 00:58:56,977
escalating into something similar and we do end up with a fork because of it i don't think so i mean

746
00:58:56,977 --> 00:59:01,778
like i said i don't i don't believe core releasing 30 is going to be the end of the world

747
00:59:01,778 --> 00:59:05,457
I think we can unify some of the policy.

748
00:59:05,778 --> 00:59:08,298
We can talk to miners and mining pools.

749
00:59:08,418 --> 00:59:09,617
Like I used to run a mining pool.

750
00:59:09,718 --> 00:59:11,578
You can talk to people that run mining pools

751
00:59:11,578 --> 00:59:14,677
and show them that it's better to align

752
00:59:14,677 --> 00:59:16,317
with what the network wants,

753
00:59:16,418 --> 00:59:18,498
which is seemingly filtering of spam.

754
00:59:19,418 --> 00:59:20,898
There might be some holdouts

755
00:59:20,898 --> 00:59:22,977
and some people, some pools might want

756
00:59:22,977 --> 00:59:24,457
to keep mining and relaying spam.

757
00:59:24,657 --> 00:59:28,157
But in general, I think it's possible

758
00:59:28,157 --> 00:59:29,418
that a lot of them would understand

759
00:59:29,418 --> 00:59:31,218
that it's better for the network not to do that.

760
00:59:31,218 --> 00:59:38,798
and yeah, I think you can kind of bring about some change to the network.

761
00:59:39,157 --> 00:59:42,177
I think the problem with a lot of core developers is

762
00:59:42,177 --> 00:59:44,558
you work with the tools you're given.

763
00:59:44,558 --> 00:59:49,438
If you're a lawmaker, you're just going to write laws and write more laws.

764
00:59:49,538 --> 00:59:50,457
You're not going to remove them.

765
00:59:50,898 --> 00:59:53,898
If you're a developer, you're going to keep focusing on the code.

766
00:59:54,377 --> 00:59:57,798
It's probably not in your tool set to go out there and engage and educate

767
00:59:57,798 --> 01:00:01,218
and talk to miners and mining pools about what is bad.

768
01:00:01,357 --> 01:00:04,317
So I think this is why the default reaction was,

769
01:00:04,418 --> 01:00:06,477
let's just adjust the filters and standards

770
01:00:06,477 --> 01:00:07,597
to what is happening

771
01:00:07,597 --> 01:00:10,258
instead of trying to go out and affect change.

772
01:00:11,078 --> 01:00:13,538
I think one of the dynamics

773
01:00:13,538 --> 01:00:15,418
that's missed a little bit too much in this conversation

774
01:00:15,418 --> 01:00:18,317
is the fact that not all nodes are created equally.

775
01:00:19,298 --> 01:00:21,058
Like the economic nodes are the thing

776
01:00:21,058 --> 01:00:21,957
that matter on the network.

777
01:00:22,317 --> 01:00:25,597
And obviously for a long time, basically forever,

778
01:00:25,817 --> 01:00:27,538
they've all been running Bitcoin Core.

779
01:00:27,798 --> 01:00:32,817
Do you think any of those will be moving across the Nots? Because it's really easy for me to spin

780
01:00:32,817 --> 01:00:37,718
up 10 Nots nodes in my bedroom and then it looks like there's massive growth on the network. And

781
01:00:37,718 --> 01:00:43,837
obviously there is some real organic growth, but do you think any of the big businesses running

782
01:00:43,837 --> 01:00:49,637
big economic nodes will move across the Nots? Hard to say, but I mean, Ocean, I would say a lot

783
01:00:49,637 --> 01:00:55,518
of the hash rate there is using Nots. And I don't think you can really deny that they are a sizable

784
01:00:55,518 --> 01:01:00,117
portion of the network now. And that is good. It's good to have mining decentralization. So

785
01:01:00,117 --> 01:01:07,337
everyone that was paying lip service to mining decentralization on the core side, I really don't

786
01:01:07,337 --> 01:01:13,218
see them congratulating Ocean in any way. So you can see that a lot of this divide is really

787
01:01:13,218 --> 01:01:17,718
personal. They just don't like Luke for various reasons and they will never like Luke and they

788
01:01:17,718 --> 01:01:23,918
will never like Ocean. So it's a difficult predicament right now. It seems to be personal

789
01:01:23,918 --> 01:01:28,857
attacks and attacks on individuals are more prevalent than actually thinking things through

790
01:01:28,857 --> 01:01:36,038
and thinking things through from a level-headed place of calm. And you see that, like the first

791
01:01:36,038 --> 01:01:41,637
reaction to a lot of posts is maintaining my side. And that is not a way for us to move forward.

792
01:01:42,938 --> 01:01:47,297
So do you think this really is about Luke as a person? Because he obviously has some pretty wild

793
01:01:47,297 --> 01:01:51,778
views. Lop just did a big post where he went through a ton of things that Luke said in the

794
01:01:51,778 --> 01:01:56,857
past that are very out there is that what is at the core of this issue in your opinion

795
01:01:56,857 --> 01:02:02,278
i don't know it's it's interpersonal i would think it's a lot of these people in bitcoin

796
01:02:02,278 --> 01:02:09,738
core that don't like luke ultimately we do need to get along and i think eventually we will get

797
01:02:09,738 --> 01:02:15,617
along um you know we have more in common with each other you know irregardless of all the

798
01:02:15,617 --> 01:02:21,657
differences in vitriol being spewed than we would think and we are all bitcoiners so you know maybe

799
01:02:21,657 --> 01:02:27,718
in a couple of years, it'll all calm down and, you know, everyone will get along better and,

800
01:02:27,797 --> 01:02:31,837
you know, we can move forward. But for now, I think it's important to keep in mind that,

801
01:02:31,837 --> 01:02:37,117
you know, everyone is, everyone wants the best for Bitcoin. They just have different views on

802
01:02:37,117 --> 01:02:43,297
what is best for Bitcoin. And yes, maybe some people are doing some things for the lulls, but

803
01:02:43,297 --> 01:02:50,718
that is short term. It's not going to last forever. Yeah. Rough consensus is messy. All right,

804
01:02:50,718 --> 01:02:54,377
Samson, you are obviously fronting up Jan 3.

805
01:02:54,598 --> 01:02:55,357
How's everything going?

806
01:02:55,457 --> 01:02:56,998
How's the nation state adoption going?

807
01:02:57,898 --> 01:02:58,617
Pretty good.

808
01:02:58,677 --> 01:03:02,657
We just got back from Paraguay and we made some good progress there.

809
01:03:02,758 --> 01:03:08,857
We met a lot of the right people that could potentially make a Bitcoin bond happen in Paraguay.

810
01:03:09,938 --> 01:03:13,457
And we likely will go back again if discussions progress.

811
01:03:14,117 --> 01:03:20,258
And I assume all of these countries have been looking at what Trump has been saying in the US and him leaning into Bitcoin.

812
01:03:20,258 --> 01:03:23,718
Has that made a real impact in your conversations with these other countries?

813
01:03:24,977 --> 01:03:34,038
Well, I think they have a vague idea, but we often seem to think in a wrong fashion that

814
01:03:34,038 --> 01:03:38,957
everyone knows everything that we know. And that's not always the case. A lot of people don't even

815
01:03:38,957 --> 01:03:45,598
know that the Bitcoin ETFs are BlackRock's most successful ETF and has generated some 200 million

816
01:03:45,598 --> 01:03:50,918
and profits for them. People don't know that. And the executive orders, they don't know that either.

817
01:03:51,038 --> 01:03:58,078
So it's kind of our job to go and tell them these things. So if you look at what we do from a 30,000

818
01:03:58,078 --> 01:04:03,738
foot view, we're kind of like a personalized podcast about Bitcoin that we go and sit down

819
01:04:03,738 --> 01:04:09,218
with them, talk about everything that's happening in Bitcoin and answer questions. And there's no

820
01:04:09,218 --> 01:04:16,837
question that is too uh too noobish to answer you know back in 2021 when sailor came out and

821
01:04:16,837 --> 01:04:21,418
started doing the strategy stuff everyone was thinking like institutions were going to start

822
01:04:21,418 --> 01:04:26,398
piling in and we saw one or two and then like really it wasn't until the last 12 months where

823
01:04:26,398 --> 01:04:31,297
we've seen real institutional adoption of bitcoin um do you think nation states may be similar in

824
01:04:31,297 --> 01:04:37,538
the sense that it may we may just be like a cycle early and in a few years we'll start seeing a lot

825
01:04:37,538 --> 01:04:43,117
of these nation states actually piling into Bitcoin? Well, there's like two parts to that

826
01:04:43,117 --> 01:04:47,898
question. So this cycle doesn't seem to have played out. We're behind schedule. You know,

827
01:04:47,898 --> 01:04:53,957
we should have had a bull run already, like a massive run up. And, you know, we're down actually

828
01:04:53,957 --> 01:04:59,797
at the time of this recording. So I think this cycle, if you want to call it a cycle, is delayed.

829
01:04:59,797 --> 01:05:05,938
It might push into next year for whatever various reasons there are. But I think the nation state

830
01:05:05,938 --> 01:05:12,538
adoption is coming. We're pushing on a lot of fronts. Other companies and people are pushing

831
01:05:12,538 --> 01:05:18,238
too. There are concrete examples of what Bitcoin can do to benefit a country out there right now.

832
01:05:18,797 --> 01:05:24,538
The moves in the US, I think, have yet to propagate throughout the world. So Trump did

833
01:05:24,538 --> 01:05:29,738
create the SBR, but they haven't started buying yet. And we are talking with other countries to

834
01:05:29,738 --> 01:05:35,278
do the same. There are a few that have said they will create it. And I think it's all coming.

835
01:05:35,837 --> 01:05:39,657
It's really that these things happen very quickly.

836
01:05:39,877 --> 01:05:42,718
It's like literally gradually and then suddenly.

837
01:05:43,137 --> 01:05:48,877
And I think we're on the tail end of gradually and we're at the beginning phases of suddenly.

838
01:05:49,677 --> 01:05:58,477
And if you look at just the U.S. alone, they're pushing forward on a lot of their budget-neutral Bitcoin acquisition and the Bitcoin Act, too.

839
01:05:58,477 --> 01:06:07,377
So I believe it's simply a matter of time before we see a massive run up and we see a massive nation state FOMO panic.

840
01:06:08,617 --> 01:06:11,718
Which nation states are you most bullish on as like a category?

841
01:06:11,857 --> 01:06:13,857
Because obviously El Salvador done incredibly well.

842
01:06:13,998 --> 01:06:14,898
Bhutan done amazing.

843
01:06:15,297 --> 01:06:16,637
The US is starting to make moves.

844
01:06:17,018 --> 01:06:20,918
Countries like the UK where I'm from and Australia where I live, I think are going to be laggards in this.

845
01:06:20,998 --> 01:06:23,198
I can't see them being amongst the first movers.

846
01:06:23,317 --> 01:06:25,558
Like where do you think the real progress will come from?

847
01:06:26,558 --> 01:06:28,337
I think it's likely Latin America.

848
01:06:28,477 --> 01:06:42,578
And I've said that since we started Gen 3, that it's the most ripe area of the world to significantly do something with Bitcoin because you have energy, the energy part of the equation.

849
01:06:42,977 --> 01:06:48,998
You have the general stability, political stability, and you have the need.

850
01:06:49,357 --> 01:06:53,718
So you put all those things together and it just makes it the perfect place.

851
01:06:53,718 --> 01:06:56,438
And I think we just need a few more dominoes to drop.

852
01:06:56,438 --> 01:07:03,098
if Paraguay if things pan out in Paraguay the way we hope I think that's a big domino and

853
01:07:03,098 --> 01:07:08,797
countries in surrounding in the surrounding area would likely come as well I mean I'm excited for

854
01:07:08,797 --> 01:07:13,977
the nation state FOMO that's uh is that when we actually get the the million dollar bitcoin target

855
01:07:13,977 --> 01:07:20,258
that you always talk about we'll see I mean even without nation state adoption we should see it too

856
01:07:20,258 --> 01:07:25,857
simply because of the corporate buys. Every day, there's more and more corporations buying.

857
01:07:26,278 --> 01:07:29,598
And it just blows my mind that we're not running already.

858
01:07:30,377 --> 01:07:35,657
Yeah, it is like, it is a bit strange. This cycle has felt very different. And one of the

859
01:07:35,657 --> 01:07:41,018
best ways I've found to describe it is like my vibes, my vibe check is completely gone.

860
01:07:41,258 --> 01:07:44,857
Like in previous bull markets, you get a sense of what's happening. You get a sense of where

861
01:07:44,857 --> 01:07:48,857
we're going. You can almost feel it when we're about to run. And this time, I've just got no

862
01:07:48,857 --> 01:07:53,278
idea what's happening and I don't I can't put my finger on why that is but my vibes are all off

863
01:07:53,278 --> 01:07:58,578
yeah because every day you see an announcement that strategy bought this many coins meta planet

864
01:07:58,578 --> 01:08:04,998
bought this many coins this new company is buying and the price is going sideways and down so it

865
01:08:04,998 --> 01:08:10,778
makes zero sense you know and I don't really have an answer about why I think it's probably a number

866
01:08:10,778 --> 01:08:19,797
of things. It could be paper Bitcoin. It could be ETFs. It could just be outright fraud like FTX.

867
01:08:19,797 --> 01:08:25,678
Some exchange somewhere selling coins that they don't have and they're buying back when they need

868
01:08:25,678 --> 01:08:31,598
to buy back to meet demands for withdrawals. I don't know. But definitely, I think everyone has

869
01:08:31,598 --> 01:08:37,638
a sense in their head that something is off and there's no way to know for certain until, you know,

870
01:08:37,638 --> 01:08:43,098
something blows up and it's all over the news. But definitely, I would say it puts the suddenly,

871
01:08:43,438 --> 01:08:50,458
you know, very close to now, and it could trigger at any time. And that's kind of like the Omega

872
01:08:50,458 --> 01:08:57,697
thesis. And I think that the current situation of Bitcoin price is definitely, you know,

873
01:08:57,777 --> 01:08:58,938
on the verge of Omega.

874
01:08:59,877 --> 01:09:06,018
You're feeling it. So why do you think there's fraud? Like, what leads you to think that there's

875
01:09:06,018 --> 01:09:10,438
some kind of fraud in the market? Is there always going to be blow ups whenever we have one of these

876
01:09:10,438 --> 01:09:16,158
like bull and bear markets? Because we have had that in the past. Do you think that's likely in

877
01:09:16,158 --> 01:09:21,518
the future? Well, there's always been something, right? Like FTX was the perfect example. We saw

878
01:09:21,518 --> 01:09:27,297
that they were selling Bitcoin that they did not have. And, you know, that's always a possibility.

879
01:09:27,757 --> 01:09:34,477
And I think of all the factors, it has to be some contributing factor that some entity is doing

880
01:09:34,477 --> 01:09:41,458
something weird. I'm here for it. I'll have the popcorn ready. Samson, anything else you want to

881
01:09:41,458 --> 01:09:45,277
talk about before we close this out? This has been great. No, I think we pretty much covered

882
01:09:45,277 --> 01:09:50,697
everything. It's a good conversation. Bitcoin's going to a million dollars. Everything will be

883
01:09:50,697 --> 01:09:56,678
okay with Core30. Run whatever implementation you want. Stop shouting at people. This has been great,

884
01:09:56,777 --> 01:10:00,498
Samson. Thank you very much. Where do you want to send anyone before we do close out?

885
01:10:00,498 --> 01:10:03,237
I'm on X. My handle is

886
01:10:03,237 --> 01:10:05,518
Excelion, E-X-C-E-L-L-I-O-N

887
01:10:05,518 --> 01:10:07,678
and you can find Jan3 on X2

888
01:10:07,678 --> 01:10:08,718
Jan3.com

889
01:10:08,718 --> 01:10:11,518
Perfect. Alright, thank you man

890
01:10:11,518 --> 01:10:12,638
I appreciate that. That was fun

891
01:10:12,638 --> 01:10:15,218
Thanks Danny. Catch you next time

892
01:10:30,498 --> 01:11:00,477
Thank you.