← THE Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
It is a bad idea. It is a bad proposal, it is a bad bip and it is a horrible precedent. If you distill their whole argument, it's people are adopting bitcoin and fees are too high and babies are dying. It's not something that you want to happen easily in a trillion dollar network on its way to $10 trillion. Nobody will take bitcoin seriously. We'll see. I don't think there's another chance. If this fails, no one's going to take this seriously. Again. This thing is not designed to fail gracefully. It's designed to be the grenade on the floor and force people to move to another room.
- [00:34]
B
Do you think that there is a risk of this soft fork becoming a hard fork?
- [00:38]
A
I would say the likely outcome is that they will. We're going to go up with God candles and Omega candles and people will be caught off guard. This bear market feels artificial and everything. Precious metals, tech stocks, oil, you name it. They've all had a run and we haven't. So I think we're overdue for that run.
- [01:06]
B
Samson. Samson, Mo. Can we put. Put this to rest? Also, how is your last name pronounced?
- [01:11]
A
It doesn't matter. A rose by any other name is just as sweet.
- [01:16]
B
The. The memes. The memes from Coinjoin, Chris and many others. But he's been, I think, probably the. The memetic hero of this cycle. He's really been putting everyone else to shame. The memes have been quite incredible and quite numerous. I've got to say, I got a chuckle out of many.
- [01:33]
A
Yeah, he's quite prolific this year. I don't think he'll ever hit his peak again, which was the liquid and the swaps button. Baby pushing one. But, you know, he's got to try to top it.
- [01:45]
B
Yeah, it's, you know, he creates a tough act to follow for himself. I think that's the biggest problem, I think. Uh, but Samson, great to have you back on the show. Always enjoy talking to you. Now is, I think, a pretty perfect time for us to chat again. So excited to pick your brain a little bit because there is a lot of. I don't want to, let's see, Drama, for lack of a better word. There's a lot of emotion right now around BIP110. We're not just going to talk about BIP110. Also for people that are tired of hearing it and are about to skip through this, this, we are going to talk about all the other things that you are doing with Jan3 with Aqua also Just kind of want to get your take on the overall macro outlook as it relates to bitcoin, where you see things going. A couple other things as well if we have the time. But I do want to start out with BIP 110 because it has taken so much air out of the room, let's say. I think there's a lot of misconceptions, there's a lot of strong language being thrown around, There's a lot of strong emotions and that's understandable. We're talking about bitcoin. People have their life savings in bitcoin. I care about it a heck of a lot. I know you do as well. Let's just start out with maybe you are somebody who has been. For those who aren't aware, you were supportive of the Knots movement when that was the only thing on the table. You were critical of Core while also being reasonable with your criticisms in terms of not just calling all of them pedos or something like that. You had actual criticisms. And you've also been in bitcoin for a long time. You've seen multiple cycles play out. You were there for the block size wars. You've seen this movie before, so to speak. What do you think is sort of the biggest disconnect right now causing this seemingly pretty intense schism amidst the big bitcoin community? Where is the fundamental piece where people are not seeing eye to eye in your opinion?
- [03:49]
A
Well, the biggest thing is a lack of nuance. So I posted something yesterday about that because I've been accused of flipping sides. But I believe X is not a good platform for serious discussion. It's more of a outlet for anger, frustration and just blasting your opinions out. And there's no real follow through. It's really hard to follow through because everything is buried in a thread somewhere. And nobody sees that because the algo promotes the the less nuanced view, the more anger promoting view. So yeah, I think the issue is there's a lot of little nuance here and possibly a lack of understanding about how bitcoin works from the 110 supporter group. And I believe even the core side has made a lot of missteps too in how they've communicated things or framed things. And again, that goes back to the lack of nuance. So if you look at a developer, they are not marketing product PR comms people, they are developers deep in the code. And if you compare that to say using an AI, they have this million line context window about the code and not so much about how people perceive what they say, or the nuance behind the things they say. So they can say something like, well, if you go back to the origin of the schism, it was about Operaturin and Citraia and I think that was the kind of spark that lit the fire. But they were saying some things like, you know, citraya needs this. Steve from Spiral said that on a pod. And then just the way that Antoine Poinsot and Matt Corallo and Peter Todd were saying, they kind of implied that this had to be done because the network was now functioning in a certain way and it was causing problems with Relay Policy and Mempool Coher that it was leading companies like Citria to do certain things. But I think that is kind of a surface level take and without understanding the nuance behind it, which is that policy is not consensus, and that nothing they do will really impact the core consensus rules of Bitcoin. And like a bunch of other nuance about Operatur and how Citria uses it or didn't need to use it, that just kind of kicked everything off because it made people feel very angry that a change was being forced on them. So even though operturn is a policy and it's a default setting, it felt like they were being coerced because Core was saying, we are changing this and people are saying don't change it. But the fact is, changing it doesn't mean anything. And I criticize Core and Core devs for doing this because it didn't really change anything. Right? Like anybody can change their defaults in their Core client or on their Knots client or any other fork of Bitcoin. And again, there's even more nuance to this too, which is Core is not Bitcoin. So, you know, people don't really understand that it is open source software. You can create a fork and as long as you're in consensus, you can change any policy or setting on your own node and even the miners can do that too. So if you wanted to enforce some rule set on miners, you could have them enforce the policy, but you're going to have to engage them and talk to them and say, hey, we want opreterna83 and not a byte more. Make sure you do this. It's really important and here's the reasons and rationale and data behind it. But the way that bit 110 has been thrust upon the network is it's an arbitrary change, like 7, 8 changes, 8 consensus rule changes thrust upon the network by a very small group of people. And I mean, no insult when I say a small group of people. It's not that there aren't hundreds of people that support it, there are, but there are millions and millions and millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people using Bitcoin that far outweigh the demands that this group of people has. So you can, I think the goal is to bypass the normal consensus building process and set this ultimatum for miners that we're going to make this change, quote, unquote, putting things back the way they were, but end quote, but not really because now it's consensus and it is enforced at the consensus level, not a policy change. So you're kind of using the, a noble goal of fighting spam to enforce and impose a change on the network, on miners with an arbitrary date. And I think that is where the line has to be drawn that that is not a viable path forward. It sets a horrible precedent and it sets a path where anybody could change the network. Anybody with 1% of hash rate, a few thousand nodes, and again 110 supporters will get angry if I misquote the number. But let's just say a few thousand, several thousand nodes, which is not expensive to do and I'm not saying it's a Sybil attack, but nodes are not an indicator of anything. Anybody can set a node, you can false flag, you can signal for something you're not going to enforce. It's not an adequate way to gauge any sentiment or intent of the network. And then you can, you know, get a group of people together and complain on a social media platform that we need this change. So that opens the door for, I don't know, drive chains to do the same thing, to add a up return that they need or sorry, opcode that they need to enable drive chains. Or it could be a way for covenants proponents to implement covenants, or it could be on, on the other end of it, a more malicious way is you could have a very big mining pool implement a soft fork that tightens the rules and reduces the block reward for some good reason, I don't know what, but I'm sure people can twist themselves up in a knot to think of some reason and rationalize it, but that would be a way for them to bleed out competitors and gain an advantage. So it sets this really nasty precedent and it lowers the bar for change on the network massively. So I think it is a bad idea, it is a bad proposal, it is a bad bip and it is a horrible precedent. So that's my overarching take on it, trying to Add as much nuance as possible in a few minutes time.
- [10:52]
B
And I'm sure no matter how much nuance you add, you will always have people who don't like what you have to say. So we're going to do our best here. And I'm sure I was already accused, Samson, by having you on that I had somebody say why don't you have somebody on who actually cares about using bitcoin as money? And you know, if you're saying that kind of stuff, it just like it's just demonstrably false. You know, given you can just look at the work that you do even today, not to mention the work that you have done. And I think that you mentioned a couple of points there that are really important. One is the confusion around policy versus consensus. And I'm not trying to talk down to anyone here, I'm just saying there clearly is some confusion. This oper turn change, however you feel about it, was a policy change. Correct me if I'm wrong, but even before any of this bip110 stuff, the consensus level, protocol level operation was uncapped. Is that correct?
- [11:51]
A
Correct.
- [11:52]
B
And so this is the confusing part about the messaging around BIP 110 is when I hear we're taking things back to how they were, it's like, well, you're actually changing things because the protocol was uncapped. You can say the relay policy was in fact changed by bitcoin core. However, as you also mentioned, it remains a configurable setting. Also correct. Right. Even today they haven't taken away your ability to configure it. I, I don't know if that was on, maybe that was on the table at one point, but they, you know, either way it's configurable now. Right? So like that is the other thing. So is that part of it here? Is it, is it just. And I again, I want to be really, I know that the BIP110 folks out there who feel really passionately about this and if you're listening to this, try to listen with an open mind because I promise you that both Samson and myself really care about bitcoin. Samson's been working on bitcoin for a lot longer than I have, doing much more real stuff than I do as a podcaster. But I promise you care about bitcoin a lot too. I don't want to see bitcoin fail. As much as people would like to say it, I'm not captured. Apparently there's big pools of money floating around that just pay Influencers. I wish I knew where they were, that'd be great. But I haven't seemed to find them. But the other piece here, I think is that there's a lot of comparisons made with the block size wars. There's a lot of people saying that on the BIP110 side, everyone seems to be saying that the core tard spammer, spam apologists, you know, spam apologist pedos are the big blockers, the big bitcoin big blockers. And the bitborn tenors are, you know, the noble and virtuous plebs who, you know, can do no wrong in this sense and are justified in their vitriol. Can you draw any comparisons to the block size wars as somebody who is actually there when it all went down made some hats, I believe, as well, famously. What are people missing when they draw these comparisons in terms of what was the actual reality then and the actual reality now?
- [13:55]
A
Yeah. Before we get into the block size war comparison, I think we should just step back and go over some of the things you talked about. So there is this framing of the whole thing, like we need to make bitcoin money, but we need to make bitcoin money is more of a rallying cry than a specific thing that we can do. What does that actually mean? What does it mean to make bitcoin money? Does that mean there's no spam, no data embedded into a bitcoin transaction or the bitcoin blockchain? Or does that mean no more treasury companies, no more ETFs, it's all bearer, peer to peer cash. It's like a very amorphous blob of sentiment that is kind of summed up in we need to make bitcoin money. And if you disagree with me, that means you're for everything that we don't like and you're trying to make bitcoin a worse money. And it's just really interesting in terms of human psychology, how can this be true? Because if you sit down and you rationally think about it, there is really not that much to that statement. It's a really nice statement. It's like there is no second best or you do not sell your bitcoin. And you know, bitcoin is money. Bitcoin money, it's like a nice rallying cry. But what does that entail? What does that mean? You do? And I think that is where we start to drop off because it's so interpretable in any number of ways. People can twist that and justify any behavior they have insulting people, canceling people, canceling companies, attacking people, slandering people. It's, it's a good way to justify that because everything, it can be taken as any tens of dozens of meanings and twisted against anybody else. Like Walker, you don't want bitcoin as money because some reason but I think you have to really self reflect. I was engaging a little bit with Ian Northen. He's bitcoin lawyer, Ocean lawyer, he works at Ocean and he was critiquing Michael Saylor saying you know you're doing these things to make bitcoin a worse money and it's degrading bitcoin, it's weakening it. But I kind of questioned him on that like how can anything anyone does weaken the value proposition of Bitcoin. Spam is a nuisance and it makes it harder for people to run nodes. That is a given. But you know, if, if you believe bitcoin is money then and bitcoin is the most is the best form of money we've ever had and it is durable, immutable, permissionless bearer. You know all the reasons why it's better than gold then how can it not withstand people using it as money? Because every company in the world uses money. Every system on the planet uses money. So if you think bitcoin is money then anyone in any, in any place, in any form factor, company or individual should be able to use it, right?
- [17:07]
C
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- [20:30]
B
Stack harder I'm glad you took a step back there because I think that that's a really good, valid question. And perhaps actually before we I'll take us another step here is before getting into the block size war comparison, I've okay, there's been a lot of shifting goalposts throughout this whole thing. It started out with we're running knots to rug the spammers and I've consistently said I think it's great if you run knots and you can go back and check my tweetest during this have I made some memes saying that filters don't work correct? Because they don't. And if they did work, you wouldn't be proposing a soft fork right now. Bip1 tenors so take a step back. You can breathe. It's going to be okay. But it started out with the knots and then okay, clearly evidence that knots was not effective, that it wasn't effective to combat spam in this way. Which again yet I don't want spam on There either. There's a diff. There's a difference between not wanting spam and saying we need to propose a contentious soft fork that was vibe coded up, you know, in an afternoon to try and create a temporary fix for this that expires in a year by making consensus changes like those are two very different things. I think you and I both agree. Yeah, we don't want dick butts or whatever it might be on bitcoin. But also sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease. And I think that's what it's really gotten down to is people who have a good justification for what they are doing in their hearts like we do, they want. They want Bitcoin to continue succeeding. But the prescribed medicine, the prescribed antidote, whatever analogy you want for that, I think is where people disagree. Well, yeah, did you see the iatrogenic search results went like, you know, parabolic after Saylor tweeted about that, which I thought was funny. But what I fundamentally kind of struggle grappling with is people who think that bitcoin is the best money, want bitcoin to be money, but somehow think that the quote, non monetary use cases of bitcoin are going to price out people using Bitcoin for monetary transactions. Like, I just. I personally, Perhaps this is naive of me. Feel free to call me an idiot in the comments, guys. I look forward to it. I at least think that, look, there's going to be an incredible demand for sending bitcoin transactions in the base layer. There's not much of a demand right now. I think the demand's going to continue to increase. It's going to continue to get more expensive in both bitcoin and dollar denominated terms. If you want to denominate it in infinitely printable Federal Reserve notes. But perhaps you could just explain where you're at in terms of does the free market of the fee market solve the spam issue eventually? Have we already seen evidence of that or is that just my naivete talking?
- [23:20]
A
Well, I've said it publicly. I think the ultimate victory is, you know, we'll win because of the block size and the fee market. Right. Fees will be prohibitive eventually, but that doesn't mean. So this is where I differ from some people on the core camp, which is I think we should fight spam. We should do things to mitigate it, especially on utxo. Bloat up, return neither here nor there. Like even if you, if you want 1.10, 110, still has OperTurn at 83 bytes and you can still cram things into multiple opera turns. Do I think that Core as a group should have some initiatives within there to work on anti spam features? Yes, I think so. But I think that also depends on funding. A lot of development is funded with no strings, so people can work on what they choose to. Fighting spam. If you are a developer, and I'm speaking like from the developer perspective here, I can take myself out of my position and put myself in their shoes. If ultimately I believe and I understand that it's a losing game, I might choose to work on something else that is better, like optimizing blockchain sync times or something else, or bip54 or something. Right. So if you want to fight spam and you're not a developer, you're not technical, then you have to either fund development or, or find someone that's willing to volunteer time. But you can't just say I want to do this and expect it will be done because there is no obligation from a group of other people to make some change. I don't know. I think NOSTR should be more peer to peer and not have relays. That's a valid opinion. I've said that publicly lots of times. But do I expect that? I don't know, Marty or Will are going to do it like. No, it's their project and if I don't like it, I can always fork it and make my own version of NOSTR and call it, I don't know, Walkerster or something. Right? But you know, you have to understand how open source software works. And I think that's another part of the big divide, which is if you are technical and you understand code, then you can do whatever you want as long as it's within consensus rules. And I think a lot of people are less technical. They're buying node in a box implementations and they're just like downloading the binary and running that, right? And then that's it. They're not really in the command line in the terminal, they don't know how to use config files, yada yada, yada. So they feel like this change has been forced upon them and there's nothing they can do. But actually you can. It's like you're in the, in the kiddie pool and you know, you don't even need to code now. You could just tell a fable or opus, you know, take this repo, make me a version with 83 bytes oper turn and it'll do that for you. It'll probably Create the binary for you too. So you're in the kiddie pool and you feel like you're being pushed under, but just stand up and everything is fine. You're still following consensus rules. Policy might have changed, but nothing can stop you from changing it back or doing something or fighting spam. But you cannot do it or achieve success doing it by posting on X. You're going to have to raise capital or learn to do it yourself.
- [26:47]
B
You can just do things now more than ever. But apparently it is always easier to rage post, I think. Okay, I want to ask you too, and I think this maybe can tie into the block size war piece a little bit. What do you think is the actual most likely outcome of this, of BIP 110 right now? Do you think, I mean, you know, are the goalposts going to continue to be shifted? Will it be successful in its activation threshold, which there's also some obviously debate about how good of an idea that that threshold is. How do you think this will play out? And are there parallels you can draw based on your experience in the block size war era?
- [27:35]
A
Yeah, I would say the likely outcome is that they will not succeed in reaching 55% and they're going to enter the mandatory signaling phase on August 8th and there will be a fork. They will fork off with 1% of the hash rate. And that might persist for a few hours, but I don't think it will persist long term. Now you ask a really good question, Walker. What happens after? Like, what's going to happen? And a lot of the leaders of the initiative, Mechanic and Luke, they are not really planning for any contingency. Like if you ask mechanics, I don't know, like, okay, but you have to live in the real world and look at probability. It's not just we think everyone's going to flip at the last minute because that's not the case. And this whole rushed implementation, vibe coded or not vibe coded, that is irrelevant. This rushed rollout is just doomed for failure because the reason you have long signaling periods is to allow miners to understand what is happening and nodes on the network to upgrade and prepare. But there is no preparation other than we think. The game theory says they're going to flip the bit at the last minute because that's really what the hope is. If it doesn't work, then I've asked this question to some people too, and they say, well, we'll try again. But if you can try again, it was not existential, right? If you can go again. And they say, well, we'll keep trying until we get it. Then you could have just waited for years and built up consensus, because what you've done now is made it toxic. And we don't even need to go back to the block size wars, but just go back to CTV Covenants. When Jeremy Rubin was pushing for it really aggressively, it just turned a lot of people off, raised people's red flags, spider senses, and they're thinking, well, why does this guy want it right now? You know, what's the rush? Is there something. Is there an ulterior motive? Is there some altcoin project external factor that's going to utilize it in some way? But, you know, that was a lot of pushback. And I think if you skip forward a few years to now, I think people would be amenable to a soft fork with Covenants in it. I don't know, but I feel like, personally, I am not against it, but you have to let things happen naturally. Building consensus is a lot like, you know, falling in love. You can't force it, but when you have it, you know, you know you're in love, Walker, you know, you. You love Carla. But if I tell you, go love Carla, that's probably not gonna work, right? Well, maybe it'll work because she's beautiful and talented, but might have worked either way with her.
- [30:31]
B
But it's a good analogy.
- [30:33]
A
It's as good as I can get. But you can't force consensus, and that's what we're seeing here. If you let it happen naturally, and if, by extension, you have said, we'll keep trying, that means it's not urgent. So there is no need to do this arbitrary deadline. And even the arbitrary deadline in itself is a massive red flag, so they say. Like, you know, we have this mandatory signaling period. But who is we and why is it mandatory? Who are you to tell me that that's mandatory? Who are. Who are they to tell you, Walker, that it's mandatory? You know, we have things to do. We are busy. You can't just say what gave you notice. It was like, eight months. And, you know, that is the deadline, so you better, like, get out of the wedding room because I threw a grenade down or else. But, you know, that doesn't really work. Like, if you look at. Look at what everyone's doing, everyone's busy. If you take Prince Philip, for example, he was on some prince tour in the US Going from city to city, and then now he's sick with, like, a flu or something. Like, you know, what if people are busy and Then they can't do an upgrade. What are you going to do to them? Right. They might have a lightning node with lightning channels and you're going to cause this destructive thing to everybody and it is disruptive. I saw Terence Michael posted something this morning. I was just flipping by and he said, you know, I didn't read it all, but he said something like, if you have loans out, you know, be careful because of the possible fork and chaos in the network, so be careful. And other people post it too. If you have a lightning node running, you might want to close some channels or do something, but be prepared for this disruption. So it is disruptive and it's not something that you want to happen easily in a trillion dollar network on its way to $10 trillion. Nobody will take bitcoin seriously if you willy nilly change the consensus rules. It doesn't matter if you're tightening or loosening them. It's all bad. It also signals to the market that this is not something that is viable to be built on. Right. You can't build a house on quicksand. You can't have people's emotion driving technical development even if you don't like the developers. Right. There's just so much bad stuff in here that, you know, I could go on and on. And the frustrating part is people say like, well, tell me why. I'm like, I told you why, I told you why so many times. I wrote lots of things about why and you keep asking me, tell me why it's bad. And I just don't have an answer. So I think you just have to let it play out, unfortunately. But we'll see. I don't think there's another chance. If this fails, no one's going to take this seriously again. And I think you're going to put spam fighting on the back burner for a long time. And even worse, this has incentivized technical people to show the BIT110 supporters that BIP110 is meaningless. They've developed new ways to embed data in bitcoin. So it's kind of just been a horrible thing all around for everybody. Just because people were angry.
- [33:32]
B
Yeah, the, the rushed nature of it, I think is, is actually quite important. Just because, like, this isn't something that, like, this isn't a move fast and break things situation with Bitcoin. Right. This isn't Silicon Valley, you know, like, let's just, you know, we'll move fast, we'll break things, whatever. We'll fix, like, no, no, we should take things as slow as possible and protocol level changes should only be done after the most well thought out, careful consideration possible. Not with like, you know, email spammer techniques of click this link right now or lose access to everything you, you know, you care about in your life. Like you gotta click it right now. That's what it feels like. And the other piece here is, I mean I know Luke has said, he said many times like people are. This isn't me putting words in his mouth. You can go back and search his tweets. He's said many things about the fact that if, if, well, you know, if they don't win, basically, if they're, if their side doesn't win, that bitcoin is doomed. Right, the bitcoin is doomed. And I find that kind of language just to be very interesting, not very helpful. And personally I don't agree with it. But you know, he's entitled to his opinions. He can call me a liar or something like that, but he will. You can go back and search his tweets for it. Do you think though on that note that there's a given Luke who is, you can say he's not a leader of this movement as I've seen people try to claim, but he is, you know, it's just again, statement of fact. If this doesn't go the way that Luke and the other BIP110 folks believe that it will, which they believe that it's going to be successful. If it's unsuccessful. Do you think that there is a risk of this soft fork becoming a hard fork? Is there a risk of then a proof of work change being proposed? I'm not sure how much you've been following some of the discourse around that side of things, but I would love your take on it.
- [35:33]
A
It's most likely there will be a chain split. It'll be a minority chain or a chain with very low hash rate. It will have, if they have the current amount of hash rate relative to the main chain, they will have 33 hour blocks and a difficulty adjustment in six to seven years. So it is not a viable chain and it's missing a lot of, if you want to compare it to block size, wars era stuff, they're missing a lot of the machinery that could make it viable like exchanges are not paying attention to this thing at all. A lot of the miners are not even paying attention to this thing at all. So can this exist? Can it live on its own? I'm not really sure it can because the block times are so low. Because the hash rate is so low, when we were threatened with a split in the block size war, there's a good amount of hash rate behind both right behind the segwit side and the not segwit side. So it wasn't 1%. So it was definitely more viable that they could. Without a proof of work change, they can survive. But with BIP 110, it would have to have proof of work change to remotely be viable. And I think there's one thing I didn't answer before, which was what kind of happens at this time? But related to this, the whole point of signaling is you can have miners that false signal for something. That's why usually signal periods are so long and they require a super majority in the past, especially for consensus changes, because the stakes are so high. And you have to understand that mining pools, they're not all friends with one another, right? You can, it's a very bloody business with thin margins and cutthroat competition. So you can have a pool that signals for something or a lot of pools that signal for something and don't enforce that something, bip110 or others. So that's why the signaling period is so long with such a high threshold, because it indicates that, you know, it's highly likely this pool pass. And that signals safety to all the people signaling for the change because change is risky for them in Bitcoin and for the miners pools and miners because the stakes are high. There's real capital and resources, energy, hardware, all at risk if things go south. So that's why I think a lot of them will just ignore this because the risk is high. But also there is no viable path forward post signaling to enforce those purported rules of 1.10. Because if you look at some of the core developers, they've taken the time generously to look at the 1.10 code and they've said even knots doesn't support it, doesn't enforce the rules correctly. So which software client are you going to run as a miner or mining pool that lets you comply with this thing that you're signaling for? It does not exist right now. So that's why I think it's really just going to. It's going to fork because some people believe it and there will be some mismatch between enforcement even amongst 110 nodes. And we're going to see this minority chain, but it'll probably fizzle out and die. And then I don't know what happens after that. People have said they'll Try again. But I hope they don't try again in the same fashion and they try to go through the rough consensus process or spend more time or even gather some data to show the activation mechanism will work. There is zero data right now about what happens in a split. You could do this on testnet and show data and show that there is a client or a patch that will allow you to enforce the rule set correctly, but there is nothing like that right now. It's just trust me, bro. And what happens? I don't know.
- [39:37]
B
Another thing that is just an interesting usage of language is that I've seen Luke basically say that it wouldn't actually be the bip110 crowd that is forking. It would be everyone who's not running bip110. Have you seen this train of logic? And can you address that at all? For those that may be confused by
- [39:58]
A
that kind of language, it's pretty clear, isn't it? Like, yeah, we're forking off. But yeah, he said that to me too and you know, I replied back. It's. It's all perspective, isn't it? Right? It's like the theory of relativity. Is time passing slower for you or faster for me? Well, both. It's true, you know, from his perspective we're forking off. From our perspective, he's forking off. But all you need to know is where is the economic majority? Right? That's the question you have to answer. And the irony is that they've kind of figured it out. They've said this thing big Bitcoin, which is analogous to economic majority. So you. They kind of know in the back of their minds. And I don't know why they insist on forking off to prove a point. But you know, some people are going to lose money. I was actually hoping to sit this one out. So if you, you can ask Grok to verify my claim. But after Core 30 was launched, I stopped complaining about it because there was no discussion. They, the core developers made their choice, maintainers merged it, they cut a release, it's done. So I can complain all day long and bitch at them and complain and cry and criticize and attack them, but that doesn't mean anything. They've already done it. So I stopped talking about it. But bit 110 is such a horrible idea that I had to say something because people are going to suffer because Luke and others are pushing this forward. And I've said publicly to Luke, you should walk it back, cancel the mandatory period or have some fail out time like you know, X blocks after mandatory, it'll stop, you know, minimize the damage or even before, like if you can set the deadline to before your, you know, mandatory block and have it, have that fork fail gracefully. But this thing is not designed to fail gracefully. It's designed to be the grenade on the floor and force people to move to another room.
- [41:57]
B
You know, Samson, I said we weren't going to talk about bip 110 for 45 minutes. And then here we went and talked about bip 110 for 45 minutes.
- [42:06]
A
You see, it's the same with Sheikh Roque.
- [42:08]
C
It's the same, you know, because it
- [42:11]
B
is all of this. And again, I wish all of the bip1 tenors well, I think that the majority of them are doing what they're doing from a place of caring about bitcoin. Now, the tactics that they employ are not ones that I would personally use, but to each their own. But, you know, I hope that people at least get realistic about what the reality of the situation is here, about the potential, you know, potential for things to not go the way that you want and what you're going to do at that time. There may be a lot of rage quits. I don't know, maybe there'll be some come to Jesus moments as well. And no, I'm not saying that bitcoin core is Jesus or anything like that for anybody who's going to take that out of context. I'm just saying, like, they're going to
- [43:03]
A
take it out of context.
- [43:04]
B
Yeah, that's okay. Feel free to clip it, guys. I've been called the biggest core TARDS influencer for even when I stopped posting about it like months ago. And then, you know, it's like, well, if you want to, if you want to make me into something, I guess I'll just, you know, become that thing. You know, it's. It's a little tiresome, but.
- [43:22]
A
But we should move on and try to cover some more topics. I know you have a hard stop soon, but before that, I just want to chime in. So you did ask, like, what is the lesson from the block size war? Yeah, yeah, I don't want to go into the technical activation stuff that has been tweeted about endlessly, but I guess we should talk about the emotional lesson and the emotional similarities. So the block size increase was an emotional thing. If you distill their whole argument, it's. People are adopting bitcoin and fees are too high and babies are dying, to paraphrase Roger Ver, because they can't afford to transact Bitcoin. And that is a very good emotional argument that you can't really disagree with, right? Like why Walker, would you not want people to be able to use bitcoin? But the solution was wrong, which was a consensus rule change, right? And again, slippery slope. But you may not agree with that because you can always disagree with that. You can always say, well, there was no block size limit when Satoshi launched bitcoin. Gotcha. And that's kind of the place we're at with 110, which is emotionally it's a good argument. Right? We don't want spam, we don't want bad stuff. We want to prevent spammers and make bitcoin better as money. But the solution is wrong. You're changing consensus rules again. And you can always go back and say, well, Satoshi, you know, he didn't, he, he didn't remove the default. He had the policy at launch, you know, or whatever. No, he didn't actually. But you get my point. The, the, the crux of the issue is it's always a really good emotional argument and it's a good rallying point for people that don't fully understand bitcoin. And I mean that with no malice. Like it takes time to learn Bitcoin, to understand everything and all the nuance there or at least even get a, a surface level understanding. I don't even think I know bitcoin that well. If you want to dive down into the weeds, into the code. I have an okay understanding of the top level. But this is the lesson that it's sort of an emotionally right argument, but the wrong take on how to fix it. And the best way is to take it slow, follow consensus rules and think about long term implications or even think about the double edged sword. If you do this for your reason now, someone else can take that sword and you know, attack you with it later on.
- [45:41]
B
I think that's a, it's a perfect way to wrap up this, this particular topic on. And I, I do thank you for the insights on this. I hope people listen to that part with an open mind. Moving on to some, some other topics while we still have some time too. I do want to get your thoughts. Okay. This, there's this kind of. The reality is that this is a fairly niche argument topic right now.
- [46:04]
A
Right?
- [46:04]
B
Like most people that hold bitcoin are probably not even aware that this is going on. A lot of people are just going about their lives, working, trying to stack more SATs. Maybe they're spending bitcoin too, using this money. Fantastic. But where do you think we're at from a larger zooming out perspective? From an adoption perspective, you see different parts of the adoption curve, I think both at the, let's say top down level, but then also the bottom up level. In terms of the work that you're doing with Jan3 and Aqua within that respectively, kind of approaching from two sides and meeting in the middle. From an adoption perspective, where do you think we are and what do you think it takes to push sort of the next large wave of adoption that I think many of us feel didn't really come in this last cycle? Maybe the treasury companies took some wind out of that. But what are your thoughts on it and what do you think it takes to sort of initiate that next wave of incoming bitcoiners?
- [47:02]
A
I think the current rut that we're in is just because people believe enough people believe in the four year cycle that they're panicking that we're going to go down a lot. So they preemptively sold or lost faith in bitcoin. I don't believe it's caused by treasury companies. If anything treasury companies and ETFs have brunted this, this downfall. Right. It's like they're all shock absorbing bitcoin price decline whereas before they existed it would just be hodlers and we might have seen an 80% drop or something in the past. But I believe we're just in this self fulfilling prophecy where people think the four year cycle will hold and we're going to go lower and this definitely feels like the bottom is behind. But you shouldn't believe me because I'm a permeable. I'm always bullish on bitcoin, but this kind of scraping along the lower 60s, it definitely feels like we've reached the point where sellers are exhausted. Everyone that has sold and lost faith has already exited. And then bitcoin will just do its thing. I'm a firm believer in gradually, then suddenly and bitcoin will melt faces because there is a lot of capital out there. We're only 1 trillion, a $1 trillion asset. We've seen gold do almost 3x, silver 4.5x. There's a lot capital out there and once it starts flowing into bitcoin you're going to see a chain reaction and we're going to go up with God candles and Omega candles and people will be caught off guard. Everyone that thought the four year cycle was going to happen, they'll probably miss out because they've been waiting for a 40k or 30k bottom, but these things just have a way of working themselves out. People have very short memories. The timeframe on which they panic is usually short duration. If you look at the recent dip in treasury company stocks, they're already recovering because two, three weeks have passed and people saw okay, they didn't blow up, it's okay. And capital is flowing back in and you have this rotation out from short term capital to long term capital. And that's always been the battle. It's always short term versus long term capital. And long term capital is patient and they invest on a thesis, not on emotion. So they usually will win. So if your long term capital entering the strc trade right now, you know you're not getting 13%, you're getting something like 20 odd percent because there's price appreciation built into that too and lower effective, higher effective yield. So it's just a matter of time, I think, before we see bitcoin do its thing. And to me there's a very high probability we'd see bitcoin do its thing because everything has had a run. I don't believe 126,000 was a sufficient all time high. It felt like it was cut short. And this bear market feels artificial and everything. Precious metals, tech stocks, oil, you name it, they've all had a run and we haven't. So I think we're overdue for that run. And the more people are impatient and bored with it, the more violent that run is going to be.
- [50:31]
B
It does seem like I've seen a lot of people basically be like, nope, this isn't the bottom. The bottom is going to be at exactly 40k in, you know, on October or something or other. And they're very convinced about that. And in my somewhat much more limited time in bitcoin than you, but even in that time, what I've seen is that bitcoin like right when you get that pit in your stomach where you're like, is there a chance Peter Schiff was right? Right at that moment is usually when bitcoin decides to rip your face off and make you feel foolish for even thinking those thoughts again. In my, in my limited experience, Peter Schiff is not right, guys. And he probably holds more bitcoin than he lets on. Related to that, I also think that there's this because I agree with what you said and I think there's this other disconnect here where, because the printers haven't. The money printers, the fiat money printers haven't fired, haven't really gone brrr in a while. I think that people are sort of forgetting that that is the inevitable outcome. Right. And I'm curious if you think though. I think there's sort of a couple of schools of thought here. Sort of the, you know, Larry Lepard's big print thesis for versus like a Lynn Alden gradual print thesis. And I'm curious where you stand on that. From a macro perspective,
- [51:46]
A
nothing stops this train believer. But I am big print believer too, so I'll side with Lawrence on this. If you look at US debt alone, it's getting very close to 40 trillion now with 1 trillion added every year. That is not sustainable. Something has got to give. We just don't know when it's going to give. And if I could predict when, then I'd be a trillionaire, but I don't know when. I can't predict the future, but I see the directionality of this and it is going to be a big print eventually. We'll see.
- [52:20]
B
I think. Well, you know, technically you've actually given some kudos to both Lyn and Larry there with, you know, nothing stops the strain. Also big print. I think the theses are complementary. Perhaps it's gradual prints interspersed with big prints because we know that like fiat only goes one direction, right? Like over the long, the long arc of history, we know which way it goes and it's toward debasement. And so it's just, you know, not a matter of if, but a matter of when with the time we have left. Samson, I do want to make sure that we give you a chance to talk a little about the work that you're doing with Jan3 with Aqua Wallet. Anything that you want to make people aware of. Also, if you're not using Aqua Wallet, you should really give it a try. I really like using it. It's become one of my daily driver wallets. I think it's very fun and easy to use and looks nice and yeah, it's fun to spend Bitcoin with. And I do so whenever I get the chance, like at Steak n Shake. Shout out to Steak n Sh for continuing to be based and having tallow cooked things and accepting Bitcoin. You guys are awesome. What else are you guys working on right now? Anything with Aqua or Jan3 more broadly that you want to make people aware of that they should be excited about.
- [53:30]
A
Yeah, so Aqua, we're getting close to a big release. We've actually been rebuilding the entire app in react. So Alex Bragan, he's our cto, he's been leading this initiative for the past several months, but this will let us roll out updates much faster. It'll make the app much more responsive, snappy, and everything's just going to feel better overall. But this has been, you know, probably a five, six month initiative now, but we're nearing the end of it. I don't know if he's okay with me saying this, but you know, we're getting close to release and that is a big thing that we're all looking forward to. It's actually quite complex because we've tried to make the update so that when you update grade your Aqua Wallet, you don't even notice that it's changed. So it's sort of like ripping out the engines on an airplane mid flight and switching them in with new ones. But the transition will be seamless for Aqua users on the nation state front. Actually we were going to release it today but we postponed till tomorrow morning Pacific time. But we have a report coming out. It's the 2025 nation state Bitcoin adoption report. It's taken us a bit longer than we thought to compile it, but it's a comprehensive overview of all nation state adopt adoption for 2025 and going forward. We're going to do this every year. We've divided this methodology to rank countries too with bitcoin adoption. So we will introduce this concept of the B20, like the G20, which are the top 20. Thanks top 20 countries that are leading bitcoin adoption worldwide. So that'll come out tomorrow. People on Nostr get the heads up ahead of time and then people that watch your stream later will, you know, see it ahead of the stream, ahead of the pod that's released later. But yeah, that took a while for us to get right. But I think now that we have the structure, the methodology, next year we should be able to release it, you know, soon after 2026 ends.
- [55:31]
B
That's really cool. I'm looking forward to reading that. And yeah guys, this is a benefit of watching the show on Nostr. You're getting this alpha ahead of time. So thank you to those who joined on Nostr and who zapped Samson. Where can people find out more information? You're excelion on X on Nostr as well. Where can they find out more info about Jan3 to try out Aqua Wallet, et cetera.
- [55:53]
A
Yeah, you can go to jan3.com our website or follow us on X jan3com and Aqua's Aqua Bitcoin on X or aqua.net on the web.
- [56:04]
B
Love it and it really is a great wallet. Like I enjoy using it very much. And yeah, I have a lot of wallets on my phone, I'll put it that way. It's one of the few that I use consistently though, because they're I've downloaded a lot of wallets that I'll then use for a little bit, like just to test them out then, you know, not use again for a while. Aqua I use on a regular basis. So yeah, keep up the great work with that. Excited to check out the report and thank you for joining. And for those who stuck around for the whole thing, I hope that you, you know, regardless of what quote side of this bip110 thing that you're on, that you can take Samson's points at face value and evaluate these things objectively and also prepare yourself for any eventuality so that, you know, what's that old expression like Happiness is expectations minus reality. You know. So just be prepared is all I'll say. And yeah, Samson, really appreciate your time. Appreciate you sneaking this in and looking forward to the next time.
- [57:03]
A
Thank you, Walker. We'll do it again.
- [57:12]
C
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.comwalkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin Podcast Podcast. Until next time, stay free.