Hello, everybody. My name is Daniel Prince, and I'm the host of the Once Bitten podcast.
This is a podcast focused on Bitcoin. It's my mission to interview as many people as I can
around the different aspects of Bitcoin and help people understand exactly what Bitcoin could mean
for them and for their families and for their future. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so
much for listening. Hello everybody, welcome to this episode of the Once Bitten Podcast.
A couple of weeks ago I asked on NOSTA and Twitter if people could start linking me to
explainer videos or articles or essays or any educational content that they have been looking
at and finding and sharing about the current issue in the Bitcoin space which is all centered around
BIP 110. Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110. So I've spent the last couple of weeks digging in,
reading what I can, watching what I can, sharing as well along the journey, and one name kept
coming up, and it's somebody I'd never heard of. Very underfollowed on Twitter. His name is
Rono Cuny. He is coming from a telecoms background over 25 years in his career. He is also
the creator of thebitcoinportal.com, which is one of the best dashboards out there that nobody's
looking at. It is incredible. Go and just look at that. If you want to stop this now and just check
out thebitcoinportal.com, there is so much information on there. And then his weekly
substack, BlockSpace Weekly. The links will be in the show notes. And he had written up to the
point when I started reading his work he'd written a 10-part series on BIP110 and was taking you
through the history of it, the dynamics of it, the analysis which is more important, the analysis of
it and then in issue number five he ran a he shared the results of a simulation he's running.
So he's running a simulation of what the world would look like in the Bitcoin space if BIP110
were activated and the results were very interesting.
And then he came back in issue number eight
and updated that and made some corrections as well.
But you can follow all of that as well
on thebitcoinportal.com.
So I love the fact that Renault has come out of nowhere
with regards to myself, never heard of him before.
He's been in the space for the last three years.
So this is all he's known, spam world, right?
He doesn't come with, and this is a thing
that you gotta be very, very careful of
because people are out there throwing shade at people that are coming to this argument or debate
and telling them you haven't been around for 15 years, you weren't around for the four cores,
therefore your opinion doesn't matter.
That is complete and utter total fucking bullshit and completely anti-Bitcoin.
I just want to lay that line down right now.
Bitcoin is for everyone. It is an open, permissionless protocol.
And if you've got something to bring to this space, bring it.
and then put your ideas forward
so people can start reading them and discussing them.
So please don't listen to that narrative
that's being thrown around out there.
It's just complete and utter nonsense.
Take note of the people that are using that narrative.
Take very close note and just watch.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this interview with Rono.
This is his first ever podcast.
So yes, he was a little nervous.
And yes, we did have an internet dropout halfway through.
and then yes I did forget to press record for the last 10 minutes so we had to do it all again
so it's a baptism of fire for Renaud in many different ways
I am just very thankful that he has given up the time to come on the podcast
and has written this incredible series with deep dive analytics
and will continue to write as well because this is something that has completely gripped him intellectually
and he is 100% down to carry on with this research
So sit back and relax and enjoy this podcast with Renault.
Before we get into it, one quick shout out, obviously, for the sponsors.
Relay have been sponsoring the show for almost five years.
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Bitbox offer you the Bitbox O2 or the Bitbox Nova.
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Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy this episode with Runo.
All right, Runo, we are recording.
It's great to meet you.
Thanks for having me, Daniel.
And great to see for what is to me a new voice in the Bitcoin space, because I love it when this happens.
I just put out a tweet and actually I think this happened on Noster.
I put out a post and I think can anyone just send me some essays, articles, video explainers, anything that you're coming across about BIP 110 so I can start digging in, please.
um that was where met with a fair amount of abuse in in one channel but uh a lot of really
interesting articles started come across my feed and they were all being written by you
and then i'm like well who the hell's like reno cuny and i find you find you more on twitter where
you're more active over there then i find your website bitcoin portal which is incredible we've
got to talk about that what you've built there if people have never seen the bitcoin portal stop
now go go over and see bitcoinportal.com and then you have your substack and at time of recording
i think you've released an 11 part series about bit 110 and you've got number 12 up your sleeve
yes yes right okay and this has been very interesting for me to read because you are
coming at it from obviously there's so much emotion built up around this whole thing but
the way you're coming at it is with the data analysis that you are pulling from the dashboard
that you built in the first place and using all of that data to get readers like myself
up to speed. So that's why I wanted you to have your moment here to come on a podcast. I believe
it's your first podcast. Might be the first time anyone's ever heard of you. Might be the first
time anyone's seen your website. Might be the first time anyone goes and reads your articles.
i'm not claiming like this is a scoop but i want people to understand that there are other voices
out there and they shouldn't just be waved away because they haven't been around since 2016 bro
like all of this narrative that's being pushed our way you've got something to say and it's very
very interesting but before we get into all of that like who's where no where did you come from
what have you been doing for the last 25 30 years of your life yes yes thanks for swiping me on the
Yeah, actually, I discovered Bitcoin quite recently.
So in 2023, second half.
And it was after listening for a video from Matthew Crater.
So first I was browsing through on YouTube and I found that one
and I thought, okay, again, some Bitcoin stuff.
And I start to listen and then at some point in the video,
it starts to click.
for me. And next day I was buying some Bitcoin. So I'm a recent in Bitcoin, but my background is in telecom.
So I've been working telecom for 25 years plus, actually. I started in Finland, in Nokia, in the beginning of 2000, you know.
And yeah, so doing some research, doing some solution architecture work for telecom networks.
And also some product management.
So I've been a product manager for 15 years in the telecom business in various companies.
So I went in Nokia, but also in small companies, some startups.
And more recently, I'm fully focused on Bitcoin.
So this is now, I think it's the most important project,
you know, a software project in the world.
So I want to be part of that, basically.
Yeah.
So are you still doing your 9 to 5 job, so to speak?
No, I don't.
I don't because due to some reorg, you know, in my company,
I kind of had to look for something else, right?
So, yeah.
So here I am full time on Bitcoin.
It their loss and our gains sir Unbelievable Right So the Bitcoin portal the bitcoinportal what what made you start like building that because when i was digging through that there layers and layers
and layers of information so clearly you're pulling on your past skill set of data analysis
and pulling all of that in so why what what was the driving force behind that yeah good question
And so, you know, it's both for me some hobby, right?
But also I kind of realized that there are some parts
that are not fully addressed in the monitoring space
of the Bitcoin network.
So while you have kind of a lot of sites
that are providing you information about the data
and the price of Bitcoin.
There are not so many that are actually splitting
what's inside the block, right?
And I thought, okay, now it's a good time for me
to actually bring that,
especially with the debate on the spam, right,
that we have at the moment.
So what is the part of the Bitcoin blocks
that are actually having spam
and those that are, you know, the part that are more financial transactions.
So I thought this was missing.
I wanted to put it up and share it, you know.
So I'm sharing that information.
And I started about a year ago on this portal.
So, yeah.
And I kept adding new layers.
So on that specific topic, because of your timing coming into the space,
This is something that has always been a factor, right?
Because what the fuck happened in February, 2023?
Like that's when all of this spam really started kicking off and has culminated now into three
years of shit throwing and arguing and not getting anywhere and culminating in this latest
BIP.
So when that's an interesting angle, because you come at it, this is already happening.
You're looking at it.
You're like, why isn't this being tracked?
and you've even set up on your Twitter,
you have an alert that tweets out alerts
of the amount of spam that is still getting into the blogs,
which people aren't really paying much attention to.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think this is the thing that was missing
really in this debate
because we have had the new release
of the Bitcoin Core V30
and a huge debate on this sub return
opening up the limit to 100 kilobytes.
But the thing is, and there was some kind of explanation given,
like, yes, you know, it's been always possible
to put data in enough return, and this doesn't change much
because it was always possible, right?
Even the limit was only 83.
But so that was the reason given,
but then no data given. So people had no idea how much data was going to a preterm, actually,
in the first place. And so I thought this was really a missing angle, and I wanted to bring that.
And if you look at the data, you realize that, okay, in fact, there was really no
So no large op return before last year, 2025, maybe starting in April, May.
There was almost no large op return being mined.
So it's kind of, you get those decisions made, but there is no data behind.
So I wanted to bring that visibility and that angle.
and yes I also have this
alerts for
X so when there is a
lateral pre-turn popping up then you are
kind of alerted on X
so that's the idea
yes. So when you started
digging into the history of
this what was the
biggest red flag for you?
Yeah
so
in fact it's really
some kind of discovery
journey, right? I'm looking at something, then something else is coming up. And I start to get
the better picture, right? But if you look at the history, yes, before 2023, the blocks, they were
mostly financial transaction. And then beginning of 2023, this spam coming up. And you see it,
But on the portal, no, I just have one year data.
So you cannot see it on the public portal
because I had to restrict.
It's a kind of a smaller machine.
I will try to open more data there.
But yeah, you see that for sure there
is a lot of non-financial data now.
And it's about, nowadays, it's about 40% of the used block space.
So the block capacity is 4 megabytes per 10 minutes, you know.
And at the moment, blocks, they are filled about 1.5 megabytes.
And you have about a bit less than 1 megabyte of financial data.
All the rest is spam.
so uh all two percent yeah i think i remember 37 was the the figure that you'd um last updated in
one of your articles because you you wrote uh you wrote an article i think it was issue number five
then you came back and recalced everything and rerun the simulation and that was article number
eight where you updated all of with a brilliant infographic as well so you've been running let's
talk about that you've been running a simulation okay sure yes uh the simulation it's uh it's about
the simulation of the BIP110.
So the idea is to look at the blocks
and derive what would be out of the block if BIP110 is activated.
And yeah, you see that you are able to remove quite a lot,
quite a bit from the spam.
And not everything can be removed,
because there are still a lot of those so-called runes
that are fit within the op return that are below 83 bytes,
so are about.
So you have plenty of those.
So those would not be taken off by BIP 110.
But all the rest, the large inscriptions
and the bigger data, it's out.
And that's really the beauty of BIP 110,
is that it doesn't claim to remove all the spam.
But what it does is that it actually at least
limits the spam and especially the large files.
So the large file, they are not able to make it anymore
to the blockchain in one piece, in a single piece.
There is always this possibility to split a large file
in smaller pieces and then fit it.
but then it's a different problem that is coming, right?
So yeah, that's really the idea of the simulation
is to understand the impact of BIP 110.
Well, the impact is very significant.
So a lot of spam will be removed
after BIP 110 is activated.
Yeah, and so I'll link the, obviously, your website here
so people can go and read number eight
and see the visual graphic.
It's been tweeted around a lot, actually.
I've seen it.
Different people are picking up on this.
But just so the simulation you ran for 10 days, over that 10-day period, there were 4.7 million transactions.
You ran it between blocks 929,592 and 931,032.
So 4.7 million transactions.
And BIP110 eliminated all ordinal inscriptions and runes metadata attached to them.
and the financial transactions were untouched correct yes i mean yeah that's the job the mic
moment right yeah in fact i added a new feature in the portal so you can uh see it for yourself
the the b.10 simulation page it's under uh on chain spam analysis and then you go to the and
this one is is giving you the latest 144 blocks so um so we can see in real time how things would
yeah i'm on it now i'm on it now all right okay so yeah people can go to the bitcoinportal.com
then just hit the on chain tab and then hit the uh analysis uh bit 110 simulator and yeah i've got
you can choose your block range, either 10, 50, 144. I've got it sent to 144. Transactions filtered
82,631. Block space reclaimed 71.62 megabytes, which is 33.5%. Fees that would be lost 0.0542
bitcoin that's the minor revenue impact uh so like we said you've analyzed 144 blocks there and this
is just running right that you people can go on you say it's already latest block so you see the
real time here uh situation how things would look like this is uh so filtered by category you've
You've got this, the category inscriptions,
82 inscriptions would have been filtered and large op return 56 So what would you count as large
What's the metric?
I have a threshold here.
I believe it's one kilobytes or something.
Or it could be three.
But anyway, it's way above this 83 bytes.
But it can be a few kilobytes.
It can be, yeah.
What kind of data is that for people that are wondering?
What is going in?
So the inscriptions could be anything, text-related or whatever,
but what about the large packets?
Yeah, the large or pre-turn, I mean,
the site doesn't dig into the content, right?
Because it could be also quite risky.
But I would say...
Okay, so on that point, it could be quite risky.
I don't want that to just fall over, wash over people.
This is a point.
And this is one of the arguments that's being made on either side,
a very contentious point.
But it's something you obviously deem important.
Yes, it is important because, you know,
the nature of Bitcoin is that anybody can send anything
and then it's up to the miner.
to add that to a block.
When it's in a block, it's there forever, right?
So it's not going to go away.
And you could imagine a scenario where you have people
with bad intentions.
They start to put stuff, files that are questionable or illegal
to arm Bitcoin, for instance.
And then you would have a miner.
It could be even a rogue miner that is adding that information
and then it's forever, right?
So that's the risk that we have at the moment
with these large files that can make it to Bitcoin blockchain.
And yeah, it can be anything.
It could be, if we talk about illegal files,
it could be Sysam, it could be anything, right?
some secret stuff that should not be public.
So it's kind of a risk that is hanging on Bitcoin.
Some people are dismissing it.
It's saying, you know, it's first of all,
it was always possible to do that.
Secondly, you know, it's a distributed network.
So it's not kind of who are you going to go after
if something like this happens.
Of course, the node runners,
they kind of store everything,
but if they are not using that bad data
or that bad information,
then why should they be liable, right?
That's a fair point.
But the idea of removing the large file risk,
it needs to decrease the risk.
So that's really the idea.
that's what
bit.10 is doing
so
kind of reduce
the spam
issue
and the risk of the large file
you know the rogue
scenario right
that's the idea and I think bit.10
is doing that
so that would be
that's why it's important
right
but yeah it's a very
big debate
and people have different ideas, different opinions.
That's healthy as well.
It's good to have this fight
because then all the ideas are confronted
and people can make their own decision.
I think it's very important for Bitcoin
to have this debate now and discussion.
And this fight as well.
I agree.
And there's a lot of hand-waving over this topic,
which is a fucking important topic.
You know, you can't just look the other way on this one.
And you've got one side saying,
oh, this is definitely going to happen.
And the other side saying,
this is completely overblown.
This is FUD.
You're bringing fear, uncertainty and doubt
when you needn't bother.
And anyway, you've always been able to do it.
It's probably already on the blockchain.
You're probably already storing it.
I'm like, what?
That scares the shit out of me, to be honest.
You know, I don't want any part of that.
And whether that is pictures or like illegal documents, whatever, whatever it might be, anything like that.
If there is an option on the table for you to say, I don't want any of that coming on to my software or hardware that I'm running in my house.
you've you know you've at least you've got the option now to like look at it and say do i want
to carry on running that or do i want to choose this over here and then of course you've had the
whole debate like filters don't work bro uh which seems truly ingenuous because your data and your
analysis shows perfectly well that they do work and this is where the the debate or the argument
gets conflated around censorship and filtration,
which are clearly different things.
And the way I like to...
I use the analogy of a Brita filter.
Is your Brita filter censoring water?
Well, no, it's filtering it, right?
That's a very good one.
It's about as basic as I think I could get it.
There is a huge difference between...
And this language is getting used and it's being pointedly used as well.
There is a difference between filtration and censorship.
And yeah, I'd just like to get your thoughts on that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
And this is the point that is always brought by the opponent of the B.10.
It's really that, okay, you are doing censorship here.
But it's not.
This is where maybe my background is helping a bit
because I've been in the telecom industry
and I have worked on protocols.
So 3G, 4G, 5G protocols.
And Bitcoin is a protocol, right?
And the protocol has to have some rules
and to basically to make sure that the use case
that is providing is optimized, optimal.
And those filters, they are rules, right?
And they can be either policy rules or consensus rules.
But the idea anyway is to optimize for the use case that Bitcoin is providing,
which is money, right?
Digital money.
So it has nothing to do with censorship.
it has all to do with protocol optimization
and use case optimization.
And you can argue that, okay, what is Bitcoin for?
And some say that, why are you saying,
you know, it's just for money, it can be for other things.
But at some point you have to draw the line, right?
And you have also to basically also let the market speak.
What is the market valuing?
Bitcoin for? Is it for database storage or is it for money? And it's most likely it's just for money.
If we have this one trillion now of market value, it's probably not the database use case that is
valued like this. So that's really about protocol optimization and not censorship.
Right. So doing the filtering is not looking at who is sending, which would be censorship,
but it's looking at what is it that we are allowing. And the BIP.NN in that sense is quite
mild because it's just look at the size mostly. Right. If it's above a certain size, then it's,
it means it's not monetary so we just take it off right and um yeah so that's i think the the
but that's a very big uh that might be the biggest uh point that is debated right censorship versus
uh filtering exactly so anybody listening that has entered into that debate uh i hope that's
given a little bit of extra context.
But the underlying point here is if you've entered into the debate
and you're not running a node, why have you entered into the debate?
Yes, yes, yes.
So you're tracking nodes as well.
That's the other thing, right, is that, yeah, exactly like you say,
if you don't run a node, but, I mean, your opinion is kind of not very relevant.
Right. So and that's also the good thing, I think, about this war or this fight is that I think it brings more people to realize that the node is one of the key components in Bitcoin.
I think there are more people now running nodes.
If I look at the numbers, I seem to remember that, you know,
about a year or two years ago, we had only 20,000,
about 20,000 listening nodes, and now it's more 25,000.
So it does kind of push also people to kind of take action
and then run maybe set up some nodes yeah So the node is really the yeah there are different components in Bitcoin
But the node is one of the most important one.
You have the miners, of course, and then you
have the exchange and the market.
But the node is really the element that
deciding on the rules, what is a valid block, what is not. And if the node says it's not valid,
then the block is just rejected. So yeah, that's very, very, very important.
And you've got as well on the BitcoinPortal.com, you just go to anybody listening, go to the nodes
tab, then you've got the network overview, you've got listening nodes, and you've got the BIP110
signaling nodes so this is probably the the best part of the uh the database to dig into right now
uh it's just loading for me now right okay now people are going to open this page and uh they're
going to be a little bit shocked in the in the beginning because and we'll get into that uh
because it says zero percent zero percent block signaling zero activation threshold 55 percent
not reached. Right. That's the top line there. Network node readiness. You've got BIP 110 ready
nodes. 7.62% is what's showing at the moment, which is 1920 out of 25,209 nodes. How's that
figure changed since you started running this? Yeah, it's a dramatic increase. So about a month
ago there was there was less than one percent of those when did you start did you start tracking
this as of december when this i think no i think i i started tracking in january okay
but in fact the we had we had the the spec uh already november december but the software was
ready only maybe in January. So that's when I started to track. And yeah, so that 7.6%,
that just shows the portion of nodes, Bitcoin nodes that are running B.10. And it has been going up
up really, really fast in a few weeks.
So from 0% to almost 8% now.
And then at the top, those top numbers
is really the miners, right?
At the moment, no miner is signaling.
But I would not expect this to go very fast
because there is no strong incentive for miners
to signal very early.
But as we approach the deadline in August and September,
they will start to really consider their options here.
And this is issue number nine of your weekly updates.
Why miners will comply with BIP 110.
Yes.
Bold claim, bold title.
Some might even say clickbaity title.
But underneath the game theory, the positioning game,
and why early activation is likely.
So I'm sure you've probably got a lot of pushback on this
from one side of the fence here.
Let's go through it.
Let's try and figure out what you're trying to say here.
So you start off with basic game theory.
Well, no, you've got a summary.
The asymmetry is brutal.
Compliance costs approximately 0.1% of revenue.
Resistance risks everything.
No rational miner chooses the second option.
So the basic game theory, a minor faces two choices,
comply with BIP, excuse me, BIP 110 or resist.
Now, I'm not sure, you know, just like the general listener
might not understand why the choice is coming, what may, you know?
They might have their heads in the sand.
It's like, no, well, you know, no one's going to activate it.
And so we're just going to move on and it will just go,
it'll just be another drama that we don't talk about anymore.
But BIP 110 is coming.
Yeah, it's coming.
I mean, it's, you know, the idea is that the nodes
that are running BIP1.10 will activate at the latest in September.
That's the latest.
Of course, BIP1.10 can activate earlier
if there is more than 55% of the minor signaling.
But anyway, it will activate.
And when that happens, it means that the miners that are sending blocks that do not follow BIP 110 or do not signal even, those blocks will be rejected.
So that's really the consequence of the BIP 110 now.
Now we have to realize that those miners, they probably say,
I would claim that the miners, they don't have a strong opinion on spam.
And at the moment, they are adding quite a bit of spam to blocks
because that's the current environment they operate in.
So we have this permissive rules, permissive filters.
So they just do their job, right?
They find a block, they fill it first with financial data.
And then when they see that the block is actually not very much full,
so they just continue and add more stuff.
And now we are at around 40% span.
spam. But I don't think they have a very strong opinion about that. And if you look at their,
what revenue they make from the spam fees, at the moment, it's very small. It's 0.1% of their
revenue income is coming from the spam fees. So if you remove that, they are not going to fill it
very much. And there has been some time, like two years ago, where the spam fees were very high.
So they were making a lot of money with the spam fees, but not anymore.
It was lasting only a couple of weeks, right?
Nowadays, it has totally changed.
So they don't really make a lot of money with that.
Now they will have to really evaluate what is going to happen if they don't signal
and how determined is the P.10 camp forks and nodes.
And if they don't signal, then it means there will be a chain split.
So they will have to deal with that as well.
So it's a burden on them as well because you can also always say,
okay, if no miner is signaling,
then there will be just the B.10 chain is not going to grow.
It's not going to go anywhere.
And, you know, it's going to die.
Yes, that could be the case, but still it's a chain split.
And it's a big event.
And it's going to be a big burden for the miners anyway.
Right?
So another question is, do they really have a strong opinion about spam?
Do they really like spam so much that they are ready to go for a chain split?
I think that's the main question.
And I would argue that probably not.
So probably they also will see the benefit long term of, you know, mitigating the spam
so that it makes Bitcoin less risky to those edge case scenario that we have talked about.
and long term it could actually be a good very good thing for bitcoin price a very good good
thing for the miners so when they run the you know the scenarios the logic probably they would
conclude that it's their interest to go along but yeah i mean one other point just just to
yeah just to add to this as well like the the biggest mining companies as far as i'm aware
are publicly listed companies is is that correct sorry so again the biggest miners are the are
publicly listed companies all right yes so they have my goodness which brings us back to our
earlier discussion about illegal content and if you are a publicly listed company and you are
registered as a publicly listed company in the jurisdiction in which you in the country in which
you are uh you know carrying out your your business and you have a fiduciary duty to your
shareholders and like you can see how quickly this could just be oh my god like we have to
signal now but we can't take any further chances with anything coming across uh because that's
catastrophic like that's game over that's the that's close the doors guys your business is being
audited and if we find anything untoward turn the machines off until like you know
it's insane exactly exactly uh this is a really a big question mark why
you know people are not kind of all agreeing on that it's a it seems to be pretty evident
But there is also this angle that probably most likely those miners at the moment,
they say, yeah, fine, but we are doing your own stuff, right?
We are looking at those transactions and we make sure we don't add anything
that is illegal there.
That's most likely the case.
But of course, they are not, they are still not,
you know, at risk of a rogue miner out there anywhere,
it could be anywhere in the world,
adding bad stuff to one block.
And then those other miners,
they will have to anyway take that in the blockchain as well.
So it's not just them, right?
It's any miner anywhere that can do that.
So yeah, I agree with you.
You know, it seems to be a no-brainer.
but uh so for anybody that's um unaware of like how this whole thing plays out because it's very
difficult to to understand if you especially if you're if you're new uh it's very difficult for a
lot of people to understand i've been around for many years and it's still trying to wrap your head
around it you know all of the economic factors uh and the technical details and whatever else
nodes at the moment can signal their intent by running knots and signaling for bit 110
miners and this is yeah there's a specific i can't remember the specific block height that
bit 110 gets activated but miners if 55 or more of miners signal over any two-week period that they
are going to mine BIP 110, it gets activated early before the 1st of September deadline,
which that's the forced activation. Sorry, not 1st of September, the block height, which is around
1st of September. And then after that, there's a period, there's a couple of two-week periods,
I think, where the miners are going to sit there and just watch things play out. And it's kind of
like uh you know who moves first really yes yes exactly and um and now we are wondering you know
why the miners they are not moving faster but it's also reflecting i think the the actual state of the
of the power you know structure that you have in bitcoin so you have the nodes that actually
decide on the rules.
And then you have the miners that follow.
So now that we see that they are following
is not a big surprise either.
So they are just entities that will adapt
or that are adapting to the current rule set
and they will adapt to the future one.
So in a way that the fact that they are not signaling early
is also expected.
right? They are most likely at the moment looking at it and trying to understand what's going on.
Again, I don't think they have a very strong opinion about spam. They just operate according
to the current rule set, which is permissive. And now they are probably thinking, okay, something
I think most week is coming.
We have to prepare, but we are not in a hurry at the moment
because the deadline is in August actually.
So before this activation,
you have a kind of a mandatory signaling period.
So it's in August and in that period,
the miners will have to signal their support to B.10.
If they don't, then their block gets rejected.
So we could have already a chain split there in no cost.
And this is the big worry for a lot of people.
A lot of people that have been around Bitcoin for a long time
and have been stacking sats diligently.
There's a lot of fear around what's going to happen,
what's going to happen to the price, obviously,
because a lot of people have got a lot of value stored in this.
And a lot of people as well have built businesses around Bitcoin
A lot of companies have started accepting Bitcoin on their balance sheet, for example.
And the worst case scenario is the chain split, an absolute clusterfuck of misunderstanding, not being able to make rational economic decisions in time of panic and unease.
How is that avoidable?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say, again, let's see how things play out really.
But I would say if there is a chain split, it means that some entities out there are very
committed to mining spam, to add spam to the blockchain, right? Because I don't see really a
scenario where we have a chain split and people don't really care about spam. It's more like
if we have one, then there are some entities that have very strong opinion that spam should stay
on the blockchain and it's important, you know. And it doesn't make a lot of sense. So I would
I would guess we are not going to see a chain split, but we'll see.
There are a lot of unknown, right?
So there could be hidden incentive as well, things that we don't know.
Some people against Bitcoin wanting to push for the spammy blockchain option.
We don't know, but if we follow the rational behavior of these economic entities like miners,
the rational thing for them is just to get along and signal early enough so that we don't even go
to this mandatory signaling period. So that 1.10 is activated maybe in Q2, somewhere there.
so that they have enough time to understand what is going on
and then prepare themselves and go for it.
So I would say this is the most likely scenario.
But some disagree.
Some say that, no, if miners don't do anything,
which is the less energy kind of consuming approach,
then B.10 will not happen.
But again, it depends on the commitment of the Big 1.10 camp.
So if the camp is very committed, really believes
that it makes a lot of sense, and even believes
that there is a strong demand, but not just for now,
but also in the future, then that changes the game.
that changes the game right so yeah that's my that's and that might seem optimistic you know
but i think that also makes logical sense right so well okay let's take let's say that's the best
case scenario um if that's the best case scenario somebody could go on holiday for the next three
months leave the node running at home tune out of twitter tune out of nostra not listen to another
podcast you come back and everything will just be fine but bit 110 would have activated the the
blocks will be spamming excuse me uh filtering out the spam uh your bitcoin is your bitcoin there wasn a there wasn an airdrop of another coin and um everybody goes around their business Is that the best case scenario Yeah I think this is the one that makes sense
The worst case scenario is we get up to September.
The miners haven't activated in any way, shape or form.
They haven't signaled.
And then we get into this kind of waiting period
where they're mining both chains.
and you've now got Bitcoin and some other coin,
and it's a mess, and no one knows where it's going.
It's a mess, and it's also going to impact the price.
For sure.
Quite certainly, right?
So it makes sense that it would impact the price.
And that's the other thing.
That's the other angle.
So are the miners ready for that?
So if they don't do anything,
that's what's going to happen
and they can say yeah we let
the big point tension die
die off but still
it will be a kind of
and would the
exchanges be ready for that because people
are going to be like having
a very
tough time trying to figure out what to
hold on to and what not to and
you know it's going to
like the confusion is going to be crazy
yeah
yeah yeah
And even within the chain split scenario,
there are multiple scenarios, right?
You have the scenario where the B.10 chain
is not progressing at all, no hash rate or very little.
And then you have the scenario where it's actually
having a decent hash rate, 50% or more.
And then the scenario where it has 90%.
And yeah, so it's very uncertain what
happens if there is a chain split. Very uncertain. So I mean, people have to be ready for that.
You may say, yeah, I don't care about bit.10, I don't signal. Fine, but you have to be ready for
for that chain split scenario.
So, but it's, yeah, it's very uncertain at the moment.
I would say the most likely is that we don't have a chain split,
but if it happens, then it's going to be a mess for sure.
And then one of the other concerns
that I've seen out there is that it's not going to be compatible
with certain inheritance.
Perhaps it's not going to be compatible with certain inheritance setups.
If you're running Miniscript, if you've got some kind of multisig,
this is all, I think, very edge case.
But it has to be considered.
if people, you know, a lot of people have put a lot of time and energy
into building these kinds of things as well.
So they're economically and emotionally attached to these services.
Have you looked into that at all?
Not in too much detail, I have to say,
but I really understand that this should not be an issue with B.10.
So multi-sign is still working fine.
And then you may have very odd and edge scenarios
where you may have a problem, but then it's also up to you
to migrate.
If you have done something a little bit more complex,
more maybe a bit strange, then you see Bip1 then coming,
you just migrate.
to some Sonder setup, and then you're fine.
So this is an argument that was thrown by the B.10 opponents.
They say, yeah, but you are breaking the miniscript.
You are breaking the multisig.
No, it's just very rare cases, edge cases,
and you have plenty of time to migrate.
So I don't think that's really a sound and valid argument.
And the final point on that is BIP 110 is going to run for one year
and then there's going to be like a reset or a cooling off period
or like let's drop a knee, guys.
Let's see what this did.
Let's see whether it worked, what needs changing.
Is that the correct way to?
Okay.
Exactly.
So that's the other thing.
It's another argument for BIP 110 is that it's low risk.
So that if there is something that was not foreseen, you know, that's okay.
I don't think that's the case
but if you know
then after one year we can
we are back to the
to the non
kind of Bit.10
let's say for those edge case people
that all of a sudden lost access to their Bitcoin
it comes back to them one year later
whereas
and I don't want to throw shade
but like this is what happened
Core V30 upgraded
and they pushed through the upgrade
the whole thing actually
is just incredible when you just nutshell it.
You know, the pull request was made.
The arguing happened for goodness knows how long,
two years, three years.
Then they pushed it through.
And one of the biggest proponents for the push through
and just going against market narrative
leaves the project.
Like, you know, red flags everywhere.
And there was a bug in version 30
that has sadly ended with people losing access to their Bitcoin.
And that access is lost.
It's gone.
And I've heard the argument, well, they should have been more careful
and they should have done their backups.
They should have known what they were doing,
which is like, guys, you can't hand wave that away.
You just can't.
Whereas with Bit.110, if you do lose access to your coins
because of X, Y, or Z, a year later,
you have access back to them.
Now, yes, the price might have gone down
and things might have changed, but it might also have gone up.
But the point being, it's not a catastrophic loss.
Yeah, that's exactly the case.
And that gives time to evaluate what is working well
and hopefully everything.
But if there is something that is not,
then we can kind of recover that.
so that's
really good
and as I understand the idea of
this one year is also that
you know
that the preferred way
to
mitigate spam is really
with the policy
not with consensus
so that would be
the idea would be to scare the spammer
enough
away so that
after this one year
filtering is kind of
enough, right?
And if it's not, then again,
you know, they always will have
any way this threat of being
thrown off of the blockchain.
So, yeah, it's
kind of mild, right? If you think
about it. So one year
and then we are back to kind of policy
rules.
So filtering, not doing
the filtering and
then also the miners
doing the filtering.
Yeah.
So that mild wise and sound Yeah I think what people need to kind of ask themselves is who has the economic incentive to have the ability to spam the blockchain
Is it you, the pleb, that's running a node and using Bitcoin as a savings technology and or spending at your local pub, coffee, restaurant?
do you need the four megabyte blocks?
I would argue no.
So who does?
Who wants them?
Who's influencing it?
Who's lobbying for it?
And follow that money.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And then we are back to the discussion
on what's the purpose of Bitcoin.
Is it really a database storage
or a monetary digital network, right?
And you could see spam as a parasitic kind of activity there.
Yeah, of course, they enjoy that because their stuff
is stored forever for a little fee.
Right?
So it can be anything.
So yeah, for them, it's really an easy way
to have their stuff stored.
yeah so um yeah i hope this conversation is is helping a lot of people you know think through it
and um direct them towards your work uh make sure they start following you on on twitter
ping you any questions and um ping you some pushback as well i'm sure you've got uh you've had much
uh what what was the kind of thing that um you find yourself dealing with the most that the
the main common objective yeah i i think uh and you know it's understandable as well but this is
i think we covered already so censorship what you are doing is censorship
and we i think we covered that so it's not censorship because it's um it's optimizing for the
bitcoin purpose which is monetary um and then the other centralization argument has that come up
because I know that's another one that gets thrown around.
Like mining is becoming too centralized,
which both sides agree on.
Like this is the thing about this one.
Like, you know, both sides,
this is like when you go back to the block size wars,
the original block size wars,
both sides agreed we need extra space,
but they were coming to vastly different opinions
on how to do that.
And so, all right, so we've got this situation
where both sides agree mining is too centralized.
Yes.
Yeah, this is the funny thing, because for me, in fact,
being more permissive with spam is a centralizing force
because the more uncontrolled and more data
that you have on the blockchain, the more control you need.
Right?
So you will have to have bigger entities that are able to look into the
the
which means less miners.
And you could even imagine a scenario where you start to need to have regulation,
you know, because...
Let's go back to that original example I gave about if you're a publicly listed company and you are at the behest of all those regulations and jurisdictional laws and whatever else.
And all of this stuff, this regulatory creep starts creeping into your mining business.
You have to now order, excuse me, hire auditors, third party auditors.
And they, as everybody knows, are very, very expensive.
You'll have to have a whole legal team.
You'd have to have a whole compliance team.
And that centralizes shit because the only people that can afford that, this is what creates monopolies. We know this. We absolutely know this. We can look at any other sector and see how monopolies are created through regulatory creep. And again, just follow the money. Who are the people like putting these regulations in place and who is lobbying them?
So I agree with you.
Being more permissive to spam will create centralization.
It's inevitable.
Yes, I think that's exactly the case.
So that is a little bit strange to hear that, you know,
this current setup is made to avoid the centralization of the miner.
But also, it's not just the mining, right?
It's also the nodes.
if anything can be added to the blockchain
or to the main pool of the nodes,
then soon enough, we might see regulators coming in
and say, okay, you have to have a license
if you want to run a node
and to make sure that you are in line with our laws.
So yeah, I think this is really an important part.
And that's where I think B.10 is helping a lot here.
So, yeah, so I think this is definitely where we should be going
and what we should target.
And for the node runner as well, if you try now,
if you've been inspired to go out and start running your own node,
then look across the different options that are available to you.
there are three or four now off the shelf or you can start building your own one if you're
technically sound enough to do that or want to learn there's plenty of videos out there on
youtube how to do that now there's no excuse the barrier to entry to running a node is very very
low but when you start doing that initial block download do you know what percentage you get to
before it just like hits the wall yeah it's quite high actually no it's quite high but then
when you arrive to 2023, I think.
Yep.
When they start to green down the text for it.
So you can start doing the initial block download,
syncing up your node, everything's going fine.
And boom, you get to February 2023
and it just puts the brake on.
And then it just grinds for days,
just syncing all that data.
And that data, my friends,
are ordinals, runes, inscriptions,
spam in air quotes,
however you want to define that.
It's different for everybody.
Obviously, we've had years of defining spam, non-monetary financial transactions, basically, any of those.
And that grinds to a halt.
And then people like myself who had a one terabyte SSD storing all of that, I've now had to go and buy a four terabyte SSD and clone that across.
This is this incurs a time cost.
This incurs real cost.
You know, this this isn't it cannot be hand waved away again.
Like, you know, this is affecting individuals at the node level.
And it's the nodes that are arguably the most important part of this whole thing.
Exactly. Agree. I mean, you have to be quite motivated nowadays to run a node,
because you have to wait these two weeks or one week more.
So if we play that out, so if BIP 110 isn't taken up and spam galore,
four megabyte blocks for the next five years imagine downloading imagine coming to bitcoin in 2029 and well i gonna run a node I on board with all this Oh shit This is going to take months and months and months
And I need ridiculous amounts of storage to store all of this non-monetary financial transaction stuff.
Yeah, that's exactly.
So making Bit.10 even more important.
I think
alright so you're in Finland
are you going to be at BTC
Helsinki? Yes I
plan to be
in September? Yeah
my goodness that's going to be
either plain sailing and
everything's fine bro or
we're going to be in that period of just
complete and utter total confusion
correct
I believe it will be a bright
time
so well fingers crossed and uh and thank you for coming on thank you for your work thank you for
entering into uh the bitcoin space you said at the beginning here you've you come in around 2023
uh so this has been your journey like uh you know this whole spam thing you've seen it very very
close up uh well done for sticking around well done for digging into it and don't listen to
anyone that's going to tell you, oh, you're valid, you're an invalid contributor because you haven't
been around since 2015 and you didn't go through the block size wars. Don't listen to any of that
bullshit. That's anti-Bitcoiner. Everybody is welcome to this permissionless network and to
bring their value and their skill sets. And you've bought yours in an analytical way. And I hope that
this conversation is going to go a long way to help people either go out there, be inspired to
run a node or take a closer look at all of this,
read through your articles,
look for other educational content because this is something that isn't going
away and something that needs delving into.
And you've done a great job with that so far.
And I look forward to issue number 12.
When are you dropping that?
It's coming on Monday.
All right.
I look forward to that.
Any spoilers?
Yeah,
if you want,
It's going to be about the different entities that make Bitcoin
and what are their roles.
Excellent.
Yes.
All right.
Well, I look forward to seeing you in Helsinki in September
and reading more of your work, Renaud.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I'll leave the way for people to contact you, your Twitter.
I know you're still navigating NOSTA,
but I'll put your end pub in there as well.
the newsletter bitcoin portal so people can come and find you excellent thanks daniel thank you
mate take care bye thank you everybody for listening and if you feel compelled to share
this around please go ahead and do that because more education on this topic the better uh there
are still so many so many emotions tied up in this and why wouldn't there be you know that
we're talking about money here at the end of the day and that is the most emotional topic ever for
our species to engage in so don't be surprised when you log into your Twitter account and you
see people with very strong opinions on one side or the other side and it is
you can get trapped in the fog of war I suppose would be the best analogy to
use here so it is important to listen to like I said here in the beginning at the
end of the show it's important to look at new new perspectives new voices and
as much as the narrative of you haven't been around you didn't go through the
block size wars, you've got nothing to contribute, you've never done anything, you know, to,
what was some of the other narratives, you've never contributed in any meaningful way,
you've never bought any kind of economic value into the space, and all this kind of stuff
that people are saying is, that's baggage, you know, so if you flip that narrative on its head,
we've got a guy here
who's had like a 25, 30 year career
in his telecommunications business
who has come to Bitcoin
2023
the only world he's known
is the world of spam
so he doesn't have the baggage
so like isn't that actually
a really interesting point of view
to embrace as well
somebody that's coming in with and go to the bitcoin portal.com like go see what you've built
like this isn't a fly-by-nighter and uh i hope the the conversation here has gone a long way to
like i said there at the end inspire you to run a node we'll look into it there's a popular meme
in the bitcoin space it's called code is law and that comes from a book written by lawrence lessig
back in 1999 titled code and that meme has been around for a very very long time gets thrown around
in bitcoin space a lot i'd like to offer up that node is law because if you're running your node
then you get to decide not only do you get to decide what hardware you use like you can go out
there find the best one that you think is going to suit you but then what software what implement
implementation you get to use and if you've engaged in the conversation either on Noster or
Twitter about BIP110 without even running a node yeah it's look in the mirror time so that is I
think the defining point here node is law and what Renault is going to drop on Monday at time of
recording this is excuse me at time of release 21st of February he's going to be dropping his
next article on the 23rd of February so go and check that out where he said here he's going to
be talking about all of the different parts of the Bitcoin ecosystem and how they all intertwine
with each other if you want to go and learn more about that Simon Dixon did a recent video I think
it's in around part three of his recent video so you can just go follow Simon Dixon hard talk
he's been really delving into it as well but like the the main point here the biggest takeaway I want
everybody to take from this is let's just get down to business start educating ourselves stop
following the narratives stop choosing a side blindly just because so-and-so has said one thing
don't be led in any direction proof of work do your own research figure out what you
believe aligns with you best and go act like that that's what bitcoin is that is purely what bitcoin
is and uh i just hope everybody realizes the the existential threat of monopolies in bitcoin mining
because this isn't a joke like i said in the interview this playbook of building monopolies
has been followed to the T for over a century.
Monopolies will be built.
Governments will be lobbied.
Regulations will come down the pike.
And that is going to be incredibly difficult to ever break again.
So please take that point very, very seriously
and think about that very, very deeply.
Thank you, everybody, for listening.
Have a great weekend.
I'll catch you on the next show.
Thank you.