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Hey, hey, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix. I'm your host, Cedric Youngelman.

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This episode is brought to you by MicroSeed, the Bitcoin self-custody maximalist.

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MicroSeed engraves your entire Bitcoin seed phrase on fireproof, waterproof steel or titanium

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the size of a coin. Discreet, resilient, seed security made simple. Use the code matrix for

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discount at micro seed.io and run your own node, take custody of your own Bitcoin and stamp your

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seed phrase in metal. In this episode, I chat with Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer and educator

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that has been a driving force in Bitcoin for over a decade. Jimmy's contributed to Bitcoin Core.

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He's authored five books on Bitcoin, served as an expert witness and invested in numerous Bitcoin

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companies, and he's not afraid to call out the system for its moral failings. Today, we dive deep

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into the current debates surrounding Bitcoin node implementations, particularly Notts versus Core.

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We also get into the political undercurrents around Bitcoin core development, funding models,

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decentralization theater, and the question on everyone's mind, is Bitcoin under attack from

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within. If you're curious about who runs Bitcoin, why no diversity matters, and what's really at

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stake in the Relay Wars, this rips for you. If you want to get in touch with me, it's Cedric

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at thebitcoinmatrix.com. And now, let's enter the Bitcoin Matrix with Bitcoin professor Jimmy Song.

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What is real? How do you define real? You can't jump into cash.

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Cash is trash.

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What do you do?

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You get out.

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Jimmy Song is a Bitcoin developer, educator, and entrepreneur.

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His mission is to bring sound money to the world.

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Jimmy has authored five books about Bitcoin.

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Let's just say Jimmy Song is well-versed in Bitcoin.

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Jimmy knows the protocol, technical details,

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economics behind it, the industry, and the people.

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Jimmy has served as an expert witness in various contexts

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and has taught and advocated for Bitcoin for the last 11 years.

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Jimmy is also an open source programmer,

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having worked on many different Bitcoin-related projects, including Bitcoin Core.

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Jimmy Song is an entrepreneur, having worked at many different startups.

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He's currently an investor and advisor to many different Bitcoin companies.

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Jimmy is also a Christian, and a lot of his work is explaining the immorality of the current monetary system.

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Jimmy is also advocating or advancing the cause of Bitcoin through political lobbying efforts.

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Jimmy Song, welcome back to the Bitcoin Matrix for the fourth time.

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How are you?

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I'm doing well. I'm doing well. That's a pretty long intro, man. I figured you would shrink it a little bit, but that was like two minutes of like, oh, okay. Yeah, I guess I do do that stuff.

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You have done all that stuff. And I think it's kind of pertinent to the conversation that I'm hoping we can get into here, specifically about Nots vs. Core, but really about Bitcoin, where Bitcoin has come from, where it is, and not so much where it's going.

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But let's maybe talk about reference clients and nodes.

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Like, does it matter what kind of node you run?

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Well, it depends what you mean by matter.

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It matters for what, right?

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So, of course, like, they're different clients.

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So, of course, there are differences.

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And, you know, what you run matters if you care about those differences or not.

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I mean, generally what people run the Node software for is the determining factor for why you would run one software or the other.

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So, for example, Knots has some really nice knobs.

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If you're a miner and you want to sort of tweak your block templates and things like that, there's like a nice UI for that and stuff like that.

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So it makes more sense maybe to run NOTS if you're going to be mining and creating your block templates and, you know, mining, you know, using Datum and doing stuff like that.

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If, on the other hand, you want the latest security patches and things like that and make sure it's not going to go offline because you're using it as the backend for some lightning routing node or something like that, then maybe LND or Bitcoin Core is better.

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It really depends because there are a lot of differences.

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But honestly, between Notts and Core, they're probably the two most similar in terms of the code base and things like that.

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They're both based off of Core, right?

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Notts is a branch of Core.

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Luke maintains it.

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He's been a Core contributor for a very long time.

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You know, he just disagrees, I think, with the peer-to-peer relay part of it, which is honestly what a lot of the more recent, the recent controversy has been about.

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It's about relay policy.

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There are sort of like rational things for a node runner to consider, you know, like bandwidth and so on that you're going to be using, whether you want to participate in the relaying of certain kinds of transactions and so on, you know, versus doing it and not.

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And certain rules or defaults have been changed.

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So those things are maybe relayed by default in Core V30 that weren't in Core V29.

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There's been some backporting of like sub-Satoshi per VByte transactions and so on.

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So there's a lot of reasons along the relay stuff.

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But mostly I think what people run nodes for is so that they can verify their own transactions,

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you know not have to rely on a block explorer or something like that and not have to trust somebody

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right that that's sort of a core ethos of bitcoin and that's essentially what it's there for yeah i

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think that's really important to kind of define what is the core purpose and just kind of verify

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your own transactions and then there's all these probably other things you could do around that

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and have trade-offs and sort of things like that i don't know maybe it's akin to kind of like

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driving different cars like a Toyota or a Honda. You know, you

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still have to drive the car, the car still serves the same

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purpose, but they do a little bit different things, but a lot of

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the same things. What is relay policy? What is relay policy,

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maybe verse consensus?

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So consensus is what is allowed to go into a block. So you can

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have like a four megabyte inscription that's in a witness

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field in one transaction that is perfectly legal within Bitcoin as a consensus rule.

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But it is not something that is relayed by policy.

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And the reason for that difference or policy is a different layer, in other words.

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So consensus is what goes into a block.

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Policy is what your node is willing to relay.

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So you'll hear about different transactions like a 4-megabyte inscription transaction, for example, but you're not necessarily going to relay it.

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And part of that is for very reasonable purposes, like you don't want to be spamming the connections that you have with 4-megabyte transactions.

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transactions, right? If you get a lot of them, especially if there's like RBF or something,

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then it's entirely possible that you're kind of DDoSing your peers, in which case they'll ban you

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and things like that. You want to stay connected to the network. So there are reasons like that.

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There are other reasons like up until more recently, you had transactions creating outputs

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that were less than 546 satoshis for pay to pub key hash.

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And they come up with these like sort of limits

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because it's not economic to spend them, right?

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So if you have a 546 satoshi output for pay to pub key hash,

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the amount of money that you'd have to spend

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in order to include that into a transaction

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is probably more than 546 satoshis.

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So it really doesn't make sense to create outputs like that.

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So to minimize sort of abuse of the UTXO set, you know, there's a rule like that.

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There's also up until recently, there was a rule about, you know, how much fee you have to pay for a transaction to relay.

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You know, it's perfectly legal, for example, to have a zero fee transaction that goes into a block.

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right like a miner is hoping to make money but they don't have to right you can you can't have

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zero fee uh transactions but those don't get relayed because they you know they're they're

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you can kind of create them infinitely right like especially with rbf and stuff like that you can

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create as many of those as you want and it's not going to hurt you any especially if it's coming

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back to your own address and that's another way in which you can ddos other nodes uh is and you

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You know, it seemed one sat per satoshi was for one satoshi per vbyte was the limit for a very long time because it was very cheap, considered very cheap.

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And it's only over the summer that we got sub satoshi per vbyte transactions, which are even cheaper.

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And in a sense, they don't really make a lot of economic sense to include.

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In fact, like Mara pool actually decided, OK, we're not going to go all the way down to 0.1 sat per V byte.

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We're only going to go to 0.5 because it doesn't we've done the math and it doesn't make sense given the stale block risk and things like that.

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So, you know, consensus is what can go into a block, what's legal to go into a block.

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You know, policy is what every node has with respect to what they're willing to relay.

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And yeah, I mean, that's part of the controversy is should the policy for every node be the same or not?

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Because, you know, it sort of determines what kind of goes into blocks.

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So, you know, do we want that to reflect what goes into blocks or not?

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And, you know, that obviously has a lot to do with spam.

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Do we want certain kinds of transactions to go in or not?

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And even if we could prevent certain kinds of transactions, won't they morph to something else and so on?

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So there's a bunch of issues around policy, largely because the peer-to-peer network ends up becoming the way for most transactions to get into the blockchain.

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So despite the fact that the consensus allows a bigger range of transactions to get in, most transactions that get in are very much within this standardness restriction.

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So you do see non-standard transactions get into blocks once in a while, but those are a tiny minority.

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Vast majority are standard.

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What are the benefits or optimizations or efficiencies that come from maybe a more homogenous relay policy amongst nodes?

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And I don't know if that leads to – would that be a more homogenous mempool?

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And what would be the benefits of maybe all the nodes kind of – let's say pretend there's a very – there's only 100 transactions that want to get in at a given point in time.

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and all nodes are going to really work with the same 50 or 60

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if the policy is really similar across all of them.

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What would be the benefit of that?

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Well, the main benefit would be that you'd have faster block propagation.

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So there's something called compact block relay,

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which was, I think, introduced in, I want to say, like 2016 or something like that.

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But every time a miner finds a block,

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It can be anywhere from a few hundred bytes to like four megabytes, I guess.

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But if it's fairly large, pushing that to the entire network can take a little bit of time.

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And if it takes like 10 seconds for it to percolate through the network,

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then that's 10 seconds that somebody else can find the same block that would compete with it,

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in which case you have what's called stale block risk.

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So if you're having to compete with some other block and then it gets built on that other block, then you kind of lose your reward.

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So miners are naturally incentivized to get their blocks out there fast.

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And this is this this is something that we've tried to solve for because a lot of miners were mining, for example, empty blocks sometimes because it has no it percolates through the network very quickly and so on.

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But, you know, we came up with this thing called compact block relay, which instead of sending the entire block at once, you send sort of like, you know, here's how the block is constructed.

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And it's already transactions that you've heard of. So you can sort of use your CPU a little bit to reconstruct the block.

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And then you can you can check that instead of using this very valuable bandwidth and latency that that comes along with it.

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And then you can do the same thing. And it turns out that it's significantly faster, right? Instead of 10 plus seconds, it takes a couple seconds, something like that. And that ends up being reasonably good for preventing stale blocks.

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So instead of getting like one stale block a day, you get like maybe one stale block every two weeks and stuff like that.

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So it ends up being very useful from a network perspective, like the blocks being transmitted quicker means that, you know, there's more finality and and things like that, which which we all like, because, you know, if it's in one block and not the other, then, you know, you have to wait until one wins and all this other stuff.

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So it ends up being useful at a network level, at a global level to have, I guess, similar mempools for everybody and sort of the ability to not transmit as much and still get the block.

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So that would be the main benefit.

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I guess maybe in layman terms at a really high level, it's something like because I've already relayed these transactions when the block is solved, they can send me less information because it's already kind of in my cache or something like that.

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Yeah, it's in your mempool, right?

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And you need to take them out of your mempool because it's part of the block anyway.

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So it ends up being a lot more efficient.

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So it becomes a better feedback loop kind of.

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Yeah or better I mean you reduce latency essentially because you like you said transmitting less information And it multiplies very fast right Because it goes from the miner who mined it to all its connected nodes and then all its connected nodes

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and all its connected nodes.

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If each of those takes longer,

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then you get sort of like a cascading delay.

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But if all of those are faster,

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then you get sort of like a multiplier effect

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in how quickly it percolates.

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There's probably all sorts of maybe second

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and third order benefits around prediction markets or futures or just being able to sort of,

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you know, if there's this many transactions that are in the mempool, and we all have a similar mempool,

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you can probabilistically say the next mind block would be these transactions over those because they have more fees.

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And, you know, yeah, so you get it. If everyone had the same mempool, then, yeah, you would be able to probably estimate fees a little bit better.

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for any transactions that you want to make.

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And you'd be able to get better transaction finality

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because blocks propagate a little faster

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and there's less stale blocks.

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So you don't have to wait as many blocks and so on.

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So there's a few things like that,

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which at a network level, at a macro level are beneficial.

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Right.

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But at the individual level, it's decentralized

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and it's like, I'm going to do what I want to do over here.

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Yeah. So, I mean, the problem with like a centralized or like a uniform mempool is that it like once you kind of have that, then it becomes like, OK, well, then what if like miners start mining something else?

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Right. Like or mining or not mining certain things like an OFAC sanctions list or something like that.

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And it has to be balanced with the fact that you don't want to encourage censorship on the part of miners or things like that.

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And you want that decentralization.

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Part of the problem we have right now is that we have only like five or six pools that create templates on behalf of all their hashers that are like 90% of the hash rate.

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which means that they essentially control what goes into blocks for the most part.

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And that sucks, right?

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It does open up a lot of vectors of attack and vulnerabilities

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with respect to transactions that some people might not like and so on.

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So there are various considerations,

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But you generally are not going to get like a singular mempool, largely because these are individuals running it, right?

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If I don't want certain transactions on my node or if I'm not willing to relay it or if there aren't people relaying it to me, then I'm not going to have that in my mempool.

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And that means that when the compact block comes in, I'm going to have to ask for this transaction I don't know about.

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and that might cause a little bit more of a delay and add a little more stale block risk and so on.

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So those are all things that miners have to take into account when they're creating their block

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because even like a six-second delay in your block propagating

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means that there's about like a 1% chance of a stale block, right?

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Which it's 600 seconds per block on average, 10 minutes, right?

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Six seconds is 1% of 600 seconds.

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So a six second delay means that there's a 1% chance that somebody else finds a block in that time that the block is propagating, at which point you'd be in competition and your block might not go through.

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And it only takes like a very small risk of losing the block reward that you got for it to not be worth it.

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This is the calculation that Mara Pool made with subset per V by transactions.

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And if you go all the way down to 0.1 sat per V-byte, that ends up not being very much, right?

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If you filled an entire block of those, the amount of Satoshis you get in fees is 100,000 sats, right?

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And right now, the current block reward is 3.125, which is 312,500,000 sats.

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so it's like less than 0.1 percent of the bulk reward so it doesn't make sense to mine though

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because especially if a large part of the network doesn't know about it because there's a stale

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block risk even if you're connected to the other 90 there's like a 10 chance of one percent right

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or a 0.1 chance that there might be a stale block and even if you win like 70 of those or

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something like that. You can do the math and figure out, okay, the expected loss of including

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this is this much and the expected gain is this much. And it turns out that the expected loss is

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greater than the expected gain. So they decided not to do it and they raised the threshold to 0.5

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SAT per V-byte. So these are the things that you have to take into account. And that's what a lot

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of this is about because you um you know there there's like a global good but there's like a

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local good as well because like uh there there's a there's an article i think floppy put out about

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like running his node and he left it on for 10 hours while keeping a log of all the bandwidth

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that was getting used by the peers that he had and most of them were not uh core v29.1 or core v30

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He had one of each of those, and he just measured the amount of bandwidth that was used by each of those nodes, right?

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Like what's coming in and so on.

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The Core V29.1 and Core V30 had, over a course of 10 hours, the bandwidth that he used to download from those ended up being about 200 megabytes each.

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For everything else, it was like six megabytes, which tells you that's a significantly more bandwidth that it's using.

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And in addition, if you're a core V29.1 or core V30 node, then you're pushing those to all your peers.

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So the upload bandwidth would be equivalent because you'd hear about 200 megabytes of transactions and you would also upload 200 megabytes of transactions to each of your peers.

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A typical node has 10 peers, and you only hear it from one.

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So for every megabyte you get from that one, you end up doing nine megabytes of upload and so on.

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So it ends up being actually quite rational for people to have a more restrictive mempool policy just from the bandwidth that's getting used.

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And that's not even counting all of the CPU that's used for validation and RAM that's used for validation and space that's used for the mempool and so on.

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So there's, you know, rational reasons for an individual to limit that.

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And, you know, like you can go all the way to blocks only mode.

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But if you want to hear about transactions and so on, then it might make sense to keep that on.

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So there's a lot of different considerations.

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there. Yeah. So thinking through all this, then what is op return? Op return is an op code. It's

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part of Bitcoin script. There's a lot of different op codes and they do all kinds of different things,

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right? Like so op check sig checks like the signature, op dupe duplicates like the last

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stack element. It's like just building blocks for the programming language that's part of

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Bitcoin. Bitcoin's smart contract language has a bunch of different opcodes and opreturn is one

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of them. Now, opreturn is a little bit of a strange one because it's kind of like if you've

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ever programmed, it's like the command exit or something like that. It just sort of like terminates

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immediately and nothing after op return does anything right because it's kind of like putting

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an exit in the middle of your program it's like okay exit program nothing after the exit program

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is going to execute right uh so it's it's a little bit of a strange uh op code um and the

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bitcoin developers decided to use that as like a way to say okay if you want to put you know uh sort

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of like non-financial data into a transaction. Use this opcode and we're only going to and

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previously they said we're only going to allow one op return output per transaction but you could

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put some data there and at first it was limited to 40 bytes later it was increased to 80 bytes

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but basically this is a field designated for the purpose of putting data about the transaction

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that's not necessarily financial into a transaction.

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And there are a whole bunch of uses for it,

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but it definitely gets used.

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And it's only recently that it was brought up

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that maybe we should increase it again,

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and that's where we got this whole controversy.

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So it's one particular code amongst many codes,

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But you're saying that there are lots of uses for it, intended uses.

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So it's a programming code, right?

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It's kind of like exit program or whatever.

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And it's meant to be, it's sort of there.

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So and the Bitcoin devs decided, hey, this is like the ideal code to put stuff after it that doesn't actually matter or get executed in any way.

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So that's that's where they they said, here's here's now a spot for you within each transaction to put some arbitrary data.

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And that was originally created with 40 bytes.

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It's now, you know, up until Core v30, it was 80 bytes.

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And now it's by default 100,000 for anyone running Query 30.

255
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So in some ways, it's like a file cabinet or like a dumpster.

256
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And you can kind of put stuff there.

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And that might be a really cringe way of saying it.

258
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But is there, by adding more room to put things in there,

259
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is there anywhere in the vector that you get more functionality?

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I've heard things around like BitVM or, you know, is there something more you get by getting more out of this particular app code and how much you can use of it?

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Besides just putting data there.

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Yeah.

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And there's some controversy about that because the original limit of 40 bytes was there because you have the ability to hash something.

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So if you have data that you want to sort of like stamp, right, timestamp or something like that, that was one of the original use cases that people thought of.

265
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You can have an arbitrarily long document, right?

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You can have a three gigabyte document and you can hash it to 32 bytes.

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And if you don't know what that is, this is actually like a part of how Bitcoin works.

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It's a cryptographically secure hash is something where you can take any number of bytes and it will give you a 32 byte string, which is if you do the math on eight bits equals one byte, it's 256 bits.

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So you get sort of like a unique or almost unique 256-bit tag or fingerprint for something.

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And just to give you an idea, 2 to the 256 is an enormous number.

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You're like just not going to encounter it twice, right?

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The same number twice because it's so huge.

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It's to give you an idea, like it's around 10 to the 77th power or something like that.

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And that's the number of atoms in the solar system is like 10 to the 58th or something.

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And the number of atoms in the Milky Way is like 10 to the 69th.

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So it's like you need like a billion galaxies to get like the number of atoms as this number.

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So we haven't seen any set where two different inputs get you the same output.

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It's that difficult to find.

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So for all intents and purposes, whenever you get an output of a cryptographically secure hash function, it's going to be unique.

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and that means that if you want to timestamp something you just store the hash of how whatever

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it is rather than the entire thing you don't you don't put three gigabytes on chain you put a hash

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of it on chain and then if later someone says can you show me that it existed you show them the file

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as it was at that point and then you make them hash it and see if it's on the blockchain and now

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now you've proved it so that that's how it's it can be used unfortunately like that's like a lot of

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systems i guess don't want to use it that way and in fact this is what kind of brought it up

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is citria was the one that asked for something bigger because they have some particular emergency

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situation where they need 144 bytes and not 80. and for whatever reason they can't give like a

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hash of something they have to have all 144 bytes available to everyone almost instantly

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and the way they're doing that per their design is by using a bitcoin transaction to transmit it to

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everybody through the mempool it's like a standard transaction so everyone hears about it and that

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that was the way that they were going to solve it now i i personally think this is kind of an

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abuse of the system to be using the Bitcoin mempool as a way to alert everybody of an emergency

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situation within the Citria VM ecosystem. But the way that they were going to do it was put 80 bytes

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into op return and create two fake pub keys, which would bloat the UTXO set with something

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that would never be spendable and you know it might get mined and so on so it ends up being

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like uh uh you know like worse of two outcomes kind of like you you either let citria do this

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in which case you're uh every once in a while you're going to get a slight widening of the utxo

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set that can get pruned or you going to uh you know expand the op return now the controversial part of this is that besides Citria we don know of anybody that was going to use it for anything else

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But they increased it not from 80 to, say, 160, which is past 144.

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They decided to go all the way to 100,000.

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In fact, like the first pull request, I think it was by Peter Todd,

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would have just eliminated the feature altogether and said any amount in op return is fine.

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And then they change that to a deprecated feature, which defaults to 100,000.

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And then they change that again to take out the deprecation.

305
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So that's been the sort of saga so far.

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And yeah, that's what's been happening.

307
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No, I appreciate that.

308
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So in no way, though, this is pay like a game engine.

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If you go to 100 kilobytes, then we're going to be able to, the character can walk.

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and if we go to 1,000, the character can jump,

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and if we go to 100,000, the character can do flips,

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and we have more functionality.

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It's just sort of more of the same, just more fillage of data.

314
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That's right.

315
00:32:20,860 --> 00:32:24,600
I'm not sure it's not used for it, but it's just more data that can go in that thing

316
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:28,440
and then run into this op return code that just basically exits stage left here

317
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with all your data.

318
00:32:30,060 --> 00:32:33,260
Okay, so let's talk about censorship then.

319
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That's a tricky word.

320
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in one way i see it as maybe core saying hey um or i shouldn't say core but people who are like

321
00:32:43,700 --> 00:32:49,560
let's go to 100 000 you know let's sort of mirror uh policy more towards consensus

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let people throw anything they want in there and let the economic sort of like

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sort of uh or the market based uh around transactions figure out what's included and

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what's not so we all could be on the same page and we can move on with our lives and if this one

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company comes and they want 80 more you know bites well another one wants another 80 let's

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00:33:10,260 --> 00:33:16,120
just get rid of this now and we're all the same and there's a quote unquote no censorship and uh

327
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it's all within consensus and we'll let the market figure out and then the other side seems a little

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00:33:20,540 --> 00:33:28,640
bit like uh you know let's let's eliminate sort of uh bloat and what might be considered spam we

329
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:33,040
don't we don't spend our time defining every word but that almost feels like a little bit more like

330
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:39,460
censorship in a way. But I think, you know, every node runner should be able to do what they want.

331
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And I don't think there's anything wrong with it. And I think it makes a lot of sense from

332
00:33:42,340 --> 00:33:50,420
a network perspective. Yeah. And, you know, I have the right to what's on my note. And I think

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Bitcoin core devs are actually pretty upfront about this fact when they created the letter

334
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explaining why they chose to make it 100,000 and not some other number.

335
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It was that, well, you don't have to run our code, right?

336
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:10,220
You can stay with an older version of Bitcoin Core or run something else.

337
00:34:10,220 --> 00:34:11,820
That's entirely up to you.

338
00:34:12,300 --> 00:34:14,260
So we can't really force anything.

339
00:34:14,860 --> 00:34:16,740
And that's kind of critical, right?

340
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:18,860
Every node runner is sovereign.

341
00:34:18,860 --> 00:34:22,080
And if they don't want to relay something, you can't make them.

342
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And like I said before with the stats that were showing up, once you have certain kinds of transactions, it can take up more bandwidth.

343
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So it's not necessarily rational for a node runner to convey those things, especially if they don't think it'll get mined.

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So we know, for example, that a 0.1 Satoshi per V byte transaction is not going to get mined by Amara.

345
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So it ends up just sort of like floating around and not really doing anything.

346
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It's not really like there's no rational reason.

347
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If it weren't getting mined, then there's no reason to keep it in your mempool.

348
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Right. Like so unless you're a miner and you want to mine that or something, then then it doesn't make sense.

349
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So it's a little bit of a weird situation where if you relay it, then if enough nodes want to relay it, then there's a good chance that a miner will find out about it.

350
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But then it's up to the miner to mine it or not. And that's fairly difficult to predict, given that, yeah, I mean, like, I think this one mistake that I think a lot of core devs make, the simplifying assumption there is they'll just mine whatever is most profitable for them.

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But like profit only measured in the number of Satoshi per V-byte that the transaction does.

352
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And they're not thinking of all the other sort of costs or liabilities or benefits that they might get from mining certain transactions or the detractions that they might have in other ones.

353
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And that's a simplifying assumption that ends up kind of biting you back because a lot of the transactions that are quote unquote rational actually don't get mined by a lot of miners.

354
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And, you know, some of them are running older software where like other considerations like Coinage end up becoming more like mixed in with the fee rate.

355
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So it's, you know, I don't necessarily think those are good assumptions to make that, you know, miners are just going to go with whatever is the most profitable, especially if some of that is like considered spam.

356
00:36:44,720 --> 00:36:56,220
If other transactions that, you know, are more financial, if they're not getting through like what the long term effects on Bitcoin might be and so on.

357
00:36:56,220 --> 00:37:04,440
So, you know, those are those are considerations that I don't think we necessarily have clarity on.

358
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,500
And I suspect that every miner is different in that regard.

359
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:15,640
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned Bitcoin Core wrote a letter or I should say Bitcoin Core devs.

360
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:22,580
What do you make of how Bitcoin Core is sort of works or represents itself?

361
00:37:22,580 --> 00:37:30,160
I think it's a little weird that people can say I am writing on behalf of Bitcoin Core or there's

362
00:37:30,160 --> 00:37:34,940
just some aspects of this that you know as an open source decentralized some people are hired

363
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to work on Core some people like yourself have contributed to Core does that mean why aren't you

364
00:37:41,720 --> 00:37:46,740
on that letter why aren't you noted it not signing the letter right who gets to say who's on the you

365
00:37:46,740 --> 00:37:51,340
know what I mean? Yeah, I'm a little it's that to me, what do you make of this?

366
00:37:52,340 --> 00:37:58,720
Yeah, so this, this change going in, I think broke a lot of different precedents. Usually it

367
00:37:58,720 --> 00:38:06,280
required general consensus and not too much feed pushback. There was significant pushback. In fact,

368
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:12,000
you can look at the PR and see hundreds and hundreds of comments saying, hey, like, why are

369
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you doing this? Don't do this. And so on. There were a lot of what you call knacks or not acknowledging

370
00:38:18,620 --> 00:38:25,380
or something like that versus acts and so on. But they went through with it. And this was this was a

371
00:38:25,380 --> 00:38:32,160
significant break from precedent because generally Bitcoin debts have not merged in something that

372
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:40,200
had significant pushback from the community. So they felt the need to write this document as a way

373
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to justify what had happened because they were clearly setting something of a new precedent

374
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and they wanted to explain, hey, we think this is right and therefore we're going to do it.

375
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:57,800
You don't have to run our code. So, you know, like in that way, we're not forcing anything.

376
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:04,100
But, you know, like this, we feel that this is right. So that's, I think, where that letter came

377
00:39:04,100 --> 00:39:13,540
from and it was mostly from people that have been contributing uh you know like more often or

378
00:39:13,540 --> 00:39:21,920
i mean it certainly looks like some sort of inner circle within uh within bitcoin core i like you

379
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:27,700
said like i'm i've contributed to core but i wasn't even asked whether or not i wanted to sign

380
00:39:27,700 --> 00:39:33,700
this letter right uh and there's a lot of people on uh that aren't on that list uh that i know

381
00:39:33,700 --> 00:39:40,800
have contributed significantly in the past uh that that aren't on it so it's a it's a

382
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:47,500
um i think it it raised a few eyebrows to say the least uh like what what's going on is this

383
00:39:47,500 --> 00:39:54,720
like a new precedent so there there's there's definitely um some trepidation about like what

384
00:39:54,720 --> 00:40:01,220
this means and whether like we need to consider something else. And I think quite frankly, a lot

385
00:40:01,220 --> 00:40:08,800
of people have switched the knots because of this sort of break in precedent. And that's,

386
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,460
I think, entirely fair. Like they're trying to vote with their feet and they express their dismay.

387
00:40:13,740 --> 00:40:20,200
Yeah. I mean, like I said, there are benefits to like not running Core V30. You know, you're

388
00:40:20,200 --> 00:40:26,280
you're using less bandwidth and as a result less cpu less ram and especially if you have like a

389
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:31,800
constrained system that you're running your node on um all of that matters right and uh for your

390
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:38,120
node performance and you want to be able to query it when you want and so on so uh it might like just

391
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:44,520
be a practical decision to run knots but i suspect that the vast majority of the people that have

392
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:51,180
switched the knots it was uh sort of like a protest against this kind of thinking so that's

393
00:40:51,180 --> 00:40:54,700
with running knots there'll be a little back to the car thing is it a little bit more like

394
00:40:54,700 --> 00:41:00,300
core is the corolla and it's just dependable it gets the latest fixes everyone knows what it is

395
00:41:00,300 --> 00:41:04,600
everyone gets in a corolla like i'm used to this and it's like here's the ferrari or the lamborghini

396
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:09,040
and uh you have to kind of you have to know a little bit more about what you're doing with it

397
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:14,260
and maybe uh you know get a little bit more specialized maintenance or knowledge you know

398
00:41:14,260 --> 00:41:21,260
I mean, there's personal responsibility in both, but it seems like one's a little bit more grad school to undergrad, you know.

399
00:41:21,460 --> 00:41:22,520
Yeah, I mean, it might be.

400
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:27,360
I don't know if I can come up with the cars that best fit the analogy.

401
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:33,580
Where people are just saying to themselves, I just want to, you know, it's like the whole 80%, you know, go with the 80-20 rule.

402
00:41:33,700 --> 00:41:35,300
80% of people are running core.

403
00:41:35,460 --> 00:41:37,760
80% of the reviews are on core.

404
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:39,440
Less people are reviewing knots.

405
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:41,920
It's less on the team.

406
00:41:42,500 --> 00:41:44,780
I'm just trying to say there's trade-offs here.

407
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:47,240
There are definitely pros and cons and benefits.

408
00:41:47,240 --> 00:41:56,660
But back to sort of core, I mean, it's just, to me, it's quite audacious to say we speak or I gather these people and we speak for core.

409
00:41:56,780 --> 00:42:07,680
What's best interest in for Bitcoin, the network, you know, and, you know, whether you if you're contributing to core, like, does that mean you're working on UI issues?

410
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:12,360
and somehow that means you should have a voice on OpReturn.

411
00:42:13,100 --> 00:42:14,620
You know, just because you're working on core

412
00:42:14,620 --> 00:42:18,760
doesn't mean you're working on the part of core that relates to, you know,

413
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,960
and I don't know who should have the right to hire people or, you know,

414
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:27,160
I really feel it's in my mind, it's like there's just people plugging away

415
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:30,440
in their free time even or, you know, maybe they don't work.

416
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,340
They're lucky, but then I have this thing.

417
00:42:33,700 --> 00:42:36,840
I'm going to put it up on this board and everyone's going to vote

418
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:40,080
and the world's going to say yes or no because it's decentralized.

419
00:42:40,460 --> 00:42:42,020
And that's my contribution.

420
00:42:42,220 --> 00:42:42,960
Here it is.

421
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:48,400
Or, you know, someone might have donated for me to work on this little thing.

422
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:51,380
But again, it's got to go through the approval process just like anything else.

423
00:42:51,720 --> 00:42:52,880
And when you're done, you're done.

424
00:42:53,580 --> 00:42:56,460
Like you're not like Bitcoin Core for life.

425
00:42:56,700 --> 00:43:00,000
It's not like, you know, you don't get a pension.

426
00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:01,000
It's not like Congress.

427
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:20,740
Yeah, and it's been a strange open source project because you're right, like vast majority of open source projects, it's just people donating their time or maybe like they're once in a while on the bigger projects like the Linux kernel or Firefox or something like that.

428
00:43:20,740 --> 00:43:26,920
You get like a company sponsoring a dev and they still kind of work on whatever.

429
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:32,040
Bitcoin Core has been a little bit different in that like it used to be like that.

430
00:43:32,180 --> 00:43:37,820
But, you know, more recently there have been, you know, there's been a lot more wealth in Bitcoin.

431
00:43:37,820 --> 00:43:49,220
So companies and organizations and even private donors have donated to particular devs saying, OK, go work on something within Core.

432
00:43:49,220 --> 00:43:52,780
you've done good work and we want to continue to support you.

433
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:59,460
So that model is a little bit different than other open source projects.

434
00:43:59,660 --> 00:44:07,740
And that like, you know, typically what a Bitcoin core dev does is they go out and look for grants

435
00:44:07,740 --> 00:44:11,620
if they're not already, I guess, if they need the money, I guess.

436
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:16,520
And they'll, you know, often get it from multiple organizations.

437
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:26,240
They might get some money from Chaincode, some money from OpenSat, some money from Spiral, some money from BitMEX, you know, whoever it is.

438
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:34,340
And they get that so that they're living reasonably while working on the core software.

439
00:44:34,340 --> 00:44:45,040
And that's very strange because there's no real, like, directive on, like, what they should work on.

440
00:44:45,040 --> 00:44:48,020
They are for most of them.

441
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:54,900
I mean, some of them, like if you get like an HRF grant saying work on this privacy tool or something like that, that's one thing.

442
00:44:55,400 --> 00:45:01,780
But a lot of the core devs there, they just get funded to go do whatever they want.

443
00:45:01,780 --> 00:45:09,680
And, you know, those might not necessarily be the things that are the most urgent or the most impactful for users.

444
00:45:10,060 --> 00:45:13,860
It's something that the developer is interested in.

445
00:45:13,860 --> 00:45:16,620
And this is something that Adam Bax pointed out.

446
00:45:16,620 --> 00:45:25,940
Maybe, you know, grants have to be a little more directional rather than just sort of open ended, which is what most of them are.

447
00:45:26,340 --> 00:45:30,460
So. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a bit strange.

448
00:45:30,460 --> 00:45:37,660
And it grew out of like sort of the explosive growth that Bitcoin has had the last, you know, eight to 10 years.

449
00:45:37,660 --> 00:45:46,280
So it's, yeah, I'm not saying it's good or bad, but that's the way it is because of where Bitcoin is.

450
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:48,480
I mean, I kind of feel like this model is broken.

451
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:56,740
I mean, I kind of feel like regardless of the pros and cons that are coming out, it's like we kind of have to change things up and like kind of smash core.

452
00:45:57,400 --> 00:45:58,300
Why do you say that?

453
00:45:58,340 --> 00:45:59,700
What do you mean like smash core?

454
00:46:01,180 --> 00:46:06,040
Well, I just I think that like I think we need more competition around reference clients.

455
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:14,080
and um i i just think the way that this has been sort of mitigated is extremely political in ways

456
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:18,600
that are not aligned with the bitcoin ethos it seems like yeah i'm not saying that like there's

457
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:23,300
not gonna be politics and sort of debating these things right the idea of uh people hired to because

458
00:46:23,300 --> 00:46:28,480
you mentioned you know well developers need money i'm like whoa whoa i don't want people working on

459
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:34,740
core who need money like that just sounds alarming so they're they're doing this for the money that's

460
00:46:34,740 --> 00:46:36,080
Most of them, to be honest.

461
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:36,500
Right.

462
00:46:36,500 --> 00:46:39,320
In a short term, that means – and going down the road.

463
00:46:39,420 --> 00:46:43,040
And I don't think you have to have a lot of skin in the game to be a Bitcoiner.

464
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:57,080
I don think to understand what self can do for you and your freedom and your future and your sovereignty There just a few sats But I think to work on core if you need the money I feel like wow you could be lord

465
00:46:57,280 --> 00:46:58,320
you could be incentivized.

466
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,980
And then that could only be maybe what's relatively not a lot of money.

467
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:07,860
Like maybe they give them a job for a year, right, which is to a large organization, not a lot of money.

468
00:47:07,980 --> 00:47:14,060
But then in their mind, if they do well during their service, that's money for life or employment for life.

469
00:47:14,100 --> 00:47:15,740
It's a resume builder, right?

470
00:47:15,740 --> 00:47:22,520
And so they're incentivized in just different ways than sort of contributing altruistically.

471
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:24,740
Yeah, and this is –

472
00:47:24,740 --> 00:47:30,200
You can live on altruism, maybe not, but it kind of needs to or has in a lot of ways.

473
00:47:30,740 --> 00:47:31,000
Yeah.

474
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:36,140
And you're spending your time altruistically in a way like in the conversation, right?

475
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:42,260
Because you have skinned the game, but it's also maybe intellectually stimulating and all these different reasons.

476
00:47:42,340 --> 00:47:44,340
But that's contributing.

477
00:47:45,740 --> 00:47:51,080
I think it's like, go write the code that does XYZ is not necessarily the huge contribution.

478
00:47:51,240 --> 00:47:57,280
Coming up with XYZ is, conceptually, philosophically, that could be even more important.

479
00:47:57,580 --> 00:48:00,340
When it comes to Bitcoin, the rules are simple.

480
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:05,300
Run your own node, hold your own keys, and protect your seed phrase.

481
00:48:05,740 --> 00:48:07,720
That's where micro seed comes in.

482
00:48:08,380 --> 00:48:12,960
Unlike bulky backups, micro seed is stamped onto a tiny steel washer.

483
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:19,260
Fireproof, waterproof, and so small you can carry it anywhere or hide it in plain sight.

484
00:48:19,740 --> 00:48:24,920
Go to microc.io and use the code MATRIX for a discount on your order.

485
00:48:26,500 --> 00:48:29,940
Well, so, yeah, I mean, you're right.

486
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:33,440
But like here's sort of like how it all plays out.

487
00:48:33,540 --> 00:48:37,300
And I've seen this happen over the last 15 years.

488
00:48:37,300 --> 00:48:45,440
is that as Bitcoin price goes up, the ones that have Bitcoin at some point have enough to retire.

489
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:52,060
And it's like, well, versus somebody that's a little younger, maybe more hungrier,

490
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:56,680
that they're more incentivized to work.

491
00:48:56,880 --> 00:48:58,180
So guess what happens?

492
00:48:58,300 --> 00:49:06,420
It goes more towards the people that are hungrier and younger and aren't set up for life with Bitcoin or whatever.

493
00:49:06,420 --> 00:49:11,200
And this has been sort of like a continuous churn for 15 years.

494
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:19,200
So like the core devs that are, for example, signed that letter, very different group than say eight years ago, right?

495
00:49:19,260 --> 00:49:24,420
Like when SegWit happened and it's very different group.

496
00:49:24,980 --> 00:49:33,280
A lot of different names have either stepped back or gone to do something else or whatever.

497
00:49:33,460 --> 00:49:34,940
And that's continuing to happen, right?

498
00:49:34,940 --> 00:49:43,840
I'm hearing there are developers that are ready to step back because, you know, it's the part of the cycle where it's like, you know what, I'm kind of tired of this.

499
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,320
You know, I'd rather not deal with this.

500
00:49:46,580 --> 00:49:49,100
Let me go relax for a while or something.

501
00:49:49,660 --> 00:49:54,000
So there's definitely like aspects.

502
00:49:54,740 --> 00:49:55,900
There's an arc to the journey.

503
00:49:56,560 --> 00:50:01,940
But I think in some way, you know, you kind of on that scale, maybe you grow out of being involved.

504
00:50:02,940 --> 00:50:03,780
You disappear, whatever.

505
00:50:03,780 --> 00:50:12,780
But then I think maybe on a legacy basis or even a value basis or just maybe the debate, you see someone like Nick Szabo come back.

506
00:50:12,780 --> 00:50:17,780
Mm hmm. You know, to come in, you know, and he has he has.

507
00:50:17,780 --> 00:50:26,780
But like, yeah, he and he is interested, but like it doesn't necessarily mean you go back to coding. Right.

508
00:50:26,780 --> 00:50:30,780
Like there's there. And I don't want to fall to credentialism.

509
00:50:30,780 --> 00:50:34,220
It's just because, you know, who he is doesn't mean we have to weigh it more.

510
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:36,440
But it's notable that someone came back.

511
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:37,180
That's what I'm trying to say.

512
00:50:37,780 --> 00:50:38,060
Yeah.

513
00:50:38,260 --> 00:50:39,660
And people do that.

514
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:47,080
But obviously, like, if you leave for a while and come back, you don't necessarily have the influence that you used to have.

515
00:50:47,100 --> 00:50:47,320
Right.

516
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:54,000
And you're not going to get people to review the code that you wrote necessarily or even listen to the review that you wrote.

517
00:50:54,000 --> 00:51:05,900
So it's like any place, you know, like, you know, it's about relationships and those relationships change as the people change.

518
00:51:06,220 --> 00:51:08,540
So that's definitely happened with Core.

519
00:51:08,820 --> 00:51:13,260
And there are different people in there now than, say, five, six years ago.

520
00:51:13,260 --> 00:51:16,440
So and that's not surprising.

521
00:51:16,620 --> 00:51:18,760
Like a lot of projects are like that.

522
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:25,880
very few projects have like the same developers for, you know, a long period of time. You always

523
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:33,520
have people coming in and out. You know, it's, you know, that also means that like the culture

524
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:43,820
of it is going to change. And, you know, there's going to be different directions that maybe people

525
00:51:43,820 --> 00:51:47,760
are going to sort of push it towards and stuff. And I think that's kind of what we're running up

526
00:51:47,760 --> 00:51:56,080
against is you have a um yeah you you you have different things kind of going on and um

527
00:51:56,080 --> 00:52:05,160
yeah it's uh it's maybe a little more concentrated around uh chain code labs and spiral and local

528
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:11,480
host than maybe it was in the past um you know back in 2017 it was accused that like you know

529
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:16,520
blockstream had all the developers or whatever um of course even back then like chain code had a

530
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:26,500
decent number of developers, core developers there as well. So it's, you know, like the culture

531
00:52:26,500 --> 00:52:35,460
of the developers changes and the relationships change. And, you know, I think that's normal,

532
00:52:35,460 --> 00:52:44,040
but whether that means that, you know, the client has the same priorities, you know, that's

533
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:51,000
probably the big question is, is it still aligned with Bitcoin and what users want and, you know,

534
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:57,720
what and stuff like that. And that's the question I think everyone is kind of asking is,

535
00:52:57,720 --> 00:53:06,000
is, does this group actually want what I want for Bitcoin? And I guess for some, some of them,

536
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:10,320
they're saying, no, I'm going to go switch to something else because they don't seem to.

537
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:15,400
um and that's their right uh but you know that that seems to be what's happening yeah i mean it

538
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,780
feels like you you know you asked me like why do we have to like smash core well it's like

539
00:53:18,780 --> 00:53:23,480
i feel like we're solving problems the way you know i would solve them in my house but now we're

540
00:53:23,480 --> 00:53:30,980
solving for the town or it's like you know like uh we're playing pickup basketball and uh now we're

541
00:53:30,980 --> 00:53:35,200
playing the nba championships and like the the reference it's just gotta be a different model

542
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:38,120
because like we're still playing with people who are like it's my ball i'm going home

543
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:49,680
and so in that regard like but you know maybe on a positive note do you think that i think this is

544
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:55,340
a great thing for bitcoin in a lot of ways um i mean i think it's gonna be a very difficult thing

545
00:53:55,340 --> 00:54:00,120
i think it's gonna probably and i might be off here but i think it's gonna get a little bit worse

546
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:07,120
a little bit muddier just uh you know confusing until it gets much more clear and i don't know how

547
00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:11,400
cloudy it's going to get if it's going to be a civil war or something. I have a feeling that

548
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:19,160
this is leading to a soft or hard fork. But is this also sort of increasing node adoption or

549
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:28,260
node running awareness? I hope so. I mean, the reasons for running a node, again, are mostly

550
00:54:28,260 --> 00:54:35,320
selfish, right? You want to verify and not trust and, you know, have access to stuff and not lose

551
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:40,680
privacy um you know those are all very good reasons to run a node a lot of people don't

552
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:46,880
seem to care too much about those things so they rely on mempool.space or blockstream.info or

553
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:53,400
whatever and you know um their privacy has gone to those places then so be it but i mean i think

554
00:54:53,400 --> 00:55:00,480
there are there are um the corners that do care about this sort of thing and um you know as you

555
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:09,200
said the the vibes are such that like they're clearly very opposing camps and they're fairly

556
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:15,020
angry at each other so like does that mean like some sort of chain fork or something like that i

557
00:55:15,020 --> 00:55:22,240
don't know um but what i see is that there's a lot of people that are passionate on both sides and

558
00:55:22,240 --> 00:55:26,880
you know something that i've been talking to adam about he thinks that's a good thing because that

559
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:31,440
means that they really care if you're if you didn't care you know you wouldn't be arguing so

560
00:55:31,440 --> 00:55:37,920
passionately um and that's uh that's in general a good thing uh now it does mean that you know

561
00:55:37,920 --> 00:55:42,700
people can be really nasty to each other and stuff and there's been no shortage of that in this debate

562
00:55:42,700 --> 00:55:49,000
um but but you know that that can be um i think ultimately that uh that passion can be

563
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:55,200
channeled towards or i mean it just kind of shows how much conviction that a lot of bitcoiners have

564
00:55:55,200 --> 00:56:02,340
about Bitcoin itself and how much they think it's like a solution for a lot of really nasty

565
00:56:02,340 --> 00:56:09,360
social problems. So ultimately, you know, I think it'll be good for Bitcoin. I'm optimistic that,

566
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:18,540
you know, this will put us in a place where people are a lot more cognizant of like changes

567
00:56:18,540 --> 00:56:23,980
going forward and things like that. Certainly a lot of people learned about mempool policy

568
00:56:23,980 --> 00:56:30,060
and relay policy a lot more as a result of this whole thing, which is good.

569
00:56:30,060 --> 00:56:36,300
You're leveling up your technical knowledge, not necessarily because you're so curious,

570
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:39,000
but because this controversy kind of demands it.

571
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:40,940
I'm for that.

572
00:56:41,060 --> 00:56:46,460
I think a more informed populace is always a good thing, especially for stuff like this.

573
00:56:47,340 --> 00:56:53,700
And people are a little bit more skeptical of core and aren't blindly following them.

574
00:56:53,700 --> 00:57:10,980
So that's good, too. I think ultimately that means that they're verifying a little bit more of the stuff that's happening rather than sort of trusting, which, again, levels up their game and, you know, makes the network a little more self-sovereign and decentralized.

575
00:57:10,980 --> 00:57:16,820
So, you know, does this lead to some sort of fight?

576
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:19,000
I mean, I think we've been fighting a lot already.

577
00:57:19,300 --> 00:57:27,140
And I think people are fighting, at least at the node level, by, you know, running the clients that they're running.

578
00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:30,240
We'll see whether that leads to anything more.

579
00:57:30,980 --> 00:57:39,380
But, you know, so far, it seems like it's been relatively a healthy thing for Bitcoin rather than, oh, it's good.

580
00:57:39,380 --> 00:57:40,860
It's the end of Bitcoin, as we know.

581
00:57:40,980 --> 00:57:41,820
or something like that.

582
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:43,720
Yeah, I think long-term is probably healthy,

583
00:57:43,820 --> 00:57:47,080
but I just remember when I came and found Bitcoin in 2017,

584
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:48,720
maybe it wasn't the first time I heard about it,

585
00:57:48,740 --> 00:57:50,040
but it was really the first time I got interested,

586
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:51,200
sort of following.

587
00:57:51,320 --> 00:57:52,880
I mean, that was during the block size wars,

588
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:55,340
and it was extremely confusing.

589
00:57:56,540 --> 00:57:58,560
It did not sound like something you would put,

590
00:57:58,620 --> 00:57:59,980
you know, your life savings in.

591
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:02,260
It sounded like more like something you would speculate on,

592
00:58:02,260 --> 00:58:03,220
and now it was like,

593
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:04,960
do you have to speculate on both these things?

594
00:58:05,020 --> 00:58:07,220
Because I think one of the great things about Bitcoin

595
00:58:07,220 --> 00:58:09,000
is, you know, personal responsibility,

596
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:15,200
and I think it reignites a lot of people if they were interested in learning and stopped or they weren't

597
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:17,300
to start just doing more on their own.

598
00:58:17,540 --> 00:58:23,760
Less outsourcing of intellectual maybe things or pursuits or even just chores around the house, whatever it might be.

599
00:58:24,140 --> 00:58:28,960
But I think there's certain slices where you're like, well, you know, I'll learn about fiat

600
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:36,300
and I'll learn about the Federal Reserve, but maybe I'll outsource SHA-256 and figure it out for myself if it's unbreakable.

601
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:43,920
And maybe the source code, I think, for a lot of people, or even just the client, the reference client, was something they were like, hey, I just need to run it.

602
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:52,900
I don't need to review the code myself or understand the differences in some of these computer science or network issues.

603
00:58:53,100 --> 00:59:01,080
But going back to sort of core, you know, Blockstream has a lot of goodwill, and I'm not saying they shouldn't, in the Bitcoin community.

604
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:06,600
but they've raised hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of VC money, right?

605
00:59:06,600 --> 00:59:11,980
And so you think like, oh, maybe they're only paying a developer X, Y, Z in salary,

606
00:59:12,060 --> 00:59:13,700
but they could literally be hiring, you know,

607
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:18,880
they could put lots of millions behind the project that developer is running, you know,

608
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:23,400
or hire 1099s, you know, to help code or whatever it might be.

609
00:59:23,460 --> 00:59:27,840
But I'm saying that there's more to sort of the funneling of money, I think,

610
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,300
or sort of resource allocation than just how much a developer makes

611
00:59:31,300 --> 00:59:32,720
or what the size of the grant was.

612
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:34,700
And then if you look at chain code,

613
00:59:34,760 --> 00:59:38,900
I think they're sort of like not well-known in the Bitcoin community,

614
00:59:38,900 --> 00:59:39,540
I would think.

615
00:59:39,700 --> 00:59:40,240
They're not.

616
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:41,920
They're not.

617
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:46,580
I'm an avid learner, and I very, you know,

618
00:59:46,620 --> 00:59:49,140
maybe I heard of them before, but you just don't connect dots,

619
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:50,360
but like I didn't know them.

620
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:54,300
And they have several, like developers on their payroll.

621
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:56,920
And I think it's just, I don't know, what do you make of,

622
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:58,500
to me is very strange.

623
00:59:58,740 --> 01:00:00,320
And the people who run ChainCode,

624
01:00:00,380 --> 01:00:02,180
I don't know them very well.

625
01:00:02,220 --> 01:00:03,120
They come from the trading,

626
01:00:03,220 --> 01:00:04,640
the institutional trading space.

627
01:00:05,620 --> 01:00:06,340
From the background,

628
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:07,700
it looks like they were heavily involved

629
01:00:07,700 --> 01:00:09,560
in global markets

630
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:15,020
and sort of like designing policy

631
01:00:15,020 --> 01:00:17,800
and regulation around trading.

632
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:19,160
And they seem to be very successful

633
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:19,740
at a young age.

634
01:00:19,820 --> 01:00:21,380
And then they just pivot to Bitcoin

635
01:00:21,380 --> 01:00:24,020
and keep a very low profile.

636
01:00:25,220 --> 01:00:25,760
You're right.

637
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:30,020
Their bios make them sound like they're noobs on their website.

638
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:33,200
Like, you know, I'm forgetting their names.

639
01:00:33,300 --> 01:00:34,000
I'm not going to pull it up.

640
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:46,780
But like, you know, this person started Hudson River Trading and was very instrumental in high speed trading and arbitrage and designing global structure around financial markets and policy.

641
01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:51,000
And then in 2014, they just turned their attention to the nascent cryptocurrency industry.

642
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:53,280
And they're just excited to learn.

643
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:58,620
And then they go hire several Bitcoin core devs and keep a low profile.

644
01:00:59,020 --> 01:01:03,620
And they, I get your skepticism.

645
01:01:03,880 --> 01:01:08,860
It's just like, okay, some very rich people suddenly start getting interested in Bitcoin.

646
01:01:09,300 --> 01:01:09,980
Sure, I get that.

647
01:01:10,000 --> 01:01:10,920
What the heck happened?

648
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:12,200
We could trade it.

649
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:16,640
But they're all of a sudden very interested in the design of the protocol.

650
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:18,740
They're just donating.

651
01:01:19,820 --> 01:01:22,480
I mean, it's not even a for, it doesn't seem like it's a for profit.

652
01:01:22,480 --> 01:01:27,760
I mean, maybe, but they have a lot of not-for-profit sort of staff for a not-for-profit project.

653
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:28,860
Maybe they make money like this.

654
01:01:28,900 --> 01:01:30,100
I don't know how they make a lot of money.

655
01:01:30,900 --> 01:01:31,780
I don't know what they do.

656
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:33,260
Quite frankly, I don't think they do.

657
01:01:33,260 --> 01:01:38,880
I've never seen them at conferences or anything involved in the community, any of it.

658
01:01:39,460 --> 01:01:46,280
Yeah, I'll just put it this way because I do know at least a decent amount about Chaincode.

659
01:01:46,280 --> 01:01:49,280
It's the kind of people that want to keep a low profile.

660
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:56,100
profile so if you do have a lot of money right you want to keep a low profile but you want to

661
01:01:56,100 --> 01:02:02,220
sort of benefit something this is about how you would go about doing it right like is put yourself

662
01:02:02,220 --> 01:02:09,680
in the background like not make it obvious at all like what you're doing or how you're doing it

663
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:17,500
because you don't want people to come after you for whatever reason so i i think you you you know

664
01:02:17,500 --> 01:02:23,080
some details that are public and yeah just no just yeah minutes of looking at

665
01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:29,500
the situation so I but to me it's not even about the particulars it's just that that

666
01:02:29,680 --> 01:02:39,360
Because this could be happening offline, not this, not that anything's happening, but structures in terms of people can hire Bitcoiners, not tell you and me, not tell the world, right?

667
01:02:39,420 --> 01:02:41,920
Not that you and me matter, but like they don't have to announce it.

668
01:02:42,180 --> 01:02:43,060
They can work on things.

669
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:44,620
People can work on things on their own.

670
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:56,420
It's very interesting to me, but that it just makes me, you know, you see companies like Telegram, what they've gone through to sort of figure out how to be a company and not have the state kind of hammer them on certain things.

671
01:02:56,420 --> 01:03:06,780
You know, it's just interesting. And that's why I'm very concerned about sort of, you know, not for profit or for profit money in Bitcoin steered towards core and the way the project.

672
01:03:07,500 --> 01:03:12,480
Yeah. And it's not just chain code. There's Brink and Post and Spiral.

673
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:19,760
there there's um and there's there's a bunch of other um you know like organizations i think um

674
01:03:20,400 --> 01:03:26,720
i think uh more recently what was it like jack dorsey's grant for african and indian developers

675
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:33,360
you know they're doing something i mean it's it's not a small number of uh organizations but you know

676
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:38,560
this is the thing you you really don't know where the money is coming from who who they're funding

677
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:44,320
or whatever this is why we have to verify not trust right like you know you you don't know how

678
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:50,600
many like there there's a whole bunch of anonymous contributors to bitcoin core right and they they

679
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:57,280
hide behind sort of like pseudonyms as is their right like satoshi did and and so on uh but you

680
01:03:57,280 --> 01:04:03,400
have no idea what their what their motivations are you zero right they could be like a member of the

681
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:09,080
NSA or whatever, right? Like you, you don't know, uh, which is why like, you know, the,

682
01:04:09,220 --> 01:04:16,120
the price of, uh, you know, decentralization is eternal vigilance. It's, it's looking at things,

683
01:04:16,120 --> 01:04:21,800
you know, from a strictly merit perspective and saying, okay, this, this, this makes sense. This

684
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:27,040
doesn't. And in a sense, like this whole controversy, I think for me is, uh, is showing,

685
01:04:27,040 --> 01:04:35,280
okay, like there's a lot of people that think there's something, you know, sketchy about this particular pull request.

686
01:04:35,420 --> 01:04:37,820
Why are they going up to 100,000 and not 80, right?

687
01:04:37,900 --> 01:04:43,340
Or not 144 or 160 or 256 or some much smaller number.

688
01:04:43,900 --> 01:04:47,720
And why did they make it like multiple op returns now?

689
01:04:48,000 --> 01:04:52,880
And why did they, you know, change things down to 0.1 sat per vbyte?

690
01:04:52,880 --> 01:05:00,160
A lot of these things just don't seem to make that much sense for a lot of people.

691
01:05:00,580 --> 01:05:17,160
And, you know, therefore they keep asking the questions and they keep getting sort of, you know, told that they're not technical enough to understand, that it's nuanced, that, you know, there are lots of reasons that are, you know, sort of gigabrain.

692
01:05:17,160 --> 01:05:21,100
But, you know, you need to understand all this other stuff first or whatever.

693
01:05:21,100 --> 01:05:26,080
And they're kind of saying, OK, well, explain it because I want to verify for myself.

694
01:05:26,080 --> 01:05:28,340
And if you're saying trust me, bro, that's not going to fly.

695
01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:41,700
And I think that's kind of the right attitude, right, for any of this stuff to prevent essentially what you are implying, which is undue influence by people that, you know, like are just sort of funding different things.

696
01:05:42,340 --> 01:05:45,280
You know, it is to go verify and not trust.

697
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:51,360
And that's kind of that immune response, I think, in the Bitcoin community that's flared up as a result of this.

698
01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:53,000
And that's a very good thing.

699
01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:59,960
Now, what we do about it going forward, what happens, that's still kind of an open question.

700
01:06:00,100 --> 01:06:09,020
And whether this ends up being like a point of attack for something that we haven't thought of yet, that's entirely possible too.

701
01:06:09,020 --> 01:06:18,640
So, you know, but but the fact that a lot of people have sniffed out something is, I think, commendable and a good thing.

702
01:06:19,320 --> 01:06:22,740
But yeah, that's my take on it.

703
01:06:22,740 --> 01:06:36,820
Do you think that as it stands now, if V30 gets sort of widely adopted or built on or sort of continued in that maintains 80 percent or something of this nature, is it an existential threat to Bitcoin?

704
01:06:36,820 --> 01:06:43,800
Maybe in ways we can't even think of right now, is there a non-zero chance that it's sort of an existential threat?

705
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:48,560
I'd say it's non-zero for almost anything because we don't know what we don't know.

706
01:06:48,780 --> 01:06:49,700
And that's the problem.

707
01:06:49,820 --> 01:06:52,080
We can't imagine all of the things.

708
01:06:52,080 --> 01:06:57,340
Like before Taproot, we had no idea something like BitVM was possible, right?

709
01:06:57,440 --> 01:07:02,580
Like zero knowledge proof that you violated a smart contract, something like that.

710
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:09,940
We had no idea ARK was possible, that you could have virtual transaction outputs within like a Taproot script tree and stuff like that.

711
01:07:10,420 --> 01:07:13,060
These were not arguments for Taproot, right?

712
01:07:13,120 --> 01:07:16,340
Like we had no idea that this was going to happen.

713
01:07:16,340 --> 01:07:21,340
And this was not even in the imagination of the people that were pushing for it.

714
01:07:21,340 --> 01:07:29,020
I think in a similar way, we really don't know what the consequences of this op return change are.

715
01:07:29,900 --> 01:07:31,440
So who knows?

716
01:07:31,520 --> 01:07:41,140
Maybe somebody comes up with a completely different protocol or something that runs on top of Bitcoin based on the large op return output.

717
01:07:41,580 --> 01:07:43,100
It's entirely possible.

718
01:07:43,340 --> 01:07:44,700
And maybe that becomes popular.

719
01:07:44,800 --> 01:07:45,200
I don't know.

720
01:07:45,420 --> 01:07:48,980
Maybe it creates like all kinds of new altcoins or something.

721
01:07:48,980 --> 01:08:11,660
Does that mean that Bitcoin will end as we know it as a result of this? I mean, I don't think so. I think Bitcoin will be fine. And if those things get abusive, like there's still the block size limit. So, you know, nodes can still continue running and stuff like that. And it's still valid for financial transactions, which I think will ultimately price out all this other stuff.

722
01:08:11,660 --> 01:08:28,288
So money is the primary use case and in that case that will dominate everything else whatever happens on those other things But that said we like to prevent those non use cases as much as we can

723
01:08:28,488 --> 01:08:30,968
because ultimately Bitcoin is money.

724
01:08:31,228 --> 01:08:42,808
And the more it gets used for that, I think the faster we have Bitcoin becoming the sound money

725
01:08:42,808 --> 01:08:44,668
that we all want to see it become.

726
01:08:44,668 --> 01:08:50,508
let's say that a opportunist kosher fine,

727
01:08:50,608 --> 01:08:51,408
whatever you want to call it.

728
01:08:51,948 --> 01:08:54,528
And I'm not saying it's perfect solution for whatever they're trying to

729
01:08:54,528 --> 01:08:54,788
solve,

730
01:08:54,848 --> 01:08:57,228
but let's say it mitigates the issue of moderates it.

731
01:08:57,368 --> 01:08:58,968
Everyone acts in good faith in it.

732
01:08:59,448 --> 01:09:00,628
Whoever does in the,

733
01:09:00,748 --> 01:09:00,948
you know,

734
01:09:00,988 --> 01:09:03,168
it just kind of helps a little bit nudges it along,

735
01:09:03,268 --> 01:09:03,568
whatever.

736
01:09:04,268 --> 01:09:05,908
So let's say that's that timeline.

737
01:09:06,168 --> 01:09:07,468
That's the timeline we're on.

738
01:09:07,848 --> 01:09:12,328
Is it somehow a non-zero chance that if the not side,

739
01:09:12,488 --> 01:09:13,588
and that's a loose thing,

740
01:09:13,588 --> 01:09:18,748
not that you're on the not side or there is just one side or you know just sides but like

741
01:09:18,748 --> 01:09:26,048
that if we roll back the hundred thousand and we kind of go more filters is that somehow

742
01:09:26,048 --> 01:09:32,508
in an unintended way non-zero chance of like an existential threat to bitcoin some like i'm

743
01:09:32,508 --> 01:09:37,188
trying to look around corners like i like loop mechanic i kind of i i like and support i'm a

744
01:09:37,188 --> 01:09:42,568
small investor in ocean i think my the my the centralization of money is a problem uh i i think

745
01:09:42,568 --> 01:09:47,908
what I kind of like the not side more, but let's just say, is

746
01:09:47,908 --> 01:09:50,568
there something we're not seeing where like, we go down that

747
01:09:50,568 --> 01:09:55,068
road? And it's that, you know, that's an attack or some sort of

748
01:09:55,068 --> 01:09:59,288
threat we don't understand yet, or an obvious answer the

749
01:09:59,288 --> 01:10:03,188
impossible to know. But do you think like, is there is there

750
01:10:03,188 --> 01:10:04,328
something there? Maybe?

751
01:10:04,408 --> 01:10:07,228
I mean, I think the thing that people are talking about is some

752
01:10:07,228 --> 01:10:12,128
sort of contentious soft work, in which case, like, all bets are

753
01:10:12,128 --> 01:10:20,668
off on like exactly how that plays out uh but but yeah like that's uh that's i think one possibility

754
01:10:20,668 --> 01:10:28,428
um but yeah i mean i i i don't put too much stock in that because i i don't think i what a lot of

755
01:10:28,428 --> 01:10:33,648
people are expecting like and i've seen this a lot on twitter is oh i'm gonna get like uh you know

756
01:10:33,648 --> 01:10:40,388
an extra 10 dividend on my bitcoin because i'm gonna sell the fork that that's uh that's um that

757
01:10:40,388 --> 01:10:45,568
the majority is not on or whatever and i'm like that's that's totally not the way it's going to

758
01:10:45,568 --> 01:10:52,228
happen because that's the last war everyone learned from the last war that like if you if you hard

759
01:10:52,228 --> 01:10:59,088
fork then you're you're kind of lost uh so there's like an incentive to not hard fork but then if you

760
01:10:59,088 --> 01:11:03,928
soft fork then what what's that going to look like and how how are you going to prevent wipeout risk

761
01:11:03,928 --> 01:11:04,688
and things like that.

762
01:11:04,788 --> 01:11:09,788
So there's a lot of games that are going to get played,

763
01:11:09,788 --> 01:11:14,768
and I suspect some of it maybe even planned out in advance,

764
01:11:14,928 --> 01:11:18,368
and then after you do the analysis, it's like,

765
01:11:18,468 --> 01:11:20,788
oh, okay, yeah, then we should definitely not do that.

766
01:11:21,448 --> 01:11:26,328
There's going to be a lot of that on both sides if it comes to that.

767
01:11:28,188 --> 01:11:32,048
All that's to say, I wouldn't worry too much

768
01:11:32,048 --> 01:11:33,988
about what you can't control on this thing.

769
01:11:34,188 --> 01:11:35,808
But just kind of watch.

770
01:11:36,308 --> 01:11:42,608
The nice thing is whenever we have big conflicts like this,

771
01:11:42,608 --> 01:11:46,788
we tend to get a bump up in price as it resolves.

772
01:11:47,108 --> 01:11:49,928
So I suspect that's going to happen here.

773
01:11:50,308 --> 01:11:54,188
Do you think somehow it's maybe like a social vector attack

774
01:11:54,188 --> 01:11:57,628
where it's on one level,

775
01:11:57,728 --> 01:11:59,348
hey, look, look at the clowns over here.

776
01:11:59,408 --> 01:12:00,988
They can't even manage this thing.

777
01:12:01,088 --> 01:12:01,948
They can't even get along.

778
01:12:02,048 --> 01:12:07,828
satoshi's gone they have no leader you know we we come for the rules no rulers but some people are

779
01:12:07,828 --> 01:12:13,488
like look at the rulers over there they you know and all the infighting and and maybe the attack is

780
01:12:13,488 --> 01:12:20,408
to sort of uh show us all we we can't figure this out and when something real comes along that we do

781
01:12:20,408 --> 01:12:25,848
have to come together and figure out we don't have the method or the faith or just the process

782
01:12:25,848 --> 01:12:30,828
to figure out like, you know, maybe this forces us into ossifying ways we don't want to.

783
01:12:31,628 --> 01:12:33,088
Or, you know what I mean?

784
01:12:33,088 --> 01:12:39,148
Yeah, I personally don't think that that would be too much of a problem.

785
01:12:39,388 --> 01:12:44,028
If the thread is very clear and present and obvious,

786
01:12:44,388 --> 01:12:49,788
then I don't think the community will have a hard time coming together on something like that.

787
01:12:49,788 --> 01:12:51,028
Because we're all Bitcoiners.

788
01:12:51,168 --> 01:12:53,908
We want our Bitcoin to continue to be worth something.

789
01:12:53,908 --> 01:13:02,788
But, you know, you know, smaller or lesser than existential threats are where you get sort of the conflict.

790
01:13:02,788 --> 01:13:04,568
And that's kind of where we are.

791
01:13:04,948 --> 01:13:09,028
How has this debate been, you know, or is it more of a left or right debate?

792
01:13:09,028 --> 01:13:23,548
Yeah, I mean, the thing I think I've noticed and a lot of other people have noticed is that the sort of tactics used by core seem very familiar to most of us.

793
01:13:23,908 --> 01:13:27,908
Because they were kind of used during COVID, right?

794
01:13:28,568 --> 01:13:34,948
The trust the experts kind of vibe that we get from you're not a developer, right?

795
01:13:34,948 --> 01:13:42,968
Like, you know, even talking about the left-right thing is, oh, that's so beyond us.

796
01:13:43,088 --> 01:13:46,488
Like, there's no way you can accuse us of being like left or right.

797
01:13:47,008 --> 01:13:53,368
You know, it reminds us of like people like Anthony Fauci just being like, hey, like, you know, I'm above all this.

798
01:13:53,368 --> 01:13:55,368
I'm not partisan at all or whatever.

799
01:13:55,368 --> 01:14:03,368
So there's definitely a lot of sort of tactics that have been used.

800
01:14:03,368 --> 01:14:36,256
And I did point out I think in one of my vlogs chain code is in New York localhost is in San Francisco spiral is Francisco You know I mean is it any wonder that they kind of communicate this way I mean like the arguments that they use are sort of like skewed in a particular political direction where it you know if you if you appealing trying to appeal to sort of more you know middle of the country kind of people

801
01:14:36,256 --> 01:14:42,876
then it would be very different right like it would uh be more about self-sovereignty and you

802
01:14:42,876 --> 01:14:48,096
know check this for yourself and stuff like that instead of you know it has it has very different

803
01:14:48,096 --> 01:15:00,096
um yeah it it feels very different um and that's i think reasonable to uh to say that you know

804
01:15:00,096 --> 01:15:05,336
Maybe the developers that have been pushing for this are maybe more on the left.

805
01:15:07,156 --> 01:15:14,396
The way it's been argued, I think you can very clearly see is more on the left.

806
01:15:14,496 --> 01:15:17,456
And we know for a fact that Luke is more on the right.

807
01:15:17,636 --> 01:15:23,356
So there's definitely a cultural difference there, a political difference there.

808
01:15:23,356 --> 01:15:33,216
And as Rockstar said, a large part of this conflict is actually a lot of personal vendettas against Luke.

809
01:15:33,756 --> 01:15:36,736
There's definitely at least a little bit of truth to that.

810
01:15:36,996 --> 01:15:44,296
So whether that's because of his politics or his personality or whatever, it's all hard to untangle.

811
01:15:44,636 --> 01:15:51,636
But there's definitely some of that which comes off, at least to a third-party observer, as being more political.

812
01:15:51,636 --> 01:16:00,836
Yeah. Maybe it's kind of a tangible politics, but should we, you know, a lot of us, not you and me, but people like we need to scale to 8 billion people.

813
01:16:01,716 --> 01:16:07,016
You know, is that a concern we should have at this point?

814
01:16:07,276 --> 01:16:11,616
I don't think so. I don't think so.

815
01:16:11,616 --> 01:16:25,136
And I say that because like there are certain like when you look at eight billion people, right, there's a significant number of them that are like senile and can't remember things.

816
01:16:25,396 --> 01:16:39,076
There are a significant number of them that are way too young to be entrusted with like a wallet, let alone like a digital wallet with like a passphrase and things or like a seed phrase and things like that.

817
01:16:39,076 --> 01:16:52,336
Like just there are lots of people that are just kind of unqualified and a significant number that are also not very interested in doing that.

818
01:16:52,936 --> 01:16:57,916
A significant number that I don't think will ever get on board.

819
01:16:58,216 --> 01:17:06,616
Right. But even if it becomes a global currency, just out of principle that they will go do something else or use something else.

820
01:17:06,616 --> 01:17:08,556
I think second layers are great.

821
01:17:08,556 --> 01:17:14,596
I think a lot of them can definitely help onboard a lot more people.

822
01:17:14,816 --> 01:17:24,096
Sadly, I think a lot of them will be custodial and people will be OK with that until they get burned, at least.

823
01:17:24,516 --> 01:17:32,416
But, you know, you can't sort of like force people to use Bitcoin in exactly the way that you think they should use them.

824
01:17:32,496 --> 01:17:34,436
That's not how the world works.

825
01:17:34,436 --> 01:17:42,676
and 8 billion people is like we're seeing on chain right now like there's just so much block space

826
01:17:42,676 --> 01:17:50,756
available for other stuff in part because like there's not as many people getting in and using

827
01:17:50,756 --> 01:17:57,896
it that way uh the people getting in are you know buying etfs and you know buying microstrategy or

828
01:17:57,896 --> 01:18:08,116
you know like all these other things and you know I like I don't like that but you can't force them

829
01:18:08,116 --> 01:18:15,396
to go do that or think that they're all going to come over instantly when you know something

830
01:18:15,396 --> 01:18:23,876
happens to them so I mean I don't think we need to worry too much I think that this is where

831
01:18:23,876 --> 01:18:31,396
entrepreneurs will be stepping in to provide solutions that meet the market demand and you

832
01:18:31,396 --> 01:18:39,716
know they'll they'll uh you know maybe maybe some people get rugged but other people will learn like

833
01:18:39,716 --> 01:18:45,076
a harsher lesson or whatever but this isn't something that you need to solve right now i

834
01:18:45,076 --> 01:18:50,676
don't i'm not even sure you need to ever solve because i'm not sure we'll get to a place where

835
01:18:50,676 --> 01:18:57,556
eight million people are self-custodying and using seed phrases in fact like i i would wager

836
01:18:57,556 --> 01:19:04,756
like getting even like half that um is going to be like even if bitcoin is like the world's

837
01:19:04,756 --> 01:19:10,756
store of value and it's like the sound money that everything else is based on i i'm not sure we get

838
01:19:10,756 --> 01:19:17,476
to even like four billion people using it on a daily basis that way uh so i mean like it's

839
01:19:17,476 --> 01:19:24,976
premature scaling, premature optimization for a future that might never arrive. And yeah,

840
01:19:25,116 --> 01:19:31,616
I just don't think it's kind of a useful metric by which to plan.

841
01:19:31,856 --> 01:19:35,456
Yeah, I appreciate the levity. A couple of questions here just to round it out. Was

842
01:19:35,456 --> 01:19:43,176
Taproot a wise decision? I'm going to say that at this point, no, because 90% of the outputs are

843
01:19:43,176 --> 01:19:55,976
spam and there were a lot of things that we missed, I think, about the benefits that haven't been implemented in any wallet.

844
01:19:55,976 --> 01:20:13,944
We could like I remember AJ tweeted a while back before Taproot like oh you can have a single sick wallet and for free you can have three of five of your friends back it up

845
01:20:14,644 --> 01:20:16,424
And I was like, yeah, you can.

846
01:20:16,604 --> 01:20:20,564
And I was super excited, but no one's implemented that.

847
01:20:20,604 --> 01:20:21,904
That's perfectly possible.

848
01:20:22,644 --> 01:20:24,224
Why haven't they implemented that?

849
01:20:24,324 --> 01:20:24,464
Why?

850
01:20:24,584 --> 01:20:26,764
Because there's no good UX for it.

851
01:20:26,764 --> 01:20:39,144
Right. Like how and really you're going to set up a single sig wallet and collect five different X pubs from your friends to input into a like no one's going to go do that.

852
01:20:39,144 --> 01:20:45,884
And this is why no one's made the feature, because it's just kind of unrealistic to to do that.

853
01:20:45,964 --> 01:20:54,084
The UX isn't a good experience. And if you're going to do multisig, you're going to like go do something else.

854
01:20:54,084 --> 01:20:58,644
you're just going to make your own multi-sig instead of, hey, you can back it up with three

855
01:20:58,644 --> 01:21:06,864
or five of your friends. I don't think we really thought through what the user experience would

856
01:21:06,864 --> 01:21:15,364
look like and how that would play out. And that's something that I think we should be a lot more

857
01:21:15,364 --> 01:21:20,744
humble about going forward with Softworks. And one of the things that I've been saying is I

858
01:21:20,744 --> 01:21:22,244
I actually want ossification.

859
01:21:22,604 --> 01:21:26,384
I think it would be better for that rather than, you know,

860
01:21:26,424 --> 01:21:29,544
all these new opcodes and things that people want

861
01:21:29,544 --> 01:21:32,884
because I don't think we really have a good grasp

862
01:21:32,884 --> 01:21:35,884
of all the different ways they can get abused

863
01:21:35,884 --> 01:21:42,384
and sort of made weird or even the benefits really used

864
01:21:42,384 --> 01:21:46,444
because I pointed out in other places that, you know,

865
01:21:46,444 --> 01:21:50,184
you can do some of these functions that, you know,

866
01:21:50,184 --> 01:21:58,144
people are wanting without covenants or something like that but very few people actually make them

867
01:21:58,144 --> 01:22:03,704
right like very very very little software takes advantage of them and they're not ubiquitous by

868
01:22:03,704 --> 01:22:11,184
any means so that tells me like maybe there's no market for it and i think had we had that analysis

869
01:22:11,184 --> 01:22:16,444
pre-tap root i think we would have come to the same conclusion there's there's no real market

870
01:22:16,444 --> 01:22:23,124
for this thing why are we doing it uh and you know i i've heard from some devs that they they

871
01:22:23,124 --> 01:22:29,444
had the same doubts like you know maybe maybe i should uh you know protest on on taproot but i

872
01:22:29,444 --> 01:22:35,544
don't want to be the squeaky wheel and you know so many people want it yeah so i uh i think

873
01:22:35,544 --> 01:22:43,644
we we should be a lot more humble uh about like sort of changes like that uh going forward yeah

874
01:22:43,644 --> 01:22:48,804
I think we need a core shutdown and just keep potential services open.

875
01:22:50,324 --> 01:22:54,864
My final question is, does Bitcoin need to capture markets besides money?

876
01:22:55,164 --> 01:22:56,504
No, absolutely not.

877
01:22:56,564 --> 01:22:58,844
I think money is the only one that matters.

878
01:22:59,324 --> 01:23:07,424
And this is a little bit of a pet peeve of mine because there are people that are going out and saying, oh, you know, Bitcoin hasn't succeeded yet.

879
01:23:07,424 --> 01:23:14,464
You know, like we need to go in, you know, like make it possible for developers to make all this other stuff.

880
01:23:14,544 --> 01:23:16,424
It's like, no, no, we don't.

881
01:23:16,544 --> 01:23:18,964
I think I think money is a pretty, pretty good market.

882
01:23:19,144 --> 01:23:21,964
And if we capture money, then we don't need anything else.

883
01:23:23,144 --> 01:23:37,224
Instead, you know, they get sort of altcoin envy or think that you're going to be able to take certain altcoin markets by pushing that functionality on Bitcoin, which was, you know, which has been sort of a narrative since.

884
01:23:37,424 --> 01:23:43,784
2014 or so about okay well if anything useful comes out of all coins then we can just report

885
01:23:43,784 --> 01:23:50,404
it over to bitcoin uh but the thing is like what what they're doing is one completely scammy and

886
01:23:50,404 --> 01:23:56,124
even if if there's anything legitimate to use you don't want to pollute the monetary use case with

887
01:23:56,124 --> 01:24:04,064
that stuff right like you you can have i guess uh gambling or something on on some other chain but

888
01:24:04,064 --> 01:24:06,504
I don't want to bring it into Bitcoin. I have no interest.

889
01:24:07,124 --> 01:24:12,384
Right. Like like enabling that or promoting that in any way.

890
01:24:12,464 --> 01:24:16,944
I mean, if somebody figures out a way to do it with the current tools that they have, well, all right, fine.

891
01:24:16,944 --> 01:24:20,204
Then you can you can try it. But like I can't stop them.

892
01:24:20,204 --> 01:24:26,964
But I'm not going to like enable something just so we can capture the gambling market or whatever.

893
01:24:27,204 --> 01:24:31,984
The big thing is that it's money and it's very good at it.

894
01:24:31,984 --> 01:24:41,604
And I say we just keep that instead of trying to have other use cases or, you know, jerry rig them into Bitcoin.

895
01:24:41,844 --> 01:24:49,824
It doesn't make sense, especially when you have this other thing that it's much better product market fit for.

896
01:24:50,184 --> 01:24:53,004
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jimmy Salon, for coming back.

897
01:24:53,464 --> 01:24:56,484
I'll leave it to you for any parting words and let people know where they can find you and your work.

898
01:24:57,064 --> 01:25:01,924
I mean, just keep verifying, not trusting and level up your game.

899
01:25:01,984 --> 01:25:08,804
You can find me at JimmySong on X and I have a newsletter, JimmySong.substack.com.

900
01:25:09,044 --> 01:25:10,444
Awesome. Thank you so much, Jimmy.

901
01:25:10,744 --> 01:25:11,504
Hope to talk to you again.

902
01:25:11,504 --> 01:25:11,804
Thank you.

903
01:25:12,024 --> 01:25:15,024
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Bitcoin Matrix.

904
01:25:15,484 --> 01:25:21,624
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905
01:25:21,864 --> 01:25:23,064
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906
01:25:23,404 --> 01:25:27,624
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907
01:25:27,624 --> 01:25:32,384
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908
01:25:32,624 --> 01:25:36,404
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909
01:25:36,784 --> 01:25:38,884
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910
01:25:39,164 --> 01:25:42,684
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