1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,640
We have to be wary of making changes to Bitcoin because there will always be unforeseen consequences.

2
00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:12,640
The flip side of that that few people talk about is that not making changes to Bitcoin also has

3
00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:24,480
unforeseen consequences. Greetings and salutations, my fellow clubs. My name is Walker, and this is

4
00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:32,400
the Bitcoin Podcast. The Bitcoin block height is 820-270, and the value of one Bitcoin is still

5
00:00:32,400 --> 00:00:38,960
one Bitcoin. Today's episode is Bitcoin Talk, where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and many

6
00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:46,400
other things as well. Today, that guest is Jameson Lopp. Jameson is the co-founder in CTO at Casa,

7
00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:52,320
a multi-sig solution for self-custody. In general, he's a cipherpunk, a Bitcoin engineer,

8
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:58,400
and an educator. He's been in the Bitcoin space for a long time, and has a great perspective on the

9
00:00:58,400 --> 00:01:05,440
past, present, and future of Bitcoin. In this talk, we dig into a ton of topics, including sovereignty,

10
00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:12,080
Bitcoin, censorship, no-ster, lightning, ordinals and inscriptions, and a whole lot more. Jameson

11
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:17,840
also goes deep into the controversial topic of protocol ossification regarding Bitcoin. I think

12
00:01:17,840 --> 00:01:23,200
everyone should listen carefully to the perspective he provides on this. As always, you can watch the

13
00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:28,880
video version of this episode on Rumble, YouTube, or X by searching at Walker America, or listen on

14
00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:35,120
fountain.fm, or wherever you get your podcasts, by searching for the Bitcoin Podcast. If you listen

15
00:01:35,120 --> 00:01:39,920
to the Bitcoin Podcast on fountain, consider giving the show a boost or creating a clip of something

16
00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:44,640
you found interesting. If you haven't checked out fountain yet, I highly recommend it. You can

17
00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:49,680
send Bitcoin to your favorite podcasters and earn Bitcoin just for listening to this show. And if you

18
00:01:49,680 --> 00:01:54,880
are a Bitcoin-only company, interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin podcast,

19
00:01:54,880 --> 00:02:01,280
go to bitcoinpodcast.net or hit me up on social media. Without further ado, let's get into this

20
00:02:01,280 --> 00:02:19,200
Bitcoin talk with Jameson Lopp. I know Bitcoin never sleeps, but hopefully you're able to relax

21
00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:23,440
a little bit on the Friday. I know you're a busy guy, so I appreciate you taking the time to

22
00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:32,720
jump on another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Yeah. So Saturdays are when I normally publish my blog

23
00:02:32,720 --> 00:02:42,560
posts and I have one going out tomorrow. So it's the last hurrah trying to put some finishing touches

24
00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:51,600
on this one because it's not even related to Bitcoin. Okay. Well, I'm intrigued. I look forward

25
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:57,600
to reading it. I was just going back through some of your older stuff today. Actually, I was looking

26
00:02:57,600 --> 00:03:03,760
through the last one I was looking at was your one on just Bitcoin memetics, which was, I had

27
00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:08,960
looked at it before, but looked at it again and I was like, man, this is such a actually great archive

28
00:03:08,960 --> 00:03:16,720
of every single prominent Bitcoin meme. Like it should be some sort of required reading. It's an

29
00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:22,240
interesting concept too, just in general. I don't know, but that was a, it was very helpful. I'm curious

30
00:03:23,200 --> 00:03:28,480
which means like so many of the Bitcoin memes have been around since long before I've been in

31
00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:34,000
Bitcoin, which is only since like 2020 when I really went down the rabbit hole and started

32
00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:38,960
diving into all of this. And so I think that's the case for a lot of people that were class of

33
00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:46,400
2020 or 2021 or even 2022. And it's nice to have a little bit more of the historical perspective

34
00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:52,880
on some of them. Like even the, the, the hodl meme is a great example of that because a lot of people

35
00:03:52,880 --> 00:03:58,160
just think, oh, it's someone just decided to misspell hold, right? And it's like, no, no, there's an

36
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:02,960
entire, there's an entire post about it. He goes in this rant. The rant is amazing. You know, my

37
00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:08,400
girlfriend's out at a lesbian bar, like whatever. And it's, it's always nice for people to have that

38
00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:13,280
context of what's the origin story behind these things that you say and say a lot.

39
00:04:13,280 --> 00:04:22,960
Well, yeah, you know, stuff evolves, right? So hodl, hodl turned into a, a backer name, right?

40
00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:30,880
And that's because people didn't know the long nuanced story. And it's probably the case for

41
00:04:30,880 --> 00:04:37,840
several memes is they morph over time. You know, much like, you know, I've written extensively

42
00:04:37,840 --> 00:04:45,760
about Bitcoin maximalism and the narratives around Bitcoin and how those evolve over time. And you

43
00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:55,600
can, you can kind of trace the inflection points and the pivots. And, you know, that, that, I think,

44
00:04:55,600 --> 00:05:00,160
you know, this is just sort of like a natural sociological phenomenon. And I mean, it's, it's

45
00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:09,680
all memetics, memetics upon memetics. Yeah, I actually, I just started reading recently,

46
00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:15,440
René Girard's Things Hidden Since the Creation of the World or Things Hidden Since the Start

47
00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:20,240
of the World, forgetting the title exactly, decent way into it. And it's all about that,

48
00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:25,680
you know, a quiz of memetics and how that plays out in human history. And he's basically saying

49
00:05:25,680 --> 00:05:31,440
that everything is a result, every, you know, interaction that we have. And all these myths

50
00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:36,480
throughout history too are just tales of acquisitive memetics. And that really started to blow my mind

51
00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:40,640
a little bit. I was like, wow, I mean, he makes very compelling arguments. I'm sure one can make

52
00:05:40,640 --> 00:05:45,040
very good counter arguments to that as well. But it's an interesting lens through which to,

53
00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:52,480
to look at the world just, you know, copying and replication, and ultimately the goal being to

54
00:05:52,480 --> 00:05:58,720
somehow acquire something through that. I think it's pretty fascinating. But Jameson, thank you for,

55
00:05:58,720 --> 00:06:05,440
thank you for coming on today. I'll, this will be pretty open form. There are no rules for another

56
00:06:05,440 --> 00:06:12,160
fucking Bitcoin podcast. We'll, we'll keep it, keep it flowing. However, we so choose. I've got

57
00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:16,560
some topics I want to run through with you just because I really respect your opinion in the space.

58
00:06:16,560 --> 00:06:22,240
You've been around a much longer time than I have and have a pretty interesting career before

59
00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:28,800
that as well that I think really feeds into what you're doing now and just your has probably

60
00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:33,520
informed a lot of your viewpoints on that. And I want to dive into that a little bit too. But if

61
00:06:33,520 --> 00:06:38,480
you're good with it, we'll just kind of roll into this. I'll do my short little spiel of an intro

62
00:06:38,480 --> 00:06:45,200
and then we'll dive right in. Go for it. All right. Well, greetings and salutations, my fellow

63
00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:51,680
clubs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast. Today it is Bitcoin talk and I am joined

64
00:06:51,680 --> 00:06:57,600
by somebody who talks about and writes about and works on Bitcoin quite a lot and that is Jamison

65
00:06:57,600 --> 00:07:05,840
Lopp. Jamison is the co-founder and CTO at Casa. He's also more generally a cypherpunk, a Bitcoin

66
00:07:05,840 --> 00:07:11,200
engineer and an educator. He's got a ton of incredible resources on Lopp.net. I highly

67
00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:15,680
recommend you check that out and I'll link it in the show notes. But Jamison, thank you for coming

68
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:19,680
on to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. I know you have done quite a lot at this point, so it's

69
00:07:19,680 --> 00:07:27,200
good to have you on here. Yeah, I think I've probably done several hundred podcast episodes

70
00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:35,680
over the past decade and I'm such a data archival nerd that I have all of them hosted on my own

71
00:07:35,680 --> 00:07:42,240
server and I've used AI to transcribe them all so I can juice that SEO as much as possible.

72
00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:50,400
That's pretty incredible actually. Yeah, I mean I like talking about Bitcoin or about privacy,

73
00:07:50,400 --> 00:07:57,040
self-sovereignty, libertarian ideas. It's all over the place and as I think we were

74
00:07:59,600 --> 00:08:05,280
just mentioning I've got yet another article coming out which has nothing to do with any of it.

75
00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:10,960
It's actually like medical and health related stuff. So it's all related though in the sense that

76
00:08:10,960 --> 00:08:20,000
I follow the don't trust verify philosophy. I actually saw a tweet you had put out and I think

77
00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:25,040
there may have been an associated article to it now. I'm forgetting but you were talking about

78
00:08:25,040 --> 00:08:32,480
kind of your recent basically like let me try out this health journey and see how I can optimize

79
00:08:32,480 --> 00:08:39,200
this for my own personal health and ignore all of the noise out there. And from what I saw in

80
00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:44,080
the results it looks like it's been a pretty successful journey for you so far. So I mean

81
00:08:44,080 --> 00:08:51,200
that's fantastic because there's so much bad information out there. Yeah, well especially

82
00:08:51,200 --> 00:08:56,240
when you get into the health stuff, I mean it's a lot like the crypto space in the sense that

83
00:08:56,240 --> 00:09:01,200
like there's a lot of scams out there and in many cases it's hard to verify if you're not an expert.

84
00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:10,640
And so especially when you start going into the like supplements or people who are selling you

85
00:09:10,640 --> 00:09:22,720
specific regimens because it'll do X, Y or Z. Even if I think in some cases they aren't total

86
00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:31,520
bullshit, it's problematic because we as humans are incredibly complex creatures and I think it's

87
00:09:31,520 --> 00:09:37,440
very difficult to distill down to just a couple of variables of like if you do X, Y and Z you will

88
00:09:37,440 --> 00:09:47,360
get result A, B, C. I think you probably saw my article about going keto and weightlifting and

89
00:09:47,360 --> 00:09:54,160
losing 40 pounds in four months and that was kind of the beginning of my health journey and that was

90
00:09:54,160 --> 00:10:00,240
the like what is the most effect I can get with the least amount of effort? Like I want to be as

91
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:08,480
lazy as possible and just stop being a big slob and that was pretty successful but then I plateaued

92
00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:17,840
and so now for basically the past six months I've been like kicking it up a notch and I've been

93
00:10:18,800 --> 00:10:23,840
simultaneously doing a lot of stuff around epigenetics and longevity and you know trying to

94
00:10:23,840 --> 00:10:30,560
improve my body at a cellular level which is pretty tricky because it's hard to even say like how do

95
00:10:30,560 --> 00:10:35,120
you properly test for all of these things. So I'm actually doing a ton of different tests through a

96
00:10:35,120 --> 00:10:39,280
ton of different companies just to try to see if they're in rough consensus with each other

97
00:10:40,640 --> 00:10:46,560
and then the article that I have coming out tomorrow is more mundane and just it's

98
00:10:46,560 --> 00:10:53,360
cholesterol and it's because I went in for a routine annual physical and came out and the next

99
00:10:53,360 --> 00:11:00,640
day my doctor calls me and says we need to put you on statins immediately otherwise you might have

100
00:11:00,640 --> 00:11:05,920
a heart attack soon and so then I've spent the past month going through this whole journey of

101
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:13,440
doing a lot more advanced testing and learning about cholesterol and realizing that the common

102
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:21,120
trope of like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol that doctors will tell you is I think a gracious

103
00:11:21,120 --> 00:11:31,120
way to say it is oversimplified but a more precise way of saying it is that it results in them

104
00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:36,240
leaping to the wrong conclusion a significant portion of the time and actually prescribing

105
00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:44,560
medication when it's not required. The whole statins thing is kind of fascinating in a bit

106
00:11:44,560 --> 00:11:48,720
of a terrible way because I think there's been more and more research coming out that like there

107
00:11:48,720 --> 00:11:53,280
are a lot of unintended consequences of putting someone on statins and that's kind of been like

108
00:11:53,280 --> 00:11:58,800
the go-to for the medical establishment right it's like well your your bad cholesterol is high I

109
00:11:58,800 --> 00:12:02,720
guess we better put you on statins because that's just that's what we've always done. Yeah it's

110
00:12:02,720 --> 00:12:08,400
the easy thing for them to do instead of going in and doing the much more advanced tests that I

111
00:12:08,400 --> 00:12:13,760
ended up you know I ended up paying out a pocket for all this stuff because it would have taken me

112
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:19,920
months and months to like go through the proper channels to get all these tests ordered. Because

113
00:12:19,920 --> 00:12:26,320
they would view them as somehow not necessary for you to take and overkill for them to you know

114
00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:30,320
actually try and get answers to what may be happening. Yeah I mean the short version is you

115
00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:35,760
know the the medical industrial complex doesn't care about you obviously they have their own

116
00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:42,240
incentives and they prefer to push their solutions at you and make you go away and

117
00:12:42,240 --> 00:12:48,240
that's what was disconcerting about the experience that I had with my doctor was I felt like my doctor

118
00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:55,760
and their incentives were to do the least amount of effort possible to get the most likely overall

119
00:12:55,760 --> 00:13:03,360
average good result which means give me statins and if if and it's true that if I was in a position

120
00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:10,000
where I was having plaque build up in my arteries the statins would help and they probably wouldn't

121
00:13:10,000 --> 00:13:15,920
hurt me too much if I wasn't in that position. It's like I think 10 to 20 percent of people

122
00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:21,920
they're having side effects with statins but yeah it's it's complicated. It's like a this classic

123
00:13:21,920 --> 00:13:27,040
game of okay yeah let's let's get you in and get you out the door and passed along to the

124
00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:31,520
pharmaceutical industrial complex so that they can you know get their little piece of the pie and so

125
00:13:31,520 --> 00:13:38,000
as long as we've got you on some sort of medication we did our job. Pharma gets paid and you'll probably

126
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:45,120
improve we think so yeah well I look forward to reading that because it's it's always nice to see

127
00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:50,880
bitcoiners like yourself diving into these other topics with the same rigor that they dive into

128
00:13:50,880 --> 00:13:56,880
bitcoin because if there's one thing I've learned about bitcoiners it's that they really excuse me

129
00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:02,960
really do the research and do the work to a level that might seem somewhat psychotic to others

130
00:14:02,960 --> 00:14:07,760
but it's like that's how you actually figure out what's going on and actually get answers like you

131
00:14:07,760 --> 00:14:12,400
you have to actually do the work and if you just accept what's out there well you end up with the

132
00:14:12,400 --> 00:14:19,120
same answers that everyone else has so I'm looking forward to that. I'd like to kind of start off this

133
00:14:19,120 --> 00:14:25,840
discussion a little bit. I think that most pretty much everybody probably knows who you are. You've

134
00:14:25,840 --> 00:14:31,680
had a huge impact in the space you've been around for a long time. You've worked you worked at Bitco

135
00:14:31,680 --> 00:14:37,360
previously you're you know a co-founder now at CASA and for those that don't know CASA does

136
00:14:37,360 --> 00:14:44,320
multi-sig solutions is that a fair classification multi-sig solutions for bitcoin? Yeah I mean

137
00:14:44,320 --> 00:14:50,000
the way that I pitch it for normies is that you know we help you be your own bank you know without

138
00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:55,680
even going into any of the technical details you know we help people put themselves in a self-custody

139
00:14:55,680 --> 00:15:01,680
architecture that eliminates single points of failure so you can be human and you can make

140
00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:08,320
mistakes and not suffer from catastrophic loss due to a single mistake for whatever reason. And

141
00:15:08,320 --> 00:15:14,800
that is I think a very good thing and maybe the idea of multi-sig is still somewhat scary to some

142
00:15:14,800 --> 00:15:19,200
people who are like man I just figured out how to set up my one hardware wallet like now you're

143
00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:23,840
asking me to have multiple keys and I want to maybe get into that a little bit a little bit later

144
00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:30,160
but can we just can we just start with who is Jameson Lopp and how did you get here today from

145
00:15:30,160 --> 00:15:36,400
you can and go back as far as you want here I'll leave this open to you but who the heck are you

146
00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:44,560
and how did you get here to be who you are now? Yeah I mean I am a long-time nerd you know classic

147
00:15:46,160 --> 00:15:51,840
loner who got bullied a lot as a little kid wasn't the best at socializing because I was

148
00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:59,520
reading way above my grade level and using vocabulary that my peer group didn't understand

149
00:15:59,520 --> 00:16:04,800
and thus thought was just fucking weird and thus ostracized me for being the weird nerd.

150
00:16:06,800 --> 00:16:15,440
And as a result ended up when I went to university there was only one possible thing I could study

151
00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:20,480
and that was computer science I looked at everything they were offering and the only one

152
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:28,960
that didn't look completely boring was computers so did very well on my computer classes in school

153
00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:36,640
not so well on some of the other classes but managed to to get out with a degree and I actually

154
00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:46,080
I hit the job market in 2007 so then you know the 2008 crisis hit and it actually ended up being

155
00:16:46,080 --> 00:16:55,920
good for me I was lucky enough that I ended up at a an email marketing company and the economic

156
00:16:55,920 --> 00:17:02,720
crisis was good for us because what happened was all of these other retailers and really any company

157
00:17:02,720 --> 00:17:08,880
that was doing advertising ended up getting their marketing budget slashed and so they what they ended

158
00:17:08,880 --> 00:17:14,160
up doing was moving a lot of their budget from traditional things like print and billboard and

159
00:17:14,160 --> 00:17:21,120
television and radio and moving it to online because they realized that once they moved their

160
00:17:21,120 --> 00:17:26,080
advertising online they had metrics and they could actually figure out what the return on their

161
00:17:26,080 --> 00:17:31,840
investment and their various advertising promotions and channels and stuff work so that was good for

162
00:17:31,840 --> 00:17:42,240
us we we went over the next decade that I worked there from being 10 employees and a company that

163
00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:48,800
was sending maybe a few hundred thousand emails a day to being 300 employees and sending 100

164
00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:56,320
million emails a day so major scaling operations both the technical and the the HR front.

165
00:17:57,440 --> 00:18:03,520
Wow and I think that you know one of the talks that I've heard you give that really stuck with

166
00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:10,800
me was one you gave at Lugano last year and that was you were declaring the you know it was basically

167
00:18:10,800 --> 00:18:17,680
an obituary for SMTP and and you going through that and kind of saying some of your you know

168
00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:21,600
experiences working on this and how you know you saw a little bit of how the sausage was made on

169
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:26,720
the inside how some of these decisions were being made but then the ultimate repercussions of that

170
00:18:26,720 --> 00:18:34,000
being email trending towards centralization I'd love if you could kind of explain that a little

171
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:41,280
bit why you declared SMTP dead and kind of how you went through that journey yourself and then

172
00:18:41,280 --> 00:18:47,760
also how it sort of impacted your views about Bitcoin and other protocol let's say protocol

173
00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:58,720
ossification. Yeah so you know SMTP as a protocol it still exists and it's still used and in fact

174
00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:04,320
it is probably one of the most widely adopted networking protocols in existence there's probably

175
00:19:04,320 --> 00:19:14,400
billions of people who are using it though using it should be in quotes you know almost no one who

176
00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:22,640
is actually sending or receiving email is running an email server or client that is directly using

177
00:19:22,640 --> 00:19:27,920
SMTP rather what they're doing is they're they're going through a trusted third-party gateway that

178
00:19:27,920 --> 00:19:36,480
is doing all the the SMTP stuff way under the hood behind the scenes and and really this

179
00:19:37,840 --> 00:19:45,440
this was a multi-decade journey where I think email really started in the 70s

180
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:53,360
and and back then if you wanted to use email you would actually have to run email software and

181
00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:59,680
and you speak SMTP to the other people that were running email servers on the early internet

182
00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:08,000
and that was all good and well email as a protocol was specifically designed for message

183
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:14,320
reliability aka if you sent an email you were basically guaranteed that it would get to where

184
00:20:14,320 --> 00:20:21,840
it was going and that worked very well until the 90s when millions of people started joining the

185
00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:28,640
internet and some of them were not very nice and they were malicious and wanted to you know use

186
00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:35,120
email to basically sell stuff to people and you know send messages that were not desired the rise

187
00:20:35,120 --> 00:20:45,120
of spam and and spam became really the the greatest problem of email for the next several

188
00:20:45,120 --> 00:20:52,240
decades and you could probably argue it still is we've mostly solved spam at this point but not

189
00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:58,480
in a very good way there were many different solutions that were attempted to solve spam over

190
00:20:58,480 --> 00:21:06,480
the years like various filtering mechanisms and none of them really worked well and they usually

191
00:21:06,480 --> 00:21:10,640
also had false positives which wasn't great because that would harm the reliability of getting the

192
00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:19,600
emails that you did want and what ended up happening is that we after trying many different you know

193
00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:30,240
automated systems to to try to filter out email based on content we changed to instead filter out

194
00:21:30,240 --> 00:21:37,200
email based upon this idea of reputation so we started creating identity and reputation around

195
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:46,080
things like domain names and IP addresses and and really all of these things that have their own

196
00:21:46,080 --> 00:21:50,880
forms of centralization you know domain names are issued by an authority and they can revoke it

197
00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:59,040
and similar stuff with with a lot of like SSL certificates and IP addresses and stuff there's

198
00:21:59,040 --> 00:22:03,840
usually someone further down the line that actually has control over those things and it's not you

199
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:11,760
so what happened with these reputation systems is you know you can't have a million reputation

200
00:22:11,760 --> 00:22:18,960
systems you know you can only really handle a handful of them and so we had the rise of what

201
00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:27,920
was really known as the the spam blacklist services they essentially became gods of the email ecosystem

202
00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:33,360
because if they put you whether that was your name your IP address your domain whatever on the

203
00:22:33,360 --> 00:22:38,400
blacklist then you would find that like the vast majority of your emails stopped being delivered

204
00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:46,560
and then you had to go beg for forgiveness and we actually this is when I started realizing

205
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:56,080
what was going on this is probably around 2010 or so at my company we started hiring people

206
00:22:56,080 --> 00:23:04,320
that their title was email deliverability specialist and I thought you know this is great

207
00:23:04,320 --> 00:23:10,560
because you know deliverability is a problem that we as a company were always grappling with

208
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:16,720
because we would have all types of different clients we would have clients who were very good

209
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:22,240
about their list hygiene and made sure that all the email addresses had opted in wanted to receive

210
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:26,800
emails and then sometimes we'd have one come in who had just bought a bunch of random emails off

211
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:32,800
of a shady website and of course the vast majority would bounce or get marked as spam or whatever

212
00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:38,720
and that would harm us as well because you know we were sending all of the emails through our IP

213
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:47,600
addresses so these email reputation and deliverability specialists they actually were not working

214
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:53,520
with me in the engineering department and I found that to be odd because you know this is a protocol

215
00:23:53,520 --> 00:24:00,560
right and so you know if an email if you send an email via smtp you get a response from the

216
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:05,920
server and it should include a code and some sort of message that should either say you know

217
00:24:05,920 --> 00:24:14,640
accepted or some form of like a soft rejection or delay or throttle or a hard rejection of like

218
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:21,200
we're never going to accept this and then there should be a reason why but it turns out that

219
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:27,680
wasn't good enough because in some cases you know we were getting on the spam blacklist and there

220
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:34,080
was no automated way to appeal that rather what happened and what had to happen is you had to have

221
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:46,320
a human who had a preferably a ongoing relationship with the major blacklist providers who when we

222
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:51,600
found ourselves on the blacklist they would basically come to the engineers and we would figure

223
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:56,800
out you know which of our clients did this and whether it was intentional or unintentional and

224
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:01,040
like if we were going to fire them as a client or what we were going to do to prevent that client

225
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:07,600
from fucking up again and then the email deliverability specialist would you know get on the phone

226
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:14,320
or you know send an email to their contact saying okay we know we see that you put us on the blacklist

227
00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:21,120
this is what happened this is how we're remediating it we promise this won't happen again please take

228
00:25:21,120 --> 00:25:26,640
us off the blacklist you know basically begging for forgiveness so you know this goes to show

229
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:32,800
you the kind of that the power that the gatekeepers had in the system and this is ongoing to this day

230
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:38,800
and it you know continues to consolidate and the problem is that as of right now something like

231
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:45,440
90% of all email users are essentially captured by the top five or ten email companies in the space

232
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:55,040
I mean and it's it's kind of absurd to think about just the fact that we all take email for

233
00:25:55,040 --> 00:26:00,800
granted right like I think most not somebody like you perhaps but the majority of us just think

234
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:05,760
out email and most people when they think of email they may even think of not they don't even go

235
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:11,520
any layer below just oh that's just google or yeah if you're still using you know yeah who mail or

236
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:17,520
aol perhaps uh maybe you're you still have a aol email address but you don't go any deeper than

237
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:23,840
that and you don't think about the fact that oh this wasn't always this way this started out

238
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:30,160
differently and choices were made that you know not necessarily intentionally uh you know maybe it

239
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:36,560
wasn't a like a grand plan or you know some some evil design for to centralize email but it's just

240
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:42,400
what happened and it was the result of choices and it's a incentives yeah incentives and human

241
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:49,520
nature to find the most like convenient simple solution to things well and I think that's that's

242
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:54,800
such a good point it's like that there's always a trade-off even if we think about just like sovereignty

243
00:26:54,800 --> 00:27:01,440
right like I don't think that sovereignty in general is a it's not a binary state right it's

244
00:27:01,440 --> 00:27:07,840
not it's not zero or one it's it's a spectrum right and oftentimes where you are in that spectrum

245
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:14,080
is determined by how much convenience you are willing to forego to do something that is necessarily

246
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:19,920
harder but allows you to move a little bit in the better direction on the sovereignty scale

247
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:26,960
it's a but it's a slippery slope too right maybe the majority of people don't actually really give

248
00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:34,400
a shit about are they sovereign um but it's also a thing where you're kind of like approaching a limit

249
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:39,360
that you're never going to you know it's like bitcoin's never going to get fully to 21 million

250
00:27:39,360 --> 00:27:42,880
coins right it'll be like just below that you're just going to keep approaching it closer and

251
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,880
closer but maybe you can't ever be fully sovereign and I know that's something you've written about

252
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:52,640
as well I think you had a piece of sovereignty versus society uh something to that effect and I

253
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:58,640
thought that was a really interesting one because you basically made the point that look in a society

254
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:05,680
where there is division of labor you can't necessarily be truly sovereign in every aspect

255
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:11,120
like you're always offloading some responsibility for something to someone else so that and that's

256
00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:16,560
for convenience for efficiency but I'd love to know kind of your your thoughts on that and like

257
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:22,320
how do you grapple with that personally in the decisions you make what do you you know how do

258
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:26,800
you gauge okay this is actually something that I should care about in order to improve my sovereignty

259
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:31,120
or this is something that you know what I'm comfortable offloading this responsibility

260
00:28:31,120 --> 00:28:37,840
because ultimately it's negligible compared to the other trade-offs yeah yeah it's it's a matter

261
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:45,360
of time and resources and risk management I think you're threat modeling um if you want to be perfectly

262
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:53,200
sovereign it's funny because this is some of my favorite shows are the the folks who like live in

263
00:28:53,200 --> 00:29:00,720
Alaska or in the arctic circle and it's it's very fascinating to me to see these people they are well

264
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:06,880
I'll I'll say in most cases even they are not 100% sovereign in many cases they are still getting

265
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:13,120
shipments of some raw materials during the summer that you know give them the tooling that they need

266
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:17,520
to be able to you know provide for themselves throughout the the rest of the the winter there

267
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:26,160
are very few cases at least in first world countries where people are 100% sovereign and

268
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:30,720
and really the only way to be 100% sovereign is to essentially live a primitive lifestyle

269
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:38,960
another very interesting avenue that I've seen some people explore I know there's at least one

270
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:47,040
guy on YouTube who he he went through the whole evolution of man of like starting out you know

271
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:54,560
at the stone age and trying to bootstrap his technology to see how far up he could get into the

272
00:29:54,560 --> 00:30:02,720
the technological evolution to you know improve his ease of living and convenience and whatnot

273
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:11,120
but it's a it's a long slog to do that where you you still have to have access to you know a decent

274
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:20,240
amount of of raw materials and resources and knowledge and time and and that's where for most

275
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:27,200
of us it doesn't make sense to do that because we have we have skill sets that are the result of

276
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:34,240
years if not decades of specialized experience that are that is very difficult for other people

277
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:43,760
to reproduce and so our leverage of what we can accomplish in that specific area due to our own

278
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:51,280
knowledge it's better for us it's more valuable for us and for the economy for the world for us to

279
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:58,480
be doing that specific thing this you know specialization of tasks this is how humanity has

280
00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:08,240
evolved and civilization has advanced and the the weird trade-off to that is that it creates a more

281
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:15,920
fragile society where we do have a lot more interconnected dependencies and especially

282
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:23,600
in the most recent modern day society as we have continued to find more and more efficiency gains

283
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:28,720
and do things like create you know just-in-time supply chains those are great for efficiency and

284
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:39,120
productivity but once again the brittleness of if if a chink hits the system and the supply chains

285
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:46,560
break like the cascading effects which I think we really saw like during the pandemic for example

286
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:53,360
can have massive repercussions if you're trying to become more sovereign one thing you need to do

287
00:31:53,360 --> 00:32:00,160
is get your bitcoin off exchanges and into your own custody go to bitbox.swiss slash walker and use

288
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:07,600
the promo code walker for five percent off the bitcoin only bitbox o2 hardware wallet it's fully

289
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:12,640
open source you can go to their github and verify for yourself it's super easy to set up and it's a

290
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:20,160
great tool for seasoned psychopaths and new bitcoiners alike go to bitbox.swiss slash walker and use

291
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:25,200
that promo code walker so you not only get five percent off but you also help support another

292
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:31,040
fucking bitcoin podcast now it's it is definitely the most uh let's say near and dear example that

293
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:37,520
we have right like we've seen the it's globalization and just-in-time supply chains like it's fantastic

294
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:42,080
right things are getting cheaper and cheaper they're getting you know delivered to us at our front

295
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:47,120
door whatever we you know you can if you can order just about anything you want off of amazon like

296
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:54,560
it's sort of ridiculous too right it's like uh i order a like five or ten dollar little trinket

297
00:32:54,560 --> 00:33:01,040
that i could easily pop over to the local drugstore and get but what happens in my mind is okay it'll

298
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:06,560
take me like 20 minutes round trip to go get the thing and so what i'm really paying for is the

299
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:12,160
convenience and the time saving no and it's such a good point it's like there's a lot of things that

300
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:17,040
like i just got some you know some new uh new charging cables and it's like i could have definitely

301
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:22,800
gone to a local best buy or honestly like walmart casco anything and gotten them but i was like

302
00:33:23,600 --> 00:33:29,760
i've got too much other things that i need to do and uh wow i'm just gonna have this delivered

303
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:34,160
right to my front doorsteps i just have to reach my arm outside and it's it's a beautiful thing

304
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:40,240
convenience right but it's certainly not a very sovereign practice but again it's everything is

305
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:46,240
is a trade-off right and so i think even where perhaps sovereignty gets even a little bit more

306
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:51,440
interesting is in the digital realm like it's it's really easy i think for for people to start to

307
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:56,640
conceptualize okay what would sovereignty mean for me if i'm you know if i'm homesteading and i'm

308
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:03,120
trying to live off the land and you know just farm what i eat and you know have a very uh

309
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:10,000
basic but sovereign subsistence versus once you get into the digital realm and things get a little

310
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:16,880
bit hairier because i think it's a lot more difficult for anyone who is not trained and educated

311
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:23,120
and has spent time working with these technologies to understand first of all but even more so there

312
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:30,480
are more i think unknown unknowns for people where they just don't know what they don't know

313
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:36,480
and what they don't know they don't know can absolutely hurt them maybe not now but as we

314
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:45,040
see ourselves getting towards a uh let's say cbdc future where every piece of your online activity

315
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:51,520
can conceivably be linked to all of your economic interactions even in the physical world i don't

316
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:59,280
think people entirely grasp the ramifications of that and how that you know that is truly uh i mean

317
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:06,640
that's a it's a totalitarian wet dream but for anybody who enjoys a even a mild amount of freedom

318
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:10,960
in their individual lives i think that that should be something that's really terrifying so i guess

319
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:18,640
you know what do you think as far as uh what's your message to people who perhaps just don't get

320
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:25,360
the dangers of that sort of a future as somebody who's also seen how technologies can quickly evolve

321
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:33,040
from decentralized to very centralized a cbdc is the ultimate centralization of money right uh maybe

322
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:37,680
they can come up with some even more centralized but right now maybe besides one world currency that

323
00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:41,840
is also issued by the bank of international settlements or something individual nation

324
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:47,760
state cbdcs are are fairly uh fairly close to perfect centralization so i don't know what's your

325
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:58,880
take on that i think you don't have to be too philosophical or or kind of like even futuristic

326
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:05,440
when it comes i mean all you have to do is look at what china is doing that is what is going to

327
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:12,880
happen everywhere else like china is the authoritarian or the techno authoritarian testing playground

328
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:20,160
for all of the you know dystopian things that technology could do um you know how finney had a

329
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:30,080
great quote that you know technology can basically you know be a tool of liberation um but it's like

330
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:38,480
any tool it's a double edged sword and that you know we should assume that the powers that be will

331
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:46,720
seek to leverage technology for their own purposes and you know this is actually my own mission statement

332
00:36:46,720 --> 00:36:55,360
you know when i when i left the email engineering world and and went into bitcoin i decided that i

333
00:36:55,360 --> 00:37:05,360
wanted to have like an actual uh career mission and and that mission was not bitcoin the the mission

334
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:13,680
is to use my skills as a technologist to empower people and to make that the the empowering aspects

335
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:21,280
of technology easier for normal people to to actually grasp and leverage and make use of and

336
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:28,240
you know bitcoin was the most obvious thing to go after because it has so much potential

337
00:37:28,240 --> 00:37:33,040
and yet as you've said you know there's a really high learning curve there's a lot of pitfalls there's

338
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:40,720
a lot of ways that you know you can screw up and and unfortunately if people come in and they lose a

339
00:37:40,720 --> 00:37:44,960
lot of money because of some stupid mistake that's going to be a major turn off and we would

340
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:51,360
think prefer that not happen and it's it's such a great point that that first experience that

341
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:56,880
people have with you know not just with bitcoin with anything right we have that recency bias

342
00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:02,400
where it's like the last thing that happened to me with regard to this other thing if it was good

343
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:07,120
or bad that is going to impact how i think about that for a long time until i have another experience

344
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:14,560
that is different and so i think you know people there's been a lot of talk for a long time about

345
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:20,080
the fact that uh say so-called normies or pre-coiners i think is a kinder term they'll come around

346
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:24,880
eventually but right now they're pre-coiners the majority of people just aren't going to do self

347
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:31,680
custody right even though there's this this way that you can actually be your own bank uh that you

348
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:39,280
can be a little bit moving a positive direction on that sovereignty scale that most people just

349
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:46,080
won't be either able to do that because they won't be able to understand it or they won't care enough

350
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:51,520
to do that and you're actively you know you have built a company co-founded a company that's trying

351
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:58,800
to make that i think a little bit easier for folks and so i mean what what's your what are

352
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:04,960
your thoughts on just do you think that the you know are the majority of people in a if we look

353
00:39:04,960 --> 00:39:10,160
20 30 40 years down the road are the majority of people who are using bitcoin going to be

354
00:39:10,160 --> 00:39:14,480
self-custodied are they going to be using it in a as close to sovereign as possible way

355
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:20,480
or is there going to be a trend towards just massive consolidation in custodians and every

356
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:29,200
major wallets a custodial wallet and very few people operate using bitcoin in a sovereign way

357
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:35,360
well there's a lot of variables there one that i've brought up a number of times recently

358
00:39:35,360 --> 00:39:43,040
kind of in the context of ossification is that there's an open question around what do we as

359
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:53,360
bitcoiners prioritize when it comes to the ability and cost of self-custodying you know in 2017 and

360
00:39:53,360 --> 00:40:02,640
the scaling wars we we were faced with a fundamental question and the question was what does the bitcoin

361
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:12,800
ecosystem value more does it value more to to target a low cost of transacting on the blockchain

362
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:22,960
or does it value more to target a low cost of validating the entire system and we settled on

363
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:28,080
the latter and you know we and of course we have solutions and a number of things people are working

364
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:34,720
on to alleviate the former though you know this is the creation of other protocols and adding

365
00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:45,280
more complexity and whatnot but there are still plenty of unresolved questions and i had another

366
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:52,560
article i wrote a few years ago that was basically an attempt at listing a lot of the quote-unquote

367
00:40:52,560 --> 00:41:02,400
inviolable properties of bitcoin and some of these properties are in conflict with each other so

368
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:10,720
as you said you know decades from now will a significant people a significant portion of

369
00:41:10,720 --> 00:41:18,560
bitcoiners be self-custodying well the problem with that is that the way the protocol is currently

370
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:26,000
set up that's simply not possible now there are other projects that are going on that may result

371
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:31,840
in sort of hybrid solutions or sort of you know localized or regional you know friends and family

372
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:41,280
custody i do think that those are better than what would happen otherwise it was even half any i

373
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:49,440
believe who speculated in the first weeks and months of bitcoin that eventually the system would

374
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:58,480
essentially become owned by a bunch of custodial banks you know kind of like gold and vaults but

375
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:04,320
it would be digital gold in third-party digital vaults and that's how most people would be

376
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:10,960
transacting and you know i think that if we don't do anything that is inevitably what happens

377
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:15,920
at least somewhat because that's how most people get into the system is they

378
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:24,480
they create an account at an exchange they buy some bitcoin i o use and then that's it yeah

379
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:34,080
i am also somewhat hopeful that if we can change things around and expand the bitcoin economy to

380
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:46,640
be more circular that if we onboard more people by them earning bitcoin then it's more likely that

381
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:52,880
they will be in a self custody setup in that case you know to actually be receiving it directly

382
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:58,960
themselves rather than receiving it to a third party but you know that's somewhat pie in the sky

383
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:04,640
you know optimism you know it doesn't solve everything but i think that's one of the major issues

384
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:12,240
with where we are today i'm curious what your thoughts are and kind of there's been a fair

385
00:43:12,240 --> 00:43:18,560
amount of lightning network fud recently perhaps a lot of it is also valid but just even if we look at

386
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:25,040
you know we look at custodial lighting services like wall of satoshi that was just is just moving

387
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:31,520
out of the us uh because they're going to get slapped with some money transmitter laws and

388
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:37,440
aml kyc crap and all that and that's a whole different rabbit hole but you know i think

389
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:43,040
one of the big critiques of lightning is that it works really well for in a custodial sense if

390
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:48,400
you're using wall to satoshi using something another custodial service but most people again

391
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:53,760
are probably not going to use lightning in a non custodial way because it's more difficult and

392
00:43:53,760 --> 00:44:01,760
it's more complex and you know i think that that's a fair critique in a number of ways i also i asked

393
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:10,080
myself the question is does the layer two need to be fully non custodial in terms of working in

394
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:15,760
day-to-day operations or is it okay for there to be a little bit of centralization on the

395
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:22,160
layer two as long as the layer one remains pure let's say and i'm curious of your thoughts of

396
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:28,080
kind of lightning and then we also have things like that are kind of built on top and around of that

397
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:34,400
like fediment and then you've got things like kai is working on with chami and e-cash um and where

398
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:39,840
you kind of see those fitting into the ecosystem do you think that those types of uh other layer

399
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:47,920
solutions are good good ways for us to still have a degree of sovereignty but solve some of the uh

400
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:55,600
the issues with the base layer um and can you talk a little bit about that

401
00:44:55,600 --> 00:45:03,360
well they're good for dealing with smaller amounts of money um the problem is that it's

402
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:11,920
i don't know that i can prove it but i would say it is impossible to create a second layer that has

403
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:20,560
the exact same security model as the base layer um pretty much all of these like even in the best

404
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:27,040
case like with lightning which um doesn't involve trusted third parties if you're doing it yourself

405
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:35,680
it's some pretty complicated game theory and so you know we're still finding edge cases

406
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:42,720
um and issues because it is a more complicated protocol but it also seems to be improving i mean

407
00:45:42,720 --> 00:45:50,560
from my own experience i've been running my own lightning node for i guess four years now um and

408
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:57,360
it has certainly gotten better in terms of reliability the tooling around managing liquidity

409
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:04,000
also continues to get better and i do believe that a lot of these liquidity issues will be

410
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:10,720
solvable in an automated fashion i think some people are even applying ai to help solve liquidity

411
00:46:10,720 --> 00:46:19,280
stuff um i gave a talk in berlin i think in 2018 or 2019 where i said that one of the

412
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:30,080
big looming issues with liquidity on lightning is that it's always going to be hobbled until we

413
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:36,880
get all of the exchanges on the lightning network um and that was both for economic reasons with how

414
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:44,560
lightning works as this like circular rebalancing mechanism um and and the ability for the exchanges

415
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:51,920
themselves to be liquidity providers and for people to be able to um automatically rebalance

416
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:59,360
their liquidity by sending payments you know out of band uh to and from the exchanges uh also from

417
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:05,520
the fact that something like 50 of all bitcoin transactions are just going from one exchange

418
00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:11,040
to another so it really really makes sense for the exchanges to all be on lightning and just be

419
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:16,320
sending you know these settlements off chain because they're doing it on chain right now and

420
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:23,760
i think in many cases they don't even know that they're doing it um we we were actually in a privileged

421
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:29,280
position when i was at bit go because we were powering a lot of the exchanges so i was able to

422
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:37,280
run analytics on you know private information where i could see that just the exchanges were sending

423
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:42,560
a lot of money back and forth to each other and and it was from a efficiency standpoint it was

424
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:49,920
kind of gross to to see but but there wasn't a good solution for it without destroying privacy

425
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:56,240
basically um but lightning is that solution and it sort of automatically deduplicates a lot of that

426
00:47:56,240 --> 00:48:03,600
back and forth liquidity flow just by having some big beefy channels in between these exchanges where

427
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:09,600
you're not having to actually uh make an on-chain transaction each time you're just you know rebalancing

428
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:18,560
that channel essentially right yep um you know it was there was also an interesting coincidence

429
00:48:18,560 --> 00:48:29,440
when i first joined bit go the bit go office was actually a rented unit inside of aol's headquarters

430
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,960
well that's kind of that's kind of wild does aol still have a headquarters

431
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:41,600
somewhere uh as of a few years ago they did in palo Alto wow okay okay that's that's good to know

432
00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:48,160
not i think it's a fair point about the exchanges and just we do have some evidence of the impact

433
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:53,760
on liquidity that exchange is getting on board lightning has because i believe bitfinex had

434
00:48:53,760 --> 00:49:00,240
provides something like a third or more of the liquidity on all of lightning like it's it's a

435
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:05,920
big big chunk of that because i think that they i believe they were the first exchange or at least

436
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:12,160
very large exchange to start doing that and obviously that has a huge impact and that's

437
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:18,240
one exchange you know you start getting that in bigger multiples and it's like okay that liquidity

438
00:49:18,240 --> 00:49:24,480
just you know it doubles and triples and and and keeps going up and that's better for all the users

439
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:31,280
of the network you know not it's also beneficial for the exchanges but i'm i'm curious a little bit

440
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:38,480
i want to circle back a bit to ossification because i think that that's again i'm still new around here

441
00:49:38,480 --> 00:49:44,800
but from my readings of you know a lot of older bitcoin articles and older bitcoin talks

442
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:51,360
it seems like ossification is a pretty perennial discussion and perhaps this is the case with

443
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:57,440
any network protocol that it needs to be discussed and that maybe there's always a

444
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:05,520
a trend towards ossification eventually but it becomes a question of when is the right time to

445
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:10,720
do that if there is ever a right time and again something that comes back to trade-offs where it's

446
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:18,240
what are the benefits of ossifying versus what are the dangers of doing that and what are we

447
00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:22,160
potentially what risks have we not thought about that we're closing ourselves off to

448
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:32,400
by ossifying and i think there's a lot of folks who come from the let's say more monetary side

449
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:37,600
of bitcoin if i can call it that that thing that okay the reason to osfie is because look we have

450
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:45,440
this perfect 21 million we have sound money we have a base layer that works so if it ain't broke

451
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:51,920
don't fix it let's not introduce potential chaos and unforeseen consequences by messing with something

452
00:50:51,920 --> 00:51:00,560
that is you know a once in humanity discovery on the other side of things you have people to say look

453
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:06,080
there are some things that need to be addressed like UTXOs are are going to you know there's not

454
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:11,680
going to be enough essentially for you know every one on the planet and certainly it's gonna

455
00:51:12,240 --> 00:51:17,680
bitcoin base layer is gonna price out most people from any sort of small transactions

456
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:24,080
and so i'm curious where you fall on that or perhaps a better way to address is how do you

457
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:30,560
how do you approach ossification on bitcoin how do you approach that discussion in terms of you know

458
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:36,880
you mentioned earlier some of the basically inviolable qualities of bitcoin some of which

459
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:42,880
are in conflict but you do have some lines in the sand i think but i'm curious what is your

460
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:49,280
take on that general discussion and maybe what do you think are some blind spots that folks are

461
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:58,000
are missing when it comes to that conversation well first of all i i kind of reject the premise

462
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:04,560
that a lot of people seem to act like ossification as a conscious decision it's really not it is a

463
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:10,480
phenomenon and all networks experience it it's it's almost a law of physics in the sense that

464
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:18,720
a network grows to a size at which it's no longer feasible for the participants to coordinate upgrades

465
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:25,440
or at least to coordinate upgrades that are breaking changes right because there's no authority

466
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:30,720
that can just make everybody update their protocol it's basically like asking people to switch to

467
00:52:30,720 --> 00:52:36,400
a different language and if you're no longer speaking the same language you've lost that

468
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:42,160
network effect so you know bitcoin has built up in a pretty immense network effect at this point

469
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:49,360
obviously we don't want to break it and we saw what happens when you do break it in 2017

470
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:56,400
these other networks end up being a tiny fraction of a percent of the network effect and thus value

471
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:05,280
but you know i think any serious engineer that you talk to is going to tell you that your

472
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:11,520
software is never finished that there's no such thing as a perfect software perfect protocol

473
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:19,360
you know smtp isn't perfect really none none of the networking protocols that we use don't have room

474
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:24,000
for improvement it's just no longer feasible to improve them because there's billions of people

475
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:29,920
and billions of devices that are running the software that can't all be coordinated to update in

476
00:53:29,920 --> 00:53:40,640
concert with each other so my sort of techno accelerationists and optimists perspective is

477
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:47,280
that we need to keep pushing forward and keep trying to improve bitcoin as much as possible

478
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:54,480
before it's too late because it will become a point at which no one will be able to you know

479
00:53:54,480 --> 00:54:01,920
propose changes to bitcoin that are able to get consensus and one of the other things well

480
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:11,040
i i don't really push for any specific protocol change i think that we should prioritize

481
00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:20,560
protocol changes that a improve the like efficiency and scalability of bitcoin especially to act as

482
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:27,520
a sort of cryptographic accumulator like anything that will help people build other layers and and

483
00:54:28,240 --> 00:54:36,080
and also anything that will make permissionless innovation in the bitcoin ecosystem easier

484
00:54:36,080 --> 00:54:41,520
and you know specifically around that one thing that i keep mentioning is the the trustless two

485
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:48,640
way peg is kind of the holy grail of side chains that we were promised a decade ago that have never

486
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:53,920
materialized there are a few people that are working on that type of thing it's it's not clear

487
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:03,760
you know which of them if any are going to end up being viable but the other thing is that while

488
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:11,040
as you mentioned we have to be wary of making changes to bitcoin because there will always be

489
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:17,440
unforeseen consequences the flip side of that that few people talk about is that not making

490
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:24,960
changes to bitcoin also has unforeseen consequences and this kind of ties into the smtp history

491
00:55:25,600 --> 00:55:32,320
is that the way that i kind of summarize all of this is that you can ossify a protocol but you

492
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:38,240
cannot ossify the rest of the world and so what happens in the question you have to ask yourself

493
00:55:38,240 --> 00:55:44,480
is if a protocol is ossified and something changes about the world and how people are using that

494
00:55:44,480 --> 00:55:51,680
protocol for example with email as it as it hit mass adoption and and all of a sudden there were

495
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:58,880
spammers that started using it this was an unforeseen adversary that that smtp had not been designed

496
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:08,560
to withstand you know if if a new adversary or some new issue arises that degrades or breaks

497
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:13,600
the usage of bitcoin you know what are we going to do are we just going to throw up our hands and

498
00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:20,800
say okay well it's ossified so we'll have to deal with it you know if you want to get really nerdy

499
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:25,920
at some technical level like there are some things that will have to be changed in the protocol

500
00:56:26,800 --> 00:56:33,360
probably in a non-backwards compatible way you know these things are many decades away

501
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:40,560
but part of me because i think about bitcoin from a generational perspective part of me wonders

502
00:56:40,560 --> 00:56:53,200
is what happens if we stop making you know changes to bitcoin at the protocol and consensus layer

503
00:56:54,320 --> 00:57:00,400
and then we need to make a change and literally no one who is a bitcoin developer has been around

504
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:08,240
to shepherd such a change through the system is it possible that bitcoin as an ecosystem

505
00:57:08,240 --> 00:57:12,400
could grind to a halt because it's not able to coordinate a change anymore that's like one of

506
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:19,200
the weird edge case long-term future things i worry about well i think that it's a good thing to

507
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:26,160
worry about the long term and it's also natural if you're operating from a place of a low time

508
00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:32,560
preference thinking about generation to generation transfer like that has to be part of our thinking

509
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:40,080
right because you know we where everyone here is going to die eventually like we this is just a

510
00:57:40,720 --> 00:57:46,000
humans have not figured out a way around that yet right like with certainty we will all die and

511
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:53,040
we have uncertainty about when that will happen but given that and given the fact that bitcoin is

512
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:59,120
actually a viable tool for storing wealth and being able to pass that wealth along to other

513
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:04,720
generations i think that it's something that should be very much at the forefront of these

514
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:11,200
discussions and i'm curious i mean if you can go a little bit more into the specifics because i think

515
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:18,320
for some people they've heard it's often difficult to separate what is the fud about bitcoin from

516
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:23,680
what are the actual things at a protocol level which are going to cause some problems down the

517
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:30,320
road especially for folks who aren't technical so can you give kind of the the overview of what are

518
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:35,520
the the main concerns at the protocol level that are kind of let's say those intergenerational concerns

519
00:58:38,080 --> 00:58:45,520
oh i mean there's there's a few weird things like you know maximum integers that that are used

520
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:53,200
for things like timestamps and block heights that you know are probably 50 plus years away

521
00:58:53,200 --> 00:59:01,760
from overflowing and breaking the protocol if nothing has changed on the more immediate

522
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:11,920
time scale i think it's people will talk about quantum computing possibly in the next decade or two

523
00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:20,560
you know does does bitcoin need to upgrade to quantum resistant hashing to protect our

524
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:28,000
addresses and funds and whatnot kind of related to that which i have a half written blog post is

525
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:35,760
what do we do with satoshi's stash if we assume that satoshi is gone possibly dead and would not

526
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:42,800
be able to you know move and update their funds to be quantum resistant do we just allow people

527
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:51,280
you know early quantum computer builders to get those funds as a bounty or do we burn them or what

528
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:59,200
you know there's some interesting philosophical questions there as well i that is actually

529
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:04,320
that's a really interesting question that'd be i mean that would be really the bounty of all bounties

530
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:12,640
wouldn't it i mean that's a wow it's quite an incentive i guess to try and build a successful

531
01:00:12,640 --> 01:00:18,400
quantum computer to be able to attack the the network i suppose you know i you mentioned also just

532
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:27,200
the unforesee or when people say oh you know we implemented this change and we didn't think

533
01:00:27,200 --> 01:00:35,360
that somebody would use this new this new enhancement to do xyz do you put like the the

534
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:42,880
ordinals and brc20s into that bucket or what is i know it's a very polarizing topic depending on

535
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:47,120
who you talk to and depending also where on the industry they fall because for instance miners

536
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:52,880
tend to really like that fees have been up but we've also seen you know fees are likely going to

537
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:58,640
continue rising regardless and obviously going to continue rising in fiat terms uh because of the

538
01:00:58,640 --> 01:01:04,160
nature of bitcoin i don't buy much of the bitcoin security model is broken thing if we talk about

539
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:09,040
bitcoin repricing the entire world but i'm curious where you fall in that because obviously

540
01:01:09,040 --> 01:01:14,720
that is one of those cases where it was not anticipated that people would use upgrades in

541
01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:20,160
this way and oh it's made a lot of people angry it's made a lot of people very happy you think

542
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:30,560
it's very fun what's your take on that whole i mean using bitcoin as a database as data storage

543
01:01:31,520 --> 01:01:37,200
that's not new the only thing that was really new about inscriptions was that they were able to

544
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:48,000
i think take advantage of taproot to to put data into transactions more cheaply than was

545
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:55,680
possible before it was always possible before we've had people inscribe the white paper into the

546
01:01:55,680 --> 01:02:01,280
blockchain like 10 years ago there's actually a really cool command you can run on the command

547
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:06,320
line to extract and reconstitute the pdf of the bitcoin white paper if you have a full node

548
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:14,400
but just using bitcoin as data storage i don't think that's a problem i think that you know the

549
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:20,640
economics work themselves out there where if you're if you're going to be using bitcoin as data

550
01:02:20,640 --> 01:02:27,600
storage that data better be pretty damn valuable and you're going to need to be able to compete in

551
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:35,040
the market against people who are doing other valuable things so you know i i i wasn't surprised

552
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:42,960
by people you know taking the sort of nft hype and transferring it over to bitcoin but i also

553
01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:51,200
don't think that it's as sustainable as say nft is on salana um just due to how much more expensive

554
01:02:51,200 --> 01:03:01,120
it is i i suspect that if bitcoin is able to maintain some semblance of an nft ecosystem it's

555
01:03:01,120 --> 01:03:09,200
going to be relegated to you know hundred thousand dollar type uh really niche artwork uh the sort

556
01:03:09,200 --> 01:03:16,320
of like board ape crypto punk level stuff and it's not it's not going to be for the the layman you

557
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:21,760
know creating five dollar ten dollar things because in most of those other ecosystems you know they're

558
01:03:21,760 --> 01:03:28,720
not actually storing the entire file in in the blockchain or the the data layer or whatever

559
01:03:28,720 --> 01:03:33,040
they're just putting pointers in there so it's a lot cheaper and it's cheaper for other reasons too

560
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:40,880
uh i appreciate the explanation there because i i tend to agree that a lot of the problem or quote

561
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:48,480
problems that people see with something like inscriptions and then ordinals on top of that or

562
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:55,600
you know any of these things a lot of them work themselves out because the economics need to work

563
01:03:55,600 --> 01:04:03,760
and if they don't like you know unless you want to really try and control that uh and i suppose if

564
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:10,000
you do really want to try and control that and have that not be possible anymore uh that means

565
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:15,600
maybe you don't have a ton of faith in just the operation of the free market to try and seek you

566
01:04:15,600 --> 01:04:21,440
know effective ways to deploy capital because at a certain point it's like okay if you want to

567
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:28,400
you know spend transaction fees on this then okay great eventually that will price out the majority

568
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:33,760
of the market who may want to use that and i think it's also something that's missed which you

569
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:40,400
pointed out which is that inscriptions have been done for a long time ordinals is something a little

570
01:04:40,400 --> 01:04:45,200
bit different i suppose the actual creating a number system assigning a little bit more of

571
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:52,880
uh you know value to certain numbers or like the rare sats idea but ordinals is just a meta protocol

572
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:59,680
right and and so you can you can kind of think of it as a second layer that's that's it's

573
01:05:01,120 --> 01:05:07,280
much more amorphous in nature than the other layers in the sense that it's not even really

574
01:05:07,280 --> 01:05:12,560
creating any other data outside of the blockchain all that it's doing is looking at data in the

575
01:05:12,560 --> 01:05:19,920
blockchain and then ascribing other value to it um and i think people are free to you know

576
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:25,600
hallucinate and create their own meta protocols that don't change bitcoin in any way they're just

577
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:30,960
creating completely other software that interprets the blockchain data in a different way but i

578
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:38,400
bet that what almost nobody realizes unless you've been around for a decade is that there was an

579
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:48,800
intense debate in probably 2013 or 2014 maybe even earlier about the uh op return size and

580
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:56,480
back in in the early days i think when op return was first introduced it allowed

581
01:05:57,680 --> 01:06:06,640
40 bytes of data to be stored in the op return output and there was this massive debate

582
01:06:06,640 --> 01:06:12,480
between the protocol developers about like whether this should be good or bad or whatever and it was

583
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:20,080
from one perspective it was considered good because i think the op return UTXOs themselves are

584
01:06:20,080 --> 01:06:28,880
prunable so the nodes can throw them away because they're they're they're unspendable um but then

585
01:06:29,280 --> 01:06:35,760
i think there were some i forget if it was the what eventually became the omni protocol uh i

586
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:41,920
think it was master coin back then but there were some developers who said when 40 bytes isn't enough

587
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:47,600
can we get 80 bytes and so there's massive debate for i think several months if not longer and

588
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:52,880
eventually the op return data size did get bumped up to 80 bytes but you know this just kind of goes

589
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:57,920
to show you like storing arbitrary data in the bitcoin blockchain is not new by any means uh

590
01:06:57,920 --> 01:07:04,320
you know history is just repeating itself in a slightly different way it's a always good to be

591
01:07:04,320 --> 01:07:10,320
a student of history in that regard then so you can have a little bit more perspective on what's

592
01:07:10,320 --> 01:07:16,080
actually happening there i'd like to switch gears a little bit but stay on the topic of protocols

593
01:07:16,640 --> 01:07:23,520
and talk a bit about uh noster because i think that it's something that's i mean over it's we're

594
01:07:23,520 --> 01:07:30,800
coming up on about a year it was kind of early december uh when when i joined noster last year

595
01:07:30,800 --> 01:07:36,000
uh that's when things started really you know jack posted about it on twitter uh maybe

596
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:42,880
third week of december something like that and it just blew up uh i was actually just the other day

597
01:07:42,880 --> 01:07:48,800
i was talking with will kasarin and we were kind of just recounting the absurd uh progression and

598
01:07:48,800 --> 01:07:54,800
pace of development on noster this year and also the many attempts at censoring from elon calling

599
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:59,680
it out uh when everyone was like what what is this noster he's listing by mastodon and these other

600
01:07:59,680 --> 01:08:08,480
things uh and then to the chinese app store of pulling it down two zaps getting pulled off of

601
01:08:09,200 --> 01:08:18,720
ios clients and in the meantime all these developers building just at a rapid fire pace

602
01:08:19,280 --> 01:08:27,440
and building all sorts of things but you know you've been pretty active on noster since very early on

603
01:08:27,440 --> 01:08:33,040
uh and i'd love your thoughts on kind of where you see it evolving to next as someone who is an

604
01:08:33,040 --> 01:08:40,480
engineer and a technologist obviously it's being used as a social media protocol right now but it's

605
01:08:40,480 --> 01:08:46,960
notes and other stuff transmitted by relays there is and it's ultimately just a censorship resistant

606
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:53,600
messaging protocol right so the possibilities for how it can be used are pretty endless and i'm

607
01:08:53,600 --> 01:09:00,320
curious where you see the that ecosystem moving and developing or maybe some applications of it

608
01:09:00,320 --> 01:09:09,920
that you are really excited about yeah so i think about a month ago i published uh my own

609
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:20,720
exploration into sovereignty on noster and um finally getting around to your running my own relay

610
01:09:20,720 --> 01:09:32,640
and um migrating all of my tweets uh over to it and and copying all of my past year of notes

611
01:09:32,640 --> 01:09:39,120
from other relays over to mine just uh you know so that i could have better you know data integrity

612
01:09:39,120 --> 01:09:45,760
guarantees that i wasn't going to get rug pulled um i would say you know it still has a lot of

613
01:09:45,760 --> 01:09:53,520
problems um i still have open questions around the like long-term economic incentives um one of my

614
01:09:53,520 --> 01:09:59,520
favorite things about it is just the lightning integration uh i've been using lightning daily

615
01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:06,160
as a result of this uh where i was before i was barely ever using lightning i barely had the

616
01:10:06,160 --> 01:10:11,600
opportunity to make lightning payments but but zaps have really changed the game there and uh

617
01:10:11,600 --> 01:10:22,160
the i think that if we improve the onboarding experience and make discoverability more twitter

618
01:10:22,160 --> 01:10:27,680
like then that could get more people to come over but right now it's still too high a bar i hear a

619
01:10:27,680 --> 01:10:33,760
lot of people say you know they they poke around and they install an app and and don't necessarily

620
01:10:33,760 --> 01:10:38,480
know like what to do next and that's that's a result of the decentralization you know we're

621
01:10:38,480 --> 01:10:43,440
not putting all the data in one big honeypot and running analytics over it and machine learning

622
01:10:43,440 --> 01:10:48,320
all this other stuff though though i think you know some of the services like primal and stuff

623
01:10:48,320 --> 01:10:58,560
are starting to do that um but yeah so from bigger bigger than just social media i think the

624
01:10:59,200 --> 01:11:05,520
the best way that i've heard it described and this will probably go over a lot of people's heads

625
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:13,360
but uh it's a decentralized message bus and this is getting like really low level like

626
01:11:13,360 --> 01:11:22,080
talking about like almost like motherboard hardware level of what is this new network

627
01:11:23,120 --> 01:11:33,920
it's a new communication network but it's one where you you basically you you put data out

628
01:11:33,920 --> 01:11:38,960
onto a server and then anyone who wants to can connect to the server and read that data

629
01:11:40,080 --> 01:11:46,480
that's a very simple primitive way of describing it but if you think of it it means it's just a

630
01:11:46,480 --> 01:11:56,080
new way of sharing data and you it just happens to be that the data itself has some integrity

631
01:11:56,080 --> 01:12:02,960
guarantees due to cryptography and you know the signing of of these notes so what does that mean

632
01:12:02,960 --> 01:12:14,400
it means that that now we have a communications platform with authentication built in at the

633
01:12:14,400 --> 01:12:21,040
message level and what do i mean by that well you know if you go to facebook or tech talk or

634
01:12:21,040 --> 01:12:29,120
twitter or whatever you see a feed and you see posts from other people but you don't actually

635
01:12:29,120 --> 01:12:35,120
know that those people made that post you're trusting the third party server that they got

636
01:12:35,120 --> 01:12:40,000
that post and they authenticated that person's account and that person hasn't been taken over

637
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:44,720
and of course anyone who's been on bitcoin twitter knows that like one of the biggest scams out there

638
01:12:44,720 --> 01:12:50,640
is to you know sim swap someone hack their twitter account and put out you know some some sort of

639
01:12:50,640 --> 01:12:57,280
phishing scam or giveaway or airdrop or whatever that then drains people's crypto or you know

640
01:12:57,280 --> 01:13:05,440
you know praise upon their greed to get them to send you money um that's not feasible on this new

641
01:13:05,440 --> 01:13:13,280
network because uh they have to actually get your private key you know they can't just uh

642
01:13:14,240 --> 01:13:20,960
fool a a third party authentication service and claim to be you and bypass it and then start posting

643
01:13:20,960 --> 01:13:33,840
as you so that means we can do this now we can use this as a mechanism for other forms of interaction

644
01:13:36,000 --> 01:13:42,000
it's it's almost mind boggling to try to say what does that mean but you know you can look at

645
01:13:42,000 --> 01:13:49,840
at some of the example one of the first non social media examples that i recall uh being built a year

646
01:13:49,840 --> 01:13:59,760
ago was a chess game right so so now we have the ability uh you know without a trusted third party

647
01:13:59,760 --> 01:14:07,440
to play a game of chess with someone else you know over the internet uh and and we know that you

648
01:14:07,440 --> 01:14:13,680
know each move that you make is posting a note and you can then update your own your local database

649
01:14:13,680 --> 01:14:19,840
where all the the chess pieces are and you know that when you get a move uh that you're reading

650
01:14:19,840 --> 01:14:24,560
from a relay you know that that's the your actual opponent because you know cryptographically signed

651
01:14:24,560 --> 01:14:29,520
messages authenticated the protocol level now it doesn't sound very interesting unless you're

652
01:14:29,520 --> 01:14:37,360
really into chess but now you know take that assurance and use it for something that's more

653
01:14:37,360 --> 01:14:47,360
valuable that's more sensitive so in the context of bitcoin there are other things that you may want

654
01:14:47,360 --> 01:14:58,960
to to be able to you know coordinate between multiple parties so um a tuning casa's horn uh

655
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:05,680
earlier this year we had a team went a hackathon where they created a project called Munster

656
01:15:05,680 --> 01:15:15,600
and basically it was a way of um setting up a you know multi-person multi-sig wallet where

657
01:15:15,600 --> 01:15:22,160
you're using noster to coordinate so you're using it to coordinate the initialization of the wallet

658
01:15:22,160 --> 01:15:27,120
and the exchanging of the public keys and derivation pass and wallet descriptors and then when you

659
01:15:27,120 --> 01:15:30,880
want to actually go spend the funds from the wallet you're using to coordinate you know the

660
01:15:30,880 --> 01:15:36,080
partially signed bitcoin transactions um you could do the same thing i think i think there's some

661
01:15:36,080 --> 01:15:41,920
projects right now that are doing that for coin join you know uh once again any sort of multi-party

662
01:15:41,920 --> 01:15:50,400
usage of bitcoin uh it would be directly applicable and and really the possibilities beyond that are

663
01:15:50,400 --> 01:15:55,920
are pretty enormous i think that that's such an important thing that maybe a lot of people are

664
01:15:55,920 --> 01:16:04,160
missing right now is just the importance of being able to uh economically coordinate because if you

665
01:16:04,160 --> 01:16:09,760
are trusting okay we have bitcoin which is no trusted third party right if we're using it in

666
01:16:09,760 --> 01:16:16,960
as close a sovereign way we're holding our own keys and maybe we have a multi-sig setup but

667
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:23,680
if we don't have a way to coordinate the exchange of that value so i want to send bitcoin to somebody

668
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:31,440
on the other side of the world and i'm trusting uh whatsapp or telegram or some other form of

669
01:16:31,440 --> 01:16:36,320
messenger to relay the communication of okay you know they're going to send me their address i'm

670
01:16:36,320 --> 01:16:44,480
going to you know copy and paste that and and send the bitcoin over to them but i'm then not having

671
01:16:44,480 --> 01:16:48,560
trust uh you know i have no trusted third party in bitcoin but i've just introduced a trusted third

672
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:54,560
party into the economic coordination at the messaging layer and so having a way to have a

673
01:16:54,560 --> 01:17:01,280
censorship resistant and cryptographically signed economic coordination mechanism which is what

674
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:06,960
noster already is and can be in as you just described multiple other ways is an incredibly

675
01:17:06,960 --> 01:17:14,320
valuable thing you know aside from the obvious benefits of having a social media protocol for

676
01:17:14,320 --> 01:17:22,400
free speech having a way to freely coordinate is a really really powerful thing and i'm excited to see

677
01:17:23,040 --> 01:17:28,480
the other intersections that are created between bitcoin and noster i i love zapps zapps are a

678
01:17:28,480 --> 01:17:35,840
brilliant thing using value to actually provide uh the ultimate social signal which is a value-based

679
01:17:35,840 --> 01:17:42,160
signal right not just a meaningless like which can be spammed by a million bots providing something

680
01:17:42,160 --> 01:17:47,680
that actually has monetary value attached to it that is also incredibly powerful just from the

681
01:17:47,680 --> 01:17:53,360
social protocol perspective but i'm really excited to see what else is built a will's prediction in

682
01:17:53,360 --> 01:17:58,960
this next year is that it'll be the year of the algorithm for noster but the opt-in algorithm so

683
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:02,080
i'm i'm excited to see what that means because i think it's going to help with discoverability

684
01:18:02,080 --> 01:18:06,720
it's going to help with onboarding because it's more familiar to be able to say okay you know even

685
01:18:06,720 --> 01:18:12,720
something as rudimentary but brilliant as twitter's old in case you missed it algorithm that you know

686
01:18:12,720 --> 01:18:17,040
okay you've been off for a day here's you know in case you missed it here's what you probably

687
01:18:17,040 --> 01:18:22,000
would like to see those things are really beneficial and and help to just keep people coming back as

688
01:18:22,000 --> 01:18:33,280
well so one random idea that i pitched a few months ago was uh only zapps like there's no reason why

689
01:18:33,280 --> 01:18:40,160
we couldn't recreate only fans on noster and have the content creators you know hosting their content

690
01:18:40,160 --> 01:18:45,760
on their own paid relays and you have to you know zap them and then they get the money directly and

691
01:18:45,760 --> 01:18:51,280
there's no third party taking a huge cut and and and the reason that i say this is because i think

692
01:18:51,840 --> 01:19:00,400
there's there's a well-known trope that you know any sufficiently new and disruptive technology

693
01:19:00,400 --> 01:19:08,320
needs to be adopted by the porn industry the sex industry it's a trope for a reason though right

694
01:19:08,320 --> 01:19:15,280
but it's it's an interesting thing too not just for adult entertainers let's say but for anyone

695
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:21,920
the idea of content specific paid relays so having that because we talked about just the

696
01:19:21,920 --> 01:19:25,360
the economics incentives of you know of relays for example obviously there is a

697
01:19:25,360 --> 01:19:30,720
a cost associated with running those people are doing a lot of subscriptions or that sort of thing

698
01:19:30,720 --> 01:19:36,960
right now paying to access the relay but i think another model we'll see emerge is content specific

699
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:42,160
where you know or creator specific whatever that might be but you're paying to access that relay

700
01:19:42,160 --> 01:19:47,040
because that's the only place that this whatever type of content it is that you want to see it's

701
01:19:47,040 --> 01:19:52,720
the only place that it's available or it's curating an incredibly high signal uh you know

702
01:19:52,720 --> 01:19:59,360
collection of those you know bits of data that fit that particular criteria and i'm interested to see

703
01:20:00,000 --> 01:20:05,920
kind of how that develops as we see more and more relays pop up but it's exciting to see this uh

704
01:20:06,640 --> 01:20:13,200
see it really take off and i mean it's it still hasn't been very long uh we're still early to

705
01:20:14,160 --> 01:20:20,080
you know use a covenant meme but uh so james i do want to be i want to be conscious of your

706
01:20:20,080 --> 01:20:26,640
very scarce time here i know you have a newsletter to finish up uh but i would like to just end with

707
01:20:26,640 --> 01:20:31,360
a completely uh non-related bitcoin question which is are you reading anything right now

708
01:20:32,080 --> 01:20:35,520
even if it is bitcoin related that's okay but are you reading anything right now that you'd

709
01:20:35,520 --> 01:20:40,400
recommend uh that's really got you excited or that you've found particularly interesting

710
01:20:42,000 --> 01:20:47,680
oh well right now i'm in the middle of reading outlive by dr peter atia

711
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:54,960
um okay i may be mispronouncing his name but uh he's basically a longevity doctor and that actually

712
01:20:54,960 --> 01:21:02,800
ties into the article i'm writing right now about my recent cholesterol saga with my doctors

713
01:21:03,680 --> 01:21:09,680
okay well i'm i'm excited to check that out i'm i'm always curious what what bitcoiners are reading

714
01:21:10,480 --> 01:21:15,440
because especially for someone like you you've probably read um the vast majority of the bitcoin

715
01:21:15,440 --> 01:21:20,720
books that are out there so at least you've got that backlog taken care of and then i'll i'm gonna

716
01:21:20,720 --> 01:21:26,240
link to uh obviously to your noster to your twitter and to uh your website because i think it's one of

717
01:21:26,240 --> 01:21:32,640
the best resources around for uh new and experienced bitcoiners alike is there anywhere else that i

718
01:21:32,640 --> 01:21:41,840
should send people uh bitcoin dot page and kasa dot i o or all you need all right all right well

719
01:21:41,840 --> 01:21:48,800
i'll include those as well uh but jameson thank you so much i know uh bitcoin is scarce but bitcoin

720
01:21:48,800 --> 01:21:53,280
podcasts are abundant so thank you for spending your scarce time to come on to another fucking

721
01:21:53,280 --> 01:21:59,760
bitcoin podcast really enjoyed this uh learned some new things as well and can't thank you enough

722
01:22:00,640 --> 01:22:01,840
you bet thanks for having me

723
01:22:01,840 --> 01:22:14,240
and that's a wrap on this bitcoin talk episode of the bitcoin podcast if you are a bitcoin only

724
01:22:14,240 --> 01:22:20,160
company interested in sponsoring another fucking bitcoin podcast head to bitcoinpodcast.net or hit

725
01:22:20,160 --> 01:22:27,520
me up on social media on noster head to primal.net slash walker and on twitter search for at walker

726
01:22:27,520 --> 01:22:34,640
america or at titcoin podcast you can also watch the video version of this show on x or on youtube

727
01:22:34,640 --> 01:22:41,920
by going to youtube.com slash out walker america or rumble by searching for at walker america bitcoin

728
01:22:41,920 --> 01:22:49,280
is scarce there will only ever be 21 million but bitcoin podcasts are abundant so thank you for

729
01:22:49,280 --> 01:23:05,200
spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking bitcoin podcast until next time stay free