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Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.

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This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can

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around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean

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for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so

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much for listening. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten Podcast.

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Something a little different on this show because it's technical. I've generally shied away from

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doing the technical interviews because it's just not my bag. I've not got too much knowledge

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around that topic but that's slipping into the trap is it not? That's slipping into the trap

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of it's too technical bro just trust us which is part of the argument that has been happening

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in the knots versus core debate that has been heating up over the last couple of years

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so big respect to my guest today luke de wolf because he had sat on the sidelines for a little

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while lurking away until something sparked within this argument that pushed him to put his head

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above the parapet and the reasons being because now the argument has kind of crossed a line of

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expertise that he he has he has a career in a fiat career in cyber security and something clicked

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for him during the debate and he wanted to come on and share that so thank you very much Luke for

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stepping up into the debate and for asking me to to come on the show and share it I hope that

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between us we can get a lot of people who are too afraid to enter the debate because they are not

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known as technical people in the space to get a little deeper understanding as to what's going on

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and a little bit more clarity about it as well.

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And I have a lot of empathy with the people who are just joining us

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nine months into your Bitcoin journey, perhaps even less,

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and you're seeing all of this noise go around.

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It's very unsettling, of course, but all debates in Bitcoin are important

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to one extent or another.

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This is a feature, not a bug, and we have to be vigilant.

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We have to stay vigilant at all times and think critically,

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and dare I say it, conspiratorially.

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And yeah, always be checking.

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Always be checking what's going on.

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So enjoy this one with Luke.

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And again, thanks Luke for coming on

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and everything you're doing with your own efforts

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to educating people about Bitcoin.

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Before we get into the show,

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please make sure you're stacking your sats.

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The easiest way to do that across Europe is with Relay.

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R-E-L-A-I dot C-H forward slash Bitten.

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You can start stacking today, download the app, they are fully now, fully, fully regulated.

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So, yes, I know a lot of us hate all that kind of bullshit, but this is what they've gone through.

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They've done the hard work, it's taken them two years to tread through that absolute hell, but they've done it, they're regulated.

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You should not have any problems stacking with Relay up to 1,000 Swiss or equivalent per day straight into your self-custody.

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own your bitcoin i cannot be clearer about that if you do not own your bitcoin if they are on an

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exchange bitbox is the place you need to head to it's bitbox.swiss forward slash bitten and that

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will get you a five percent discount on the bitbox o2 or the bitbox nova which are bitcoin only

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hardware wallets if you want to start accepting or demanding bitcoin for your goods and services

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get over to paywithflash.com.

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It is done.

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It is plug and play, ready to go.

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So simple for you to use.

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You can invoice with those guys as well.

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So get over and check them out.

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paywithflash.com

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Have you met other Bitcoiners in real life?

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This is almost a bigger sin as not self-custodying your Bitcoin.

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In fact, if you were to meet a Bitcoiner in real life,

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you would most likely self-custody your bitcoin the week after because they are going to tell you

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to do the same uh so get out there and go and meet your nearest bitcoiner best place to do that

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simple club orange that is a new name a rebrand from orange pill app much simpler now club orange

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get over to club orange link in the show notes find your nearest bitcoiners find your nearest

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events get to your local conferences we were just at bitfest in manchester that was such a great

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grassroots conference in britain again the uk bitcoiners are really stepping forward so it's

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great to hang out with a bunch of bitcoiners over there and all of the guests from other countries

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as well thank you for those that made the effort to come across i chatted there with mick from

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Geyser. He found the Geyser Fund two or three years ago. They've funded so many different

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Bitcoin projects. He gave a talk there, a keynote about the new feature that Geyser are going to be

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launching. It's going to be all or nothing campaigns. Launch your biggest ideas on Bitcoin

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with confidence. All or nothing campaigns are coming soon. Get over to geyser.fund to find

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out more. Meanwhile, enjoy this rip with Luke DeWolf. Luke, from the Bitcoin Infinity Show,

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and organizer of BTC Hell, or co-organizer, or one of the leads, you would never claim to organize

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and be anything more than just a cog in the machine of the team that put that together,

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which was an amazing event. Well done. Congrats to you all. Welcome to the show, mate. Welcome back.

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thanks a lot Daniel I appreciate the kind words great to be here with you again feels like Helsinki

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was a long time ago but it really was only a few months and yes as you say I am only one of the

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the team that put it all together but we're all extremely proud of it working on next year and so

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more more news should start to trickle out on the on the socials when we have some things to

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announce but we do have dates and we do have a venue so it will be happening at least that's the

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that's what it looks like right now amazing all right we'll show the dates then what when's it

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going to be september 26th to 27th or 25th to 26th i should really i should really get my handle on

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that it's the friday saturday of of that particular week next year so a little later in the calendar

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maybe a little easier for people to uh to make it it's not in the middle of vacation time anymore so

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yeah same venue no uh we couldn't get the same venue and so we're going with another one but it's

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it's great uh similar vibes a little bit bigger as well so we're gonna try and go a little bigger

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too so that's the that's the aim bring the noise mate i love it uh yeah really uh well hopefully

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um we'll be along again uh to help you guys out and support and uh enjoy the uh the few days with

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the uh the euro plebs and uh and special guests that that flew in from from afar it's always great

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to see you know people from the u.s canada australia south africa further afield wherever

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they've come from new zealand even um we had willy woo in riga right uh that's uh special yeah exactly

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we really should have tried to get him along to helsinki since he was already in the neighborhood

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but uh yeah now we have a bit more of a of a presence though people know what we're about

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the the mining angle is definitely still a big a big part of things here in fact we're going to have

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at least one day of mining specific content. We're going to call it the European Mining Summit

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is the current branding. So similar to Prague's Industry Day, if you're familiar with that,

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but focused on mining and energy, basically. So that'll be a day on top of the two days of

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regular conference. So really will be a three-day conference this time around.

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Excellent. Right. Well, we're going to get on here and start talking about what's been going on

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in the last i mean it's really heated up i would say in the last nine months i mean it's been going

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on ever since you know what the fuck happened in february 2023 but you got it if anybody if anybody

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wants to hit pause right now and go back and listen to the episode i did with mechanic and

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giacomo it is literally titled what the fuck happened in february 2023 and it would take you

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back to like where all this started um but we want to talk about now i've not done a show yet

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about the not score debate uh i think we've moved on from debate um it's it's really getting a little

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bit crazy but i think to for those listeners that tune in each week and haven't heard us talk about

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it and might still be on the fence as to what it even is uh perhaps they've not even paid attention

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to it and uh maybe it's over their heads heads down stacking be at mining perfect like you might

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even just want to stay there and uh but if you do want to get into the weeds and find out what's

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going on i think um this is a good way to do it uh so shank lauren's not here because she would

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have set this up very nicely because she would have simply said luke what is knots what is not

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okay that's a that's a very good start and so i do want to preface all of this that i'm not

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officially affiliated with Luke Dash Jr. Mechanic. You need three initials to distinguish me from

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Luke Dash Jr., by the way. That's starting to get quite annoying. I'm getting confused for Luke

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Dasher or Dash Jr. all the time now, which is quite funny. But I'm not affiliated with them in

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any way So take everything I saying with a little bit of a grain of salt but I have done my homework And so hopefully everything I say is at least mostly correct Okay What is Nots Nots is an alternative Bitcoin client implementation

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If you run Bitcoin Nots, you're running a Bitcoin node the same way as you would be if you were running Bitcoin Core.

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It's just got a few changes that, yeah, specifically Luke Dash.

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I'll call him Luke Dash Jr. generally.

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Let's try and keep consistency here.

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I won't go between Dasher and Dash Jr.

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that Luke has been curating, which fits more of his view of what Bitcoin is, which specifically is Bitcoin as money.

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And specifically, it's generally been removing features from core that he has viewed as straying away from Bitcoin as a medium for monetary exchange and more into arbitrary data, programmatic money.

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The real difference in this entire debate, if you want to call it that, as you say, would be between sound money and programmable money to really, really simplify it.

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So to answer the question directly,

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Notts is an alternate Bitcoin client implementation that you can run

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that has a slightly different feature set to core, different policy defaults.

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Everything is configurable in Notts as well.

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So you can actually run a Bitcoin Notts node

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and have basically all the settings be the same as a Bitcoin core node.

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They're fully compatible with each other.

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It's an alternate client implementation for Bitcoin.

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Excellent.

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And just to keep it even a little bit, I want to keep it as basic as possible so I don't lose anybody along the way here.

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There could be some listeners that we forget.

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We just assume too much as Bitcoiners.

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And I learned this actually from some feedback I received in Riga after emceeing the morning where a lady approached me and she was down the rabbit hole, had been, but bought her partner for the first time.

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and she said, you guys are using some acronyms

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and you're saying things like Paper Bitcoin Summer

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and I've brought my partner here and he wants to learn

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and this is all going over their heads.

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You've just really got to assume the basic level of understanding

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and know that new people are joining the network every day.

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That's the real number go up.

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It doesn't matter on the dollar terms,

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but more and more people join the Bitcoin network every single day.

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So that means there are noobs every single day that are coming into the space.

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And so people might hear Bitcoin Core and think that's like the team.

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That's Team Bitcoin.

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That's Bitcoin Inc.

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Now, I know this is as basic as it gets, but do you want to just explain to people the decentralized nature of Bitcoin?

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And there is no Bitcoin Core HQ where 50 staff members turn up to work every day.

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Do you just want to give an overview of that?

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And then we'll get into a little bit more technical stuff.

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Well, I hate to immediately derail the scenario you're putting together, but I would say there is a Bitcoin Inc. with a Bitcoin headquarters that 50 people go into the office every day.

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And that's unfortunate.

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it. The decentralized nature that Bitcoin is supposed to have, absolutely, is that it's an

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open source project. And so if you don't know what an open source project is, this is simply a bit of

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code that lives on the internet that anyone can contribute to. Now, that doesn't mean anarchy.

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That means there's always some level of control. And the way of controlling that is that there are

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people who have the permission to actually say this goes in or this does not go in. These are

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the maintainers of an open source project. Bitcoin Core has five of them. And they essentially are

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the people who eventually say that you get to put a change in or you don't get to put a change in.

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And so for a lot of reasons, and I want to be careful here, I don't want to derail what we're

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talking about or make any accusations to specific people because I don't think that's helpful here.

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But for a lot of reasons, those who are maintainers of Bitcoin Core get a lot of attention. And it's a

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hard job. There have been maintainers who have decided to come off of that job because of the

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pressure. There were legal threats specifically by the only person who is not Satoshi Craig,

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right? That was legally threatening Bitcoin Core. And by extension, effectively, the only people who

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really could have been at legal risk or at most legal risk would have been the maintainers.

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Okay. That's a little bit long-winded. An open source project is a piece of code on the internet

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that anyone can theoretically can contribute to. Bitcoin Core, the software, is an open source

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project. Absolutely. Bitcoin knots is a fork of Bitcoin core, a fork in this case, because this

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is going to be confusing when we also are talking about that there are forks of Bitcoin as well,

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different, different chains. Bitcoin cash is a fork off of Bitcoin. BSV is a fork of Bitcoin cash.

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Okay. A software fork is that someone sees one of these open source projects and decides to take

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that entire code base, make a new project and start to do their own thing with it separately.

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So Bitcoin Noughts is that essentially. And since Bitcoin Core is still open, Bitcoin Noughts tends to implement all the same changes that Bitcoin Core does.

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I can come back to in a moment why that's good and bad. But basically, the whole thing is that Bitcoin Core has hundreds.

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I really should know the exact number, but quite many contributing developers who are on this full time, they are funded by grants by a bunch of different organizations.

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And quite many of them actually do work out of the same offices.

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I believe it's mostly in San Francisco and New York.

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They come together and the work is organized, in my view, quite a lot like a corporate software shop, essentially, that there are people who are in charge of specific areas.

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And the direction of development is directed by, yeah, essentially a central management for lack of a better term.

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So Bitcoin Core is Bitcoin Inc. in my view, and to use the term that you did, it's the organization that is developing the reference implementation for a Bitcoin node.

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And again, I just want to be careful as far as keeping the terminology basic.

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You need to run something in order to be running a Bitcoin node.

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and Bitcoin Core is the reference implementation.

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When we say that, it's meaning like this is the default one.

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If you wanted to install Bitcoin,

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this is the default one that comes in all of your, say,

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node in a box softwares these days.

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It's the Kleenex, it's the brand name implementation.

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And Notts, at this point,

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is the only really highly adopted alternative to this.

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There are other implementations such as Libre Relay, which has a different purpose, but Nots is the major one.

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And it does have most of the same code base as Core, which means it gets all of the security improvements and minor feature changes that don't really do much to the way Bitcoin actually functions in terms of money.

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It just simply does not merge certain things or implements some alternatives where keeping the priority of Bitcoin as money would be violated by actions that have been undertaken by Bitcoin Core.

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So that would be how I would explain that.

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And now let's clear up a little gray line between, and again, like nuance, just nuance between the language, but in practical terms, it's huge.

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The difference between a developer, core developer and a core maintainer.

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Great. Sure. Okay. The core developer, or I think contributor is really the term that they tend to

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use, is anyone can really go and contribute something to the Bitcoin core code. You do what's

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called a pull request, and that can either be accepted or rejected into the next release of the

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software. Anyone can do that. There are regular contributors who are basically in this process

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quite a lot. And I think the weight is generally given to them when deciding to make changes,

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but you could have someone out of the blue do something interesting and they will accept it.

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Our friend Fractal Encrypt made some, I believe, documentation changes. He noticed some,

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I forget if it was typo or something that was unclear. He made a pull request and the change

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got accepted because it wasn't controversial and it worked. And he showed that you can,

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in fact, go and contribute to this project, which is fantastic. It is fantastic.

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Now, the maintainers are the ones who ultimately hold the keys to the project, which means they

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ultimately are the ones who make the decisions about what actually makes it into the final

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release. There are five of them, which is good. This means that the centralization risk at least

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is down to five. It's not down to one. But yeah, basically, they're the ones who call the shots

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with the project, ultimately. And now I would say that there's quite a bit of that, the decisions

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they make and the ultimate technical, their decisions to implement something or not. I think

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there's quite a lot of other bureaucracy there. And so it's not necessarily that these five people

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are unilaterally making decisions,

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but they are the ones who ultimately had to hit the button.

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So the maintainers are the ones who have the permission

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to hit the button to say,

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yes, this goes into the next release of Bitcoin Core or not.

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Does that clear that up for you?

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Yeah I hope so I hope people are up to speed now So I think probably the last thing you might want to touch on is GitHub and how that works

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And this basically being the message board for proposing changes, updates, pull requests, noticing bugs, reporting.

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Yeah, if you just want to get people up to speed on that.

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Sure. And I'll stay super high level here. It's really just the place where the code for Bitcoin Core lives. The code for Nots also lives there. And the code for everything that we're basically talking about, it all lives on GitHub.

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And it is an open message board whenever someone decides to go and open the pull request as the nomenclature is.

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You open a pull request, which is you say, I want to make this change to the code.

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And then people are free to go and comment on it.

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The sort of ownership level people in the project have permissions to do things like closing down a conversation

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or saying you can't make certain comments

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or banning users, things like that.

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So in terms of it being a place

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where open discussion is able to happen about Bitcoin,

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it still is essentially moderated

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by the team of individuals

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who is at the project level.

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So the developers, contributors, and maintainers,

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they run the GitHub.

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That's what it means. There are other places for communication about Bitcoin. I'm sort of anticipating a question along these lines. The mailing list, the Bitcoin mailing list is an important place where ideas get bounced around before they start to make it into this pull request phase or parallel to it.

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there's been quite a lot of discussion. It's a Google group now, I do believe, and it's open,

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the official Bitcoin mailing list. And there are other places, of course, where conversations

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happen. X is a big one, of course. And there are plenty of these telegram and signal groups

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these days. I've been reminded recently that back in the day of the block size wars, it was Slack

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and IRC. There's an IRC channel also for internet relay chat for Bitcoin development. And I believe

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plenty of, a lot of channels for different subjects. So there are many places where

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discussions can happen that are quite open. And GitHub is one of them. And whenever an actual

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change is going to be made to the code, it's made there. And the decision to, the bar is quite high

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for something to be actually added or changed on the Bitcoin code. Basically, the maintainers

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have to be convinced that this is going to be something that's in their view, beneficial to

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to the code base. So yeah, it's a place where the development itself actually happens and gets

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discussed in line of the changes happening, if that makes sense. Yeah. Interesting that they

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have the ability to close down a conversation or yeah, it's almost as if filters work, Luke.

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Ah, interesting.

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More on that soon, I think.

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More on that.

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So, Luke Dash Jr., you mentioned that name earlier.

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People may be scratching their heads, might not have heard that name before.

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So, let's just do a quick update as to his career, for want of a better words, in relation to Bitcoin.

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Sure.

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Well, Luke is one of the longest standing Bitcoin core developers. And to the extent that he's no longer working directly on core, he is a Bitcoin developer for an extremely long time.

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I couldn't tell you the list of absolutely everything that he's done for Bitcoin, but it's very, very, very many things.

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For example, he's the person who was able to figure out that Segwit could be done as a soft fork.

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And that was extremely important in the resolution of the block size wars.

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He ran a mining pool called...

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Uh-oh.

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Not Elysium.

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sounds something like that.

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I can look it up if it's relevant,

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but he ran a mining pool by a different name

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that eventually turned into Ocean

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just a couple of years ago.

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Here it was resurrected.

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And so actually the blocks that were first found by Ocean

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had the name of the previous pool, I think,

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because a setting hadn't been toggled

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or there was references to the old pool there somewhere.

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The decentralized mining was something that was important to him back in the day.

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Largely, he's a polarizing figure in the community, more for his personal, I'll say, opinions and lifestyle choices.

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During COVID, he was very much avoiding catching whatever was going around.

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He's Catholic and has a ton of kids and is extremely strict in his moral code.

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I don't know. I'm not a spokesperson for him exactly, but that's definitely the highest level things to know, I would say, for him. But he's been a Bitcoin developer for an extremely long time and has had an outsized influence in what's actually happened in Bitcoin and major changes to Bitcoin have either been implemented by him or thought of by him, the Segwit one being one of the most prominent.

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But he also created Bitcoin knots. And this is a reference to the knots on the whips that the biblical Jesus used to whip the money changers because they were desecrating the house of God with the act of money changing.

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That I do believe is the correct reason for why that is called Bitcoin Noughts. And so you can extrapolate that somewhat, that Bitcoin Noughts is supposed to be this thing to whip out the bad parts of, say, arbitrary data storage out of Bitcoin. And that's kind of been the tact that Noughts has taken.

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since February 2023, there's been a major uptick in usage of Noughts.

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Prior to that, it did kind of been considered this quirky, weird fork that hardly anyone implemented.

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But after the advent of a lot more arbitrary data being put onto the chain,

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users were looking for an outlet to be able to signal, hey, I don't want this stuff.

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I run Noughts on my personal home node. My mempool is quite clean. I use quite tight settings myself, even I think stricter than the Noughts defaults.

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And yeah, I do not want to participate in the relaying of transactions that are for the purpose of embedding arbitrary data onto Bitcoin.

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And that is very easy to track, find these transactions in the mempool. You can tell what they are. You can tell what they look like. And ultimately, a miner chooses to mine these transactions or not.

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and now Ocean. So Ocean started a couple of years ago here as essentially out of the blue,

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a pool that had mining templates based off of knots as defaults to filter out different types

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of arbitrary data. We can start using the word spam if you like, maybe being too diplomatic.

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And so they actually have one template that's very strict, one template that is

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a nots default that allows some bits of spam, but less harmful stuff. And then they also offer

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a core compliant template or something that's quite matching to core. And so they give their

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users a choice. And this is the only pool that does this at this point, that gives the users a

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choice of what they actually want to mine. And then a little while later, they implemented

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datum, D-A-T-U-M, which is something you can run on your Bitcoin node, which creates the block

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templates that you can mine off of for you. And so you can basically say that you can create your

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own block templates based on all of your own rules. And if you do end up finding a block with

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your miners, you will have made the template that that block creates. So yeah, it's a great

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effort towards decentralization of mining, which I think is the ultimate way out of all of these

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issues is just simply having more miners constructing their own blocks. So right now,

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I would say Luke Dash Jr. is pretty much known at the moment for knots and for ocean slash datum.

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Ocean being the company in the mining pool and datum being the protocol.

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Any mining pool could implement datum.

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And stratum v2 is essentially an equivalent mining protocol that would allow miners to mine their own templates.

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and there is theoretically a mining pool coming up maybe more than one that going to do stratum v2 So decentralized mining is something that is slowly moving along

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But for now, we have Ocean,

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and Ocean has about 2% of the hash rate type,

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something like that, somewhere between 1% and 2%.

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And so Ocean finds a couple of blocks a day at the moment.

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But that's something, that's a start.

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So that's Luke Dash Jr. in maybe a few too many words.

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I would just add, throughout the years that he's been contributing to Core,

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he's had up and down relationships with certain other developers, maintainers.

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And also, I believe he started working on Notts years and years ago.

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this isn't a thing that's just been spun up out and i want to make this clear because a lot of

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people i think just well you can't just spin up a whole new thing and you know like within a week

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just because you don't you think it's spam and i think it's you know somebody's right uh i think

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there's a lot like do you know when he he first you know like started talking about knots releasing

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knots created it i want to say like it could even be like 10 years ago oh yeah i was gonna say i

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thought it was 2013 2014 yeah right okay then that i think is something has been missed by a lot of

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people this isn't a fly by night spin up right okay fuck you guys here's my new thing like this

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has been decade over a decade and uh to my knowledge and again

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see we're walking into the trap or what's that's been set that feels like um a little bit

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disingenuous which has been happening the whole time throughout this is you and i are going to sit

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here and put our hands up and say look we're not technically sound uh enough to to talk about this

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at any depth right so we should just believe the tech bros like that's the trap right there

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and i found that to be the most disingenuous part of this whole thing it's like you know you have

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no authority at all to be even memeing you know i've i've been shot down by a couple of these guys

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for for just putting out memes no text just a meme and then getting character assassinated

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it's like wow like fuck you guys this is this is wild um okay so if i don't understand it

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technically can i not ask questions about it uh where's where's the education rather than the

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you know the shaming no absolutely uh plebslop is the term going around i believe uh and and

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yeah i i mean i have to say i've been disappointed with with some people who have been sharing that

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term seemingly unironically because it really is, it feels quite elitist to me to be kind of

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gatekeeping and saying that you, first of all, I've heard more than once on Onyx on this that

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if you're not a contributor to Bitcoin Core, you shouldn't be saying anything about what Bitcoin

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Core is doing. And I mean, like we were talking about earlier a little bit, like the bar is super

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high to get into being a core contributor. The change that Fractal did was a small documentation

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change, not to overly minimize that he did a contribution and that was great, but to be a

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regular contributor and actually make changes to Bitcoin, the bar for that is quite high.

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And there's only some hundred or so individuals who are currently doing that.

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And there's an attitude right now that basically core gets to dictate what happens to Bitcoin and that the masses, the users must go along with that.

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And well, NOTS is one alternative to that and one way that users are exercising their right as sovereign individuals in a decentralized ecosystem to say, no, I do not agree with what you're doing.

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And it was pointed out to me that in the block size wars, Bitcoin Core essentially was the winner, right? It was Bitcoin Core versus big blockers that eventually became Bitcoin Cash. And Bitcoin Core and the development team there and everything going along with that stood their ground and made the necessary changes and ultimately even made a compromise with Segwit, right, that won the block size wars, so-called.

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But the pattern I'm noticing basically is that core is the new power base that effectively the users are deciding to say, hey, we're not necessarily going to take this any longer.

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And we might be going down a road where there could be a potential fork, a soft fork, but it could turn into a full chain split art fork scenario.

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I don't want to mix terms up, but chain split, I think, is better.

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There could be a chain split out of this, and the battle would be between, essentially, is Bitcoin Core, the organization and the developers and maintainers of Bitcoin Core, are they in charge of Bitcoin or are the users in charge of Bitcoin?

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And just to bring it back to the block size wars analogy, what I've been hearing a little bit is that the impression is so much that it wasn't exactly the users of Bitcoin versus the miners back then.

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It was sort of Bitcoin core versus the miners.

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Bitcoin core plus the users to be generous.

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But now we might be in a scenario where the user base has a chance to exercise its rights in the community and say, hey, our voice matters as well.

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Right. I think we've got everybody up to speed.

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Now let's talk about Bitcoin improvement proposals.

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or bips because bip 444 was dropped uh time of recording like three and a half weeks ago four

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yeah yeah something like that about a month let's say about a month ago and uh yeah that's that's

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caused a stir obviously uh dropped by uh an anon a pseudonymous uh account so

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immediately started kind of the witch hunt as to who that was uh led of course by

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on the other side of this debate um some questionable behavior around that because

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you know like uh pseudonymity is what we're here for right absolutely i mean uh i made a choice to

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unmask so did you um but to those who who choose to uh not release their entire identity or not

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or not keep their entire identity i think it's it's only a mark of respect and and even to those

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who have had their identities revealed.

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I won't say anyone,

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but I continue to use their name

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unless they start to use their name themselves

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in other contexts and all this.

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And I mean, there's been speculation

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about who this Dathan Om may or may not be.

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The only one that I will address

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is that people think he's Luke Dash Jr.

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I am strongly of the opinion that he is not.

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Luke Dash Jr., mostly because I've seen the two of them talking in the same threads at the same

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time, sometimes with quite different opinions. So I do believe that Dathon is not Luke.

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But yeah, Luke would have to be an extremely good actor and very good at compartmentalizing

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parts of his personality in order to achieve Machiavellian goals, Machiavellian goals in

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order to make this work.

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So this is what's really interesting that this debate had been raging for a long, long

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time, as we said at the beginning.

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And then, boom, out of nowhere, there's a new actor, there's a new voice, and there's

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a new bit.

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And this person could have been lurking.

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It could have been someone from either side.

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It could be someone from CORE that suddenly had a change of heart and has come across and put this proposal.

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It could be someone just trying to stir up and divide even more.

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It could be anything.

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But the fact of the matter is, it's out there.

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And this caught your attention.

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And why?

393
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Absolutely, sure.

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So, yeah, thanks for the very open-ended segue here because I'm going to take us on a bit of a tangent.

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I'll just preface this a little bit with that if you've seen anything that I've been doing with Knut, Knut Spahnelm, on the Bitcoin Infinity Show or more recently the Bitcoin Infinity Academy.

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I've been a staunch monetary maximalist, so to say, since this whole furore erupted in February

397
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2023.

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I don't know that necessarily monetary maximalism was in the milieu before that, but definitely

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I'm here in Bitcoin for Bitcoin as money and for Bitcoin to...

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upend the fiat system and to get us out of the dystopia that we currently find ourselves

401
00:41:48,111 --> 00:41:57,811
hurtling towards. And I find any attempts to make Bitcoin less useful as money to be

402
00:41:58,511 --> 00:42:07,171
actively working against those goals. And so monetary maximalism to me is simply

403
00:42:07,171 --> 00:42:16,191
let's defend and preserve Bitcoin as a form of money, store of value, medium of exchange,

404
00:42:16,191 --> 00:42:23,451
unit of account, and reject ways of transacting on Bitcoin, Bitcoin the network, Bitcoin the

405
00:42:23,451 --> 00:42:32,231
technology that are not strictly monetary. Now, we can get into some definitions here and

406
00:42:32,231 --> 00:42:39,371
gray areas, tons of gray areas. Is it a monetary transaction to open a lightning channel?

407
00:42:39,931 --> 00:42:47,531
I would say yes, because it's something that is enabling this medium of exchange mechanism.

408
00:42:48,291 --> 00:42:55,851
It's monetary by all respects, essentially. A peg out transaction onto the liquid network,

409
00:42:55,911 --> 00:42:59,791
I would say, is also the same because you're simply moving, not even really moving,

410
00:42:59,791 --> 00:43:09,351
You're sending your Bitcoin to another network, and then you can do some things over there, and at a later date, you can come back into Bitcoin. So far, so good.

411
00:43:09,351 --> 00:43:26,891
And there are talks of other layer two protocols that need to anchor themselves onto Bitcoin somehow that are a little shitcoin looking, things that are resembling of Ethereum style DeFi.

412
00:43:26,891 --> 00:43:32,851
And those are for sure a bit of a gray area to me.

413
00:43:33,851 --> 00:43:48,031
But what's not a gray area is the embedding of arbitrary data through mechanisms that are absolutely exploits, in my view.

414
00:43:48,691 --> 00:43:54,931
This will be primarily things like images, but it can also be long strings of text.

415
00:43:54,931 --> 00:44:08,711
And it's also a couple of protocols for creating tokens directly on Bitcoin and making transactions with these tokens using primarily Operator or inscriptions.

416
00:44:09,271 --> 00:44:17,911
So I should probably do a really, really high level overview of what the main types of spam effectively are.

417
00:44:17,911 --> 00:44:24,951
the first thing that was discovered back in February 2023 was, and I call it discovered

418
00:44:24,951 --> 00:44:31,751
because these things were all there. These bugs were all there. The Ordinals Protocol,

419
00:44:32,051 --> 00:44:38,331
I guess discovered is the wrong word. The Ordinals Protocol is a mechanism for giving

420
00:44:38,331 --> 00:44:44,071
an individual number to every Satoshi, which for various reasons I find silly.

421
00:44:44,071 --> 00:44:52,091
go listen to Knut on that topic a little bit more, I would say. But it's a protocol for

422
00:44:52,091 --> 00:45:03,251
basically differentiating UTXOs from each other. And so you can essentially have a UTXO that under

423
00:45:03,251 --> 00:45:10,011
this ordinal protocol is theoretically more valuable than some other UTXO. That's the most

424
00:45:10,011 --> 00:45:17,311
charitable way I can describe that. But the technical thing, so ordinals themselves are silly,

425
00:45:17,571 --> 00:45:24,191
but it's a third party program. It's a layer on top of Bitcoin, even existing outside of Bitcoin.

426
00:45:24,371 --> 00:45:31,511
They're just simply analyzing the blockchain for their own purposes. Okay, fine. Go be silly

427
00:45:31,511 --> 00:45:38,131
somewhere else. That's fine. I don't care. But the thing at the same time that they found

428
00:45:38,131 --> 00:45:44,811
was by using a bit of Bitcoin code, Bitcoin script,

429
00:45:45,891 --> 00:45:51,711
called if you would send an op false code and an op if code.

430
00:45:51,811 --> 00:45:55,371
I'm really trying not to be way low level here.

431
00:45:55,611 --> 00:45:59,431
But you could do that in a Bitcoin transaction.

432
00:46:00,291 --> 00:46:07,551
And essentially, whatever goes under this op if would be ignored by the Bitcoin script.

433
00:46:07,551 --> 00:46:12,551
and you can put whatever you want there up to a limit. There is a limit actually,

434
00:46:13,091 --> 00:46:18,111
but you can keep repeating this structure over and over and over again in the same transaction

435
00:46:18,111 --> 00:46:25,351
and essentially fill it with an image. And the only limit to that protocol is actually the 4

436
00:46:25,351 --> 00:46:32,311
megabyte block size or the 4 megabyte effective block size. So there have been like 4 megabyte

437
00:46:32,311 --> 00:46:40,891
at 3.96 megabyte. I think that's the theoretical limit blocks that are literally just one of these

438
00:46:40,891 --> 00:46:48,511
inscriptions. So just terminology for a long time in the early 23s, we were calling all of this stuff

439
00:46:48,511 --> 00:46:52,811
ordinals. What was really correct was that the ordinals is this kind of third party protocol

440
00:46:52,811 --> 00:47:01,451
living on top of this. Inscriptions is the thing that is being put onto the blockchain via this

441
00:47:01,451 --> 00:47:09,231
mechanism. Op, false, op, if. Op, false, op, if is my shorthand for that.

442
00:47:10,491 --> 00:47:20,151
Now, there's another category here that basically uses fake public keys on Bitcoin to embed data.

443
00:47:20,971 --> 00:47:27,191
The most prominent user of this at the moment is Bitcoin Stamps. And basically, this is a

444
00:47:27,191 --> 00:47:33,331
protocol that effectively just said, hey, we can create a multi-sig. We can make a multi-sig

445
00:47:33,331 --> 00:47:40,911
transaction where everything in this massive multi-sig is really just random data. And the

446
00:47:40,911 --> 00:47:49,591
random data that you get there actually is like an image, corresponds to an image or some text or

447
00:47:49,591 --> 00:47:56,051
something like this, but usually it's an image. And the thing is, every single one of these public

448
00:47:56,051 --> 00:48:04,391
keys has to be stored in the UTXO set, as in all of the Bitcoin nodes have to continue to keep these

449
00:48:04,391 --> 00:48:11,871
stored somewhere. Because if they ever were to be spent, you have to validate that this was actually

450
00:48:11,871 --> 00:48:18,771
valid. So you can't get rid of them. That would break Bitcoin's consensus. So to differentiate

451
00:48:18,771 --> 00:48:26,951
what these are, the inscriptions creates only one new UTXO, but embeds a bunch of data with it

452
00:48:26,951 --> 00:48:36,011
at a discount, at a four times discount that was introduced by SegWit. Then this Stamps uses

453
00:48:36,011 --> 00:48:42,771
bare multisig, or there's a new one that isn't using this bare multisig, but regardless,

454
00:48:42,771 --> 00:48:46,411
They're using public keys to embed data there.

455
00:48:47,071 --> 00:48:50,031
And this creates a bunch of new UTXOs.

456
00:48:50,191 --> 00:48:53,251
It's more expensive than these inscriptions.

457
00:48:53,631 --> 00:48:57,651
And from my perspective, I can't even really be charitable to this.

458
00:48:57,691 --> 00:49:05,351
This was designed to be as destructive to Bitcoin as absolutely possible, with the rationale

459
00:49:05,351 --> 00:49:09,951
being that it's the most permanent possible because you can't get rid of it.

460
00:49:09,951 --> 00:49:20,891
You can theoretically prune or ignore the data from these inscriptions, but you can't ignore what's on these stamps.

461
00:49:22,131 --> 00:49:29,311
And finally, the other place where you can easily at this point put arbitrary data into Bitcoin is Opratern.

462
00:49:29,731 --> 00:49:35,291
And this is the thing where all of this controversy has really heated up in regards.

463
00:49:35,291 --> 00:49:54,031
So for the longest time, the oppratern was a compromise. And this theoretically happened back in 2014. Oppratern is literally a statement that says in the scripting language, go back to the beginning of the program.

464
00:49:54,031 --> 00:50:13,691
And it existed for a theoretical reason. It exists in other programming languages, basically. But what it meant was that if you put something after the operaturn, the program would ignore what was afterwards, is basically the mechanism. But you can put the data there.

465
00:50:13,691 --> 00:50:20,691
And when other protocols started to use these fake public keys, basically,

466
00:50:21,971 --> 00:50:29,811
Opratern was identified as a compromise that you can put your data in this Opratern instead of in the public keys and bloating the UTXO set.

467
00:50:30,751 --> 00:50:42,751
So the limit for this was traditionally 40 bytes, which is 42 for real, but 40 in terms of the actual data that you can put in.

468
00:50:43,691 --> 00:50:48,911
Later on, this was raised to 80 or 83 bytes by Core.

469
00:50:49,451 --> 00:50:51,931
Knott's kept it the same at the original 40.

470
00:50:52,631 --> 00:51:07,191
And so there was a whole controversy with Samurai Whirlpool for a little while that was claiming that Knott's had basically intentionally not allowed these Whirlpool, Samurai Whirlpool transactions.

471
00:51:07,191 --> 00:51:10,391
But they're getting the causality wrong.

472
00:51:10,391 --> 00:51:18,751
core had opened up up to 80 bytes, which the Whirlpool used, and Notts just simply didn't

473
00:51:18,751 --> 00:51:25,551
follow that. So the causality is off there, I would say. But what really kicked off the

474
00:51:25,551 --> 00:51:32,991
controversy here was that core removed the policy default to 80 bytes for this operaturn.

475
00:51:33,631 --> 00:51:39,051
And when operaturn was implemented, the actual theoretical limit for operaturn was the block

476
00:51:39,051 --> 00:51:45,531
size. You can put up to the block size in this op return. And so now we're back there. And since

477
00:51:45,531 --> 00:51:52,551
it's not this witness data, it's not a four megabyte limit, it's a one megabyte limit. Great.

478
00:51:53,231 --> 00:52:10,457
But anyway you can put a one megabyte large file into an op return and that it The controversy really kicked off for I would say many in the knots camp and I this is where

479
00:52:10,457 --> 00:52:16,317
I'm going to want to be clear about my role in all of this I consider myself very very very

480
00:52:16,317 --> 00:52:24,697
lightly supportive of the BIP overall a hundred percent aligned in terms of the monetary maximalism

481
00:52:24,697 --> 00:52:32,277
of it. I do have some criticisms of the Bit444 that we can get into, but we haven't even talked

482
00:52:32,277 --> 00:52:40,497
about what it is yet. So cart before the horse a little bit. The group that kicked off this Bip

483
00:52:40,497 --> 00:52:51,897
and Luke and all this basically are concerned about kitty porn making it onto the blockchain

484
00:52:51,897 --> 00:53:03,077
in a in a egregiously easy to access manner now i think this is a bit overblown that's that's what

485
00:53:03,077 --> 00:53:08,477
i'll say is that is that this specific fear that has has kicked this all off is a bit overblown

486
00:53:08,477 --> 00:53:17,157
there have been some conversations about the the legal implications of allowing or um yeah

487
00:53:17,157 --> 00:53:21,717
explicitly allowing this stuff if it if it made it onto the chain like if this makes it onto your

488
00:53:21,717 --> 00:53:26,397
node what's going to happen. The unfortunate newsflash is that there are apparently child

489
00:53:26,397 --> 00:53:34,817
abuse images already on the Bitcoin blockchain. Don't go looking for it, of course. But through

490
00:53:34,817 --> 00:53:39,837
inscriptions, I believe, or some other type of... By the way, there are tons of arcane

491
00:53:39,837 --> 00:53:48,297
ways of embedding data. It really is possible to embed data in tons of different ways. This

492
00:53:48,297 --> 00:53:51,697
is called stenography in the parlance.

493
00:53:53,717 --> 00:53:55,597
So you can get really creative

494
00:53:55,597 --> 00:53:57,717
with how you embed data in this or that.

495
00:53:57,857 --> 00:54:01,877
And so it's not like it's easy

496
00:54:01,877 --> 00:54:05,397
to simply say we turn off this or that feature

497
00:54:05,397 --> 00:54:06,737
and we suddenly stop spam.

498
00:54:06,837 --> 00:54:09,397
In fact, I'll be the first to admit,

499
00:54:09,517 --> 00:54:12,237
you can't stop spam.

500
00:54:12,657 --> 00:54:14,237
I do believe it is possible

501
00:54:14,237 --> 00:54:18,157
to have some sensible limits on it though.

502
00:54:18,297 --> 00:54:30,057
And that's basically what this entire BIP444 is about, is setting some limits on what is possible here.

503
00:54:30,217 --> 00:54:40,357
It's intended to be temporary in order to make a more reasoned, more permanent fix after a year, gives a year's development time.

504
00:54:40,357 --> 00:54:47,957
And the reason for the temporariness and the urgentness is cited as the child abuse material that could make it onto Bitcoin.

505
00:54:48,297 --> 00:54:57,177
One last on that, just the data itself in the operaturn is not really raw, plain text data.

506
00:54:57,177 --> 00:55:10,637
It's not like this information is actually able to, like you could extract the code from the block and immediately it's there as a file you could simply open.

507
00:55:11,437 --> 00:55:16,157
There are some things you have to do to make it like a proper file.

508
00:55:16,157 --> 00:55:25,537
Well, the argument really is that it's the easiest it ever would be to do this, basically.

509
00:55:25,537 --> 00:55:34,917
You can dump an image that's one megabyte large onto Bitcoin and with very little effort, turn it into something you could open up with your image viewer.

510
00:55:35,277 --> 00:55:38,797
So these are the concerns.

511
00:55:38,797 --> 00:55:43,597
and from my part, I do think the legal or the,

512
00:55:44,257 --> 00:55:48,077
not to minimize it, that child abuse material is awful

513
00:55:48,077 --> 00:55:49,397
and I don't want it on Bitcoin.

514
00:55:49,637 --> 00:55:51,217
Definitely, I do not want that.

515
00:55:51,477 --> 00:55:55,717
But I do think that the original justification for this

516
00:55:55,717 --> 00:55:56,797
is a little bit overblown.

517
00:55:57,157 --> 00:55:59,197
I personally just don't like the spam.

518
00:56:00,157 --> 00:56:01,317
So I'll pause there.

519
00:56:02,117 --> 00:56:03,297
Damn, all right.

520
00:56:04,077 --> 00:56:05,537
Before we move on to the BIP,

521
00:56:05,937 --> 00:56:07,737
you mentioned a few things here,

522
00:56:07,737 --> 00:56:09,957
which people might be kind of wondering,

523
00:56:10,277 --> 00:56:11,877
like, well, how the hell does that even happen?

524
00:56:12,177 --> 00:56:15,537
And I think we'll talk about fake public keys.

525
00:56:16,677 --> 00:56:19,297
And I mean, well, just basically,

526
00:56:19,577 --> 00:56:22,397
how does someone create a fake public key

527
00:56:22,397 --> 00:56:24,697
that they literally just take a public key

528
00:56:24,697 --> 00:56:26,217
created by their hardware wallet

529
00:56:26,217 --> 00:56:27,777
and then change three or four of the figures.

530
00:56:27,897 --> 00:56:29,257
And now they've got a fake public key,

531
00:56:29,297 --> 00:56:31,097
which they can relay a transaction

532
00:56:31,097 --> 00:56:32,177
onto the Bitcoin blockchain,

533
00:56:32,377 --> 00:56:34,377
which then means it can never be spent.

534
00:56:34,557 --> 00:56:35,717
Like this is the thing that you were,

535
00:56:35,777 --> 00:56:37,297
that unspendable transaction.

536
00:56:37,737 --> 00:56:46,757
Because it is a fake public key, like it looks like a public key as soon as it hits and it's going to get relayed, but no one can then access it.

537
00:56:46,757 --> 00:57:00,137
So it's on the blockchain forevermore. And this causes bloat, right? The UTXO set has just, I mean, it's mooned since February 2023 when you look at it.

538
00:57:00,137 --> 00:57:07,357
And again, the way I understand it, like all of this bloat and nonsense that's entered onto the blockchain.

539
00:57:08,577 --> 00:57:17,197
Well, I've run a node and my two terabyte hard disk SSD thing is now telling me, right, we're 95% full.

540
00:57:17,597 --> 00:57:19,057
You now need a four terabyte.

541
00:57:19,077 --> 00:57:23,237
And I'm like, wow, you know, that crept up.

542
00:57:23,237 --> 00:57:32,777
So this is a real concern because now it's making it longer for people to make the initial Bitcoin download, blockchain download.

543
00:57:32,957 --> 00:57:44,877
It's making it more expensive for people, which is completely antithetical to Bitcoin and, you know, the technology and Moore's law and all of this kind of stuff.

544
00:57:44,877 --> 00:57:51,357
Like it should be, we should be getting equipment now that is cheaper and faster.

545
00:57:51,897 --> 00:57:57,117
And we should have the IBD down in, you know, obviously it depends on your Wi-Fi speed and whatever, but in a few days.

546
00:57:57,177 --> 00:57:59,437
But for some people, it is taking weeks.

547
00:58:01,217 --> 00:58:10,877
Yeah, the entire root of the problem here, and I mean, I will say that there's a couple of effects, but let's tackle this one, is the increase in storage.

548
00:58:10,877 --> 00:58:20,057
So the consistently full four megabyte blocks is what is essentially creating the storage requirement, the actual size of the blockchain.

549
00:58:20,397 --> 00:58:22,157
Now that's growing linearly.

550
00:58:22,777 --> 00:58:24,037
We can say that.

551
00:58:24,777 --> 00:58:32,017
The best part about this is at least there is a cap on the amount that the blockchain can grow in terms of storage.

552
00:58:32,017 --> 00:58:40,777
And yeah, realistically, Moore's Law should handle this fairly soon here.

553
00:58:40,877 --> 00:58:56,237
But storage and memory prices are quite high. The UTXO bloat that everyone is concerned about is that it really is hard, computationally hard to run a Bitcoin node harder, harder and harder and harder.

554
00:58:56,237 --> 00:59:03,257
if they have to keep this UTXO set and keep accessing it, basically, is the problem.

555
00:59:03,417 --> 00:59:07,477
So the biggest issue is that the IBD, the initial block download,

556
00:59:07,477 --> 00:59:14,017
the reason that's starting to take much, much longer is not so much because of the storage.

557
00:59:14,277 --> 00:59:17,277
It's because these blocks to actually compute the blockchain,

558
00:59:17,597 --> 00:59:22,117
it takes longer if you can't store the entire UTXO set in memory.

559
00:59:22,117 --> 00:59:27,877
And so 16 gigabytes of RAM is no longer really sufficient.

560
00:59:28,257 --> 00:59:31,577
It will bottom 8 gigabytes is completely out of the question.

561
00:59:31,757 --> 00:59:33,557
I believe it's effectively impossible.

562
00:59:34,137 --> 00:59:43,017
Now, you pretty much need 32 gigabytes of RAM on your node in order for the blockchain to be computed properly.

563
00:59:43,017 --> 00:59:47,777
you can choose to prune your node if you would like,

564
00:59:48,917 --> 00:59:53,577
meaning removing old UTXOs that have been spent

565
00:59:53,577 --> 00:59:56,477
and you no longer need to keep them in.

566
00:59:57,297 --> 01:00:00,397
But you can only do that after you've gotten to the end,

567
01:00:00,477 --> 01:00:01,497
after you've done the whole download.

568
01:00:01,637 --> 01:00:03,377
You can prune afterwards, basically.

569
01:00:04,217 --> 01:00:08,077
So yeah, the whole thing is it's making it more expensive

570
01:00:08,077 --> 01:00:11,737
to run a node, meaning that theoretically,

571
01:00:11,737 --> 01:00:18,917
the node numbers are going to trend downward over time, meaning less decentralization in Bitcoin.

572
01:00:19,797 --> 01:00:24,517
And then there's even a question of whether the only nodes that actually matter are the so-called

573
01:00:24,517 --> 01:00:31,517
economic nodes, not the ones that enforce policy and relay transactions and all this.

574
01:00:32,037 --> 01:00:40,157
I don't disagree with that view 100%. I disagree with that view like 90%. There is something too

575
01:00:40,157 --> 01:00:46,697
that the most important nodes are the ones that are actually accepting Bitcoin payments or sending

576
01:00:46,697 --> 01:00:51,397
Bitcoin payments, but accepting Bitcoin payments, especially to be able to validate that the Bitcoin

577
01:00:51,397 --> 01:00:57,877
that you're getting is actually real Bitcoin. That's important. And you can make decisions

578
01:00:57,877 --> 01:01:05,217
as an economic node as well, if you like. I definitely use my node to make transactions.

579
01:01:05,377 --> 01:01:09,557
I don't make a lot of transactions. I'm not a merchant, but I definitely use my node to make

580
01:01:09,557 --> 01:01:14,397
transactions. So I consider myself an economic node, but some people consider only the nodes

581
01:01:14,397 --> 01:01:19,117
for the big merchants and the big service providers to be the ones that really matter

582
01:01:19,117 --> 01:01:25,937
in the ecosystem, which is, again, is just antithetical to this decentralized network that

583
01:01:25,937 --> 01:01:33,637
any sovereign individual can join. But yeah, the spam is making it more costly to run a node,

584
01:01:33,637 --> 01:01:40,857
and that's not good. Full stop. The other effect it has is that when you get these massive frenzies,

585
01:01:41,697 --> 01:01:46,197
like you can go through and you can see these massive mempool spikes that happened starting

586
01:01:46,197 --> 01:01:52,977
around this February 2023. These just make Bitcoin much less usable, user-friendly.

587
01:01:53,797 --> 01:01:59,077
It was quite expensive to send the Bitcoin transaction back in that period of time.

588
01:01:59,077 --> 01:02:03,017
it was expensive to open or close a Lightning channel.

589
01:02:03,297 --> 01:02:06,837
So basically, if you had a Lightning channel open, great.

590
01:02:07,737 --> 01:02:11,757
But if you didn't, if you didn't have your funds in Lightning, you are stuck.

591
01:02:12,637 --> 01:02:19,317
You could either choose to send your funds on-chain for huge fees

592
01:02:19,317 --> 01:02:24,337
or somehow get into a Lightning wallet by some other mechanism.

593
01:02:24,597 --> 01:02:38,123
But yeah it clogged up the network It priced out the entire developing world This is like anyone who had just a little bit of money could not use Bitcoin unless they were already onboarded

594
01:02:38,123 --> 01:02:43,963
It stopped the onboarding and adoption of people in the developing world while this was going on.

595
01:02:45,643 --> 01:02:49,403
And to me, this makes Bitcoin drastically worse as money.

596
01:02:49,403 --> 01:02:56,943
It means that on the whim of one of these fads, you can just get a massive fee spike.

597
01:02:57,123 --> 01:03:12,383
And what ended up happening as well is that services that would make Bitcoin transactions at what they thought were actually crazy overpays, but would make sure that what they're doing gets into blocks, that stuff would not get handled.

598
01:03:12,383 --> 01:03:23,043
So what we had were, I believe it was Binance consolidations sitting in the mempool for like a really, really, really long time that were at like 30 sats per V byte or something.

599
01:03:23,903 --> 01:03:28,943
And they were these massive transactions, like these huge blobby transactions, if you see them on the mempool.

600
01:03:29,723 --> 01:03:34,723
But they were entirely monetary, just to use that term.

601
01:03:34,863 --> 01:03:39,243
Like it was literally a whole ton of UTXOs being merged into one, right?

602
01:03:39,243 --> 01:04:03,603
The definition of a monetary transaction, even if it is a bit of an edge case, a rarer one, a consolidation is absolutely allowed. Absolutely. And so what ended up happening was all of these consolidations that they would do all the time were sitting there stuck and basically creating a fee floor that's way above what we would usually experience.

603
01:04:03,603 --> 01:04:18,583
And so this is all just to say that I don't think high fees are bad for Bitcoin. I do not. That's a be cash or talking point. The thing was, it was all so artificial and so sudden.

604
01:04:19,583 --> 01:04:25,523
We've had fee spikes in times of massive adoption to Bitcoin, which is great.

605
01:04:25,883 --> 01:04:27,083
It's great to see.

606
01:04:27,503 --> 01:04:32,063
And these fee spikes are probably something to do with why things start to depress after

607
01:04:32,063 --> 01:04:36,043
a little while, because it becomes more expensive to transact and this and that.

608
01:04:36,323 --> 01:04:38,023
But the thing is, it's because of demand.

609
01:04:38,223 --> 01:04:40,983
It's because of demand for Bitcoin, and that's a good thing.

610
01:04:42,203 --> 01:04:47,303
Now, an argument can be made that these massive fee spikes actually helped with certain areas

611
01:04:47,303 --> 01:04:47,723
of Bitcoin.

612
01:04:47,723 --> 01:05:01,183
For example, the major exchanges made changes to how they do these consolidations, as far as I understand. And the Lightning ecosystem had to make a lot of changes in order to become more resilient.

613
01:05:01,183 --> 01:05:06,183
And one thing that cropped up at the time was Bolt's swaps to Liquid.

614
01:05:06,803 --> 01:05:17,543
And this became essentially the edge around basically going fully on-chain is that prices on Liquid were much cheaper.

615
01:05:17,543 --> 01:05:21,703
And so Liquid adoption actually increased by quite a bit.

616
01:05:22,883 --> 01:05:25,783
So instead of swapping out to on-chain, you would swap out onto Liquid.

617
01:05:25,943 --> 01:05:29,503
You could do this or that there and then swap back into your own channels if you wanted to.

618
01:05:29,503 --> 01:05:35,943
So a lot of innovation happened. I'm not saying that that was a bad thing that the innovation

619
01:05:35,943 --> 01:05:42,463
happened, but the way it happened was absolutely a case where Bitcoin became much worse as money.

620
01:05:42,643 --> 01:05:48,623
And this is not comparable at all to gold's non-monetary use cases, because basically,

621
01:05:48,623 --> 01:05:54,543
you don't have to deal with the consequence of someone else's jewelry in your own wallet.

622
01:05:54,543 --> 01:06:01,523
Like the jewelry of all of the people in the world are sitting on the Bitcoin blockchain and competing for transaction space.

623
01:06:02,463 --> 01:06:08,623
And so just by the nature of the network, it's degrading the usefulness of Bitcoin as money.

624
01:06:08,743 --> 01:06:13,743
And even if we're not in a period of huge demand now, who's to know when the next one is going to happen?

625
01:06:13,743 --> 01:06:29,523
So that's always been the argument for me is that when these massive frenzies for ordinals or inscriptions or whatever you call them heat up, that that just makes Bitcoin worse at what it's supposed to be.

626
01:06:29,803 --> 01:06:35,883
And I worry for the effects on adoption for short term gain for a very small group of people.

627
01:06:37,663 --> 01:06:39,523
All right, let's do the BIP.

628
01:06:40,443 --> 01:06:40,963
The BIP.

629
01:06:41,443 --> 01:06:41,863
The BIP.

630
01:06:41,863 --> 01:06:42,023
Okay.

631
01:06:42,023 --> 01:06:48,303
four four four four four four so before you get into that i think it's probably

632
01:06:48,303 --> 01:06:55,423
we should note that bips are bips have been open for years right this isn't a thing that just comes

633
01:06:55,423 --> 01:07:02,043
and goes and uh you don't get a straight no you don't get straight yes they can be looked at

634
01:07:02,043 --> 01:07:08,403
reviewed you people can throw in an opinion uh this is what you've been doing um some of them

635
01:07:08,403 --> 01:07:13,803
go back five or six years, might still be open, might still be debated.

636
01:07:14,523 --> 01:07:18,483
So I just want people to understand how this kind of works.

637
01:07:18,483 --> 01:07:20,083
So this is the new one.

638
01:07:20,363 --> 01:07:24,843
This is dropped by the anonymous person.

639
01:07:25,583 --> 01:07:29,363
And you have now engaged with the conversation.

640
01:07:29,783 --> 01:07:35,383
But because this overlaps directly with what you do in Fiatland,

641
01:07:35,383 --> 01:07:41,243
And this is where you can really lean in with your technical expertise and your experience.

642
01:07:41,543 --> 01:07:46,663
So I'm really looking forward to hearing about that and how this overlaps with this BIP.

643
01:07:47,623 --> 01:07:57,943
Perfect. I'll cover what is the BIP before I get into kind of my take on the situation and why I support it, at least to the extent that I do.

644
01:07:57,943 --> 01:08:20,183
Okay, the BIP, and I really want to say that it's not being granted an official BIP number, apparently. And so everyone who's using this 444 might get rugged eventually. I prefer it to this reduced data temporary soft fork. It's a mouthful and RDTS, if you squint your eyes, it looks like other words.

645
01:08:20,183 --> 01:08:28,923
so I don't like it. RDTS might be the more proper term here, but 444 is what I like to use and I'm

646
01:08:28,923 --> 01:08:36,163
going to continue to use it. Basically, it's a set of technical proposals to make a consensus change

647
01:08:36,163 --> 01:08:45,403
to Bitcoin to disallow certain types of transactions. And here we should be clear

648
01:08:45,403 --> 01:08:53,963
again about a couple of things. Consensus is what makes a valid Bitcoin transaction. So if your

649
01:08:53,963 --> 01:09:00,223
Bitcoin transaction that you send out and broadcast and propose to everyone is against consensus,

650
01:09:00,863 --> 01:09:05,583
literally everyone is going to say, hey, this isn't the Bitcoin transaction. Get out of here.

651
01:09:05,583 --> 01:09:15,463
policy is is a different thing uh node policy is users can set their own parameters for what they

652
01:09:15,463 --> 01:09:22,923
will or will not choose to relay and ultimately what they will decide to to mine so you can have a

653
01:09:22,923 --> 01:09:29,903
a stricter policy than consensus but you can't have a looser policy than consensus basically so

654
01:09:29,903 --> 01:09:35,803
consensus is the ultimate limit and policy, you can make settings changes to that underneath. I

655
01:09:35,803 --> 01:09:44,523
hope that's clear enough. And a soft fork is basically a restriction in these consensus rules,

656
01:09:44,523 --> 01:09:49,703
ultimately, like it's fully backwards compatible with the rest of the chain, because

657
01:09:49,703 --> 01:09:59,403
it's restricting, technically, the things that can be put onto Bitcoin. So it means that you

658
01:09:59,403 --> 01:10:05,963
could do fewer things on Bitcoin, but they were all valid before. A hard fork is whenever you open

659
01:10:05,963 --> 01:10:14,003
up new functionality that basically, if you decide to reject that, you would be rejecting a new

660
01:10:14,003 --> 01:10:22,323
valid set of consensus rules on another chain. And so effectively, you lose the backing of the

661
01:10:22,323 --> 01:10:29,843
the network is what happens. And then you get left with a coin split is what happens. So this

662
01:10:29,843 --> 01:10:39,463
is how Bitcoin Cash was implemented, sorry, emerged, was that it ended up being a hard fork

663
01:10:39,463 --> 01:10:48,883
off. Now, what's being proposed here is a soft fork. So what this means is that a smaller subset

664
01:10:48,883 --> 01:10:51,643
of what was valid will be valid in the future

665
01:10:51,643 --> 01:10:56,283
for those who signal to accept this soft fork.

666
01:10:56,703 --> 01:11:00,563
I'm not going to get into deeply the technical details here

667
01:11:00,563 --> 01:11:02,823
for the BIP, unless you want me to,

668
01:11:03,243 --> 01:11:06,123
but the high level is that, first of all,

669
01:11:06,303 --> 01:11:10,703
the top-level marquee change is that op return is being set

670
01:11:10,703 --> 01:11:12,723
at 83 bytes on a consensus level.

671
01:11:13,123 --> 01:11:16,223
So there used to be no limit on how big op return could be,

672
01:11:16,323 --> 01:11:18,023
so the block size was the effective limit.

673
01:11:18,883 --> 01:11:21,003
In the BIP, 83 bytes.

674
01:11:21,003 --> 01:11:28,463
So the previous policy default would now be set as the consensus level.

675
01:11:28,583 --> 01:11:29,683
You cannot go above it.

676
01:11:30,383 --> 01:11:37,863
A bunch of other changes are also included to things to limit other mechanisms for pushing scripts, basically.

677
01:11:38,323 --> 01:11:41,163
Pushing scripts, pushing other types of data.

678
01:11:41,523 --> 01:11:46,043
It theoretically addresses these stamps to a certain extent.

679
01:11:46,043 --> 01:11:50,483
It addresses the inscriptions.

680
01:11:51,423 --> 01:11:55,803
Basically, the way it addresses the inscriptions is it gets rid of op if entirely.

681
01:11:56,043 --> 01:12:02,863
So I was saying op false op if is the kind of the signature for inscriptions.

682
01:12:03,043 --> 01:12:05,423
Well, it says op if is no longer valid.

683
01:12:05,523 --> 01:12:08,203
If your transaction includes op if, you're no longer valid.

684
01:12:08,443 --> 01:12:14,703
It gets rid of what's called the taproot annex, which would be another place to just put data that really hasn't seen any use.

685
01:12:14,703 --> 01:12:16,103
So it's just disabling that.

686
01:12:17,943 --> 01:12:22,923
So basically disabling a whole bunch of methods for spam to get on to Bitcoin.

687
01:12:25,323 --> 01:12:27,023
I'll actually pause here.

688
01:12:27,103 --> 01:12:33,763
Do you have anything specific to kind of direct this a little further as far as the actual what this is?

689
01:12:34,443 --> 01:12:37,183
No, I think this is a nice buildup.

690
01:12:37,543 --> 01:12:40,463
So get as technical and as geeky as you want.

691
01:12:40,463 --> 01:12:45,623
So, you know, let's get people up to speed as to what's going on.

692
01:12:46,103 --> 01:12:46,243
Okay.

693
01:12:46,543 --> 01:13:04,009
So now maybe I give kind of my little thesis here as far as why I think something like this is justified And then we can kind of talk a little bit about the merits of the BIP itself and my positions on that But here bringing it back

694
01:13:04,009 --> 01:13:10,769
to kind of Fiat Land and my background. So I'm an industrial control systems cybersecurity

695
01:13:10,769 --> 01:13:17,749
professional by trade. That's a lot of words to say, basically, I do cybersecurity for the things

696
01:13:17,749 --> 01:13:27,429
that control factories, electrical grids, oil and gas pipelines, ships, basically anything

697
01:13:27,429 --> 01:13:31,529
that where something happens in the real world is controlled by these industrial control systems.

698
01:13:31,949 --> 01:13:35,889
And you have to do a lot of things differently than you would in essentially the traditional

699
01:13:35,889 --> 01:13:38,549
IT world with computers and phones and this and that.

700
01:13:39,609 --> 01:13:44,529
Companies and individuals are usually very concerned about their own personal or company

701
01:13:44,529 --> 01:13:51,209
data, one, it getting out, but also that it not being tampered with and all this, like

702
01:13:51,209 --> 01:13:56,369
all of these things of hacking, cases of hacking, an individual getting hacked.

703
01:13:56,849 --> 01:14:01,269
This is almost universally someone gets their password stolen, basically.

704
01:14:01,449 --> 01:14:04,929
So this is a case of their data being leaked.

705
01:14:05,669 --> 01:14:11,509
And then someone can go and do all sorts of nefarious things with that, with the logins

706
01:14:11,509 --> 01:14:15,489
to your email or your bank account or something like this.

707
01:14:15,849 --> 01:14:18,769
That's what individuals and companies are usually concerned about.

708
01:14:19,469 --> 01:14:23,909
What industrial control systems are concerned about is that the thing has got to keep running

709
01:14:23,909 --> 01:14:25,549
and it's got to keep running safely.

710
01:14:26,249 --> 01:14:31,249
So another term for these industrial control systems is critical infrastructure.

711
01:14:31,249 --> 01:14:36,749
Now, this is a bit of a more of a precise definition that is essentially set by mostly

712
01:14:36,749 --> 01:14:43,869
governments or governing bodies for electricity or whatever you call it, not whatever you call it,

713
01:14:43,869 --> 01:14:51,209
etc. But critical infrastructure are basically those things that are considered essential to

714
01:14:51,209 --> 01:14:58,369
the safe and smooth operation of society. And so the vast majority of things that fall under

715
01:14:58,369 --> 01:15:02,489
industrial control systems also are considered critical infrastructure. This is again,

716
01:15:02,489 --> 01:15:10,589
electrical grids. This is traffic control systems, communications, energy. So anything related to

717
01:15:10,589 --> 01:15:16,989
energy, electricity, oil and gas, and transmission generation, all of this stuff is considered

718
01:15:16,989 --> 01:15:23,549
critical infrastructure, water, water systems, transport, the list goes on and on and on. This

719
01:15:23,549 --> 01:15:28,169
stuff is considered critical infrastructure. The internet is considered critical infrastructure

720
01:15:28,169 --> 01:15:33,849
because of the dependence of everyone on the internet in order to communicate.

721
01:15:33,989 --> 01:15:35,449
We're communicating over the internet.

722
01:15:36,529 --> 01:15:42,909
So something I'd never heard anyone say before is Bitcoin is critical infrastructure.

723
01:15:43,849 --> 01:15:47,489
And as soon as that thought came to my mind over the course of just going back and forth

724
01:15:47,489 --> 01:15:50,329
with people on this, it's just light bulb.

725
01:15:51,049 --> 01:15:57,869
Bitcoin fits the definition of critical infrastructure absolutely, because it's this base monetary

726
01:15:57,869 --> 01:16:03,689
layer for what we can build an entirely new society on. It's not critical in the sense of

727
01:16:03,689 --> 01:16:08,549
that some government is deciding it's critical. It's critical because I'm deciding it's critical.

728
01:16:08,829 --> 01:16:11,909
And it's critical because every user of the network is deciding it's critical.

729
01:16:11,909 --> 01:16:20,129
I think anyone who becomes to a certain level a Bitcoiner, the functioning of Bitcoin is critical

730
01:16:20,129 --> 01:16:28,789
for many parts of their life, at the very least to a similar degree as the internet itself.

731
01:16:29,849 --> 01:16:37,369
So my follow-on to this, because I don't think that's a massive, that's not a massive insight

732
01:16:37,369 --> 01:16:43,449
that Bitcoin is critical infrastructure, but the critical infrastructure as a term,

733
01:16:44,089 --> 01:16:49,909
as how the implications for how this must be defended and how you go about defending it,

734
01:16:49,909 --> 01:16:51,149
That's what I'm talking about.

735
01:16:51,629 --> 01:16:57,269
Well, governments would consider the banking industry to be critical infrastructure, right?

736
01:16:57,669 --> 01:16:58,109
Absolutely.

737
01:16:58,329 --> 01:17:02,929
Payment systems, Visa, MasterCard, Swift, all of this stuff.

738
01:17:03,249 --> 01:17:05,249
Yes, the same thing, same reason.

739
01:17:05,489 --> 01:17:05,589
Yes.

740
01:17:06,769 --> 01:17:13,949
So where this leads and where this ties into kind of my perspective here is that, so to

741
01:17:13,949 --> 01:17:21,789
To credentialize myself a little bit, I hold the CISSP certification, which is one of the

742
01:17:22,469 --> 01:17:29,749
most commonly requested management cybersecurity certifications out there. I also hold one called

743
01:17:29,749 --> 01:17:34,789
the GICSP. This is the equivalent for industrial control systems by a different organization.

744
01:17:35,249 --> 01:17:40,009
I'm not trying to pump myself up here. This is all visible on my LinkedIn, by the way. Feel free

745
01:17:40,009 --> 01:17:46,529
to go check that out. It's all visible. This is to say that I know my stuff. I'm credentialized.

746
01:17:46,689 --> 01:17:53,429
That's not everything there is to it, but those were difficult examinations. I will also say a

747
01:17:53,429 --> 01:17:58,149
little bit about that in order to get these things, you kind of have to have a mile wide

748
01:17:58,149 --> 01:18:05,709
of knowledge, but that's an inch deep. So my job, the roles that I've had over my career are largely

749
01:18:05,709 --> 01:18:10,369
about knowing what how long has that been luke and it's about about 10 years at this point in the

750
01:18:10,369 --> 01:18:16,249
in the combined industrial control system cyber security so i i don't i don't mean to say that

751
01:18:16,249 --> 01:18:21,269
i'm like an expert in in any of this stuff but i know my stuff that's that's that's where i'm at

752
01:18:21,269 --> 01:18:27,769
i i kind of consider myself uh i'm not a junior anymore i'm i'm a journeyman that's that's how i

753
01:18:27,769 --> 01:18:32,689
would uh describe myself i know what i know and i know a fair bit about what i don't know

754
01:18:32,689 --> 01:18:48,209
So that's which I think is important. And my job has been to know a lot about what to do and then digging into how to do it later. But I don't need to hold that stuff in my brain all the time. So that's just a little bit of contextualization for this stuff.

755
01:18:48,209 --> 01:18:55,989
and in terms of how you go about defending this critical infrastructure stuff a whole lot of this

756
01:18:55,989 --> 01:19:01,229
is about putting in layers of defenses and this this actually this actually is true for for the

757
01:19:01,229 --> 01:19:07,569
rest of cyber security generally but the the key principle here is that you cannot ever

758
01:19:07,569 --> 01:19:14,049
stop someone who has unlimited resources and unlimited motivation to get into your system

759
01:19:14,049 --> 01:19:23,449
You can't. That's a government, that's a really, really motivated competitor, industrial espionage sort of thing.

760
01:19:23,449 --> 01:19:28,649
But you can make it as difficult as possible for them to do the nasty things that they want.

761
01:19:29,449 --> 01:19:37,389
And so the main framework that I've used in my career is something called ISA, IEC.

762
01:19:37,689 --> 01:19:40,889
And I really wish I had the acronyms to spell out, by the way.

763
01:19:40,889 --> 01:19:47,009
Industrial Society of Automation is one of the ones that goes into this one, ISA IEC 62443.

764
01:19:47,549 --> 01:19:53,549
And they couldn't have picked a better number. I say that number like 20 times a day. But there's

765
01:19:53,549 --> 01:20:02,429
ISO 27001 is a really common IT cybersecurity certification. And at least that one kind of has

766
01:20:02,429 --> 01:20:11,449
thousands in it. But yeah, 62443, whatever. This framework basically sets the controls.

767
01:20:11,809 --> 01:20:17,509
Cybersecurity is about implementing controls to defend against threats. I can go even more

768
01:20:17,509 --> 01:20:21,229
specific into things like what is risk and what is a vulnerability, but that's a little boring.

769
01:20:21,229 --> 01:20:30,049
I'll save that for my book. Yeah, something like that. Working on it, working on it.

770
01:20:30,049 --> 01:20:35,529
the main thing is you put in controls to defend against threats.

771
01:20:36,169 --> 01:20:39,569
And in these frameworks, this industrial cybersecurity framework,

772
01:20:40,409 --> 01:20:47,109
the threat levels are basically ranked in terms of how capable and how motivated they are.

773
01:20:47,109 --> 01:20:50,929
So the very basic level of controls is actually against accidents.

774
01:20:51,349 --> 01:20:57,109
Like literally someone unsuspecting gets into a system that they're not supposed to be in,

775
01:20:57,109 --> 01:21:02,469
And they just cause havoc that they weren't supposed to.

776
01:21:02,629 --> 01:21:03,669
That's the level.

777
01:21:03,809 --> 01:21:05,589
It's very, very, very low level stuff.

778
01:21:05,669 --> 01:21:08,429
And it's super basic things like, do you have a password?

779
01:21:09,969 --> 01:21:15,249
In many of these factory settings or industrial control systems settings, the computers there

780
01:21:15,249 --> 01:21:17,909
that run everything, many of them literally don't have passwords.

781
01:21:18,329 --> 01:21:22,329
And many of them are literally running 20 year old operating systems and have been running

782
01:21:22,329 --> 01:21:22,989
for 20 years.

783
01:21:23,389 --> 01:21:25,349
So it's crazy out there.

784
01:21:25,349 --> 01:21:32,489
If you get into one of these systems, you can actually do a lot of damage, which is why I have a job.

785
01:21:34,229 --> 01:21:41,449
So the really basic level of stuff, I actually analogize this basically to the policy filters.

786
01:21:41,809 --> 01:21:45,589
It's stuff to prevent the really, really easy stuff.

787
01:21:46,069 --> 01:21:52,369
If someone is stopped by basically just a password, they're not very motivated.

788
01:21:52,669 --> 01:21:55,109
There's malware viruses and all this.

789
01:21:55,109 --> 01:22:01,969
just floating around on the internet looking for stuff to break into. And if you don't have any

790
01:22:01,969 --> 01:22:06,569
password, if you don't have any antivirus and you're connected to the internet, you can just

791
01:22:06,569 --> 01:22:15,209
some random little bug that hunts for private keys could get onto your system and just

792
01:22:15,209 --> 01:22:22,069
do whatever it wants if you don't have any protections at all. And so that's the really

793
01:22:22,069 --> 01:22:31,549
basic level. And so that's level one. Level two is basically when threat actors start to get a

794
01:22:31,549 --> 01:22:35,629
little more motivated and these are a little bit more targeted. I consider these to be kind of the

795
01:22:35,629 --> 01:22:41,189
filter level stuff. But then you get into more and more expensive things, things that are a lot

796
01:22:41,189 --> 01:22:46,329
harder to implement, things such as literally not being able to communicate in and out of your

797
01:22:46,329 --> 01:22:50,929
industrial environment. So in other words, totally locking off the internet almost completely.

798
01:22:50,929 --> 01:22:55,929
this stuff gets more and more expensive and it gets more and more difficult to overcome

799
01:22:55,929 --> 01:23:04,929
to the point where essentially militaries and governments consider these things to be

800
01:23:04,929 --> 01:23:06,929
worth spending the money on basically.

801
01:23:06,929 --> 01:23:10,929
Hardly anyone in the corporate world would go so far as to any of that.

802
01:23:10,929 --> 01:23:19,889
But the point I'm trying to get at is that the layers of protections get more and more advanced based on the

803
01:23:19,915 --> 01:23:26,275
level of threat that you're anticipating receiving. Now, I basically say all of that,

804
01:23:26,395 --> 01:23:32,215
and now I'm prefacing all of this with Bitcoin is not a company. Despite what we said back

805
01:23:32,215 --> 01:23:36,175
with that core might be compromised and blah, blah, blah, run like a company.

806
01:23:36,915 --> 01:23:44,775
Bitcoin is a decentralized network. Cybersecurity, defense, whatever it is, has to be undertaken

807
01:23:44,775 --> 01:23:50,075
differently to what a corporation or a government or an individual can do. I, as an individual,

808
01:23:50,255 --> 01:23:58,955
can choose to lock my phone with whatever settings I want to keep myself secure, my own personal

809
01:23:58,955 --> 01:24:04,475
data. A corporation can similarly say, hey, we're going to do this and that to make ourselves more

810
01:24:04,475 --> 01:24:08,175
cyber secure. And maybe they have to spend a lot of money and it takes some time, but they get the

811
01:24:08,175 --> 01:24:13,635
thing done. A government's same thing. But with Bitcoin, it's entirely different. It's a

812
01:24:13,635 --> 01:24:20,115
decentralized system, users can choose to run their own nodes, and they can choose to have their

813
01:24:20,115 --> 01:24:26,275
own levels of policy. And ultimately, the final backstop is the consensus rules themselves. You

814
01:24:26,275 --> 01:24:31,055
can't do something that is against the consensus rules of Bitcoin. That at least is the place where

815
01:24:31,055 --> 01:24:39,615
we butt up against it. But the insight that I'll say comes from kind of my area is that

816
01:24:39,615 --> 01:24:48,055
is that well over 90% of attempted cybersecurity incidents are stopped by the really, really basic

817
01:24:48,055 --> 01:24:55,415
stuff, like just literally having a password. It goes to 95%, 97%, 98% when you start to add in

818
01:24:55,415 --> 01:25:00,095
more complicated things like multi-factor authentication or network segmentation or

819
01:25:00,095 --> 01:25:07,175
things like this or having an antivirus, right? But the thing is, there are so many of these

820
01:25:07,175 --> 01:25:12,255
cybersecurity incidents that go undetected, unreported, right? Because they're simply

821
01:25:12,255 --> 01:25:20,655
stopped by one of these layers of filters, right? So the thing is, what level of, say,

822
01:25:20,875 --> 01:25:27,135
spammer is being stopped by the policy filters that already exist? Well, we got some evidence

823
01:25:27,135 --> 01:25:32,415
for this. When the policy was dropped, there were a couple of companies, and I'm not going to shut

824
01:25:32,415 --> 01:25:37,715
them out, who said, yay, we can finally start to do the thing that we've wanted to do on Bitcoin

825
01:25:37,715 --> 01:25:46,315
so much easier now that this policy limit is gone, right? And the thing is the limits that are

826
01:25:46,315 --> 01:25:52,915
essentially set by consensus that say, hey, you can do this type of transaction, but not that type

827
01:25:52,915 --> 01:26:00,335
of transaction. If we were to restrict that with something like this bit 444, it's not a given

828
01:26:00,335 --> 01:26:04,535
that these attack vectors are automatically going to move to something else.

829
01:26:04,695 --> 01:26:06,955
It makes it more difficult, more costly.

830
01:26:07,135 --> 01:26:11,315
They have to do something in order to change their tactics.

831
01:26:11,975 --> 01:26:14,315
And basically, at the end of the day,

832
01:26:14,915 --> 01:26:17,835
every organization and individual in the world

833
01:26:17,835 --> 01:26:22,035
has to play this cat and mouse game against threat actors,

834
01:26:22,155 --> 01:26:25,575
people who want to steal your data or steal your stuff, whatever it is.

835
01:26:25,575 --> 01:26:33,015
And my argument is that Bitcoin also has to play that game to a certain extent.

836
01:26:33,495 --> 01:26:34,495
We have to do it differently.

837
01:26:34,995 --> 01:26:37,055
We have to come to consensus with each other.

838
01:26:38,095 --> 01:26:41,335
Individuals can set their own policy limits for themselves.

839
01:26:41,875 --> 01:26:48,615
Users can choose to put their hash rate towards mining templates that have the transactions

840
01:26:48,615 --> 01:26:49,915
they want, whatever.

841
01:26:50,555 --> 01:26:54,835
But I consider spam on Bitcoin to be an attack.

842
01:26:54,835 --> 01:27:03,895
I do. It's not the biggest attack there is, but it is one. And when it really disrupts the usability

843
01:27:03,895 --> 01:27:10,315
of Bitcoin, then it's an actual serious one. It's degrading the availability of the network.

844
01:27:10,495 --> 01:27:17,715
And that was the thing. The availability of the system to be used properly is the key point in

845
01:27:17,715 --> 01:27:24,675
critical infrastructure systems. If you can't use your network, then you're done. You might have

846
01:27:24,675 --> 01:27:31,935
heard in the news that Russia has DDoSed this or that website or service. Here in Finland,

847
01:27:32,075 --> 01:27:39,155
we had a DDoS of the transportation network. So everyone got free train rides for the rest of the

848
01:27:39,155 --> 01:27:47,075
day, just as the way of solving that. But you take away the ability to use something and the system

849
01:27:47,075 --> 01:27:53,595
is no longer worth it. So that's the angle I'm coming from. And it is, just to be clear about

850
01:27:53,595 --> 01:28:01,295
something. It's an anti-ossification message, begrudgingly. I wish we could. But I do believe

851
01:28:01,295 --> 01:28:07,415
that Bitcoin, the Bitcoin network, the Bitcoin users need to come together every once in a while

852
01:28:07,415 --> 01:28:12,895
to defend against some kind of threat or attack. That's going to include quantum. I don't even

853
01:28:12,895 --> 01:28:17,075
really want to get into that because that's a whole other thing. There are bugs that will need

854
01:28:17,075 --> 01:28:23,435
to be fixed before a certain date, before Bitcoin will stop working. We can't ossify completely and

855
01:28:23,435 --> 01:28:32,735
it's a call to vigilance and it's a call to be be flexible and open to respond to these threats

856
01:28:32,735 --> 01:28:39,555
vigilance that's the key word uh i used i used to just hashtag stay vigilant like uh you know

857
01:28:39,555 --> 01:28:46,355
because you know if if not you then who who else is watching there's only the you know few is a

858
01:28:46,355 --> 01:28:51,895
meme for a reason and uh there's only few of us here like i said earlier more and more of us are

859
01:28:51,895 --> 01:28:58,995
joining the network every day but still very few of us um in the grand scheme of things have found

860
01:28:58,995 --> 01:29:07,875
this thing and uh are building our our futures on it and like you said so let's let's take a typical

861
01:29:07,875 --> 01:29:14,355
scenario like um it could be transport it could be oil and gas it could be some oil and gas right

862
01:29:14,355 --> 01:29:21,015
in critical infrastructure obviously and what's your what's your threat vector there well like you

863
01:29:21,015 --> 01:29:26,435
say you could just have some like kid in the basement just randomly accidentally gets involved

864
01:29:26,435 --> 01:29:34,335
in some kind of online hackathon and finds his way into some oil and gas company system and

865
01:29:34,335 --> 01:29:40,555
just creates havoc because they I mean very unlikely that they would be that lax because

866
01:29:40,555 --> 01:29:45,595
they'd have someone like you that has looked at the threat vectors and a threat vectors could be

867
01:29:45,595 --> 01:29:54,015
environmentalist activists turning up in rubber dinghies to blow up a pipe or something to,

868
01:29:54,115 --> 01:30:02,195
you know, make a statement and then claim they did it two days later in order to raise awareness.

869
01:30:02,555 --> 01:30:11,675
That's a classic. So now you've got to like put your mind to Bitcoin now, as all of us should do.

870
01:30:11,675 --> 01:30:19,655
think critically what are the attack vectors how high does it go it goes to the very fucking top

871
01:30:19,655 --> 01:30:30,235
we're talking state we are talking like you said unlimited money with any means possible

872
01:30:30,235 --> 01:30:37,855
and the desire the incentive to bring this thing down

873
01:30:37,855 --> 01:30:44,775
doesn't get any more critical than that i don't think i have i

874
01:30:44,775 --> 01:30:52,935
was that hyperbolic in any way no i don't think it was and i think understanding what we're up

875
01:30:52,935 --> 01:31:00,255
against is important and understanding exactly how bitcoin can be attacked is is also important

876
01:31:00,255 --> 01:31:05,275
uh just to be clear about something i don't think spam or arbitrary data is the is the most

877
01:31:05,275 --> 01:31:11,875
most critical one. The capture of the reference implementation, I think, is also more sinister.

878
01:31:12,875 --> 01:31:20,275
I have been being called out on X for this as far as that I'm maybe making accusations about this

879
01:31:20,275 --> 01:31:28,235
that are unfounded, that the running of Bitcoin Core is transparent, the funding is transparent.

880
01:31:28,235 --> 01:31:31,555
and that is true.

881
01:31:31,755 --> 01:31:36,415
I do acknowledge that all of this stuff is being done out in the open

882
01:31:36,415 --> 01:31:43,655
except the thing is it is run essentially like a central organization

883
01:31:43,655 --> 01:31:46,855
and it's not like there's anything inherently wrong with that.

884
01:31:46,855 --> 01:31:50,715
It's just that the ethos is a little off there

885
01:31:50,715 --> 01:31:54,595
and then there's one specific Bitcoin maintainer

886
01:31:54,595 --> 01:31:57,135
who it's been going the rounds on Twitter

887
01:31:57,135 --> 01:32:00,595
that she doesn't really like Bitcoin maximalists

888
01:32:00,595 --> 01:32:02,855
and is a little pro NFTs and all this

889
01:32:02,855 --> 01:32:06,595
and was quite junior in her career

890
01:32:06,595 --> 01:32:08,995
when she was made a Bitcoin maintainer.

891
01:32:09,715 --> 01:32:13,475
And basically all I ask about that is how did this happen?

892
01:32:13,575 --> 01:32:17,535
How did this end up being what was considered the right move here?

893
01:32:17,635 --> 01:32:21,595
Who's making the decisions and how are these decisions getting made?

894
01:32:21,695 --> 01:32:25,075
That's the part that seems quite opaque to me.

895
01:32:25,075 --> 01:32:27,315
I'm happy to have conversations about this.

896
01:32:27,315 --> 01:32:38,315
And I do hope I'm wrong to the extent that those who are working on Bitcoin Core are actually Bitcoin ethos aligned.

897
01:32:38,315 --> 01:32:54,543
But their actions and what they done to me indicates that they more concerned about increasing the utility of Bitcoin There a whole thing where you give all of these developers a whole pile of money and say

898
01:32:54,703 --> 01:33:01,223
go work on Bitcoin Core. And I don't think all they're doing is bug fixes and security patches.

899
01:33:01,783 --> 01:33:09,023
And I do admit here also that they are actually defending against security threats on their own.

900
01:33:09,023 --> 01:33:15,843
there's a cybersecurity angle to Bitcoin Core. You should upgrade to the latest versions of the

901
01:33:15,843 --> 01:33:23,963
Bitcoin Core software, except if you consider the changes they've made to be essentially a downgrade.

902
01:33:24,063 --> 01:33:28,303
Some people are even calling it malware. I think NOTS is great because it's merging in

903
01:33:28,303 --> 01:33:36,943
security changes that Bitcoin Core provides. There was recently apparently a bug that was

904
01:33:36,943 --> 01:33:41,683
disclosed that didn't get fixed in the latest core release that Luke went and changed in knots,

905
01:33:41,783 --> 01:33:47,723
right? So you should run your latest node implementation because there are actually

906
01:33:47,723 --> 01:33:55,623
cybersecurity vulnerabilities in older releases. But the thing is, as the reference implementation,

907
01:33:56,003 --> 01:34:02,643
core is the one that basically gets to decide when to change course and when to change policies and

908
01:34:02,643 --> 01:34:11,903
and why. And they have been trying to get their kind of message out to the plebs. But the message

909
01:34:11,903 --> 01:34:19,363
to the plebs has been a lot of, well, hey, we're right. So you should agree with that. And not a

910
01:34:19,363 --> 01:34:26,683
lot of listening to reasons why you might not think that they're right. And just to attempt to

911
01:34:26,683 --> 01:34:31,923
steel man this a little bit, the reason for the policy change to op return that they made,

912
01:34:31,923 --> 01:34:40,503
taking away the limit was basically that there is the ability for transactions using larger

913
01:34:40,503 --> 01:34:47,523
opertern to get into blocks by side channels, Libre Relay, going directly to miners. And this

914
01:34:47,523 --> 01:34:55,103
is starting to become more and more common. There is also a set of actors that are basically using

915
01:34:55,103 --> 01:35:01,903
these fake pub keys and could be using opertern instead if the policy limit were relaxed. And so

916
01:35:01,903 --> 01:35:13,763
So their answer was to just completely remove all limits and say that, well, because consensus rules, again, the strictest rules that we've got, says that you can have up to one megabyte op return.

917
01:35:13,923 --> 01:35:20,023
Well, by policy, we should allow the relay of up to one megabyte op return and everything will be more transparent.

918
01:35:20,703 --> 01:35:21,763
Everything will be easier.

919
01:35:22,803 --> 01:35:26,783
And so that's a valid technical argument.

920
01:35:26,783 --> 01:35:39,703
And if you're only looking at this from the perspective of looking at the transactions that are bouncing around people's mempools and eventually making it into blocks, I can understand why that realization is there.

921
01:35:39,983 --> 01:35:44,063
But the point that I come back to is that filters absolutely do work.

922
01:35:44,543 --> 01:35:45,323
Filters work.

923
01:35:45,943 --> 01:35:47,963
We just don't see all the stuff that's filtered out.

924
01:35:48,283 --> 01:35:50,723
And that's true in the cybersecurity world.

925
01:35:50,723 --> 01:35:55,943
You have to do all these studies to see how many things are actually filtered out.

926
01:35:55,943 --> 01:36:08,483
If there's someone who's working in the security operations center for some company, they can tell you how many attempts to get into their system there actually are versus how many start to become a problem.

927
01:36:08,683 --> 01:36:10,323
Filters and controls, they work.

928
01:36:10,563 --> 01:36:20,363
And so taking the filter away, it definitely means that more of these arbitrary data transactions are able to get onto the chain more easily.

929
01:36:20,563 --> 01:36:23,783
And then who's to say how much demand is going to be there for that?

930
01:36:24,723 --> 01:36:32,423
Now, again, I come back to you that the Steelman point for this is that by not allowing OpReturn,

931
01:36:32,743 --> 01:36:40,183
not allowing putting data into the OpReturn, you increase the amount of public keys that are being used for data encoding.

932
01:36:40,183 --> 01:36:51,323
So there's a bunch of these new layer twos that use some kind of proof or another that has to be a certain transaction size.

933
01:36:51,323 --> 01:36:57,643
And when they run out of operaturn space, they've simply been using additional public keys to fill out their encoding space.

934
01:36:58,203 --> 01:37:00,043
And so that creates that UTXO bloat.

935
01:37:00,343 --> 01:37:09,903
And if they're going to do it anyway, well, maybe the idea is give them the bigger trash can, so to say.

936
01:37:10,423 --> 01:37:18,003
But I think going all the way to one megabyte is just absolutely like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, basically.

937
01:37:18,003 --> 01:37:32,463
If there was some valid reason to raise the opportune limit to, say, 256 bytes, 160 bytes or 256 bytes is being tossed around by quite many people as a solution here.

938
01:37:33,383 --> 01:37:38,823
Yeah, that would have, I think, gone over with drastically less controversy.

939
01:37:38,823 --> 01:37:43,203
Or at least the controversy would have said, well, hey, you're in the pocket of this or that company, blah, blah, blah.

940
01:37:43,203 --> 01:37:49,063
but maybe CORE would have actually had a chance to like communicate why they're doing it that they

941
01:37:49,063 --> 01:37:58,403
were just trying to to reduce bloat of the UTXO set so um the the issue to me really is that

942
01:37:58,403 --> 01:38:04,923
CORE went and made these changes unilaterally the this change was incredibly controversial

943
01:38:04,923 --> 01:38:12,923
had more NACs the the the terminology here is AC for agree acknowledge and no NAC no

944
01:38:12,923 --> 01:38:20,863
acknowledge for do not agree. So it had tons of NACs, but they were ignored. More NACs than NACs,

945
01:38:20,943 --> 01:38:25,983
and they were ignored by the team because they were mostly coming from non-regular contributors.

946
01:38:26,823 --> 01:38:30,443
So these are people who have a GitHub account who decided to come on and say,

947
01:38:30,443 --> 01:38:36,623
well, we disagree with this. And I believe Mechanic, Bitcoin Mechanic was banned

948
01:38:36,623 --> 01:38:40,743
from the Bitcoin Core GitHub for this.

949
01:38:41,663 --> 01:38:44,763
I think Luke has been locked out for a long time, apparently,

950
01:38:45,503 --> 01:38:47,583
from being able to contribute over there.

951
01:38:48,543 --> 01:38:52,723
So yeah, basically Core ignored opposition.

952
01:38:53,243 --> 01:38:57,203
And what they say to that is, well, should every change be democratic?

953
01:38:57,543 --> 01:38:59,863
Should every change be at the whim of the user base?

954
01:39:00,563 --> 01:39:03,763
And there's a valued argument there that they should be able to do

955
01:39:03,763 --> 01:39:07,863
what they want in terms of making a software implementation,

956
01:39:07,863 --> 01:39:10,323
but it's the users who get to say,

957
01:39:10,483 --> 01:39:12,923
well, hey, I agree with this change or not.

958
01:39:13,203 --> 01:39:15,663
And since Bitcoin Core comes as a package,

959
01:39:15,663 --> 01:39:17,283
you kind of have to agree with everything

960
01:39:17,283 --> 01:39:19,663
or discard it entirely.

961
01:39:21,243 --> 01:39:22,403
And so the thing...

962
01:39:22,403 --> 01:39:23,863
To be clear there as well,

963
01:39:24,403 --> 01:39:26,583
with the NACs and the ACTS,

964
01:39:26,883 --> 01:39:29,663
the terminology that's used there on GitHub,

965
01:39:29,663 --> 01:39:38,143
anybody could create a github account and if you ignore if you agree with um with with the

966
01:39:38,143 --> 01:39:43,643
you know op return set to one megabyte you can go and act if you disagree you can go and that

967
01:39:43,643 --> 01:39:49,143
and if i remember rightly um that like you said the nacks were far outweighing the axe

968
01:39:49,143 --> 01:39:56,863
uh and then the the kind of rationalization was that i was just you guys spinning up a load of

969
01:39:56,863 --> 01:40:01,683
anonymous accounts on GitHub and just throwing the nags up there to try and muddy the water and

970
01:40:01,683 --> 01:40:09,643
throw us off course. And it's like, wow, like, you know, maybe they, maybe, maybe not. But the point

971
01:40:09,643 --> 01:40:19,083
being, like, you can't prove it. And there could be 1000 people out there, like, just general

972
01:40:19,083 --> 01:40:24,943
Bitcoin plebs that are following this, and decided, you know what, I'm going to create the GitHub

973
01:40:24,943 --> 01:40:29,503
account. I'm going to use a pseudonymous name. I'm going to put that in. And this could be where

974
01:40:29,503 --> 01:40:37,563
the BIP44 has come from, BIP444 has come from, or the RTSD, whatever, RTDS. I can't remember what

975
01:40:37,563 --> 01:40:47,043
you said now. So it's a fascinating, it's been a real weird one. And I have empathy with a lot

976
01:40:47,043 --> 01:40:52,203
of people that are new here, might have been in Bitcoin nine to 18 months and trying to figure

977
01:40:52,203 --> 01:40:56,703
all of this out and all of this language has been thrown at them. It's hard to build conviction

978
01:40:56,703 --> 01:41:04,083
when this is happening, but it is important. It's going to be a very important milestone for Bitcoin

979
01:41:04,083 --> 01:41:10,423
and wherever we go now, it's going to be very, very interesting. So how are you kind of

980
01:41:10,423 --> 01:41:17,463
weighing in on this latest bit? What are your views? What have you added to it?

981
01:41:17,463 --> 01:41:24,123
well my bottom line is i directionally support it i do think there are some things that need to

982
01:41:24,123 --> 01:41:32,863
be improved and i i will say that they are taking criticism uh the the doth on om was was banned from

983
01:41:32,863 --> 01:41:39,343
from x fairly early on it's it said that there was a lot of reports from the kind of bitcoin

984
01:41:39,343 --> 01:41:45,323
core crowd and and a mass reporting campaign from their side to to silence the account and get them

985
01:41:45,323 --> 01:41:51,103
off twitter uh but then but then everyone complained that they have no one to nowhere to

986
01:41:51,103 --> 01:41:57,123
to register their feedback to and somehow he got the account back or made a new account something

987
01:41:57,123 --> 01:42:01,883
like this and another another point here people should be very aware of like this this datum om

988
01:42:01,883 --> 01:42:20,932
could be a male could be a female could be a group of people it could be five or six people sitting there looking at this stuff using that one alias to we we have no idea the mystery no we have no idea and and and so so now he he back on

989
01:42:20,932 --> 01:42:28,471
twitter i'm just going to use he by default but but whatever um dathon is back on on x and there's

990
01:42:28,471 --> 01:42:36,452
also a telegram channel that that is is fairly easy to to find i'm told uh uh where where he's

991
01:42:36,452 --> 01:42:43,271
he's there and responding to questions and things um so so so the thing is um he's there he's

992
01:42:43,271 --> 01:42:50,151
responding to feedback the initial draft and the motivation for for the bip was most of it was

993
01:42:50,151 --> 01:42:57,312
about kind of the legal risk due to to child abuse material and that's been taken out and i believe

994
01:42:57,312 --> 01:43:03,491
rightfully because it's really, I think it's a bad hill to die on basically to say that this is

995
01:43:03,491 --> 01:43:09,471
the only reason why we're doing this and why it's an emergency and everything. There's an updated

996
01:43:09,471 --> 01:43:15,432
motivation that I agree with strongly because it's effectively a monetary maximalist manifesto

997
01:43:15,432 --> 01:43:21,812
and it's very short, but it's very, very good, the motivation. I think it's hard to argue with it.

998
01:43:21,812 --> 01:43:24,271
Giacomo posted some very good measured

999
01:43:24,271 --> 01:43:26,511
critiques of the motivation

1000
01:43:26,511 --> 01:43:28,552
just in terms of the practical implications

1001
01:43:28,552 --> 01:43:30,391
but anyway I think Giacomo

1002
01:43:30,391 --> 01:43:32,212
has been a very good voice here by the way

1003
01:43:32,212 --> 01:43:34,591
Tone Vase and Jimmy Song

1004
01:43:34,591 --> 01:43:36,312
have been doing a series

1005
01:43:36,312 --> 01:43:38,332
covering this in much more depth

1006
01:43:38,332 --> 01:43:40,411
and so I would recommend checking that out

1007
01:43:40,411 --> 01:43:42,212
they've had Giacomo on I think twice

1008
01:43:42,212 --> 01:43:43,891
Knut's been on

1009
01:43:43,891 --> 01:43:46,312
they've had merch from kind of the

1010
01:43:46,312 --> 01:43:47,411
more core side

1011
01:43:47,411 --> 01:43:50,491
I think they're on episode 6 or 7 or something like this

1012
01:43:50,491 --> 01:44:08,031
And so they're really trying to cover this issue very well. And there are technical bits of this that have faced some valid criticism, one of which is that removing op if is very, very drastic and breaks many things.

1013
01:44:08,031 --> 01:44:29,291
So to that, I mostly am that I want that to be out of the BIP, mostly because there's apparently been cases where coins couldn't be spent anymore if they disable this op-if, coin confiscation, or freezing funds, if you want to say that.

1014
01:44:29,291 --> 01:44:33,591
No one's actually physically taking the private keys or anything like that.

1015
01:44:33,791 --> 01:44:36,031
I say physically, but I think you know what I mean.

1016
01:44:36,031 --> 01:44:39,671
but freezing funds, they couldn't be spent.

1017
01:44:40,011 --> 01:44:41,831
Now, there's two answers to this.

1018
01:44:41,891 --> 01:44:43,391
One is that this is temporary

1019
01:44:43,391 --> 01:44:45,331
and after a year they would be able to spend it

1020
01:44:45,331 --> 01:44:47,331
also that they can hear about it

1021
01:44:47,331 --> 01:44:48,631
and move their coins to an address

1022
01:44:48,631 --> 01:44:49,472
that wouldn't be affected.

1023
01:44:49,932 --> 01:44:51,631
I think that's pretty weak.

1024
01:44:51,871 --> 01:44:53,411
I don't like that at all.

1025
01:44:53,491 --> 01:44:56,831
I don't like coin confiscation concerns

1026
01:44:56,831 --> 01:44:58,911
but there's a flip side argument

1027
01:44:58,911 --> 01:45:00,771
that if you're going to be making a soft fork,

1028
01:45:01,091 --> 01:45:05,472
anyone could go and send coins,

1029
01:45:05,472 --> 01:45:12,531
send Bitcoin to some address that violates the soft fork in the future and say, hey, look,

1030
01:45:12,531 --> 01:45:19,212
there's a reason to not use this anymore. And so there's got to be a line where you eventually say,

1031
01:45:19,312 --> 01:45:27,452
hey, people are adults and responsible for their actions and we have to eventually make some kind

1032
01:45:27,452 --> 01:45:33,171
of change and we can't let any coin confiscation at all get us in the way of it if it looks like

1033
01:45:33,171 --> 01:45:38,671
it's obvious sabotage or whatever. But regardless, it's a precedent that I don't want set. Apparently,

1034
01:45:38,671 --> 01:45:45,631
they're going to go back to the drawing board on that specific point and make it so that, yeah,

1035
01:45:45,771 --> 01:45:51,791
it's more narrowly defined and it breaks fewer things. There have been also some criticism about

1036
01:45:51,791 --> 01:45:58,251
limitation to the number of tap leaves. I really do not want to get into that as far as right now,

1037
01:45:58,251 --> 01:46:05,231
the technicals of that. Taproot is complicated. Limiting the number of tap leaves to a certain

1038
01:46:05,231 --> 01:46:11,591
amount theoretically reduces different vectors, but can theoretically break some really advanced

1039
01:46:11,591 --> 01:46:17,932
wallet functionality. I think many of these things that would be broken are actually good, valid

1040
01:46:17,932 --> 01:46:25,671
uses of Bitcoin, such as, hey, you've got a multisig that decays from a 3 of 5 to a 3 of 4

1041
01:46:25,671 --> 01:46:33,411
to a two of four to a two of three to a one of three eventually over time. And it uses this op

1042
01:46:33,411 --> 01:46:38,671
if statement and it could be used in inheritance, something like that. That's cool stuff that's

1043
01:46:38,671 --> 01:46:44,472
interesting and feels fully monetary to me. And they have to pay their fee to get that whole thing

1044
01:46:44,472 --> 01:46:50,371
set up and all this. So I don't want that breaking. Directionally though, the whole thing is

1045
01:46:50,371 --> 01:46:56,991
reducing spam vectors, I think is good. I think it's possible. The filters don't need to be

1046
01:46:56,991 --> 01:47:04,932
perfect. The filters don't need to be like, there's no spam at all anymore. As I understand it,

1047
01:47:05,371 --> 01:47:12,511
some of the alternate vectors proposed that are not covered by this BIP would be more expensive.

1048
01:47:12,891 --> 01:47:16,952
Like inscriptions would break under the terms of the BIP as they are currently, but they already

1049
01:47:16,952 --> 01:47:23,952
have another opcode that they would use instead. But as I understand it, they have to pay more for

1050
01:47:23,952 --> 01:47:31,331
that to work. Where I get a little bit into the weeds here, and I find the entire thing tricky,

1051
01:47:31,331 --> 01:47:39,391
is this going to result in an incentive to put more arbitrary data in fake public keys?

1052
01:47:40,212 --> 01:47:46,692
In other words, is there going to be an incentive to do more UTXO bloating or not?

1053
01:47:46,952 --> 01:47:49,011
That's very, very tricky.

1054
01:47:49,251 --> 01:47:55,231
And I acknowledge that it's not straightforward that we just say, hey, get rid of the spam

1055
01:47:55,231 --> 01:48:00,171
vectors and we might be eventually left with a UTXO set that's getting even bigger because

1056
01:48:00,171 --> 01:48:04,812
we disabled some of the methods that are more easy.

1057
01:48:05,712 --> 01:48:08,771
I just don't believe that it's worth giving up.

1058
01:48:09,131 --> 01:48:14,391
And so where I'm at is I'm supportive of the BIP as long as it can address some of these

1059
01:48:14,391 --> 01:48:21,891
technical concerns and actually get to something that may pass. And I believe the conditions that

1060
01:48:21,891 --> 01:48:28,831
would be that the BIP would actually pass would be a huge signal, a strong signal that the users,

1061
01:48:28,831 --> 01:48:35,212
the plebs are actually the ones in control in Bitcoin. That Bitcoin Core gets a massive reality

1062
01:48:35,212 --> 01:48:44,331
check that their multi-million dollar funding apparatus is not infallible and that maybe

1063
01:48:44,331 --> 01:48:48,231
listening to their users, the plebs, is worth doing.

1064
01:48:48,751 --> 01:48:51,291
I don't want to do anything that's going to break Bitcoin.

1065
01:48:51,472 --> 01:48:54,131
I don't want to do anything that's going to confiscate anyone's funds.

1066
01:48:54,131 --> 01:49:00,671
But I absolutely think that this BIP, supporting and signaling for this BIP, is one of the

1067
01:49:00,671 --> 01:49:06,651
concrete tools that a pleb who disagrees with the actions of core can take. The others at the

1068
01:49:06,651 --> 01:49:13,251
moment include running knots, run knots, and put up your own filters. They don't do nothing.

1069
01:49:13,871 --> 01:49:21,251
It might seem like they do hardly anything, but my mempool is very, very calming and clean.

1070
01:49:21,572 --> 01:49:30,251
So that's good. Less resource use on my system. And if you are in control of any hash rate,

1071
01:49:30,671 --> 01:49:35,871
point it towards ocean and use datum if you can.

1072
01:49:36,891 --> 01:49:38,871
There's some technical challenges to set up,

1073
01:49:38,911 --> 01:49:42,891
but if you're an actual miner, you can definitely implement datum.

1074
01:49:43,151 --> 01:49:46,072
Something like 97% of knots blocks are being created,

1075
01:49:46,231 --> 01:49:49,791
sorry, ocean blocks are being created with datum at the moment.

1076
01:49:50,031 --> 01:49:51,151
It's amazing.

1077
01:49:52,771 --> 01:49:55,572
It's folks like me who have a heater

1078
01:49:55,572 --> 01:49:59,871
and it's hard to connect it to my home datum server,

1079
01:49:59,871 --> 01:50:02,831
so I just give up and use Ocean's basic template,

1080
01:50:03,371 --> 01:50:04,531
some cypherpunk I am.

1081
01:50:05,091 --> 01:50:07,331
But my hash rate is pointed at Ocean

1082
01:50:07,331 --> 01:50:12,011
at the template that is most constraining to data.

1083
01:50:12,331 --> 01:50:18,692
So if my little 21 energy Ofen 2 finds a block,

1084
01:50:19,212 --> 01:50:20,631
it will not have any monetary,

1085
01:50:20,891 --> 01:50:24,572
it will only have monetary transactions in it.

1086
01:50:24,791 --> 01:50:26,312
That's what I'm doing.

1087
01:50:27,312 --> 01:50:29,771
And plebs can actually do something.

1088
01:50:29,871 --> 01:50:31,391
And altogether, maybe we can do a lot.

1089
01:50:32,291 --> 01:50:32,851
I hear you.

1090
01:50:33,712 --> 01:50:34,151
Yeah.

1091
01:50:34,291 --> 01:50:46,371
I mean, a lot of the criticism thrown towards that stance is, you know, pointing you, oh, you're just an ideologist.

1092
01:50:46,371 --> 01:50:48,031
well if

1093
01:50:48,031 --> 01:50:51,091
if that's what I'm being accused for

1094
01:50:51,091 --> 01:50:53,011
then I stand guilty because

1095
01:50:53,011 --> 01:50:54,771
yeah I'm here for the

1096
01:50:54,771 --> 01:50:56,171
morality

1097
01:50:56,171 --> 01:50:59,111
the ethical nature of

1098
01:50:59,111 --> 01:51:01,171
rebuilding society

1099
01:51:01,171 --> 01:51:03,052
actually discovering what a true

1100
01:51:03,052 --> 01:51:04,851
civilian life

1101
01:51:04,851 --> 01:51:06,871
excuse me civilization

1102
01:51:06,871 --> 01:51:09,371
should be

1103
01:51:09,371 --> 01:51:11,351
because we've not experienced

1104
01:51:11,351 --> 01:51:12,411
it in our lifetime

1105
01:51:12,411 --> 01:51:15,531
you know anyone born after 1971

1106
01:51:15,531 --> 01:51:26,732
pure fiat standard you know i'm sick and tired of it and we have this thing it needs vigilance

1107
01:51:26,732 --> 01:51:43,160
it needs people like yourself to to lean on your skills and everything that you learned over the last 10 years And I hope you inspired other people listening because they have similar skill sets that

1108
01:51:43,300 --> 01:51:45,940
you know, your voice needs to be heard.

1109
01:51:46,120 --> 01:51:48,240
Don't be afraid of stepping into the ring.

1110
01:51:48,360 --> 01:51:49,480
It's very noisy on Twitter.

1111
01:51:50,320 --> 01:51:51,140
Reach out to me.

1112
01:51:51,280 --> 01:51:52,060
Reach out to Luke.

1113
01:51:52,240 --> 01:51:56,560
Reach out to, you know, get to your local meetup and have these discussions, right?

1114
01:51:56,620 --> 01:51:58,760
Just find out, like, what's going on.

1115
01:51:58,760 --> 01:52:03,340
because if we just sit there silent

1116
01:52:03,340 --> 01:52:06,760
and let all of these changes just take place,

1117
01:52:07,240 --> 01:52:13,380
like we said, we've visualized the threat vector.

1118
01:52:13,900 --> 01:52:16,520
It goes to all three-letter agencies.

1119
01:52:16,520 --> 01:52:19,120
It goes to the deepest of states.

1120
01:52:19,300 --> 01:52:21,060
It goes to nation states.

1121
01:52:21,400 --> 01:52:26,380
It goes to banks, massive hedge funds.

1122
01:52:26,380 --> 01:52:32,1000
yeah it will constantly be under attack and if we do not stay vigilant if we

1123
01:52:32,1000 --> 01:52:41,780
said it before complacency will be the killer and we have to keep thinking critically or even

1124
01:52:41,780 --> 01:52:48,960
conspiratorially and um having these conversations uh so i appreciate you coming on is is there

1125
01:52:48,960 --> 01:52:55,260
anything we didn't cover or anything you you want to put a pin in or hand off with before we uh

1126
01:52:55,260 --> 01:53:01,520
before we close it now. Yeah, I think got the chance to cover everything important. If you

1127
01:53:01,520 --> 01:53:06,780
want to follow along with what's going on here, I think most of the critical conversations are

1128
01:53:06,780 --> 01:53:16,340
happening on X. And yeah, I would just say that I'm in this for upending the fiat monetary system.

1129
01:53:16,340 --> 01:53:25,160
I'm not here to enable people to make a quick buck off of Bitcoin. And I want this to be over.

1130
01:53:25,260 --> 01:53:25,940
I really do.

1131
01:53:26,080 --> 01:53:28,720
Like I want to go back to focusing on other things,

1132
01:53:29,340 --> 01:53:32,040
focusing on Bitcoin adoption and all this.

1133
01:53:32,180 --> 01:53:34,780
I think this entire thing is a distraction.

1134
01:53:35,200 --> 01:53:38,940
And I just, I want a resolution of some kind

1135
01:53:38,940 --> 01:53:41,740
so we can get back to fixing the money and fixing the world.

1136
01:53:42,700 --> 01:53:43,660
Well said, sir.

1137
01:53:43,800 --> 01:53:44,860
Well, thank you for coming on.

1138
01:53:44,860 --> 01:53:49,180
Where can people come and find you and Canute and the show

1139
01:53:49,180 --> 01:53:50,320
and everything that you're doing?

1140
01:53:50,540 --> 01:53:52,240
Let's make sure you get the shills out there.

1141
01:53:52,300 --> 01:53:53,620
You got all the books behind you.

1142
01:53:53,620 --> 01:54:00,960
thanks Daniel yeah so I'm at Luke DeWolf first name last name on x and you can find all the

1143
01:54:00,960 --> 01:54:05,380
other details from there basically it's the Bitcoin Infinity show we have everything under

1144
01:54:05,380 --> 01:54:10,340
the Bitcoin Infinity media brand these days I'm not a part of the show so much anymore the

1145
01:54:10,340 --> 01:54:15,820
the schedules with with Knut and I and me having a two-year-old really weren't matching up so I'm

1146
01:54:15,820 --> 01:54:22,460
just the producer there now but we're doing the Bitcoin Infinity Academy once a week and

1147
01:54:22,460 --> 01:54:29,140
that's still a lot of fun. And yeah, what's coming up? I don't know, stay tuned a little bit,

1148
01:54:29,220 --> 01:54:36,360
but I am working on a book kind of merging these ideas. So we'll see when that makes it out. I'm

1149
01:54:36,360 --> 01:54:42,540
hoping soon. And I'm itching to get back into having conversations like this. So yeah, maybe

1150
01:54:42,540 --> 01:54:48,080
you'll be seeing me on a fresh new pod eventually. So that's what I've got coming up. And go to

1151
01:54:48,080 --> 01:54:55,520
btchell.com for all the information about BTC Hell. Honestly, I'm just so proud of that conference,

1152
01:54:55,520 --> 01:55:01,160
and it's a different kind of thing than anything else that I've done here. It's my adopted

1153
01:55:01,160 --> 01:55:07,860
home country that I just feel so much affinity for and I've been welcomed into, and this is my

1154
01:55:07,860 --> 01:55:13,900
way of contributing to adoption in my local area, and it couldn't have been a better success,

1155
01:55:13,900 --> 01:55:15,420
and we're aiming just for more next year.

1156
01:55:15,480 --> 01:55:16,840
So thanks to everyone who came

1157
01:55:16,840 --> 01:55:19,220
and to everyone who helped support

1158
01:55:19,220 --> 01:55:20,060
what we're doing there.

1159
01:55:20,260 --> 01:55:23,940
And yeah, just thanks to everyone for that.

1160
01:55:24,020 --> 01:55:25,520
So check out btchell.com,

1161
01:55:25,580 --> 01:55:28,480
join the mailing list to get updates

1162
01:55:28,480 --> 01:55:30,420
and hopefully see you in Helsinki

1163
01:55:30,420 --> 01:55:31,480
in September next year.

1164
01:55:32,120 --> 01:55:34,340
Hopefully that discount code BITTON

1165
01:55:34,340 --> 01:55:35,780
will still be running for the listeners

1166
01:55:35,780 --> 01:55:36,880
if they want to get over there.

1167
01:55:37,280 --> 01:55:38,060
A hundred percent.

1168
01:55:38,460 --> 01:55:39,460
Use code BITTON.

1169
01:55:40,140 --> 01:55:40,520
Excellent.

1170
01:55:41,060 --> 01:55:41,560
All right, brother.

1171
01:55:41,780 --> 01:55:42,900
Well, thanks for coming on, Luke.

1172
01:55:42,900 --> 01:55:45,060
and yeah, I look forward to chatting again soon.

1173
01:55:45,460 --> 01:55:45,940
Thanks, Daniel.

1174
01:55:46,020 --> 01:55:46,560
Appreciate it.

1175
01:55:46,600 --> 01:55:46,900
Take care.

1176
01:55:47,460 --> 01:55:47,740
Bye-bye.

1177
01:55:48,780 --> 01:55:50,660
Well, thank you everybody for listening

1178
01:55:50,660 --> 01:55:52,060
and thank you again, Luke,

1179
01:55:52,140 --> 01:55:54,660
for coming on and sharing everything

1180
01:55:54,660 --> 01:55:56,440
that you just shared with us there.

1181
01:55:56,560 --> 01:55:58,840
I hope, like I said at the beginning of the show here,

1182
01:55:58,920 --> 01:56:00,860
that if you had no understanding at all,

1183
01:56:00,920 --> 01:56:02,160
that you've got some now.

1184
01:56:02,240 --> 01:56:03,400
If you had a little understanding,

1185
01:56:03,520 --> 01:56:04,580
maybe you have a little more.

1186
01:56:05,260 --> 01:56:08,380
If you are fully down the rabbit hole

1187
01:56:08,380 --> 01:56:11,500
and technical and a developer,

1188
01:56:11,500 --> 01:56:18,760
or at least very least can write code i hope we didn't do an absolutely dreadful job there

1189
01:56:18,760 --> 01:56:27,280
maybe you switched off just 25 minutes in i don't know but they're definitely you know of course

1190
01:56:27,280 --> 01:56:39,840
we are very much skewed here towards very few people that truly do understand the depths of

1191
01:56:39,840 --> 01:56:47,960
the code and everything that goes with that and are able to suggest or even put forward

1192
01:56:47,960 --> 01:56:58,440
improvement protocol proposals excuse me it's and is this an inherent problem do we need more

1193
01:56:58,440 --> 01:57:04,580
coders I mean the argument being developers the argument being not the argument being the

1194
01:57:04,580 --> 01:57:06,700
what's been

1195
01:57:06,700 --> 01:57:08,980
recognized

1196
01:57:08,980 --> 01:57:10,420
over the years

1197
01:57:10,420 --> 01:57:12,640
and I've spoken to some of

1198
01:57:12,640 --> 01:57:14,920
the guys that run

1199
01:57:14,920 --> 01:57:16,340
funds for developers

1200
01:57:16,340 --> 01:57:18,720
what's been recognized over the years is that

1201
01:57:18,720 --> 01:57:19,900
developers go through

1202
01:57:19,900 --> 01:57:22,560
like a training

1203
01:57:22,560 --> 01:57:24,680
like some kind of

1204
01:57:24,680 --> 01:57:26,660
hackathon camp, whatever

1205
01:57:26,660 --> 01:57:28,540
they get the funds that they need

1206
01:57:28,540 --> 01:57:29,620
they get supported

1207
01:57:29,620 --> 01:57:32,580
from the donations, from various

1208
01:57:32,580 --> 01:57:39,260
funds out there they get up to speed and they can read the code and they can tinker with the code

1209
01:57:39,260 --> 01:57:45,480
they can make changes uh obviously they can't because it won't reach the consensus but theoretically

1210
01:57:45,480 --> 01:57:53,880
they could but then they end up going where the money is and that means working on other blockchains

1211
01:57:53,880 --> 01:58:00,260
and this is a real problem because if money is being collected as donations and then spent

1212
01:58:00,260 --> 01:58:07,220
to train developers but then the developers have nowhere to go after that and the carrot gets

1213
01:58:07,220 --> 01:58:15,780
dangled from xyzblockchain.com for them to go and you know do work over there with a nice wage

1214
01:58:15,780 --> 01:58:23,220
of course that's where the incentive lies and this is i mean everything is incentives we know that

1215
01:58:23,220 --> 01:58:29,740
so this is a problem and i do remember having a discussion with this with mike schmidt from

1216
01:58:29,740 --> 01:58:32,120
Brink Fund, you can go back

1217
01:58:32,120 --> 01:58:34,180
and find that episode where we go into that.

1218
01:58:34,880 --> 01:58:35,300
So,

1219
01:58:35,920 --> 01:58:38,060
there's lots to be discussed

1220
01:58:38,060 --> 01:58:39,160
here, obviously.

1221
01:58:39,760 --> 01:58:41,400
Always. And I

1222
01:58:41,400 --> 01:58:43,020
say this word

1223
01:58:43,020 --> 01:58:45,760
with a grain of salt.

1224
01:58:46,220 --> 01:58:47,340
There is nuance

1225
01:58:47,340 --> 01:58:48,900
to all of this.

1226
01:58:49,460 --> 01:58:51,540
And it's not plain black and white.

1227
01:58:51,1000 --> 01:58:54,020
It's not, you know, just choose

1228
01:58:54,020 --> 01:58:56,080
one side or the other. Maybe you have

1229
01:58:56,080 --> 01:58:58,320
already. I know where I lean.

1230
01:58:58,320 --> 01:59:01,960
I lean in the same way that Luke's been leaning

1231
01:59:01,960 --> 01:59:06,820
I've preferred to run NottsClient on my node

1232
01:59:06,820 --> 01:59:11,320
just to stop relaying any of that crap

1233
01:59:11,320 --> 01:59:14,140
yes, it might still end up on the blockchain

1234
01:59:14,140 --> 01:59:17,460
but if it's a little bit harder for them

1235
01:59:17,460 --> 01:59:19,120
then so be it

1236
01:59:19,120 --> 01:59:21,220
that's pretty much all I can do

1237
01:59:21,220 --> 01:59:25,460
having this debate is going to

1238
01:59:25,460 --> 01:59:28,600
I mean it is part of the history books already

1239
01:59:28,600 --> 01:59:30,600
we'll be looking back at this

1240
01:59:30,600 --> 01:59:32,740
moment in time, in 10 years time

1241
01:59:32,740 --> 01:59:34,240
however it ends

1242
01:59:34,240 --> 01:59:36,640
but I think it will always

1243
01:59:36,640 --> 01:59:38,340
be known as an important debate

1244
01:59:38,340 --> 01:59:39,040
to have had

1245
01:59:39,040 --> 01:59:41,920
whether or not you've been enjoying it

1246
01:59:41,920 --> 01:59:44,200
it's here

1247
01:59:44,200 --> 01:59:46,200
so like I said at the beginning

1248
01:59:46,200 --> 01:59:48,380
I hope this has gone some way

1249
01:59:48,380 --> 01:59:50,700
as to help you understand a little bit more

1250
01:59:50,700 --> 01:59:51,560
about what's going on

1251
01:59:51,560 --> 01:59:54,200
alright finally please again

1252
01:59:54,200 --> 02:00:00,760
show some love for the show sponsors you've got relay here in europe r-e-l-a-i dot ch forward

1253
02:00:00,760 --> 02:00:06,880
slash bitten you can download the app today and start stacking sats immediately bitbox.swiss

1254
02:00:06,880 --> 02:00:11,480
forward slash bitten for your hardware wallet paywithflash.com if you want to start accepting

1255
02:00:11,480 --> 02:00:19,240
sats club orange if you want to meet your local bitcoiners and get over to geyser.fun to see what

1256
02:00:19,240 --> 02:00:26,260
projects are over there that you might be able to help get off the ground. And finally, if for any

1257
02:00:26,260 --> 02:00:34,480
reason at all you are a little bit worried about your security setup, your physical security setup,

1258
02:00:35,140 --> 02:00:40,940
you find yourself looking over your shoulder, Glock.me is the place for you to go and check out.

1259
02:00:41,100 --> 02:00:46,020
This is something that's going to become bigger, I believe, in 2026 and something you want to keep

1260
02:00:46,020 --> 02:00:53,740
an eye on if that is a genuine worry for you or your family so go check him out glock.me g l o k

1261
02:00:53,740 --> 02:00:58,020
dot me that's an unofficial shield for the glock guys thank you so much for listening

1262
02:00:58,020 --> 02:01:00,040
i will catch on the next shot