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In this X post, I said I don't know the consequences of BIP-110.

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Plenty of people called that incompetent, cowardly, or both.

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Others praised it as humility.

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It's neither. It's just true.

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I don't know the consequences, and here's my claim.

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Neither do you.

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The best in Bitcoin made audible.

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I am Guy Swan, and this is Bitcoin Audible.

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What is up, BiBitBox?

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Because you love me.

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But everybody's going to hate me after this episode anyway.

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You should get a discount.

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In fact, go ahead and do it now before you hate me.

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I have a discount code.

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It's Guy.

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And you can find the link and details right down in the description of this show.

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And if you want to get a good hardware wallet and you want to support me because you still love me, it is right down there.

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It's a great way to help out the show.

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And I take my sponsorships extremely seriously.

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And I hope that that is appreciated by everybody that I go out of my way to make sure that I know and trust and personally know the people involved in basically every project that I have ever told people to use on this show.

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With the exception of one back in the very first year and I felt like shit about it for like three weeks and then canceled it.

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And trust me, this does not make me a lot of money.

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In fact, it's been losing money for like a year

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just because I've been investing so much

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in a bunch of things around this.

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I don't do this because I'm getting rich doing it.

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I do this because I love it

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and I think it's valuable to people.

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So with that said, all of you are going to hate me

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or at least like 95%.

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If you support BIP110, you're going to hate me.

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And if you don't support BIP110

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and you're vehemently against it,

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you're also going to hate me.

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So that's why you should pause right now

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and go get a BitBox.

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And I just want to say, I haven't canceled anybody's friendship over this issue.

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I'm not canceled anybody's friendship over any issue in Bitcoin, because I think Bitcoin

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is more important than that.

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But I'll preface this, that if you can't get mad and disagree with somebody and actually

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get into a heated debate without hating them afterward or thinking they're a bad actor,

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then that's your problem, not mine.

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So I'll let you make that decision and just do what I've always tried to do on this show

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is give you my honest take on things.

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And a shout out to Jimmy Song for actually defending himself and laying out why

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he thinks there is way too much arrogance on both sides of this thing.

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And I think he did a great job.

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And I love that everybody on both sides came in and still called him a coward

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and called him a fence sitter and said, you don't technically understand that.

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And I'm going to address all of it in the end of this.

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So if you actually want to get a little bit of heated, enjoy this episode,

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this is going to be a really fun one.

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If you don't, then fix your panties and go have a conversation with AI for an hour.

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And it tells you how great you are and how everything you think is absolutely right.

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That will be way more comfortable.

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But I think this is more fun.

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So let's get into it. We are getting right into today's read by Jimmy Song, and it is titled

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On Overconfidence by Jimmy Song.

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The BIP-110 debate has raged for eight months, and both camps keep pressuring me to pick a side.

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I get it. If BIP-110 is existential, which both sides insist it is, then rallying people to pass

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it or kill it becomes a moral duty. I still refuse. Not because neutrality is the safe spot,

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the cowardice I'm accused of, but because I have a good reason. This article is that reason.

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A binary view of this question is corrosive, and the worst of its effects is that it sets the stage

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for centralization. Tweet. I am not for or against BIP-110, the reason being that I don't know enough

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about the system to know the consequences of either path. We'll know a little more when the

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soft fork resolves one way or the other, but currently I have little idea of how anything

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plays out. In this X post, I said I don't know the consequences of BIP-110. Plenty of people

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called that incompetent, cowardly, or both. Others praised it as humility. It's neither. It's just

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true. I don't know the consequences. And here's my claim. Neither do you.

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Overconfidence

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Arguing on the internet is annoying for a lot of reasons, but the worst is the certainty.

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Everyone is dead sure of their position.

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The reason is simple, people believe the argument that sounds more confident.

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Over time, this has ratcheted up until total certainty is table stakes for any argument at all.

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In person, certainty is harder to fake.

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Body language, tone of voice, a pause in the wrong place, all of it leaks the doubt most people actually feel.

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Online, words are easy to compose, and it's easy to sound like you know when you don't.

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This produces some terrible arguments, and certainty about consequences is the worst of them.

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If you've studied dynamic systems, you know they're exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions.

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A tiny change at the start can produce wildly different outcomes.

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The popular version is the butterfly effect.

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A butterfly flaps its wings, and six months later, the weather turns on the other side of the planet.

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Science fiction writers use this to show that small acts have big consequences.

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From a complexity standpoint, that's not the useful part.

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The useful part is that you can't tell what's going to happen.

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It's why weather forecasts fall apart past two weeks.

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Weather is a dynamic system, and dynamic systems don't let you see far ahead.

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So when I say I don't know the consequences of BIP-110, I mean it.

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I don't know, and I don't think anyone can know short of running the experiment,

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because Bitcoin is a dynamic system too.

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It has feedback loops, interdependent variables,

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and behavior that resists modeling.

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Looking back.

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Take the last soft fork, Taproot.

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It was in the works for years,

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and plenty of very smart people implemented it

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and predicted how it would get used.

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Tweet from Anthony Towns.

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Big short-term win is for self-custody, I think.

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You get an, if I lose my wallet,

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I can recover my funds via X alternative for free.

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Not sure if exchanges will see benefits in the short term,

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though I think Bitfinex announced they'll support on day one.

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One predicted use was social recovery,

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which is using Taproot to back up your coins with help from your friends.

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The people making that prediction knew Taproot inside and out.

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They were wrong.

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Five years on, I am not aware of a single consumer wallet

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doing social recovery with Taproot.

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What actually happened, nobody saw coming.

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Inscriptions, ordinals, BRC20.

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People used Taproot to stuff junk into the blockchain.

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There were also more positive developments like BitVM and ARK.

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These are second-order consequences, and no one predicted them before Taproot shipped.

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If we look back at SegWit, no one predicted the deluge of soft forks that would emerge in late 2017 and early 2018.

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nor did anyone predict that BCH would emerge or be adopted by Bitmain

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or that Craig Wright would join them and then split from them

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and then decide to sue Bitcoin Core devs leading to the resignation of the lead maintainer.

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Epistemic Humility

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I'm not fence-sitting, I'm telling the truth.

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We don't understand the full consequences of what we're doing

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so we should move carefully and slowly.

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I'm wary of soft forks in general for exactly this reason

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because the second and third order consequences are things we keep failing to predict.

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A hallmark of centralized systems is that they pretend to know what can't be known,

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namely every consequence of a policy.

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It's the hubris that drives legislators to pass law after law,

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certain they're doing good because their intentions are good,

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even when the results are bad.

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Hayek called it the pretense of knowledge,

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and it's the conceit that makes centralization possible.

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if people really grasp

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dynamic systems and how hard

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second and third order effects are to predict

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they'd want fewer laws

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not more

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that's exactly what's happening here

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and people understand other people's

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pretense of knowledge well enough

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when it suits them

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BIP 110 advocates demanded it from core devs

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over the elimination of the opportune standardness rules

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which was then walked back

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to a change default

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now the same demand runs the other way

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regarding BIP 110

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Each side claims

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it knows the consequences

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and the other side doesn't.

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The truth is that nobody knows them least of all the second and third order effects People also paper over their ignorance by appealing to intentions We want small miners to get as much fees as the big miners get

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We want CSAM off the blockchain.

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Fine intentions both, but intentions don't make good law.

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Austrian economists have known this for a century,

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and you don't have to look past socialism's many failed runs to see why.

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The Decentralized Way

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If we shouldn't make large changes, what's the alternative?

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A decentralized one.

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Instead of one policy for everyone, we decide one person at a time.

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Centralization means surrendering your self-sovereignty and letting some other entity decide for you,

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usually with a single rule for all.

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That road leads to surveillance, restriction, confiscation, and worse.

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More laws don't make a better society.

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Decentralized law has a far better track record.

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English common law is the classic example.

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Nobody legislated it.

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It changed one case at a time.

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Consensus emerged and norms shifted, but slowly.

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That's why I favor a policy-based approach over a consensus-based one.

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Consensus changes carry all the second-in-order risk I've been describing.

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Policy is each node deciding for itself.

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BIP-110

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So, is Jimmy against BIP-110, against Softworks in general?

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My stance is that Bitcoin is money, and that money is best when it changes very little,

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which is why I'm an ossificationist.

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Related to that is my position on Softworks, which is that it's fine for bug fixes and security improvements.

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That includes removing opcodes almost nobody uses.

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I'm for simplification and for shrinking Bitcoin's attack surface.

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Does BIP-110 qualify?

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I can't tell.

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Read it one way and it shrinks the attack surface.

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Less arbitrary data, smaller blocks, cheaper nodes, more of them.

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Read it the other way and it's a policy preference smuggled into a hurried consensus change,

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something even the proponents half concede with their own FAQ,

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admits that spam is best fought with filters, not forks.

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Both readings are honest.

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I can't decide between them.

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And saying so isn't a dodge.

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It's the truth.

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Here's the part I want to be careful about, because it's the whole point of this essay.

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I'm not for BIP-110. I'm also not for stopping it.

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Those sound like the same refusal, but they're not.

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To be against activation, I'd have to know the chain is better off without it, and I don't.

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To be for activation, I'd have to know it's better off with it, and I don't know that either.

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The boosters are sure it saves Bitcoin.

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The loudest opponents are just as sure it wrecks it, with their warnings of chain splits and frozen coins.

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Both are predictions about a dynamic system.

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Which is to say, both are guesses wearing the costume of fact.

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I won't join either side, because joining means claiming a certainty that I've spent this whole essay arguing nobody has.

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What I will do is defend the attempt.

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There's a camp that sees unrestricted data on-chain as existential,

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a slow poison that prices out node operators

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and turns the world's money into the world's hard drive.

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I don't share their certainty,

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but a UASF is exactly the tool a decentralized system

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hands to people who feel that way.

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Users asserting that they, not miners,

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are the final authority over the rules.

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Telling them they aren't allowed to try would be the centralizing move,

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the one this whole essay warns against,

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and it would mean pretending I know their stand is wrong.

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I don't.

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They have every right to make it.

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And they're going to make it no matter what I say.

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The signaling is live, the software ships, the block heights are set.

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My declaring for or against changes none of it.

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So the real choice in front of me was never activate or don't.

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It's fight the attempt, bless the attempt, or watch it.

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I choose to watch.

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because however this resolves, we learn something valuable we currently don't know.

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That's the one thing I'm actually sure of.

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If BIP-110 stalls at single-digit signaling and dies,

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we learn how a hostile user-activated soft fork fails and what it takes to kill one.

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If it activates, we learn what it takes for a soft fork with significant opposition to succeed.

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Either resolution clears a patch of the fog.

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The Honest Position

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The pressure to declare for or against assumes one side can see the end of this from the beginning.

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Neither can.

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The boosters are guessing and the doomsayers are guessing,

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and dressing a guess in confidence doesn't turn it into knowledge.

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That's the conceit that builds central planners.

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The pretense that the consequences of a policy can be known in advance

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when the whole lesson of dynamic systems is that they can't.

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So my honest position is the one I started with.

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I don't know the consequences of activating BIP-110.

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I don't know the consequences of blocking it, and neither do you.

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I'm not for it, and I'm not against it.

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The only thing I'll commit to is the process.

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The people who think the stakes are existential have the right to make their case to the network.

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They're going to make it regardless, and watching how it plays out is how we learn.

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We'll know what BIP-110 does to Bitcoin when it plays out, one way or the other.

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Until then, anyone who tells you they already know is selling the same false certainty that builds every system Bitcoin was made to escape.

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You should buy a BitBox for your own sake so that you can hold your own keys, do it easily, and BitBoxes are just cool.

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00:14:30,603 --> 00:14:33,863
They're one of my favorite hardware wallets, have been for a very, very long time.

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And particularly, I like their entire stack to go from like start to finish, use their software, the ability to just plug it right into a phone.

245
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It's just a really awesome tool.

246
00:14:45,643 --> 00:14:46,943
It's a great hardware wallet.

247
00:14:47,443 --> 00:14:52,863
And in addition, you should also support the show because I do a lot of work and it helps me out.

248
00:14:53,043 --> 00:14:57,163
And I only promote, I take my advertising very seriously on this.

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I refuse to work with anybody that does not have a product that I literally know and love,

250
00:15:03,703 --> 00:15:05,143
that I specifically trust.

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00:15:05,703 --> 00:15:08,563
And it's a great way to help out the show.

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00:15:08,963 --> 00:15:10,143
You've got a discount code.

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00:15:10,303 --> 00:15:13,603
And all you got to do is remember to put mine in when you go get your hardware wallet.

254
00:15:14,003 --> 00:15:14,463
Check it out.

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00:15:14,663 --> 00:15:15,923
Links and details right in the show notes.

256
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This was fantastic, man.

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And it is hilarious.

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the determinism that this has been responded to on both sides, the usual suspects and the

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not usual suspects.

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But I want to address some of them because this literally drives me crazy because people

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think that because they have a technical reason or that there's a technical reality about

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00:15:43,843 --> 00:15:49,063
one tool or one piece of this, and because they understand that technical reality, that

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they understand the social consequences. All of these consequences are social. And I'm going to

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start with Adam back, who I massively respect and consider him a friend, but I'm going to shit on

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him a little bit here. He said, fence sitters going to fence sit. The stuff about Taproot is

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nonsense. Coincidental spam as easily sent is easily sent. I think is what it's supposed to say

267
00:16:12,343 --> 00:16:18,143
with Segwit or P2SH tech people know better. Segwit had widespread consensus that crazily,

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the crazily broken filter BIP does not.

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Accordingly, it will fail.

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Simple.

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Man, this is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy.

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The stuff about Taproot is nonsense.

273
00:16:28,123 --> 00:16:28,923
It's coincidental.

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00:16:29,223 --> 00:16:31,343
Spam was easily sent with SegWit or P2SH.

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You don't, nobody knows that.

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00:16:33,943 --> 00:16:36,543
It literally didn't happen until Taproot

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and explicitly until we blew out the script size,

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the script witness limit.

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00:16:42,903 --> 00:16:44,443
It was 10 kilobytes.

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That was the most you could put in a transaction.

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The claim is not that you could not put steganography or put data into the chain.

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00:16:55,243 --> 00:17:02,023
The claim is that the way and ability and the cost of doing so absolutely changed.

283
00:17:02,463 --> 00:17:09,443
And thus the social outcome and the tradeoff of people actually paying to do that did in fact change.

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00:17:09,443 --> 00:17:27,767
You can say that you change the incentives you change the price and the cost and the mode of interaction and that that did not change the outcome especially when the the empirical evidence is to the contrary They weren using SegWit or P2SH to do it They did when Taproot did it

285
00:17:28,046 --> 00:17:29,546
It may be coincidental.

286
00:17:29,546 --> 00:17:30,887
He might be right.

287
00:17:31,247 --> 00:17:38,007
But the arrogance is hilarious because Jimmy Song is literally talking about the fact of exactly what we don't know.

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00:17:38,287 --> 00:17:39,027
We don't know.

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00:17:39,607 --> 00:17:41,046
The price changed.

290
00:17:41,347 --> 00:17:43,306
The rules and the policy changed.

291
00:17:43,306 --> 00:17:46,847
It does not mean that you couldn't have figured out how to stick crap in it.

292
00:17:47,066 --> 00:17:50,046
It's that people weren't until it got easier and cheaper.

293
00:17:50,566 --> 00:17:51,687
Like, holy crap.

294
00:17:51,806 --> 00:17:54,127
Did anybody read this thing and actually think about it?

295
00:17:54,627 --> 00:17:55,627
Then Luke jumps in.

296
00:17:55,907 --> 00:17:57,407
The outcome is not even a factor here.

297
00:17:57,546 --> 00:18:01,147
Do you support forcing Bitcoiners to distribute CSAM, Core30 or not?

298
00:18:01,227 --> 00:18:01,826
BIP went in.

299
00:18:02,227 --> 00:18:03,647
You're not going to stop it, Luke.

300
00:18:04,287 --> 00:18:04,927
You're not going to.

301
00:18:06,066 --> 00:18:07,247
God bless.

302
00:18:07,247 --> 00:18:16,207
there are a few comment sections where like the top posts do such a perfect job of showing how

303
00:18:16,207 --> 00:18:21,527
right the post is in my opinion now i will agree with one part of adam back's post it says segwit

304
00:18:21,527 --> 00:18:26,147
had widespread consensus and crazily broken fill and the crazy broken filter bit does not

305
00:18:26,147 --> 00:18:33,227
accordingly it will fail simple um and actually i disagree with that i i do not think it is at all

306
00:18:33,227 --> 00:18:39,707
obvious that it will fail just because it does not have broad widespread consensus but i do think

307
00:18:39,707 --> 00:18:47,107
it is far more likely to fail than not but i would never say accordingly it will fail simple with the

308
00:18:47,107 --> 00:18:54,147
confidence that the tweet has uh which is exactly what jimmy points out is that it's very easy to be

309
00:18:54,147 --> 00:18:59,107
insanely confident in text when i don't think anybody if nobody would even be talking about

310
00:18:59,107 --> 00:19:05,387
that. Adam Back would not jump in here and go off with fence sitters going to fence sit if there

311
00:19:05,387 --> 00:19:12,107
was absolutely no concern whatsoever. Jameson Lopp wouldn't jump in. Luke would not jump in if

312
00:19:12,107 --> 00:19:15,867
they were certain. If they were certain, they wouldn't even respond because they wouldn't care.

313
00:19:15,987 --> 00:19:20,607
They would simply know that their outcome was going to be their outcome. It's exactly why nobody

314
00:19:20,607 --> 00:19:24,407
talks about Bcash anymore because nobody's worried about it. Nobody thinks it's going to win.

315
00:19:24,407 --> 00:19:29,287
that is the action of somebody who is not concerned the reason everybody's bitching about

316
00:19:29,287 --> 00:19:34,867
this is because nobody knows everybody's insecure about it and so they have to come in and say their

317
00:19:34,867 --> 00:19:42,027
piece and one way or the one way or the other being more likely isn't relevant nobody knows

318
00:19:42,027 --> 00:19:47,447
and one side being right will not mean that they know because one side's eventually going to be

319
00:19:47,447 --> 00:19:51,927
right one way or the other but i'll give you a perfect example of something that just happened

320
00:19:51,927 --> 00:19:58,227
they proved it nobody knows what the fuck they're talking about it's real easy the op return the

321
00:19:58,227 --> 00:20:02,967
change in op return the nazis screamed it was going to be flooded with spam and tons of people

322
00:20:02,967 --> 00:20:08,147
were going to use it and the other side literally said over and over and over again is that this is

323
00:20:08,147 --> 00:20:13,326
going to be better they should use it and it will actually they will actually move stuff over to it

324
00:20:13,326 --> 00:20:19,467
it's like a trash can and some people maybe even a lot of people will put their their trash in the

325
00:20:19,467 --> 00:20:25,326
trash can. I talked about both and the potential for both on the show in many different conversations

326
00:20:25,326 --> 00:20:30,027
and at many different stages, but I wasn't sure. The only thing that it really looked like to me

327
00:20:30,027 --> 00:20:34,947
was that it might allow more spam, but I wasn't even certain that anybody was ever going to use

328
00:20:34,947 --> 00:20:42,066
it either way because there wasn't much incentive to. Inscriptions aren't going to change their

329
00:20:42,066 --> 00:20:48,387
code. There's a real limitation in having to retool. There's a social cost to building a

330
00:20:48,387 --> 00:20:52,887
completely different thing to use something a different way and then to totally change like

331
00:20:52,887 --> 00:20:56,347
all your other inscriptions are kind of useless if now you're going to switch it over to op return

332
00:20:56,347 --> 00:21:00,047
so nobody's going to do that so i had no reason to think that anybody was ever going to switch it

333
00:21:00,047 --> 00:21:03,826
over and it's more expensive so why would you switch it over you didn't change the incentive

334
00:21:03,826 --> 00:21:08,247
you didn't change the cost structure of anything they're not going to use it but in the same way

335
00:21:08,247 --> 00:21:14,607
blowing out op return the op return limit wasn't going to nobody was going to use it because they

336
00:21:14,607 --> 00:21:17,467
Because the spam systems are already in place.

337
00:21:17,566 --> 00:21:19,867
They use inscriptions and they're cheaper to use inscriptions.

338
00:21:20,187 --> 00:21:20,826
So what happened?

339
00:21:21,207 --> 00:21:22,047
Basically nothing.

340
00:21:22,627 --> 00:21:24,027
Both sides were wrong.

341
00:21:24,767 --> 00:21:24,967
All right.

342
00:21:25,027 --> 00:21:29,127
So then Jameson Lopp comes in and says, we cannot know unknown unknowns, quote unquote,

343
00:21:29,287 --> 00:21:31,607
is a meaningless statement that doesn't help the decision making process.

344
00:21:32,007 --> 00:21:32,147
Why?

345
00:21:32,247 --> 00:21:36,747
Because there are always unknown unknowns for both doing something and for doing nothing.

346
00:21:37,167 --> 00:21:40,447
Yeah, except that everybody's claiming what the social outcome and how people are going

347
00:21:40,447 --> 00:21:44,367
to use this and what the consequences for the chain use are going to be.

348
00:21:44,607 --> 00:21:47,127
Those are necessarily unknowns.

349
00:21:47,667 --> 00:21:53,307
And the thing that gets me is the people who arrogantly think because they know some technical piece of it,

350
00:21:53,307 --> 00:21:57,707
or they have some technical understanding that they can predict what people will do.

351
00:21:58,147 --> 00:21:59,747
Those are not the same thing.

352
00:22:00,047 --> 00:22:01,807
They're not even slightly the same thing.

353
00:22:01,907 --> 00:22:05,507
They're totally different categories of conversation and thought.

354
00:22:05,847 --> 00:22:12,907
Hell, I can't even imagine a track record that is worse than developers trying to predict how users will use software.

355
00:22:12,907 --> 00:22:18,907
they don't even realize that they live in totally separate universes like developers understand how

356
00:22:18,907 --> 00:22:24,547
the thing works inside so they don't even know this is exactly why you have this conversation

357
00:22:24,547 --> 00:22:30,167
of like oh people can just use steganography and people can just use they can use fake pub keys and

358
00:22:30,167 --> 00:22:36,347
all this stuff and so obviously there will just be endless there will be this huge inscription

359
00:22:36,347 --> 00:22:41,947
market no matter how whatever mechanism we have because people can always stick in arbitrary data

360
00:22:41,947 --> 00:22:47,887
but that does not align with any of the economic reality or the social costs or the barriers to

361
00:22:47,887 --> 00:22:52,967
actually doing it i think there was an example of peter todd doing during all of this showing that

362
00:22:52,967 --> 00:22:57,667
like he could do some like really complicated thing with a terminal and he could like force

363
00:22:57,667 --> 00:23:04,147
a bunch of arbitrary data into a transaction no matter what even even like valid within the

364
00:23:04,147 --> 00:23:08,167
filters but it's funny because i think that was actually the example in which he actually used

365
00:23:08,167 --> 00:23:13,347
slipstream to get around it if i'm not mistaken i don't know i could be wrong in the details and i

366
00:23:13,347 --> 00:23:18,326
might be mixing up two different episodes or examples of this actually happening but i remember

367
00:23:18,326 --> 00:23:24,727
reading the post um of one of the situations like this and and looking at like all of the different

368
00:23:24,727 --> 00:23:28,727
commands and like the setup like the lengthy thing that was explained of how they actually

369
00:23:28,727 --> 00:23:31,927
did this thing and all i could think is that this is a perfect example of one of those like github

370
00:23:31,927 --> 00:23:36,247
tools there's like this this problem is solved and now you have a tool that like solves this problem

371
00:23:36,247 --> 00:23:38,647
and it's so great and it's really easy to use.

372
00:23:38,867 --> 00:23:40,586
And then they give you like six pages

373
00:23:40,586 --> 00:23:42,267
of like how to install it and get NPM

374
00:23:42,267 --> 00:23:45,787
and your package manager and then install it

375
00:23:45,787 --> 00:23:47,667
and then run this like special thing

376
00:23:47,667 --> 00:23:49,066
to get permissions and all this stuff.

377
00:23:49,367 --> 00:23:51,566
And all I can think every time when I do this,

378
00:23:51,586 --> 00:23:52,566
and I can do all of those things

379
00:23:52,566 --> 00:23:54,806
and I do those things pretty like constantly.

380
00:23:55,107 --> 00:23:57,767
But I feel like I'm in this funny middle place

381
00:23:57,767 --> 00:24:00,826
where I read this and I think this developer

382
00:24:00,826 --> 00:24:02,407
has no idea that nobody's gonna use their crap.

383
00:24:02,806 --> 00:24:03,907
Like you didn't solve the problem.

384
00:24:04,007 --> 00:24:05,667
You didn't solve the problem until there's a tap

385
00:24:05,667 --> 00:24:13,367
and your interaction, your actual system, your software flows directly toward or directly with

386
00:24:13,367 --> 00:24:17,467
the intent of the user. And this developer has no idea because they don't understand.

387
00:24:18,066 --> 00:24:23,207
They don't. It's like they have blinders on the fact that people aren't going to open up a terminal

388
00:24:23,207 --> 00:24:28,287
window. The only people you have are crazy autists or people who build their own stuff anyway,

389
00:24:28,287 --> 00:24:32,887
or are constantly tweaking things. And because of that, you're never going to have a broadly

390
00:24:32,887 --> 00:24:37,907
popular tool. In fact, probably one of the biggest things that's actually changed that in recent,

391
00:24:38,167 --> 00:24:42,887
in like the recent year or two, is that you can actually have AI install these things for you,

392
00:24:42,887 --> 00:24:47,947
which is an interesting element to all of this, but totally different topic and side tangent.

393
00:24:48,387 --> 00:24:54,607
But all of this, like you have to pick a direction and you have to be confident and say declarative

394
00:24:54,607 --> 00:24:58,787
one way or the other, that definitely this is going to be worse for spam or definitely this is

395
00:24:58,787 --> 00:25:03,867
going to kind of fix spam or this is going to be a good decision when literally when all we are

396
00:25:03,867 --> 00:25:09,867
talking about is the social outcomes of how users will use something when taproot could not be the

397
00:25:09,867 --> 00:25:15,647
more perfect example despite adam back's flippant hand waving like there were no like everybody just

398
00:25:15,647 --> 00:25:19,127
knew what the hell taproot was going to be used for and everybody was right because they had some

399
00:25:19,127 --> 00:25:24,407
technical understanding of it we don't have nobody's using it to do efficient multi-sig

400
00:25:24,407 --> 00:25:26,267
Almost nobody's using it for privacy.

401
00:25:26,647 --> 00:25:36,167
Almost nobody's using it for a joint, like, key recovery and, like, complex, multi-layered, multi-path scripts.

402
00:25:36,447 --> 00:25:37,586
None of that shit is happening.

403
00:25:37,907 --> 00:25:40,107
Nobody's using Taproot except spammers.

404
00:25:40,586 --> 00:25:41,687
We're five years in.

405
00:25:41,847 --> 00:25:47,747
I'm even still hopeful and confident that we will actually get, like, cross-input signature aggregation or something,

406
00:25:47,927 --> 00:25:51,187
and Taproot will actually become the thing that it is.

407
00:25:51,187 --> 00:26:07,090
But hell I not even confident on Quantum but Quantum might be here before we even get to that point and people actually use it for what it used for Why Because users just want to use the stuff that works and the stuff that already built and they don want to retool or create new wallets or do anything And the idea that that not a factor in the spam

408
00:26:08,030 --> 00:26:09,270
how the hell?

409
00:26:09,390 --> 00:26:11,230
We're five years into Taproot

410
00:26:11,230 --> 00:26:12,710
and nobody's even switched their multisig.

411
00:26:13,070 --> 00:26:16,390
If you forced inscribers to literally retool

412
00:26:16,390 --> 00:26:19,310
to make their stuff work or their ordinals work again,

413
00:26:19,450 --> 00:26:20,930
they literally might just give up.

414
00:26:21,510 --> 00:26:23,210
They might be five years before Emo

415
00:26:23,210 --> 00:26:25,430
even cares or thinks about spam again.

416
00:26:25,690 --> 00:26:26,330
You don't know.

417
00:26:26,330 --> 00:26:27,870
You just don't know.

418
00:26:28,250 --> 00:26:32,810
We're asking, we're making declarations about what users will do.

419
00:26:33,490 --> 00:26:35,830
Technical understanding does not fix that.

420
00:26:36,170 --> 00:26:44,590
A guess about child pornography on the chain does not lead to any moral superiority, does

421
00:26:44,590 --> 00:26:46,630
not tell you what users are going to do.

422
00:26:47,030 --> 00:26:51,930
And I'll tell you, everybody who said the sky is falling from the BIP-110 changes, the

423
00:26:51,930 --> 00:26:53,650
changes seem insanely mundane to me.

424
00:26:53,650 --> 00:26:59,390
Like they're extremely minimal and they don't seem to affect anything that's actually being used.

425
00:26:59,890 --> 00:27:06,890
Yet again, nobody, almost nobody is using op if inside of Taproot except for spammers, except for inscriptions.

426
00:27:07,410 --> 00:27:10,890
Nobody is using giant witness data except for inscriptions.

427
00:27:11,350 --> 00:27:17,430
And importantly, the people who are the very few people who are using it not for inscriptions won't even be affected.

428
00:27:17,430 --> 00:27:24,810
And anybody who's using op-if inside of Tapscript for multisig is actually doing it wrong.

429
00:27:25,190 --> 00:27:27,190
They should be using different leafs.

430
00:27:27,630 --> 00:27:29,590
It's better for privacy and it's cheaper.

431
00:27:30,110 --> 00:27:35,050
They're probably only using op-if so that they don't have to retool Miniscript to actually

432
00:27:35,050 --> 00:27:36,110
do it the right way.

433
00:27:36,310 --> 00:27:41,490
But I'm supposed to think the sky is falling because we won't have op-if inside a Tapsroot

434
00:27:41,490 --> 00:27:42,750
when it's not even needed.

435
00:27:42,750 --> 00:27:48,730
And if you hate me because I have this opinion about it, or I actually came to my own conclusion

436
00:27:48,730 --> 00:27:52,990
and this is how I think about it and I shared it and it doesn't mean that I absolutely support

437
00:27:52,990 --> 00:27:57,670
BIP 110 or I absolutely reject it, I'm a fence sitter and that makes you not like me, that's

438
00:27:57,670 --> 00:27:59,150
your problem because you're too petty.

439
00:27:59,530 --> 00:28:04,790
I don't dislike Jameson Lopp or Luke or Adam Back because they disagree with me, but I'm

440
00:28:04,790 --> 00:28:07,030
going to call them out on their shit because I do disagree with them.

441
00:28:07,230 --> 00:28:08,510
I'm telling you how I think.

442
00:28:08,810 --> 00:28:12,210
I can actually get this intense about something and be friends with somebody still.

443
00:28:12,210 --> 00:28:14,770
If they can't, then they shouldn't be friends with me.

444
00:28:15,090 --> 00:28:23,170
I still tried to extend an olive branch to Roger Ver in multiple different situations over the years where we were actually in the same place and conversed a little bit.

445
00:28:23,610 --> 00:28:25,950
I mean, it was a lost cause, but I give it a shot at least.

446
00:28:26,350 --> 00:28:26,670
And you know what?

447
00:28:26,730 --> 00:28:33,190
On that topic, I'll also point out something about Adam Back's comment is that tech people know better.

448
00:28:34,090 --> 00:28:37,390
Widespread consensus is the crazy broken filter bit does not.

449
00:28:37,730 --> 00:28:38,810
Accordingly, it will fail.

450
00:28:39,110 --> 00:28:39,390
Simple.

451
00:28:39,770 --> 00:28:42,290
That actually does not denote whether or not you should support it.

452
00:28:42,690 --> 00:28:47,310
Even if I was concerned that small blocks were not going to be the proper outcome,

453
00:28:47,830 --> 00:28:50,730
or were not going to be the actual outcome of the block size war,

454
00:28:51,210 --> 00:28:53,430
I still think small blocks are the better decision.

455
00:28:54,070 --> 00:28:55,670
They're the better long-term path.

456
00:28:55,750 --> 00:28:59,850
They are a better assurance of Bitcoin's security and robustness

457
00:28:59,850 --> 00:29:03,730
and maintaining consensus in a decentralized way for the long term.

458
00:29:04,090 --> 00:29:06,690
And I think scaling is actually a red herring.

459
00:29:06,690 --> 00:29:26,310
You can't scale consensus to every single interaction. It's the nature of the tradeoff of the problem. And to fix it or to actually get around it, I think actually requires a technology as foundational and as breakthrough as Bitcoin was in the context of fiat money.

460
00:29:26,310 --> 00:29:53,250
So just a point to add is that supporting BIP-110 or not or supporting the direction or the case for making policy changes to limit inscriptions or to change the cost and incentive structure of inscribing garbage into the chain does not actually hinge on whether or not supporting or making a decision or having a stance on something is going to succeed or not.

461
00:29:53,250 --> 00:30:06,050
For the exact same reason that sound money, even if there's no technological way to secure it, no decentralized way to actually make it work, is still the proper position in the context of fiat.

462
00:30:06,570 --> 00:30:18,130
Everybody knows you cannot totally solve inscriptions or you can't solve data embedding, arbitrary data embedding with a policy or consensus rules.

463
00:30:18,130 --> 00:30:24,270
There is always a way, but you absolutely can change the cost and the incentives.

464
00:30:24,670 --> 00:30:34,550
They have been changed before, like three or four times, to looser and cheaper, and then the spam problem arrived.

465
00:30:35,150 --> 00:30:43,570
I believe claiming that changing the cost and incentives around sticking spam into the chain did not.

466
00:30:43,570 --> 00:30:49,950
it was simply coincidental that suddenly it blew up and became a massive part and half of the entire

467
00:30:49,950 --> 00:30:59,210
UTXO set is exactly the arrogance that you don't know that. You don't know that. Absolutely 100%

468
00:30:59,210 --> 00:31:05,890
nobody knows that at all. You don't know that it definitely was because of the script limits

469
00:31:05,890 --> 00:31:13,030
being blown out from 10 kilobytes to as big as anybody wanted. But to say there's not a simple

470
00:31:13,030 --> 00:31:17,890
logical path from the cost and difficulty of doing something to the presence of the thing

471
00:31:17,890 --> 00:31:23,870
actually existing and the empirical evidence that aligns with that and that you can't draw the

472
00:31:23,870 --> 00:31:29,710
conclusion because some technical person somewhere can always steganography some emojis into the

473
00:31:29,710 --> 00:31:37,950
train is also something you can't know that is a declaration about the social and economic outcome

474
00:31:37,950 --> 00:31:45,350
of a technicality, knowing the technicality is not any sort of crystal ball about what people

475
00:31:45,350 --> 00:31:53,170
will actually do with the tool. And considering not one good prediction about what Taproot was

476
00:31:53,170 --> 00:31:58,830
going to be used for has actually come to fruition on the chain, I think we should be a little bit

477
00:31:58,830 --> 00:32:03,450
more humble in claiming because we have some technical knowledge about something, we can

478
00:32:03,450 --> 00:32:09,330
predict human behavior. And I'll give you another good example, actually, because nothing has

479
00:32:09,330 --> 00:32:14,210
actually gone in Bitcoin's history. Nothing has actually gone exactly the way anybody has predicted

480
00:32:14,210 --> 00:32:19,390
it would. And I'll tell you how we could have lost the block size war and not gotten Segwit.

481
00:32:19,730 --> 00:32:24,370
And I promise you there's not a soul on earth who could have told you that this definitely wasn't

482
00:32:24,370 --> 00:32:30,670
going to happen. We were betting and got lucky on the ignorance of the big blockers in how Bitcoin

483
00:32:30,670 --> 00:32:35,630
worked because they could have stopped Segwit. And if you tell me, oh, we had support for Segwit

484
00:32:35,630 --> 00:32:40,290
and they weren't belligerent enough, that's bullshit. You don't remember what it was like

485
00:32:40,290 --> 00:32:46,910
talking to them. They were going to slit somebody's throat over this issue. They were stopping Segwit

486
00:32:46,910 --> 00:32:52,150
and they were refusing to give Segwit specifically for the purpose of getting their hard fork.

487
00:32:52,470 --> 00:32:56,130
They didn't give a shit about what was good for the network. They wanted their way.

488
00:32:56,130 --> 00:33:11,270
Had they understood how nodes worked and had they understood how the dynamics of the soft fork, they could have done a user rejected soft fork of SegWit activation and SegWit would not have won.

489
00:33:11,270 --> 00:33:21,470
The UASF would have failed if they had forced SegWit off the network from the Bcashers rather than them actually splitting off into their own fork.

490
00:33:21,790 --> 00:33:26,750
They wouldn't have gotten their fork because that requires extremely high and broad consensus.

491
00:33:27,110 --> 00:33:34,930
But they could have stopped a soft fork because that only requires enough people for inertia to land on the people who did not update.

492
00:33:35,290 --> 00:33:39,570
We got lucky because they didn't understand how nodes worked.

493
00:33:39,570 --> 00:33:57,990
In fact, they went so belligerent, they were so angry about the idea that nodes could stop them from getting their hard fork, that they literally, I think just out of pure belligerence, adopted the policy that nodes don't matter at all, and then started preaching that mantra that your node doesn't do anything.

494
00:33:57,990 --> 00:34:00,110
and that was their ultimate failure.

495
00:34:00,510 --> 00:34:03,170
If they had just accepted and thought about the nuance

496
00:34:03,170 --> 00:34:04,690
of what a no does

497
00:34:04,690 --> 00:34:06,970
and how they could have actually enforced their power

498
00:34:06,970 --> 00:34:08,690
even without minor hash rate,

499
00:34:09,110 --> 00:34:10,570
they could have stopped Segwit.

500
00:34:10,910 --> 00:34:12,170
And nobody would have known,

501
00:34:12,270 --> 00:34:15,710
you cannot predict whether or not they were going to do that.

502
00:34:15,930 --> 00:34:17,190
We did not know the outcome.

503
00:34:17,610 --> 00:34:18,550
It was a gamble.

504
00:34:18,870 --> 00:34:20,050
We were playing chicken.

505
00:34:20,350 --> 00:34:21,450
And when you play chicken

506
00:34:21,450 --> 00:34:23,430
and claim what the outcome is going to be,

507
00:34:23,670 --> 00:34:27,270
you're betting on what a person is going to do

508
00:34:27,270 --> 00:34:29,370
and you don't know it.

509
00:34:29,370 --> 00:34:31,770
And it's not an arbitrary fence-sitter,

510
00:34:31,770 --> 00:34:34,170
it's not a, those are unknown unknowns,

511
00:34:34,170 --> 00:34:38,370
it's literally the area in which nobody can know.

512
00:34:38,370 --> 00:34:41,770
And if that's the core area that we're fighting over,

513
00:34:41,770 --> 00:34:43,170
because the technicality

514
00:34:43,213 --> 00:34:50,353
is just the technicality, and everybody's arguing about what the outcome of user actions and choices are going to be.

515
00:34:50,473 --> 00:34:51,833
That's what this argument is over.

516
00:34:52,333 --> 00:34:57,433
What are users going to do if this policy is in place or this technical reality is in place?

517
00:34:57,553 --> 00:34:59,973
With all due respect, Lopp, it's not an unknown unknown.

518
00:35:00,353 --> 00:35:02,393
It's the whole thing we're arguing about.

519
00:35:02,393 --> 00:35:09,313
What will users do on chain if these are the policy rules or consensus rules versus these?

520
00:35:09,473 --> 00:35:12,533
It's not part of the argument. It's the whole argument.

521
00:35:12,533 --> 00:35:22,793
And the thing that I'm constantly told about from Nazis is that the government's going to flood the chain with CSAM for 10 years and that's going to kill Bitcoin.

522
00:35:22,933 --> 00:35:23,513
It's existential.

523
00:35:23,673 --> 00:35:26,793
And I'm like, you're telling me what somebody's going to do.

524
00:35:27,233 --> 00:35:34,853
And if we're talking about the government, they explicitly would just use whatever steganography option they have.

525
00:35:34,973 --> 00:35:39,253
They could do it just like Adam Back says in Segwit or P2SH.

526
00:35:39,253 --> 00:35:47,513
If they wanted a concerted attack on Bitcoin and they're okay with spending unlimited funds to do it, they don't need taproot and inscriptions.

527
00:35:47,913 --> 00:36:02,513
The only thing that actually, I think, actually changes with taproot, inscriptions and consensus rules or policy rules is a subtle difference in the price and incentives for spamming the hell out of the chain versus not really being interested in doing it.

528
00:36:02,653 --> 00:36:04,953
That's exactly why I am a fence sitter.

529
00:36:05,093 --> 00:36:06,853
If anybody wants to call it, I don't give a shit anymore.

530
00:36:06,853 --> 00:36:13,633
I'm literally so sick of everybody telling me exactly what it's going to be and then playing this like silence is violence bullshit.

531
00:36:13,773 --> 00:36:14,993
Like I have to pick a side.

532
00:36:15,293 --> 00:36:18,353
If I don't think either one of you right are right, I'm not going to pick one of you.

533
00:36:18,453 --> 00:36:38,967
It the most if you not a Democrat you have to be a Republican nonsense So no I do not think that having taproot means the government can attack us And if we make the consensus rules that op codes or op return is small and there a script limit again and taproot doesn have op if that now the government can attack us with CSAM

534
00:36:39,567 --> 00:36:40,427
Yeah, that's not true.

535
00:36:41,007 --> 00:36:42,427
Don't figure out a way to stick it in.

536
00:36:42,427 --> 00:36:55,747
And importantly, the claim that making a not doing the contiguous and non contiguous, you know, remember, that was a whole section of this argument that just kind of blew up for, I don't know, four weeks and then just disappeared again.

537
00:36:55,747 --> 00:37:08,667
The idea of contiguous data versus non-contiguous data is that, you know, whether or not you're literally printing the JPEG into the data, into the transaction data versus doing a steganography thing.

538
00:37:08,667 --> 00:37:37,047
It is hilarious that this was a perfect example of the everybody's arrogant about exactly what the outcome is. And they're 100% sure that it's definitely, oh, everybody will treat the contiguous data as like an explicit acceptance or approval of doing, of putting whatever horrible data or images they want on chain versus no, people will literally see it no different at all from steganography.

539
00:37:37,047 --> 00:37:41,267
and the courts will see it no differently at all than secondography

540
00:37:41,267 --> 00:37:42,767
because technically it's not any different.

541
00:37:43,027 --> 00:37:45,347
And one side claims they know because CSAM is bad

542
00:37:45,347 --> 00:37:47,827
and the other side claims they know because they have the technical reality.

543
00:37:48,207 --> 00:37:50,427
Both of you are telling me what other people are going to think.

544
00:37:50,747 --> 00:37:51,927
So get off your high horse.

545
00:37:52,027 --> 00:37:52,827
You don't know.

546
00:37:53,187 --> 00:37:53,947
Neither do I.

547
00:37:54,047 --> 00:37:55,027
I have no clue.

548
00:37:55,287 --> 00:37:57,947
I have no clue whether or not this is going to lead to more spam,

549
00:37:57,947 --> 00:38:01,447
whether BIP-110 actually does anything against it

550
00:38:01,447 --> 00:38:13,022
or if they will actually just retool all their stuff and keep their inscriptions going the same way or if they just gonna to throw in the towel because all of crypto seems to be dying or if they going to throw in the towel anyway because it kind of looks like everybody throwing

551
00:38:13,022 --> 00:38:17,622
in the towel. The crypto, the whole crypto narrative is dying. The inscriptions, even

552
00:38:17,622 --> 00:38:21,782
though they're a huge amount of the block space, don't really have much of a market anymore. It

553
00:38:21,782 --> 00:38:26,662
seems to have petered out. Spam may literally die of its own accord because it's stupid,

554
00:38:26,662 --> 00:38:28,642
but it might literally last forever.

555
00:38:28,802 --> 00:38:31,782
It might be half of the blocks forever for no reason.

556
00:38:32,042 --> 00:38:32,702
Because guess what?

557
00:38:32,782 --> 00:38:34,622
People are also generally stupid.

558
00:38:35,162 --> 00:38:36,942
Bit.10 may literally be enough

559
00:38:36,942 --> 00:38:40,122
to just kind of cut off a finger at a crucial point,

560
00:38:40,462 --> 00:38:42,462
kill the market, and nobody ever reinvest

561
00:38:42,462 --> 00:38:44,842
because they think it's a stupid thing to worry about,

562
00:38:44,982 --> 00:38:46,822
to think and actually build a market on

563
00:38:46,822 --> 00:38:49,342
because kind of the last group of people that did it

564
00:38:49,342 --> 00:38:50,622
all kind of got rug pulled.

565
00:38:50,622 --> 00:38:52,802
Now they have to support like four different things

566
00:38:52,802 --> 00:38:53,962
in their software stack

567
00:38:53,962 --> 00:38:55,722
just to see all the previous inscriptions

568
00:38:55,722 --> 00:38:56,982
versus the new inscriptions.

569
00:38:57,282 --> 00:38:59,522
That sounds like a giant bloated mess.

570
00:38:59,802 --> 00:39:00,942
But what the hell do I know?

571
00:39:01,122 --> 00:39:02,062
Windows exists.

572
00:39:02,782 --> 00:39:04,502
The people who cannot admit

573
00:39:04,502 --> 00:39:07,102
that all of this argument

574
00:39:07,102 --> 00:39:09,562
is about telling everyone

575
00:39:09,562 --> 00:39:12,142
exactly what other people are going to do

576
00:39:12,142 --> 00:39:15,142
when everybody has been so blatantly wrong

577
00:39:15,142 --> 00:39:16,882
about everything up to this point.

578
00:39:16,882 --> 00:39:18,502
And all we have is hindsight.

579
00:39:19,042 --> 00:39:20,142
And for all the declarations

580
00:39:20,142 --> 00:39:22,022
about what Taproot's going to be used for

581
00:39:22,022 --> 00:39:23,702
and the fact that it was safe

582
00:39:23,702 --> 00:39:24,882
and that there were no consequence

583
00:39:24,882 --> 00:39:27,182
and there were not going to be any negative consequences.

584
00:39:27,322 --> 00:39:32,562
And when it's just absolutely, you cannot possibly make the claim

585
00:39:32,722 --> 00:39:36,462
that previous changes to Bitcoin had no effect whatsoever

586
00:39:36,622 --> 00:39:40,362
about the existence of spam on chain, because technically

587
00:39:40,362 --> 00:39:55,916
you could always find some way to squeeze it in goes against all of the empirical data all of it It might be right but it doesn have any evidence But also claiming that BIP is going to stop it And they not going to just retool and keep selling trash

588
00:39:56,756 --> 00:39:58,036
You might be right.

589
00:39:58,536 --> 00:40:01,396
But there's also not a lot of evidence to support that.

590
00:40:01,736 --> 00:40:02,996
And I don't think it's existential.

591
00:40:03,356 --> 00:40:03,996
Either way.

592
00:40:04,276 --> 00:40:08,316
And neither one of you are going to stop government from doing whatever the hell they want.

593
00:40:08,496 --> 00:40:10,216
To shove crap into the chain.

594
00:40:10,636 --> 00:40:12,196
Because I don't know.

595
00:40:12,736 --> 00:40:16,276
Just like Jimmy Song, and thank you for this article, man, because you said it really well.

596
00:40:16,556 --> 00:40:18,496
I don't know what people are going to do.

597
00:40:18,636 --> 00:40:22,976
I don't know which thing users are going to do in response to which thing that actually occurs.

598
00:40:23,176 --> 00:40:27,656
And because I don't think it's existential, I don't have a strong position on what I should do.

599
00:40:28,016 --> 00:40:34,676
I've said probably a hundred times that I always thought policy and actually decentralizing Bitcoin mining was the best way to deal with this.

600
00:40:34,896 --> 00:40:36,596
But I don't know what people are going to do.

601
00:40:36,936 --> 00:40:39,896
All I know is that one side's telling me people are going to do this,

602
00:40:39,896 --> 00:40:42,356
and the other side's telling me that people are definitely going to do this.

603
00:40:42,456 --> 00:40:44,516
And I know that both of you don't know shit.

604
00:40:44,756 --> 00:40:47,836
And I'm not a Democrat or Republican for the exact same reason.

605
00:40:47,896 --> 00:40:49,796
It's where I've sat politically for most of my life.

606
00:40:49,796 --> 00:40:52,116
It's where I continue to sit right now on this issue

607
00:40:52,116 --> 00:40:55,316
until I feel like I have more confidence and I'm pretty comfortable here.

608
00:40:55,716 --> 00:40:58,536
So buy a Bitbox, use my discount code, and kiss my ass.

609
00:40:59,096 --> 00:41:00,456
Love you guys. Catch you on the next episode.

610
00:41:00,536 --> 00:41:01,476
Don't forget to subscribe.

611
00:41:09,896 --> 00:41:22,636
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

612
00:41:23,856 --> 00:41:25,776
Ralph Waldo Emerson