Hi there! This is 21 and 21, a rapid-fire Q&A show filmed at Presidio Bitcoin.
I'm Haley Burko, and I ask people who stop by Presidio Bitcoin 21 questions in 21 minutes.
Today I'm speaking with Neha Narula, the director of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative,
which supports research in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
She also serves on Blox Board of Directors.
Neha, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin.
Hi, Haley. It's nice to be here.
I'm really excited that you were able to jump on the pod today.
I've followed you for a bit, but also you're on Blocks for the Directors, and I work at
Spiral, which is part of Blocks.
So it's very cool that you could come by.
Yeah, it's really awesome to be here, especially when there's so many Spiral folks around.
Yeah.
Yes, it's a big week today, or this week with the Spiral team off site.
But yeah, thanks for coming in.
So I'm going to ask you 21 questions in 21 minutes and start this clock.
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it.
All right, let's go.
Wow, it's counting down.
So what brings you into Presidio Bitcoin?
Steve invited me, and it sounds like a really cool place.
And San Francisco is really beautiful.
Yeah, so I'm excited to be here.
Check it out.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you're working on right now?
Yeah.
So I lead the Digital Currency Initiative, which is based out of the Media Lab at MIT.
and we have a lot of developers and researchers who are working on Bitcoin.
Something that I'm really interested in right now is trying to answer
really hard long-term questions about Bitcoin's viability and how far it can go.
And so the two areas that I've been thinking about the most are,
number one, scalability.
So how far can we actually scale self-custody?
How many people can use Bitcoin in a self-custodial way?
So not with an intermediary that's holding your funds. And the second being security. So proof of work, mining, super important, underlies what makes it hard to double spend in Bitcoin. But the question is, you know, how is it going to work as the block subsidy changes? How is it going to work with different incentives? How do we get a better understanding of that?
How is some of this research important to Bitcoin's future and kind of what are different ways that we're conducting this research?
Yeah. So I think these are like two of the most important questions in Bitcoin. You know, how many people can really use it? Can it serve as a medium of exchange at scale? And how do we think about its security? What does that rely on? I mean, to me, these are like critical underlying questions. So, you know, I think they're pretty, you know, pretty self-evidently important for Bitcoin.
The way we work on them is that we have these developers at the Digital Currency Initiative who work on Bitcoin Core. Most of them are pretty involved in what we call the plumbing or the maintenance, the day-to-day of Bitcoin Core, you know, keeping it going, the build system, testing and fuzzing, different frameworks, different pieces of infrastructure.
But some think a lot about research, too. And we have this amazing student body at MIT. And so we can work with students and try to get them interested in research projects.
That's great. How did the Digital Currency Initiative start and kind of what was this connection to like MIT to begin with?
Yeah. So there was actually a couple of students at MIT who got really into Bitcoin. Like, I want to say 2012, 2013, they started a Bitcoin club. They started having club meetings. They started the MIT Bitcoin Expo, which continues to this day. And so they were getting like all the students at MIT really interested. Then they did this thing called the drop.
So in 2014, they raised money to buy a bunch of Bitcoin and give every undergrad at the time $100 worth of Bitcoin. So they dropped, they did it in different ways. Some of it was like you could submit an address. Some of it was you could get an account on an exchange. There were like all these different ways you could get it. They actually, you know, a professor ended up writing a study about it later.
I was kind of salty because I was a graduate student at the time at MIT.
I did not get $100 worth of Bitcoin in this drop.
I was mad they limited it to undergrads.
But, you know, what they realized, these students, you know, realized was that, okay, all these kids are really interested in Bitcoin, but they don't really have any way of engaging with it beyond the club and beyond, you know, using it.
So they wanted to kind of kickstart this research initiative at MIT.
And so the then director of the Media Lab started the Digital Currency Initiative.
And, you know, we've been through a lot of different iterations and we've been in a lot of different directions, worked on a lot of different things. But yeah, that's how we started at MIT.
That's so cool. I bet a bunch of people are very thankful for that $100 drop so long ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How did you become a Bitcoiner?
Yeah. So it took me a little while. I had some friends who were very into Bitcoin from very early on. And I don't know, I thought they were kind of crazy. Like, I thought it was interesting, but I didn't really pay a lot of attention to it.
I was in graduate school at MIT in computer science and I finished grad school in 2015 and I was trying to figure out what to do next.
And I was just kind of depressed. Like I was looking at all the jobs out there and I was like, oh, man, you know, I really like working.
I was working in databases and distributed systems. I really like this work. I like these intellectual questions.
But, man, am I just going to, like, go make some ad server faster?
Or am I just going to like figure out how to serve you know news feeds to people you know like cut some milliseconds off of that It just felt really unimportant And then I read in the news if you remember 2015 or I don know I don know if you if you remember this but Bitcoin was in the news a lot
because we were having this big debate about how to scale. And then the block size wars happened.
And so I worked in scalability. And so I was like, oh, Bitcoin's having trouble scaling.
What like why? It's just a payment system. Why would that be hard? It's really easy to scale
payment systems. And so then I started actually learning more about how Bitcoin works.
and I got super into it, I started learning more about our monetary system, about, you know, banking
and central banking. And I was just like, wow, you know, I'd always thought that technology was the
most powerful lever we had to change the world. And then I realized, oh, incentives are also an
incredibly powerful lever. And when you marry the two together, it's even more powerful. So I was
nerd sniped after that. It's definitely a rabbit hole that I feel like most people go down when
learning about Bitcoin. Yeah, right. There's a lot to learn. Yeah. So much. It doesn't stop. No.
What are you currently most excited by in Bitcoin and why?
OK, I think I'm excited by two different things. One is like deeply technical and one is more
use case oriented. So last year I went to an event put on by the Human Rights Foundation
And I got to meet a lot of people who are really focused on the use case for Bitcoin. I met a lot of activists. I met a lot of people who had been debanked in their countries because, you know, it sounds obvious once you say it, but it hadn't really occurred to me that one of the first things dictators do in authoritarian countries is that, you know, they'll they'll turn off people's bank accounts.
They'll stop them from being able to transact. And these people had come very naturally to Bitcoin and stable coins as one of the only ways that they could, you know, make money, get donations, pay their employees, like survive, basically. Right.
So that was super exciting to me. And hearing more about these use cases in the past year has just been really inspiring.
And then the other area that I've been really interested in has been, like, I think there's been a lot of innovation in the types of things you can do in Bitcoin script. So Bitcoin has a very limited scripting language, right? You know, it's part of the value proposition.
and you know we we've always thought there were a lot of things you just can't do and people are
figuring out really crazy exciting ways to do like just nutty things on top of bitcoin some of it you
might not agree with but that's the beauty of a permissionless system right is that people are
going to do what they want to do and if they're willing to pay for block space then they're going
to do it and i think that's really exciting i think people are coming up with really clever ideas
So this idea that like, you know, the constraints of Bitcoin script are creating a lot of creativity.
So let's fast forward to a grim future and Bitcoin has failed.
Okay.
Why do you think it failed?
Oh, my God. There's like so many ways Bitcoin can fail.
I think about this all the time. There's so many ways.
Okay, I think one way it can fail, which actually might be controversial because I think a lot of people would define it as success, is if all the central banks around the world start holding Bitcoin.
I think that that totally destroys the value proposition of Bitcoin.
So let me explain.
We're seeing this rise in the financial institutionalization of Bitcoin, right?
So we have these ETFs, we have this notion of nation state reserves being floated around, and we have like a lot of large companies adding Bitcoin to their treasuries. And so more and more and more people are, you know, it's starting to become narratively accepted that Bitcoin is sort of this alternative to gold, this digital alternative to gold.
and and I I mean I understand why people see it that way and I don't necessarily think there's a
problem with seeing it that way but I think that there's a huge problem if that's all bitcoin is
because the entire value proposition of bitcoin is this idea that it is permissionless money that
nobody can stop that's not controlled by you know a small set of entities and if it becomes the case
that the vast, vast majority of Bitcoin is held by, you know, the same actors that hold gold right now,
maybe, you know, more, even more concentrated.
I think that's going to be a real problem because those people are going to start running nodes.
They're going to start mining.
They're going to have more and more of a say in what the network is and what the network becomes.
So, you know, I think that's a real problem.
I think we need to have like what I call a long tail in Bitcoin of users.
of, you know, just individuals and people who are holding it and using it.
I think that's really important.
Well, I was going to ask you how we can mitigate the risk, but maybe you can expand on this long tail.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the way to mitigate the risk is to get it into as many people's hands as possible.
You know, just thinking about money, thinking about cash, thinking about currency,
thinking about like what people value and how these things work.
Like the thing that's really sticky is is just billions of people around the world seeing this as something that they can hold and that they can use and that is going to have value day to day.
And it doesn't mean that they use it every single day to buy coffee.
But I think the fact that they can hold it if they want to is really important.
And if we limit the number of holders to, you know, like a million financial institutions, like that's nowhere near good enough.
And so I think we I think we have to think about how far we can push that.
Well it also going to ask you how we can get more people to use Bitcoin as a form of payment because right now there definitely a lot of people that are holding Bitcoin which is great It has that value proposition too But I agree with you that it really important to get people to use Bitcoin as a form of currency
Yeah, I wish more people who claim to be in crypto had worked on this problem, right?
Like, payments are so, I don't know, payments can be, it's like people don't find them the interesting thing, but I think that they're the really important thing.
And it's totally a usability issue, I think. You know, it's like we need better wallets. We need better flows. We need better understanding. And instead of working on that, people built casinos or even worse, they built tooling for casinos to make more casinos or to make better casinos or to make like trading all the tokens that like come out of the casinos.
And, you know, imagine if all of that energy had been put into, you know, making really amazing wallets.
Like, what would we have by now?
You know, but you can't control what people work on.
So I think that, you know, I don't personally work on usability and wallets and design, but I know a lot of that has come out of Spiral and that, you know, there is this Bitcoin design community.
I think that's so important.
Yeah.
Yeah, the Bitcoin design community is super important.
They're doing really great work.
Yeah.
Yeah. In regards to like, you know, having a dream to see better wallets being built, is there like a specific type of wallet that you would like to see exist, like your dream, your dream wallet?
Oh, man. Yeah. OK, so I am just like so bad at actually taking care of my stuff. Right. And so I am like the worst. I do self-custody some of my Bitcoin, but not all of it because I don't trust myself. And so I think things that can like really eliminate that fear for people of like, oh, my gosh, if I don't do this right, I'm going to lose everything. Right.
Another area that I think that I'm starting to get more excited about is, you know, well, if you look at where this technology is having the biggest impact, like where's Bitcoin actually getting used, where stable coins getting adopted, it's in the global south. Right.
And I just feel like as people who are sitting here right now in San Francisco, California, we just do not even understand what payment systems in other countries and other cultures are like.
and they are so different and they are so, I mean, they're just like, you know, the challenges are different.
And so, you know, something we're trying to figure out how to do now is how do we forge better relationships
with the engineers and the developers and the students and the builders in these places
so that we can work with them to solve the challenges that exist there and not here in the United States.
Yeah, it is. It's really hard if you've never been somewhere,
you don't have like personal relations with somebody to kind of like know their struggles.
I remember when I went to like Africa for like the first time and I had read about M-Pesa, you know, and I'd like, you know, M-Pesa is this thing. It's in Kenya. It's like, you know, it's used everywhere, blah, blah, blah. But it wasn't until I went to Nairobi and I got, you know, I got myself a feature phone and I like signed up for M-Pesa and I bought something that I really understood what it was like and how it worked. Right. You have to go there and you have to experience it.
Totally. So what's your most controversial Bitcoin opinion?
oh wow i don't know um i mean i think maybe you know one thing i already said about like not being
excited about nation state reserves that's that's definitely kind of controversial i guess i would
say um oh okay uh i am super excited about layer two stuff and when i say that i mean in addition
to lightning so like zk roll-ups and all of that like i think that's i think that's exciting i want
to be able to build things on Bitcoin, like really build things that hit a different point
in the tradeoff space of, you know, trust and efficiency and, you know, what you can
do, programmability.
I don't know.
I don't know if that's controversial or not.
But yeah, I'm really excited about that.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's actually, that was similar to Jack's answer, too, about being excited about other
layer two solutions.
Yeah.
Oh, cool.
All right.
good company yeah um okay what's your perfect sunday
okay um well i spend a lot of time in new york now um so i guess a really good sunday might be
like going to a really good bakery because new york has like some really good food um spending
time outside we live near central park i central park is beautiful it's really nice i think it's
so funny when people who live in New York, when you talk to them and they're like, what do you like
about living in New York? And they talk about the parks. And I'm like, you know what, like 97% of the
rest of the United States has is grass and trees. And like you live in New York, but it's true.
Central Park is really is really nice. Maybe like a museum or like a cultural event or an art thing,
hanging out with friends, probably cooking dinner at home and hanging out with my partner. Yeah.
something like that sounds like a lovely day yeah um so what do you think the best way is for
universities to support the bitcoin open source ecosystem well i like to think that we are doing
a pretty good job um we have been a stable long-term home for um some of the most senior
developers who work on bitcoin for 10 years now 10 years so that's that's like that's like a
century in Bitcoin time.
Um, I think, I don't know that universities should necessarily play that huge of a role
in a specific open source project I think what we doing is pretty unique I don know if it should be replicated or not I mean I think if there interest at different universities in replicating it that great and they should But what I would like to see is a shift in the value system
in universities, because what you have to understand is to get your PhD, to get tenure,
you have to publish in a very specific set of conferences or journals. You have to do a very
certain type of work. It's like very highly specialized. It's not the same conference or
journal like across all of computer science, even. It's like, you know, there's like 50 of them.
And you have to speak a certain language. And I think that so far we haven't done a good job
of matching Bitcoin up with that language. There are a lot of papers that are published in Bitcoin
and Lightning, but I don't know that academics really totally understood the constraints and
the value system behind it. And I think it was a lot easier for academics to sort of invent their
own blockchain or invent their own consensus protocol, which is really unfortunate. You know,
I hope as Bitcoin grows and becomes used more, there will be more of a research focus on it just
because of impact. But, you know, I think we'll have to wait and see. Yeah.
What do you think the role of stable coins should be?
I think stable coins are pretty exciting. I know there's an argument to be made
That they are actually, you know, some people might say stable coins aren't the end game.
Bitcoin's the end game.
I mean, you know, 99% of stable coins are the dollar.
I think they reflect a demand for U.S. dollars.
Like there's just like this voracious demand for U.S. dollars in the world.
As an American, like this benefits me.
So, you know, it's hard to sort of, you know, just totally go against that.
But I and I also believe in, you know, if people want something, we should be able to give them what they want.
You know, we shouldn't stop them from having access to what they want.
And right now people want dollars.
I do think just looking forward, like fast forwarding way into the future, there needs to be a more universal payment mechanism.
Like I like I think I think we're both going to move towards more global currencies and like many, many more and fragmented currencies at the same time.
Like, I think we need, you know, we'll probably have something. Something will replace the dollar eventually. I think it'd be great if it wasn't just another nation state's currency. It would be very cool if it were something a little bit more neutral. You know, is Bitcoin a candidate for that? Well, I think it depends on how far it can scale. And then at the same time, I think that people are just going to have way more currency. It's just going to become super easy to launch currencies. It's going to be super easy to exchange them and trade them. So I think we'll see a lot more of them.
So I think stable coins are an important part of this journey.
And if people want them, they should be able to access them.
Who are some of your favorite Bitcoiners working in the space right now?
Oh, man, I just feel like this question is going to get me in trouble because I'm going to feel bad later because I, yeah, I haven't thought about this at all.
If you could give someone a shout out on the show.
OK.
I feel weird, like naming specific people.
there are definitely some people who taught me a lot along the way and have been very patient with
me so maybe I'll I'll name some of them so one is Jeremy Rubin he taught me a lot about Bitcoin
he's a person at MIT who started the club and the expo and he you know he just answered all my
stupid questions I another person who answered a lot of my stupid questions is Tadj Drijja even
though I argued with him incessantly, he put up with it. I really enjoy collaborating with Ethan
Heilman. I think he is like a lovely person to work with, so kind, and such a good Bitcoin academic
person. And then, yeah, I think that there have been a lot of other people in and around the
ecosystem who have been really generous with their time and their energy and have helped me,
and there's too many to name. Yeah. Totally get it. Well, that leads me to my last question.
Almost made it. Yeah.
So speaking of kind of like people answering your questions and on your learning journey, what advice would you give to people who are either just starting to work or learn about Bitcoin or thinking about entering the space?
Yeah, I know there's so much to learn and to understand.
And it's super challenging.
Just keep going.
And there's so many more resources out there now than there were 10 years ago.
and there's so many different ways to get involved too.
Like I love your story and how, you know,
the people here just like,
it seems like they found a niche and they like stepped in.
So things are so different now than they were 10 years ago.
I think it's like, no matter what your skillset is,
there's some way to get into it and get involved.
Stay off of Twitter or X or whatever.
It would definitely say that.
It's just like super distracting.
Try to find like pockets and communities of people
that, you know, that you get along with.
Go to your local bit devs,
go to your local lightning devs, things like that.
Yeah, and just the coins for everyone.
Yeah.
Love it.
Well, where can our listeners like follow you,
learn more about you, connect with you if they want to?
Yeah.
So the website for our org at MIT is dci.mit.edu.
Yeah, I am on Twitter slash X.
It's at Neha, so N-E-H-A, but I don't use it very much.
and then you can always just email me.
I'm kind of a boomer like that.
I still like email.
And so, yeah, you can Google
and find my email pretty easily.
Yeah, perfect.
Well, thank you so much for making the time
to come on the show today
and stopping by Presidio Bitcoin.
Yeah, thanks for having me here.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Anytime.
Okay.
Thank you.