Bitcoin Spam, Fees, and Filters with Softsimon from Mempool - FFS #108

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Simon, welcome to the Freedom Footprint show.

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Thanks so much for joining us.

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Thank you for having me.

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Yeah, Simon, um, the first time I met you was at Baltic Honey

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Badger in Riga back in 2019.

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You remember that?

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Right.

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I do remember.

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Yeah, fascinating time.

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And since then you've become a titan in the, uh, blockchain studying department,

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I guess, or the time chain studies department of the Academy of Bitcoin.

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And since you sort of invented mempool space, or at least

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co invented it, I guess.

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What's, um, can you give our listeners the TLDR on you so I don't

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misrepresent you too much here?

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Sure.

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So the TLDR is that, uh, I started, uh, dig deep into Bitcoin in 2017, right in

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the bull run block size war and all that.

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And, uh, I was also traveling everywhere, just living, living a nomadic lifestyle.

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So that's why I had the opportunity to go to like all these conferences, like.

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Honey Badger in 2019 and, uh, I went to a bunch of other ones, like building on

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Bitcoin in, uh, in Lisbon and, uh, it was in late 2018 that I created, uh, mempool.

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space, the first version.

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And, uh, I think 2020, uh, me and Wiz, like made it into a company and we hired

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like a team of great developers that together we've been building it out.

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To what, what it is today, which is like a, a fully featured, like

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block explorer with tons of feature.

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We had lightning explorer and like an audit system.

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I mean, there's so much stuff we've been able to do.

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Uh, the past few years, so I guess that's the TLDR.

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It's become the industry standard, uh, for fee estimation and a lot of other things.

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And for like most wallets, when you click open in external explorer kind button, and

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then, uh, they redirect you to mempool.

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space because it's the most trustworthy one, I guess.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It's quite, uh, incredible.

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I wouldn't have imagined when I, when I made the website, because it's, for

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me, it was just a small tool to, to track transactions, like to see where

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your transaction are in the mempool.

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That was like the original idea.

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Like, which block are you in?

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Are you in the next block or the next, next block?

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So, I mean, that's the core of the website, right?

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So,

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Such a, uh, it's sort of emerged like Bitcoin emerged, uh, it emerged out

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of a simple set of simpler things.

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Um, So yeah, there are three things I really want to talk to you about today.

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And one is, uh, uh, the fees.

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And I know you're a proponent of higher fees, or maybe that's a

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bit misrepresentation as well.

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So, so let's go into, to that whole category.

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And of course, the spam and what to do about it and how to categorize it and

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what's good and what's bad and straighten up a couple of things around that.

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And about how the mempool works in general, and what data you

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can extract out of mempool.

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space.

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I'm realizing that this is more than three things.

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And then the final thing is that you read, Bitcoin Jew does his

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book, book, so we don't have to.

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And that was, uh, yes, you took one for the team there,

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having to endure that, I guess.

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Uh, and, uh, we can go into that and point out why that, uh, whole thing is wrong.

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Uh, yeah.

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So where do you want to start?

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you can start with, uh, your, the fee market stuff.

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what is going on?

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The fees are right now estimated in the next block to

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be around 180 sats per vbyte.

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Why is that?

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looks like, I mean, if you go to mempolispace, we have a

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new filter on the main page.

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Like the dashboard, you can see the next block and you can filter by coin join

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and consolidation transactions and data.

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So if you click the data, you'll see that right now, the majority of the

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transactions seems to be like data stuff.

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Which is mostly like JPEGs and tokens and token transfers.

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So I think that's the cause of the many of the fee spikes

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like the past year, I'd say.

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Because if you, if you discount for all the data fee spikes,

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there hasn't been that much.

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activity in the main pool so far, uh, this year, at least.

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and this, I think this data tab used to be a fecal matter icon, uh, when you

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was like for one day and then we changed to a more general purpose data.

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So, so the data includes various kinds of data inclusion.

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So it's both the inscription type when you, when you add data in the witness

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data in transactions, and it also includes the op return data, which is

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a field in transaction output where you can embed a certain amount of data.

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And there's also a third category, which is fake pub keys, which is used

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by a legacy way of doing multisig before we had paged script hash.

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So that's also a way that people found to include data on the blockchain.

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So, so those bound together forms the data category we have, so you can see

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what's data and then you can call it data.

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You can call it spam.

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Depends on, uh, your kind of use.

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It's a big, hot debate right now, and it's been going on for, I mean, years.

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From when the whole ordinal stuff started.

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Yeah, and I guess you, um, you may or may not be under pressure from certain groups

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to remove the fecal matter icon, I guess.

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I mean, I don't know what you can say about your opinions on this

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stuff, but what's the difference between the different types of data?

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Is there a reason that you removed the emoji?

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Is some data less, less important?

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Yeah, I think it's, I mean, we have a, we have some kind of guidelines and visions

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when we do decisions on what we add on the website and, uh, like, are we going

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to add JPEGs and you can be a JPEG or are you, are we going to add this or that?

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I mean, we have some guidelines, right?

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And like one guideline is no cheat coin, for example.

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So we want to add any support for the tokens or stuff like that.

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but we also have a very neutral view to, to the blockchain.

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Like, we don't want to take any too much of a opinion on what this is.

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So like the shitcoin emoji that we had for, I think, one day before we removed

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it to change the data is just because that's reason it just became too much

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drama very quickly because people start arguing about it very quickly, but

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change the data and everyone is pleased because everyone can decide what this is.

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It is embedded data.

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Like the more, I mean, the more objective, if you know what, if you get what I mean,

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so we, we're not trying to, to, to, um, decide for, for the users, what, what

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this is, um, We let the user decide.

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We just want to show what's on the blockchain, what's in the main pool,

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and, uh, and just be a tool for, I mean, a general tool that show unbiased data,

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Yeah, that's a noble stance, indeed, to keep it apolitical.

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I like that.

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And just step aside, remove yourself from the drama of Bitcoin Twitter.

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I mean, we here on the show, we've definitely taken a stance on this.

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And like, in my view, and in Luke's as well, I think we view the Satoshi

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as something very special and these other, any other arbitrary data you

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can put to, to the Satoshi or rather to the transaction is by definition

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less special than the Satoshi itself.

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So, so already there, there, we find a problem with like

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attaching, data to transactions.

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Yeah, I think I have, I have one very like personal opinion, what

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my opinion is, and then I have my professional opinion, like what I'm

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putting into practice in the website.

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And, uh, I'm in my personal stance is that.

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I treat the block space as something very scarce, very unique, and I always, for all

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these years, I've been extremely cautious when I'm doing like UTXO management.

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I don't want to make too many transactions.

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Because I know that all these extra transactions are going to be stored on

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the blockchain forever on everyone's node.

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So I'm not going to do like, Oh, let's do some test transactions to see if it works.

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No, I'm not going to do that.

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I'm going to make one transaction to, to reduce, uh, like spam

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on, on, on a blockchain.

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So, and then suddenly I see people just spamming hundreds, thousands

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of transactions that seem to me just meaningless and just data.

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I'm It's a little bit sad.

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I don't think they really understand what they're doing.

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They don't really, I think these kinds of people that do like the

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JPEGs and the tokens and stuff, they're only, don't really care about

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Bitcoin as a decentralized money.

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They just see it as some kind of a place you can gamble tokens

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and stuff like the degen things.

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So, So that's basically my opinion.

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I don't, I don't like it, but I also see it as inevitable.

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Like it was inevitable that all this stuff, like when they were,

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you know, before they tried to create new blockchains and new

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fork of Bitcoin and try to scam people, then it stopped working.

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Then it started creating like new, new words.

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It started creating ICO stuff, DeFi stuff.

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Scam people, then they ran out of people to scam and they created

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the NFT stuff on Ethereum and then people stopped buying the NFTs.

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So now they found like a new way and the new way is to move everything on

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Bitcoin and call this, I'm building on Bitcoin, buy my shit coin, right?

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And it's, uh, it's, there's also a lot of new L layer twos popping up recently.

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That's like, oh, we are related to on Bitcoin.

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I mean, you can do token trading and stuff.

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Uh, this, there's a lot of, uh, this, um, stuff that a lot of

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Bitcoiners that are only into the sound money aspect don't like seeing.

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But again, I think it was inevitable because Bitcoin is like this one

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chain rule the whole world stuff.

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So eventually, like, even according to the Bitcoin maximalists.

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Ideology, uh, how to pronounce that, but everything will be on

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Bitcoin, like eventually, right?

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So I've seen Bitcoin maximalists even claim that the Ordinals people

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and JPEG people, they're also, they're also Bitcoiners because

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they're building on Bitcoin.

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So why aren't they Bitcoiners as well?

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So

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Yeah, it's a delicate thing and, uh, I, like, when they were shitcoining on their

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own chains, at least they weren't clogging other people's nodes with, with bullshit.

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So they, they are, they are using a, a flaw of the protocol

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to, to, uh, use people's storage space for their own interests.

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So they are risking sacrificing the golden goose for a kinder egg, basically.

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That's the way I view it nowadays.

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So it's bad behavior.

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I don't know how to, exactly how to fight it though, except for

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initiatives like ocean mining.

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I really like that and we'll see how it works.

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I know there was another one, another similar, I don't remember the name

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of that, but I heard of it from that conference in Dubai, that there's another

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mining pool doing transparent mining.

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okay.

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What are your thoughts on that?

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I don't, yeah, I don't really see like how the way Ocean is doing it is actually

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doing any help because the only thing happening is that another mining pool

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are going to mine the transactions.

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And we've seen recently that the more filters we put on the mempool, the more

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sideways people are finding to inject these weird transactions directly to

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the miners, like bypassing the mempool.

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So, so we had, there was one mining pool who.

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I've implemented like a whole, product for this to, to inject and it was all,

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coming from the Ordinal's ecosystem, like the demand for being able to

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inject, uh, special transactions straight in the, into the block templates.

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And sidelining the mempool policy.

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So even if you have a strict mempool policy, I think one of the Luke Dashtuners

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ideas is just a strict policy, but I think people will find a way around it.

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And also like the op return stuff that the new token protocol that's going

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to be released soon called runes.

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It's a way of storing So that's something that's been in Bitcoin for a very long

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time, and I don't think it will change.

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So, I mean, I don't see any viable way of filtering that, for example.

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So I think it's inevitable.

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So that's why my conclusion to all this is that high fees fixes this because they

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have to be priced out somehow, because if you start, if you're doing a business

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of minting thousands of tokens every day.

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It's going to hurt when it costs like 10 per token, but, uh, but if you have like

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a layer two network or some side chain or some other network, you can do all this

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stuff on, I think it's inevitable that it will move to that network in the end.

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I don't know, it can take a while, but I think that's inevitable because there's no

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reason why you should pay so much money.

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You're seeing the, like, I saw a website, you can see how much Bitcoin

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has been burned on just doing all this.

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Ordinal stuff.

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And it's like hundreds of Bitcoin that's been burned, I would say

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burned, but by the people minting them.

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So I think I'm not too worried about the future of this, actually.

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I think it's just going to be, the fees are going to go up.

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They're going to be priced out and the hype is also going to go away.

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It's like two, two things there.

231
00:14:25,501 --> 00:14:29,761
I think the hype is a short, more short lived than people think.

232
00:14:30,151 --> 00:14:32,841
It could be like this bull cycle or something.

233
00:14:32,841 --> 00:14:39,986
It's After the next bear cycle, I think people are going to be fed up with

234
00:14:39,996 --> 00:14:43,186
buying these tokens, because they're going to be worthless again, and then

235
00:14:43,186 --> 00:14:44,216
they're going to find something new.

236
00:14:45,109 --> 00:14:45,409
Yeah.

237
00:14:45,409 --> 00:14:48,139
At the end, at the end of the day, you have to find new

238
00:14:48,139 --> 00:14:49,489
people to fool all the time.

239
00:14:49,489 --> 00:14:49,699
Right?

240
00:14:49,699 --> 00:14:53,389
That, that's, that's why they, they're able to do them in the first place because

241
00:14:53,389 --> 00:14:55,099
you can't fool them with coins anymore.

242
00:14:55,643 --> 00:14:56,613
Yeah, there's something like that.

243
00:14:57,183 --> 00:15:00,493
I think I've already seen a big drop in NFTs on Bitcoin

244
00:15:01,233 --> 00:15:03,093
and the BRC20 token trading.

245
00:15:03,113 --> 00:15:06,233
It was huge last year, the BRC20 tokens.

246
00:15:06,823 --> 00:15:10,253
But it seems that it has gone down massively already.

247
00:15:10,313 --> 00:15:14,753
So I, some people are worried that this is here forever now and it's

248
00:15:14,753 --> 00:15:16,213
going to stay, but I'm not so sure.

249
00:15:16,233 --> 00:15:17,773
I think it's going to go away.

250
00:15:18,304 --> 00:15:19,564
A self solving problem.

251
00:15:19,569 --> 00:15:22,504
So, so when, when I, when I look at the latest block here on Mapple

252
00:15:22,504 --> 00:15:26,974
Dust Space, I know this is just a, a snapshot, but, but, uh, about half the

253
00:15:26,974 --> 00:15:28,834
transactions are these data things.

254
00:15:29,604 --> 00:15:33,774
Uh, if I just look at it, uh, maybe a little less than half

255
00:15:33,774 --> 00:15:35,864
the, there's a great big one.

256
00:15:36,104 --> 00:15:36,644
Uh.

257
00:15:37,499 --> 00:15:37,889
Whoa.

258
00:15:38,569 --> 00:15:42,389
There's been a increase the past weeks with all this stuff.

259
00:15:43,479 --> 00:15:47,159
And, uh, like I remember the first time these came around and, and everyone was,

260
00:15:47,539 --> 00:15:51,449
uh, uh, had their panties in an uproar and it turned out that the problem went away

261
00:15:51,449 --> 00:15:56,699
within like less than two weeks, sort of, but the, the dangerous thing is like the,

262
00:15:56,999 --> 00:16:01,969
um, the stamps and all of this, that, that are deliberately trying to destroy as much

263
00:16:01,969 --> 00:16:08,409
as possible, like, and, and also the, the We have experienced the base, like the

264
00:16:08,409 --> 00:16:15,749
lower band level sats per vbyte, like it never goes below a certain threshold now.

265
00:16:16,349 --> 00:16:21,499
Uh, it seems, uh, it has been above, like, 10, so, for a month or something.

266
00:16:21,819 --> 00:16:25,519
And usually, like, the mempool clears every now and then, but we never have

267
00:16:25,519 --> 00:16:30,519
any, like, we can never be sure that we'll ever clear totally again, alright?

268
00:16:31,089 --> 00:16:33,189
It's a possibility we never will clear again.

269
00:16:33,609 --> 00:16:36,539
And it looked like when the fees started to go down and when it suddenly

270
00:16:36,539 --> 00:16:40,529
started to go down to five, then all the JPEG people saw an opportunity

271
00:16:40,589 --> 00:16:42,879
to create a lot of images and stuff.

272
00:16:42,879 --> 00:16:43,099
So.

273
00:16:43,734 --> 00:16:50,724
So I think they take use of the low fees, so that's why low fees aren't that great.

274
00:16:51,398 --> 00:16:58,398
So, what do you think the higher fees go, what that will do for adoption, though?

275
00:16:58,548 --> 00:17:03,828
Because my view on this is that the high fees caused by all of this

276
00:17:04,148 --> 00:17:10,728
spam, it has got to be hurting, right now, new people entering into

277
00:17:10,728 --> 00:17:14,348
the space, because everything just costs more to do on Bitcoin now.

278
00:17:14,848 --> 00:17:19,678
And if high fees are the antidote to this, isn't that pricing out new adoption?

279
00:17:20,138 --> 00:17:20,958
What's your thought on that?

280
00:17:21,855 --> 00:17:22,295
Yeah.

281
00:17:22,365 --> 00:17:23,075
Good question.

282
00:17:23,395 --> 00:17:27,515
I mean, I think we all, we've seen fee spikes all the time

283
00:17:27,525 --> 00:17:29,485
in the past five, seven years.

284
00:17:30,275 --> 00:17:35,175
And uh, what usually happens is that, uh, some use cases of

285
00:17:35,215 --> 00:17:36,645
Bitcoin is being priced out.

286
00:17:37,065 --> 00:17:41,455
So stuff that you could, you do before is no longer being done or it's

287
00:17:41,505 --> 00:17:46,725
being shut down for some reason, like payments, some, like some companies

288
00:17:46,725 --> 00:17:48,235
that accept the Bitcoin for payments.

289
00:17:48,235 --> 00:17:50,425
I think in 2017, they stopped doing that.

290
00:17:51,025 --> 00:17:56,555
What's the on chain fees that were too high, but they also see, uh, I mean,

291
00:17:56,555 --> 00:18:01,505
there's like so many, I think it's like 1000 folds more people using Bitcoin

292
00:18:01,525 --> 00:18:06,815
today than, uh, five to seven years ago, but the fees are still like quite low.

293
00:18:07,215 --> 00:18:10,005
So I think what's, what's, and the reason for that is that.

294
00:18:10,675 --> 00:18:13,795
The block space has been optimized so much like the way people are

295
00:18:13,795 --> 00:18:15,175
using Bitcoin has been optimized.

296
00:18:16,345 --> 00:18:20,215
So, so when the fees are going up and while we're having high fees, it's

297
00:18:20,215 --> 00:18:25,145
causing all the services that are using Bitcoin to, um, to optimize.

298
00:18:25,175 --> 00:18:27,605
I don't know if you remember, there was something called bit mixo clock,

299
00:18:30,285 --> 00:18:33,135
once a week at the certain, uh, clock.

300
00:18:33,165 --> 00:18:34,455
BitMax it all there.

301
00:18:35,135 --> 00:18:36,455
I don't know, withdrawals or something.

302
00:18:36,735 --> 00:18:40,525
And the mempool will just be clogged like crazy for, for, for a whole day.

303
00:18:40,775 --> 00:18:44,945
But that doesn't happen anymore because they are doing it in

304
00:18:44,945 --> 00:18:46,795
a much more efficient way now.

305
00:18:47,505 --> 00:18:51,025
They're spreading it out or they are doing it in another way.

306
00:18:51,435 --> 00:18:53,215
And it was also very common.

307
00:18:53,375 --> 00:18:58,935
A lot of people have forgot this, but in before 2018, most exchanges,

308
00:18:58,955 --> 00:19:01,875
when you did a withdrawal, they did one transaction per withdrawal.

309
00:19:02,270 --> 00:19:07,330
So it was a big thing in 2018 and 19 when exchanges like Coinbase, Binance announced

310
00:19:07,330 --> 00:19:09,430
that we're doing batch withdrawals now.

311
00:19:09,930 --> 00:19:13,120
So we're doing like hundreds of withdrawals in one transaction, which

312
00:19:13,120 --> 00:19:14,790
is obviously much more efficient.

313
00:19:15,560 --> 00:19:20,960
So you've seen this like changes and I'm probably going to mention this later,

314
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:27,550
but this is the reason why BigBlox is like extremely stupid because it just.

315
00:19:28,375 --> 00:19:31,475
Uh, makes people, uh,

316
00:19:32,071 --> 00:19:32,671
Lazy.

317
00:19:33,556 --> 00:19:35,616
lazy and extremely wasteful.

318
00:19:35,616 --> 00:19:39,886
You're, you, you want, you're promoting wastefulness basically, but, uh, with

319
00:19:39,886 --> 00:19:44,576
the fees and the looming fees, everyone knows that the fees will go up and can

320
00:19:44,576 --> 00:19:51,596
go up, it causes all the infrastructure to adapt more I'd say, but, uh, to go

321
00:19:51,596 --> 00:19:53,946
back to your question, there's certainly.

322
00:19:54,396 --> 00:19:57,466
A lot of when, if we're going to have like a period, like let's say

323
00:19:57,466 --> 00:20:02,176
we have a bull run this year and the fees are going to be, uh, 100 per

324
00:20:02,176 --> 00:20:08,706
transaction for like six months, it's going to be very tough for new people

325
00:20:08,736 --> 00:20:10,346
to like set up a lightning wallet.

326
00:20:11,156 --> 00:20:15,166
For example, like, even if you use a simple Lightning wallet, uh, non

327
00:20:15,166 --> 00:20:19,126
custodial like Phoenix, you still have to make an on chain transaction.

328
00:20:19,136 --> 00:20:21,886
You maybe want to make one test transaction, you may want to transfer

329
00:20:22,646 --> 00:20:24,096
to a hardware wallet or something.

330
00:20:24,096 --> 00:20:25,326
It's going to cost a lot of money.

331
00:20:25,746 --> 00:20:30,456
So that it might be a problem, uh, for adoption.

332
00:20:31,126 --> 00:20:36,791
And uh, I really hope that Uh, it causes people to start

333
00:20:36,841 --> 00:20:38,451
looking into alternative methods.

334
00:20:38,451 --> 00:20:41,441
Like for example, if, if the fees really go to like a hundred dollars

335
00:20:41,441 --> 00:20:46,191
per transaction this year or next year, uh, I think more people would start

336
00:20:46,201 --> 00:20:50,201
considering using like liquid side chain, for example, for certain stuff.

337
00:20:50,551 --> 00:20:55,141
And I saw that, uh, you know, people using HODL, HODL, the peer to peer

338
00:20:55,141 --> 00:21:00,341
exchange that they might switch to using liquid as well for, for, for trades.

339
00:21:00,411 --> 00:21:02,751
So instead of doing multiple on chain transactions, every

340
00:21:02,751 --> 00:21:04,861
time you trade, You can do it.

341
00:21:05,071 --> 00:21:09,841
You can do one, one, you, you move some Bitcoin to liquid that you plan on using

342
00:21:09,841 --> 00:21:14,671
for trading, and then you buy and sell on the liquid network, for example.

343
00:21:14,701 --> 00:21:20,421
So I think the high fees is going to push this kind of change, uh, definitely,

344
00:21:20,471 --> 00:21:24,331
I mean, Bitcoin fees are going to go up because the block space is scarce

345
00:21:24,641 --> 00:21:28,471
and you're probably going to compete with a lot of, uh, token trading, JPEG.

346
00:21:28,976 --> 00:21:29,776
stuff as well.

347
00:21:29,816 --> 00:21:32,046
That's going to push the fees even higher.

348
00:21:32,686 --> 00:21:37,566
But this is like the, one of the biggest issues of Bitcoin and that's causing

349
00:21:37,566 --> 00:21:43,186
all this debate and the forks and the split is that Bitcoin can't really scale.

350
00:21:43,206 --> 00:21:47,786
Everyone can't just use Bitcoin on chain because they have a limit of, I think

351
00:21:47,786 --> 00:21:49,926
it's like 14 transactions per second.

352
00:21:50,206 --> 00:21:52,176
Like if you averaged it out.

353
00:21:52,456 --> 00:21:58,226
So how would you make everyone use the on chain Bitcoin?

354
00:21:58,236 --> 00:21:58,676
You can't.

355
00:21:59,501 --> 00:22:04,651
So if you get a sustainable, if Bitcoin doesn't change at all from, from, from

356
00:22:04,651 --> 00:22:09,531
its current form, uh, the fee is going to go very high if that option is very

357
00:22:09,531 --> 00:22:13,671
high and you're mostly going to use Bitcoin on on chain transfers for larger

358
00:22:13,671 --> 00:22:19,811
transactions, uh, uh, when it makes sense, but, uh, you're going to use

359
00:22:19,831 --> 00:22:23,571
small transactions, maybe in a custodial lightning wallet or sidechains like

360
00:22:23,571 --> 00:22:26,276
Liquid or re invent New technologies.

361
00:22:26,906 --> 00:22:32,136
And this is the reason why I'm actually pro the Covenant software, because it

362
00:22:32,216 --> 00:22:37,116
seems to open up for more alternative Layer 2s, alternative scaling solutions.

363
00:22:37,476 --> 00:22:39,956
I don't think that Lightning is solved like a silver

364
00:22:39,956 --> 00:22:40,886
bullet will solve everything.

365
00:22:40,886 --> 00:22:43,966
I think it's just one piece of the puzzle, but we need many.

366
00:22:44,986 --> 00:22:50,056
We need a plethora of stuff that can be used for various reasons, like you can

367
00:22:50,056 --> 00:22:54,706
use a lightning wallet for doing small payments, your coffee payment, you can

368
00:22:54,706 --> 00:23:01,136
use liquid for your trading, and you can use some other, I don't know, some layer

369
00:23:01,156 --> 00:23:02,686
2 network that doesn't exist anymore.

370
00:23:03,406 --> 00:23:09,346
For other stuff and keep on chain for like large value or cold storage or something.

371
00:23:09,346 --> 00:23:10,381
Just

372
00:23:10,891 --> 00:23:11,961
love this perspective.

373
00:23:12,081 --> 00:23:18,181
I absolutely love it because like it, it hammers in the point that Bitcoin

374
00:23:18,591 --> 00:23:21,391
doesn't care about your opinions about it.

375
00:23:21,451 --> 00:23:24,361
It is here for you to study more than anything else.

376
00:23:24,371 --> 00:23:26,721
It is trying to teach you something about how it works.

377
00:23:28,361 --> 00:23:29,291
And that's always true.

378
00:23:29,291 --> 00:23:33,471
And the more you zoom out, the more, the more you grasp of what it is doing.

379
00:23:33,491 --> 00:23:37,991
So, so like this narrative that dollar cost averaging was the best thing to

380
00:23:37,991 --> 00:23:41,791
do in the world, that that is also sort of dying since that requires

381
00:23:41,871 --> 00:23:43,861
a transaction every time you do it.

382
00:23:43,861 --> 00:23:47,361
And if you do a daily dollar cost averaging, it's probably not a good

383
00:23:47,361 --> 00:23:49,061
idea in a high fee environment.

384
00:23:49,061 --> 00:23:49,341
Right.

385
00:23:50,031 --> 00:23:51,751
Uh, so, so correct me if I'm wrong.

386
00:23:51,761 --> 00:23:54,806
If I, if I, Try to remember 2017.

387
00:23:54,836 --> 00:23:58,996
You say that Bitcoin, on chain Bitcoin, has around 10 times more users

388
00:23:58,996 --> 00:24:00,616
today than it did back then, right?

389
00:24:00,696 --> 00:24:02,316
It's your estimate, I

390
00:24:02,516 --> 00:24:03,276
a rough estimate.

391
00:24:03,466 --> 00:24:05,456
I think so because the adoption has skyrocketed.

392
00:24:06,126 --> 00:24:09,156
So many more people know about Bitcoin today than before.

393
00:24:09,406 --> 00:24:14,136
So, so I'm seeing like, it feels like the user base has 10x.

394
00:24:15,076 --> 00:24:17,756
But, uh, the fees is still like the same,

395
00:24:18,326 --> 00:24:21,966
Well, well, denominated in dollars, yes.

396
00:24:22,916 --> 00:24:28,046
But, but I think if I, because if I backtrack, Uh, like back in 2017,

397
00:24:28,096 --> 00:24:32,716
people weren't even using, like, fee estimators, like, like, Mempool's one.

398
00:24:32,876 --> 00:24:39,216
Like, uh, so it was vastly not under efficient, vastly under efficient,

399
00:24:39,296 --> 00:24:41,946
It was extremely inefficient, everything, the fee estimations.

400
00:24:42,466 --> 00:24:46,776
Yeah, so, so, so I think the, uh, the, the whole thing that Mr.

401
00:24:46,776 --> 00:24:53,176
Veer was so upset about was, like, 20 fees, uh, For a short amount of times, but

402
00:24:53,176 --> 00:24:58,156
that must have been lower in terms or way higher in terms of sats per V byte, right?

403
00:24:58,166 --> 00:25:00,586
Since Bitcoin's purchasing power was

404
00:25:00,666 --> 00:25:03,176
If you, if you go back to check a block, you'll see that the sats per

405
00:25:03,176 --> 00:25:06,426
vbyte is much more higher as I think.

406
00:25:07,060 --> 00:25:12,780
so in Satoshis, it's, uh, lower today, but in the dollar terms, it's about the same.

407
00:25:13,780 --> 00:25:14,150
Yeah.

408
00:25:14,310 --> 00:25:19,890
So, so it is teaching us something and that is how to use the time

409
00:25:19,890 --> 00:25:25,040
chain more efficiently and the, the, that time space is limited.

410
00:25:25,942 --> 00:25:26,262
yeah.

411
00:25:26,292 --> 00:25:27,242
Fascinating stuff.

412
00:25:28,142 --> 00:25:32,412
So wait and see then is the answer, I guess.

413
00:25:33,237 --> 00:25:33,547
Yeah.

414
00:25:33,597 --> 00:25:38,782
To the question of, uh, Onboarding and scalability, I think that,

415
00:25:39,375 --> 00:25:40,735
that's, that's the way to do it.

416
00:25:40,735 --> 00:25:44,635
Like, uh, but Bitcoin doesn't need to scale to every person in the world.

417
00:25:44,635 --> 00:25:49,515
It just needs to scale to every dollar in the world, which is a different thing.

418
00:25:50,367 --> 00:25:51,477
yeah, that could be,

419
00:27:03,110 --> 00:27:07,080
Anyway, uh, so what arguments are Mr.

420
00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:08,950
Veer making in its fantastic book?

421
00:27:08,950 --> 00:27:15,265
So, so for those of you who don't know, There was a guy back in 2017 who let

422
00:27:15,335 --> 00:27:19,075
his ego get the better of him, and he wanted to increase the block size

423
00:27:19,105 --> 00:27:23,165
to a gazillion bytes per block, and he thought that would fix everything.

424
00:27:23,725 --> 00:27:27,965
And so, yeah, give us the TLDR on Roger Verne's book, please, Simon.

425
00:27:28,810 --> 00:27:30,060
oh, where to start?

426
00:27:30,230 --> 00:27:37,340
I, I mean, I can, like, after reading this book, there's almost nothing new for

427
00:27:37,340 --> 00:27:43,825
people that have been in Bitcoin for, for, you know, Uh, since 17, uh, and listen

428
00:27:43,855 --> 00:27:47,715
to at least one time what Roger Ver is saying in his debates and stuff, it's the

429
00:27:47,785 --> 00:27:50,735
same, it's the same stuff all over again.

430
00:27:51,555 --> 00:27:57,149
And, uh, it's basically, he's part of like a small faction.

431
00:27:57,319 --> 00:28:00,919
I'm not sure if small is the right word, but there's a faction in

432
00:28:00,919 --> 00:28:04,869
Bitcoin that was very, that caused the whole community to split.

433
00:28:06,034 --> 00:28:10,594
Um, that was super convinced that the way to scale Bitcoin was to

434
00:28:10,594 --> 00:28:11,764
just increase the block size.

435
00:28:12,234 --> 00:28:15,694
And if the fees go over, like, I even say he was shocked when the

436
00:28:15,694 --> 00:28:19,114
fees went to 1 per transaction.

437
00:28:19,134 --> 00:28:20,854
He thinks that's unacceptable.

438
00:28:21,084 --> 00:28:23,224
It has to be much, much cheaper than PayPal.

439
00:28:24,164 --> 00:28:28,434
So, uh, we should just increase the block size every time the fees go up.

440
00:28:28,494 --> 00:28:31,564
And we should just increase, increase, increase, because it doesn't matter.

441
00:28:32,450 --> 00:28:38,210
and it could, it could be potentially several gigabytes per block instead of

442
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,810
like today's, uh, like two megabytes.

443
00:28:41,490 --> 00:28:47,360
So that is the idea that this big blocker movement, uh, has been pushing.

444
00:28:47,860 --> 00:28:52,140
And, uh, but you said Rajvir tried to change the block size, right?

445
00:28:52,190 --> 00:28:53,060
But it's deeper than this.

446
00:28:53,890 --> 00:28:58,430
It's about who is controlling Bitcoin, who has the power, who

447
00:28:58,470 --> 00:29:00,870
should dictate the rules of Bitcoin.

448
00:29:00,870 --> 00:29:01,980
This is what it's all about.

449
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:05,140
It's only about control and power, right?

450
00:29:06,050 --> 00:29:12,740
And, uh, Roger Ver, uh, if you look at his bio, he, uh, he

451
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:14,490
invested and bought Bitcoin.

452
00:29:14,520 --> 00:29:14,630
com.

453
00:29:14,631 --> 00:29:15,680
Blockchain.

454
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:18,050
com is an investor in BitPay.

455
00:29:19,025 --> 00:29:24,315
And other, all these kind of companies, and uh, all these companies had the

456
00:29:24,315 --> 00:29:25,945
agenda to increase the block size.

457
00:29:26,665 --> 00:29:29,255
And let the miners control the block size.

458
00:29:29,485 --> 00:29:36,855
So it's, but then you have the, the small blockers, which, uh, I think,

459
00:29:37,635 --> 00:29:42,605
uh, they have a more like grassroots idea of who's going to control Bitcoin.

460
00:29:43,015 --> 00:29:45,315
It's not going to come from the corporations or the miners.

461
00:29:45,775 --> 00:29:48,435
It's going to come from the, the grassroots users.

462
00:29:49,045 --> 00:29:51,165
It's you and me who run a BTC pay server.

463
00:29:51,175 --> 00:29:56,225
For example, we have running our own node and we are dictating the rules of Bitcoin

464
00:29:56,235 --> 00:29:58,205
by running the nodes and the miners.

465
00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:02,000
To us, they are just service providers.

466
00:30:02,370 --> 00:30:06,860
They just mine the blocks and they serve it to us, and we say accept or deny if

467
00:30:06,860 --> 00:30:08,760
it's following the rules or not, right?

468
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:13,680
So that is like the core ideas of like the Bitcoin movement

469
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:15,480
today and how Bitcoin Core was.

470
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:19,630
But the big bloggers and Roderveer, they have a completely

471
00:30:19,670 --> 00:30:20,700
different idea about this.

472
00:30:20,900 --> 00:30:27,170
They think that the We don't need nodes, basically, um, because we only, we only

473
00:30:27,170 --> 00:30:31,890
need miners and the miners should just, they can go together and they can discuss

474
00:30:31,890 --> 00:30:36,480
and sign some agreements that we're going to, now we're going to increase the block

475
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,340
size and the users don't have to care because you're just going to get this

476
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:44,510
software update and suddenly there's a new block size and they don't know because,

477
00:30:44,930 --> 00:30:46,250
and they can't have any say in this.

478
00:30:47,470 --> 00:30:48,990
So that's like the big difference.

479
00:30:49,220 --> 00:30:51,590
And it's very obvious to me that, of course.

480
00:30:52,110 --> 00:30:55,380
Bitcoin should be controlled by the people and us, the people

481
00:30:55,380 --> 00:30:59,600
who run nodes, and that's why Bitcoin has to stay decentralized.

482
00:31:00,050 --> 00:31:02,960
That's why everyone should be able to run a node if they can.

483
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:05,990
And that's why the block size hasn't increased.

484
00:31:06,250 --> 00:31:11,000
There hasn't been any consensus within the Bitcoin core sphere that we should

485
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:14,720
increase the block size to like the crazy amounts that the big blockers are saying.

486
00:31:15,482 --> 00:31:15,782
Yeah.

487
00:31:15,992 --> 00:31:21,932
Just to add to that, my, my conviction had like, uh, I, I became really convinced

488
00:31:21,932 --> 00:31:26,522
about Bitcoin's decentralization, that it was actually not just empty words,

489
00:31:26,527 --> 00:31:32,912
but a real thing back in 2017 where this seg two x hard fork was denied by the

490
00:31:32,912 --> 00:31:37,972
community because the community wanted seg, but we didn't want the two x and

491
00:31:38,152 --> 00:31:43,977
all the big players, like above 95% of them, I think that got together in some.

492
00:31:44,672 --> 00:31:48,532
You know, evil conglomerate meeting in, in, uh, in New York.

493
00:31:48,822 --> 00:31:53,002
And they, they decided that, okay, we will, uh, we will push segwit through

494
00:31:53,002 --> 00:31:54,662
and then we will increase the block size.

495
00:31:55,332 --> 00:31:59,212
And the users just stopped it by signaling that we won't fall for this.

496
00:31:59,492 --> 00:32:03,022
And this is like, some people claim that that is, uh, I mean,

497
00:32:03,202 --> 00:32:04,687
that, that showed me that.

498
00:32:05,367 --> 00:32:09,577
That generation of Bitcoin users were, uh, you know, vigilant enough

499
00:32:09,577 --> 00:32:16,787
to fight this, but, uh, but, uh, it doesn't mean that we're safe forever.

500
00:32:16,797 --> 00:32:19,917
We need to stay this way in order to secure Bitcoin.

501
00:32:19,927 --> 00:32:23,987
Like if, if we become complacent, then we lose the whole thing because

502
00:32:23,987 --> 00:32:25,422
Bitcoin is not backed by energy.

503
00:32:25,422 --> 00:32:27,867
It's backed by us and like what we choose to do.

504
00:32:28,381 --> 00:32:29,111
absolutely.

505
00:32:29,881 --> 00:32:33,331
I mean, many people call the USF soft fork.

506
00:32:33,776 --> 00:32:37,866
Uh, like the Bitcoin liberation day or something like the independence

507
00:32:37,866 --> 00:32:42,726
day, because that's where, that's when we fought this massive attack.

508
00:32:42,756 --> 00:32:47,646
Like you said, 2X was like an agreement of between all the Bitcoin companies,

509
00:32:47,686 --> 00:32:51,026
like the big businesses, like the Roger Ver companies and the miners.

510
00:32:51,566 --> 00:32:55,146
That's all we're going to do this, and yet Bitcoin was able to resist this.

511
00:32:55,536 --> 00:33:00,266
And the, I mean, the most ridiculous part of the book is that Roger's

512
00:33:00,306 --> 00:33:01,516
seeing this all backwards.

513
00:33:01,816 --> 00:33:06,076
He's seeing that this was consensus, that the industry had reached the

514
00:33:06,076 --> 00:33:11,466
consensus, but the Bitcoin core has been hijacked by these forces.

515
00:33:11,636 --> 00:33:15,526
And he's using like absurd conspiracy theories to draw this conclusion.

516
00:33:16,236 --> 00:33:20,786
That it got hijacked by bankers and the Bilderberg to control

517
00:33:20,806 --> 00:33:22,111
Bitcoin, to kill Bitcoin.

518
00:33:22,491 --> 00:33:27,041
And so that's why the future of Bitcoin now lives within Bitcoin Cash.

519
00:33:27,111 --> 00:33:29,931
So that's why he's promoting, still promoting Bitcoin Cash

520
00:33:29,931 --> 00:33:31,431
instead as the true Bitcoin.

521
00:33:32,291 --> 00:33:38,331
And I mean, it's, uh, I mean, at one point it's like ridiculous and hilarious

522
00:33:38,521 --> 00:33:43,351
to read the, this perspective, but then on the other hand, you have to remind

523
00:33:43,351 --> 00:33:47,121
that it was like the biggest attack against Bitcoin that we ever had.

524
00:33:47,761 --> 00:33:51,541
So it, we shouldn't forgive that guy.

525
00:33:52,171 --> 00:33:56,711
Invite him to podcast and stuff to, to, to promote his agenda because he

526
00:33:56,711 --> 00:33:58,641
hasn't changed his mind a single bit.

527
00:33:58,701 --> 00:34:00,686
He just continues to promote his.

528
00:34:01,736 --> 00:34:03,026
Bitcoin Cash and all that stuff.

529
00:34:03,664 --> 00:34:04,614
That's so weird, though.

530
00:34:04,804 --> 00:34:08,034
He must have lost a lot of money, uh, doing this thing or,

531
00:34:08,139 --> 00:34:08,409
yes.

532
00:34:08,499 --> 00:34:08,909
Oh yes.

533
00:34:09,019 --> 00:34:09,229
Oh yeah.

534
00:34:09,329 --> 00:34:13,289
He talks about how many millions he invested in, in Bitcoin Cash

535
00:34:13,289 --> 00:34:15,979
development and stuff, because he sees this as a true Bitcoin.

536
00:34:16,259 --> 00:34:19,729
So actually I think he's not deliberately trying to scam.

537
00:34:19,739 --> 00:34:20,179
He's just.

538
00:34:20,919 --> 00:34:26,219
Uh, he truly believes his, uh, idea that he is part of the Bitcoin consensus

539
00:34:26,539 --> 00:34:30,761
and, uh, Bitcoin Cash is like the real Bitcoin and Bitcoin, the Bitcoin that

540
00:34:30,801 --> 00:34:33,011
we think is Bitcoin has been hijacked.

541
00:34:33,786 --> 00:34:34,216
Yeah,

542
00:34:34,486 --> 00:34:36,156
So, so yeah, I don't know what to say.

543
00:34:36,446 --> 00:34:40,526
he doesn't believe in free markets then, uh, apparently,

544
00:34:40,851 --> 00:34:42,171
Well, it's very funny.

545
00:34:42,171 --> 00:34:47,441
He says that because Bitcoin, I mean, he's even citing Austrian economics in

546
00:34:47,461 --> 00:34:51,971
the book and claiming that Bitcoin cannot have a value because it doesn't have a use

547
00:34:51,971 --> 00:34:53,701
case anymore when the fees are so high.

548
00:34:54,201 --> 00:34:59,071
That's why Bitcoin Cash is definitely going to pass Bitcoin as soon as people

549
00:34:59,071 --> 00:35:03,391
realize that Bitcoin Cash is store of value and utility with low fee.

550
00:35:03,876 --> 00:35:08,476
Then, if he only spread this message, then people will wake up and realize,

551
00:35:08,796 --> 00:35:13,706
oh yes, now I know, Bitcoin is high fee and has no utility, so I have to

552
00:35:13,706 --> 00:35:14,986
switch to Bitcoin Cash, basically.

553
00:35:15,106 --> 00:35:18,316
That's, I think that's the whole sum of the book.

554
00:35:18,366 --> 00:35:21,816
That's why he's shilling the book now and trying to wake people up again.

555
00:35:23,436 --> 00:35:25,276
so he doesn't understand

556
00:35:25,296 --> 00:35:28,786
think the funny thing is that, No, no people today, like no new

557
00:35:28,786 --> 00:35:30,626
people joining the space today.

558
00:35:30,626 --> 00:35:32,166
They have no idea what Bitcoin cash is.

559
00:35:32,266 --> 00:35:35,546
It's like a long forgotten, failed fork of Bitcoin.

560
00:35:35,556 --> 00:35:36,576
One of many.

561
00:35:37,916 --> 00:35:38,276
So

562
00:35:38,754 --> 00:35:44,164
Yeah, but that's why he might be able to fool a whole new batch of

563
00:35:44,204 --> 00:35:44,864
Yeah.

564
00:35:44,874 --> 00:35:48,354
I'm not so sure about that because I mean, if you read this book as a newcomer, I

565
00:35:48,354 --> 00:35:52,264
think the people that giving this book a high review are already like Roger Ver

566
00:35:52,264 --> 00:35:57,284
fans and big blockers, because if you read this book as a, just coming out,

567
00:35:57,314 --> 00:36:01,669
I'm trying to imagine reading this book and it's, it's, It seems very ridiculous.

568
00:36:01,789 --> 00:36:02,569
A lot of the stuff,

569
00:36:04,194 --> 00:36:09,144
Do you think he has a chance of, of re onboarding the BSV people?

570
00:36:09,144 --> 00:36:10,254
I mean, uh, yeah.

571
00:36:10,374 --> 00:36:16,544
So the, the Bitcoin cash itself had a, a hard fork where , the, the fake Toshi

572
00:36:16,544 --> 00:36:19,664
fans went to Bitcoin, Satoshi's V Vision,

573
00:36:20,443 --> 00:36:23,713
I mean, according to ve, Bitcoin got got hijacked at least three times,

574
00:36:23,713 --> 00:36:25,573
so they forked three times in total.

575
00:36:26,263 --> 00:36:30,123
First they had to fork from Bitcoin core to to bitcoin cash because, uh,

576
00:36:30,333 --> 00:36:33,773
bitcoin core got got hijacked, and then it got hijacked by Craig Wright.

577
00:36:33,773 --> 00:36:34,883
So they had to to fork.

578
00:36:34,913 --> 00:36:35,153
Yeah.

579
00:36:35,183 --> 00:36:40,033
Again, and then it got hijacked by the Bitcoin cash lead developer that

580
00:36:40,063 --> 00:36:43,363
tried to add a dev tax to himself.

581
00:36:44,128 --> 00:36:47,928
So they had to fork again into two different versions that were

582
00:36:47,928 --> 00:36:49,608
called Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Node.

583
00:36:50,038 --> 00:36:54,908
So today, Bitcoin Cash is like the third or fourth or something like that.

584
00:36:55,708 --> 00:36:58,428
Which is just, when you read this, it just seems like absurd.

585
00:36:58,438 --> 00:37:04,233
You realize that This is not how Bitcoin is supposed to work, just

586
00:37:04,273 --> 00:37:07,963
splitting all the time as soon as you have, uh, some, some change of ideas.

587
00:37:08,629 --> 00:37:12,359
No, it's, it's, it's Rodger coin, through and through, right?

588
00:37:12,599 --> 00:37:17,469
If it doesn't fit with Rodger's point of view, then he forks

589
00:37:17,469 --> 00:37:19,199
it off and makes a new one.

590
00:37:19,919 --> 00:37:20,139
So,

591
00:37:20,364 --> 00:37:23,284
yeah, I don't understand how they're thinking.

592
00:37:23,514 --> 00:37:27,604
I mean, the whole point of, uh, I saw someone made a good point

593
00:37:27,604 --> 00:37:32,314
to my tweet thread is that one of the biggest feature of Bitcoin

594
00:37:32,484 --> 00:37:34,224
is that it's resistant to change.

595
00:37:35,224 --> 00:37:40,644
That's like huge, that if someone, a huge power, even like this New York

596
00:37:40,644 --> 00:37:44,244
agreement with 50 companies signing and all the mining pools, they want

597
00:37:44,244 --> 00:37:48,054
this change, but Bitcoin is resistant to change, so they couldn't change it.

598
00:37:49,624 --> 00:37:55,114
if the grassroots users of Bitcoin wants to change, then it actually is possible.

599
00:37:55,154 --> 00:38:00,184
But, uh, like you said, then like we are the Bitcoin consensus rules.

600
00:38:00,204 --> 00:38:01,054
It's all the users.

601
00:38:01,709 --> 00:38:06,309
You have to convince, that this change is, uh, worth it.

602
00:38:07,449 --> 00:38:12,109
So, and it takes a lot of time, uh, as a lot of people get frustrated

603
00:38:12,379 --> 00:38:16,079
by, but it takes years and years to get a change into Bitcoin.

604
00:38:16,479 --> 00:38:23,229
And it has to be, have most upsides to like, Decentralization, privacy, and all

605
00:38:23,229 --> 00:38:27,809
this stuff and no downs and barely any downsides than it maybe can get merged

606
00:38:27,809 --> 00:38:29,549
into Bitcoin after like five years.

607
00:38:30,179 --> 00:38:34,749
So it's very hard and it seems to get harder and harder each year to get

608
00:38:34,789 --> 00:38:39,229
changes into Bitcoin, which is only good because I think everyone wants to protect

609
00:38:39,439 --> 00:38:44,309
Bitcoin from change because we don't want it to get actually hijacked or changed

610
00:38:44,449 --> 00:38:49,769
for the worse with by some ideas from someone in our next generation that.

611
00:38:50,209 --> 00:38:53,669
Things, inflation is good or something like it could, could happen, right?

612
00:38:54,369 --> 00:38:57,919
So it has, so that's why it's, I think it's good at Bitcoin getting

613
00:38:57,919 --> 00:39:03,409
slowly towards solidifying and in the end, it might not be able to change.

614
00:39:03,409 --> 00:39:05,929
We could just shut down the Bitcoin core repo or something.

615
00:39:05,929 --> 00:39:10,439
And then everything that will be built on, on just side, side layers

616
00:39:10,589 --> 00:39:14,839
is that, I think that would be better because then you keep the 21 million

617
00:39:14,839 --> 00:39:17,009
limits and the decentralized network.

618
00:39:17,890 --> 00:39:21,100
So, so would you call yourself an ossification maximalist then?

619
00:39:21,741 --> 00:39:22,301
not really.

620
00:39:23,001 --> 00:39:26,751
Uh, I don't want to also find, I still think there's a lot of changes to be

621
00:39:26,751 --> 00:39:28,911
done in, in, into the consensus rules.

622
00:39:29,041 --> 00:39:34,391
I mean, there are even bugs right now in Bitcoin that was make the chain stop

623
00:39:34,391 --> 00:39:37,091
working in like 150 years or something.

624
00:39:37,381 --> 00:39:43,081
So, uh, I don't quite remember exactly which year, but it's like a, Um, integer

625
00:39:43,141 --> 00:39:45,771
overflow bug with a date or something.

626
00:39:45,771 --> 00:39:48,381
So, so it's not yet patched.

627
00:39:48,381 --> 00:39:50,551
I mean, there's stuff like this that has to be patched.

628
00:39:51,241 --> 00:39:57,871
And also, as I mentioned before, I still think we need the covenants, um, uh,

629
00:39:58,091 --> 00:40:00,221
forked into, uh, soft forked into Bitcoin.

630
00:40:01,061 --> 00:40:06,691
Um, and I also want, uh, more, more use of, uh, Schnorr signatures.

631
00:40:07,071 --> 00:40:09,321
We can use like the cross input.

632
00:40:10,216 --> 00:40:15,376
Uh, like join multiple input signatures into one to optimize the block space even

633
00:40:15,376 --> 00:40:21,336
more and make, uh, make it cheaper to do, uh, coin joins, private transactions.

634
00:40:21,916 --> 00:40:26,396
And, uh, I think, uh, the Human Rights Foundation was just now like a week ago.

635
00:40:26,861 --> 00:40:33,521
They wanted to fund the development of cross signature input aggregation

636
00:40:33,561 --> 00:40:37,731
development to make this possible, make this happen into Bitcoin.

637
00:40:38,653 --> 00:40:44,303
So yeah, there's still stuff being worked on that definitely would need, but, uh,

638
00:40:44,553 --> 00:40:47,163
I mean, it was, when did we have Taproot?

639
00:40:47,253 --> 00:40:47,623
I think it was 2021.

640
00:40:49,178 --> 00:40:52,498
So it was three years since we activated the last soft fork and

641
00:40:52,498 --> 00:40:56,178
we still haven't, we still don't have any plan for the next one yet.

642
00:40:56,268 --> 00:40:58,848
So you see how, how slow we are moving.

643
00:40:59,297 --> 00:41:04,527
if we rewind the clock back to 2017, again, there was something called ASIC

644
00:41:04,537 --> 00:41:09,737
boost, um, that was a, uh, patented, if I remember correctly, a patented

645
00:41:09,737 --> 00:41:13,877
way of using Bitcoin miners that made them like 10 percent more efficient

646
00:41:13,887 --> 00:41:15,807
than the competing miners, right?

647
00:41:16,517 --> 00:41:23,452
And there was like, I don't know if this patent was ever used, actually

648
00:41:23,452 --> 00:41:28,412
used, or if it was just threatened to be used, and if like, this is why the

649
00:41:28,912 --> 00:41:34,202
miners were so against SegWit, because SegWit would deny them to use this thing.

650
00:41:34,842 --> 00:41:36,072
What do you remember

651
00:41:36,082 --> 00:41:40,252
mean, Bitmain has been for a long time being the biggest miners because they are

652
00:41:40,252 --> 00:41:43,572
the, the manufacturer of miners in China.

653
00:41:43,952 --> 00:41:49,222
And, uh, they are also basically using their best miners for themself to mine.

654
00:41:49,312 --> 00:41:53,132
And then they're selling like the, the, the, the, the generation before

655
00:41:53,137 --> 00:41:55,022
to, to everyone all around the world.

656
00:41:55,022 --> 00:41:57,392
So they're keeping like the best one for themself.

657
00:41:57,392 --> 00:42:03,182
And, uh, I don't know the details on, on, uh, how ASIC Boost worked

658
00:42:03,182 --> 00:42:04,232
or if it actually was in use.

659
00:42:04,852 --> 00:42:09,662
But, uh, there was a big talk about how Bitmain is using this ASIC boost to have

660
00:42:09,662 --> 00:42:11,912
a huge advantage, uh, with hashing power.

661
00:42:12,142 --> 00:42:16,832
And, uh, the SegWit software was actually, uh, fixed that somehow.

662
00:42:16,962 --> 00:42:22,922
I don't know how, but for some reason, uh, ASIC boost would stop working with SegWit.

663
00:42:22,992 --> 00:42:28,292
So, yeah, so that was speculated as one of the reasons why they were against SegWit.

664
00:42:29,037 --> 00:42:35,187
But again, they signed the agreement to fork Bitcoin into SegWit two

665
00:42:35,187 --> 00:42:39,147
X, which means activate SegWit and then do a block size increase.

666
00:42:39,147 --> 00:42:41,767
So I, I don't know

667
00:42:42,587 --> 00:42:45,017
there's a lot for historians to dive into.

668
00:42:45,875 --> 00:42:48,605
if, if you want to read about this, there's a good book

669
00:42:48,605 --> 00:42:50,165
called, uh, the Block Size War.

670
00:42:50,646 --> 00:42:55,746
yeah, that, I, I think that, that, it slightly skewed that book, like the, the

671
00:42:55,746 --> 00:43:01,606
perspective is not entirely, like it's from a guy that's, it's seemingly still,

672
00:43:02,076 --> 00:43:08,156
you know, indecisive of what the, uh, what he wanted in terms of large or small

673
00:43:08,425 --> 00:43:12,925
I think it, I think it tried to make an outside perspective, like a guy

674
00:43:12,925 --> 00:43:15,925
just following the events and trying to make it as objective as possible.

675
00:43:16,580 --> 00:43:23,378
But I think it shines through that the big blockers argument didn't hold, hold water.

676
00:43:23,878 --> 00:43:28,808
So I think it, it, I think my, I felt that it was more leaning

677
00:43:28,808 --> 00:43:31,638
towards the small blocker side.

678
00:43:32,259 --> 00:43:35,219
Yeah, I, I think he could have been harsher, uh,

679
00:43:35,589 --> 00:43:38,439
Well, I think it was a, it's a good book to see like the

680
00:43:38,439 --> 00:43:39,599
both sides and the argument.

681
00:43:39,599 --> 00:43:42,959
And I think I, for me, it was obvious when I'm reading this, that the small

682
00:43:42,959 --> 00:43:45,029
blockers were right in, in the debate,

683
00:45:02,129 --> 00:45:07,079
So, so maybe to return back to the present a little bit, uh, what is it that,

684
00:45:07,289 --> 00:45:11,339
uh, Mepo is, is working on these days?

685
00:45:11,459 --> 00:45:11,759
Uh,

686
00:45:12,189 --> 00:45:18,579
We have been working, um, a lot towards our, uh, like the, the, the business

687
00:45:18,579 --> 00:45:22,795
model of the Mempool Space Company, which is, the, the accelerator service.

688
00:45:23,845 --> 00:45:27,485
So a lot of the stuff that we've been developing has been

689
00:45:27,495 --> 00:45:29,865
like, um, towards that end.

690
00:45:29,935 --> 00:45:35,115
And you can see even now, if you go to the website, if you go to an unconfirmed

691
00:45:35,135 --> 00:45:38,665
transactions, there's a button called accelerate, and you can click there

692
00:45:38,665 --> 00:45:43,785
and you can see the fee breakdown, but the service is still not launched.

693
00:45:43,845 --> 00:45:45,965
So you can only sign up on the waitlist.

694
00:45:47,371 --> 00:45:50,391
and then we built, uh, have we, we have improved a lot.

695
00:45:51,211 --> 00:45:52,981
Uh, like when it comes to.

696
00:45:53,596 --> 00:45:57,156
Viewing the mempool like with the filters, uh, like I explained before, like the,

697
00:45:57,176 --> 00:46:01,116
you can see what's data, what's the coin join and consolidation, and you

698
00:46:01,116 --> 00:46:03,386
can, uh, like filter for a lot of stuff.

699
00:46:03,866 --> 00:46:10,220
And, uh, it's all tied down to, to seeing, uh, what transactions

700
00:46:10,260 --> 00:46:13,470
has been accelerated, uh, as well as stuff like that.

701
00:46:14,753 --> 00:46:16,693
like an educational video somewhere?

702
00:46:16,693 --> 00:46:20,193
Um, uh, like, like, uh, uh, uh, um, mempool.

703
00:46:20,203 --> 00:46:23,220
space for dummies where you, where you show all the features and like,

704
00:46:23,267 --> 00:46:24,877
Uh, not, not an official one.

705
00:46:25,287 --> 00:46:28,397
There are people that have been doing guide, guided videos on, uh.

706
00:46:29,212 --> 00:46:34,265
On YouTube and stuff, but, uh, I mean, we, we keep adding a lot of tiny

707
00:46:34,265 --> 00:46:36,575
features like everywhere now and then.

708
00:46:36,605 --> 00:46:40,485
And I think most of the advanced users that are using the websites every day,

709
00:46:40,485 --> 00:46:45,023
they, they notice, but most people are probably never gonna need to use those

710
00:46:46,013 --> 00:46:51,294
features, but it's very, it's like, you can do a detailed, dive into the

711
00:46:51,294 --> 00:46:53,204
main pool and filter by various stuff.

712
00:46:53,494 --> 00:46:56,014
We just added that you can filter by age, for example.

713
00:46:56,014 --> 00:46:56,244
So.

714
00:46:56,794 --> 00:46:59,164
Then you see different transactions in different, uh,

715
00:46:59,594 --> 00:47:01,054
fading, depending on their age.

716
00:47:01,698 --> 00:47:02,888
I mean, I love it.

717
00:47:02,928 --> 00:47:04,838
I learned something new.

718
00:47:04,888 --> 00:47:10,508
I wouldn't say like, maybe not every time I use the site, but, but like, uh, it's a,

719
00:47:10,508 --> 00:47:15,868
it's a very, you can learn a lot from just exploring this site and like clicking on

720
00:47:16,033 --> 00:47:21,033
I know, and I've seen, and I've seen from so many people how they discovered

721
00:47:21,043 --> 00:47:24,543
a lot of features of Bitcoin by just browsing around on the website, because

722
00:47:24,603 --> 00:47:28,973
we are visualizing and showing all these features that, uh, didn't exist before.

723
00:47:30,603 --> 00:47:35,863
like for example, one, one thing we have is that if you go to block zero, the

724
00:47:35,873 --> 00:47:40,573
Genesis block or one of the first few blocks, you see that, uh, the, when the

725
00:47:40,603 --> 00:47:43,453
coins were mined, addresses didn't exist.

726
00:47:44,383 --> 00:47:48,513
And this is something that we, we, we show correctly on Mempool space, but

727
00:47:48,523 --> 00:47:50,613
most of most other block explorers.

728
00:47:51,118 --> 00:47:56,018
Show it wrongly, they show, like, they show the addresses, but the addresses

729
00:47:56,068 --> 00:48:01,628
didn't exist back in 2010 and 2009 when, when, uh, Bitcoin was launched.

730
00:48:02,408 --> 00:48:09,518
So it was only paid to public keys that you have to connect to someone's node

731
00:48:09,708 --> 00:48:12,888
by IP, and you can make a transaction.

732
00:48:13,855 --> 00:48:19,485
So, I mean, it's a bit, uh, just one, one example of stuff that.

733
00:48:20,115 --> 00:48:23,945
You can notice when you click around because people ask us sometimes like,

734
00:48:23,945 --> 00:48:25,145
why, why does it look like this?

735
00:48:25,245 --> 00:48:29,315
And like, yeah, it's because this and this, so, so you can learn a lot of stuff.

736
00:48:30,446 --> 00:48:33,946
Yeah, I mean, the whole feature set is interesting here.

737
00:48:33,946 --> 00:48:41,056
And I mean, like, I run, I run a self hosted mempool on my node.

738
00:48:41,056 --> 00:48:43,266
And, and, and so the mempool.

739
00:48:43,296 --> 00:48:45,856
space is sort of the official version, right?

740
00:48:45,866 --> 00:48:49,886
Like, it's, it's, it's Wiz's mempool, officially, something like that.

741
00:48:49,926 --> 00:48:51,986
At least I've heard it referred to as that, right?

742
00:48:52,806 --> 00:48:55,896
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's our mempool, it's from our data centers.

743
00:48:56,495 --> 00:48:59,610
but yes, it's, uh, Yeah, I'm glad you're running your own

744
00:48:59,620 --> 00:49:02,060
mempool the transaction yourself.

745
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,480
And I think that's part of the, like the new kind of Bitcoin culture and the new

746
00:49:06,540 --> 00:49:11,870
Bitcoin companies from, uh, since 2017 that you have people like, you know,

747
00:49:11,870 --> 00:49:15,530
before you have BitPay, for example, I want to take over Bitcoin, but now you

748
00:49:15,540 --> 00:49:18,480
have BTC Pay server instead where you run your own node and you can accept

749
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,490
payments yourself without a third party.

750
00:49:20,855 --> 00:49:23,965
And with mempool, you can run your own explorers.

751
00:49:23,965 --> 00:49:25,525
You don't have to go to blockchain.

752
00:49:25,585 --> 00:49:28,025
com or something to check your transaction and trust them.

753
00:49:28,035 --> 00:49:32,875
Then you can run it yourself because we are an open source product.

754
00:49:33,775 --> 00:49:39,365
And uh, I think that's, it's the whole ethos of Bitcoin, right?

755
00:49:39,415 --> 00:49:41,885
That you, You can self host everything yourself.

756
00:49:41,885 --> 00:49:47,065
So I really like this, uh, new direction Bitcoin took after

757
00:49:47,065 --> 00:49:50,605
the, after the war of 17, 200,

758
00:49:50,823 --> 00:49:51,513
Absolutely.

759
00:49:51,553 --> 00:49:53,843
That, like, that's the direction we need to go in.

760
00:49:54,616 --> 00:49:58,476
Yeah, I mean, I guess the way, the way I use it is that my node never is

761
00:49:58,476 --> 00:50:01,056
exactly the same thing as the mempool.

762
00:50:01,066 --> 00:50:02,476
space node.

763
00:50:02,776 --> 00:50:07,586
Uh, just, just from, I don't know, not exactly seeing the same, the

764
00:50:07,586 --> 00:50:11,326
same mix of transactions or, or even, even now when there are so

765
00:50:11,326 --> 00:50:14,666
many transactions in the mempool, because that, that's an issue, right?

766
00:50:14,676 --> 00:50:18,556
Like with the, with the current amount of transactions currently in the

767
00:50:18,556 --> 00:50:20,541
mempool, Well over a hundred thousand.

768
00:50:21,661 --> 00:50:22,561
Yeah, exactly.

769
00:50:22,561 --> 00:50:26,401
Like, uh, I mean, that's, that's a lot to be able to, to keep up, right?

770
00:50:26,401 --> 00:50:27,941
Most nodes aren't, aren't keeping

771
00:50:28,071 --> 00:50:33,101
Yeah, but we are using basically unlimited nodes so we can keep

772
00:50:33,101 --> 00:50:36,341
all the transactions and we don't, we also disabled the timeout.

773
00:50:36,431 --> 00:50:40,491
So, so we keep all transactions until they get confirmed for now.

774
00:50:40,771 --> 00:50:41,921
We'll see what we do in the future.

775
00:50:41,921 --> 00:50:44,481
Maybe I have to start deleting old stuff.

776
00:50:44,891 --> 00:50:49,731
But, uh, But most home node runners are going to have the default, which

777
00:50:49,731 --> 00:50:51,551
is like 300 megabyte limit, I think.

778
00:50:51,921 --> 00:50:55,051
So when you run mempool locally, you're going to have much less transactions.

779
00:50:55,501 --> 00:50:58,981
It will basically filter out the lowest fees.

780
00:50:59,531 --> 00:51:03,691
So I think all the 1 sat per rebuy transactions that have been laying around

781
00:51:03,691 --> 00:51:08,166
there Taking hundreds of megabytes, they don't show up on your local node.

782
00:51:09,171 --> 00:51:11,761
Yeah, does this theoretically mean that since mempool is keeping

783
00:51:11,761 --> 00:51:16,161
basically everything around that, uh, nothing is going to really age

784
00:51:16,161 --> 00:51:19,071
out of the, the system at this point?

785
00:51:19,101 --> 00:51:23,061
Like, even, even if it's someone's got a one sap per vbyte transaction that

786
00:51:23,071 --> 00:51:24,891
hasn't confirmed in well over six months.

787
00:51:25,306 --> 00:51:28,326
It's still kicking around there on mempool, therefore it's going to be

788
00:51:28,436 --> 00:51:31,766
because we don't want people to look up their transaction and it says not found.

789
00:51:31,846 --> 00:51:33,986
We want to have all the transactions.

790
00:51:34,519 --> 00:51:39,109
so if I get this right, like the thing you talked about before by boosting, um,

791
00:51:39,359 --> 00:51:42,979
it's like, uh, child pay that pays for parent or something like that, right?

792
00:51:43,379 --> 00:51:47,199
Uh, that, uh, are replaced by fee or what is it?

793
00:51:47,689 --> 00:51:49,039
Or is it just off band?

794
00:51:49,744 --> 00:51:51,564
It's completely off band.

795
00:51:52,519 --> 00:51:52,989
Okay,

796
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:57,170
we are sitting between the users and the mining pools, basically.

797
00:51:57,220 --> 00:51:58,660
So that is the idea.

798
00:51:59,970 --> 00:52:05,045
And this is something that's been very Uh, popular recent years,

799
00:52:05,205 --> 00:52:08,775
like a lot of mining pools, they have own accelerator pages now.

800
00:52:08,775 --> 00:52:12,135
I think at least three mining pools have their own accelerator services.

801
00:52:13,270 --> 00:52:18,010
That, um, are a bit, um, so, so if you look at certain blocks,

802
00:52:18,010 --> 00:52:20,950
you can see there's always like a bunch of, like 10% of the block

803
00:52:20,950 --> 00:52:24,910
is like these offAnd accelerated transactions or fee bomb transactions.

804
00:52:25,680 --> 00:52:35,806
Um, but uh, we are going to, uh, what we built is a offAnd service that is

805
00:52:36,106 --> 00:52:38,536
fully public and full, fully auditable.

806
00:52:39,286 --> 00:52:44,876
So you can see on Manpo space which transactions that are being fee bumped.

807
00:52:45,426 --> 00:52:51,356
And, uh, in the blocks you can see, uh, yeah, you can, you can go to a

808
00:52:51,356 --> 00:52:53,646
node block and you can see which have been fee banned, but you can see how

809
00:52:53,646 --> 00:52:55,356
much extra fee they paid off band.

810
00:52:56,236 --> 00:53:00,166
The basic idea is that you open a transaction that's unconfirmed

811
00:53:00,216 --> 00:53:05,526
and the fee is too low to be confirmed in recent times.

812
00:53:05,546 --> 00:53:08,836
You want to pay for getting it accelerated off band.

813
00:53:08,916 --> 00:53:12,346
So you click the accelerate button and then you get the fee breakdown

814
00:53:13,686 --> 00:53:14,686
that you can see right now.

815
00:53:14,686 --> 00:53:17,836
That is how far you can go right now because you can't

816
00:53:17,846 --> 00:53:19,286
use the service just yet.

817
00:53:19,496 --> 00:53:23,496
We're just running like in beta, some beta testing right now.

818
00:53:23,921 --> 00:53:24,331
Okay.

819
00:53:24,511 --> 00:53:29,801
So the real question in here that I wanted to ask is like, is this, is this a

820
00:53:29,946 --> 00:53:30,936
we attacking Bitcoin?

821
00:53:30,936 --> 00:53:30,956
Bitcoin.

822
00:53:31,011 --> 00:53:32,201
Are you attacking Bitcoin?

823
00:53:32,201 --> 00:53:32,671
Exactly.

824
00:53:32,701 --> 00:53:34,381
Like, and of course you're going to say no,

825
00:53:34,416 --> 00:53:35,676
It's very controversial.

826
00:53:35,931 --> 00:53:37,781
can you still man your arguments, please?

827
00:53:38,249 --> 00:53:39,599
Yeah, I know, I know.

828
00:53:39,599 --> 00:53:43,319
It's very controversial and I've been like finding myself

829
00:53:43,324 --> 00:53:44,909
if this is really a good thing.

830
00:53:45,506 --> 00:53:53,053
But, um, I think are a lot of legit, legitimate use cases where

831
00:53:53,058 --> 00:53:54,703
people's transactions are stuck.

832
00:53:55,888 --> 00:54:01,178
And there's no way to RBF, there's no way to CPFP, and they reach out

833
00:54:01,188 --> 00:54:06,148
to us and say please can you help me confirm my transaction, and there's

834
00:54:06,148 --> 00:54:11,168
no way, because the protocol, how it works right now is that you can't

835
00:54:11,228 --> 00:54:12,568
accelerate all kinds of transactions.

836
00:54:13,388 --> 00:54:16,748
A very common one are lightning force closures by Sea lightning

837
00:54:16,748 --> 00:54:17,618
or something like that.

838
00:54:18,058 --> 00:54:20,968
So it's like the force close the transaction with two sa for V bite and

839
00:54:20,968 --> 00:54:24,118
it's stuck in the man pole and the node is just locking up all this capital.

840
00:54:25,118 --> 00:54:29,878
And, um, so if you could just click a button and do this offAnd,

841
00:54:30,591 --> 00:54:34,281
uh, that would actually provide a help for service for this people.

842
00:54:34,931 --> 00:54:38,891
So, so that, uh, makes me feel that it's a, it's a good service.

843
00:54:39,731 --> 00:54:41,831
And then the, the, the second thing is that.

844
00:54:42,611 --> 00:54:46,521
It's already happening and it's already been happening for a long time, but

845
00:54:46,521 --> 00:54:53,121
it's all opaque behind closed doors and people are sending emails and they're

846
00:54:53,121 --> 00:54:56,441
writing on Twitter with the mining pools, like, you know, like the, I don't

847
00:54:56,761 --> 00:55:02,441
know if you remember the 4 megabytes, block that the UDI mined or something.

848
00:55:02,441 --> 00:55:06,401
He just DM'd on Twitter some mining pool and he sent this transaction and he paid

849
00:55:06,661 --> 00:55:10,771
like some fee and you don't, you didn't, you don't know what he, what he paid and

850
00:55:10,771 --> 00:55:12,381
you can't, you didn't see it in a mempool.

851
00:55:12,381 --> 00:55:13,421
It just showed up, right?

852
00:55:14,061 --> 00:55:18,511
So there's a lot of this kind of stuff that's happening right now that is,

853
00:55:18,541 --> 00:55:20,371
uh, you don't know what's going on.

854
00:55:20,371 --> 00:55:22,191
So it's called, we call it dark mempools.

855
00:55:22,791 --> 00:55:25,331
So this is a growing phenomenon, which is a bit scary.

856
00:55:25,906 --> 00:55:29,926
It's basically these dark mempools where people are doing the, the, the,

857
00:55:29,946 --> 00:55:31,516
the trading of Bitcoin transactions.

858
00:55:31,536 --> 00:55:34,616
And it's also pushed a lot by the ordinals, the people who wants

859
00:55:34,616 --> 00:55:36,446
to do off band transaction stuff.

860
00:55:37,466 --> 00:55:45,006
And, uh, so what we are doing is trying to compete and, uh, we doing like a 10x

861
00:55:45,006 --> 00:55:49,866
much better service that is open and transparent and everyone can validate.

862
00:55:49,896 --> 00:55:52,676
And we even make it possible that even if you host your own node.

863
00:55:53,201 --> 00:55:58,491
You can, uh, you can audit and see the, uh, what, what

864
00:55:58,491 --> 00:55:59,871
transaction has been accelerated.

865
00:56:00,581 --> 00:56:07,671
So, basically, it's not great that we have to resort to this off band system,

866
00:56:08,181 --> 00:56:13,551
but it's inevitable, as Bitcoin Core, Uh, as it works today, it's not going

867
00:56:13,551 --> 00:56:17,981
to change so that you can just fee bump any transaction because it doesn't work.

868
00:56:19,061 --> 00:56:24,184
Like if you have a stock transaction, that, uh, already paid all its, uh,

869
00:56:24,818 --> 00:56:29,598
uh, all, all its inputs in, in, in the outputs, there's no way of bumping the fee

870
00:56:29,598 --> 00:56:32,778
and there's no way to like, maybe you're sending from one exchange to another.

871
00:56:33,393 --> 00:56:36,543
There's no way of bumping the fee because you can't use RBF because you

872
00:56:36,543 --> 00:56:38,033
can't, don't control the private keys.

873
00:56:38,819 --> 00:56:42,399
So there's like all these cases where, where you have stuck transactions and you

874
00:56:42,399 --> 00:56:45,049
can only resort to off band right now.

875
00:56:45,599 --> 00:56:48,269
So that's why we providing a solution.

876
00:56:48,379 --> 00:56:53,329
So that is, and for us, it's a good business model that can fund the

877
00:56:53,329 --> 00:56:57,719
company and the project, the open source project that build out all these.

878
00:56:58,478 --> 00:57:01,818
Uh, all the, I mean, all the great features, we just sitting

879
00:57:01,818 --> 00:57:05,098
encoding great features and publish it all open source all day long.

880
00:57:05,718 --> 00:57:10,438
But, uh, we're also, we also have some funding from, uh, Bitcoin

881
00:57:10,708 --> 00:57:14,258
investors that in the future want to have some, uh, revenue.

882
00:57:14,258 --> 00:57:18,508
And I think the transactional exploration, uh, system is, uh, one

883
00:57:19,348 --> 00:57:23,278
such a good service that we can use because we don't want banner ads.

884
00:57:23,448 --> 00:57:24,748
We don't sell data.

885
00:57:25,578 --> 00:57:26,748
It's very hard to monetize.

886
00:57:28,038 --> 00:57:28,658
In many ways,

887
00:57:29,953 --> 00:57:33,813
And do you see, uh, uh, competitors to, to yourselves in the future?

888
00:57:33,813 --> 00:57:37,103
I mean, your competitors now are the pools themselves, right?

889
00:57:37,103 --> 00:57:41,153
And their own, uh, their own systems, but do you think there will be, uh, a

890
00:57:41,153 --> 00:57:43,663
competitor in the transparency thing?

891
00:57:44,124 --> 00:57:47,884
it might be, but I mean, uh, the benefit we have is that we have a

892
00:57:47,884 --> 00:57:51,364
lot of, uh, people, I mean, we had a lot of users that are coming to

893
00:57:51,364 --> 00:57:54,404
the site because they want to track a transaction or see why it's stuck.

894
00:57:54,948 --> 00:57:58,338
So we have, we have a lot of the demand right now.

895
00:57:58,488 --> 00:57:59,618
So people have, uh.

896
00:58:00,168 --> 00:58:03,338
They go to the website from a wallet, for example, when they check, why isn't

897
00:58:03,358 --> 00:58:06,918
my transaction confirmed in one day, and they go to the website, and if they

898
00:58:06,958 --> 00:58:10,528
see an accelerate button, and they can pay a lightning invoice, they click

899
00:58:10,588 --> 00:58:15,098
pay 10, and then it gets accelerated and confirmed in the next block.

900
00:58:15,138 --> 00:58:21,718
That is how we can catch more users than competitors, I think.

901
00:58:22,379 --> 00:58:22,679
yeah.

902
00:58:22,729 --> 00:58:24,759
So, um, okay.

903
00:58:25,109 --> 00:58:26,529
Let's do a specific example here.

904
00:58:26,759 --> 00:58:32,469
If you have, uh, uh, say a coin joined with 200 participants and it's stuck.

905
00:58:33,374 --> 00:58:34,954
Then it becomes a bit more tricky, right?

906
00:58:35,024 --> 00:58:37,924
Because that's a, that's a lot more fees.

907
00:58:38,344 --> 00:58:38,524
Yeah.

908
00:58:38,524 --> 00:58:38,824
Oh yeah.

909
00:58:38,934 --> 00:58:41,674
It's probably, it's not going to be viable to accelerate.

910
00:58:41,724 --> 00:58:46,598
It might cost a thousand dollars in a fiat value to excel it because it's so huge.

911
00:58:46,608 --> 00:58:50,048
If it's like a big transaction in the mental, because you, you have

912
00:58:50,048 --> 00:58:54,664
to pay to, ask you, you, you would increase the fee of the transaction.

913
00:58:55,171 --> 00:58:57,071
So, so what could you do about that?

914
00:58:57,151 --> 00:59:01,221
I guess nothing, just wait and hope for the best and hope for people to,

915
00:59:01,604 --> 00:59:01,904
Yeah.

916
00:59:01,934 --> 00:59:07,534
Maybe someone in the coin joint made a huge million dollar, uh, coin join, uh,

917
00:59:07,924 --> 00:59:11,194
watch and he feels it's a necessary, it's.

918
00:59:11,594 --> 00:59:14,184
Economically viable to, to accelerate.

919
00:59:14,359 --> 00:59:15,459
A coinjoin.

920
00:59:15,949 --> 00:59:16,459
I don't know.

921
00:59:16,714 --> 00:59:17,284
all right.

922
00:59:17,534 --> 00:59:17,754
Yeah.

923
00:59:17,964 --> 00:59:22,314
At least, at least these payments, because you only accept Bitcoin, I presume, uh,

924
00:59:22,324 --> 00:59:26,364
for these, uh, or you plan to because you haven't launched the thing yet, but

925
00:59:26,919 --> 00:59:30,379
Yeah, we care mostly about Bitcoin, yeah.

926
00:59:31,959 --> 00:59:33,709
We want to have Bitcoin, that's the goal.

927
00:59:34,334 --> 00:59:34,764
all right.

928
00:59:34,849 --> 00:59:41,289
if I can decide, we will accept Bitcoin, Lightning, or Liquid, and all kinds of

929
00:59:41,289 --> 00:59:43,559
ways you can pay privately on Bitcoin.

930
00:59:44,104 --> 00:59:44,524
Okay.

931
00:59:44,734 --> 00:59:49,294
But, but the pools may take like a briefcase full of dollars or something.

932
00:59:49,854 --> 00:59:55,654
Uh, I guess, your competitors, that is, like Udi's transaction for instance,

933
00:59:55,654 --> 01:00:00,024
he might have just given a briefcase full of dollars to some important

934
01:00:00,104 --> 01:00:04,764
person, or showed him pictures of him having sex with someone he shouldn't

935
01:00:04,764 --> 01:00:06,204
have had sex with or something.

936
01:00:06,764 --> 01:00:09,604
I mean, there are many ways of paying for stuff.

937
01:00:10,589 --> 01:00:14,139
Yeah, but we want to have the most affordable way, so

938
01:00:14,818 --> 01:00:15,668
And transparent.

939
01:00:16,073 --> 01:00:18,263
yeah, that's the, that's the idea.

940
01:00:18,751 --> 01:00:19,531
Alright, great.

941
01:00:20,541 --> 01:00:22,401
Luke, what comes to your mind here?

942
01:00:22,916 --> 01:00:25,876
Well, I think this has been a good chat.

943
01:00:26,206 --> 01:00:29,696
We've had a bit of history, a bit of current state.

944
01:00:29,706 --> 01:00:32,506
So I'll just throw it right back at you, Simon.

945
01:00:32,676 --> 01:00:35,376
Is there anything else you wanted to bring up?

946
01:00:37,076 --> 01:00:42,166
Or if there isn't anything else on your mind, where can our listeners, uh, where

947
01:00:42,166 --> 01:00:43,536
would you like to direct our listeners to?

948
01:00:44,263 --> 01:00:46,028
Um, I mean, you can, um, yeah.

949
01:00:46,528 --> 01:00:48,468
You can follow, I mean, you can go to mempool.

950
01:00:48,468 --> 01:00:56,141
space uh, you can, uh, if you have a, uh, building a home node, like umbrella

951
01:00:56,151 --> 01:00:59,481
or something, you should install mempools, uh, the mempool app, the

952
01:00:59,481 --> 01:01:01,311
open source app and self host yourself.

953
01:01:01,651 --> 01:01:04,411
So when you're looking up, when you look up transactions, uh,

954
01:01:05,121 --> 01:01:07,911
it's, it's going to be all private data straight from your node.

955
01:01:08,496 --> 01:01:14,756
So, I encourage everyone to do that, and you can follow

956
01:01:14,796 --> 01:01:16,866
me on Twitter, at SoftSimon.

957
01:01:17,796 --> 01:01:25,326
And you should also follow at Mononautical, Mononaut is our

958
01:01:25,776 --> 01:01:28,346
mempool rockstar developer.

959
01:01:28,646 --> 01:01:32,626
He tweets almost every day about all the shenanigans.

960
01:01:33,466 --> 01:01:36,506
Going on in the mempool in a very technical manner.

961
01:01:36,506 --> 01:01:39,446
And, uh, so that's, I recommend,

962
01:01:39,951 --> 01:01:41,561
That account is fantastic.

963
01:01:41,601 --> 01:01:45,281
We were just talking about that the other day, and like, how much

964
01:01:45,281 --> 01:01:47,101
of Mononaut's fanboys we are.

965
01:01:47,551 --> 01:01:49,551
Simon, thank you very much for this conversation.

966
01:01:49,571 --> 01:01:53,471
This has been great, educational, and, uh, fantastic in general.

967
01:01:53,501 --> 01:01:58,791
And, um, yes, uh, don't listen to Roger Ver or any of his lackeys for that matter.

968
01:01:58,811 --> 01:02:02,261
And, uh, don't trust them when they say they're very sorry that they

969
01:02:02,261 --> 01:02:04,671
promoted the, uh, the fake Toshie for

970
01:02:04,686 --> 01:02:05,356
not sorry.

971
01:02:05,646 --> 01:02:05,746
I

972
01:02:05,876 --> 01:02:08,296
not sorry at all, they're just trying to fool you again, so don't

973
01:02:08,296 --> 01:02:09,696
give them the benefit of the doubt.

974
01:02:10,286 --> 01:02:15,306
Uh, listen to, uh, uh, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every

975
01:02:15,306 --> 01:02:17,456
time, and, uh, keep on rocking.

976
01:02:18,276 --> 01:02:19,146
Great to have you here.

977
01:02:19,466 --> 01:02:20,126
Thank you.

978
01:02:20,236 --> 01:02:20,461
Yep.

979
01:02:20,491 --> 01:02:21,351
Thanks a lot, Simon.

980
01:02:21,401 --> 01:02:23,131
This has been the Freedom Footprint Show.

981
01:02:23,331 --> 01:02:24,201
Thanks for listening.