You think it's just a malicious attack on Bitcoin?
It's definitely a malicious attack at this point.
The people that have basically taken control of the GitHub project are bad actors.
They are not looking out for Bitcoin's interests.
They have some ulterior motive.
To me, it doesn't make any sense why you would be involved in a project
if you were actively trying to sabotage it.
For what reason?
You can't sabotage a project unless you get involved in it.
True.
The immediate danger is the illegal data problem, which has been created by Core30,
actively making it easier to spam and making it a supported use case.
Bitcoin isn't intended to be a file sharing network.
What is Bitcoin supposed to be?
What is spam?
Can you define spam?
Anything that people have not consented to.
When you run Bitcoin, you're running it for a specific purpose,
and there's only one purpose that was there intended from the start that everyone has agreed to.
Calling it censorship to keep Bitcoin what it's supposed to be and stop attacks is nonsense.
The way Bitcoin works is that the nodes are the ones enforcing the rules.
If you're not running a full node, you're not verifying that according to those rules they paid you.
You think that they paid you when they haven't.
If you're not enforcing the rules, nobody is.
People need to actually choose to run a full node.
A lot of people today don't even have a computer, they just have a phone.
They're not going to have a full node on their phone at this point.
Correct, then people were running full nodes on their phone.
But it's only gotten harder and harder because the block size is such that the blockchain grows faster than the technology is.
Keeping up with improving on processing that data.
If we went down to what number would you be like really concerned about it?
I'm really concerned about it already.
I mean, it was 200,000 back in 2017.
The highest it's been recently is 100,000.
It wasn't really until COVID hit and the government started printing money like crazy
that it became clear that if Bitcoin didn't work out, the economy is always not going to work out.
You said that Bitcoin's odds of succeeding as a decentralized currency might be as low as 3% to 4%.
Why are we in that much danger right now?
The probability of success is low, but it's there.
I'm working as hard as I can to get Bitcoin to meet that small probability.
Down the rabbit hole.
Cypherpunk.
Welcome back to Cypherpunct, where we explore money's history, crypto's future, and Web3's
role in advancing human rights and freedom and digital liberty.
Today's guest is Luke Dash Jr., one of the longest tenured Bitcoin core developers,
contributing since 2011. He is the creator and lead maintainer of Bitcoin Knotts, an alternative
Bitcoin node implementation focused on decentralization, user sovereignty, and resisting
protocol abuse. Luke is also the CTO and co-founder of Ocean, the Bitcoin mining pool designed to
return block construction to individual miners and reduce systemic mining centralization. Luke
played a critical role during the 2013 Bitcoin chain split, helping guide the network away from
an unnecessary hard fork that could have permanently fractured Bitcoin. He has been described by peers,
including Jack Dorsey as a guardian of Bitcoin and is known for his uncompromising defense of
Bitcoin as decentralized, censorship-resistant sound money. Welcome to the show, my man.
Thanks.
So Luke, tell me about yourself. What did you do before Bitcoin? What was your early life like?
How did you even get involved?
Before Bitcoin, I kind of came to Bitcoin from the open source side. I've been involved in
open source for a long time. I did some work on BitTorrent clients and other file sharing network
stuff. Did some work in
telephony systems.
What do you think
about the idea of open source
projects versus closed source, like this idea
of the cathedral versus the bazaar?
Cathedral versus
the bazaar is more about
centralized versus decentralized
development. As far
as I'm concerned, closed source
basically doesn't exist.
Okay, that makes sense. Have you ever
seen that
I was looking at the other day because I was interested just to see how Bitcoin has evolved
as an open source project. And there's like this really cool video that just shows all of the code
commits. I think it was made like in 2017, like it ends in 2017, but like it shows from the beginning
of the Bitcoin to 2017. And it just shows how the network evolves and it like has all these little
dot points. It's really, it's really cool. And I saw your name on there a lot, like moving in,
coming back, coming out. It was like really, really interesting to visualize the creation of
like an open source project with all of these random people that are coming and some people
coming three years later, some people coming seven years later, some people, you know, coming for one
year and disappearing and then, you know, people coming in and out and back. It was just like,
it was really interesting to visualize that. Do you, when you think about closed source projects,
is there any positive reason to have a closed source project or would you say
that all projects should be open source
or it really depends on what you're trying to build.
Everything should be open source.
If you don't have the source code, how can you ever trust it?
Okay, that makes sense.
I think the counter argument from the closed source community would be,
or people that have closed source stuff would be,
we don't want someone to steal our code
or we don't want someone to find a hack in the code
or something along those lines.
People who are trying to compromise programs
can do it with or without the code.
It's really just the defenders, the good actors,
who are kind of put at a disadvantage by not having access to the code.
Can you unpack that a little bit?
The attackers are used to working with closed source things.
They're used to looking at the low-level assembly code, the byte code,
the way the CPU works with it, just in the closed source program.
they don't i mean they gain probably a little bit of benefit from having source goods review
but not nearly as much a benefit as the people who would find the vulnerability and fix it
interesting yeah it's that the more eyeballs what was the there's a great quote i think it's by
linus like with more eyeballs all bugs are shallow or something like that do you know what i'm talking
about the quote no there's some there's some quote that i think linus torvalds uh said that
was like with enough eyes all bugs are shallow or something like something to the extent of what
you were describing right there um as far as all the projects you've worked on do you
obviously bitcoin is your most passionate project that you've that you've seen what did it feel like
when you discovered bitcoin did you instantly realize the significance of what bitcoin was or
was it kind of like oh here's something interesting is it like similar to bittorin or other open
source projects? Were you like, kind of,
wow, this is amazing. Did you have that?
No, actually, I
saw Bitcoin as kind of just a
nerdy experimental project
to, you know,
advance the ability to use non-decimal
number systems with currency.
It wasn't really until
COVID hit and
the government started printing money like
crazy that it became clear that
if we didn't,
if Bitcoin didn't work out,
the economy as a whole was
not gonna work out we'll have some dark years ahead if we don't make interesting work i mean
it was like i did a book series with larry lapard and we talked about his book the big print
and like if you look at the data over you know the past century or whatever it just seems like
every time there's an issue or problem the printers fire up and it just gets bigger and
more adamant like more pronounced like i think with covid it was like 50 of all the dollars that
have ever existed you know in 120 years they've made in like four months or something crazy yeah
we went down a path we're not going to ever return a month to us dollar it's pretty much a guaranteed
failure at this point it's just a matter of time matter of time so um obviously the the history of
all fiat currencies have essentially ended in failure right i mean so i'm only through the need
to avoid at this point which what you just said is you know it's not the it's not the exception
it's literally the rule i mean the exception is a fiat currency that lasts for a very long period
of time. Because the world reserve currency, at least for sure, has always changed hands. It's
always been different as time goes on. And usually fiat currency failure is the product.
Once you get humans in that loop that can kind of arbitrarily make decisions,
especially if they don't have to bear the consequences of those decisions.
The way I think about money printing is like it's like doing drugs. It's like you feel great
right away, but then you get all the consequences a little bit later that are delayed,
that are way worse than had you just not done drugs.
I'll have to take your word for it.
Well, I don't do drugs, but I'm just throwing it out there.
I'm just throwing it out there as an analogy, right?
Oh, man.
So obviously you worked with Core for a very long time.
What made you decide to start a separate implementation?
And when did you decide that you couldn't work with Core anymore?
I mean, can you talk about that a little bit?
I mean, Bitcoin Nuts began pretty much the same time Bitcoin Core began.
They've been peacefully coexisting in parallel for 15 years now or something like that.
And to an extent, I still work with Core to the extent that the gatekeepers let me.
The gatekeepers.
so can like for our non like non-technical audience can you explain a little bit like how
that how that how that would work like you can run us you're running knots at the same time but
you're also you know pushing things to core as well you guys are kind of sharing ideas i mean
just unpack that a little bit i'm not technical at all and most of our audience probably is not
both bitcoin knots and core are based on the code that satoshi released way back when and so the the
code bases are almost identical really.
Nots usually rebases on and pulls in everything core does,
every release usually.
And so they remain very similar.
The only difference is that not says usually more features,
more fixes merged than core does.
Interesting.
Let's talk a little bit about the idea of,
because I know this has been a big controversy,
obviously with knots and core,
The idea of using Bitcoin block space for non-monetary things, transactions that are non-monetary in nature.
How do you, like, with somebody who's not technical, like my first thought was, oh, if somebody pays, they should just be able to put whatever they want on Bitcoin because the fee is the filter, right?
That's like the way that I always thought.
As I learned more, now I'm not so sure.
As I watched a lot of debates play out,
my mind's been changed a little bit on some of these issues.
Satoshi, I mean, on the very first block he ever pushed through on the blockchain,
there was non-financial information on there.
I know there's different ways you can put information on chain.
You can put it in the block header.
You can put it actually in the transaction.
Can you explain that a little bit in layman's terms for people?
I mean, Bitcoin is not a storage system.
It's not designed for that.
It's not intended for that.
It's only the last year or two that people have started trying to exploit it for that purpose.
Satoshi's, the Genesis block, uses the Coinbase.
Every block has 100 bytes that are reserved for the miners that can be put arbitrary, whatever.
And it's 100 bytes a block that's like maybe a few kilobytes a year.
But in the Genesis block, Satoshi used that specifically,
one to make a political statement, obviously,
but it also had the parallel purpose of proving that he did not pre-mine Bitcoin.
That newspaper headline was the same day he launched the Bitcoin blockchain.
Yeah.
And so anyone could see that he had not mined for months other blocks based on this.
It was proof of, it was kind of like proof of fair mining, a fair launch.
Yeah, basically.
Proof that there was no...
pre-mining at all.
Do you,
this 100 bytes that's set aside
for the miner that publishes,
is it possible that,
like, are, obviously most people
are not putting non-financial information
in there, or are they using that space
to put non-financial information right now?
It's usually used to identify
who mines the block.
The pools that find the block
usually put the pool name in there.
With Ocean, because the miners
make their own blocks, they put other stuff in there.
is it possible to sell that space to make extra revenue,
a place to put information,
or is that not a thing that occurs right now?
Is it possible to sell?
Yes.
Is there a reasonable market for it?
No.
No?
I mean, it's very limited space, very small,
and there's really not much use for it.
Historically, back years ago,
the pool, the laggiest at the time,
And like people who were mining on the pool could just suggest things to put in there and it would go in there.
But nobody really cared even then.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
And that was like, there was no cost for doing that.
And people still didn't care to really do it.
There was some movie quotes.
Maybe some movie quotes.
Okay.
Where like, so now that little, that bit of space is reserved for the miner that mines the block to put information or a name, whatever they want to put there.
Yeah.
The problem really comes when people are putting different non-financial information inside the block space that's usually where all the transactions go.
Am I understanding that correctly?
I mean, the block space itself does not support arbitrary data.
So to do this, they actually have to disguise their arbitrary data as transactions, which obviously it isn't.
but they have to convert it into,
make it look like it's a transfer from someone to another.
They're really just,
their intent of this is to take it later
and then transform it back into whatever image or whatever.
And so this is fundamentally an abuse of the system.
And not only that, but it also makes the blockchain larger.
The way SegWip, the changes in SegWip were made,
The block size limit is effectively dynamic.
If you have legitimate usage of the chain, it grows maybe two megabytes each block.
But the way the spammers are exploiting it, they actually can push that up to like four megabytes in the extreme cases.
Is that...
It increases the load for people to run a full node and also at the same time displaces legitimate usage of the chain.
And so we've seen a huge drop off of people actually using Bitcoin for transactions and also drop off of full nodes as well.
Do you think that, like, I know correlation doesn't always imply causality.
Like, do we think that that is the reason we've seen less transactions?
Or is it just because Bitcoin seems like it's kind of been in this bearish market for the past couple of years where we haven't got as many people interested in learning about Bitcoin?
I mean, I'm just throwing ideas out there.
I don't know for sure what the right answer is.
I'm just kind of positing a theoretical question.
If you just say hypothetically you wanted to accept Bitcoin,
if people can't send you Bitcoins, what's the point?
Yeah.
The fact is the spam has been making it impractical until recently
to even send Bitcoin so people don't even try.
as far as the megabytes go you mentioned that with segwit potentially blocks could be up to
four megabytes if non-financial information is included in the block is that what you're saying
correct yeah with because i mean i run nodes for different protocols and projects and bitcoin is
the lightest node that i run it's like i can run i still i think i'm still running my node on like a
two terabyte drive that i bought like eight years ago um so when we talk about making it easy for
people to run a node. Are you worried that if we go to four megabyte blocks that we wouldn't
outpace something like Crider's Law that talks about, you know, how storage space can scale over
time? Or is that like a legitimate concern for you? Or do you think that it's just, it would make
it maybe not as easy for people in several countries? Or like, what's your... It's not the
storage that's the hard part. It's getting the node synchronized and actually processing and
verifying all the data.
And it's been, it was proven back in 2016, 2017,
that the network can't actually sustain
more than about 300 kilobytes of transactions per block.
And despite that, SegWit increased the block size
as a kind of compromise with the people
that eventually left to make big cash.
But we've seen since that point,
the full node count has mostly dropped off.
We've seen the negative effects that it's had in practice,
so there's really no doubt in my mind there.
So a couple of questions.
You said 300 kilobytes.
Is that...
I'm confused by that.
I guess my understanding is
if I'm doing a new node,
it takes a day to get it to synchronize.
But after it's synchronized, it's fine.
is that what you're talking about here
when you say how long it takes to synchronize?
But then once it's caught up,
it just runs smooth, at least for me.
It takes a day if you're on a beefy machine, maybe,
but a lot of people don't have that.
A lot of people, unfortunately,
aren't willing to wait a day.
Yeah, okay, I see what you're saying.
They're not willing to wait to synchronize a node.
It's not enough that it's technically possible
for people to run a full node.
People need to actually choose to run a full node.
A lot of people today don't even have a computer.
They just have a phone.
they're not going to have a full node on their phone at this point
back in 2013, 2012
that was actually something that you could do
you could run a full node on a phone, really?
I think I have a Raspberry Pi out there that I use
back then people were running full nodes on their phone
but it's only gotten harder and harder
because the block size is such that
the blockchain grows faster than the technology is
keeping up with improving on processing that data
okay that an interesting because a mega one megabyte per block for example you multiply that that 144 megabytes a day
It's 365 days a year.
That's actually growing at a tremendous rate.
And the CPUs, the disks only improve so much per year.
And that's like, hopefully it's a 17% improvement
on the technology side.
Because I was actually researching this a little bit,
looking into something called Crider's Law
that was talking about how storage space was improving.
And it seemed like it was, from my initial research,
that it was greatly outpacing the growth of the Bitcoin blockchain.
It's not the storage space that is the problem at the bottom.
It's the storage speed.
Storage speed.
And that's synchronizing that full,
though that will take 17 hours or 16 hours or however it is,
depending on what you're using.
I think if you're using an SS,
I know there's different, again, I'm not a super savvy hardware specialist.
I think I'm using an SSD for my node, which is older technology.
Now they've got these two drives and these things that are, you know,
so my computers have this little drive that's this big,
and it's like three terabytes or five terabytes or whatever, two terabytes.
And that thing, like, that thing, man, that thing goes fast.
The node will synchronize in like 30 minutes or an hour with that, I feel like.
There's definitely improvement, but the blockchain growth has done so much damage already
that we have a long way to catch up.
We'll probably start catching up
probably within the next decade at some point,
but only slowly.
So we want people to be able to synchronize that node.
Your thought is much quicker than hours or days.
We want that to happen faster
to encourage more people to run a node.
Is there a point of diminishing returns
for people running nodes?
Is there a number in your mind
that mathematically, game theoretically,
we want to hit?
Well, for the network to be secure, because we don't have a centralized entity saying this is how it is, the way Bitcoin works is that the nodes are the ones enforcing the rules.
And so every time someone pays you with Bitcoins, you are looking at their payment, does it confirm in the valid blockchain, and giving them a product or a service.
and so if you're not running a full node
you're not actually verifying
the rules, you're not verifying that according
to those rules they paid you
they could just be making it, you think
that they paid you when they haven't
and so if you're not enforcing the rules
nobody is
and so therefore
usually I would say
85% of the network is where you want to be
with a safe number of full nodes
weighed by, you know, some businesses
do more transactions than other businesses
but
If you had a 50-50 split, you could very well have half the economy following an invalid chain where there's been inflation or whatever, the other half of the economy following the valid chain.
What happens if the valid chain following the economy goes to sleep?
You got eight hours on this invalid chain that everyone's following.
Interesting.
And so globally, you need to have enough lead for the valid chain verification to stay ahead of any potential invalid chain that might be mined.
Interesting topics.
My mind's going down all these rabbit holes right now.
This is like war gaming, cryptographically.
but cryptography only comes into play
if people are actually running the checks
yeah
I mean
because I know now
you know a lot of people just use
whatever
hot water on their phone
it's obviously connected
to a node that they're not running
right
most of the time
most people aren't as technical savvy
technically savvy enough to run
their nodes
that I know that are using Bitcoin
on a daily basis
and that's a big problem for Bitcoins
security.
What is that?
I mean, the thing is too, though,
like if you are,
if you're trusting like a Coinbase
or trusting a, you know,
third party to run that node,
I guess if they break that credibility,
something or get hacked
or there's a problem or whatever,
then they'll forever lose that credibility.
Is there any merit to that as a...
Meta if you have.
As a kind of like a gatekeeping
to make sure people are running honestly.
Kind of like how when the Silk Road
kind of came out,
everybody there was like a rating system right like nobody really knew each other there was no
way to like verify or get your money back or anything but the ratings were the the social
consensus was based off of the ratings if there's a niche that's relying on one of these trusted
entities yes but if it's suddenly the entire economy is the entire economy going to give up
the last day of their income to enforce the rules or are they going to say no we need that income
We're going to stick it to the invalid chain and just delete the inflation or whatever.
Because at that point, you might get back to a chain that has the properties you want.
But now everybody who was running full note is screwed because they would not have followed that chain.
And you eventually end up back to the point where you just, miners become, and the miners and the exchanges essentially become fed without any kind of accountability to anyone.
I know a while ago, you actually had put JPEGs on the blockchain.
Like, what changed your mind on all of this?
That's not true at all.
Oh, it's not true?
No.
Tell me what happened.
I don't know what you're referring to.
someone said that you had put JPEGs on the blockchain before and then someone's lying
someone's lying that's what uh I thought you had just like changed your mind like you put
Jesus JPEGs or something on the blockchain and then later on you're like no this is wrong no
that didn't happen no maybe I was just a I read that somewhere but maybe it was just fake fud or
whatever.
I think you've said that Bitcoin's odds of succeeding as a decentralized
currency might be as low as 3% to 4%.
Why are we in that much danger right now?
Is that just hyperbolic talk or trying to get people to focus on an issue?
Like you said, people who are using Bitcoin are using a phone wallet and
probably not using their own phone note.
We're already in a situation where Bitcoin is left insecure to a large
extent.
Yeah.
And somehow we need to get back to that point where people are using full nodes if we want Bitcoin to succeed.
And that's definitely an uphill battle.
Yeah, no, for sure.
Sure.
I think that entities, I mean, the good part is the entities that do run the nodes, they have a huge incentive to make sure that those are running correctly, following the chain and doing it.
Do that.
I think they do because of just for many reasons.
Obviously, social credibility, business credibility.
if you're operating and you care about Bitcoin,
if you're using Bitcoin, if you're promoting Bitcoin,
if you're a Bitcoin company,
if Bitcoin fails and it's your fault,
you're basically kicking it.
You're shooting yourself in the foot.
Unless you have to gain more from Bitcoin's failure
because you're invested in scam coin.
I feel like you can do both.
You can care a lot about Bitcoin
and still be involved in other coins or projects or whatever.
I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive.
Maybe. I'm just thinking back to 2017. You had, at the time, pretty much most of the major exchanges signing on to the New York agreement, planning to change Bitcoin without any kind of community support for this. And if people were not running full nodes, that can very well happen.
and the only reason
that is the beautiful part though
about Bitcoin though
is like those entities
if they're running one node
they only have one
like it might be an important node
but they only have one vote
so like all the other people
can basically
use their nodes as a voter right
only if they have a full node themselves
if they're trusting someone else's full node
then the other person
no I see what you're saying
but what I'm saying is like
yeah there's say this huge pool running
you know a node
and then there's Coinbase running a node
and then Yumi and Paul each have a node
our full node votes
counts just as much as Coinbase's node
No, we have very little economic influence individually.
How often do people pay you with Bitcoins?
Not every day, right?
No, not every day.
But Coinbase does.
But our node still has a vote because we still have to do consensus, right?
Only to the extent that you're accepting payments with Bitcoin
and using your full node to verify it.
Okay.
And these centralized exchanges do a lot more of that than most individuals.
Okay.
Interesting.
And so if they were willing to try to change the protocol back in 2017 when there were still enough full nodes to say, no, we're not doing this.
If people stop running full nodes altogether as we're trending toward and they can get away with it, why wouldn't they?
So are you saying that we've gone down to less full nodes since 2017 to today or have we gone up?
I feel like we have to.
2017 was our biggest.
Really? We have gone up.
Okay, let's see here.
So it says the number of Bitcoin nodes has not gone down overall since 2017.
In fact, they've shown periods of increasing fluctuation.
But key metrics indicate growth and stability in recent years,
depending on the type of node counted.
There are two main ways Bitcoin node counts are tracked,
and they measure different things.
Reachable slash listening nodes, publicly connectable full nodes,
often tracked by bitnodes.io, and coin.dance.
These are the ones that accept incoming connections and help relay data.
That is the most commonly cited visible network metric.
In late 2017, during the peak bull run, around 20K, reachable nodes peaked at around 12,000 to 12,500.
They dipped in 1819 down to 9,000.
By 2021, they hit new all-time highs above 13,000, 13,374 reported in July 2021.
More recent data up through 25 and 26 shows reachable nodes typically in the 10 to 15,000 range
with ongoing fluctuations, but no sustained long-term decline below 2017 levels.
What do you think about that?
Not accurate.
Not accurate?
The 2017 peak was over 200,000 nodes.
Okay, so total full nodes, including non-listening, unreachable private nodes
that still fully validate but don't accept inbound connections.
These are harder to count precisely, but are estimated higher,
often via crawlers like Luke Dash Jr.'s.
There you go.
The estimates around 2017-2018 peaked over 200,000 total nodes at one point.
There was a notable decline reported in 2019-2020, dropping below 47,000 in some estimates.
And then by 2023 and later, total validating nodes were estimated closer to 50,000 to 100,000 plus,
with some community figures suggesting even higher for private unreachable ones.
Okay, so what is the difference between...
Can you unpack for our non-technical listeners the difference between both of those nodes
that were described there?
It's not a material difference.
It's not a material difference?
Right.
Okay.
It's just that the listening nodes
are easier to count
than the non-listening ones.
Okay.
But as far as the consensus goes,
they're identical.
Okay.
So why is the count so much higher
or so much lower
for those listening nodes?
Can you go up, Paul,
to the top again?
Let's see.
It was the reachable listening nodes.
The count seems way lower for those.
Right.
You have to basically either
have the right ISP, the right router,
or manually configure your router.
Do something to become a listening node.
It takes actual action.
Okay, so that's why there's less of those.
Yeah, there's not much benefit to doing so.
So those are not more important for any reason.
So, okay.
All right, cool.
I was going to say...
I mean, we do need some percent of the network
using listening nodes, but...
Yeah, because mine is definitely not that.
It can be much smaller.
it doesn't have to be 85% on that worth listening.
Okay.
Well, Brock still has a lot to learn.
So do I.
Okay, that's interesting.
All right.
So, you know, we're, I guess my question would be
what number would greatly concern you?
You know, if you saw that number that's fluctuated,
it seemed to be fluctuating between 50,000 and 200,000
over the past, you know, five to 10 years.
If we went down to what number would you be like
really concerned about it?
I'm really concerned about it already.
You're really concerned about it right now.
Yeah, I mean, it was 200,000 back in 2017, but it hasn't been since then.
It's probably hit the highest it's been recently is 100,000.
And despite during all of this, the number of people acquiring Bitcoins,
potentially using Bitcoins, has been going up, aside from spam killing the usage.
But still a lot more people are acquiring Bitcoins.
it's hard to know though because aren't a lot of people
using lightning networks even though like if transactions
on mainchain have gone down
more people are using it seems like lightning
has definitely been helping
and it also helps
on the full node front because
you only need to
you only need to have your full node syncing
when you're
verifying a new incoming
new channel
so once you've verified the channel
you have to have some level of monitoring but it can be
like outsourced
safely and you can you don't have to have a full node syncing constantly anymore so that does help
there but okay not necessarily enough to uh overcome the negative trends
i'm a i'm a i'm a what do you call it an optimist i think we're i think we're doing good i think
we're going to keep getting better and you know there will be challenges and tribulations and um
but i think global adoption people using bitcoin people taking advantage of the you know the
properties and characteristics, although we still have a lot of work to do. I think that,
you know, more and more people are learning about Bitcoin and why it's important,
getting involved, getting, owning a piece of Bitcoin, you know, getting involved with a network,
coming to conferences like the ones we're going to be speaking at in the next couple of days.
So, yeah, don't get me wrong. I would say the probability of success is low, but it's there.
And I'm, I'm working as hard as I can to get us, to get Bitcoin in to meet that small probability.
I mean, 3% to 4% here, that's what you said.
That's pretty low probability of success.
I'm sure I'm not alone.
There's lots of other people that are also working hard.
Are you still, you still think 3% to 4% is an accurate number?
Or would you say more 20% now, 50%?
I say single digit.
I don't really know.
You're still single digit.
I don't know if it's a big single digit.
What do you think is the biggest danger right now?
Quick break to support the show.
We'll be right back.
So much of what happens is underground.
secret marketplaces and there's secret group chats and there's a huge information asymmetry.
If you go into it and you just try to figure it out for yourself, you're going to get burned
dramatically because it might take you four years to find that where everything is really happening.
The cost to mine one Bitcoin is much less than the purchase price of a Bitcoin. In every project,
we look at that. So it's a matter of the energy costs and the efficiency of the miners that we're
using, we look at the cost to mine a Bitcoin, they're averaging around $40,000 to $50,000 per
Bitcoin is the cost of production. And we're trading at $110,000 per Bitcoin right now.
That arbitrage is what creates such interesting return on investment.
Our business model essentially is, hey, we have the experience. We've already made the mistakes.
We can just leapfrog all of that and work with you essentially and just manage and do everything.
And you're kind of a silent partner, a majority partner, and we're the minority partner,
but we're the manager. You only make money when your partners make money. There's no fees. There's
no this. There's no that. It's like, hey, we're going to negotiate because we're a true partner.
And like we want to make as much revenue as possible because we make our profit solely from
net profits of positive cash flow and operations. Curated Mining. Form your own Bitcoin mining
company. All right, let's get back to the conversation. The immediate danger is obviously
the illegal data problem, which has been created by Core30.
Long term, it's definitely getting users to use their own full nodes.
I mean, they're kind of interrelated.
I know I was very skeptical of that problem,
but I saw a lot of good conversations on X.
I have a lot of respect for Nick Szabo and his thoughts on the matter,
and I saw you guys talking about it,
and I was really reading a lot of the threads and posts on the topic,
Like, I'm kind of like, right now, like, my mind is, like, undecided.
I'm, like, I'm up in the air.
I've seen so many good threads from both sides of the argument.
It's like, I don't know what to believe anymore.
So, like, I don't know.
Just look at, link it by yourself.
You run a full node.
If that running a full node required you to be involved in distribution of these illegal materials,
not just illegal, but very immoral materials, would you do it?
Would I do it?
I mean.
Let's pretend it was all legal.
Would you willingly distribute stuff?
No, I don't want to distribute that shit.
But, you know, it's kind of like, it's almost like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
It's like running Bitcoin and giving the world an access to money does so much more good than harm, you know, to a decentralized, you know, global money that nobody can, no government can steal from you.
Nobody can take away from you.
I mean, I don't like, I don't pay attention day to day with my node.
you know what I mean? It just runs. And like, I don't, I'm not even aware of, I just, I know I'm
running Bitcoin. Like I'm not concerned with individual transact. I don't think about that
stuff. You know what I mean? Uh, like I wouldn't, but if, I mean, I'm a radical cypherpunk, man.
I probably would just, I would keep running my fucking node no matter what, you know, because
I think the mission that Bitcoin fucking represents is so fucking important and it's such a big deal.
And it's so important for humanity that like, you know, one's going to destroy that for me.
I mean, I'm just saying what I would do, what I'm thinking, like what I'm throwing out there.
But then you've got these nodes in all these countries and places and stuff that…
Do you think most people that we hope adopt Bitcoin would agree with that?
I don't know. Maybe not.
I mean, maybe, you know…
We're already having trouble.
It's interesting.
Remember we already having trouble getting people to run full nodes just because it takes a day or two to sink Yeah Just a minor inconvenience Do you have like I guess I trying to pin you down on like a number of nodes like a specific number
Like, you know, if you drop 10,000, like, that would be, obviously, a cost for extreme concern.
Like, what's that number?
Can't have a count because the number of people acquiring and using Bitcoin is changing on a regular basis.
So that's why I would say it's 85% of people doing economic activity with Bitcoin.
and that what the actual count is for 85%
and that's obviously going to continually be increasing
as long as we're looking for adoption.
Interesting.
These are interesting questions.
I think Nick wrote,
made some really interesting legal points
about different jurisdictions
and then I saw other lawyers on the other side
get involved and say stuff.
I think Joe Carlos already had some interesting points
And it's like, it's fascinating to see so many great ideas and people having different thoughts. And like, I'm just, I'm just, I just feel happy to be alive at this time to like, just witness this all play out and just see, like, I think X has become, you know, like the new Bitcoin talk forum, it feels like where everybody's just posting threads and ideas and conversations and, you know, we can go back and forth.
And I think I was talking to Nick on one thread, and I don't know if you were on it or not, but what about this? I think we came up with an idea that I thought was interesting that I want to talk to you about and maybe unpack it more. What if there is a way to have not just one type of node, but like a node that can basically not store any of the arbitrary data and store only the financial data so it's never at risk for any of this?
Like what if there was a bucket?
I don't fully understand how these different protocol features work.
My understanding is Core v30 wants to create a separate area for this stuff.
Is that accurate?
No, it's not.
Adam Back's idea.
That's Adam Back's idea.
Okay.
So Adam wants to create a separate area to put that information and make it easy to put it there.
But what if you could do that and then make it so that you could run a node that doesn't store any of that information?
You have to have the spammers voluntarily.
cooperate with it. But wouldn't they
want to do that because it's cheaper?
Their whole goal was to harm Bitcoin.
So you're saying in a
attacker, you know, that
is not motivated by monetary economic
game theory, they would
just want to try to harm Bitcoin
or attack Bitcoin. They would just
ignore to put a cheaper transaction.
Altcoins already exist.
Say that one more time? Altcoins already exist
that are specifically designed for
data storage. Yeah, so I mean that is another
very accurate point as well is that
And this is part of where my final thought on all this is that it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, people are going to put it on the other chains just because it's cheaper.
But then what you're saying is that they would have a malicious reason not to do it where it would be non-financial in nature.
I mean, some of the core spammers have as much as admitted it explicitly.
What do you mean as much as? Can you unpack that?
They've been interviewed and explicitly said that their goal is to harm Bitcoin.
What?
Who has said this?
I don't know.
Different people in the spam community.
That are Bitcoin core developers?
Not Bitcoin core developers.
I was about to say.
All those spammers.
Bitcoin core developers have said pretty terrible stuff too, but not that.
I mean, I hope that would not be trying to purposely harm Bitcoin.
I guess the question is, if Bitcoin can't be censorship resistant and just kind of operate and run, if there is a way...
Again, I still think that the chance of Bitcoin not working at this point, I feel like Bitcoin has reached escape velocity.
That's my personal opinion.
But Bitcoin has to be able to handle all these challenges and deal with all these challenges.
And the question is, is the network robust enough?
I think it is.
I think that there are so many nodes distributed in so many different countries and so many
different places all over the earth that, you know, it's kind of like people downloading
file sharing on the internet.
Like, okay, technically it's illegal.
Good luck enforcing it at scale across the world.
You know, that's kind of my thought.
Like, okay, maybe you can make an example out of a couple people running a node.
Well, keep in mind, like file sharing isn't really illegal.
It just allows the copyright holder to sue you.
If the government doesn't, the government's not going to prosecute you for it unless you're in Japan.
They have those videos where it says FBI will come after you or whatever.
If you do it commercially.
Or something like this.
If you do it commercially, you have more liability.
I feel like I remember some grandma getting arrested by the feds or something when she was downloading files off LimeWire or something way back in the day.
I know in Japan, they do have criminal penalties just for normal copyright infringement.
And people basically don't do pile sharring there because they'll go to jail.
Really?
Wow.
These are interesting conversations and topics.
A lot of interesting rabbit holes to go down.
One thing that reminds me of someone trying to argue that the legality of this stuff doesn't matter
because Bitcoin's illegal in China
and people still run nodes there.
But the reality is people don't run nodes in China.
You can't run a node in China at this point.
So, like, can't you just...
Can't you use a VPN or something?
I mean, I'm sure there are people who do it anyway.
But for the most part, you know,
general anyone off the street,
even if they want to,
they're not going to run a node.
Yeah, the average person,
unless they're a true cypherpunk
and there's a cause.
There's few and far between
as far as Chinese nodes.
If you look at the network,
if you look at the regions that nodes are in,
there's basically none in China.
Is there a good infographic to look at that
to see where all the nodes are?
I'm not sure.
You're not sure?
I'm pretty sure I've seen websites with it,
but I don't know why.
I know I've seen them before
and they look kind of cool
because you can just see
the whole world lit up
with all these different connections,
which is why I think also that,
you know, along,
like the whole world is hostile.
Like, all these countries are hostile to each other.
So, like, if one country loves Bitcoin, the other country hates Bitcoin.
If one country...
You know what I mean?
So, like, you've got this kind of...
This geographical decentralization and arbitrage
where it makes it hard to uniformly enforce the same laws
in all these different places, which is...
Well, unless...
...the benefits of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin becomes a file-sharing network for things that are universally important.
Yeah.
I just...
You know, the only thing that would make sense
would be to try to harm the network.
But, I mean, I just...
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, okay, that looks pretty cool.
Yeah, you can see everywhere.
Australia, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Chile.
You got Hawaii, Canada, Alaska, Iceland.
Iceland's got some Bitcoin nodes.
Look at that.
Norway, France.
Algeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine.
Yeah, so there's just nodes everywhere all over the world.
It's pretty cool.
Just not China.
Where's China?
You got to go?
Well, you got to look at China.
It's got pretty lit up on the coastline there.
You see that?
Those were all like Shenzhen.
You got Taiwan.
You've got Japan lit up.
So you got a lot of Chinese nodes along the port cities and the coastline.
Guangdong, Guangdong.
Some of those places, Philippines.
I mean, it looks pretty.
I mean, I want to see that whole map blue.
But I mean, that's some pretty nice distribution there of nodes.
I think this.
Most people are not even aware of this conversation
because it's so like niche on crypto Twitter,
like in the underground.
Most people, you know,
that are interacting with Bitcoin
or new to Bitcoin or whatever.
I mean, they don't even,
they don't understand it on a technical level yet.
Like I deal with so many people like that.
So many, like the conversation we're having,
like 99 out of 100 Bitcoiners I talked to,
wouldn't go that far.
I would say, you know, 90, 98,
nine out of 10 Bitcoiners I talked to
are not like, they barely would know what core is.
they're like, oh, that's a development team behind, but they're not.
They're more of the problem.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, you know, that's why we're having this conversation.
I think it's good for people to be aware of it, but, you know, you've got to reach people
in phases as they can understand, okay, you know, why is Bitcoin important, right?
Kind of start with the money thing.
And then you can kind of get down into these different issues.
But I just think it's really cool that these conversations can kind of play out.
And I'm like, you know, one day I wake up and I read a thread and I'm on one side and
the next day I wake up on the other side.
And then the next day I wake up, it's like, I just kind of like, now I'm just kind of like
in the middle and I'm like, I'm really curious how this plays out. And, you know, I can see merit to
both sides and I can see merit to different ideas on both sides. And, you know, you don't want to
censor Bitcoin, but yes, Bitcoin isn't intended to be, you know, file sharing network. And it's just,
it's a fascinating. Calling it censorship to Bitcoin, what it's supposed to be in stop attacks
is nonsense. I mean, are we censoring when we, what is Bitcoin supposed to be, right? I guess,
what is spam? Can you define spam?
Anything that has not been
that people have not consented
to. When you run
Bitcoin, you're running it for a specific purpose
and there's only one purpose
that was there intended from the start that
everyone has agreed to.
Well, if the protocol allows you
to do it, that's why they have to
bypass it. But they're still able to
do it. Only by bypassing
rules. But if they
were bypassing the rules, how could they
even do it to begin with? Because the
the rules on the network allow it to happen.
Software is only so smart.
So what is the solution to fix the software?
We get,
we get consensus from people.
So that couldn't happen.
Because if he fixes and not scores,
just absolutely refusing to fix anything and making it worse.
I mean,
just real quick back to the previous point though,
is it censorship to reject transactions that spend Satoshi's coins without a
valid signature?
Say that one more time?
If you reject a transaction and keep it out of the chain
that spends Satoshi coins but doesn't have a signature,
is that censorship?
It's an interesting question.
Enforcing rules is not censorship at all.
I mean, I guess it's your prerogative if you want to do that, I would think.
but if the network allows you to not reject those transactions,
if a node can not reject those transactions
and be in consensus with the network,
you know, is...
If they can do it, they can do it,
I guess would be my counter to that.
If you can put the next block
and you have the right to run whatever implementation you want
and do it how you want to do it,
that's part of the network, right?
I guess...
I mean, it's just an interesting question. It's just an interesting thought experiment. I mean, I go back and forth. I just don't think it's for 99% of this, what we call spam, you know, putting non-financial information on Bitcoin. I would say that long term, it just, it will, it does not make economic sense to do that because there are so many other chains where you can do that for so cheap.
that like trying to put that stuff on Bitcoin is such a niche thing.
That's like most Bitcoiners can't afford to even interact with those types of
things. So it's like this niche of the niche of the niche thing.
And like, I think it just dies out over time.
Cause it's just as Bitcoin grows more important for its main use case,
it gets more and more expensive to try to put, you know,
a picture of a lion or whatever on fucking Bitcoin. It makes no sense.
You know, the financial cost is so high that that acts as a filter.
In practice, it's the opposite.
but spam rounds out the legitimate usage.
But it's so much more expensive to put that spam on there.
If somebody's willing to pay,
that's why I get back to this question is,
what is spam?
I feel like if you ask 10 people,
they'll give you 10 different answers.
It's almost like this subjective question.
What might be spam to you?
It might be spam to me,
but maybe it's not spam to Paul.
You know what I mean?
But if it's spam to anyone, it's spam.
what if I say a monetary transaction is spam to me?
You can't because that was the intended use case from the start.
You agreed to that by running the software.
Yeah, I mean, the software is allowing me to do other things.
It's allowing me to do these, what did you call it?
I put a Satoshi-less transaction.
But it does, the point there is the system is based on rules.
Having rules is not in any way censored.
but the rules of the software are allowing this to happen right now is there a way to make the
rules of the software not allow this to happen yeah that's how it has that's how bitcoin has
worked for the last 15 16 years but haven't people been able to for the past 15 16 years
put non-financial information on the blockchain no i thought this was something that's been
happening this conversation has been happening since bitcoin's inception almost people putting
different forms of arbitrary data on Bitcoin.
Not really.
Not really or not at all?
There's been spam, but when there's a new way of spamming,
the bug gets fixed historically.
Okay.
It's not intended use case of it.
There's ways that people can abuse the scripting system
to find new exploits to bypass and spam filters.
Then Discord fixed those?
historically? Is that how that's happened? Used to. Used to. When did that stop?
The last couple of years. Okay, interesting. So there hasn't been a way for people to put
non-financial data for the past 15 years onto the chain that has been unstoppable?
I'm over my technical chops here, bro. So you're going to have to bear with me because I'm not a
super technical person, but people that I've talked to have told me that there has been ways
to put spam on Bitcoin that have not been,
that have been the same way for many a very long time.
Not really.
There's been exploits in the last couple of years
that Core has refused to fix that were introduced.
Only the Taproot one was introduced in 2021.
So with Taproot and SegWit and all this stuff,
like my understanding was that that stuff was introduced
to help privacy on Bitcoin.
Is that accurate, but also it's introduced ways
to exploit the protocol?
Is that kind of what you're saying here?
So these are unintembed.
Taproot has been a significant improvement.
But because the code wasn't updated for it in the spam filter side,
the spammers realized they use Taproot.
They can just bypass all the spam filters.
And that's kind of what's allowing this.
Right.
So prior to Taproot, there wasn't a way for spammers to put stuff on
that had never been patched.
And I can't say there's no vulnerabilities.
Okay.
until someone exploits it in a systemic way.
There's no real reason to proactively go looking for them.
Tell me a little bit about, let's switch gears a little bit.
Let's talk a little bit about Ocean.
Why did you decide to create Ocean?
What is Ocean?
Well, the number two problem with Bitcoin,
after lack of full node adoption,
is the terrible mining centralization.
Miners are all using pools.
And the pools have basically taken control over the whole mining process.
And so essentially before Ocean launched,
there was six, maybe seven real miners that made pretty much all the blocks.
And so that is a significant risk for Bitcoin,
aside from the full node issue.
That needs to be fixed, and that was something that
I've actually been in a good position to fix.
may be on a few people that is in that position to get fixed.
So I figured as long as we need Bitcoin as much as we do,
after all the money printing that's been going on since COVID,
we're going to have to address this eventually.
We might as well get it addressed sooner rather than later.
It's just going to get worse and worse.
The last 10 years has shown that.
And so that's basically why I decided to bring back the rule
and address the whole mining centralization issue.
Okay, interesting.
Straight on.
I love it.
No, I'm good friends with Bob and Mark
and we've talked a lot about it
and I think it's really cool what you guys are doing.
I know my team and you guys have had a talk.
We're going to try to switch over to you guys
and make it all work.
We just have a lot of back-end partners
that we work with and stuff.
So we have to be able to have a,
with different business entities,
be able to kind of visualize and quickly see through it
and kind of have some of that tooling built out around it
that maybe some other pools have.
But I'm 100% with you.
I really love the idea that the miners can produce their own blocks.
And I think it's pretty cool how the miners themselves
get into the Coinbase when one of them finds a block.
I think that's super cool.
So it just pays out directly from there.
It doesn't go to the pool.
Is that my understanding of it?
Unless it's a smaller miner.
Because you can only put 50 in there or something like that.
There's some miners that have firmware bugs
that limit how many they can put right in the reward.
But yeah.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, very, very, very interesting.
So my understanding is that you still,
if the miner finds the block,
it doesn't matter what rules they want.
You guys will let them do,
whether it's rules from core,
rules from knots, rules from however.
Is that accurate?
As far as spam filtration goes, yeah.
Spam filtration goes.
Obviously, you have to make a valid Bitcoin block.
Yeah.
So you're, yeah.
so even though you've got a strong opinion on you can't buy any theory yeah well no longer you can
oh man so as long as you know i mean we we can't stop miners from making whatever blocks they want
okay it's just impossible yeah all we do is help coordinate the rewards makes sense okay i love
bitcoin so the way this all works it's like you have a strong opinion about something but at the
And at the end of the day, you know, it's decentralized.
And, you know, if you solve the block, you get to make the rules and kind of do it within the system, obviously, within Bitcoin's operational system as it currently stands.
If a miner is making blocks that are terrible for the network I going to say yeah that a bad thing to do Like you shouldn do that But there nothing Ocean can do to stop that even if we wanted to Yeah
Well, because what you're doing is you're taking,
you're giving that power back to the miners, right?
I mean, that's the block creation.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
It's just, you know, we've gotten lazy over the past decade.
I mean, if they wanted to,
they don't have to use Ocean at all.
Like, still make that block.
There literally is nothing Ocean can do
to stop them from making that block.
Okay, interesting.
So I didn't even know about Bitcoin until like 2015.
I played sports.
I knew not that much about computers,
but obviously when I found out about Bitcoin
and it's why I was fascinated
and went down the rabbit hole and studied it.
In 2013, tell me about this chain split issue
that popped up.
What almost happened here?
2013 was March and then May.
March, I don't know if it was March or maybe even February
that Bitcoin Core 0.8 was released.
And that had some major rewriting of basically the low-level back-end code
for storing the UTXO set.
And when that was rewritten, people didn't realize
is that there was actually a protocol rule that people didn't know about.
And when they rewrote that code,
they accidentally removed the enforcement of that rule.
So the 0.8 nodes that had just come out
would now accept blocks that were technically invalid
according to the old rules.
And if it's intentional, that's a hard fork.
The whole network goes along with it.
But because this was a completely unplanned, unknown issue,
The only real solution at the time was to basically add that rule back in what became 0.8.1.
We added the rule back in temporarily and then scheduled the hard fork for three months later in May.
Coordinated hard fork.
So how did that, was there problems in the short term?
Like how quickly was that second update rushed out?
Well, nobody even noticed that the problem existed.
Oh, nobody.
So a miner actually made a block that broke the old rules that had been removed.
Oh, interesting. Wow.
So a miner made that block.
The new updated nodes accepted the block,
and all the old nodes all immediately rejected the block.
So what happened when that occurred?
People noticed somewhat quickly.
I guess it was probably a few hours of analysis of what was going on.
I believe even before we had fully figured out what had gone on,
the largest mining pool, like the people who ran the pools
were actually active in the community at the time.
And so the largest mining pool just downgraded,
and that was enough to resolve the problem
because not all the miners had upgraded already anyway.
So by the largest one downgrading, the old rules had the majority,
and then all the notes followed along the
valid chain at that point.
Wow.
What would happen if something like this happened today?
Because obviously
the blocks are worth a lot more today.
So, yeah.
That's, you know, a half a million dollar block.
It happened today.
I don't know.
It's hard to say.
You would think the precedent
would mean
everyone would move to the more restrictive rules.
But it's possible that it could go the other way too.
Probably not, though, because I don't think
mining pools upgrade right away.
So it would probably be something that got noticed.
Obviously, it would get noticed a lot faster.
And probably it would get resolved that much faster,
I would think.
How would the economic loss to a party or whatever,
how would that be dealt with do you think
I don't think it wouldn't be dealt with
it'd be just a loss
sorry you didn't really mine this block
is that kind of how it would occur
that kind of happens occasionally anyway
stale blocks
sometimes two miners find the same
block height at the same time and only one of them
can prevail in the end
so that's just
to an extent kind of just
one of the risks that miners take
interesting
the sooner miners notice that they're mining
in battle blocks the quicker they
connect on it
there's been a lot
of talk I've been watching on
X about filters
this idea of filtering filters
you know if
even if like 5%
of the network is running
the new Bitcoin core V30 and
95% would be running NOTS
that's like 1 out of every 20 blocks
would be
put forward
by a core implementation that could include a bunch of JPEGs or whatever,
at that point, it would go onto the chain,
and then all of the Notts nodes would still have to accept that, right?
Is that kind of how that works?
Yeah, to a large extent.
To a large extent.
It's still 95% better than if it was all the blocks.
Why do you say it's 95% better than if it was all the blocks?
Because 95 out of 100 blocks would not have the spam
and would have the legitimate transactions that the spam is.
So, okay, so you're saying that, you know, then it would just be a slower, basically the blockchain would be two meg, you know, two, it would follow the smaller block size and then occasionally have one bloated block.
So it wouldn't grow as quickly.
That's okay.
I see what you're saying.
But it wouldn't, it wouldn't solve the, from preventing that from coming on chain.
It would just kind of slow it, I guess would be the.
It would rate limit it.
And that's really the best you can do with spam.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Makes sense.
So it's still a valuable potentiality.
The biggest issue with Core30 is not so much the spam risk
as much as it is the intended data use case,
which is what makes the illegal data a problem.
Intended data use case.
Can you explain that?
What do you say?
Treating data storage as if it's a supported use case
and having a specific standard way of doing data storage
on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Okay.
Interesting.
because it's one thing
spammers like I mentioned have to
bypass all the rules and find ways to
sneak around and
change their data into something
else, transactions, and then change it back
when they want to look at the data
it's another thing if Bitcoin
itself now supports
storing data and they don't
have to do anything special
they can just say we're storing data this
way that's now officially
standard for the network
and you're saying like in your
and core v30 made that possible right okay whereas it wasn't possible before but it was
still happening it just was harder is that my understanding of it before they had to modify
their data hide it as something it wasn't okay and then change it back later uh-huh but with
core 30 now they can just drop it in the chain and it's an official supported way of storing data
so are you talking about like before it had to be like a simple proof like a hash and then they'd
have to take the hash and then convert it back to something else is that what you're saying or
They would have to take it and make it look like it's payments to someone else.
Okay, gotcha.
Now they can just say, drop it in, this is data storage.
Okay, I see what you're saying.
That's the only way to see that data.
You can't see it as a transaction.
Okay.
Is there, I guess I'll go back to that solution that I was thinking of
and that was kind of brought up a little bit.
Is there a way to have two different nodes
where you've got this type of node
that you can only have financial data
and that the network itself will actively,
if you run that type of node,
it will prune all of this stuff.
And you can run a full Bitcoin node
without having to store any of the arbitrary stuff.
And then you can have a secondary.
Because I know some other blockchains do this
where they've got different types of nodes.
Bitcoin nodes have supported pruning for years now.
Okay.
But you can't have everyone pruning
or the system just doesn't work.
Okay.
But I mean, if the core team put it together where, if they made it actually so, you know, there was this bucket where, you know, anything that's non-financial went into this bucket and then everything else went into the main bucket, like, would it be a possible solution to the problem to just have people run, people can choose whether they want to run a node that takes into account everything, or they could run this node that 100% always will enforce none of that.
It would solve the intentional data storage issue.
It would not solve the spam issue because it requires the spammers to
cooperate.
But then you could actually,
you could really try to tackle that problem anytime something came up to try
to, to try to, you know,
have the core team really focus on that to patch it.
Cause you were saying before they would historically do that.
If there was an exploit that came up,
they would fix that in the next release.
You could kind of get everybody aligned to say, Hey, this,
this part is purely financial and anytime any kind of spam exploit pops up we patch it instantly i
mean they can already patch it it's just that the people that have taken control of the
the github project are bad actors like they are not looking out for bitcoin's interests
they have some ulterior motives the people that took that have basically taken control of core
Is that what you're saying?
Right.
Okay.
Who is in control of that right now?
And are you just saying that because you disagree with them
or are you saying it because you actually think they're bad people?
I mean, can you unpack what you mean there?
I mean, I tend to assume good faith as much as I can.
But after so many years of this
and going in the exact opposite direction,
it's really pretty much impossible to assume good faith at this point.
There's no explanation other than that they're malicious.
So you are adamant that there's just not a disagreement
about the way that things should be run?
You think it's just a malicious attack on Bitcoin
or just taking Bitcoin in a direction you don't agree with?
No, it's definitely a malicious attack at this point.
So you think these are bad?
Yeah.
I mean, they hit it pretty well.
I don't know if they hit it pretty well or I'm just too naive.
I don't know how you could give your life to Bitcoin.
actions last year leave no doubt left and those actions to you were what the the changes in core
30 the changes actively making it easier to spam and making it a supported use case okay because i
know i know there's you know many people on good people that i know on both sides of this equation
that think you know that tend to agree with you and then there's people i respect on the other side
that agree more with core.
And I know those people aren't malicious people.
I know them personally.
They just have a different opinion.
Do you think that's a possibility here?
Not if they know the facts.
I mean, it was one thing when
they just weren't updating the spam filters
because they had excuses like
they didn't want to spend the time
reviewing the code and stuff.
But it's another thing to actively make it easier
for the data storage and the spam
when there's already filters that are working.
Interesting.
11 kids.
So how many kids do you have so far?
I've got three.
I'm about to have a third.
Congrats.
Thank you, my man.
How has being a father shaped how you are,
who you are as a man?
I don't know.
You don't know?
Is it tough with 11 kids?
No, there's only eight at home at the moment.
Only eight at home at the moment, yeah.
It's tough for me with two right now.
I don't know how you have to do it.
Well, two is the hardest.
Some people say three, but in my case, it was two.
So hopefully it'll get easier for you once this baby's born.
That's a pretty bullish action for the future.
So you come off as a little pessimistic,
but I think you're pretty bullish on the inside.
I tend to be more of a realist.
More of a realist?
I don't know, man.
11 kids is like, I'm bullish on...
That's a call option on the future, my man.
It's not a choice.
But would I be working on Bitcoin if I was a pessimist?
That's a good point.
I don't think so.
I'm just realistic.
I see the risks, the chances,
and I do my best to address the issues that we're facing.
No, I mean, I think it's really admirable how much you care about Bitcoin. And I think that it's important to have diverse viewpoints. And that's the whole point of open source projects, right? You've got everything out in the open and people can debate and have a discussion.
And, you know, hopefully people are coming from the right, like their hearts in the right place, I guess, is what I'm getting at.
You know, I hope you're wrong.
That would be very disappointing if, you know, people were actively trying to sabotage Bitcoin that were involved in the project.
I mean, to me, it doesn't make any sense why you would be involved in a project if you were actively trying to sabotage it.
I just, for what reason?
So I'm hoping that you can't sabotage a project unless you get involved in it.
True, true.
Well, I mean, there's been many people that have tried to sabotage Bitcoin over the years that have not been involved in it.
So they've tried and they failed.
Fair.
I know plenty of them.
Let's see here.
That's probably why this ongoing attack from Core is probably the worst attack we've faced.
Paul wants me to ask you about Epstein's involvement in Bitcoin Core.
Is there any merit to that?
Jeffrey Epstein had indirect financial ties to Bitcoin core development through the donations to the MIT.
Let's see.
So this seems like a pretty, from what you're pointing at here, Paul, this seems like a pretty indirect thing.
He gave to a college and the college gave to some kind of fund that then went around and funded some core developers.
I don't think that's a direct thing, but maybe you have more knowledge on that.
I don't know anything about that.
I don't know anything about it either.
That would be a spicy take.
But I mean, could it be true? Maybe. But do I know that it's true? No.
What did Peter Saddington say the other day? What was it? Maybe.
The reason I wanted it to be addressed is because it somewhat lends merit.
It gives merit to the argument that poor may have been compromised, right?
that there may be active sabotage, you know, in effect,
and that there may be funding for that.
So I just wanted to throw that out because that's a recent thing that's come around.
Yeah, I think it's, I mean, first off, it's less than a million dollars,
and I don't think he gave it directly to,
he didn't like give it directly to Bitcoin Core.
It looks like he donated it to MIT, and then MIT then turned around.
I got you.
There's no such thing as giving directly to Bitcoin Core.
Is that what you said?
Can't you sponsor a developer and stuff like that?
But then through other organizations like this MIT.
Okay, I thought.
Because wasn't this drama recently that MicroStrategy was sponsoring Bitcoin Core devs?
Or wasn't that a thing recently or a couple years ago?
MicroStrategy explicitly refused to fund any development.
That's right.
Was it Cash App that did it?
I feel like there was a couple companies recently that had.
Yeah, there was some ETFs or something.
companies that were actively sponsoring Bitcoin core developers.
Yeah, I believe several ETFs announced that they were going to put a certain amount aside
for developer funding.
And then I guess Michael Saylor told one of the other ETFs, don't do that.
And they didn't.
And that was where the controversy came from.
In hindsight, maybe he had good reason for that.
I don't usually talk to like super technical people.
So this is a rare interview for me.
So thank you for being patient with me and answering my questions and concerns and thoughts that I've come up with in my mind.
And hopefully our audience gains more and more understanding from this conversation.
Even if you're not technical, that would be my hope with this conversation.
But I think one thing is for sure that, you know, there's a lot of people that care very much about Bitcoin.
Do you have a final piece of advice or thoughts for anybody, new Bitcoiners, anybody that's getting involved with Bitcoin?
Do you want to leave our audience with anything?
it's just a reminder to run your own full node.
At this point, make sure it's not.
Where's the best place for people to go
to learn how to run their own full node?
Would you just say a YouTube video?
Is there a specific,
do you have something on your website
that's like a tutorial,
like a video tutorial,
something along those lines?
Not really.
No.
I try to keep Bitcoin as easy as possible
to install on a computer.
Obviously, there's Start9, Umbrella, whatever,
and sells physical machines if you don't have a computer.
BitcoinKnotts.org also has a link to a Discord chat group,
also a Telegram chat group where people discuss it.
Yeah, we'll put that link in this conversation.
They have support groups there.
If you need help with it, you can chat.
You just have to be aware that there's also scammers hanging out
waiting to try to scam people.
Yeah.
Bullies on all these.
No matter where you're at,
they'll always be scammers.
So, you know,
a fool and his money is soon parted.
That's a lesson as old as time.
And as much as you want to stop that,
I mean, I think sometimes people
just have to learn the hard way
for the first time
and they'll never happen to you again.
It's like you pay for your education.
If you join and I DM you,
it's a scammer.
Oh man, that's funny.
Well, Luke Dash Jr.,
thank you so much for this conversation.
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