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- [00:01]
A
The roundtable is back. Welcome back to the show. Don't forget we are sponsored by bitbox and it is a great way to help out the show as well as help out yourself by getting yourself a bitbox. I've been a huge fan of their wallet, their stack, the hardware wallet itself, but also their actual wallet software. Literally for like a set of just getting a hardware wallet and going all the way to being your own Bitcoiner and having your software and everything and plugging into your phone, doing everything. Bitbox has one of the best all in one setups and they're a really good company. And it's also, like I said, there's a discount code, but it's also a really great way to help out the show and what we do. And speaking of the show, I've been kind of noticing a sentiment lately has been really, really garbage because we're in a bear market and we're a bunch of red candles recently. And so I wanted to talk about kind of why we're here. It's something that I don't think we can refresh too often and ask the question, what if bitcoin dies? You know, it's not like this isn't sure, you know, this is not a given. It's not predestined. We do think this is the best solution, but what if it does? What if it does die? What if it does break? What if we're wrong? What does that mean? And ask the question, why are we here? And what would we be doing in the face of bitcoin? Being imperfect or not working or dying. Like, what's. What's the alternative? Because I think it's easy to be afraid of, like when things are bad or when it feels like things are really crappy or we're in a bad spot. And I think we should lean into that. Okay, so what's the plan? What do you do? Why are we here? And we actually had a really. Didn't really talk much about the spam debate. I don't think we did. I'm sure it came up at some point. I can't even remember, but we really talk about that bigger question. A lot of. A lot of different issues and stuff around it and thinking about where we are in the market and our history in the market. Because, you know, the show's a bunch of, you know, for better or worse, OGs. People have been around for a really, really long time in the bitcoin space. And I think it's worth that perspective. There's a lot of New people who, you know, don't know what it felt like 12 years ago and 15 years ago. So I thought, let's get a little perspective and let's ask that question and go around the roundtable and ask and see what people think about what if bitcoin died? And why are we here? So with that, let's get into roundtable number 22. I believe this is what if bitcoin dies? Welcome to the roundtable, guys. We're back. We're back, guys. Satoshi's roundtable, whatever this is called. Good to have some OGs in the house with sentiment so shitty. And I want to talk about today, I want to talk about what if bitcoin dies. And the reason I want to talk about it is because there have been a couple of times in bitcoin's history where I got really, really afraid of something or I was, I was really fearful. I, I had no idea. I realized I had no idea what I was getting myself into or I did not know something about some topic or issue. And you know, kind of my default, I, I guess the, that natural tendency is to like, move away from it, is to be like, oh my God, that thing makes me afraid. I'm just going to ignore it or I'm going to not think about it. And every, all of my actual, I guess you could say, successes in bitcoin or the reason I'm still here is because I tried to do the opposite. You know, there were like a couple of books that kind of like set the framing in my mind. You know, like the obstacle is the way and like some of those things, but just that, like, if you're afraid of something or if you're resisting something, you want to move away from something, that is literally what you should be going to. That's what you should go read about. You know, when somebody says that the cryptography is not going to stand up, go read about the cryptography, like, because fear is you're afraid of stuff when you have no plan, when you don't know anything about it, and if it happens, you have absolutely no clue what you're going to do. And bitcoin, as amazing of a thing as it is, a lot of people are, think it just might not work. And a lot of people feel that it just might not work or it's dying or that sentiment is crap. And, you know, we didn't have a good enough bull run this last time. And maybe it's over. You know, maybe this is where it stops. And bitcoin just does this bullshit for the next 20 years. And so let's play that out. How would bitcoin die? What if bitcoin doesn't go anywhere else? Does that even make sense? Does it just go back to zero because of the having. You know, And. But before we, like, really dump. Jump into that conversation, I just want to get updates. Welcome everybody back. Glad everybody's available. Jeff, what's up, my man? How you doing, dude? Feel like we hadn't talked much in the last couple weeks. I've been busy with kids.
- [05:58]
B
Yeah, I. I don't know. I just. I just saw that on the other side of town here, a rabbi was shot by a female cop accidentally while the cops were fighting a guy who hates women outside of pornhub. So.
- [06:20]
A
So wait, what? That is the. That's like, the setup for a really complicated joke.
- [06:27]
B
Some guy showed up outside of the pornhub office. I don't know if that was on purpose or not to, like, shoot people because he supposedly hates women. That was. I don't know if, like, they tried to make. There were three or four narratives that they tried to spin. At the beginning, they tried to say he hated Jews because. But then it came out that the
- [06:45]
A
rabbit, he was antiseptic.
- [06:47]
B
Yeah, he was anti. Semicond. But.
- [06:49]
A
But I had two people mechanic. I had two people comment about they're going to use antiseptic. That was the great.
- [06:56]
C
You didn't get in trouble for it.
- [06:59]
A
It'll be a bad word very soon. It'll be like npc, you know?
- [07:03]
B
Yeah, but. But apparently it came out that the. The. A lady. A lady police officer accidentally shot the rabbi, who was just a bystander, apparently, and one Muslim cop was killed in the process. So, like, three dudes died and. Because some guy hated women. I don't. I don't know. Like, it's. It's a very.
- [07:28]
A
Like, that sounds like a very complicated. Like, the journalist is trying really, really hard to make this relevant to something that isn't, like, women cops or worse. Like, how do we. How do we divert away from someone coming to that conclusion?
- [07:44]
B
That was like a massive shoot, you know, shootout, and. And apparently they. They stop the shooter.
- [07:50]
A
That's crazy. It's very crazy there.
- [07:52]
B
It's very weird. And, you know, my. My homeless neighbors have all set up. Set up camp around.
- [08:01]
A
That's nice.
- [08:02]
B
The neighborhood. And it's nice and warm now in Montreal, so. So the homeless people are out making
- [08:10]
A
any friends, getting any. Getting any free drugs.
- [08:14]
B
Yeah, it's actually not that bad. We took a Ride to. I can't remember where we went. We went some. Maybe one of the. There's like a cats and coffee or something we went to. But on the way there, like on the highway, there's like, like literally tent cities like in California, like on the way to this other place, like across, across town. So Canada has. Has a pretty, pretty serious homeless issue.
- [08:45]
A
Just a note, because I have never seen one of these in the US for anybody who wants a business idea. I've listened to some, some dude, it was probably like, I don't know, chamath or some. Somebody like that or whatever. He's talking about how like one of the favorite things that he sees in like business trends is going to another country that does something like really unique or different and then going back to the US or the state or whatever and realizing that there's none of those things there in that location. And so they just set up the. And he used the example of some Japanese style restaurant or whatever that suddenly blew up and a bunch of these little things. But on that note, Jeff, there is a thing in his area called cats and coffee.
- [09:33]
B
No, I actually think I heard about this from. I think I heard about it in
- [09:38]
A
the U.S. in the U.S. really? Okay, well if it's. I guess if it's not a Canada thing, if there is in the US I was just thinking that that's a, that's a hilarious and really funny idea that I've never ever heard of until you found that in Montreal. So I, I assumed it might just. It was just not around here. But it's literally just a coffee place where there's a bunch of cats sitting around so you can like pet the cats and hang out and cuddle. It's very therapeutic.
- [10:05]
B
They probably do some sort of like adoption thing or something too. Sure. But I don't know, it's sort of like. It's weirdly like I, I like it, but it's. It's also weirdly like kind of a bad idea. Like you just got like cats.
- [10:20]
A
Like I'm not, I'm not gonna do it. I'm just letting other people know that they want to do it.
- [10:24]
B
Like cat fur on. I mean like they, they actually are pretty clean, but like, I just wondered how much they have to clean up all the time. Like they just probably. It's a little bit odd, but gotta
- [10:34]
A
get a couple robot vacuum cleaners. They'll be sitting on them as they ride around. Mechanic, how you doing, my man?
- [10:41]
C
Yeah, pretty good.
- [10:43]
A
Yeah,
- [10:46]
C
my threshold for credulity got exceeded, So I now think bip110 is more likely than not. And I guess it's an uncomfortable month while that slowly becomes a thing. But I'm just inundated with a lot of support. Very underwhelmed with the opposition. And that spells good for the network, though. It's gonna be an incredibly bumpy ride this month. We got 42 days left until the fork.
- [11:16]
A
And how are blocks?
- [11:19]
C
Blocks are slow. The hash rate's about the same as it was last time we were doing this podcast, so whenever that was. Um, but I think the blocks are a little bit less now, but the hash rate's the same, so not much has changed in that regard.
- [11:40]
A
Gotcha. Any other updates? Any fun stuff for the month?
- [11:44]
C
No, not really. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on that. That's kind of dumb for me to talk about, unfortunately, but hopefully next month a whole bunch of stuff can start being talked about. This time next month, it will be like eight or nine days away. So there should be a lot of. A lot of public things to talk about at that point. Yeah.
- [12:05]
A
Steve, how's it going, man?
- [12:08]
D
Dude, I'm doing great. Only problem in my life is that my wife is going for Germany and the World Cup. She's not going for the U.S. so a little bit of marital force.
- [12:19]
A
Divorce that bitch immediately, dude.
- [12:22]
D
In terms of bitcoin stuff, I agree with you, guy. And I often think of the importance of letting people know. Know people. Who's their first bare market. It seems like the world's ending, and we've been there. And, like, I really appreciated the OGs that, like, calm me down during those times. And I think it's important that guys like us kind of speak up. And it's not just that I'm okay with this stuff. It's that, like, I'm excited about it. Like, this is my favorite time in bitcoin, when you get to strip away all of the stuff on top and you can see the bottom and you realize how beautiful the underlying stuff is and how robust it is. This analogy came to me. So it was like, we're kind of living in this house, and we're kind of on the first floor of the house, and the first floor is kind of like bitcoin price and layer two stuff, and, like, microstrategy stuff. Maybe that's on the third floor. I don't know. But we're on the first floor and there's a storm coming. There's like a tornado or something. And I'm like, We'll just go in the basement, guys. And people are scared to go in the basement. They're like. They're thinking, like, there's spiders and, like, dirty stuff and down there. And I'm like, no, guys, I know you don't go in the basement a lot. I go in the basement every day. The basement is immaculate. There is, like, it's furnished. There's extra refrigerators stocked with meat down there. No, there's no, like, bullshit donuts and stuff, but there's a pool table down there. There's like, it's so much better than you think it is. You guys just haven't been down there ever or in a while. And they're like, oh, God, I guess we'll go in the basement. And they're like, what if we go in the basement and, like, the storm destroys the top floor? I'd be like, it might. There were some problems with the top floor. But you know what else might happen? You might realize the basement is awesome, and you don't even care what gets built on the top floor anymore. That's just, like, the sense of even a chain split. They're like, oh, I heard the basement can split into two. And I'm like, yeah, technically, it splits into two every day. Sometimes it splits into two, and when it comes back together, which it always does, we have twice as much meat in the fridge. Somehow, like, it's a beautiful, magical thing. And so, I don't know. Maybe I went too much with that
- [15:11]
A
analogy, but you took it too far. But I was in for it too far. I was here for it the whole time.
- [15:17]
D
It's not just that I'm okay with it. I genuinely get excited about this stuff. Maybe I'm more of a competitive. I love fights. Like, I. Maybe I'm just here for the conflicts because I like that stuff, but it reveals. It reveals the beauty, man.
- [15:32]
C
Dude, I'm with you a hundred percent. Like, I've never enjoyed bear markets. Like, I've never. Like, it's. You're just watching your net worth go down. Typically, this is the first one where I'm like, please go lower. Like, because every time it goes lower, MSTR and stretch and all of other. All the other scams of sailor are crashing and burning. And it's so fun to watch because these, like, you know, I got beef with bitcoin core, but the. The sailor cult is way stupider somehow. Like, I'm actually really amazed that there's something stupider than the core cult is the sailor cult. And these guys are like you're buying fake paper. Bitcoin, it's losing money constantly. It's completely against the ethos of the whole thing. It's not working. They, they're not a company that produce anything that it's not. Apple decided to start taking bitcoin. It's just a guy that's like, hey, give me your money, I'll buy bitcoin and I'll do a bunch of financial magic to magic more money out of the air somehow. And, and it's a complete violation of all the principles. I hate everything about it. I own a little bit of microstrategy that I bought to defer taxes in Canada and I can't bring myself to sell it because I know if I do, it will start going up again. So I'm like holding this thing maliciously, knowing that the longer I hold it, the lower it's going to go. I just want it to die. It just. Everything about it kills me. And it wasn't even that bad. I started out as normal, just like, oh, this probably isn't a good idea. Like you want to buy coins yourself and hold them in self custody, yada yada. And the reaction to that was so insane that I was like, oh, okay, now we got beef. Like, now it's actually got a. Now it's become personal. I really want this thing to completely crash and burn. Like, Saylor is just. I can't believe what he's getting up to with this stuff. And the lower the price goes, the more they'll die. And then if it goes lower than that still, then stuff like NACA and all the treasury stocks in general start dying. That's going to be beautiful to watch, man. And it, it cleans out the space just, just in such a good way. I couldn't care less whether Bitcoin's at $20,000. It, it's not going to bother me.
- [17:50]
A
What's really interesting is exactly how that stuff unfolded. Like, because kind of the foundation of what Saylor was doing is like, okay, and that seems fine. You're basically taking a very long leverage play, taking low interest debt that you're issuing to get something that will outpay that will over a long enough span get a higher percentage than the 1%, 2% bonds that you're selling. And like, so just in a general sense, it's kind of seemed whatever to me. And then Saylor was kind of such a cultural or social phenomenon because he just had such a ridiculous conviction in promoting of bitcoin. Then I feel like everybody Flooded into this thing without realizing that it was just kind of a. Okay, he has a way to buy more bitcoin, like they were going to get rich off of it. When it's literally the equity that you hold being diluted and it's like you're not going to out beat bitcoin with a financialization that allows Sailor to get more bitcoin and then holding a piece of that, you know, like, that's not, that's, that's never going to work out net in your favor. It can't.
- [19:19]
E
It's going to work out in Sailor's
- [19:21]
A
favor, in strategy's favor. And sure, you might be able to put your 401k in it or whatever if you can't get it directly into bitcoin.
- [19:29]
C
You can though, just buy, buy an etf.
- [19:33]
A
That's the thing is that now just in the general sense, is it like, okay, you have capital that's stuck somewhere, but now you can with the etf, right? You have plenty of options basically at this point. But the level of kind of expanding of all of those things and kind of like continuing to leverage that bet and the, the kind of like fascination this, this whole like, this is our way to get rich in bitcoin, I feel like was just kind of like a cult of personality, right? Is it like. It's just like I'm just putting my money in the thing that Sailor has because sailors, Jesus Christ, look at this convicted guy on like bitcoin. And it just got way out of the scope of like really, like this is not. You really should still just be buying bitcoin and holding your keys, you know, like it's not, it's just not that hard. And you, you're continually over complicating it and like good for Sailor if, if that works out for him.
- [20:33]
C
But
- [20:35]
A
you should not be, you should not be selling bitcoin to put some in. In a bitcoin derived thing, you're just adding counterparty risk. You're just adding counterparty risk and just, just like it proves you're going to get hit worse on the downside, you know, it's not unlike any other leverage. You know, you might do pretty well on the way up, but you can do pretty dang bad on the way down, you know.
- [21:00]
C
But I just can't believe how many people have fallen for it and celebrating it. Like, yeah, not, not your keys, not your coins. What, what happened to these like trite but unbelievably true, you know, what do you call them? Mantras?
- [21:17]
A
I Guess, principles, idiom, mantras, whatever.
- [21:20]
C
Yeah, but the whole point was like, basic rules.
- [21:22]
A
The basic rules of Bitcoin6102 risk, they're trite because that's the easiest way to apply, right? Yeah.
- [21:31]
C
Don't store it with third party custodians. Make sure you control your own private keys. The problem with the existing financial system is all the trust that's required to make it work. What, you're reintroducing all that in a way that's gonna. It's just so wrong that I'm just stunned by the amount of people out there that are like, that are telling you it's a good idea.
- [21:54]
A
It just doesn't make sense to me how much it blew up as if like that was the thing. It's like, well, no, Bitcoin is the thing. This is literally kind of a derivative of a derivative of the thing. So how is this what you're excited about or, or like this is the thing that you want to own if it is literally derived from bitcoin, you know, like, how do you, how do you pry out? It's like, God bless. I don't even know how to. That's a good analogy.
- [22:27]
D
Bank runs, man. It's like to me it all just feels like, you know, back in the 1800s when there was private banks and people were like, oh, it's kind of sketchy and like, oh, but every once in a while there's a bank run and ultimately it's gold standard and it cleans everything out. Like, it just feels like that to me. Yeah, I go in the basement. Basement is the bank run. Know it's going to happen.
- [22:49]
A
It's got to happen. People just love to leverage. And I also think that's why sentiment sucks. Like I, I leveraged the, you know, chunk of my stack, a significant chunk of my stack. Expecting, expecting it, not to. Expecting it. Continue to go like, like with the expectation of like the market move. And I think probably a lot of people put themselves, did the same thing, basically planned on how it was going to play out and then when it didn't, they literally just got there. Like, that's what we're doing, right? Is that we're getting rid of the weak hands or the people who weren't prepared for who didn't put down on paper. It's like, okay, well what if this does go back to 40, you know, like, how effed am I?
- [23:38]
D
Yeah, leverage is paper.
- [23:41]
A
I understand the, I understand the. This like, why that sentiment is like, I've, I've felt that myself because of part of the position I put myself in. And yeah, so I, I understand probably where they are sitting and why they feel that way. And I imagine they're probably worse off. A lot of them are probably a lot worse off than I am. You know, like, I'm probably getting a small piece of where they feel or how they feel. So I get it. But yeah, that's literally why you just don't leverage. You, that's why you, you, you should be ready to deleverage and protect yourself in those situations because you don't know
- [24:24]
E
what it's going to do. You just don't know what it's going to do.
- [24:26]
A
And bitcoin loves to F you in the A. It loves it. You should expect it to have its best day when it is pissing you off.
- [24:38]
D
So there's like the, the personal risk situation that you're talking about with leverage. And then there's another good reason not to. And that's the Simon Dixon stuff. Have you guys been listening to Simon Dixon this year? He's, he's been quite on a lot of podcasts, especially recently. And he's talking, he says, like leverage and even bitcoin backed loans. That is the attack vector of the state. You know, that all that stuff is an act of centralization. You know, I mean, I, I have done a bitcoin backed loan too, and I don't regret that I did it. I did a really small amount. I bought a business with it. I'm, I'm happy I did it. I'm not at risk of liquid liquidation, not yet, thank God. So, like, I, I'm guilty as well, and I definitely feel bad for the people. Like you're saying that stuff's real and we all had higher expectations, but I don't think I'm ever going to do it ever again. Not because of the risk stuff, because of the Simon Dixon thing. Like, it is an act of centralization. Michael Saylor's act of centralization, even Unchain Capital is kind of an act of centralization. That is how they win. Like the state wins by centralizing coins. He agrees with me. The kid agrees with me.
- [25:55]
E
He does.
- [25:56]
D
He does.
- [25:57]
A
He came in. He came in. He says, look at my rocks. Also, bitcoin will die if it gets centralized. You shouldn't do that. And then he, and then he walked.
- [26:04]
D
Coin centralization is real. It's not as bad as minor centralization. Which ocean is fighting the greatest fight of all that.
- [26:16]
C
We've had some drama about that. This Week.
- [26:18]
D
Coin centralization is bad too. Sorry, mechanic, what are you saying?
- [26:24]
C
Oh man. There was a Stratum V2 block finally.
- [26:27]
A
And a Stratum V2 block with. Built their own template. Yeah.
- [26:32]
D
First one ever.
- [26:33]
E
Wow. Is that the first one?
- [26:35]
A
Yes.
- [26:36]
C
Yay.
- [26:37]
D
First decentralized template.
- [26:39]
A
Congratulations. I did not know that. That is exciting.
- [26:43]
D
Datum doesn't exist.
- [26:45]
A
I bet it would have taken a year longer if it had not been for datum. Just saying. Probably.
- [26:50]
C
Hey, I don't. DAM doesn't exist according to the announcements about that block.
- [26:54]
D
Yeah, I know.
- [26:56]
C
I don't know if you saw it like go Mining and Matt Coralla were both like for the first time in bitcoin's history, a miner mined a block on a pool where they made the template themselves and they got appropriately dragged for it because it's good. Obviously not true. And I don't. If you've been working on. On a way to improve the stratum protocol for the better part of a decade and you finally hit success with it, why would your announce lie? Why would you sell it with that kind of stuff? Like why not like even Leo? Like why? How petty can you be? Like it just completely. Like we were all just like, well, well done. You've done it. Good work. Why are you lying?
- [27:39]
E
I'm very happy. That's great news.
- [27:41]
A
You know, like, I don't understand the
- [27:43]
E
personal like the, the vendetta or the.
- [27:50]
A
The just belligerence of just like only
- [27:54]
E
our way to decentralize it is the right way.
- [27:56]
A
You know, like it just like.
- [27:58]
E
Like I don't understand. Like how can you. How could you not be excited about datum?
- [28:04]
C
Because of personal issues, man.
- [28:06]
E
Every other thing that you might disagree with. Do you have any idea how many people who build cool that I disagree with? Like the number is quite high actually. And people that I don't even. I literally don't even like as people
- [28:20]
A
don't really like them.
- [28:21]
E
But they build cool stuff and I don't go, well, that thing that he built that's really cool sucks. Or I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist because I have an issue with that person. Like, isn't this the whole. The whole thing about all of this is that like the code speaks for itself? Is it the tools speak for themselves? Is it the beauty of the free market and open source is that somebody
- [28:41]
A
you don't like can build something useful and you can still use that thing?
- [28:45]
E
Is that we're actually working together? How can you just pretend datum doesn't exist. And what's. What do you gain out of it other than looking stupid? Like, the fact that stratum v2 has a. A minor built template block is awesome. The fact that Datum has been doing it for a year and a half or however long is more awesome. And I am so glad that we finally have. That they finally caught up, because that was the one thing that I thought Stratum V2 was good for. There's a lot of other things that they built it to do, but those things do not. They pale in comparison to the importance of having miners running nodes. Like, that's what this is about. Do you actually have a node or are you just renting your hash to somebody else who's controlling it? And I don't understand how you can't just be happy regardless of who is
- [29:41]
A
accomplishing that task that Bitcoin has that task.
- [29:44]
E
How can you not care more about Bitcoin than your own stupid vendetta with some random person, like everybody that I have problems with. I still respect them for what they're actually useful for what they actually did. And like, Jesus Christ. I disagree with Luke on so many things. Luke says stupid shit all the time. And no hate to Luke. He's. He's the reason Segwit happened. He's the reason so many important events and things that protected Bitcoin actually existed. He's the reason Eligius. How do you.
- [30:17]
A
How do you say it?
- [30:18]
E
And Ocean exists.
- [30:19]
C
No one knows.
- [30:19]
E
Like, no one knows.
- [30:25]
D
But like, it is only spelled. It is not spoken.
- [30:29]
C
It can be grant seeking. Right? Because you have to represent these things as somehow unnecessary to justify more investment. Right? So you have. And then you have to kind of
- [30:39]
E
toe those competing ones, you know, like it should be all one anyway.
- [30:43]
C
I don't know. That's the only like. Like, pragmatic rationale I can find for pretending there isn't another protocol that does the same thing.
- [30:50]
E
Like, well, stratum V2.
- [30:52]
A
Datum doesn't encrypt.
- [30:54]
E
Right?
- [30:55]
A
Like, it doesn't do a.
- [30:58]
C
Yeah, but we're talking about the job declarator stuff.
- [31:01]
B
Like.
- [31:01]
C
Yeah, that's a separate aspect of what stratum V2 is.
- [31:05]
E
Exactly.
- [31:06]
A
And that's just why I'm saying that Stratum V2 is still a net positive because it doesn't just do what Datum does. In fact, the main thing, I think when they first started it was to deal with the encryption so that they could handle the. Was it the lost or replaced work attack or whatever it is. I. I can't remember exactly.
- [31:24]
C
Hash rate hijacking, you mean Hash rate hijacking.
- [31:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. Um, and then it was just like, oh, well, we can make it. We can fix all of these other problems with this same, you know, second
- [31:36]
C
version SV2 for, for the communication protocol between the, the firmware and I guess the pool, but I don't really want to call it a pool.
- [31:47]
E
That.
- [31:47]
C
That's been a no brainer forever and that's been supported by brains forever. And the only reason DATN doesn't support that aspect of Stratton V2 is because it doesn't really. It's not that useful and it's not really widely enough supported for us to implement it. Because at the end of the day, you're not doing. No one can hijack hijack hash rate on your own local area network. Like, and Datum encrypts. Datum replaces that. Well, that's the point, actually, because datum replaces the encryption there because it itself encrypts between itself and the pool. The plaintext stuff is happening between your miners and your node and the server sitting on top of your node, which is all on the same network.
- [32:28]
A
Usually you're assuming that that's in the same place.
- [32:31]
C
It doesn't have to be though. All the, all the pleb hash rate rental stuff, that's all plain text stratum v1 traffic, which sucks. Yeah. So if any of that supported Stratum v2, I'd immediately want to modify Datum to support Stratum v2 as well. But it's just a separate element. It's got nothing to do with the template creation stuff.
- [32:50]
A
Yeah. But anyway, that's still. Though that's just great news though. I'm super excited. I can't believe that I missed that somehow. I'm gonna find that and retweet it or whatever.
- [32:59]
D
I was looking for any kind of steel, man, and Matt's argument, but I was like, okay, is there something about Datum that's not open source? But Datum is open source. It's the, the ocean stuff that's not as open.
- [33:12]
C
But yeah, it's Tides. Tides is not public. That's all right. I'm not, I'm not even gonna say it's not open source because it's not closed source either. It just hasn't been uploaded to GitHub. And they don't. They refuse to prioritize doing it. And I understand they're not prioritizing it, but it's not like there's no stratum V2 does not have a pool implementation in it that is necessarily making it better than DAM somehow. Because, like, strand v2 is a bunch of things, but it's the aspect of miners making their own templates in a pooled context is it's done, it's been reimplemented. I think Corallo called it reverse engineering and Leo went otherwise known as reading the source code for Datum, which is public and open source. You can call it reverse engineering if you want to imply it's something that it isn't, but it's just fricking open source software. It's there and it's been re implemented by multiple people.
- [34:09]
D
Also, Matt could have just added one word to the tweet to make it defendable, which was encrypted. Right. The first whatever, encrypted protocol. And that would make it at least defensibly correct. Right. And he didn't even add that.
- [34:27]
C
Interesting. Because what's. What is it that's being encrypted there?
- [34:30]
D
Like, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it isn't. Stratum v2 encrypted where datum isn't.
- [34:37]
C
Yeah, but not with respect to comms between the pool and the miner.
- [34:42]
D
Okay.
- [34:43]
A
It's from the node to the mining
- [34:45]
C
machine anyway, from the job declarator, which is their dam gateway equivalent between that and the SV2 mining firmware. But I doubt that was even the case because there's a translator between them. Because basically there aren't any mining hardware firmware things out there that support Stratum V2. The only thing that does is brains OS. And that doesn't exist on your Bit Axe or your Watts Miner or any of that stuff. It only exists on antminers with that firmware. So there's just a. There's just a translation layer to turn it into SV2. So it's still going plain text over SV1. It just gets translated?
- [35:22]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [35:23]
D
I was trying my hardest to give Matt any kind of steel, man, but I just could not do it. It was just a blatant, bold face lie.
- [35:31]
C
Well, they should have just said, Look, Stratton V2 finally found a block. Ocean would have retweeted it and congratulated them. There was no need for that kind of lie, man.
- [35:40]
D
It's a straight up lie, every word.
- [35:42]
E
I mean, it's. It's also not something. It's not like it matters that much, but it's still just. It's a little petty.
- [35:49]
D
But Matt, given his status as His Bitcoin core dev.
- [35:53]
C
No, it matters a lot because if you're seriously going to do this, if you are really serious about dealing with the problems Bitcoin has and moving them forward. I'm never going to work with people that demonstrate that kind of pettiness. Like, it's like you're, you're just going to waste time and money. Like, I need to work with adults and stuff like that to me is just, it's just office politics and drama and like high school crap. I'm just. You guys are not remotely serious about this project. Go away. Like, yeah, I'm sorry. That's immediately my assessment of people that act like that. I'm just like, no, I'm too old for this. This is silly nonsense. I'm not dealing with it. Like, straight up, everyone. Ocean's just like, well done. That's an achievement. Congratulations. Like, that's, that's the, the truth of it. That's called being an adult.
- [36:41]
A
They just sullied their own great news. Like, and it's just like, you know, like, why, why? You know, like, just.
- [36:51]
C
You were stoked when I first told you.
- [36:54]
A
I was stoked. Now you're like, this is retarded news and just sucking. Son of a bitch.
- [37:00]
C
Anyway, sorry to sell you with that. It is a good thing. I don't think it's actually. There's a reason we didn't use it, right? I don't think it actually has the potential to do much. I think you needed that to do what we want to do. Ultimately, that is my assessment on it. But I don't know, it's probably not
- [37:20]
A
even worth saying now that they're, you know, they're plays on the table, you know, they're on the field. I'm, I, I'm curious. I want to see him prove it wrong.
- [37:27]
C
I think the main holdup with it now is not pool based. Like, I'm sure Foundry or Antpool would support it. The main thing is just trying to get the other part of Bitmain to support it, which is make native SV2 software firmware for the actual firmware. But it's heavy for embedded devices. It's not, it's, it's not a lightweight thing like it needs to be. These are really, really crappy things, right? They're. I don't know how they compare to a Raspberry PI.
- [37:54]
A
A dumb machine, right?
- [37:55]
C
Like, so this is why you're not running a bitcoin node on an antminer. You literally just can't. They're just Little single board computers. Right. So the encryption within Stratum V2 is not light. It's the, that's the one thing that's.
- [38:12]
A
You know the specifics.
- [38:14]
C
No, I don't. It's way above my head unfortunately. But I know that it's not lightweight, unfortunately. It's a lot of.
- [38:22]
A
Is it quantum resistant?
- [38:25]
C
What's that?
- [38:25]
D
I gotta go guys.
- [38:27]
A
I said is it quantum resistant?
- [38:32]
C
We're not doing that one again, guys, please.
- [38:36]
A
Well, speaking of, let's talk about the sentiment. Let's talk about where Bitcoin is. Actually one more point on what you were just saying though is that mining is changing a lot. And I'm still very, very stoked about block their modular system. And they could be a candidate where the enclosure and the boards are separate or the, the, the, the chips and the board are separate. They could be a great option, especially since they're, all their stuff is open source, to actually Potentially implement Stratum v2 at the firmware level. Um, so it would be interesting just because I think the, the handful of coming years will probably see a big change. I hope. I, I mostly I, I pray that there will be a big change in like mining hardware and infrastructure and basically standardize and kind of productize this thing. Because so far we've had these big giant like non modular bricks, right, that are not really designed for. They're just not good infrastructure. They, they're just missing how the whole map of those things build. Like the fact that you have to take the entire thing out of commission to replace a fan or to get one chip, one bad chip, you know, like, like you can't piecemeal and like quick in and out, it's just, it's just not built I think the, the right way for the infrastructure that it is. So I'm inclined to think there will be a big change just because there is a pretty significant step improvement that could be made. And I'd like to see Stratum V2 and Datum become the norm as we have an opportunity, right, Is that if you're changing out hardware, if you're changing out firmware, if you're changing out infrastructure, do it right, do it the way that's best for Bitcoin. But we'll see, I guess.
- [40:47]
C
Yeah, I think Datum will support Stratton v2 as and when there's any real demand for it. At the moment the only pool that actually supports it is brains. I don't, I'll say this perhaps foolishly publicly, but I don't really think demand pool is doing what they're presenting themselves as doing. I've only ever known them be dishonest, which is really sad because I used to think Alejandro was a pretty good dude. So you know, but so when a bunch of announcements came out that were like, hey, why don't we just pretend we're the first and pretend that doesn't exist, I'm like, yeah, this is just more of the same. Like I just don't see how a self respecting person could ever be that dishonest in public. And it's like, you know, you're going to get called out for this. Like so all that is to say SV2 is really complicated and I don't. I know what it takes to set miners up with bitcoin nodes and their own servers and to configure them all correctly. And I pretty much would assume it's just the pool doing it all with extra steps just to make it kind of look like it needed to for the announcement to kind of be somewhat legit. That's my assessment on that. So I don't think we're going to see a whole bunch of people Suddenly switch to SV2 and foundry support it and Bitmain come out with support at that level. I think it probably it might happen, but I think it's quite unlikely.
- [42:14]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well it'll be really interesting and I think it's a, like that's great news no matter which way you look at it, honestly.
- [42:21]
D
And I'm pretty stoked mechanic on the minor topic and hash rental sort of stuff. My understanding is to rent hash currently you can go the Brains route, pay with bitcoin, KYC Lite less kyc or you can do nice hash, which is heavier KYC but you can pay with fiat. Is that, is that the current state of mining rental?
- [42:50]
C
Yeah, there's others. Like there's people middlemanning Brains as well. Armand the Parman does that PI block do that. Then you send them money and they take a cut and then they buy hash rate on one of those services. I've seen that a few times. Yeah, it's. I don't know. Matthew Crater was renting on Brains and he got stuck. Some of his funds just got stuck. Like I don't know why that happened. It's been pretty clunky. Nice houses. KYC is like they want to install a camera in your bathroom levels.
- [43:25]
D
I got stuff to show them.
- [43:28]
C
Yeah. Or someone's bathroom at least. Maybe it doesn't need to be you, but I don't Know, man, I think that is pretty much the state of it. I will say that the demand way exceeds the supply when it comes to hash rate rental. And I think that's mostly due to compliance reasons. I've had people throwing money at me like, figure it out. I want to rent 20x ash, let's go. Which is, you know, 2% of the network. And then it's. You go out there, you look for it and it's just not there. Like, most of what. It's not just that they're leasing their hash rate to Foundry or whoever, it's that there's all this compliance stuff. Their accountants and lawyers are like comfortable with them on a vendor level and all that. So when it turns into like, who are we renting to? Someone we don't know. No way. Too risky. It's like, here's the money, I will, I'll give you the money to rent it. And they're like, nah, we're scared for some reason.
- [44:22]
A
I was about to say, what's the, what's the issue there? You verify all of it yourself. You're, you're getting the, you're getting an irreversible payment mechanism.
- [44:33]
C
The buyer's fine. They're getting literal proofs of work. Like, I could, I can't think of anything I'm more comfortable buying than, than literal proof of work.
- [44:41]
D
The proof.
- [44:42]
A
Yeah, the proof of what I wanted is, is the thing that I wanted.
- [44:47]
C
I mean, it should be streamable over lightning. That would be the, that's what I
- [44:51]
A
was just thinking is like, I don't understand how it's not streamable or I don't understand how I can't just go up and rent it for the next 10 seconds and then cut it off,
- [45:00]
C
you know, because no one's built that out yet. Everyone's doing the whole. The same thing in like, hey, Claude, figure out how I can use lightning. Like, design a decentralized hash rate marketplace. And I don't know, it's the griefing you have to worry about, I guess. Like, someone's going to figure out a way to game the system and that means none of it can work in a very nice or efficient way.
- [45:22]
A
Like, well, shouldn't it just be naive? Like, shouldn't it just be, here's some people offering hash rate, here's their reputation, you know, and then you can just rent it and you get proofs. And if you don't get proofs, reputation
- [45:37]
C
systems are, are centralized generally.
- [45:40]
A
No, sure, sure. But that would, it wouldn't necessarily like, you you can basically leverage something like nostr and like host. It's kind of like a. Kind of like a repo or something. Is that like you can have duplicate repos or whatever, but the centralization isn't in the connection. Like if you can still connect directly to that person. The centralization is just in quote unquote. The history is that the history is from one place and then you have to, you have to trust that the signature of that history is right. But like, I don't, I don't think you can, you can or ought to try to remove trust entirely. It is a reputation system. It's just that, I mean like, fuck, like Darknet Markets worked on that.
- [46:24]
C
Yeah, but they're centralized, right?
- [46:26]
A
They are centralized, but the same vendors would sign that they were this vendor on this marketplace.
- [46:33]
C
How do you know all this? Are you some kind of drug user guy?
- [46:37]
A
No, I've never even been up there. What are you even talking about? I've never even heard of the Dark Web. I read an article on the other
- [46:44]
D
Dark Web's in the basement with me, but.
- [46:49]
A
But no, there was like a bunch of like when, when things would shift over. I think there was even like a
- [46:54]
E
mixer that did something like that.
- [46:55]
A
I think at some point. Actually haven't been up there in a long time. But I did, I did do a lot of exploration of like Dartnet markets and like where vendors went when like a couple of those things got crashed or wiped out. And then one of them just like, like went away as like we've been good for two years. Everything's great. You got a month. We're just, we're sunsetting. Thanks guys. It's been great, you know, like that sort of thing. And it was just cool. It was. Honestly I was always fascinated with. I kind of want to, I should, I should take a dive back into that stuff because I was always fascinated with like how you deal with reputation, how you deal with trust in that sort of environment. You know, all the burned coins and stuff was always a fascinating idea to me is that, you know, there were a bunch of old. I think this was almost Silk Road or maybe there was a different one that did this. But I read about this system where new vendors would come up and they would literally burn or, or like, I think maybe even like offer it up to the exchange or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it worked, but they would just like put up, be like, I'm here's a thousand dollars worth of bitcoin that we would just put up and then. So for your. If you're their first order and you order a hundred dollars worth of stuff, well, you know, they're not going to F you because they desperately need another 900 worth of. Of worth of sales just to get back to zero. Um, and so it was a way to build up a reputation and like start something by saying, like, this is my skin in the game. There's probably a lot of examples of little. Of just kind of dumb, naive things like that that you could do. And I just don't think. I think we like to overcomplicate things and think things have to be like, perfectly decentralized for it to work or for it to be beneficial. But it's like. It's like datum. Datum's not perfectly decentralized. They can't. You could still. The. The quote unquote pool could still like, what is it? You could hold the funds or you could refuse their work.
- [49:01]
E
You know, there's like still points of control or whatever.
- [49:06]
C
Yeah, don't let the perfect be the enemy. They're good for sure.
- [49:09]
B
This is actually why banks were the. The often the nicest buildings in small towns is because they came in and built like a marble building or something as proof that they weren't going to.
- [49:23]
A
They weren't going to be out of there.
- [49:24]
B
They were invested into the community.
- [49:26]
C
Yeah, it's literally proof of work.
- [49:28]
E
It's proof of work. It's proof of work.
- [49:29]
A
It's the peacock feathers.
- [49:31]
E
It's the.
- [49:31]
C
Yeah, yeah, it's real, man. I agree with you. And it's good. Yeah, it's good not to go overboard with the griefing scenarios and stuff. I think Lightning has it pretty good as well. I love the. The justice transaction mechanism. It's like, you know, it never gets used, but if it's. You'd need it. Like. Yeah, I like that. It's not over the top, but it works, you know, and made me think
- [49:55]
D
of a question for you, mechanic, about ocean payouts. So currently, the way I understand it, they have to send you guys kind of example hashes and templates every once in a while because you guys have to know how much hash they have in order to know how much to pay them out. So they need to kind of prove that work. Obviously you guys can see in those templates whether or not they're signaling for BIP110. And super testnet pointed out that most of the ocean blocks were not signaling for bip110. Are you guys just going to stop paying out people that don't have BIF110 in their hatch.
- [50:41]
C
We would never do that. Okay. I mean, at some point, if what I think happens, if what I think is going to happen, happens, then it's just, it's a consensus rule, so they have to actually signal for it. That happens in early August, assuming it doesn't happen sooner. At that point we're in the same position as everyone else. Right. Like if someone wants to mine work, that's bip110 invalid and it's on the network live, then we can't credit them with work on the pool and no other on other pools. It doesn't matter the same way because the pool doesn't generate the jobs that don't signal for it anyway. So in, in our case, yeah, our miners will have to upgrade to, to fit within the consensus rules, because that's what they do. At the moment. I think that there's some interesting scenarios that are not unique to Ocean at all that basically every business is probably going to have to scramble to deal with. Like, if exchanges have it worse, I think, like, how, how does this work? If I send you my whole stash and I include an 84 by Opera turn in the stash and it ends up getting credited on my account and I sell it all for Fiat and then the RDTS chain takes over it and none of that ever happened and I still have all my money, are you going to sue me? Like, what happens in that scenario? Like, does your exchange come after you and say, hey, you just sold a bunch of bitcoin that seems to have disappeared. So like, love it. I'm really curious of what the exchange's policies are around that stuff, because 2017, there was all the hard fork stuff, right? And that was very easy to figure out.
- [52:23]
D
Yeah, but think about how many employees of the exchanges have to think about how bitcoin works for the first time in their lives. For the first time in their lives, they have to go downstairs into the basement and then they're going to learn like, oh God, I love it.
- [52:38]
C
It's going to be amazing if there are two chains, for whatever reason, both of them are moving more slowly and there's an a hundred block cooldown on all freshly mined coins, which takes 17 hours if you're a hundred percent of what you used to be at. So supposing you get like a 30, 70 split, you're looking at 24 hours of chaos for the longer side and then even longer than that for the shorter side. So I don't know. I Don't think we'll be in a chain split scenario. But the fun part, though, is that every company in the space that deals with a lot of money has to have robust policies around what happens. And I'm just. I've tried wording them myself, and I'm just. I'm sitting there just, you know, building a Ruby Goldberg machine of like, if this happens, then this. Unless that happens. Like, you know, because you can't go off minor signaling. You can't go off of. You can't even go off of the version bits that are flipped post 4k. Because it can all be a bluff. It can be people screwing with other people. And I don't think it's going to happen. But you have to have all the scenarios actually prepared for. Like, you have no idea what's going to want to happen here. Like pools. My favorite little Machiavellian scenario is that mining pools are all secretly preparing to do it, but telling each other they're not. So at the last minute, when they flip the bit, the other pools are caught with their pants down and then aren't ready. And then mine on a chain where they're like, wait, I'm the only one not enforcing RDTs and you're just going to wipe my chain out? Like that. That can happen. I don't think it would because pools would, you know, I mean, there wouldn't really be basis for a lawsuit on that. It would just be foundry going, I'm sorry, ant pool. Did you want us to tell you that we were gonna obey this rule? Sorry about that. Like, I don't know, like, it can happen. I just don't think it will.
- [54:27]
D
Okay.
- [54:29]
C
I don't remember what that was. Initially.
- [54:31]
D
It was me asking how you guys were gonna deal with paying out. And. Yeah, I mean, I was kind of interested when you said minor signaling because my, my feeling is like, I, I, trust me, I believe you. I. I think you've just thought about this a lot more than I have. All the game theory, prisoner dilemma, that kind of stuff. And, and why BitPointen's in such a strong spot. I was thinking the way it was going to win was that a lot of minor hash rental was going to come on and you are going to get that signaling. But it sounds like you think it'll win even if that doesn't happen.
- [55:06]
C
Yeah, I don't. I don't think that's going to happen.
- [55:08]
A
Okay.
- [55:09]
C
Like, I think hash. What I expected really was for hash rate rental to increase to the point where it's clearly real. And someone does the maths and goes, all right, someone's spending tens of millions of dollars finding all these pip1 10 blocks. That's. This is not, you know, anonymous bot accounts on Twitter. This is obviously a real thing. Uh, it's not going anywhere. And then at some point, someone actually just, you know, another order of magnitude larger begins signaling for it. And that's the beginning and the end of the cascade, basically. Well, not the end, that would be the beginning of it, but the end of the ambiguity. Because I think at that point it would just be a done deal. Like, there's no real good reason to oppose it. The only thing people are hesitant about is the fact that other people appear hesitant. It's. It's not a technical thing at all. A lot of technical people hate bip 110, but none of their reasoning is technical. It's always social. So that makes me fairly confident. Again, I think it's just going to be that, that final thing where someone comes along and says, all right, we flip a bit and it's like, okay, well now we got 10% of the network signaling for it. That's it. There's no, no one else is going to actually actively reject it. Super testnet made his URSF client. No one runs it. He think, he says it doesn't work properly and then it should be done more professionally by someone else. At the end of the day, it's a soft fork. Like, if. If it really is that bad, you need to URSF against it. You can't just ignore it. That's not. It's not a hard fork that you can just ignore if you don't like it.
- [56:44]
A
Wait, Super Testnet made a URSF?
- [56:48]
C
Yeah, SuperTestnet was pro filter and Pro knots and stuff. But he doesn't, like, he's a dev. So getting rid of OP if in Taproot is like, you know, killing a family member. Like, he wants everything. Like, if there was anyone that didn't want to have some functionality removed from Bitcoin, it would be Super Test.
- [57:05]
A
Super Test Nut. He's the. He's the.
- [57:07]
C
And I love him. Like, I'm not even saying bad things.
- [57:10]
A
He's the nerd out on everything. He's the. He is the most prolific alpha builder. Yeah, he builds 18,000 Alpha products and walks away immediately. And walks away immediately to go build another alpha. And they're all fascinating. They're all amazing.
- [57:29]
C
At this point, though, I'm like, I'm about to get rid of. Start advocating for just killing taproot at this point. I don't think in the last four, five, six. I don't think in six years I've ever been given a Taproot address by anyone to send funds to, let alone use the kinds of ridiculous conditions that people are abusing to get around all the old spam limits. And Steve has been posting like, you've posted two or three things now where you're like, here's how Taproot is being used. It's not just like, oh, some abuse. It's always something like 99.998% of this is junk data, unexecutable script.
- [58:07]
A
Like, I think the first meaningful use of Taproot will be stable coins.
- [58:16]
C
I mean, I already said I hate it, so.
- [58:18]
A
Yeah, well, I was just meaning. I was just meaning I don't think, like, Like, I've got it supported in, like, Nunchuck support supports Taproot now. It does, and they support miniscript. But I've never. I've never used it. In fact, I. I don't think I can give it to most of the things or tools that, like, I don't think, like, fold can send to a tap root. You know, it's. It's kind of like the very stratum v2 firmware problem is that it's just like nobody, Nobody uses it. So nobody uses it, you know, and they.
- [58:49]
C
They do use it in the dumbest ways. Like Nunchuck. There was a massive fight between Chris Guida and Nunchuck because. And Chris was over in the end. Like, they had this old P2SH script format that used an op if within it that they just moved over to Taproot. It's completely counter to the purpose of using Taproot because it became more expensive if you did that because you have the control block as well. And it didn't use different leaves, which is where all the efficiency and Taproot comes in.
- [59:18]
A
Yeah.
- [59:18]
C
And so we were like, this is a really dumb suggestion for a policy Nunchuck. Like, this is a P2SH policy and putting it in Taproot is dumb because it's literally cheaper if you just use P2SH, like old Segwit. And there was like this long week of arguing about it. And eventually, to their credit, Nunchuck was like, yeah, actually, you're right about this. Uh, but it was the chug. Yeah. Like, I've gotten. I got into a fight with Nancha, I got into a fight with Blue Wallet for doing silent payments using Opreturn as the, like, Oracle and All these, like, I don't know. I keep getting in fights with wallet devs. Um, I'm trying to recommend wallets to people and I'm like, I've met the devs for each, like Samurai Wallet. Like, is there a wallet out there? I haven't got a personal beef with the people that are behind it. You want to use Bitcoin, Core's wallet, it will just get deleted. Can we find something that actually works?
- [60:16]
A
That one's still just.
- [60:19]
D
I did find something nice to say about Taproot and all my analysis I've done, I realized, look at Steve, you're growing up, dude. Every time I do these analysis, I learn so much and sometimes it's good. So Taproot is roughly half key spins and roughly half script spins. And like, just if you don't. If you don't understand this, Taproot actually has the same two modes as kind of like pay to a bitcoin address or pay to a bitcoin script. So in Taproot that's called, you know, key path spend or script path spend.
- [60:58]
C
Yeah.
- [60:59]
D
And there's just like, just like in, you know, P2PK, P2SH, there's roughly half of each. So there's about 150 million pay to key key spins and taproot that have been revealed. And there's about 130 million script spins. All of the key spins are awesome. All of the key spins are everything I love about Taproot. Keyspin can be. The efficient multisig key spin's awesome. All of the script spins suck. 99.9% of the script spins suck. And if you think about it, what does script spin do that like legacy segwit transactions didn't. It's 99% the same opcodes. I mean, the big differences are that you can do 10 kilo over 10 kilobyte scripts and 10.
- [61:58]
A
There's just no limit on it, which
- [61:59]
D
there was absolutely no use for that. And then the other thing is that you can do this thing called math.
- [62:06]
A
Seriously, what would you need in a script that's more than 10 kilobytes that's not so convoluted that it's never going to work anyway.
- [62:12]
D
Dude, there wasn't even a multisig in there. There was one multisig, which was obviously a test transaction right when it first came out. Like half a million of these spins. And nobody put a multisig in a Taproot script. If there were multi sig sigs at all, which I believe there Were they were all in key spins.
- [62:32]
C
Is there a way to obfuscate a multi multisig in a script path execution or what?
- [62:39]
D
Well, so in, in key spins, like if you just do like the really basic schnorr where your key is just literally the linear combination of 10 keys and you just spend it with one key, like it's just spent and like the signature is valid and you don't know how many keys were in that key spin thing. But if you're talking about literally using the new opcode, check, sync, add. If it's an opcode, it has to be in a script.
- [63:05]
A
Okay. And you have to reveal the script
- [63:07]
D
if you use it and any. Yeah, and if you use it, I mean someone could have sent money to a script with a checks that add in there, but no one has spent from one. Yeah, except for literally one that I'm
- [63:19]
A
technically all of the taproot script pay to script could have had a multisig, but no one actually used the two of three keys to spend it.
- [63:29]
D
Exactly.
- [63:30]
A
Because it's never been published. Like the script has never been revealed as the path to spend in four
- [63:36]
D
years with, with half a million examples. Oh, sorry, that was with the over 10 kilobyte scripts I was talking about specifically. But the other thing about Taproot script transactions is it has this thing where you don't know how many spending pass there actually were. That's what MASS stands for. MASS stands for merkleized Abstract syntax.
- [64:07]
A
Syntax or whatever.
- [64:09]
D
And so the first thing in those transactions is, yo, there's a bunch of paths here. And your, your path has to be in this Merkle tree somewhere. Well, there's, there's one very interesting thing about that Merkle tree. If there's more than one, you have no idea how many branches there were. But if there was only one, meaning there were no hidden private paths that could have been spent in other ways, then the Merkle tree matches exactly the hash.
- [64:35]
A
It's just the hash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. Okay, so there's nothing else there.
- [64:39]
D
So I've done this analysis too. Guess how many people had hidden multiple paths? Like 1%. Like 99% of these mast. Of these mast usages, all 99% of script path spins had no hidden paths. The things people advertise taproot are literally unused. But I do like key path spending, so I'll keep it positive with keepath spending can stay.
- [65:11]
C
What's the difference between a keepath spend in taproot context and just using a segwit Address.
- [65:18]
A
You can combine the signatures. I mean, I mean, you can combine the keys.
- [65:21]
D
No, yeah. Segwit address is ecdsa. Yeah. So it's a huge difference because if you just have a single address and Segwit, you can't do like a hidden multi sig inside the single address like you can with Taproot or Schnorr.
- [65:43]
C
So key path is really that. That means I need to drop my hatred for Taproot.
- [65:50]
D
Key path is just pay to public key. It's just very simple. Except for the public key in the Taproot case.
- [65:55]
A
Making progress on the round table.
- [65:58]
D
Yeah, yeah, me too. I was, I was like banned Taproot for a while too, but now I'm like, no, no, that key pass venue, it's kind of awesome.
- [66:07]
C
All right. Yeah, we like it. It's just, man, this, the, the junk data and all the script stuff is just so poisonous.
- [66:14]
D
Gotta go, man. Like all scripts gotta go. No one, no one uses any of it.
- [66:18]
C
Yeah.
- [66:18]
A
Before this episode is over,
- [66:22]
E
let's talk
- [66:23]
A
about the sentiment a little bit because I opened it on this and, and I don't even think I hit the point that, that we did just before the show. But I think a lot of people feel really, really poo poo if the Twitter sentiment or like the number of like 21, 2022. Class of 2022. People, like, I think they feel like they got cheated because there was this like, mentality or like notion that if you held for four years, you're always in the green. And basically a lot of those people who got in in 2021, 2022, they're actually in the red after four years because they got in at $60,000, $65,000, $70,000. And now it's, now it's down. And I've made a couple of posts of just like, you know, 58K gang, just, just laughing and kind of having fun with the bare market. And, and I made a post, I made a post about how, and you know, this is not to dismiss people, but about how this is basically the calmest. This is the smallest bare market so far. You know, Homer Simpson meme, you know, like, so far this is the calmest and most, least destructive, least just bloody horror bear market that we've had. And you know, they have a point. I had a bunch of people jump in and be like, you've been around forever. You know, you're in the, you're always in the green, you know, so. And I don't even like, reject that I don't even like dismiss it because that is true. It is easier for me every. And I've also been through what4bear market. This is like my fifth one or something. I don't even know. And so like it gets easy. It absolutely gets easier and I am absolutely on net in the money. Right. But does anybody think that this is it?
- [68:42]
C
No.
- [68:42]
A
Does anybody think that, like, not remotely. And tell me why this is,
- [68:51]
E
you
- [68:52]
A
know, is this an anomaly? Is this, is this just kind of like how it's going to go and it's just going to slow down?
- [68:58]
E
Do you think?
- [68:59]
A
Like, what's the explanation? What's your perspective on where we are and why this quote unquote cycle has been this cycle? I just, I just want to get why aren't you feeling like it's over? Like, why is this group not feel like bitcoin's dead?
- [69:19]
C
I mean I will like, I feel I'm in two minds because in the one mind I feel like the culture is being poisoned really badly and there's too much celebration of all these treasury instruments. There's a bunch of, there's like a bunch of legends like Greg Maxwell and Adam back and people like that with all this. An unbelievable amount of credibility and good faith that are just pushing nonsense like the bstr, you know, treasury thing that Adam's pushing with, you know, blockstream and all that. That looks, I mean, we should talk about that article. The, the article that came out. Did you catch that guy?
- [69:57]
A
I didn't read it. I didn't read it.
- [69:58]
C
There was a substack thing. A guy basically saying blockstreamer running a Ponzi scheme. Like they're paying out 20% a year to their investors. Like there is no mining operation in the world that can buy their entire setup with borrowed money that they pay 20% interest to at $60,000. Bitcoin, like the power would literally need to be free for that to be a thing or like sub three cent and that's just not a thing. Like in North America they'll be like 4 cents or something. So the money literally doesn't exist. And it says you can pay out investors with, you can pay out old investors with new investor funds, which is how Ponzi schemes work. So anyway, barring all that, I'm just saying culturally, I think bitcoin's way too, way too screwed if we don't correct course soon. And that's why I'm so happy for the bear market. But price wise, like, and the things that the actual like scared Newbies are seeing them thinking it's dead. I'm like, it's not for any of the reasons you think about. Like actually the bear market is helping you more than you could possibly understand right now. It's getting rid of all the parasites that are trying to fleece bitcoin. And you know, I like bitcoin by my stock. Like all those guys that are here sucking the life out of it and ultimately undermining the price, they're all going to get buried and that will be ultimately what makes bitcoin healthy again. So I don't know. Does that make sense?
- [71:25]
A
Yeah, I'm. I'm curious and I'm like, I feel like we should be seeing some of these especially way like naca, you know, what was it? David Bailey just made an announcement like a couple weeks ago because the naka price was like absolute crap and they had to do a reverse stock split to stay on the stock market.
- [71:50]
D
Worst NASDAQ performance in history.
- [71:53]
C
Is it really?
- [71:54]
D
Yeah. Worst NASDAQ launch in history.
- [71:57]
A
He said that he had to do like he put like multiple millions of dollars and I can't remember exactly what it was, but he rebought NACA because he still believed in it and he's putting his money where his mouth is and all this stuff. And I was like, and respect if he's actually going to do that. But like, I'm shocked that I haven't seen any of them blow up. And I don't even know what that looks like yet because like pretty much all of them are doing just garbage. Like they all look like hell.
- [72:27]
D
They print whatever money they need.
- [72:30]
A
Yeah, but that's, that's thing. I just don't know how do they blow up? Like, do they have to just dump all their bitcoin or their. If their equity just becomes nothing, then it's worth less than even their bitcoin holdings. But I guess it all just depends on how they're structured financially. Right. Is like what they have to do if it just becomes worthless. But I don't know. That's just some of these things they
- [72:53]
E
created like a company that's got like
- [72:55]
A
a ton of employees and like massive
- [72:59]
E
overhead and it's like you were going to pay like, like if I made
- [73:02]
A
a, if I made a bitcoin treasury
- [73:05]
E
company, I just have like a really good multi sig bit with you know, my favorite hardware, wallets and I'd chat GPT my website and, and incorporate with, you know, my lawyer guy. But I wouldn't pay myself a salary out of it. I wouldn't pay anybody a salary out of it. It would just be a bitcoin treasury company. You just be buy equity. Why the hell does there need to be overhead? What are you invested in something? You're not investing anything. You're buying fucking bitcoin. And if you actually got a good setup, you don't have to touch it. You don't want to touch it. You just make an address or get your public key and you don't ever touch your. You put your. Put your hardware wallets in the cement like, you know, like, it's just like, why are you. How do you have 50 employees?
- [73:44]
A
What are you doing over there anyway?
- [73:47]
C
I don't get it at all. Like, send me money and I will buy a bunch of bitcoins and I won't have all the liabilities that MicroStrategy has, which doesn't generate any. It. It's not a real business, right? Like, they are literally just a very complicated organization that have say, if you send us money, we will buy bitcoin.
- [74:07]
E
Well, they used to be.
- [74:08]
A
I don't know what they do now.
- [74:09]
E
I don't know.
- [74:10]
C
They used to sell business intelligence, but they've sold all that. Microsoft do all that now. So they. They literally don't have a functioning business anymore. It's a dead zombie company that's just trying to do financial engineering.
- [74:22]
A
I wish I had like something useful to say on this because I honestly just don't know much about. I don't know the structure of it. I haven't taken the time to just be like, okay, how does this option work? How does this.
- [74:32]
C
You don't need to. It's like Ethereum. The complexity is bullshit. You can ignore it all. It's just the money doesn't.
- [74:40]
E
I get it from that standpoint. I get it.
- [74:43]
C
No one's doing anything. They're not selling anything. No one's. They're just trying to magic money out of thin air. That's it. And the way they do that is fundamentally just Ponzi like, because it requires new people to keep believing that they can do it in order to inject new capital. And they have so much in the way of liabilities that it just. The wheel comes off eventually. A little bit of a bear market and their stock just absolutely tanks, which is what you're seeing. Like, we're not even that bearish yet.
- [75:10]
A
I can't even remember who did the article. It could have been like John Carvalho or somebody.
- [75:18]
E
But there was an article, there was
- [75:21]
A
some piece that I read. I had intended on maybe doing it on the show, but it was about the fact that the reason our last cycle was so subdued or the last bull run was capped so early was because of the paper bitcoin phenomenon was because everybody like buying these stocks and ETFs and everything is the fact that it like just got all the money got shoved into the financial system and we had this like, proxy of like, oh, we're buying bitcoin. I'm curious what Yalls thought is on this, because in a lot of ways it seems like that doesn't quite make sense to me because like most of these entities have verifiable. They bought Bitcoin, right? ETFs actually hold Bitcoin and you can look at their bitcoin stash. The MicroStrategy actually publishes how much Bitcoin that they have granted debts on Coinbase. So the question is, the question is, is that how much is that rehypothecated? And I would. I'm waiting for that blow up too.
- [76:31]
D
1mstr equals 0 bitcoin.
- [76:33]
E
But.
- [76:35]
A
But like, you know, does that money going into those financial instruments actually do that, does that subdue the bitcoin price or.
- [76:47]
C
Yeah.
- [76:48]
A
Do you think it does?
- [76:49]
C
Yeah.
- [76:51]
A
Like, so the fact that NACA bought it on your behalf or MicroStrategy bought it.
- [76:56]
C
60 grand can buy. You can get rid of 121 millionth of the total supply directly. Whereas 60 grand injected into all that crap is not going to pull that much out of the bitcoin economy. Because the bitcoin economy isn't where that's. Isn't the source of that. Right. Like, ultimately what's getting sucked out of the supply of total Bitcoin is probably is going to logically be less than the 60,000 that you just injected into it. Because it's got to pay for all this nonsense. Like it has to.
- [77:29]
A
Okay, so basically you're. You're less. Less the overhead, so to speak.
- [77:34]
B
But wouldn't there have to be some sort. There would have to actually be some sort of duplication of reserve somewhere.
- [77:41]
A
Like, I feel like it would have to be rehypothecated for it to make that big difference. Like, part of me feels like that's the only way.
- [77:50]
B
I mean, it would not surprise me at all if Coinbase is. There's rehab application going on behind the scenes there or it. I mean, who knows how many places
- [78:00]
A
does that mean bitcoin can be captured just as easily as gold?
- [78:04]
C
It can if people treat it like gold. Which is vulnerable to 6102s. Leave it with a trusted third party, it's a store of value. We don't bother having it as a medium of exchange. And if we do, we use paper versions of it. They're just making. They're just undoing the entire satoshi principle of how do we make gold on the Internet and avoid the problems that came with gold. They're just undoing it. Literally. Reverse. Yeah.
- [78:29]
B
I increasingly feel like the, the collapse of society in terms of like, like, to whatever degree that's happening is actually a result of people just becoming, like, dumb as shit and don't know how anything works. And if you're dumb as shit and you don't know how anything works, then, like, you can't hold your bitcoin. You can't do. You can't do the things you need to do.
- [78:55]
A
Afraid of responsibility is a big part of it too.
- [78:58]
B
Right? To rebuild society, like, like, you know, people, like, are talking about. It's all this, like these, these propaganda waves happen on Facebook. Like, Facebook's the only, like, major, like corporate, like, social media I'm still on. And you see these, like, at least in my feed, I get these, like, waves of different propaganda and different, different days and different weeks and, and they're. They're like priming people. It looks to me like they're priming people for like, we want a revolution. There needs to be a revolution in the US and it needs to be socialist and it needs to be this. And I just keep responding with, you know, people that can't produce anything, cannot. You can't. What are you. What are you going to revolution? Like, what are you. What are you going to do? You can't build a society. You can't steal a new society like you, you can't steal your way to a new society if you can't produce anything. There is no. This is why revolutions fail. The only reason American revolution worked is because it was productive people in a faraway place throwing off, you know, like, people trying to.
- [80:05]
A
They were in the process of building their society and somebody from a distance was trying to stop them.
- [80:09]
E
Right?
- [80:10]
D
Yeah.
- [80:10]
B
And so, so the reason all the other revolutions fail is because it's some sort of group of socialist idiots trying to steal things from people, not trying to build new things. And so if you kill the cypherpunk attitude around bitcoin, I don't know, the cypherpunk culture or whatever, and you kill the maker culture and you kill all of the thing which there are A lot. I mean, YouTube's an interesting place because there are tons of people building awesome things on YouTube that, that, like, if you compare the car, like just, just the automotive portions of the number of YouTube channels, I guarantee you it is like a hundred X. I mean, some of that may be the growth of YouTube or whatever, but, but like the people that are doing crazy things now,
- [81:07]
A
you do that in any market and you, you can go deep and you can find just the most insane, like, custom deep knowledge creator corners that you just would never even think existed.
- [81:19]
B
But because of, because of metal 3D printing, because of laser welding, because of like all these things that you can buy from like, China now, like, like all these tools that are now, like,
- [81:33]
A
really accessible, there's an omen that you can buy from China.
- [81:36]
B
Yeah, but people are doing some really, really crazy stuff. And, and so there is like, there is the, the productive capacity is there, but the culture is still. There's still like, I feel like there's
- [81:53]
A
a slow corner of a renaissance starting, but there's a ton of people that have to catch up and there's a ton of young people who have to break out of the way they think about things now. But what's good is that, like, there is that age, that age range from like 18 to 25, where you can totally change, like your worldview. And a lot of people do when they kind of like open up into the world and you know, a lot of people point to the stats that like. I think it's like something like three fourths or so. I can't remember what exactly. I just, I just heard the stat the other day and I was just like, blown away that like, of the youngest generation, the two youngest generations, like, everybody reports being depressed, feeling like there's total hopelessness, and what's, what's funny is that, like, that that's. I think it's easy to look at that trend or to look at that and be like, well, that's about to grow up into the world. And then that's what's going to be the mentality of the world. But I don't think that's the case. I think that actually means that that generation is primed to think about things a different way. That, that if some. Somebody actually presents a possible solution or if there is hope, is that they might go for it harder than anybody else because they're the ones that need some sort of an answer and they feel like things have to change. And the, the question is, do they, do they grow up and become you know, dangerous. You know, when you're, when you're 20, when you're in your 20s, that's when you're dangerous. Right? That's when things that you do actually matter. And do they grow up to be. To force a socialist change or, or do they actually realize what is wrong and reject basically the structure they're in and, and, and reach out to do something for themselves or find that, you know, that YouTube video or that thing online that. That teaches them how to do it or they're. They host their own thing because they're sick of having a subscription for their car. You know, so I don't know. It's. Part of it gives me hope. Part of it's like just scary not knowing which way it's going to go.
- [84:12]
C
I think this, the rise of nationalism that you're talking about, Jeff, like the incitement for people to go out. Did you see all the like English people throwing wheelie bins at the cops and stuff? Did you see all that stuff? That was pretty funny a little bit.
- [84:26]
A
Yeah.
- [84:27]
C
I think that's all part of it. Like, I don't know why people contest that. That is all like the predictable swing back from globalism to national was such a, Was such a plan from ever. That was in the Epstein emails. It was, you know, the nationalist sentiment is coming back. Here's how we're going to exploit it. Like it's totally a psyop. So.
- [84:47]
B
And the craziest thing is like I, I don't, like, I don't know man. I. Conservatives, I've generally considered my. I mean like, I don't know, I'm. I'm a crypto, anarchist, libertarian or whatever you want to call it. Like, you know, whatever label you want to get. Agrist. But. But I, I certainly came from the conservative side of things and I generally have felt like most of my life I identify more with or better understand conservatives. But dude, they're like the number of just like. And the dead Internet theory is entirely plausible. I, you know, it may be that, that you know, some of the people I'm interacting with are just bots, but there are people I know also who I've inter. Interacted with who have just the like most adopted.
- [85:39]
A
The bots. Adopted.
- [85:40]
B
Mind boggling.
- [85:41]
C
Yeah.
- [85:42]
A
Like, like have NPC'd super hard.
- [85:44]
B
The most like pro war position or something that's just like what in and like in a rabid way, like it's just very odd and it's like, it's like you're a. I mean Maybe that's part of it. It's like, I was like, this is a weak person. Like, like, I know physically in real life, this is not a person that. But like, they're talking like, yeah, you know, like, and it's like, so maybe that's, you know, maybe those are flip sides of the same coin. If you're, if you're a weak person, you feel like you need this to feel tough or something, but I don't know, it's just so odd. And I had, I had a conversation with somebody and I like, you know, you can kind of. Sometimes maybe it's random, but you can. If you're having a back and forth with somebody, you can kind of tell when you've asked them something that sort of makes them think because, you know, the response takes longer or whatever. And, and I just asked like, okay, well, like, like, you know, he wants everybody deported and all of these things. And it's, It's a post on a. Like some, some dad who's like a Mexican who's been. Been in the U.S. illegally for like 20 years. And, and like, but he has no. His whole life is here or in. Well, not here, but in. In the US And, And I'm like, you know, like, he's saying, well, should have done it, right? And I'm like, look, I don't know anything about this, this story. I'm like, but I can tell you my situation. Like, I am a U.S. citizen. I've, you know, we literally have no path to immigrate. And like, how long am I supposed to be. How long am I supposed to live in a country where I, I don't belong, where I don't have a social network, where I don't have, you know, like, where I can't work, like, what am I, what am I supposed to do? And he's like, like, literally after, after, not, like, having to ask the question, like, three different times in three different ways. He was like, well, you should have just should have thought about that before. But before I married my wife, I got it. Like, that's his, like, conclusion.
- [87:45]
A
It's like, you should have just not married the person that you loved. That is stupid.
- [87:49]
B
It's the most.
- [87:51]
A
Did you not read. Did you not read immigration policy before you chose what to do with your life?
- [87:57]
B
Obviously, I mean, after that I was just, I was just like, you know, all right, well, that's, that's fine.
- [88:03]
D
You.
- [88:03]
B
You deserve the hell you help create. But. But like, but the thing is, is that even if we had read immigration Policy. The ban didn't happen until January 21, 2026. Like we were already married. So like there's no like even by his. It's like, what are we supposed to do? Like it's just, it's just a.
- [88:22]
A
They rug pulled you.
- [88:24]
B
Yeah, well, yeah,
- [88:27]
C
usually they grandfather stuff like that in man. I don't know. Like even your most staunch conservative shouldn't be. He'd have to be pretty stupid maggot to be like, oh, but she's Iranian, right? Like, yeah, I mean she's a threat.
- [88:42]
A
She's a threat.
- [88:42]
C
She's a threat.
- [88:43]
A
Like she's probably got nukes. Yeah, probably two weeks, she's in two weeks she's gonna have nukes.
- [88:50]
C
Jeff's wife, two weeks to develop nuclear weapons.
- [88:54]
A
She's got a Ph.D. she says, she says it's an artificial intelligence. Yeah, shit's about nukes. Telling you right now, she's quantum AI expert. I met her.
- [89:06]
C
She's crazy quantum AI expert.
- [89:09]
A
Hey, I've been waiting for quantum AI nuclear bombs.
- [89:12]
D
There's been wait for my chance to explain why sky's not falling in Bitcoin.
- [89:17]
A
I want to hear it. I want to hear it.
- [89:19]
D
Okay, so first I'll give kind of the thing I agree with when it comes to price. Unfortunately, we are still in the situation where the USD price of Bitcoin is the best aggregate sentiment of like whether Bitcoin's doing good or bad. All right, I won't say price is completely irrelevant. Price is important. But price has very large swings up and down in the short term. These swings, short term in Bitcoin means a year and these are two years or whatever. And the short term aspects of Bitcoin's volatility are driven by emotions and speculation and not holding your own keys and all of the unprincipled stuff. And yes, in Bitcoin you are going to have to learn that the only way is the real way, which is long term thinking. Hold your own keys. Nothing is broken. At the cryptographic level, we are like talking about chain splits. Chain splits are not a structural problem for Bitcoin. They happen all the time. They're healthy. They're how we change the protocol. It always works. There's nothing on the base floor level in terms of cryptographic proof how the system is overall working. Nothing is wrong. Absolutely nothing is wrong. And because nothing is wrong, it's still the same as it always is. It's totally unbreakable. The short term price stuff is like, yeah, it's going to flush People out. Especially if you don't hold your own key, especially if you do leverage all that. But the deep underlying mechanism where bitcoin doubles every couple of years on average when you zoom out, absolutely nothing has changed with that. So, sure, I mean the sky is falling in the short term and on the layer two stuff and on the unprincipled stuff. Nothing about the principled stuff is wrong and it's. The principled stuff. Is that what ultimately gives Bitcoin that long term growth? So that's why sky's not falling for me.
- [91:43]
A
I like that.
- [91:44]
C
I completely agree.
- [91:46]
B
I am not on, I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I haven't seen a lot of the things that I used to follow. But I know that going into this bear market, the, the news about the things that were happening in the background, you know, like the stuff that blocks building, the like all sorts of bank integrations, like, like, I don't know, things that were also related to what Tether's doing and whatever. I just, my feeling, and it, it is mostly a feeling because I, like I said I'm not keeping up with it, is that there's a whole lot of stuff going on and that the unlock is going to be at some point in, you know, it may take another year or two or five, whatever, but I think that the unlock is going to be pretty significant at some point and then, you know, it will be a sort of like I, I kind of, I kind of feel like maybe this is the S. Like in the S. You know, like, like we had all of this, you know, growth and, and, and the, the s. And the s. Adoption. You know, we're, we're now in the like the sort of limbo middle and, and then at some point it's just gonna, it's just gonna be the thing.
- [93:03]
C
That's how I feel.
- [93:04]
B
Yeah, I almost feel like there are a lot of people that already know, like this is already kind of decided. Like, I feel like there's a lot of people behind the scenes that have. Which is for better or worse, like, I don't. There are a lot of people I wish weren't involved at all. But, but with the legislation and the things that, you know, Trump and these other people have pushed for, I kind of feel like, like there is this kind of quiet plan to just erase US Debt by, you know, like, and maybe that's not going to work out the way they want it to. Maybe. I mean China has said that that's their plan or whatever and it may just be because of shit that Michael Saylor has said. I don't know.
- [93:47]
C
They're not going to do that, man. This is the point of the debt is like the point of the war. It's not supposed to be won or repaid. It's supposed to go on forever. That's the whole, that is the money of the people that like, logically, the person that is owed all the money for the debt is the person that wants, that is in control of everything. And therefore they will do what they need to perpetuate it and make it worse. It's not just like backwater third world countries that get saddled with unpayable debt. It's the whole planet, man. It's everyone.
- [94:18]
B
Right? But the problem is, is that there are like, these monetary regimes don't go on forever. And at some point they hit some sort of tipping point and, and the writings on the wall that it's going to be another monetary regime or it's going to be. And, and so I feel like they
- [94:40]
A
look for their exit plan. They're like, there's always a group ready. The alternative only even arises because of the people preparing their exit plan. Like those, those with enormous amounts of capital when they realize that the monetary shift is happening or that they need to empty their bags of the debt, the shift to the next thing occurs because they set up the structure so that they can get out. So, and you know, one thing about institutions and stuff and why I kind of feel that we're in the flat part of the S is because when huge institutions, when governments, when like really big, slow, long existing, long living entities get into something like this that's new, they will not push it until they are positioned right. They will not make noise about it the second you hear about it and the second they're gung ho about it, they are already set, they are already ready to go and they take as long as they want and they will do what they can. Big financial institutions will go out of their way to try to figure out how to make things go down while they are preparing, while they're putting in a position like it's just like, you know, cnbc, you know, one of the things, like we took a really cool class on like, kind of like investing and like mentality and like money management plans way back when. And one of the things that he said is like, you will learn one thing when you watch cnbc. If you, if you make a journal and you mark it down, you will notice one thing over and over and over again. If they Come on, cnbc. And they're telling you about something that's really great. It's about to go down. They're telling you about something that's really bad, it's about to go up, like, and it's because they are literally paying for the position to get the liquidity to offload when they're pumping something to you and to get the liquidity to get in when they. When they want something. And so I think. I think that's what we're getting, like a very long, slow build out. Because what you're looking at is such a widespread thing and, you know, the liquidity is three times what it was like three years ago. Price isn't all that interesting, but the liquidity is a lot deeper. And I think that's. That's something that a lot of people are missing.
- [97:19]
D
Yeah, one thing on that. I'm in a. Obviously in a great mood today because I'm about to say something nice about tone bass. That thing you mentioned about sentiment, one of the. And I think I did.
- [97:32]
A
You're messing up the rounds.
- [97:33]
D
Ultimately a nice guy, man. I'm optimist. One thing, I think mechanic might have mentioned this before. One of the probably the greatest thing tone base ever gave us is, is that when you see everyone thinking, like, it's bad. When you see the sentiment so bad, it means there's nobody left to sell.
- [97:54]
A
Yeah.
- [97:55]
D
You know, so it's like there is. There is a bottom there. The same thing when it's like, when everyone's so happy, that means there's nobody left to buy.
- [98:03]
C
Yep.
- [98:03]
A
Yeah.
- [98:04]
C
You've always got to run to the other side of the bottom.
- [98:06]
A
I love that framing.
- [98:07]
E
Yeah.
- [98:07]
D
Yeah. And it does feel like literally everyone on Twitter is melting down, which means everyone that was going to sell is already sold.
- [98:15]
C
But are they, though? Like, I don't really see. I just see people saying they're running bip110. Like, that's my algo, of course.
- [98:22]
A
But I was about to say echo chambers, man. It's all. It's all algorithms. I see. I see the algorithm for this, that and the other. And I. Yeah, I love that.
- [98:32]
B
I love that.
- [98:32]
A
Like, I. I played around with my algorithm a couple times, but it always comes back. It always falls back into, like, the. The negative loop tendency.
- [98:42]
C
I see a lot of doom and gloom. I really don't see it. I see microstrategy Cope, which is irrelevant to Bitcoin, in my opinion, and I see 58k gang riding around, but I'm happy for them.
- [98:57]
D
Dude, your poll was so good. Your poll the other day was awesome.
- [99:01]
A
Wait, what poll?
- [99:02]
C
I said who really controls bitcoin? Is it devs, miners, nodes or 58k gang?
- [99:08]
A
And it's 58k gang.
- [99:09]
C
Like most people is both nodes and 58k gang. I didn't leave that often, but people took the time to write that below.
- [99:18]
A
That's hilarious.
- [99:21]
C
I'm happy to see it. I don't see the doom and gloom. I really don't. I think that most people are like this is, this is a bare market for ants. Like most people I know are like around long enough now.
- [99:33]
A
I don't know, I guess it's, I guess I'm probably seeing mostly sentiment from like I said, there was like, you know, there's videos on like kind of influencers and the, the YouTube,
- [99:50]
D
like clips of five influencers all saying like, oh, this is so bad, it's so bad, it's so bad, it's so bad.
- [99:55]
E
Yeah.
- [99:56]
A
And, and I see a lot of comments from people who literally say I got in, in 2021, I got it. Like I think this is the post 2020. This is the worst bear market and this is the worst moment for the people. Post 2020. The people who got in because like this was going to change things and this was going, they thought that this was because I, I literally saw like accounts that I was surprised by. I wish I had them off the top of my head. But like I remember having this feeling and this notion when I was reading a thing and it was that, you know, the, all the narratives that bitcoin was sold on to the 2020, 2021, 2022 group have failed. It didn't keep up with inflation. It's not, you know, it's not saved the financial system. It's not, it's not provided a legitimate alternative. You can't go use it at the store. You know, like it does feel like, I think it's less that it's like a horrible, terrible, like the world is dying, like earth shattering bear market and more. It's like we're in the doldrums. There's just no fucking wind blowing. You know, we're just sitting here and I think that's what a lot of people that got into 2021 era feel like. And it's probably just that group and I'm just seeing a disproportionate amount of it. But I think that's the general sentiment in that group. If you go read, if you go look at the sentiment meters, it's all just like everybody's. It's all as hell and we' going to hell. But
- [101:29]
E
I think it feels like we're
- [101:32]
A
in a holding pattern for something that's building.
- [101:35]
C
To me, it all feels like there's a lot of politics now. Like, a lot of people want to know what happens with the midterms. Like, this matter to bitcoin. It does now, unfortunately.
- [101:46]
A
Yeah.
- [101:46]
C
Like, so, like, this was the whole crypto friendly admin.
- [101:49]
B
Right.
- [101:50]
E
I'll extend an olive branch to those
- [101:51]
A
people and like, let them know that, like, if you're class of 2020-2022 zone and you feel that way, there's not a person on this panel that does not know what that feels like, that has not sat in the worst of the worst. Like the literal worst of the worst. And probably I'll just.
- [102:16]
E
I'll.
- [102:17]
A
I'll speak for everybody here and said. What the. Did I do? What. What stup. This is the stupidest thing. I cannot believe that I am here and I'm not. I think I said it. I think I said it before the show. But, like, my. Our first. My brother and. And my first bare market, I threw up. I literally vomited.
- [102:40]
C
What was. Was that?
- [102:41]
A
2014, 2011.
- [102:45]
C
Oh, man.
- [102:47]
A
We. We got in on the run. On the run and it went.
- [102:54]
B
It took like two weeks for us to get our money to Mount Gog.
- [102:58]
C
Yeah, I remember that.
- [103:00]
B
And so in that two weeks, like,
- [103:03]
A
we missed the whole. We practically missed the run.
- [103:05]
B
We basically missed the whole run.
- [103:06]
A
And so, like, that's how long the bull market lasted was two. It was. It was two and a half weeks. And we saw the first half a week. It took us two weeks to get the money in, and then it was over after we bought. I've literally vomited. I. I like, I like, super cried
- [103:22]
E
because we were broke. We were broke. We didn't have any money.
- [103:25]
A
We didn't have the money that we put into it. And like, so, like, I know it feels like shit, but that was literally the thing that motivated me more than anything else to just go figure it out. To go figure out whether or not I had made the dumbest decision ever. And maybe this is somehow like, similar to how bad that is just because, like, my experience of that was extremely sharp, you know, took three months to get to the bottom and it was just awful. Blood and murder and, you know, maybe two years to just go half that. You know, like, like two years to lose 40% might even be worse because it's just slow and awful and Just like, why is nothing happening? You know, like it's. Maybe it's. It's like rip the band aid off, right?
- [104:22]
B
Yeah. Time.
- [104:22]
C
Time is hard.
- [104:24]
B
Yeah. The longer something takes, the more feeling of proof you have.
- [104:28]
A
This isn't gonna work. I'll pose this as a question to the group. Raise your hand if you're all in. If I'm what all in?
- [104:40]
C
You're all in. I have a house. So does that. Can I be all in if I.
- [104:45]
A
Doesn't matter. Anything that you have outside of in, like liquid value, like, are you, are you all in on bitcoin?
- [104:56]
C
Like, basically I'm all in, yeah.
- [104:59]
D
It's so much deeper than that. When I was, when I was doing my version of throwing up, like crying or whatever, depressed, like, you know, mentally not well, the one thing that kept me going was that bitcoin is the only truth in the world that we live in. Bitcoin is our only hope for a system of honesty. Of course I'm still in. It's the only thing real to me.
- [105:28]
A
What's the alternative?
- [105:29]
D
The alternative is like you be like Jeff and you spend your time looking at politics all day. Like, that is not sustainable. Our financial system is not sustainable. Politics is not sustainable. All these commercials, all this stuff, this fiat world that has been created is just sustained by debt and by lies. There's nothing real there. If you go to the bottom of it, it's just a circle of, of of liabilities and the whole all, all the stuff that safety says about the fiat standard and the fiat world and all this stuff that's real, that's the anxiety everybody has been feeling. Bitcoin is our only source of truth. It's our only rock to stand on. Of course I'm all in. It doesn't even matter. Like this price swings doesn't even matter. It is the only real thing that I know. And like, because it's the only real thing, that's what its long term value proposition is. It always comes back down to that realness. So yeah, of course not just for price, just for like the stabilization of anxiety caused by fiat.
- [106:47]
C
Yeah. I only bought bitcoin as a medium of exchange initially back in 2013, 2011, sorry, 2012 and 2013. Then when I saw it start to rush up at the end of 2012, it was no longer a medium of exchange thing. I was like, oh, maybe this finite supply thing, deflationary thing is a thing. Maybe I should just get loads and hold onto it instead of using it as a medium of exchange and Then when that. The first bear market hit, like two months later, you know, 2013, April, when Mount Gox started breaking and it just collapsed. And then I was like, right, well, that didn't work out. But you know what? I don't want to sell. I want to keep these no matter what that was. Then I realized, oh, I will just never sell this thing. I love it. Like, that's the end of this for me.
- [107:33]
A
That's the end of that.
- [107:34]
C
So that became my mentality forever. It's like I'm just keeping as much as I possibly can on principle. If it goes to zero, I don't care, man.
- [107:42]
A
If quantum. If Quantum breaks bitcoin.
- [107:45]
D
Oh, look at the time.
- [107:46]
A
If I'm just Look at the time. Look at that. No, I'm just saying if quantum breaks bitcoin and this does go down, I think I just want to hold it so that I still have my thing, because if I don't spend it, it won't break.
- [107:58]
C
Can I have a curveball thing? I know it's random to bring up
- [108:00]
A
at the end, but I still have my coins.
- [108:03]
C
Let me ask. I know you didn't read the article on the blockstream cloud mining thing.
- [108:08]
A
No, I didn't.
- [108:11]
C
Did anyone here read it?
- [108:12]
D
I did not.
- [108:15]
A
I'll put it in my roundup, like in my lineup.
- [108:18]
C
I'm just curious what you think, because I don't know if the guy stretched it out beyond reason or if it's actually pretty reasonable. Like, I can summarize it if you want.
- [108:27]
B
It's real quickly. Before you do that, then I just want to say, like, one of the things that motivated me, like, through the whole thing was the understanding that if I save in dollars, I mean, inflation aside, if I am holding dollars, that money is being devalued to fund wars and policies that are literally making my wife, my life worse. And so just as a fuck you to the whole system.
- [109:01]
A
Yeah. If.
- [109:01]
B
If I could put my money into something that cannot be devalued specifically to fund those things. Whatever they do to bitcoin is, you know, they might be able to damage it, they might be able to attack it, whatever, but it cannot be devalued specifically to benefit.
- [109:19]
A
Fund those things.
- [109:20]
B
Them. Right. That was always like a major thing for me. It was like, even if this doesn't work, it's.
- [109:28]
A
It's so much better.
- [109:30]
B
I'm not contributing to my own oppression. I'm not contributing to the deaths of millions of people like it. This is better. And. And then on top of that, you know, they. They passed Obamacare during the. Our early, you know, like, contact with bitcoin. And. And so my health insurance premiums quintupled. And. And then, like, the benefits actually went down. Like, they, they, you know, if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. But that wasn't, you know, that wasn't the case at all.
- [110:06]
A
You can pay five times as much for half your plan.
- [110:09]
B
Yeah. And. And. And so when I dropped my insurance, which was a weird experience, there's only been like, two or three times in my life where, like, I had an adult laugh at me for something like, like. And in each case, it was a black woman. I don't know why that is. Like, like, but at the dmv, I had some black woman laugh at me over some, like, not having my. My debit card or something. I was like, that's weird.
- [110:35]
A
What are you. What are you doing?
- [110:37]
B
Like, you know, and then. And then this. I called. When I called and said, I, well, I can't afford the premiums on this plan anymore. The woman on the phone laughed at me, but I was like, but the premiums just went from $40 a month to $300 a month. Like, what. What are you laughing about? Like, and so, so, like, it's like, whatever. I canceled the plan, and then I got a notice in the mail that said they were going to seize money from my bank account. Now, I don't know if they were actually going to do that or if they, like, if they actually did that to people. It was. It was like, we're going to garnish wages and whatever else. But, like, that was enough for me that, like, all right, it. I'm taking everything out of the bank. I'm going to use, like, bitcoin loaded debit cards to, like, do everything in cash and, and doing that in, what was it, 2013 or 24? Whenever. Whenever the policy was put in place was, like, it was. It was doable. And I didn't have a bank account for, like, some years.
- [111:40]
A
There's nothing like somebody saying they're going to steal stuff out of the bank account you don't control to make you realize you don't control it and take everything out of it.
- [111:48]
B
Bitcoin's good. Bitcoin's a good thing.
- [111:51]
C
Yeah. It's ethical money, and that's a big deal. I don't have any issue holding bitcoins. If I lose 50% of my net worth, I lose 50% of my net worth. I didn't kill a bunch of people. By participating in a system that needs people to die to perpetuate itself. It's.
- [112:11]
A
You can make a lot of money in fiat and still lose 50% of your net worth because you're in a bank that decides to work at it.
- [112:17]
C
To be honest, I think this is really underrated, like, as a, as a mechanism, like, people are more like. People want to talk about these things in terms of like selfish incentives. And they don't like in invoking these motivations because they, because they think they're irrational, like ethical concerns. But I really do want to hold bitcoin because it's good for the world. And this is why I was never a shitcoiner. They don't do anything for anyone. Ethereum doesn't help make the world a better place. It's just people, like, everyone thinks bitcoiners are just trying to get rich. It's really not actually that.
- [112:51]
A
Like, as soon as those green candles go away, nobody trying to get rich stays.
- [112:56]
C
Yeah, that again. That's why the bam. Like, if you leave, and I know who guy is targeting with this, with this train of thought. If you leave bitcoin because of what's happening right now, you don't have the kind of love that any of us are talking about here. And the people that remain will be the people with that kind of love. And that's what makes it such a great system and such a beautiful ecosystem. Because ultimately the people that end up with all the coins tend to be the people that are in it for the ethical purpose and therefore they just can't bring themselves to get out of it. But the people are just here for a pump and dump. Well, they don't last long.
- [113:34]
A
Makes me think of two things, is that. Part of me wonders if the culture will influence or cause problems in bitcoin or if bitcoin will influence and correct the culture. But what makes me think, think about or what makes me hopeful, despite the fact that how bad things can feel and how bad the culture can be, is that I genuinely think that it is the bear markets, it is the bank runs, it is the kicks in the nuts, the margin calls that fix the culture. Like, those are the things that actually, you know, put the rubber to the road and force people to make hard decisions. People don't make hard decisions if they don't have to. People don't change their behavior if they are not forced to. The reason you have responsible business owners and you have, you have fiscal responsibility and accountability and a sound money market is because sound money punishes you. For not having those things.
- [114:51]
E
It's because sound money punishes you.
- [114:54]
A
It's the bear market. And we can never lose the bear markets. We can never lose the bank runs. They're the most important part of a free market.
- [115:01]
D
They are.
- [115:01]
A
The price of liberty is risk and volatility. If you can't handle those two things, it's not fun, it's not easy. But that liberty isn't. It never was. That was never the claim. It wasn't about having the easiest thing. It was about being free and being responsible for your own life. The cost is risk and volatility. This is what it feels like. All right, we just hit two hours.
- [115:32]
D
Yeah, I gotta run.
- [115:34]
C
Yeah, I gotta run too.
- [115:36]
D
That was a good one, guys. Good thing. I'm in a good mood.
- [115:39]
E
Good geese, man.
- [115:40]
A
Taproot is half good.
- [115:42]
D
Go to the episode, the Basement.
- [115:44]
E
We didn't talk about Quantum.
- [115:46]
D
There's like tools in the basement. It's freaking immaculate. Go down there.
- [115:52]
A
Love it.
- [115:53]
D
All right, guys, see you later.
- [115:55]
A
Thank you, guys. I'll catch you on the next one. I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. That was fun. I really, I really, really enjoyed that conversation. I'm curious what you guys think. You know, like a lot of people are new, A lot of people have, you know, this is like a first cycle or first cycle and a half and they feel like they never got their promised run. And you know, like, I can understand why that would seem or feel like he got gypped. And I also think, you know, it's good. We have, we have a lot of crypto exiting the space and I think that's been needed for a really, really long time. There's still a mess, there's still a bunch of financial engineering and all sorts of stuff, but you know, to some degree in a fiat, a still fiat dominated world, that's always going to be the case. But I'm curious what you guys think if you know, this, this resonated or is this just, you know, four people who have been in bitcoin so long that they're either desensitized to the situation or they're so in the money that it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Trust me, we feel it. You know, it's not like that's not fun watching your net worth. It's not fun. Hell, the battles and losses and burned keys and some of the stuff that has happened over the years, like it has never been a non volatile ride in bitcoin's history. So let me know, let me know. Check out the new YouTube channel we have the Guys Take. I think it's actually Guys Take at Guys Take. And it's still like super small. So please subscribe and help boost it and share it out with people. But because of that, I don't even think it shows up in the results very well. I think you have to scroll a little bit, but check it out. I think we've got some really, really awesome content over there and I've been really enjoying the new format. Don't forget to check out the feed, all that good stuff. Follow me on Twitter. Feel free to DM me or tag me or something. I try to answer as much as I can. And oh yeah, don't forget to get a bitbox. Great way to help out the show. I also have a bunch of other affiliate links that will help me out as well. And they're really great products. Like, I don't have, like sponsorships with them, but they're just things that I love and I've used in bitcoin for a long time. So check that out and you can get that list also on bitcoinaudible. Com. If it's maybe incomplete or something in the description with that, that should wrap us up. Thanks, guys and I'll catch you on the next roundtable. Catch you on the next guys, take on the next episode of Bitcoin Audible. And until then, guys, that's our two sets.