It is a bad idea. It is a bad proposal. It is a bad BIP and it is a horrible precedent.
If you distill their whole argument, it's people are adopting Bitcoin and fees are too high
and babies are dying. It's not something that you want to happen easily in a trillion dollar network
on its way to 10 trillion dollars. Nobody will take Bitcoin seriously. We'll see. I don't think
there's another chance. If this fails, no one's going to take this seriously again. This thing is
not designed to fail gracefully. It's designed to be the grenade on the floor and force people to
move to another room. Do you think that there is a risk of this soft fork becoming a hard fork?
I would say the likely outcome is that they will... We're going to go up with god candles and omega
candles and people will be caught off guard. This bear market feels artificial and everything,
precious metals, tech stocks, oil, you name it, they've all had a run and we haven't. So I think
we're overdue for that run.
Samson, Samson Moe,
can we put this to rest also?
How is your last name pronounced?
It doesn't matter.
I rose by any other name.
It's just a sweet.
The memes, the memes
from CoinJoin Chris and many others,
but he's been, I think,
probably the memetic hero
of this cycle.
He's really been putting
everyone else to shame.
The memes have been
quite incredible
and quite numerous,
I've got to say.
I got a chuckle out of many.
Yeah, he's quite prolific this year.
I don't think he'll ever
hit his peak again,
which was the liquid
and the swaps button
baby pushing one.
But, you know,
he's got to try to top it.
Yeah, it's, you know,
he creates a tough act
to follow for himself,
I think.
That's the biggest problem.
But Samson...
Great to have you back on the show.
Always enjoy talking to you.
Now is, I think, a pretty perfect time for us to chat again.
So excited to pick your brain a little bit because there is a lot of, I don't want to,
let's see, drama, for lack of a better word.
There's a lot of emotion right now around BIP-110.
We're not just going to talk about BIP-110 also for people that are tired of hearing
it and are about to skip through this.
uh we are going to talk about all the other things that you are doing with jan 3 with aqua
also just kind of want to get your take on the overall macro outlook as it relates to bitcoin
where you see things going a couple other things as well if we have the time but i do want to start
out with bip 110 because it has taken so much uh air out of the room let's say i think there's a lot
of misconceptions there's a lot of uh strong language being thrown around there's a lot of
lot of strong emotions and that's understandable we're talking about bitcoin people have their life
savings in bitcoin i care about it a heck of a lot i know you do as well uh let's just start out
with maybe you are somebody who has been for those who aren't aware uh you were supportive of the
knots movement when that was the only thing on the table uh you were critical of core while also
being reasonable with your criticisms in terms of not just calling all of them pedos or something
like that. You had actual criticisms. And you've also been in Bitcoin for a long time. You've seen
multiple cycles play out. You were there for the block size wars. You've seen this movie before,
so to speak. What do you think is sort of the biggest disconnect right now causing this seemingly
pretty intense schism amidst the Bitcoin community.
Where is the fundamental piece
where people are not seeing eye to eye, in your opinion?
Well, the biggest thing is a lack of nuance.
So I posted something yesterday about that
because I've been accused of flipping sides.
But I believe X is not a good platform
for serious discussion.
It's more of a outlet for anger, frustration, and just blasting your opinions out.
And there's no real follow through.
It's really hard to follow through because everything is buried in a thread somewhere.
And nobody sees that because the algo promotes the less nuanced view, the more anger promoting view.
So, yeah, I think the issue is there's a lot of little nuance here.
and possibly a lack of understanding about how Bitcoin works from the 110 supporter group.
And I believe even the core side has made a lot of missteps too
in how they've communicated things or framed things.
And again, that goes back to the lack of nuance.
So if you look at a developer, they are not marketing product PR comms people.
they are developers deep in the code and if you compare that to say using an AI
they have this million line context window about the code and not so much about how people perceive what they say or the nuance behind the things they say so they can say something like well if you go back to the origin of the
the schism it was about Opratern and Citraea and I think that was the kind of spark that lit the fire
but they were saying some things like you know Citraea needs this Steve from Spiral said that
on a pod and then um just the way that uh anton points out and matt corallo and peter todd were
saying they kind of implied that this had to be done because the network was now functioning in a
certain way and it was um causing problems with uh you know relay policy and mempool coherence
and that it was leading companies like Citra to do certain things.
But I think that is kind of a surface level take
and without understanding the nuance behind it,
which is that policy is not consensus
and that nothing they do will really impact the core consensus rules of Bitcoin.
And like a bunch of other nuance about Operatorn
and how Citra uses it or didn't need to use it,
That just kind of kicked everything off because it made people feel very angry that a change was being forced on them.
So even though Operatorn is a policy and it's a default setting, it felt like they were being coerced because Core was saying we are changing this and people are saying don't change it.
But the fact is changing it doesn't mean anything.
And I criticize Core and Core devs for doing this because it didn't really change anything, right?
Like anybody can change their defaults in their core client or in their nots client or any other fork of Bitcoin.
And again, there's even more nuance to this too, which is core is not Bitcoin.
So, you know, people don't really understand that it is open source software.
You can create a fork.
And as long as you're in consensus, you can change any policy or setting on your own node.
And even the miners can do that too.
So if you wanted to enforce some rule set on miners, you could have them enforce the policy, but you're going to have to engage them and talk to them and say, hey, we want op return at 83 and not a byte more.
Make sure you do this. It's really important. And here's the reasons and rationale and data behind it.
but the way that bit 110 has been thrust upon the network is it's an arbitrary change like
seven eight changes eight consensus rule changes thrust upon the network by a very small group of
people and i mean no insult when i say small group of people it's not that there aren't hundreds of
people that support it there are but there are millions and millions and millions maybe hundreds
of millions of people using Bitcoin that far outweigh the demands that this group of people
has. So you can, I think the goal is to bypass the normal consensus building process and set
this ultimatum for miners that we're going to make this change, quote unquote, putting things
back the way they were but end quote but not really because now it's consensus and it is
enforced at the consensus level not a policy change so you're kind of using the a noble goal
of fighting spam to enforce and impose the change on the network on miners with an arbitrary date
i think that is where the line has to be drawn that that is not a viable path forward it sets a
horrible precedent and it it sets a path where anybody could change the network anybody with a
one percent of hash rate a few thousand nodes and again the 110 supporters will get angry if i
misquote the number but let's just say a few thousand several thousand nodes which is not
expensive to do and i'm not saying it's a sybil attack but nodes are not an indicator of anything
Anybody can set a node, you can false flag, you can signal for something you're not going to enforce. It's not an adequate way to gauge any sentiment or intent of the network. And then you can get a group of people together and complain on a social media platform that we need this change.
So that opens the door for, I don't know, drive chains to do the same thing, to add an op code that they need to enable drive chains.
Or it could be a way for covenants proponents to implement covenants.
or it could be on the other end of it,
a more malicious way is
you can have a very big mining pool,
implement a soft fork that tightens the rules
and reduces the block reward for some good reason.
I don't know what,
but I'm sure people can twist themselves up
in a knot to think of some reason and rationalize it But that would be a way for them to bleed out competitors and gain an advantage So it sets this really nasty precedent
and it lowers the bar for change on the network massively.
So I think it is a bad idea.
It is a bad proposal.
It is a bad BIP and it is a horrible precedent.
So that's my overarching take on it,
trying to add as much nuance as possible in a few minutes time.
And I'm sure no matter how much nuance you add,
you will always have people who don't like what you have to say.
So we're going to do our best here.
And I'm sure I was already accused, Samson, by having you on,
that I had somebody say,
why don't you have somebody on who actually cares about using Bitcoin as money?
And if you're saying that kind of stuff,
it's just demonstrably false,
uh you know given like you can just look at the work that you do uh even today not to mention the
work that you have done and i think that you mentioned a couple of points there that are
really important one is the confusion around policy versus consensus and i'm not trying to
talk down to anyone here i'm just saying there clearly is some confusion this operaturn change
however you feel about it was a policy change correct me if i'm wrong but even before any of
this bit 110 stuff the uh the consensus level protocol level op return was uncapped is that
correct correct and so this is the confusing part about the messaging around bit 110 is when i hear
we're taking things back to how they were it's like well you're actually changing things because
the protocol was uncapped the you can say the relay policy was in fact changed by bitcoin core
however as you also mentioned it remains a configurable setting also correct right
even today they haven't taken away your ability to configure it i i don't know if that was on maybe
that was on the table at one point but they you know either way it's configurable now right so
like that is the other thing so is that part of it here is it is it just and i again i want to be
really i know that the bit 110 folks out there who feel really passionately about this and if
you're listening to this try to listen with an open mind because i promise you that both samson
and myself really care about Bitcoin. Samson's been working on Bitcoin for a lot longer than I
have, doing much more real stuff than I do as a podcaster. But I promise you, I care about Bitcoin
a lot, too. I don't want to see Bitcoin fail. As much as people would like to say, I'm not captured.
Apparently, there's big pools of money floating around that just pay influencers. I wish I knew
where they were. That'd be great. But I haven't seemed to find them. But the other piece here,
I think is that,
uh,
there's a lot of comparisons made with the block size wars.
And there's a lot of people saying that,
you know,
the,
on the bit one 10 side,
everyone seems to be saying that the,
the core tard spammer or spam apologists,
uh,
you know,
spam apologist pedos are the big blockers,
the big Bitcoin,
big blockers.
And the bit one tenors are,
you know,
the,
uh,
the noble and virtuous plebs,
uh,
who,
you know,
can do no wrong in this sense and are justified in their vitriol.
can you draw any comparisons to the block size wars as somebody who was actually there when it
when it all went down uh made some hats i believe as well uh famously uh what are people missing
when they draw these comparisons in terms of what was the actual reality then and the actual reality
now yeah before we get into the block size war comparison i think we should just step back and
go over some of the things you talked about. So, you know, there is this framing of the whole
thing like we need to make Bitcoin money, but we need to make Bitcoin money is more of a rallying
cry than a specific thing that we can do. What does that actually mean? What does it mean to
make Bitcoin money? Does that mean there's no spam, no data embedded into a Bitcoin transaction
or the Bitcoin blockchain?
Or does that mean no more treasury companies,
no more ETFs?
It's all bearer peer-to-peer cash.
It's like a very amorphous blob of sentiment
that is kind of summed up in
we need to bank Bitcoin money.
And if you disagree with me,
that means you're for everything that we don't like
and you're trying to make Bitcoin a worse money.
And it's just really interesting
in terms of human psychology
How can this be true? Because if you sit down and you rationally think about it, there is really not that much to that statement. It's a really nice statement. It's like, there is no second best or you do not sell your Bitcoin and, you know, Bitcoin is money. Keep Bitcoin money. It's like a nice rallying cry. But what does that entail? What does that mean you do? And I think that is where we start to drop off because because it's so interpretable in any number of ways, people can twist that and justify.
any behavior they have, insulting people, cancelling people, cancelling companies,
attacking people slandering people It a good way to justify that because it can be taken as any tens of dozens of meanings and twisted against anybody else Like Walker you don want Bitcoin
as money because, you know, some reason. But I think you have to really self-reflect. I was
engaging a little bit with Ian Northen. He's a Bitcoin lawyer, Ocean lawyer. He works at Ocean
and he was critiquing Michael Saylor saying,
you know, you're doing these things
to make Bitcoin a worse money
and it's degrading Bitcoin.
It's weakening it.
But I kind of questioned him on that.
Like, how can anything anyone does
weaken the value proposition of Bitcoin?
Spam is a nuisance
and it makes it harder for people to run nodes.
That is a given.
But, you know, if you believe Bitcoin is money,
And Bitcoin is the best form of money we've ever had.
And it is durable, immutable, permissionless, bearer.
All the reasons why it's better than gold, then how can it not withstand people using it as money?
Because every company in the world uses money.
Every system on the planet uses money.
So if you think Bitcoin is money, then anyone in any place, in any form factor, company or individual should be able to use it. Right?
Wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin?
Ledin makes that possible.
And the global leader in Bitcoin-backed lending, Ledin, has introduced their lowest rates ever.
No complexity, no fine print.
The larger the loan, the lower the rate.
These new rates apply to all new loans, refinances, and renewals.
You'll see the rates up front before you apply.
The new lower rates come with Ledin's gold standard protection.
Your Bitcoin remains custodied and is never lent out for interest.
Perfect 8-year track record of keeping clients' assets safe, auto top-up, LTV alerts, and partial repayments to keep you in control.
Repay whenever you want with zero penalties or monthly payments.
Ledin's perfect $10 billion plus track record through every market cycle in the last 8 years speaks for itself.
Don't choose between a great rate and the safety of your Bitcoin.
Get both at Ledin.
Check out your rate by using their loan calculator at ledin.io slash walker.
That's L-E-D-N dot I-O forward slash walker.
If you're hodling Bitcoin personally or for a business, here's the uncomfortable truth.
You probably don't have insurance.
Most policies exclude Bitcoin, and the ones that don't, they only pay you back in fiat.
What's the point of that if you need to claim a loss when number go up?
That's not insurance. That's liquidation.
Now there's another option. BDIC.
They're building an insurance marketplace on the Bitcoin standard.
One Bitcoin lost equals one Bitcoin paid.
They've integrated with Liana Business for enterprise self-custody with personal wallet coverage options coming later this year.
If you care about protecting your Bitcoin as Bitcoin, sign up for the waitlist at bdic.io slash walker.
That's bdic.io slash walker.
Insurance on the Bitcoin standard.
Blockstream Jade Plus delivers robust security with fully open-source hardware and software.
Its unique genuine check feature ensures your device is authentic, giving you ultimate peace of mind.
With versatile connectivity options including Bluetooth, USB-C, built-in camera, and SD card, Jade Plus offers unparalleled flexibility in managing your Bitcoin.
Whether you prefer wireless convenience or air-gapped security, Jade has you covered.
Its innovative design features a durable metal case, a bright 1.9-inch color screen,
and intuitive navigation buttons that make managing your Bitcoin straightforward and enjoyable.
Jade Plus also supports secure, air-gapped transactions via QR code signing
using the Jade Link storage device, keeping your Bitcoin safe without compromising convenience.
Visit store.blockstream.com and use my coupon code WALKER for an exclusive 10% discount on your Blockstream Jade Plus.
Protect your Bitcoin. Sleep better. Stack harder.
I'm glad you took a step back there because I think that that's a really valid question.
And perhaps actually before we, I'll take us another step here.
Before getting into the block size war comparison,
I've okay there's been a lot of shifting goalposts throughout this whole thing it started out with we're running a
knots to rug the spammers and i've consistently said i think it's great if you run knots and you
can go back and check my tweet history in this have i made some memes saying that filters don't
work correct because they don't and if they did work you wouldn't be proposing a soft fork right
now bip 110ers so take a step back you can breathe it's going to be okay but it started out with the
knots and then okay clearly evidence that knots was not effective that it wasn't effective to
combat spam in this way, which again, yeah, I don't want spam on there either. There's a difference,
there's a difference between not wanting spam and saying we need to propose a contentious soft fork
that was vibe coded up, you know, in an afternoon to try and create a temporary fix for this that
expires in a year by making consensus changes. Like those are two very different things. I think
you and I both agree. Yeah, we don't want dick butts or whatever it might be on Bitcoin, but also
sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease. And I think that's what it's really gotten down
to is people who have a good justification for what they are doing in their hearts,
like we do, they want Bitcoin to continue succeeding. But the prescribed medicine,
the prescribed antidote, whatever you, and now do you want for that, I think is where people
disagree. Well, yeah. And did you see the iatrogenic search results went like, you know,
parabolic after Saylor tweeted about that, which I thought was funny. But what I fundamentally
kind of struggle grappling with is people who think that Bitcoin is the best money,
want Bitcoin to be money, but somehow think that the quote, non-monetary use cases of Bitcoin
are going to price out people using Bitcoin for monetary transactions. Like I just, I personally,
me, perhaps this is naive of me, feel free to call me an idiot in the comments, guys. I look forward
to it. I at least think that, look, there's going to be an incredible demand for sending Bitcoin
transactions in the base layer. There's not much of a demand right now. I think the demand is going
to continue to increase. It's going to continue to get more expensive in both Bitcoin and dollar
denominated terms, if you want to denominate it in infinitely printable Federal Reserve notes.
But perhaps you could just explain where you're at in terms of does the free market of the fee market solve the spam issue eventually?
Have we already seen evidence of that?
Or is that just, you know, my naivete talking?
Well, I've said it publicly.
I think the ultimate victory is, you know, we'll win because of the block size and the fee market, right?
Fees will be prohibitive eventually.
but that doesn't mean so this is where i differ from some people in the core camp which is i think
we should fight spam we should do things to mitigate it especially on utxo bloat
operaturn neither here nor there like even if you if you want 110 110 still has operaturn 83 bytes
and you can still cram things into multiple operaturns um do i think that core as a group
should have some initiatives within there to work on anti-spam features? Yes, I think so.
But I think that also depends on funding. A lot of development is funded with no strings,
so people can work on what they choose to. Fighting spam, if you are a developer, and I'm speaking
from the developer perspective here, I can take myself out of my position and put myself in their
shoes. If ultimately I believe and I understand that it's a losing game, I might choose to work
on something else that is better, like optimizing blockchain sync times or something else,
or Bit54 or something, right?
So if you want to fight spam and you're not a developer, you're not technical, then you
have to either fund development or find someone that's willing to volunteer time.
But you can't just say, I want to do this and expect it will be done because there is
no obligation from a group of other people to make some change like you know like I don't know
I think Noster should be more peer-to-peer and not have relays that's a valid opinion I've said
that publicly lots of times but do I expect that I don't know Marty or Will are going to do it
Like, no, it's their project.
And if I don't like it, I can always fork it and make my own version of Nostra and call it, I don't know, Walkerster or something, right?
But, you know, you have to understand how open source software works.
And I think that's another part of the big divide, which is if you are technical and you understand code, then you can do whatever you want as long as it's within consensus rules.
And I think a lot of people are less technical.
They're buying node in a box implementations and they're just like downloading the binary and running that, right?
And then that's it.
They're not really in the command line in the terminal.
They don't know how to use config files, yada, yada, yada.
So they feel like this change has been forced upon them and there nothing they can do But actually you can It like you in the kiddie pool and you don even need to code now You could just tell a fable or opus take this repo make me a version with 83 bytes op return And it do that for you
It'll probably create the binary for you too. So you're in the kiddie pool and you feel like you're
being pushed under, but just stand up and everything is fine. You're still following
consensus rules policy might have changed but nothing nothing can stop you from changing it
back or or doing something or fighting spam but you cannot do it or achieve success doing it
by posting on x you're going to have to raise capital or learn to do it yourself
you can just do things now uh now more than ever uh yeah but apparently you know it is always
easier to uh to rage post i think uh okay i want to ask you to and i think this maybe can tie into
the block size war piece a little bit what do you think is the actual most likely outcome of this
of bip 110 right now do you think i mean you know is the uh are the goalposts going to continue to
be shifted will it be successful in its activation threshold which there's also some obviously debate
about how good of an idea that that threshold is.
How do you think this will play out?
And are there parallels you can draw
based on your experience in the block size war era?
Yeah, I would say the likely outcome
is that they will not succeed in reaching 55%.
And they're going to enter the mandatory signaling phase
on August 8th, you know, and there will be a fork.
they will fork off with 1% of the hash rate.
And that might persist for a few hours,
but I don't think it will persist long-term.
Now, you ask a really good question, Walker,
what happens after?
Like, what's going to happen?
And a lot of the leaders of the initiative,
Mechanic and Luke,
they are not really planning for any contingency.
Like, if you ask Mechanic,
they're like, I don't know.
Like, okay, but you have to live
in the real world and look at probability. It's not just we think everyone's going to flip at the
last minute because that's not the case. And this whole rushed implementation, vibe coded or not
vibe coded, that is irrelevant. This rushed rollout is just doomed for failure because the reason you
have long signaling periods is to allow miners to understand what is happening and nodes on the
network to upgrade and prepare but there is no preparation other than we think the game theory
says they're going to flip the bit at the last minute because that's really what the the hope is
if it doesn't work then i've asked this question to some people too and they say well we'll try again
but if you can try again it was not existential right if you can go again and they say we'll keep
trying until we get it like then you could have just waited for years and built up consensus
because what you've done now is made it toxic and we don't even need to go back to the block size
wars but just go back to ctv covenants when jeremy rubin was pushing for it really aggressively it
just turned a lot of people off raised people's red flags spider senses and they're thinking well
why does this guy want it right now you know what's the rush is there something is there an
ulterior motive does is there some altcoin project external factor that's going to utilize it in some
way um but you know that that was a lot of pushback and i think if you skip forward a few
years to now i think people would be amenable to a soft work with covenants in it i don't know but
i feel like i personally i am not against it but you have to let things happen naturally
Building consensus is a lot like, you know, falling in love.
You can't force it.
But when you have it, you know, you know, you're in love, Walker.
You know, you love Carla.
But if I tell you, go love Carla, that's probably not going to work, right?
Well, maybe it'll work because she's beautiful and talented.
But it's a good analogy.
It's as good as I can get.
But you can't force consensus.
And that's what we're seeing here.
If you let it happen naturally, and if by extension, you have said, we'll keep trying,
that means it's not urgent. So there is no need to do this arbitrary deadline. And even the
arbitrary deadline in itself is a massive red flag. So they say like, you know, we have this
mandatory signaling period, but who is we and why is it mandatory? Who are you to tell me that that's
mandatory? Who are they to tell you, Walker, that it's mandatory? You know, we have things to do.
We are busy You can just say well what gave you notice It was like eight months And you know That is the deadline so you better get out of the wedding room because I threw a grenade down or else But you know that doesn really work
Like if you look at look at what everyone's doing, everyone's busy.
If you take Prince Philip, for example, he was on some Prince tour in the U.S.
going from city to city.
And then now he's sick with like a flu or something like, you know, what if people are busy and then they can't do an upgrade?
What are you going to do to them?
Right.
They might have a lightning node with lightning channels and you're going to cause this disruptive thing to everybody.
And it is disruptive.
I saw Terrence Michael posted something this morning.
I was just flipping by and he said, you know, I didn't read it all, but he said something like if you have loans out, you know, be careful because of the possible fork and chaos in the network.
So be careful.
And other people posted, too, if you have a lightning node running, you might want to close some channels or do something, but be prepared for this disruption.
So it is disruptive.
and it's not something that you want to happen easily
in a trillion dollar network on its way to 10 trillion dollars.
Nobody will take Bitcoin seriously.
If you willy-nilly change the consensus rules,
it doesn't matter if you're tightening or loosening them.
It's all bad.
It also signals to the market that this is not something
that is viable to be built on, right?
You can't build a house on quicksand.
You can't have people's emotion driving technical development,
even if you don't like the developers, right?
there's just so much bad stuff in here that you know i could go on and on and the frustrating part
is people say like well tell me why i'm like i told you why i told you why so many times i wrote
lots of things about why and you keep asking me tell me why it's bad and i just don't have an
answer so i think you just have to let it play out unfortunately but we'll see i don't think
there's another chance if this fails no one's going to take this seriously again and i think
you're going to put spam fighting on the back burner for a long time. And even worse, this has
incentivized technical people to show the Bit.1.10 supporters that Bit.1.10 is meaningless. They've
developed new ways to embed data in Bitcoin. So it's kind of just been a horrible thing all around
for everybody just because people were angry. Yeah, the rushed nature of it, I think, is
is actually quite important just because like this isn't something that like this isn't a move
fast and break things situation with bitcoin right this isn't silicon valley you know like
let's just you know we'll move fast we'll break things whatever we'll fix it like no no we should
take things as slow as possible and protocol level changes should only be done after the most
well thought out careful consideration possible not with like you know uh email spammer techniques
of click this link right now or lose access to everything you you know you care about in your
life like you got to click it right now that's what it feels like and the other piece here is
i mean i know luke has said he said many times like people are this isn't me putting words in
his mouth you can go back and search his tweets he's said many things about the fact that if if
well you know if they don't win basically if their if their side doesn't win that bitcoin is doomed
right the bitcoin is doomed uh and i find that kind of language just to be very interesting not
very helpful and personally i don't agree with it um but you know he's entitled to his opinions
uh he can call me a liar or something like that but he will you can go back and search his tweets
for it do you think though on that note that there's a given luke who is uh you can say he's
not a leader of this movement as i've seen people try to claim but but he is uh you know it's just
it's again statement of fact if this doesn't go the way that luke and the other bip 110 folks
believe that it will which they believe that it's going to be successful if it's unsuccessful
do you think that there is a risk of this soft fork becoming a hard fork is there a risk of then
a proof of work change being proposed i i'm not sure how much you've been following some of the
discourse around that side of things but i would love your take on it it's most likely there will
be a chain split it'll be a minority chain or a chain with very low hash rate it will have if if
they have the current amount of hash rate relative to the main chain,
they will have 33-hour blocks and a difficulty adjustment in six to seven years.
So it is not a viable chain.
And it's missing a lot of, if you want to compare to Block Size Wars era stuff,
they're missing a lot of the machinery that could make it viable.
Like exchanges are not paying attention to this thing at all.
A lot of the miners are not even paying attention to this thing at all.
So can this exist?
Can it live on its own?
I'm not really sure it can because the block times are so low because the hash rate is so low.
When we were threatened with a split in the block size war there a good amount of hash rate behind both right Behind the SegWit side and the not SegWit side So it wasn 1
So it was definitely more viable that they could, you know,
without a proof of work change, they can survive.
But with BIP-110, it would have to have proof of work change to remotely be viable.
and I think there's one thing
I didn't answer before
which was what kind of happens
at this time
but related to this
the whole point of signaling
is you can have miners
that false signal for something
that's why usually signal periods
are so long
and they require a super majority
in the past
especially for consensus changes
because the stakes are so high
and you have to understand
that mining pools
is
They're not all friends with one another, right?
You can, it's a very bloody business
with thin margins and, you know, cutthroat competition.
So you can have a pool that signals for something
and then, or a lot of pools that signal for something
and don't enforce that something,
BIP-110 or others.
So that's why the signaling period is so long
with such a high threshold,
because it indicates that, you know,
it's highly likely this pool will pass.
and that signals safety to all the people signaling for the change because change is risky
for them in bitcoin and for the miners pools and miners because the stakes are high there's real
capital and resources energy hardware all at risk if things go south so that's why i think a lot of
them will just ignore this because the risk is high but also there is no viable path forward
post-signaling to enforce those purported rules of 110 because if you look at some of the core
developers they've taken the time generously to look at the 110 code and they've said even knots
doesn't support it doesn't enforce the rules correctly so which software client are you going
to run as a miner or mining pool that lets you comply with this thing that you're signaling for
it does not exist right now so that's why i think it's really just going to it's going to fork because
some people believe it and there will be some mismatch between enforcement even amongst 110
nodes and we're going to see this minority chain but it'll probably fizzle out and die and then
i don't know what happens after that people have said they'll try again but i hope they don't try
again in the same fashion and they try to go through the rough consensus process or spend more
time or even gather some data to show the activation mechanism will work there is zero data
right now about what happens in a split you could do this on testnet and show data and show that
there is a client or a patch that will allow you to enforce the rule set correctly but there is
nothing like that right now. It's just, trust me, bro. And what happens? I don't know.
Another thing that is just an interesting usage of language is that I've seen Luke basically say
that it wouldn't actually be the BIP 110 crowd that is forking. It would be everyone who's not
running BIP 110. Have you seen this train of logic? And can you address that at all for those
that may be confused by that kind of language.
It's pretty clear, isn't it?
Like, yeah, we're forking off.
But yeah, he said that to me too.
And, you know, I replied back,
it's all perspective, isn't it, right?
It's like the theory of relativity.
Is time passing slower for you or faster for me?
Well, both, it's true.
You know, from his perspective, we're forking off.
From our perspective, he's forking off.
But all you need to know is
where is the economic majority, right? That's the question you have to answer.
And the irony is that they've kind of figured it out. They've said this thing, big Bitcoin,
which is analogous to economic majority. So they kind of know in the back of their minds.
And I don't know why they insist on forking off to prove a point, but some people are going to
lose money. I was actually hoping to sit this one out. So if you can ask Grok to verify my claim,
But after Core 30 was launched, I stopped complaining about it because there was no discussion.
The core developers made their choice.
Maintainers merged it.
They cut a release.
It's done.
So I can complain all day long and bitch at them and complain and cry and criticize and
attack them.
But that doesn't mean anything.
They've already done it.
So I stopped talking about it.
But Bit110 is such a horrible idea that I had to say something because people are going
to suffer because Luke and others are pushing this forward.
And I've said publicly to Luke, you should walk it back, cancel the mandatory
period or have some fail out time like, you know, X blocks after mandatory,
it'll stop, you know, minimize the damage or even before, like if you can
set the deadline to before your.
you know, mandatory block and have it, have that fork fail gracefully.
But this thing is not designed to fail gracefully.
It's designed to be the grenade on the floor and force people to move to another room.
You know, Samson, I said we weren't going to talk about PIP 110 for 45 minutes.
And then here we went and talked about PIP 110 for 45 minutes.
You see, it's the same with Sheikh Roque.
It's the same.
you know because it is all of this and again i wish all of the the bit one tenors well i think
that the majority of them are doing what they're doing uh from a place of caring about bitcoin
now uh the tactics that they employ are not ones that i would personally use but to each their own
but you know i i hope that people at least get realistic about what the reality of the situation
is here about the potential you know potential for things to not go the way that you want
and what you're going to do at that time uh there may be a lot of rage quits i don't know maybe
there'll be some come to jesus moments as well um and no i'm not saying that bitcoin core is jesus
or anything like that for anybody who's going to take that out of context.
I'm just saying like...
They're going to take it out of context.
Yeah, that's okay.
Feel free to clip it, guys.
I've been called the biggest courtard's influencer for...
Even when I stopped posting about it like months ago.
And then, you know, it's like, well, if you want to make me into something,
I guess I'll just, you know, become that thing.
You know, it's a little tiresome.
But we should move on and try to cover some more topics.
I know you have a hard stop soon.
But before that, I just want to chime in.
So you did ask, like, what is the lesson from the block size war?
I don't want to go into the technical activation stuff that has been tweeted about endlessly.
But I guess we should talk about the emotional lesson and the emotional similarities.
So the block size increase was an emotional thing.
If you distill their whole argument, it's people are adopting Bitcoin and fees are too high and babies are dying, to paraphrase Roger Ver, because they can't afford to transact Bitcoin.
and that is a very good emotional argument that you can't really disagree with right like why
walker would you not want people to be able to use bitcoin but the solution was wrong which was a
consensus rule change right and again slippery slope but you may not agree with that um because
you can always disagree with that you can always say well there was no block size limit when satoshi
launched bitcoin gotcha and that's kind of the place we're at with 110 which is emotionally it's
a good argument, right? We don't want spam. We don't want bad stuff. We'd want to prevent spammers
and make Bitcoin better as money. But the solution is wrong. You're changing consensus rules again.
And you can always go back and say, well, Satoshi, you know, he didn't remove the default. He had the
policy at launch, you know, or whatever. No, he didn't actually. But you get my point. The crux of
the issue is it's always a really good emotional argument and it's a good rallying point for people
that don't fully understand Bitcoin. And I mean that with no malice. Like it takes time to learn
Bitcoin, to understand everything and all the nuance there, or at least even get a surface
level understanding. I don't even think I know Bitcoin that well if you want to dive down into
weeds into the code, but I have an okay understanding of top level. But this is the lesson that
it's sort of an emotionally right argument, but the wrong take on how to fix it. And the best way
is to take it slow, follow consensus rules, and think about long-term implications, or even think
about the double-edged sword. If you do this for your reason now, someone else can take that sword
and attack you with it later on I think that a perfect way to wrap up this particular topic on and I do thank you for the insights on this I hope people listen to that part with an open mind Moving on to some other topics
while we still have some time too,
I do want to get your thoughts.
Okay, there's this kind of,
the reality is that this is a fairly niche
argument topic right now, right?
Like most people that hold Bitcoin
are probably not even aware that this is going on.
yeah uh a lot of people are just going about their lives working trying to stack more sats
maybe they're spending bitcoin too using this money fantastic but where do you think we're at
from a a larger zooming out perspective from an adoption perspective you see different parts of
the adoption curve i think both at the let's say top down level but then also the bottom up level
in terms of the work that you're doing with jan 3 and aqua within that respectively kind of
approaching from two sides and meeting in the middle from an adoption perspective.
Where do you think we are and what do you think it takes to push sort of the next large wave of
adoption that I think many of us feel didn't really come in this last cycle? Maybe the treasury
companies took some wind out of that. But what are your thoughts on it and what do you think
it takes to sort of initiate that next wave of incoming Bitcoiners? I think the current rut that
we're in is just because people believe enough people believe in the four-year cycle that they're
panicking that we're going to go down a lot so they preemptively sold or lost faith in bitcoin
i don't believe it's caused by treasury companies if anything treasury companies and etfs have
brunted this this downfall right it's like they're all shock absorbing bitcoin price decline
Whereas before they existed, it would just be hodlers.
And we might have seen an 80% drop or something in the past.
But I believe we're just in this self-fulfilling prophecy where people think the four-year cycle will hold and we're going to go lower.
And this definitely feels like the bottom is behind.
But you shouldn't believe me because I'm impermeable.
I'm always bullish on Bitcoin.
But this kind of scraping along the lower 60s, it definitely feels like we've reached the point where sellers are exhausted.
Everyone that has sold and lost faith has already exited.
And then Bitcoin will just do its thing.
I'm a firm believer in gradually, then suddenly.
And Bitcoin will melt faces because there is a lot of capital out there.
We're only a $1 trillion asset.
we've seen gold do almost 3x silver 4 5x there's a lot of capital out there and once it starts
flowing into bitcoin you're going to see a chain reaction and we're going to go up with god candles
and omega candles and people will be caught off guard everyone that thought the four-year cycle
is going to happen they'll probably miss out because they're they've been waiting for a 40k
or 30k bottom but the these things just have a way of working themselves out people have very
short memories the time frame in which they on which they panic is usually short duration if you
look at the recent dip in treasury company stocks you know that's they're already recovering because
two three weeks have passed and people saw okay they didn't blow up you know it's okay and capital
flowing back in and you have this rotation out from short-term capital to long-term capital
and that's always been the battle it's always short-term versus long-term capital and long-term
capital is patient and they invest on a thesis not on emotion so they usually will win so if
your long-term capital entering the strc trade right now you know you're not getting 13 you're
getting something like 20 odd percent
because there's price appreciation built into that too
and lower effective higher effective yield So it just a matter of time I think before we see Bitcoin do its thing And to me there a very high probability we see Bitcoin do its thing because everything has had a run
I don't believe 126,000 was a sufficient all-time high.
It felt like it was cut short and this bear market feels artificial.
and everything precious metals tech stocks oil you name it they've all had a run and we haven't
so i think we're overdue for that run and the more people are impatient and bored with it
the more violent that run is going to be it does seem like i've seen a lot of people basically be
like nope this isn't the bottom the bottom is going to be at exactly 40k in you know on october
something or other and they're very convinced about that and in my somewhat much more limited
time in Bitcoin than you but even in that time what I've seen is that Bitcoin like right when
you get that pit in your stomach where you're like is there a chance Peter Schiff was right
right at that moment is usually when Bitcoin decides to rip your face off and make you feel
foolish for even thinking those thoughts again in my in my limited experience Peter Schiff is not
right guys and he probably holds more bitcoin than he lets on uh related to that i also think
that there's this because i agree with what you said and i think there's this other disconnect
here where because the printers haven't fought the money printers if you have money printers
haven't fired i haven't really gone burr in a while i think that people are sort of forgetting
that that is the inevitable outcome right and i'm curious if you think though i think there's sort of
a couple of schools of thought here,
sort of the, you know,
Larry Lepard's big print thesis
versus like a Lynn Alden gradual print thesis.
And I'm curious where you stand on that
from a macro perspective.
I'm a nothing stops this train believer,
but I am a big print believer too.
So I'll side with Lawrence on this.
If you look at US debt alone,
it's getting very close to 40 trillion now
with 1 trillion added every year.
That is not sustainable.
something's got to give we just don't know when it's going to give and if I could predict you know
when then I'd be a trillionaire but I don't know when I can't predict the future but I see the
directionality of this and it is going to be a big print eventually we'll see I think well you know
technically you've actually given some kudos to both Lynn and Ed Larry there with you know nothing
stops this train also big print I think the theses are complementary perhaps it's gradual
prints interspersed with big prints because we know that like fiat only goes one direction right
like over the long uh the long arc of history we know which way it goes and it's toward debasement
and so it's just uh you know not a matter of if but a matter of when uh with the time we have left
samson i do want to make sure that we give you a chance to talk a little about about the work that
you're doing with jan 3 with aqua wallet anything that you want to make people aware of also if
So if you're not using Aqua Wallet, you should really give it a try.
I really like using it.
It's become one of my daily driver wallets.
I think it's very fun and easy to use and looks nice.
And yeah, it's fun to spend Bitcoin with.
And I do so whenever I get the chance.
Like at Steak and Shake.
Shout out to Steak and Shake for continuing to be based and having tallow cooked things
and accepting Bitcoin.
You guys are awesome.
What else are you guys working on right now?
anything with Aqua or Gen3 more broadly that you want to make people aware of that they should be
excited about? Yeah, so Aqua, we're getting close to a big release. We've actually been rebuilding
the entire app in React. So Alex Bragan, he's our CTO, he's been leading this initiative for the past
several months. But this will let us roll out updates much faster. It'll make the app much more
responsive snappy and everything's just going to feel better overall but this has been you know
probably a five six months initiative now but we nearing the end of it i don know if he okay with me saying this but you know we getting close to release And that is a big thing that we all looking forward
to. It's actually quite complex because we've tried to make the update so that when you upgrade
your Aqua Wallet, you don't even notice that it's changed. So it's sort of like ripping out the
engines on an airplane mid-flight and switching them in with new ones. But the transition will be
seamless for aqua users on the nation state front actually we were going to release it today but we
postpone till tomorrow morning pacific time but we have a report coming out it's the 2025
nation state bitcoin adoption report it's taken us a bit longer than we thought to compile it but
it's a comprehensive overview of all nation state adoption for 2025 and going forward we're going to
do this every year we've divided this methodology to rank countries too with bitcoin adoption
so we will introduce this concept of the b20 like the g20 which are the top 20 thanks top 20
countries that are uh leading bitcoin adoption worldwide so that'll come out tomorrow people
on austria get the heads up ahead of time and then people that watch your stream later will
you'll see it ahead of the stream uh ahead of the pod that's released later but yeah that took a
a while for us to get right but i think now that we have the structure the methodology
next year we should be able to release it you know soon after 2026 ends
that's that's really cool i'm looking forward to reading that and yeah guys this is a benefit of
watching the show on noster you're getting getting this alpha ahead of time so thank you to those who
joined the Noster and who zapped.
Samson, where can people find out
more information? You're Excelion
on X,
on Noster as well. Where can they find
out more info about Jan3 to try
out Aqua Wallet, etc.?
Yeah, you can go to Jan3.com
our website or follow us on X,
Jan3.com and Aqua's
Aqua Bitcoin on X
or Aqua.net on the web.
Love it. And it really is
a great wallet. I enjoy using
it very much and uh yeah i have a lot of wallets on my phone i'll put it that way um it's one of
the few that i use consistently though because i've downloaded a lot of wallets that i'll then
use for a little bit like just to test them out then you know not use again for a while aqua i use
on a regular basis so uh yeah keep up the great work with that excited to check out the report
and thank you for joining and for those who stuck around for the whole thing i i hope that you you
know regardless of what quote side of this bip 110 thing that you're on that you can take samson's
points at face value and evaluate these things objectively and also prepare yourself for any
eventuality um so that you know what it's what's that all expression like happiness is uh expectations
minus reality uh you know so just uh just be prepared is all i'll say and uh yeah uh samson
really appreciate your time appreciate you sneaking this in and uh looking forward to the next time
Thank you, Walker. We'll do it again.
YouTube and Rumble, just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at
Titcoin podcast. Head to the show notes to grab sponsor links, head to substack.com slash at
Walker America to get episodes emailed to you and head to Bitcoin podcast.net for everything else.
Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time
listening to The Bitcoin Podcast. Until next time, stay free.