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Hey everyone, Michael here with the Bitcoin Way podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Today on the

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show, I have Chris Guida. Chris is an outspoken developer and a big proponent of BIP110,

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NOTS. He lays it all out. I think this was one of the best explanations I've heard

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in one concise place where we talk about NOTS, the origins of the node debates and everything,

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all the implementations, and we get into BIP110, what it is, why he thinks everyone should be

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signaling it. You're going to love this discussion. It does get a little bit technical, but I think

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it's high level enough that if you've been following Bitcoin for any period of time,

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you're going to kind of track and hopefully you're convinced one way or the other at the end.

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Hey, everyone. Like I said in the intro, I've got Chris here with me. Chris,

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welcome to the Bitcoin Way podcast. Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me.

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I appreciate you joining, man. This has been too long. We should have been talking about this a

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while back. I've had a mechanic on, I've had sort of different perspectives. Pierre Richard came on

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during the heat of the knots versus core debate. But when I get into some of the technical details

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of BIP 110, I want to keep it high level enough that people can follow if they're not a developer

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and I'm not. So I'm going to be asking these questions out of genuine curiosity. Let's start

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just briefly, a quick background on you. You've been a developer for a long time, Bitcoin focused

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now for several years. What was the moment that made Bitcoin resonate with you where you said,

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okay, I'm going all in, I'm dedicating my time to this? Oh, man. Yeah. So I've been, as you said,

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I've been a professional developer for a while, 2010 is when I started. I became a Bitcoin developer

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in 2020. And the moment that I said, I want to be all in on Bitcoin, I think was much earlier

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when I first got into Bitcoin, I was kind of always trying to find a way to get into Bitcoin

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development because I was just so interested in Bitcoin and how, you know, how it can give you

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freedom in your life. Basically, several years, maybe over a decade ago is when I first got into

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Bitcoin. And I guess there were lots of things that just kind of pulled me in. But one of the

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things I realized was that, I mean, so the real killer app for me was actually the Silk Road.

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When I realized that, oh my God, there's a whole, you know, like Agora marketplace functioning

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basically like outside the law. The people running it seem to be like these, like basically moral

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upstanding people, but they just, you know, there's these certain, you know, substances and

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whatever that are illegal for, in my opinion, not great reasons. But there's this payment system

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that you can use that nobody can stop. And I was like, that was sort of, I guess,

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the beginning of the rabbit hole. But I had already sort of started getting into

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libertarian politics and sort of realizing how the financial system, the monetary system

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is sort of very oppressive, but in ways that are not obvious. And I realized that Bitcoin can

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provide freedom both on the individual level, but also on a societal level. And so I think

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my sort of Bitcoin moment was, yeah, over a decade ago, I would say, when I realized,

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oh, this is the way forward for humanity. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that.

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Okay, so let's jump right in, because this could be a long conversation. I'm going to have a lot of

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dumb questions for you. I've studied this and then forgot it. It's like learning Spanish for me,

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right? If I don't use it, I lose it kind of thing. So a lot of these things are very fuzzy for me

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right now. I haven't dug deep lately. So the technical crux of the debate that's been raging,

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knots versus core, I think BIP 110 is sort of an extension of all of that, has been, as I

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understand it, to be related to the SegWit witness discount. So data stored in the section,

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It's cheaper than regular transactions.

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And critics say that this was designed for signatures, smart contract features.

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It's not for JPEGs, which is obviously a huge concern for many people.

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Is that a good way of framing it?

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How would you reframe that, perhaps?

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So I agree that the SegWit discount has caused there to be more spam than there would be otherwise.

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But I disagree that there's sort of an implication there that, oh, well, if we got rid of the

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discount, then the problem will be fixed. And I don't agree with that. There are always going to

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be incentives for people to put arbitrary data in the chain because Bitcoin's blockchain is very,

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very useful for storing arbitrary data. What it's especially useful for is what we call gamified

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spam, which is effectively shit coins, right? It's these token projects that they're pumping

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and dumps, right? They're just a way for scammers to do a quick money grab by leveraging Bitcoin's

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brand, right? It's basically like an, what's it called? Like an affinity scam of Bitcoin. They're

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saying, oh, we're building on Bitcoin. So this is, we're all Bitcoiners and we're doing Bitcoin stuff,

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but it's a lie, right? It's a big scam. And so they just, they do these pump and dumps. And

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what happens is the people, their victims are trying to get rich. And so when they're not very

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sensitive to fees. So the fees can go up to $50 or $100 per transaction, but these people think

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they're going to be millionaires. So it doesn't really matter whether the witness discount is

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there. The witness discount provides a 75% discount, which is significant. And if we lowered it, that

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could maybe help a little bit. But the thing that keeps spam away, and if you study Bitcoin history,

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you realize the thing that keeps spam away is an attitude of hostility towards spam.

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And so we had this exact same battle a little over a decade ago, and it was called the Op-Raturn War. And BitMEX actually wrote a great article about it, which everyone should read, where basically Bitcoin culture was hostile to these spammy shitcoin use cases.

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and there were people like Luke Dasher, Jeff Garzik,

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and many other Bitcoin Core devs at the time

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who were very hostile to these use cases

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and basically put up a credible front of,

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well, we're just going to keep fighting against this spam

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and every time the spammers make a move,

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we're going to make another move

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and we're going to keep escalating until they go away.

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And eventually what happened is there was this sort of compromise,

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which is Op return, where it's known as like a garbage bin, you know, okay, well, the spammers

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are going to spam. So, you know, let's just give them a place that's, you know, as harmless as

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possible. And so that was Op return. And then the spammers went away for about a decade. And then

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they started coming back with ordinals. So we're just having, you know, part two of that war.

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So we really need to look to how we won historically and just do the same thing again.

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Can you explain what's different?

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Why did the spammers go away for a decade?

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What was it?

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And then why did ordinals and some of these other, what I would agree with you, sort of

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shitcoiny, scammy sort of projects come about?

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Was it just they figured out that there was a way for them to do these things using the

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existing tools?

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Yeah.

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And so what happened in 2014 is that the spammers decided to go spam on other blockchains.

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So at first they were like, well, you know, we can leverage Bitcoin security because Bitcoin

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is so secure because it's the number one cryptocurrency.

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And so there were people like the counterparty guys, there was Omni, and then there was Vitalik

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with Ethereum.

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And you can look back at his tweets.

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he was thinking about building Ethereum on Bitcoin.

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And he basically said, he explicitly stated

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that he noticed that the Bitcoin devs

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were hostile to use cases like his.

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And so he knew that the Bitcoin core devs

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were gonna be at war with him.

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And so he decided to go build another blockchain.

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And so what happened is the shitcoiners,

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in that moment, that's when the shitcoin industry

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was kind of born.

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because all of the cryptocurrency activity

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was going to happen on Bitcoin up until that moment.

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But then when Ethereum came about,

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all of the shitcoiners

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and all these sort of fiat brain people

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realized, oh, we can just make our own blockchain, right?

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We don't have to do this on Bitcoin.

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We can just go to this other blockchain

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or this long tail of other shitcoins

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and we can do our shitcoin use cases over there.

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And basically what happened is the scams dried up.

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everybody realized, oh, these are scams, you know? And so these pump and dumps have a certain life

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cycle, right? Like you have to, they keep going as long as there's a, as long as the sort of shared

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delusion can be maintained. The shared delusion can be maintained as long as there's a sense that

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something novel is happening. So, you know, there was a big NFT craze on Ethereum in starting with

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CryptoKitties, like in 2017, which made an Ethereum node impossible to run. But then it really sort of

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reached its peak in 2021. And then it sort of crashed. And then after that, all of the NFT

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scammers just kind of went away because the public had wised up to the scam. But then what happened

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with ordinals is that something that appeared novel happened, which is that, oh, now we can do

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NFTs, same as before, but now it's on Bitcoin. And so this felt novel again. And so the scam sort of

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got this renewed energy. So that's really all that happened, right? It's these people who are just

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these DGens who are like going to the casino and they're trying to gamble and they're trying to get

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rich quick. Most of them are losing their shirts, but some of them are getting, you know, rich in

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the short term. In the long term, usually they end up just blowing the money on something else.

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But yeah, that's I think that hope that answers your question. Yeah. Yeah. So in your view is the

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incentive, because like what I think of is we're going to have you're putting Bitcoin's future at

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risk when you do these things. I'm not saying it's over. Like my conviction is still very high.

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But you're putting Bitcoin's future at risk.

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Is the incentive for the people promoting these what you refer to as scams?

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And candidly, I generally agree with that sentiment.

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When you say putting Bitcoin's future at risk, you're talking about the scammers are putting Bitcoin's future at risk, right?

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Correct. Correct. Yeah.

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So they are comfortable doing that, in your view, not because they aren't concerned about Bitcoin's future.

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Like they, they, they're just, they're just hoping to get rich quick.

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Like that's really what it amounts to.

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And if Bitcoin dies because of it, who cares?

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They made their money.

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They got out.

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Is that kind of the.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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So there's, there's a kind of, um, you know, and, and, and, uh, this is very deep in, in

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Bitcoin culture that, um, there's a certain darkness to fiat culture.

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There's a certain, there's a certain, um, high time preference that, that fiat money

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being the reserve asset creates in people.

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It incentivizes short-term thinking.

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And it incentivizes this exact behavior, right?

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Like, oh, well, I don't have to plan for the future.

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And I can't plan for the future.

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Planning for the future is actually punished under a fiat standard.

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And so my best path towards prosperity for myself and my descendants is to just try and

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just keep rolling the dice.

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That's kind of the best strategy on a fiat standard.

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So if you're a fiat brain person and you've grown up surrounded by fiat culture and you're used to your money just kind of evaporating away all the time and you're looking for some way to get ahead, it actually is kind of a good strategy if you're sort of spiritually bereft to just kind of go to the casino and see if you can get lucky.

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Okay. So is your position then that if people seek to allow Bitcoin to do anything because it's valid consensus, it's a valid transaction, it effectively becomes nothing because it's no longer peer-to-peer electronic cash.

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And it just becomes whatever the hell anyone wants it to be. And in the future, it could be some other iteration of some sort of shitcoin scam on top of Bitcoin as well.

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Right now, it's money versus arbitrary data.

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It's a file storage database.

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Is that?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So it's wonderful, actually, that we drove Vitalik to create his own blockchain because

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Ethereum shows us all of the things that are going to happen to Bitcoin that wait down

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this road of just kind of let the money printer have its way with Bitcoin.

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um that exactly what has happened to ethereum is what is going to happen to bitcoin if we do that

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and bitcoiners are very sort of libertarian minded they they believe in free markets but

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what they don't realize is that when you just when you just say all behavior is is is you know

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morally equivalent you know all and and and um the bitcoin system should not should not bias any

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particular behavior over any other behavior um as long as you know as long as everything's paying

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a fee per data. That's the only metric that we need to look at. What libertarians don't realize

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is that we don't exist in a free market right now. We exist under a fiat standard, which is

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actually very authoritarian. There's people who pull the levers to print the money. And those are

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the people that are going to end up in charge of Bitcoin if we allow the free market to have its

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way with Bitcoin. It's not really the free market, right? What's happening is that the fiat printer

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comes in and captures Bitcoin. And if you want to see what's going to happen to Bitcoin,

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all you need to do is look at Ethereum. That is what's waiting for us down that road.

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Okay. So let me give you an analogy that I've sort of used in my mind. I think other people

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probably used it too, but I want you to either poke holes in it or tell me if this is right.

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So a group of people get together in a community and they're like, hey, let's design and build a

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park for us all to use freely. Right. Um, and the intent of this park is for, you know, our kids to

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play on the playground, for us to have picnics, to do all these things. And then you've got more

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people show up and they're using the park for the same purposes as intended. And then more people

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show up and they want to start putting graffiti on, on the playground and on the, uh, you know,

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the, the, the pickleball court ground, you know, like whatever it is that they're doing.

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And you say, look, technically, it's not like any of us own this. However, this was never the design. Take your graffiti and all the other things that you're doing, shooting off fireworks or whatever, take it somewhere else.

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Like this was growing garbage or letting the dogs poop everywhere, you know, just kind of leaving a mess.

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Yeah. So is that sort of the justification as an analogy? Is that sort of the justification you would use for saying, no, even though this is a decentralized thing that no one operates independently or centrally, that's effectively what this whole debate amounts to?

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yeah i mean basically what what our opponents who tend to be core supporters are arguing is that um

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well the the people who are using the park for for good things are going to price out the people

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who are using the park for bad things and uh this argument is insane i don't know why anybody would

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believe it yeah if you just if you just if you have two brain cells to rub together you realize

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this is a silly argument um no that's not what's going to happen what's going to happen is it's

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going, the park is going to get ruined and everyone's going to leave. You know, there needs

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to be a, you know, even though it's decentralized, right? Even though we're all, you know, we're all

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working together to make the park happen. There needs to be a sense of what the park is for

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and what sorts of behaviors are acceptable. What sorts of behaviors are not acceptable.

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The park has a purpose, right? If the park doesn't have a purpose, then yeah, it's fine to just let

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anybody do whatever they want. But if the point of the park is for people to be able to go to the

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park and hang out in nature and touch grass and throw a Frisbee and run around with their dogs,

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then those are the sorts of activities that should be protected. And similarly with Bitcoin,

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Bitcoin has a purpose. The purpose is to be money. And in my view, I don't think you should really

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call yourself a Bitcoiner if you don't believe this, if you don't agree with this. But I think

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Bitcoin's purpose is to be the next world reserve asset, or at least to be a future world reserve

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asset so that we can replace the fiat standard with something more just. So that's its purpose.

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So if there's all of this activity that's competing with that purpose, then Bitcoin is sick or dying.

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So the sticking point to all of this is while Bitcoin is decentralized, and I would say credibly so, it should be more. We need way more nodes, in my opinion, running online. I mean, that's what we're all about the Bitcoin way. Self-custody, run a node, be self-sovereign.

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we have this we have the reference implementation core and that is when if someone spins up a brand

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new node and they know very you know they're brand new to bitcoin they've heard they should

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run a node by default they're probably going to run core all else equal and there are a handful

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of developers ultimately a very small group of people who centrally manage that you know and

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And yes, there's area for public comment.

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And I mean, we've seen some of this.

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What's the solution to that?

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Like, you know what I mean?

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Like, is it just many implementations?

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Like, would your hope be that Knotts isn't the only primary alternative and that we'd

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have tons of implementations?

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Or do you think we just need a few?

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Is Core just, are they bought and paid for in your view?

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I know these are a lot of questions I'm throwing at you.

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Yeah, I mean, so I think that two implementations is much better than one.

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I don't know why everybody is like, we need a third implementation.

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I think we should focus on having a second implementation before we should focus on having

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a third implementation.

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But one implementation is obviously not good, right?

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That's a central point of failure, as you've just noted.

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It's very easy to see.

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And I think we've seen very strong evidence recently that this has actually been happening,

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how a single implementation can become corrupted and subverted

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to serve the ends of moneyed interests, let's just say,

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and to no longer serve the interests of the users, right?

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The node runners, the people who are actually running the software.

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So yeah, I mean, that situation is very bad.

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How do we solve it?

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I think that we should focus on making Notts more decentralized.

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I think that people have this sort of loop derangement syndrome where they don't like

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Luke for one reason or another.

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I think those are irrational fears.

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Bitcoin Notts is open source.

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I think that it's totally transparent what Luke does.

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I'm going to start trying to contribute to Notts actually more pretty soon, hopefully.

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And, you know, a GitHub repo is centralized.

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There's nothing that anybody can do about that.

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There's the people who can, there's the maintainers, right?

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There's the people who can merge the PRs into the code base

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and make that officially the code.

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And so, you know, it's not going to work if there's 100 maintainers.

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And one maintainer is obviously not good either.

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Five maintainers is what Bitcoin Core has.

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That's pretty centralized.

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One maintainer is what Bitcoin Nots has.

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That's also pretty centralized.

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That's even more centralized.

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But what I don't agree with is people saying,

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well, we shouldn't support Bitcoin Nots

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because Bitcoin Nots only has one maintainer.

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And I'm like, okay, well,

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two centralized repos

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are better than one centralized repo.

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That's still a lot better, right?

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So but yes obviously it would be ideal if there were many many implementations I think that would be the healthiest thing Yeah You have competition at least So okay So here I tell you how I

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perceived this being rolled out was because I'm on X, right? So like I'm paying attention to the

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debate there. I'm not a developer, so I'm not going through all the forums. Although I did go

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back and revisit that and it's hard to follow if you're not a developer. But the way I saw it was

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there was sort of a debate about this in the background amongst developers uh maybe some

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censorship i mean we could talk about that too i'd be curious to hear your opinions but

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in general there there was there was debate going on but then it felt like it more or less came to

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the broader public and which happens to be kind of x which is a lot of the node runners right the

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people who are into bitcoin are on x and they said this is what we're doing that was sort of where

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for me, I got really turned off. Even if I agreed with the change, philosophically, I can't just get

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on board with the fact that they wanted to make this change. And it was obviously a very contentious

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topic. In that sort of environment, my default, or what seems to make sense to me is a default to

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conservatism. Let's not make the change if this is that heated. And they proceeded anyway. Is that

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a fair analysis of what you think happened. Do they need to pay attention to what people on X

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are saying? Okay, so you think they do. Absolutely. Okay, so you hit the nail on the head. That is

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absolutely right. And their disdain for X users is misplaced. So for one thing,

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so as I said earlier, devs need to take into account the opinions of the people that are

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running their software. If they don't do that, people will stop running their software.

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And so that's why we saw after the PR was open to remove the operaturn limit,

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we saw a big exodus into Bitcoin Noughts. And then once the PR was merged, you saw another

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exodus after that. And it went up to 20%. I think it's around 25% people running Noughts.

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this was perfectly predictable.

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So another thing,

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Bitcoin developers tend to be either not node runners.

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They just have a salary.

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They're just paid by one of these organizations

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that funds Bitcoin devs.

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And they don't necessarily own Bitcoin.

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They don't necessarily run a node.

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They don't necessarily align with Bitcoin values.

293
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They just have a job.

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And they're usually these sort of engineering types who like to tinker and solve interesting

295
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problems and work on cool tech.

296
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And that's great and all, but they tend to get lost in the weeds, right?

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They tend to look at the trees and they don't tend to look at the forest.

298
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So, and as I said, they tend to be just people who are getting paid to work on Bitcoin, but

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who don't necessarily hold the Bitcoin values.

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And the ones who do run nodes usually are running them for testing purposes, and they usually have very powerful machines.

301
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So developers have very high salaries, and they can usually afford very high-powered machines.

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And so when they have a lot of complaints about people having trouble syncing their nodes, for instance, a lot of times they just kind of dismiss those complaints as not realistic because they're like, well, I have a $2,000 computer and it syncs Bitcoin in half a day.

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So why are people worried about this?

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But when you're working, as I did, with actual merchants trying to get people to accept Bitcoin using their own full nodes, and you realize that merchants don't have $2,000 to spend on a point of sale system, you take a different perspective.

305
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Um, so, but anyway, all this is to say that, uh, yes, devs absolutely need to listen to

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people on, on, on Twitter who are, um, who are telling them in no uncertain terms, I am

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running a node.

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I am having problems running my node.

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I have friends who I have, um, tried to onboard to running nodes and they're struggling.

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Um, you know, uh, Bitcoin devs need to pay attention to that.

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Um, and if they don't, then they're going to end up, uh, losing market share, which

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is exactly what we've seen.

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okay so to what extent these these bitcoin these core devs who are making these changes supporting

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these changes to what extent do you believe and i'm sure there's some combination of these two i

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don't think it's 100 one or the other but i could see it being there are paid interests in the

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background and they are being asked to do operate in a certain way and their funding's dependent on

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some variation of that. And then I think you've also got, to your point, my dad used to run a

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software company and he worked with developers. And it's hard to find developers that are easy

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to work with because they're so smart, so technically. Good ones are very smart, very

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technical, and they want to engineer the hell out of everything. And sometimes what you need

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is simplicity and you need someone who understands the business implication in this case. And for

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you know, for Bitcoin, you didn't understand the monetary, you know, uh, incentives that are put,

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put forth by the, the changes you make to what degree do you feel like core is influenced by

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just excitable engineers versus there's money changing hands in the background to incentivize

325
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particular changes? Um, yeah, I, I like to, I like to assume good faith whenever I can. Um,

326
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You know, there are definitely moneyed interests that are involved with funding Bitcoin core devs that definitely have an interest in raising the opportunity limit, for instance.

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But I think the devs themselves, as you said, they just tend to be people who are like basically good people who are, in my opinion, misguided.

328
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Right. A lot of them came into Bitcoin with this.

329
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So I think it's mostly ideological, right?

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Bitcoin has this kind of, you know, like F the man, you know, we're going to replace the world order with a Bitcoin standard.

331
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And we're going to do it without any violence.

332
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And, you know, just people writing software and running software.

333
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And there's kind of two different flavors of that.

334
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There's the, how do I put this? There's the kind of more, less realistic, more utopian version,

335
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which actually you can see in certain strains of anarcho-capitalism, which where,

336
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basically, it's kind of like communism, right? Where, okay, we all just have to be good people,

337
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and we all just kind of have to help each other out.

338
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And then society will just like magically work.

339
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There's that kind of dominant ideology among Bitcoin devs

340
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where, okay, Bitcoin is just going to kind of magically work.

341
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And if it becomes under attack,

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it will just kind of magically do some kind of Tai Chi move

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and avoid the attack.

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But it doesn't need to counterattack or do anything defensive.

345
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So, you know, nobody needs to like consciously provide for the collective defense. That's

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basically what I'm trying to what I'm getting at. There's a strain of libertarianism or

347
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anarcho-capitalism that just kind of denies the problem of collective defense. And then you have

348
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the other side of anarcho-capitalists or libertarians who understand that you need some

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kind of sheriff, you know, some kind of defense force who takes responsibility for collective

350
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defense. And this is not, you know, this is not statism, right? But it's a more realistic view.

351
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And you can see this by, I mean, we can, it's a whole nother conversation.

352
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But the upshot- It's like the militia, right? It's not a central power having a standing army,

353
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it's the people organizing. And in this case, maybe that would be the node runners, for example.

354
00:29:14,138 --> 00:29:18,338
The node runners, exactly. Yes. The node runners need to be conscious of what they're doing.

355
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They need to be taking active choices.

356
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When a certain group of developers gives them the option of running a certain piece of software,

357
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they have to consider that piece of software and be like, is this a good idea to run?

358
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Or am I going to take this other software?

359
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Because I think that's better in the long term.

360
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You need to have a group of principled, long-term thinking,

361
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you know, based node runners, you know, who are going to stand up and fight for Bitcoin survival

362
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and not just roll over when the free market says that Bitcoin is for free is for data storage.

363
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Yeah. So so I agree with that. What concerns me long term is that we are still at least best I

364
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can tell in sort of the I mean, at the earliest I mean, or I'm sorry, the latest we're in like the

365
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early majority phase of Bitcoiners coming online. I think we're probably even pre early majority

366
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coming online. We're still very early. And when I think out 20 or 30 years, who are the next batch

367
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of node-orders going to be over that period of time, it's going to be a lot harder to muster up

368
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a new crop of libertarian minded people. Do you have any long-term concern with what you just

369
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described that that's what Bitcoin is going to sort of depend on is the guy who you've been

370
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talking to about Bitcoin for 10 years now, trying to get him into it, buy some, hey, learn about

371
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self-custody, run a node. And he's just at every turn it's been known, yeah, maybe someday. And

372
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then eventually that guy's going to be a node runner, or at least he's going to be a Bitcoiner

373
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because I think you're going to have to be. It's the monetary gunpowder of our age, in my view.

374
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Is he going to have the ability to discern in the future what type of node, what software he

375
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should be running and what changes are hostile toward Bitcoin as a form of money? Yeah, I mean,

376
00:31:13,458 --> 00:31:21,058
it's a difficult question. And, you know, we just kind of have to, it's an iterative process,

377
00:31:21,058 --> 00:31:27,818
right? We just have to watch as threats develop and we have to be very vigilant. And when

378
00:31:27,818 --> 00:31:35,798
stuff starts to get bad, we have to see if we can recruit people to the cause, you know?

379
00:31:35,798 --> 00:31:38,418
So, hey, and Bitcoiners tend to do that, right?

380
00:31:38,418 --> 00:31:39,498
They tend to rise to the challenge.

381
00:31:39,778 --> 00:31:46,278
When Bitcoin is under threat, they tend to understand this and they tend to be agentic

382
00:31:46,278 --> 00:31:46,698
people, right?

383
00:31:46,698 --> 00:31:55,498
They tend to be people who can get stuff done and who are willing and able to make a real

384
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difference in the world.

385
00:31:57,218 --> 00:32:01,518
And when duty calls, they are willing to do that.

386
00:32:01,578 --> 00:32:03,338
And we've seen Bitcoiners do this again and again.

387
00:32:03,338 --> 00:32:13,318
And, you know, as I mentioned in 2013 and 2014, when we were having, you know, spam war part one, we saw a bunch of node runners come up and say, yeah, we're going to run these filters.

388
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We don't like this spam, you know, you know, and a bunch of miners back then.

389
00:32:18,178 --> 00:32:20,898
There used to be a lot more principled miners back then.

390
00:32:21,958 --> 00:32:22,858
That's definitely a problem.

391
00:32:22,858 --> 00:32:28,378
Um, um, but yeah, I mean, the, the, the hope is that, you know, as threats develop, the

392
00:32:28,378 --> 00:32:32,418
threats develop slowly enough that people can, can catch them developing before they

393
00:32:32,418 --> 00:32:34,078
become, uh, fatal.

394
00:32:34,178 --> 00:32:40,278
Um, and, and, and Bitcoiners rise to the challenge to, um, to repel the attack.

395
00:32:40,518 --> 00:32:41,318
Um, so.

396
00:32:41,778 --> 00:32:43,098
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.

397
00:32:43,138 --> 00:32:47,278
And what gives me hope is like, I've got three kids, one on the way, and they're all going

398
00:32:47,278 --> 00:32:48,878
to be running their own node in their teens.

399
00:32:48,878 --> 00:32:55,818
You know, like I'm going to be teaching them self custody and they're going to, you know, earn in Bitcoin and that as early as possible.

400
00:32:56,198 --> 00:33:10,718
And so one guy myself who just tripped into Bitcoin a few years ago is going to, you know, offload into the world for new node runners who are hopefully critical thinkers and principled in their convictions and can make that discernment.

401
00:33:10,718 --> 00:33:16,358
And it seems to me like Bitcoiners tend to populate the earth at a higher rate than many other cohorts.

402
00:33:16,358 --> 00:33:19,718
So I'm hopeful, but I wanted to hear your perspective on that.

403
00:33:20,278 --> 00:33:24,378
Okay, so let's talk about, we're going to get to BIP-110, I promise.

404
00:33:24,618 --> 00:33:32,118
I want to hear your take on this distinction between knots and core, because my understanding

405
00:33:32,118 --> 00:33:37,658
is some high 90%, they're the same, right?

406
00:33:37,738 --> 00:33:39,558
Like it's 90, they're 99% the same.

407
00:33:39,638 --> 00:33:44,558
And there are some configurations in each that are different for a very specific purpose

408
00:33:44,558 --> 00:33:49,578
and for nots in order to fight what Luke and folks like yourself view to be spam.

409
00:33:50,378 --> 00:33:55,138
How would you explain how these two implementations operate differently?

410
00:33:57,018 --> 00:33:59,438
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting question.

411
00:33:59,438 --> 00:34:07,358
I think that Luke has a more specific vision for Bitcoin than Bitcoin Core does.

412
00:34:07,358 --> 00:34:14,158
Bitcoin Core seems to have this very diffuse vision of Bitcoin that doesn't, in my view,

413
00:34:14,238 --> 00:34:16,138
it's very unfocused and incoherent.

414
00:34:16,478 --> 00:34:21,998
It's kind of just like, okay, well, whoever contributes is the one who gets to say where

415
00:34:21,998 --> 00:34:22,478
it goes.

416
00:34:22,838 --> 00:34:29,138
And then as I alluded to before, there's funding that sort of tends to drag developers'

417
00:34:29,318 --> 00:34:31,238
interests in a particular way.

418
00:34:31,618 --> 00:34:37,018
And when there's a fiat money printer printing the reserve asset, it tends to go in that

419
00:34:37,018 --> 00:34:43,958
direction, in a more fiat direction. And so I think Luke's vision for Bitcoin is more

420
00:34:43,958 --> 00:34:56,098
Bitcoin centric. It's more node runner centric. Luke's philosophy is the same thing that you just

421
00:34:56,098 --> 00:35:00,998
said, which is there should be as many node runners as possible. The number of node runners

422
00:35:00,998 --> 00:35:06,638
is pathetically low right now. Everybody needs to be run. I mean, there's no reason why in the

423
00:35:06,638 --> 00:35:16,318
future, everybody, every human in the world can't run a node. The only reason is that the limits,

424
00:35:17,058 --> 00:35:22,998
really the block size limit, was set too high. I mean, that's basically what it is.

425
00:35:24,678 --> 00:35:29,658
And, you know, so, but the good news is that Moore's law increases exponentially.

426
00:35:30,178 --> 00:35:33,738
So what that means is that computing power and, you know, and resources are always

427
00:35:33,738 --> 00:35:39,738
increasing exponentially with respect to cost. And so what that means is that the cost of running

428
00:35:39,738 --> 00:35:47,938
a Bitcoin node should be decreasing exponentially over time. And so basically as long as we keep

429
00:35:47,938 --> 00:35:54,578
the UTXO set limited in size, and this is the big problem that happened during the spam attack in

430
00:35:54,578 --> 00:36:00,778
2023 and 2024, was the UTXO set exploded in size. And that's why we saw node runners struggling to

431
00:36:00,778 --> 00:36:06,558
do IBD, and the cost of running a node, the minimum cost of running a node rising instead

432
00:36:06,558 --> 00:36:12,038
of falling exponentially as it's supposed to do, as long as we keep that under control,

433
00:36:12,378 --> 00:36:14,178
the block size limit takes care of the rest.

434
00:36:15,718 --> 00:36:24,638
But Luke has a great talk about this from 2019 or 2021 or so, a few years ago, where

435
00:36:24,638 --> 00:36:26,298
he talks about why the blocks need to be small.

436
00:36:26,498 --> 00:36:27,938
And it's basically because of this.

437
00:36:27,938 --> 00:36:35,158
We want the technology to catch up and surpass the growth of the blockchain.

438
00:36:36,118 --> 00:36:40,138
And if it does that, and if and when it does that in 10 or 20 years, you're going to see

439
00:36:40,138 --> 00:36:43,778
the cost, the minimum cost of running a node become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and

440
00:36:43,778 --> 00:36:43,958
cheaper.

441
00:36:44,418 --> 00:36:49,178
And eventually, any random person is going to be able to sink a node in under an hour

442
00:36:49,178 --> 00:36:49,738
for $5.

443
00:36:50,598 --> 00:36:56,658
But we have to focus on that as an outcome or it won't happen because there's all of

444
00:36:56,658 --> 00:37:02,678
these other forces that are trying to make Bitcoin nodes harder to run.

445
00:37:03,338 --> 00:37:06,878
So, yeah, I think that's a long answer.

446
00:37:07,138 --> 00:37:08,198
No, no, that's helpful.

447
00:37:08,198 --> 00:37:14,998
So is the incentive in your mind for people to run a node who, like, you know, I mean,

448
00:37:15,038 --> 00:37:17,718
you've obviously been very deeply involved in Bitcoin.

449
00:37:18,118 --> 00:37:22,838
I've only been around for four years, but I, you know, I did my 2000 hours of podcast

450
00:37:22,838 --> 00:37:25,858
listening and read all the books, you know, like I've sort of checked those boxes.

451
00:37:26,658 --> 00:37:29,438
For me, it's an act of self-sovereignty.

452
00:37:29,438 --> 00:37:32,018
Philosophically, I could not run a node, right?

453
00:37:32,018 --> 00:37:34,218
But I also have an economic interest to run a node.

454
00:37:34,218 --> 00:37:35,258
I mean, there's privacy,

455
00:37:35,258 --> 00:37:37,138
I wanna add decentralization to the network

456
00:37:37,138 --> 00:37:40,078
that my net worth is highly dependent upon.

457
00:37:41,838 --> 00:37:45,018
In your mind, is the incentive going to be

458
00:37:45,018 --> 00:37:49,538
for the next cohort of Bitcoiners who come online to say,

459
00:37:49,538 --> 00:37:51,378
I have an economic incentive,

460
00:37:51,378 --> 00:37:54,658
I need this network to maintain its decentralized nature

461
00:37:54,658 --> 00:38:02,858
to grow in its decentralized nature because my life depends on Bitcoin remaining secure and

462
00:38:02,858 --> 00:38:07,498
decentralized. Is that going to be enough, do you think, for many, many people? If they just

463
00:38:07,498 --> 00:38:10,578
understand that one thing, they don't have to understand all the nuts and bolts and how mining

464
00:38:10,578 --> 00:38:14,438
works and all these things, but if they can just grasp that, is that the incentive?

465
00:38:15,878 --> 00:38:21,318
Yeah. I mean, I think the key fight that's happening right now, especially with Bit.1.10,

466
00:38:21,318 --> 00:38:23,178
is going to be cultural.

467
00:38:24,238 --> 00:38:26,558
If we can keep,

468
00:38:26,698 --> 00:38:27,998
if we can preserve Bitcoin's culture

469
00:38:27,998 --> 00:38:29,978
as a Bitcoin-centric culture

470
00:38:29,978 --> 00:38:31,418
and avoid Bitcoin

471
00:38:31,418 --> 00:38:33,938
from sliding into fiat culture,

472
00:38:34,618 --> 00:38:37,158
which there are strong forces on it

473
00:38:37,158 --> 00:38:38,558
to do that because of funding

474
00:38:38,558 --> 00:38:39,718
that comes from fiat VCs,

475
00:38:40,598 --> 00:38:43,078
if we can keep Bitcoin's culture strong,

476
00:38:43,518 --> 00:38:45,418
then it should be fairly easy

477
00:38:45,418 --> 00:38:47,818
to beat that drum

478
00:38:47,818 --> 00:38:50,078
and keep teaching new Bitcoiners,

479
00:38:50,078 --> 00:39:18,678
You know, run your node, make sure you know what's going on. Don't trust anybody that didn't earn your trust. You know, don't, yeah, don't trust Verify. You know, become a Bitcoin dev, learn the technology. It's not as hard as it sounds. You know, it's, especially now with LLMs, you know, you can just go and you can, you know, ask the LLM, like, hey, explain to me this technical concept. And it's really not difficult concepts.

480
00:39:18,678 --> 00:39:23,238
The thing about Bitcoin that's hard is it takes a lot of time because there's a lot of concepts.

481
00:39:24,198 --> 00:39:28,018
But it's just a lot of simple concepts that build on top of each other.

482
00:39:28,218 --> 00:39:33,138
And so all you have to do is just put in the time and eventually you'll get to the point where you don't need to trust anyone.

483
00:39:34,698 --> 00:39:38,498
But as I said, I mean, we have to win this cultural battle.

484
00:39:38,778 --> 00:39:41,658
And Bit.10 is primarily a cultural battle.

485
00:39:41,658 --> 00:40:04,338
I mean, it's primarily a, are we going to let fiat culture invade Bitcoin and displace Bitcoin culture inside of Bitcoin, which obviously would be fatal? Or is Bitcoin culture going to win? And is Bitcoin spirit going to survive? Is Bitcoin survival instinct going to survive? And are Bitcoin maximalists going to win the day?

486
00:40:04,338 --> 00:40:12,198
yeah that's a good it's a good question so the core the core side says that filters don't work

487
00:40:12,198 --> 00:40:17,038
miners are going to include these transactions anyways you've got things like slipstream uh

488
00:40:17,038 --> 00:40:22,858
from mara um and basically you end up playing whack-a-mole is is kind of which to me it sounds

489
00:40:22,858 --> 00:40:27,878
like what you've described is the anti-spam camp playing whack-a-mole over the years and just

490
00:40:27,878 --> 00:40:33,198
trying to you know the spammers do something you respond they do something else you respond again

491
00:40:33,198 --> 00:40:38,298
is that just the game of the game here? Yeah. I mean, the, the, I mean, yes,

492
00:40:38,398 --> 00:40:40,478
it's a cat and mouse game. I mean, the,

493
00:40:40,478 --> 00:40:42,158
the fight for freedom is a cat and mouse game.

494
00:40:42,298 --> 00:40:44,358
The fight against tyranny is a cat and mouse game.

495
00:40:44,358 --> 00:40:46,598
The tyranny always comes back and we always have to fight it.

496
00:40:46,858 --> 00:40:50,438
This is not something that can just be a one forever. You know,

497
00:40:50,578 --> 00:40:52,418
and this is what I mean by the,

498
00:40:52,498 --> 00:40:58,178
these core devs who have more sort of communist leanings or utopian leanings.

499
00:40:58,418 --> 00:40:59,658
They think that there's,

500
00:40:59,658 --> 00:41:04,018
there's going to be some kind of technical solution that's just going to solve the problem

501
00:41:04,018 --> 00:41:08,498
forever. And that's, you know, just study history. That's obviously not going to happen.

502
00:41:10,358 --> 00:41:20,758
Now, the good news is that, so the will to fight spam is one of the most important

503
00:41:20,758 --> 00:41:30,118
one of the most important features or aspects of the battle against spam. If you think that

504
00:41:30,118 --> 00:41:34,218
spam is something that can be defeated, it becomes something that you can defeat. If

505
00:41:34,218 --> 00:41:45,376
you think that it not something that you can defeat then it becomes a much more difficult problem And this is precisely the strategy of the spammers right They want to kind of demoralize Bitcoiners

506
00:41:45,376 --> 00:41:47,056
and make Bitcoiners believe,

507
00:41:47,056 --> 00:41:48,656
oh, there's nothing that we can do to stop it,

508
00:41:48,656 --> 00:41:51,056
so we might as well just let it happen.

509
00:41:51,056 --> 00:41:55,516
And so, but obviously this is voices of darkness,

510
00:41:55,516 --> 00:41:57,896
who are tempting Bitcoiners down a dark path.

511
00:41:57,896 --> 00:41:59,936
Let's not listen to those voices.

512
00:41:59,936 --> 00:42:02,976
In the past, we easily defeated the spammers

513
00:42:02,976 --> 00:42:07,636
because the core developers were willing to play

514
00:42:07,636 --> 00:42:09,276
that cat and mouse game.

515
00:42:09,276 --> 00:42:13,216
And all they needed to do was commit to playing that game,

516
00:42:13,216 --> 00:42:14,736
just commit to escalating.

517
00:42:14,736 --> 00:42:17,616
Whenever the spammers come back with some new thing,

518
00:42:17,616 --> 00:42:20,796
we just escalate even more.

519
00:42:20,796 --> 00:42:24,816
And so the last time this happened, the last Spam War

520
00:42:24,816 --> 00:42:30,636
Part 1 in 2013 and 2014, we fought them in policy.

521
00:42:30,636 --> 00:42:34,256
We fought them with filters because that's all we needed to do.

522
00:42:35,216 --> 00:42:45,756
There's a reason why in evolution animals evolve sort of menacing behaviors or growling behaviors.

523
00:42:49,716 --> 00:42:53,436
Bitcoin should have the ability to say, hey, we don't like that.

524
00:42:53,736 --> 00:42:54,596
Stop doing that.

525
00:42:54,656 --> 00:42:55,396
That's hurting us.

526
00:42:56,416 --> 00:42:57,576
And that's what filters do.

527
00:42:57,576 --> 00:43:02,296
Filters are this kind of voice that says, hey, this behavior is unacceptable.

528
00:43:03,556 --> 00:43:10,176
And these words are backed by force, right?

529
00:43:10,296 --> 00:43:14,756
Like an animal is not going to have like a threatened disposition if it can't back up

530
00:43:14,756 --> 00:43:16,176
the threats with force.

531
00:43:16,956 --> 00:43:20,716
And the consensus rules are force.

532
00:43:20,716 --> 00:43:31,976
And so back in the day when we were fighting spam, the devs just needed to say, hey, we're going to filter your spam because it was implied.

533
00:43:32,516 --> 00:43:37,156
We're going to find some way in consensus to block this stuff if you don't back down.

534
00:43:37,376 --> 00:43:39,776
And so the spammers just said, OK, well, we're going to go somewhere else.

535
00:43:41,256 --> 00:43:43,396
So usually that's all you need to do.

536
00:43:43,396 --> 00:43:49,476
But when core, when the dominant Bitcoin implementation is on the side of the spammers,

537
00:43:50,016 --> 00:43:54,496
then that's a much worse situation for Bitcoin node runners.

538
00:43:54,776 --> 00:43:58,956
Because now the dominant node implementation is saying there's nothing we can do to fight

539
00:43:58,956 --> 00:44:02,116
spam and we absolutely commit to never attempting to fight spam.

540
00:44:02,616 --> 00:44:03,416
So what's that going to do?

541
00:44:03,496 --> 00:44:06,336
That has the obvious effect of now the spammers are going to be emboldened.

542
00:44:06,716 --> 00:44:08,796
Now the spammers are going to redouble their efforts.

543
00:44:08,796 --> 00:44:29,696
They're going to like, there's a whole shit coin industry out there that wants to come and spam Bitcoin and turn it into Ethereum. And if we don't do anything about that, that's what they're going to do. So, I mean, it's really unfortunate that that core sort of betrayed us this time around. But, you know, so we're so we have to take the battle to the consensus layer. So that's what we're going to do.

544
00:44:29,696 --> 00:44:50,196
Okay. So one last question before we get to the battle at the consensus layer. Some of the core, I guess, the core sympathizers would argue that filters could actually increase mining centralization because they push transactions to out-of-band channels controlled by obviously like the large miners.

545
00:44:50,196 --> 00:44:52,636
How do you think about that trade-off?

546
00:44:52,776 --> 00:45:00,776
And if you're willing and able, if you could sort of steelman that argument and then dismantle it in sort of whatever way you see fit.

547
00:45:00,776 --> 00:45:08,256
Yeah, so the steel man of that is that if we have direct miner APIs like Slipstream,

548
00:45:09,076 --> 00:45:24,136
then if node runners are filtering en masse kinds of transactions that are commonly mined,

549
00:45:24,136 --> 00:45:29,136
then you could end up creating an advantage for,

550
00:45:31,616 --> 00:45:35,416
I mean, it's kind of a long, hairy technical debate,

551
00:45:35,416 --> 00:45:38,136
but there's a lot of moving parts.

552
00:45:38,136 --> 00:45:40,656
But basically there's these things called compact blocks.

553
00:45:40,656 --> 00:45:44,196
And when a new block is found,

554
00:45:44,196 --> 00:45:46,956
that block is propagated throughout the network

555
00:45:46,956 --> 00:45:48,796
in sort of a summarized form

556
00:45:48,796 --> 00:45:51,416
so that the block propagation can happen really fast.

557
00:45:51,416 --> 00:45:53,396
And you want block propagation to happen really fast

558
00:45:53,396 --> 00:45:55,956
because you want the network to stay in consensus.

559
00:45:55,956 --> 00:45:59,996
You don't want, if two blocks come out really, really fast,

560
00:45:59,996 --> 00:46:02,876
kind of one after the other, or immediately at the same time,

561
00:46:02,876 --> 00:46:05,196
you don't want a situation where one part of the network

562
00:46:05,196 --> 00:46:06,996
is building on this block, and the other part of the network

563
00:46:06,996 --> 00:46:09,056
is building on this other block, because then you

564
00:46:09,056 --> 00:46:10,796
get network partitions, and you get forks,

565
00:46:10,796 --> 00:46:14,896
and you start to have double spend risk.

566
00:46:14,896 --> 00:46:18,456
Not a big problem, but minor centralization

567
00:46:18,456 --> 00:46:21,396
comes in where, OK, so if there's

568
00:46:21,396 --> 00:46:24,936
a kind of transaction that's being commonly mined,

569
00:46:24,936 --> 00:46:27,176
but most of the nodes are ignoring that transaction,

570
00:46:27,176 --> 00:46:30,296
then those blocks become very slow to propagate.

571
00:46:30,296 --> 00:46:34,256
And if that happens, then you could have large miners

572
00:46:34,256 --> 00:46:36,816
who have 20%, 30%, whatever of the hash power,

573
00:46:36,816 --> 00:46:39,576
you could have them, basically they know about the block

574
00:46:39,576 --> 00:46:40,616
before the rest of the network.

575
00:46:40,616 --> 00:46:42,196
And so they have kind of an advantage

576
00:46:42,196 --> 00:46:44,456
and they can start building on that block.

577
00:46:44,456 --> 00:46:48,716
And then they have kind of a, yeah,

578
00:46:48,716 --> 00:46:54,496
They have a few seconds of head start on the rest of the network.

579
00:46:55,916 --> 00:47:00,276
The thing is, there's a bunch of reasons why this doesn't hold water.

580
00:47:00,836 --> 00:47:10,576
The first is that the type of transaction that was the rationale for removing the opportune limit does not cause this.

581
00:47:11,316 --> 00:47:18,636
Because this was a justice transaction, a fraud-proof transaction from Citria that is never supposed to happen.

582
00:47:18,716 --> 00:47:28,096
So I don't know how much you've read about this transaction, but it's basically, it's like a, you know, it's like a, you know, shit went really sideways.

583
00:47:28,536 --> 00:47:31,976
And the coordinator that's running the network is trying to screw people out of their money.

584
00:47:32,156 --> 00:47:39,856
And so, you know, the watchtowers have to, like, post this fraud proof as fast as possible so that people can get their money out and slash the coordinator.

585
00:47:43,036 --> 00:47:44,976
But, yeah, it's never supposed to happen.

586
00:47:44,976 --> 00:47:47,636
So the thing is, this particular transaction

587
00:47:47,636 --> 00:47:50,856
was the rationale for getting rid of the operaturn limit.

588
00:47:50,856 --> 00:47:54,276
But this transaction is never expected to happen.

589
00:47:54,276 --> 00:47:58,416
And if it does happen, it only needs 64 bytes.

590
00:47:58,416 --> 00:48:00,976
So it needs 144 bytes.

591
00:48:00,976 --> 00:48:03,736
So an operaturn that fits this transaction,

592
00:48:03,736 --> 00:48:06,196
if we had doubled the operaturn limit from 80 bytes

593
00:48:06,196 --> 00:48:08,496
to 160 bytes, that would have been sufficient

594
00:48:08,496 --> 00:48:10,136
for this transaction.

595
00:48:10,136 --> 00:48:14,976
So I mean, yes, there's these extremely

596
00:48:14,976 --> 00:48:20,776
extreme edge cases that are totally not at all relevant to the PR that removes the operaturn

597
00:48:20,776 --> 00:48:28,536
limit, where mining centralization could be remotely relevant, but it isn't. And the other

598
00:48:28,536 --> 00:48:33,416
reason why it's not relevant is because miners can do selfish mining attacks anyway. So basically,

599
00:48:33,876 --> 00:48:39,856
the attack that they're... Well, actually, there's two reasons. The first reason is that

600
00:48:39,856 --> 00:48:42,056
miners can already do a selfish mining attack.

601
00:48:42,056 --> 00:48:45,256
So this is where a miner mines a block

602
00:48:45,256 --> 00:48:47,016
and then doesn't announce the block at all.

603
00:48:47,016 --> 00:48:49,456
And then they just keep mining on top of that block.

604
00:48:49,456 --> 00:48:50,956
And if they have a high enough hash power,

605
00:48:50,956 --> 00:48:53,556
they can kind of attack the network

606
00:48:53,556 --> 00:48:57,956
by constantly just messing with the chain

607
00:48:57,956 --> 00:49:01,516
and sending these three block reorgs to the rest of the,

608
00:49:01,516 --> 00:49:04,836
basically keeping the rest of the network kind of in chaos

609
00:49:04,836 --> 00:49:06,916
and messing with smaller miners.

610
00:49:06,916 --> 00:49:10,036
But this is an attack that they can already do intentionally.

611
00:49:10,036 --> 00:49:12,076
So the worry is that, OK, well, miners

612
00:49:12,076 --> 00:49:14,716
would do this attack unintentionally

613
00:49:14,716 --> 00:49:17,556
because their blocks are propagating more slowly.

614
00:49:17,556 --> 00:49:20,356
And the other thing that makes this argument completely

615
00:49:20,356 --> 00:49:23,536
irrelevant is that miners don't do this because they don't

616
00:49:23,536 --> 00:49:25,996
want their blocks to propagate slowly.

617
00:49:25,996 --> 00:49:29,196
They want the whole network to build on top of their block

618
00:49:29,196 --> 00:49:30,716
because it's very, very improbable

619
00:49:30,716 --> 00:49:33,776
that they will find that next block.

620
00:49:33,776 --> 00:49:36,296
So they don't want their blocks to propagate slowly.

621
00:49:36,296 --> 00:49:46,576
And actually, if you look at the compact blocks release, the release of Bitcoin Core that included compact blocks for the first time, it actually said the reverse of what Bitcoin Core developers are saying now.

622
00:49:46,576 --> 00:49:49,796
It said, hey, miners, you probably need to adjust.

623
00:49:49,876 --> 00:49:55,876
You probably want to adjust your filters to mine only things that are commonly filtered, you know, to mine only standard things.

624
00:49:56,476 --> 00:49:58,956
Because if you don't do that, your blocks are going to propagate more slowly.

625
00:49:59,076 --> 00:50:03,716
So back in 2016, this was seen as like a, you know, a thing that miners should definitely want to do.

626
00:50:03,716 --> 00:50:08,836
And I see no reason why that same argument isn't relevant today.

627
00:50:10,036 --> 00:50:29,236
And also, it would seem to me like if you have set up the infrastructure such that you have 20, 30 percent of the hash power on the network, you have a very strong, I mean, unless you're just an arm of like the CIA or something operating with, you know, federally funded dollars in sort of an opaque fashion.

628
00:50:29,236 --> 00:50:34,576
And it would seem to me like your incentives align such that you don't make people question

629
00:50:34,576 --> 00:50:36,896
the integrity of the network and you try to keep it.

630
00:50:36,896 --> 00:50:41,136
You're incentivized to make the network strong and to play by the rules.

631
00:50:41,136 --> 00:50:46,756
So that way people don't, there's not an exodus from Bitcoin because there's a bunch of monkey

632
00:50:46,756 --> 00:50:47,236
business.

633
00:50:47,496 --> 00:50:49,916
That's basically, yeah, yeah.

634
00:50:50,036 --> 00:50:50,236
Exactly.

635
00:50:50,536 --> 00:50:52,056
And Satoshi wrote this in the white paper.

636
00:50:52,216 --> 00:50:56,536
He said, you know, basically my consensus system doesn't work if more than half of the miners

637
00:50:56,536 --> 00:50:57,096
are dishonest.

638
00:50:57,096 --> 00:51:20,836
And so I would see them as a hostile miner. They are mining things that the network says are abusive. So that's a hostile act. And so we should take action with our miners that are explicitly dishonest. We should take action to boycott them and otherwise make their lives more difficult.

639
00:51:20,836 --> 00:51:38,516
Yeah, it all comes back to kind of the theme that's run throughout this conversation is basically as a culture, we need to act in such a way as to disincentivize bad actors from operating on the network and let them go play on Ethereum or some other shit coin rails.

640
00:51:39,556 --> 00:51:41,556
Okay, man, let's talk about BIP-110.

641
00:51:41,556 --> 00:51:46,316
okay so i'm i'm gonna be honest with you everything that we've talked about

642
00:51:46,316 --> 00:51:52,156
up to this point i've i'd sort of done my research forgotten a lot of it but it's coming back to me

643
00:51:52,156 --> 00:51:59,056
now bip 110 is not something i have had a lot of time to dive into um could you put into simple

644
00:51:59,056 --> 00:52:04,316
terms what bip 110 is and i mean to the extent that it's useful maybe kind of break down like

645
00:52:04,316 --> 00:52:10,236
how bips work sort of generally for for anyone who isn't isn't familiar with the concept um yeah

646
00:52:10,236 --> 00:52:12,056
You don't need to get into the weeds on that.

647
00:52:12,096 --> 00:52:16,596
But if it's helpful at all to kind of describe how BIP-110 came about, feel free.

648
00:52:17,136 --> 00:52:17,376
Yeah.

649
00:52:17,616 --> 00:52:22,156
So I don't know if we're going to have time to go into the BIP process.

650
00:52:22,956 --> 00:52:30,436
And I mean, so just to summarize BIP-110 specifically, and then if you want to like double click on anything and go deeper, then we can do that.

651
00:52:31,016 --> 00:52:40,116
But just to kind of summarize where, in my view, where BIP-110 came from is, you know, so basically as we've been talking about,

652
00:52:40,236 --> 00:52:45,236
There is this, there was a standard on the network

653
00:52:45,236 --> 00:52:49,736
starting in 2014 that transactions that include

654
00:52:49,736 --> 00:52:52,996
more than 80 bytes of arbitrary data per transaction

655
00:52:52,996 --> 00:52:56,696
were non-standard or abusive.

656
00:52:56,696 --> 00:52:59,576
And that the Bitcoin node runner community came together

657
00:52:59,576 --> 00:53:03,316
and said, this is the maximum amount of arbitrary data

658
00:53:03,316 --> 00:53:05,536
that we want to allow per transaction because Bitcoin

659
00:53:05,536 --> 00:53:06,996
is not for arbitrary data storage.

660
00:53:06,996 --> 00:53:29,316
And so when the operaturn limit was removed in October, I think is when they released version 30 of Bitcoin Core, when that happened, Bitcoin Core effectively unilaterally hard-working policy.

661
00:53:29,316 --> 00:53:41,056
So there's a, like, it's kind of a metaphor and kind of not.

662
00:53:41,056 --> 00:53:42,836
And for your listeners, if they don't

663
00:53:42,836 --> 00:53:44,736
know what the difference between a hard fork and a soft fork

664
00:53:44,736 --> 00:53:47,676
is, a hard fork is where you expand the rules.

665
00:53:47,676 --> 00:53:50,936
And a soft fork is where you restrict the rules.

666
00:53:50,936 --> 00:53:52,236
And so the great thing about Bitcoin

667
00:53:52,236 --> 00:53:55,476
is that it tends towards stability because,

668
00:53:55,476 --> 00:53:57,696
or it tends towards conservatism because soft forking

669
00:53:57,696 --> 00:53:59,236
is much easier than hard forking.

670
00:53:59,316 --> 00:54:01,816
And that makes sense when you think about it.

671
00:54:01,936 --> 00:54:05,716
You know, if some of the nodes would like to restrict the rules

672
00:54:05,716 --> 00:54:11,536
and they want to be pickier about what types of transactions

673
00:54:11,536 --> 00:54:12,796
they're going to accept,

674
00:54:13,156 --> 00:54:14,856
then they can simply reject blocks that don't do that.

675
00:54:15,756 --> 00:54:17,736
Whereas a hard fork,

676
00:54:17,936 --> 00:54:21,156
if some of your listeners were around for the block size wars,

677
00:54:22,156 --> 00:54:26,716
you'll remember that the big blockers wanted to hard fork Bitcoin

678
00:54:26,716 --> 00:54:27,776
to a larger block size.

679
00:54:27,776 --> 00:54:32,516
And this was non-viable because hard-forcing Bitcoin

680
00:54:32,516 --> 00:54:34,176
is very, very difficult.

681
00:54:34,176 --> 00:54:38,916
Because when you loosen the rules,

682
00:54:38,916 --> 00:54:42,936
the old nodes will not accept those new blocks.

683
00:54:42,936 --> 00:54:47,976
So the old nodes say there is a limit of one megabyte per block.

684
00:54:47,976 --> 00:54:52,676
And if we want to raise the limit to two megabytes per block,

685
00:54:52,676 --> 00:54:54,956
all of the old nodes who haven't upgraded

686
00:54:54,956 --> 00:54:56,496
are going to reject those new blocks.

687
00:54:56,496 --> 00:54:58,836
As soon as somebody mines a block that's two megabytes,

688
00:54:58,836 --> 00:55:01,296
they're going to reject that block.

689
00:55:01,296 --> 00:55:04,956
And so this is ultimately why Bcash failed,

690
00:55:04,956 --> 00:55:07,916
because they were trying to hard fork Bitcoin.

691
00:55:07,916 --> 00:55:11,736
And SegWit actually did end up increasing the block size,

692
00:55:11,736 --> 00:55:13,796
but they did it in a way that was backwards compatible

693
00:55:13,796 --> 00:55:14,696
with the old nodes.

694
00:55:14,696 --> 00:55:17,076
And this is why SegWit was victorious,

695
00:55:17,076 --> 00:55:20,916
while Bcash was the loser.

696
00:55:20,916 --> 00:55:25,256
So going back to the hard forking policy,

697
00:55:25,256 --> 00:55:27,156
This is a new thing that I just came up with.

698
00:55:27,656 --> 00:55:32,376
So basically, you know, so Node Runners had decided from 2014 that the amount of arbitrary

699
00:55:32,376 --> 00:55:34,696
data allowed in a Bitcoin transaction is 80 bytes.

700
00:55:35,076 --> 00:55:39,316
And then when Core said, OK, we're going to raise that limit to 100,000 bytes, that was

701
00:55:39,316 --> 00:55:40,456
a loosening of the rules.

702
00:55:41,096 --> 00:55:44,916
And in consensus, this is a no-no, right?

703
00:55:44,916 --> 00:55:46,436
You don't hard fork Bitcoin.

704
00:55:47,696 --> 00:55:52,676
I mean, like there's very, very edge case scenarios where you can, but generally speaking, you

705
00:55:52,676 --> 00:55:53,076
can't do that.

706
00:55:53,076 --> 00:55:55,576
and certainly not unilaterally, and certainly not

707
00:55:55,576 --> 00:56:00,016
in just a few months like Bitcoin Core did,

708
00:56:00,016 --> 00:56:03,676
with obvious pressure from the shitcoin industry.

709
00:56:03,676 --> 00:56:08,076
And so as we were talking about before,

710
00:56:08,076 --> 00:56:14,996
if node runners are not able to suppress the bad behavior,

711
00:56:14,996 --> 00:56:18,396
the abusive behavior, the spamming, in policy

712
00:56:18,396 --> 00:56:20,316
because the dominant node implementation

713
00:56:20,316 --> 00:56:25,376
has suddenly become a turncoat, has suddenly betrayed the Bitcoin node runner community,

714
00:56:25,376 --> 00:56:32,136
and has decided unilaterally that 100,000 is now the limit instead of 80, when that happens,

715
00:56:32,376 --> 00:56:37,076
the only backstop, the only fallback is changing the consensus rules. And so

716
00:56:37,076 --> 00:56:50,916
So leading up to bit.1.10, bit.1.10 was originally proposed by Luke, and then was later taken

717
00:56:50,916 --> 00:57:02,496
up by another developer called Dathan. And what it says is that we can temporarily invalidate

718
00:57:02,496 --> 00:57:07,496
transactions that have more than 80 bytes of arbitrary data.

719
00:57:09,556 --> 00:57:14,556
And when I first was participating in these filter battles,

720
00:57:15,276 --> 00:57:19,256
I didn't realize that, like it seemed to me

721
00:57:19,256 --> 00:57:21,316
that you can't fight spam in consensus

722
00:57:22,236 --> 00:57:25,536
because the way that information theory works,

723
00:57:25,536 --> 00:57:27,596
and the core devs will tell you this,

724
00:57:27,596 --> 00:57:30,156
and there's a great BitMEX research article

725
00:57:30,156 --> 00:57:35,936
talking about it, you can't put in the consensus rules,

726
00:57:35,936 --> 00:57:38,436
no spamming, right, where Bitcoin is money.

727
00:57:38,436 --> 00:57:39,756
You can't do that.

728
00:57:39,756 --> 00:57:44,796
But what you can do, BIP 110 is making me realize,

729
00:57:44,796 --> 00:57:50,536
is that you can temporarily limit certain transaction

730
00:57:50,536 --> 00:57:55,216
formats that are known to be stored on arbitrary data.

731
00:57:55,216 --> 00:57:56,296
So that's what BIP 110 does.

732
00:57:56,296 --> 00:57:58,896
It basically is the next level of escalation beyond filters.

733
00:57:58,896 --> 00:58:01,536
If filtering doesn't work, usually filtering works,

734
00:58:01,536 --> 00:58:04,176
because the dominant node implementation

735
00:58:04,176 --> 00:58:06,836
is filtering abusive transactions.

736
00:58:06,836 --> 00:58:09,436
But when the dominant node implementation betrays

737
00:58:09,436 --> 00:58:11,216
the node-runner community and says, well,

738
00:58:11,216 --> 00:58:12,456
we're not going to do that anymore,

739
00:58:12,456 --> 00:58:16,676
because filters don't work, even though they do, then.

740
00:58:16,676 --> 00:58:21,036
And that can, in retrospect, that actually

741
00:58:21,036 --> 00:58:22,916
is very likely to happen, because there's

742
00:58:22,916 --> 00:58:28,736
this thing called the tolerant minority in policy,

743
00:58:28,736 --> 00:58:31,976
where if you just have a few percent Libre Relay, whatever,

744
00:58:31,976 --> 00:58:35,176
a few percent of node runners that are very tolerant,

745
00:58:35,176 --> 00:58:39,536
and a few miners that are willing to go against the standards

746
00:58:39,536 --> 00:58:45,736
on the network, then anybody who wants

747
00:58:45,736 --> 00:58:47,136
to send that transaction is going

748
00:58:47,136 --> 00:58:49,276
to have a pretty easy time of it.

749
00:58:49,276 --> 00:58:54,136
So you really need a strong political will

750
00:58:54,136 --> 00:58:55,836
and also a strong technical ability

751
00:58:55,836 --> 00:59:00,156
in order to filter that stuff at the policy level.

752
00:59:00,156 --> 00:59:02,736
But what core devs did not tell you about

753
00:59:02,736 --> 00:59:04,956
is that at the consensus level, there's

754
00:59:04,956 --> 00:59:07,216
an intolerant minority.

755
00:59:07,216 --> 00:59:10,816
So in policy, there's a tolerant minority that says, oh, well,

756
00:59:10,816 --> 00:59:12,876
there's a bunch of people posting JPEGs.

757
00:59:12,876 --> 00:59:14,456
Well, we're just going to allow that.

758
00:59:14,456 --> 00:59:15,956
And we're 5% of the node runners,

759
00:59:15,956 --> 00:59:21,276
so we're basically making the standard from the network.

760
00:59:21,276 --> 00:59:23,056
But in consensus, it works the opposite way.

761
00:59:23,056 --> 00:59:25,076
In consensus, if you have just a few percentage

762
00:59:25,076 --> 00:59:27,656
of the node runners that say, we don't like this,

763
00:59:27,656 --> 00:59:31,636
then it's very easy for those node runners

764
00:59:31,636 --> 00:59:36,896
to restrict the rules further.

765
00:59:36,896 --> 00:59:41,756
And so all this is to say, the more I've looked into BIP 110,

766
00:59:41,756 --> 00:59:46,576
the more I've realized that it is kind of the ideal next step.

767
00:59:46,576 --> 00:59:50,396
And if it activates, I expect it to be very effective.

768
00:59:50,396 --> 00:59:50,976
OK.

769
00:59:50,976 --> 00:59:53,776
So describe what it's doing exactly.

770
00:59:53,776 --> 01:00:00,596
I think you sort of touched on it, but you gave sort of a narrative, which I think was very helpful, around context for it.

771
01:00:00,676 --> 01:00:03,236
What exactly does BIP110 do?

772
01:00:03,416 --> 01:00:03,876
Why is it?

773
01:00:04,936 --> 01:00:06,296
Something is temporary.

774
01:00:06,716 --> 01:00:10,256
It doesn't filter out these, or it doesn't, explain that.

775
01:00:10,256 --> 01:00:27,016
Yeah. So basically what Bit.10 does, if you look at the rules, it takes all of the transaction formats that can be seen as officially supported ways of storing arbitrary data in the Bitcoin blockchain.

776
01:00:27,016 --> 01:00:40,156
It takes all of these commonly used formats and some additional formats that could become standard if Bitcoin Core continues to loosen policy.

777
01:00:40,256 --> 01:00:47,536
It takes basically large operaturns and inscriptions, and it says these are consensus invalid for one year.

778
01:00:49,796 --> 01:00:56,216
And so that communicates that Bitcoin is not for arbitrary data storage.

779
01:00:56,756 --> 01:01:01,016
And because it's not for arbitrary data storage, it is money.

780
01:01:01,296 --> 01:01:03,356
It sort of reaffirms that Bitcoin is money.

781
01:01:03,356 --> 01:01:14,116
so so is the intent then that is the reason it's for one year to sort of minimize the

782
01:01:14,116 --> 01:01:19,336
i guess the the the blowback from some people who might say who might say hey this is

783
01:01:19,336 --> 01:01:26,256
does it just give us a runway to use bitcoin as money to weed out the spammers for a period of

784
01:01:26,256 --> 01:01:30,756
time so that way they go build somewhere else or they stop like what happens after a year i guess

785
01:01:30,756 --> 01:01:32,956
is maybe my concern.

786
01:01:32,956 --> 01:01:36,916
Well, so making the fork temporary

787
01:01:36,916 --> 01:01:40,636
allows us to invalidate things that we wouldn't otherwise

788
01:01:40,636 --> 01:01:41,916
be able to invalidate.

789
01:01:41,916 --> 01:01:51,916
So BIP110 turns off a thing called op if inside Tapscript.

790
01:01:51,916 --> 01:01:55,556
And this is something that is, as far as people can tell,

791
01:01:55,556 --> 01:02:01,316
is not used anywhere actively except by inscriptions,

792
01:02:01,316 --> 01:02:04,016
right, inscription spam.

793
01:02:04,016 --> 01:02:07,476
And so there could be some risk.

794
01:02:07,476 --> 01:02:10,236
So we've never tried it.

795
01:02:10,236 --> 01:02:14,796
The last time Bitcoin turned off disabled behavior

796
01:02:14,796 --> 01:02:18,476
that was previously allowed was back in the days of Satoshi.

797
01:02:18,476 --> 01:02:20,456
I think there might have been some other force since then

798
01:02:20,456 --> 01:02:21,676
that I'm forgetting.

799
01:02:21,676 --> 01:02:37,554
But this is something that rarely happens on Bitcoin And so there could end up being some people who have their funds frozen for up to a year because of that

800
01:02:37,994 --> 01:02:39,254
And people who are not spammers, right?

801
01:02:39,254 --> 01:02:41,634
People who are using this very edge case thing.

802
01:02:43,374 --> 01:02:48,294
Again, there aren't any known examples of people who have their funds frozen.

803
01:02:51,014 --> 01:02:51,614
Hypothetically.

804
01:02:51,614 --> 01:03:08,714
Yeah, hypothetically, if those people did exist, then at the end of the year, they could withdraw those funds. And then the other reason is because the way that Bit.1.10 operates is it turns off what's called upgrade hooks.

805
01:03:08,714 --> 01:03:15,714
So these are things like future SegWit versions and unknown Tapscript versions.

806
01:03:15,714 --> 01:03:21,714
And these are, they're called hooks.

807
01:03:21,714 --> 01:03:26,714
They're like places in script that don't have a defined definition right now.

808
01:03:26,714 --> 01:03:31,714
But in a future soft fork, the software could redefine them as something specific.

809
01:03:31,714 --> 01:03:42,134
So all of the proposed upgrades to Bitcoin script, so like CheckSig from Stack and like

810
01:03:42,134 --> 01:03:50,654
OpCat, I think, and GreatScript Restoration and BIP360, and all of these are turning on

811
01:03:50,654 --> 01:03:54,754
new versions of Bitcoin script, and they're using these upgrade hooks.

812
01:03:54,754 --> 01:04:01,654
and basically those will become unusable for a year.

813
01:04:01,974 --> 01:04:05,754
So Bitcoin would not be able to turn on any new functionality

814
01:04:05,754 --> 01:04:08,574
during when Bit.1.10 is active.

815
01:04:09,454 --> 01:04:12,334
And so if we were to make those rules permanent,

816
01:04:12,474 --> 01:04:13,934
and so it does that in order to prevent spam

817
01:04:13,934 --> 01:04:17,394
because those can be abused, right?

818
01:04:17,394 --> 01:04:19,534
Those upgrade hooks can be abused to store arbitrary data

819
01:04:19,534 --> 01:04:20,634
in the blockchain.

820
01:04:21,494 --> 01:04:24,194
So Bit.1.10 turns them off in order to sort of preempt that.

821
01:04:24,754 --> 01:04:35,954
But that's not something that we can leave as a permanent situation because then Bitcoin would not be able to have any soft forks that upgrade the protocol.

822
01:04:36,314 --> 01:04:36,794
Okay.

823
01:04:37,434 --> 01:04:45,454
So when you think about things like, I know it's sort of a point of FUD at the moment, but you think about like quantum resistance, that sort of stuff.

824
01:04:45,974 --> 01:04:51,334
You eventually need some malleability to adopt those types of changes.

825
01:04:51,334 --> 01:04:56,294
Not for engineers just tinkering and having fun, but new threats emerge.

826
01:04:56,734 --> 01:05:02,514
You need some level of ability to modify and sort of play the new game that's being played,

827
01:05:02,574 --> 01:05:03,734
I guess, as time goes on.

828
01:05:04,134 --> 01:05:04,254
Yeah.

829
01:05:04,474 --> 01:05:09,254
And again, I've read the BIP very closely.

830
01:05:09,814 --> 01:05:11,414
It explains all this.

831
01:05:12,234 --> 01:05:17,554
It's very unlikely that there will be some emergency upgrade that Bitcoin needs to do

832
01:05:17,554 --> 01:05:18,474
in the next year.

833
01:05:18,474 --> 01:05:29,694
But if magically there is some kind of quantum resistance or whatever that Bitcoin needs in the next year, then that's fine.

834
01:05:30,234 --> 01:05:33,594
It'll just activate as soon as Bit.1.10 is no longer active.

835
01:05:35,834 --> 01:05:38,874
And one more thing about the temporary nature.

836
01:05:38,874 --> 01:05:53,514
This goes back to what I was talking about with information theory, where you can't stop spam with permanent protocol changes, because there's always going to be ways around the spam.

837
01:05:53,994 --> 01:06:00,294
But what a temporary software allows us to do is it allows us to fight spam and consensus, basically.

838
01:06:00,294 --> 01:06:12,034
It's not something that we should ever have to do, but it's a very, very, very useful and vital tool, I think, for Bitcoin to have moving forward if we want Bitcoin to stay money.

839
01:06:12,954 --> 01:06:12,994
Yeah.

840
01:06:13,174 --> 01:06:20,834
We need to be able to say, hey, arbitrary data storage is not okay, so we're turning off all of the popular methods of arbitrary data storage.

841
01:06:21,754 --> 01:06:22,354
Okay.

842
01:06:22,994 --> 01:06:27,574
So BIP-110 has a mandatory activation date sometime this fall.

843
01:06:27,574 --> 01:06:35,014
um and that that's regardless of minor signaling right so my my understanding is support's growing

844
01:06:35,014 --> 01:06:41,434
right uh but what happens if it activates we don't have sufficient minor support like how does this

845
01:06:41,434 --> 01:06:48,114
actually work you know like what do we need to have happen in order for your vision for how this

846
01:06:48,114 --> 01:06:52,254
should play out to play out and what could go wrong in the midst of that and if it does go wrong

847
01:06:52,254 --> 01:06:58,614
what does that mean so um were you around for the block size war no man i'm i'm still a noob

848
01:06:58,614 --> 01:07:04,674
okay so in the block size war so so i read the book okay cool yeah you read the block size war

849
01:07:04,674 --> 01:07:09,754
book by uh jonathan beer yeah yeah very good book everybody should read that um yeah it

850
01:07:09,754 --> 01:07:18,994
basically bit.10 does the same thing um uh the difference is that so segwit segwit was given a

851
01:07:18,994 --> 01:07:21,874
year of signaling.

852
01:07:21,874 --> 01:07:24,354
And then it was given a deadline at the end of the signaling

853
01:07:24,354 --> 01:07:25,094
period.

854
01:07:25,094 --> 01:07:27,414
And at the end of the signaling period,

855
01:07:27,414 --> 01:07:31,234
if insufficient hash power was signaling for SegWit,

856
01:07:31,234 --> 01:07:33,674
SegWit would be canceled.

857
01:07:33,674 --> 01:07:39,894
And so a few months into the signaling period,

858
01:07:39,894 --> 01:07:42,314
we kind of started realizing that this was a mistake,

859
01:07:42,314 --> 01:07:45,354
because there were some hostile miners that were blocking the fork

860
01:07:45,354 --> 01:07:48,554
from activating, namely Bitmain.

861
01:07:48,554 --> 01:07:51,934
and they're lackeys.

862
01:07:51,934 --> 01:07:59,234
And so what ended up happening is that a group of developers

863
01:07:59,234 --> 01:08:05,454
got together and put out a different version of Bitcoin,

864
01:08:05,454 --> 01:08:08,654
a different activation client for something called BIP148,

865
01:08:08,654 --> 01:08:11,274
which was the original UASF.

866
01:08:11,274 --> 01:08:15,994
So this was a soft fork to start rejecting blocks

867
01:08:15,994 --> 01:08:18,774
that were not signaling for SegWit.

868
01:08:18,774 --> 01:08:23,674
And long story short, leading up to the activation of BIP-148,

869
01:08:23,674 --> 01:08:26,934
100% of the miners started signaling for SegWit.

870
01:08:26,934 --> 01:08:33,434
So if you look into the incentives for miners

871
01:08:33,434 --> 01:08:35,314
and why this happened, it becomes very obvious

872
01:08:35,314 --> 01:08:38,294
why they did this.

873
01:08:38,294 --> 01:08:40,954
Because miners are just trying to get paid.

874
01:08:40,954 --> 01:08:41,954
They're not trying.

875
01:08:41,954 --> 01:08:46,354
And we shouldn't be leaving protocol changes up to the miners.

876
01:08:46,474 --> 01:08:47,234
That doesn't make any sense.

877
01:08:47,754 --> 01:08:54,554
The node runners, you and me, we should be in charge of the rules.

878
01:08:54,734 --> 01:08:56,074
And the miners are just employees.

879
01:08:56,074 --> 01:09:03,634
The miners should just, you know, I mean, like you could see a situation where there's

880
01:09:03,634 --> 01:09:07,794
some kind of simple attack on the network where, you know, some three-letter agency

881
01:09:07,794 --> 01:09:12,554
like spins up a bunch of fake nodes and tries to, you know, you know, turn on Ethereum or something

882
01:09:12,554 --> 01:09:21,014
like that, you know, turn on a bunch of MEV, a bunch of, anyway. But this is clearly not that,

883
01:09:21,334 --> 01:09:24,994
you know, if you, if you look on, on Twitter, as you were, as you were saying, you know, this,

884
01:09:25,094 --> 01:09:30,014
this clearly has support among, you know, real actual Bitcoiners who really, really are looking

885
01:09:30,014 --> 01:09:34,654
out for the long-term interest of Bitcoin. And it's not turning on any, any new functionality,

886
01:09:34,654 --> 01:09:36,954
It's just a protective measure.

887
01:09:36,954 --> 01:09:41,694
It's just disabling some things that are abusive.

888
01:09:41,694 --> 01:09:44,914
But anyway, so the mandatory signaling period

889
01:09:44,914 --> 01:09:46,534
is basically building .

890
01:09:46,534 --> 01:09:48,874
It's kind of like if you took SegWit and you built

891
01:09:48,874 --> 01:09:51,394
BIP 148 in from the beginning.

892
01:09:51,394 --> 01:09:52,514
So that's all that .10 is.

893
01:09:52,514 --> 01:09:55,534
It's basically if SegWit had been done in a way

894
01:09:55,534 --> 01:09:57,494
that it doesn't put the miners in charge

895
01:09:57,494 --> 01:09:58,494
from the beginning.

896
01:09:58,494 --> 01:10:01,154
Instead of putting them in charge and then being like,

897
01:10:01,154 --> 01:10:02,834
whoops, we shouldn't have done that.

898
01:10:02,834 --> 01:10:03,694
The users are in charge.

899
01:10:03,694 --> 01:10:09,294
do it uasf and and then the miner start signaling so bit 110 just does that same thing but just all

900
01:10:09,294 --> 01:10:17,214
in the same package from the start okay so i've heard many people on the core side like the the

901
01:10:17,214 --> 01:10:24,654
loudest ones and probably the most some of the most notable say that the knots bip 110 crowd

902
01:10:24,654 --> 01:10:31,694
sounds like the big blockers of the of the block size wars what what exactly are they i know you're

903
01:10:31,694 --> 01:10:35,614
you're shaking your head. What are they, what, what's their argument? Like what, what are they

904
01:10:35,614 --> 01:10:40,654
referring to when they say that? Cause like I, I read the book, but again, I'm not a developer.

905
01:10:40,654 --> 01:10:44,014
So there was a lot of it that was just kind of over my head. I kind of understood conceptually,

906
01:10:44,014 --> 01:10:49,934
but it's, it's also been a while since I read that. Yeah. I think the steel man of that is that

907
01:10:49,934 --> 01:10:57,434
we are opposing Bitcoin core and Bitcoin core was seen as kind of the, the victors of the block size

908
01:10:57,434 --> 01:11:01,914
war. But I think this is a misreading of history. And actually, if you read the Block Size War book,

909
01:11:02,114 --> 01:11:05,254
it explains that a lot of the core developers were actually against doing the UASF.

910
01:11:05,834 --> 01:11:13,834
And if it had been up to core, SegWit would have failed. I'm now pretty much convinced of that.

911
01:11:15,554 --> 01:11:19,714
And basically, it was just a few developers who were willing to be like, no, we are not

912
01:11:19,714 --> 01:11:26,374
leaving this to chance. We are turning on SegWit. SegWit is the solution. We are not leaving the

913
01:11:26,374 --> 01:11:31,654
miners in charge. So I think the steel man of the case that the knots people or the BIP110 people

914
01:11:31,654 --> 01:11:39,554
are the big blockers is that, you know, that we're opposing Bitcoin core, which I think is silly. I

915
01:11:39,554 --> 01:11:43,174
mean, I think, I mean, I think it's true, right? I think we are opposing Bitcoin core, but I don't

916
01:11:43,174 --> 01:11:47,354
think that makes us the big blockers. And I think if you look at all of the other ways in which the

917
01:11:47,354 --> 01:11:51,614
core supporters are like the big blockers, it makes a lot more sense. So like, for instance,

918
01:11:51,614 --> 01:11:57,634
It's, you know, so as I was saying before, you know, Luke's philosophy and my philosophy

919
01:11:57,634 --> 01:12:00,054
is very much that we want more node runners.

920
01:12:00,874 --> 01:12:09,614
And fighting against spam allows there to be more node runners because it increases the

921
01:12:09,614 --> 01:12:11,414
benefits and lowers the costs of running a node.

922
01:12:12,554 --> 01:12:13,774
So this much is obvious.

923
01:12:15,654 --> 01:12:19,254
And the big blockers were saying, oh, it doesn't matter if fewer people run nodes.

924
01:12:19,334 --> 01:12:20,574
Let's just make the blocks bigger anyway.

925
01:12:20,574 --> 01:12:24,154
there will always be at least 100 node runners or there will always be at least 1,000 node runners

926
01:12:24,154 --> 01:12:27,594
or something like that. They had this idea in their head, oh, it doesn't matter because there

927
01:12:27,594 --> 01:12:34,614
will always be enough, right? But if you just don't care about the costs and you just blow the

928
01:12:34,614 --> 01:12:43,474
lid off of the costs and at the same time, you cripple Bitcoin's usefulness as money, right? So

929
01:12:43,474 --> 01:12:48,194
by enabling all these spammy use cases, you're making it harder for merchants to onboard,

930
01:12:48,194 --> 01:12:53,234
right like if you've ever tried you know onboarding uh anybody to self-custody and the fees are 50

931
01:12:53,234 --> 01:12:57,314
dollars you can't you kind of look like a scammer they look at you and they're like who's this

932
01:12:57,314 --> 01:13:04,014
scammer you know this bitcoin thing seems like a scam um so you know so fighting spam is is good

933
01:13:04,014 --> 01:13:08,594
it it helps bitcoin be better money it helps bitcoin be be healthy it helps it uh fulfill its

934
01:13:08,594 --> 01:13:14,994
uh its purpose okay so i don't remember if i was answering your question there no no no i think you

935
01:13:14,994 --> 01:13:22,594
did. So let's start to round this out. So if BIP 110, I guess I would just say broadly,

936
01:13:23,094 --> 01:13:29,734
what you're hoping for, if it doesn't play out the way that you intend, and I don't know if this

937
01:13:29,734 --> 01:13:35,294
is maybe the way of saying it, but if Core sort of wins this battle, so to speak, does that

938
01:13:35,294 --> 01:13:43,054
fundamentally change your conviction in Bitcoin? Does it alter the way that you view its future,

939
01:13:43,054 --> 01:13:47,094
its likelihood of succeeding in the ways that you and I hope that it does?

940
01:13:47,754 --> 01:13:51,114
Do we see an exodus of people from Bitcoin

941
01:13:51,114 --> 01:13:52,894
because they've lost hope in the project?

942
01:13:52,894 --> 01:13:54,474
What do you think?

943
01:13:56,154 --> 01:13:56,714
100%.

944
01:13:56,714 --> 01:13:59,634
If Core is able to unilaterally

945
01:13:59,634 --> 01:14:04,714
effectively hard fork policy

946
01:14:04,714 --> 01:14:07,334
against the will of most of the node runners

947
01:14:07,334 --> 01:14:09,974
and

948
01:14:09,974 --> 01:14:13,614
Bitcoin loses the will to fight spam

949
01:14:13,614 --> 01:14:16,434
and through that

950
01:14:16,434 --> 01:14:20,114
all these Ethereum use cases flood into Bitcoin

951
01:14:20,114 --> 01:14:25,134
and through that Bitcoin turns into a big casino

952
01:14:25,134 --> 01:14:28,874
that's no more innovative than Ethereum

953
01:14:28,874 --> 01:14:31,174
and you know

954
01:14:31,174 --> 01:14:32,414
Ethereum is a joke

955
01:14:32,414 --> 01:14:36,334
and people think oh Bitcoin will magically

956
01:14:36,334 --> 01:14:43,294
no longer, will magically never become Ethereum. And that's not true. Bitcoin will avoid becoming

957
01:14:43,294 --> 01:14:48,954
Ethereum if Bitcoiners prevent it from becoming Ethereum. We, you know, the buck stops with us,

958
01:14:48,954 --> 01:14:53,534
you know, the node runners. And if we let Bitcoin turn into Ethereum, it will become

959
01:14:53,534 --> 01:15:01,034
a plaything of the fiat money printer. And it will not threaten, it will not disrupt anything.

960
01:15:01,274 --> 01:15:04,914
It will not be capable of disrupting anything. It will just be this mindless, purposeless

961
01:15:04,914 --> 01:15:11,394
thing that isn't money anymore. Yeah. As an analogy, you hear, fix the money,

962
01:15:11,494 --> 01:15:15,494
fix the world. And I used to say that very flippantly. And I don't believe that anymore.

963
01:15:15,554 --> 01:15:20,874
I think human action fixes the world. And our money in Bitcoin in particular is a tool to do so.

964
01:15:21,334 --> 01:15:27,874
And so I've grown more convinced of the cultural necessity of what you've described here. And

965
01:15:27,874 --> 01:15:29,694
I think it makes a lot of sense.

966
01:15:30,334 --> 01:15:34,374
I don't have the technical chops

967
01:15:34,374 --> 01:15:37,234
to agree or disagree with what you've just described.

968
01:15:37,474 --> 01:15:38,814
I'm hopeful that you're wrong

969
01:15:38,814 --> 01:15:41,094
because I don't know which direction we're headed.

970
01:15:41,714 --> 01:15:45,134
But in the meantime, the way I...

971
01:15:45,134 --> 01:15:45,894
I mean, this is it, man.

972
01:15:46,554 --> 01:15:47,874
This is...

973
01:15:47,874 --> 01:15:51,254
If 5.10 doesn't activate, the future is dark.

974
01:15:52,014 --> 01:15:52,234
Okay.

975
01:15:52,974 --> 01:15:55,414
Yeah, because in the meantime,

976
01:15:55,414 --> 01:15:58,174
I'm the, like, where else am I going to park my wealth, right?

977
01:15:58,234 --> 01:16:01,454
I mean, like, it's Bitcoin or it's, you know, a Tesla stock.

978
01:16:01,594 --> 01:16:02,494
I don't know.

979
01:16:02,614 --> 01:16:07,994
So, I mean, this is our shot and why I wanted to have you on to discuss this.

980
01:16:08,674 --> 01:16:13,834
Okay, so for someone who's listening to this podcast, maybe just being introduced to all

981
01:16:13,834 --> 01:16:18,034
these concepts, I'm sure most people who are listening to a Bitcoin podcast of this nature

982
01:16:18,034 --> 01:16:23,074
are acquainted with the notion of BIP 110 and the NOS versus core thing.

983
01:16:25,414 --> 01:16:29,534
what should they focus on and care about here?

984
01:16:31,094 --> 01:16:32,694
What's your guidance for people?

985
01:16:32,894 --> 01:16:37,694
Is it just run a node, run knots, signal BIP 110, that's it?

986
01:16:38,294 --> 01:16:40,794
Or is there maybe more to the story?

987
01:16:42,574 --> 01:16:46,754
I mean, there's all levels of analysis

988
01:16:46,754 --> 01:16:48,754
from zoomed all the way out to zoomed all the way in.

989
01:16:49,374 --> 01:16:53,754
And I think our priorities should...

990
01:16:53,754 --> 01:17:01,514
I think our priorities become straightened out once we realize what the absolute widest,

991
01:17:02,954 --> 01:17:06,474
the absolute most zoomed out view is, which is Bitcoin becoming the reserve asset.

992
01:17:07,834 --> 01:17:10,314
And in order for it to do that, and in order for it to, I mean, so

993
01:17:11,754 --> 01:17:16,634
there are ways that Bitcoin could become the reserve asset and become centralized. And if it

994
01:17:16,634 --> 01:17:21,834
does that, it still fails. So it has to become the reserve asset, but it also has to stay

995
01:17:21,834 --> 01:17:27,694
stay decentralized. And so the way that I put this is Bitcoiners have to value decentralization

996
01:17:27,694 --> 01:17:32,794
and integrity. And they have to value Bitcoin being money because, I mean, that's at the end

997
01:17:32,794 --> 01:17:38,334
of the day, Bitcoin isn't useful at all if it's not money. It isn't anything if it isn't money.

998
01:17:39,714 --> 01:17:45,494
So what I would say, so everything, all the more zoomed in levels of analysis should flow from

999
01:17:45,494 --> 01:17:53,594
that. So that should tell you what you should be doing. So in order for Bitcoin to stay decentralized,

1000
01:17:54,154 --> 01:18:00,474
you have to, as I said, don't trust, verify, run your own node, hold your own keys.

1001
01:18:03,734 --> 01:18:08,014
Don't improperly do too many things for other people, right? Try to onboard as many other people

1002
01:18:08,014 --> 01:18:13,674
to being sovereign Bitcoiners as possible. You know, like Uncle Jimming is great, but, you know,

1003
01:18:13,674 --> 01:18:24,594
don't become JP Morgan. Be the small community, Uncle Jim. Don't do everything for everyone.

1004
01:18:25,974 --> 01:18:29,054
Make sure that other people are onboarding themselves. Other people are becoming sovereign.

1005
01:18:29,054 --> 01:18:40,834
Other people are becoming agentic. We have to get Bitcoin being used in commerce by merchants.

1006
01:18:40,834 --> 01:19:08,394
One of the things that really affects the outcome of consensus changes, consensus battles like Bit.1.10, is merchant adoption. Which side are merchants falling on? Do merchants believe in decentralization and integrity and in Bitcoin being money? Or are merchants kind of don't care and they might as well accept Ethereum or Solana in addition to Bitcoin?

1007
01:19:08,394 --> 01:19:19,234
You know, are they doing, you know, we need, what keeps the miners in line is merchants,

1008
01:19:19,534 --> 01:19:19,694
right?

1009
01:19:19,754 --> 01:19:23,014
Like that's the counterweight to the miners in the consensus process.

1010
01:19:23,454 --> 01:19:27,774
If a bunch of node runners who aren't doing any payments say, we don't like what the miners

1011
01:19:27,774 --> 01:19:29,374
are doing, the miners can just ignore that.

1012
01:19:29,894 --> 01:19:36,814
But if a bunch of nodes being used for commerce are going to be rejecting blocks, then the

1013
01:19:36,814 --> 01:19:38,334
miners have to, they have to think about that, right?

1014
01:19:38,334 --> 01:19:43,034
They have to think twice about mining blocks that are going to be rejected.

1015
01:19:43,614 --> 01:19:46,014
Because a block is like $300,000 to mine.

1016
01:19:46,194 --> 01:19:46,954
That's a lot of money.

1017
01:19:47,014 --> 01:19:50,154
If you mine a block and it gets rejected, you just lost a lot of money.

1018
01:19:53,754 --> 01:19:57,714
So what I would say is, yeah, teach people how to be devs.

1019
01:19:58,074 --> 01:19:59,014
Teach people how to be merchants.

1020
01:19:59,574 --> 01:20:01,554
If you don't know how to be a merchant, become a merchant.

1021
01:20:01,914 --> 01:20:04,454
If you don't know how to, I mean, so I would say hold your own keys.

1022
01:20:04,594 --> 01:20:05,254
Learn how to use Lightning.

1023
01:20:05,254 --> 01:20:11,674
learn how to onboard somebody to self-custody, learn how to be a merchant, learn how to be a

1024
01:20:11,674 --> 01:20:17,054
developer. Generally, people take one of those two paths. They either become a merchant or they

1025
01:20:17,054 --> 01:20:21,474
become a developer. I'm trying to kind of create, I'm working on a project called Ambrosia, which I

1026
01:20:21,474 --> 01:20:27,394
hope to sort of combine those, right? Like I want devs to be merchants because the biggest problem

1027
01:20:27,394 --> 01:20:31,654
with Bitcoin Core is they don't understand why the merchant experience is bad because they're

1028
01:20:31,654 --> 01:20:33,034
and not merchants.

1029
01:20:33,034 --> 01:20:34,974
Devs tend to just kind of look for a job.

1030
01:20:34,974 --> 01:20:36,894
They tend to look for somebody else to give them

1031
01:20:36,894 --> 01:20:38,014
a high-paying salary.

1032
01:20:38,014 --> 01:20:40,594
And then they can sit back and have a cushy existence,

1033
01:20:40,594 --> 01:20:42,694
and they don't understand the people that are actually

1034
01:20:42,694 --> 01:20:44,974
trying to use their software.

1035
01:20:44,974 --> 01:20:47,254
I want developers to use their own dog food.

1036
01:20:47,254 --> 01:20:50,254
So we have to get this loop between devs and merchants going.

1037
01:20:50,254 --> 01:20:57,554
And we have to get this loop between Bitcoiners and merchants.

1038
01:20:57,554 --> 01:21:00,174
If nothing else, get merchants in your local economy

1039
01:21:00,174 --> 01:21:06,534
accepting Bitcoin, at least using a custodial wallet, but pressure them to get into something

1040
01:21:06,534 --> 01:21:14,734
self-custodial. Phoenix wallet works really well for that. Yeah, just learn as much as you can,

1041
01:21:14,874 --> 01:21:19,414
help other people learn as much as they can, and use Bitcoin as money.

1042
01:21:20,114 --> 01:21:25,914
I love it, man. I think that's sage advice. Honestly, that's what we do. All we do is train

1043
01:21:25,914 --> 01:21:31,034
people on self-custody, self-sovereignty, protecting your data, plan B residencies,

1044
01:21:31,294 --> 01:21:35,954
how to run a node. That's all we do all day long. And I couldn't agree more with that

1045
01:21:35,954 --> 01:21:42,194
sentiment. So let's round this out with our final question. You promised me you had some

1046
01:21:42,194 --> 01:21:46,074
unpopular opinions. So what's an unpopular opinion you have? And you get bonus points

1047
01:21:46,074 --> 01:21:51,774
if you offend some Bitcoiners with it. Besides everything you just said.

1048
01:21:52,294 --> 01:21:55,834
Yeah, I know. I think I've already mentioned them, right? I think

1049
01:21:55,834 --> 01:22:00,354
My two biggest unpopular opinions are that most Bitcoiners are actually sovereignty minimalists,

1050
01:22:00,474 --> 01:22:08,074
not sovereignty maximalists. So they're the sort of the more communist version of a libertarian,

1051
01:22:08,434 --> 01:22:14,314
which is, you know, basically I want to have as much freedom as possible, but I don't want to

1052
01:22:14,314 --> 01:22:19,214
take any responsibility. So I know this is going to trigger a lot of people. There's a lot of

1053
01:22:19,214 --> 01:22:23,034
Bitcoin core devs that fall in that camp. Actually, almost all of them basically are just like,

1054
01:22:23,034 --> 01:22:26,554
we don't, what taking responsibility, what's that? We don't want to have to do that. We just want to

1055
01:22:26,554 --> 01:22:35,614
tinker and not have to worry about anything. That's number one. And number two is, I think,

1056
01:22:36,274 --> 01:22:40,114
you know, a lot of like Wall Street Bitcoiners would be offended by this, but Bitcoin is not

1057
01:22:40,114 --> 01:22:45,174
just a store of value. Bitcoin is a store of value and a medium of exchange. If it's just a store of

1058
01:22:45,174 --> 01:22:52,854
value, it becomes gold. And as we know, gold was captured and is literally where the fiat standard

1059
01:22:52,854 --> 01:22:53,354
came from.

1060
01:22:53,354 --> 01:22:55,854
The fiat standard came from gold being captured.

1061
01:22:55,854 --> 01:22:59,154
So if we want to avoid that, we need

1062
01:22:59,154 --> 01:23:01,054
Bitcoin to work as a medium of exchange.

1063
01:23:01,054 --> 01:23:02,614
We need Bitcoin to work in commerce.

1064
01:23:02,614 --> 01:23:04,314
Obviously, store of value is more important.

1065
01:23:04,314 --> 01:23:06,354
This is why in the block size wars,

1066
01:23:06,354 --> 01:23:13,814
we emphasized Bitcoin being stable and conservative.

1067
01:23:13,814 --> 01:23:17,454
But Bitcoin also needs to scale organically.

1068
01:23:17,454 --> 01:23:19,314
And oh, here's another one that'll probably

1069
01:23:19,314 --> 01:23:19,934
fend a lot of people.

1070
01:23:19,992 --> 01:23:27,812
Liquid and Citria and layer twos that don't have unilateral exit.

1071
01:23:28,312 --> 01:23:30,052
So Lightning and Arc have unilateral exit.

1072
01:23:30,252 --> 01:23:31,332
Do you know what unilateral exit is?

1073
01:23:32,152 --> 01:23:34,432
I can imagine what it would mean.

1074
01:23:34,672 --> 01:23:37,472
You can get in and out and you can decide.

1075
01:23:38,152 --> 01:23:39,872
Like you have optionality when you're there.

1076
01:23:40,392 --> 01:23:42,312
You don't need to ask permission to exit the layer two.

1077
01:23:42,412 --> 01:23:42,592
Yeah.

1078
01:23:43,232 --> 01:23:45,292
So this is what Lightning does.

1079
01:23:45,592 --> 01:23:49,072
If you have a Lightning channel, you have a transaction that's pre-signed

1080
01:23:49,072 --> 01:23:51,392
that you can post at any moment, and it will close the channel

1081
01:23:51,392 --> 01:23:52,592
and withdraw all your money.

1082
01:23:53,292 --> 01:23:54,592
So that's why Lightning has unilateral exit.

1083
01:23:54,852 --> 01:23:59,132
Arc has a similar thing, although they're kind of struggling with that.

1084
01:23:59,652 --> 01:24:01,652
They have some workarounds that are not great.

1085
01:24:01,872 --> 01:24:04,392
But we're working towards unilateral exit on all the layer twos.

1086
01:24:05,092 --> 01:24:09,432
But Liquid and Citria and BitVM and all these,

1087
01:24:10,052 --> 01:24:13,332
there are apparently ways to make BitVM have unilateral exit

1088
01:24:13,332 --> 01:24:14,772
with like ZK proofs and stuff.

1089
01:24:15,792 --> 01:24:18,492
But I'm skeptical.

1090
01:24:19,072 --> 01:24:20,012
I'm not ready for shit.

1091
01:24:20,832 --> 01:24:25,152
So my unpopular opinion is that a bunch of things that people say are layer twos are

1092
01:24:25,152 --> 01:24:26,112
not actual layer twos.

1093
01:24:26,592 --> 01:24:28,552
They're just, they're applications, right?

1094
01:24:28,572 --> 01:24:29,932
They're just things that use Bitcoin.

1095
01:24:30,292 --> 01:24:30,592
Okay.

1096
01:24:30,752 --> 01:24:32,732
You're not really a lot better than Coinbase, right?

1097
01:24:32,772 --> 01:24:36,792
Like you just, you put your layer two, you put your, you put your Bitcoin into layer

1098
01:24:36,792 --> 01:24:39,292
two, you trust somebody, and then hopefully you can get your money out.

1099
01:24:40,172 --> 01:24:40,992
That's not layer two.

1100
01:24:41,172 --> 01:24:41,592
That's an app.

1101
01:24:42,172 --> 01:24:43,932
That's a good, that's a good warning to give.

1102
01:24:43,932 --> 01:24:50,832
because I use Lightning often for payments, haven't played around with many of the others.

1103
01:24:51,012 --> 01:24:55,072
So that's something I need to be aware of. And I think many people do. Well, I'll be honest with

1104
01:24:55,072 --> 01:25:11,412
you I think those are good unpopular opinions because there are lots of people who will be offended No offense taken here man I think we on the same page with this stuff So I appreciate that Chris first of all thank you so much for your time man This has been a blast I learned a ton Why don you tell people where they can find you follow you anything

1105
01:25:11,412 --> 01:25:16,312
else you want to point them to? Yep. Yeah. Thanks. Same. Right back at you, Michael. Thanks for

1106
01:25:16,312 --> 01:25:27,152
having me on. It's a fun conversation. I'm Chris Guida. I'm cguida6 on Twitter. My projects right

1107
01:25:27,152 --> 01:25:33,552
now are just working on building a local economy and building a project called Ambrosia, which,

1108
01:25:33,552 --> 01:25:38,372
as I said, is a point of sale system to try and get as many merchants onboarded to self-custodial

1109
01:25:38,372 --> 01:25:43,132
Lightning as possible. And yeah, you'll see me around speaking at conferences and

1110
01:25:43,132 --> 01:25:46,532
doing a podcast circuit and all that. So yeah.

1111
01:25:47,332 --> 01:25:49,132
Love it, man. Thank you so much for your time. Cheers, brother.

1112
01:25:50,252 --> 01:25:50,612
Cheers, man.

1113
01:25:51,092 --> 01:25:54,812
And that's a wrap again. Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Chris. I know I had a blast.

1114
01:25:54,812 --> 01:25:58,632
One of my favorite conversations I've had on the podcast, honestly, just very insightful,

1115
01:25:58,872 --> 01:25:59,712
knowledgeable guy.

1116
01:25:59,932 --> 01:26:01,552
Glad he spent some time with me.

1117
01:26:02,232 --> 01:26:06,692
If you need help, as we discussed, taking your Bitcoin into proper 100% self-custody,

1118
01:26:06,792 --> 01:26:09,192
go to thebitcoinway.com slash podcast.

1119
01:26:09,512 --> 01:26:13,092
We can teach you to run a node, schedule a free 30-minute call with our team where we

1120
01:26:13,092 --> 01:26:14,372
can walk you through our philosophy.

1121
01:26:14,852 --> 01:26:17,872
We can show you what an onboarding option looks like for you.

1122
01:26:18,232 --> 01:26:21,252
And we also help with online privacy, setting up privacy phones.

1123
01:26:21,372 --> 01:26:24,232
We've got a Plan B residency in tropical Panama as well.

1124
01:26:24,232 --> 01:26:28,112
if you're looking to get out of one of these tyrannical jurisdictions that we're seeing pop

1125
01:26:28,112 --> 01:26:34,112
up all over the world. Again, it's thebitcoinway.com slash podcast. Until next time, stay safe,

1126
01:26:34,572 --> 01:26:37,672
stay sovereign, and remember the yield on Bitcoin is freedom.