Mining as a Service and BIP-110 with Kent Halliburton | Bitcoin Infinity Show #214

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,280
Kent Halliburton, a warm welcome to the summer edition of the Bitcoin Infinity Show.

2
00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:06,160
Nice to have you here.

3
00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:08,440
Yeah, it's a pleasure to be on here, man.

4
00:00:08,680 --> 00:00:10,840
I've been looking forward to this for quite some time.

5
00:00:12,120 --> 00:00:12,920
Yeah, so have I.

6
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:18,100
I've heard a lot about you, but I am embarrassed to say I don't know that much.

7
00:00:18,140 --> 00:00:19,560
I don't know your entire story.

8
00:00:20,200 --> 00:00:22,460
So I'd love for you to share it here.

9
00:00:22,580 --> 00:00:27,100
Like what's the TLDR on Kent Halliburton and SaaS mining?

10
00:00:27,100 --> 00:00:30,340
and what, who are you and what do you do?

11
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:33,520
Jeez, TLDR I can do.

12
00:00:33,700 --> 00:00:35,000
Entire story, I don't even know.

13
00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:35,720
Still writing it.

14
00:00:36,060 --> 00:00:40,020
But yeah, gosh, where do I go with that broad opening here?

15
00:00:40,180 --> 00:00:41,920
So I guess, you know, I think when I was younger,

16
00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:43,280
I didn't understand what drove me.

17
00:00:43,720 --> 00:00:45,640
And as I look back in the rear view mirror

18
00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:47,660
and can sort of place the events

19
00:00:47,660 --> 00:00:49,300
into some semblance of a pattern,

20
00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:51,880
it's pretty clear that I've been driven by sovereignty

21
00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:52,960
my whole life.

22
00:00:53,120 --> 00:00:54,020
That's the through line.

23
00:00:54,020 --> 00:00:56,140
So kind of the events that I think of

24
00:00:56,140 --> 00:01:01,000
that have made me who I am and have brought me to doing what I do,

25
00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:04,080
which I do find at this point to be more of a calling than anything,

26
00:01:04,480 --> 00:01:07,680
is started growing up on a farm on the Oregon coast.

27
00:01:07,860 --> 00:01:09,960
So my father was a cranberry farmer.

28
00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:12,980
Actually, before being a cranberry farmer, and I vaguely recall this,

29
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:14,960
he was a sawyer, which actually is a real word.

30
00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:16,840
It's a man who saws logs.

31
00:01:17,140 --> 00:01:20,140
I guess it could be a woman too, but a sawyer is one who saws logs.

32
00:01:20,140 --> 00:01:21,800
So he did that for a while.

33
00:01:22,220 --> 00:01:24,800
Was Tom Sawyer a guy who saw logs?

34
00:01:25,100 --> 00:01:25,900
There you go.

35
00:01:25,900 --> 00:01:30,940
Well, I mean, he had the name and I'm sure the name came like Smith was short for blacksmith and that sort of thing.

36
00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:36,740
So but yeah, so I grew up on a cranberry farm and I think that gave me a low time preference look at the world.

37
00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:39,440
I didn't realize it at the time. It's just what I what I knew growing up.

38
00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:42,740
And and then I kind of got hooked by the surfing bug.

39
00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:47,800
And so I knew I wanted to be someplace where I could surf and use that as an excuse to get an education.

40
00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:52,020
So I wound up in the central coast of California getting a computer engineering degree.

41
00:01:52,020 --> 00:02:02,960
Funny enough, the name Bob Burnett may be familiar to many of your listeners, but my high school graduation gift was a computer on which I got a computer engineering degree that Bob Burnett designed.

42
00:02:03,160 --> 00:02:06,740
And now Bob Burnett is both a friend and an advisor to SAS mining.

43
00:02:06,920 --> 00:02:10,200
So pretty interesting to see how the world comes full circle.

44
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:16,140
But I went through Cal Poly, got a computer engineering degree, promptly got out of that and decided I didn't want to grow up.

45
00:02:16,140 --> 00:02:21,640
And so I Peter Pan for a year by running a deli in San Luis Obispo, where the college was.

46
00:02:21,640 --> 00:02:30,260
And then from there, went on to get completely addicted by solar and thought the world needed to convert and realize that there's some nuance to that.

47
00:02:30,340 --> 00:02:37,500
And now I've got a more refined view of solar, but still think that there's very much an important application for it.

48
00:02:37,780 --> 00:02:40,160
But I was driven, again, by sovereignty there, right?

49
00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:42,560
So computer engineering was about sovereignty.

50
00:02:42,920 --> 00:02:47,080
I wanted to understand how this technology around me was working, shaping my life.

51
00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:54,860
And so understanding clear down to the transistor level helped me make sense of things and make it not seem like just magic, how computers worked.

52
00:02:55,000 --> 00:02:59,940
And then going into rooftop solar gave me an understanding how grids worked and energy systems.

53
00:03:00,300 --> 00:03:04,420
And the ability for somebody to produce their own power was kind of a magical experience.

54
00:03:04,540 --> 00:03:11,880
You know, turning on somebody's inverter and watching their meter spin backwards is a pretty, pretty revelatory experience that I enjoyed.

55
00:03:11,880 --> 00:03:17,740
and then kind of at the top of my game there I was competing against Elon's cousins at a company

56
00:03:17,740 --> 00:03:22,920
called SolarCity we were a publicly traded company I had a big staff of like 100 people and nine

57
00:03:22,920 --> 00:03:27,780
figure revenue targets we were publicly traded and so there's just a grind and I just I got ground

58
00:03:27,780 --> 00:03:33,020
down by it and had a dream to see the world and threw on a backpack quit my job and and did a

59
00:03:33,020 --> 00:03:39,480
walkabout for a couple years and this was 2014 to 2016 and during that walkabout I fell in love

60
00:03:39,480 --> 00:03:44,760
with the Portuguese woman and Bitcoin, both of which happened in Peru, which is where I'm talking

61
00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:51,380
to you from now, Canute. And my life then shifted after that walkabout experience to a classic

62
00:03:51,380 --> 00:03:56,620
American dream, but in Portugal, which I've come to think of as the original West Coast since the

63
00:03:56,620 --> 00:04:02,820
age of discovery set out in the 1400s from their shores. And in a lot of ways is I think what

64
00:04:02,820 --> 00:04:08,160
California wishes it could be, you know, a very, very similar sort of geography, climate. And,

65
00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:12,320
But I'm sorry, California, I love you, but better food in Portugal, too.

66
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,800
And the next steps were, how do I get into Bitcoin?

67
00:04:15,940 --> 00:04:17,180
Because I'd fall in love with that, too.

68
00:04:17,300 --> 00:04:22,140
So living the American dream, I mean, family, marriage, house, entrepreneurship.

69
00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:24,620
And entrepreneurship, of course, had to be in Bitcoin.

70
00:04:24,860 --> 00:04:28,360
And I was trying to figure out my place and did a bunch of failed experiments.

71
00:04:28,620 --> 00:04:30,460
You know, of course, the shitcoin trading.

72
00:04:30,840 --> 00:04:32,200
I did try my hand in that.

73
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:34,300
Tried mining from home, tried Bitcoin ATMs.

74
00:04:34,300 --> 00:04:46,900
And it wasn't until I pick up Jeff Booth's The Price of Tomorrow, I think circa 2020, read that, read Chapter 5, which is about the inevitable collision of solar and Bitcoin mining, that I realized that is where I fit in this ecosystem.

75
00:04:46,900 --> 00:04:50,940
So a friend, mutual contact, put me in touch with the founder of SaaS Mining.

76
00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:57,000
And I basically had a call with him and said, hey, can I get you coffee every morning just to be here and get started in mining?

77
00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:04,460
And he said, sure. And so that led to a whole a whole new journey in in my life, figuring out how to build SaaS mining.

78
00:05:04,840 --> 00:05:10,400
And kind of the short story is we raised a million dollars to go self-mine and that wasn't enough to self-mine.

79
00:05:10,500 --> 00:05:14,660
You really do need like five to seven million dollars to get something off the ground if you want to be a self-miner.

80
00:05:14,820 --> 00:05:23,820
And so we pivoted to building a mining as a service platform instead, which is what we've continued to do and build on for about five years now.

81
00:05:23,820 --> 00:05:28,360
And I've been running the business the last three, and we operate now on three continents.

82
00:05:28,760 --> 00:05:30,820
We are the first to build a tech platform.

83
00:05:30,940 --> 00:05:36,020
So we really are a tech company that attached a user experience, not unlike like an Airbnb,

84
00:05:36,440 --> 00:05:39,840
if you will, that connects data centers with end users.

85
00:05:40,220 --> 00:05:44,240
So like Airbnb connects, you know, rental units with people who want to rent them.

86
00:05:44,340 --> 00:05:50,660
We do something quite similar here at SAS Mining, and we only earn money the way that our clients

87
00:05:50,660 --> 00:05:55,920
to, which means we don't profit off of hardware electricity sales, but we take 15% of the

88
00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:58,480
Bitcoin that's mined from the mining pool directly.

89
00:05:58,640 --> 00:06:00,680
So we're non-custodial and receive that Bitcoin.

90
00:06:00,840 --> 00:06:02,440
And that's how we drive our growth.

91
00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:05,120
Awesome.

92
00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:10,100
I had a funny, you should say that about Jeff Booth, because I had a conversation with him

93
00:06:10,100 --> 00:06:13,340
yesterday about mining and other things.

94
00:06:13,340 --> 00:06:31,740
And one of the topics we talked about was how mining, how the block reward part of the block subsidy will be enough up until 2140 that fees are like not essential to mining yet.

95
00:06:31,740 --> 00:06:43,300
I mean, we're supposed to transition into fees being the thing, but even when they are, the gist of it is that mining on the whole is not supposed to be profitable.

96
00:06:43,520 --> 00:06:44,900
It's like a zero-sum game.

97
00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:50,860
It's like one of the most bleeding-edge competition-driven markets in the world, right?

98
00:06:51,040 --> 00:06:53,560
So how do you view that?

99
00:06:53,560 --> 00:06:59,180
Can a Bitcoin mining company be profitable in fiat terms?

100
00:06:59,180 --> 00:07:02,580
And is it even something we should strive for?

101
00:07:02,820 --> 00:07:14,400
Or is mining more like, yeah, I'm sacrificing these dollars or euros or whatever they are so I can get sats and KYC free sats will be worth more than anything else.

102
00:07:14,460 --> 00:07:17,940
So in the long run, like the more low time preference miner wins.

103
00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:19,660
How do you view the whole ecosystem?

104
00:07:19,660 --> 00:07:45,380
There's a big question. I realize that. But how do you view the whole ecosystem and the narratives around mining, minor fees and security budgets and all of this crap I hear? I'm biased, of course, but I personally don't think that a Bitcoiner should care about how miners make money. Like if the system works, they will make enough money to secure my to find me block space and secure my transactions.

105
00:07:45,380 --> 00:08:13,920
Another friend you mentioned there is Bob Burnett. I think he has a very clear view of this, that as a miner, you search for block space to sell to your consumers. That's really the thing. And your consumers pay you in the block subsidy, the block reward and the fees. That's their payment to you. And it's not miners don't really find Bitcoin, find Bitcoins. They find blocks, they find block space. And securing the network is sort of a byproduct of that.

106
00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:15,840
And I agree with that view.

107
00:08:16,020 --> 00:08:20,880
Like, what's your view on mining in general and your role as a miner?

108
00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:24,340
You asked me a pretty broad question there.

109
00:08:24,520 --> 00:08:27,880
And I think the right way to answer it is actually to talk philosophical first.

110
00:08:28,460 --> 00:08:32,100
Because here's the truth is, I don't think that we describe Bitcoin correctly.

111
00:08:32,260 --> 00:08:33,240
I know that's a bold statement.

112
00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:48,484
But why I say that is because to me Bitcoin is two innovations that is more akin to heads and tails on the same coin And what I mean by that is one side of the coin for Bitcoin is the decentralized ledger

113
00:08:48,484 --> 00:08:57,704
And we spend a lot of time talking about its attributes and properties and glorious, wonderful, you know, uncensorable value transactions.

114
00:08:58,444 --> 00:09:03,784
You know, you can send value in an uncensorable way anywhere, you know, hard cap limit 21 million.

115
00:09:03,784 --> 00:09:27,464
The other side of the coin, though, is in essence a decentralized money printer. And I know that can be triggering to call it a money printer, but it is. I mean, it is, you know, on one side of the coin, we've got cypherpunks. I think the other side of the coin, though, is hashpunks live there because you need hardware, electricity, internet connection and profitability aside. You can print your own Bitcoin, right? Anybody can with those three things.

116
00:09:27,464 --> 00:09:39,764
And so I look at that and I sit back and think to myself, you know, in 2013, the timeline for how we acquired Bitcoin split.

117
00:09:40,184 --> 00:09:44,684
And that split, I think, has led to an othering between the two communities.

118
00:09:44,844 --> 00:09:46,704
They live on the same on that same coin.

119
00:09:46,964 --> 00:09:53,024
And what I mean by that is 2013, the advent of the ASIC came about as well as Coinbase opened its doors.

120
00:09:53,024 --> 00:10:00,884
So that kind of two magnets with opposite polarity, it drove people away from mining and into buying.

121
00:10:01,104 --> 00:10:04,364
And I think that that division has had long consequences.

122
00:10:04,944 --> 00:10:11,624
In fact, I would argue clear downstream of those consequences for how we as Bitcoiners choose to acquire Bitcoin lives even BIP 110.

123
00:10:12,244 --> 00:10:19,064
And that conversation had all of us in the Bitcoin community said, no, how we get our Bitcoin is by producing it or mining it.

124
00:10:19,064 --> 00:10:23,904
I don't think we would be living as we do today and having the arguments that we do today.

125
00:10:24,824 --> 00:10:27,504
So I do think it matters how you get your Bitcoin.

126
00:10:27,944 --> 00:10:31,884
And as far as, yes, it can be outsourced to somebody else that's mining.

127
00:10:32,284 --> 00:10:44,624
But at the end of the day, if the people that are mining are using mining as a stepping stone to get more dollars, I think some of the far reaching consequences are some of the centralization that we've experienced.

128
00:10:44,984 --> 00:10:47,904
And that is a cause and effect situation.

129
00:10:47,904 --> 00:10:54,384
Nobody did it intentionally, but it is the cost of choosing to buy rather than produce your own Bitcoin.

130
00:10:54,924 --> 00:11:01,324
So I think it's what we're seeing right now is potentially a bringing together of those two entities.

131
00:11:01,324 --> 00:11:05,584
It's one of the main things that I really enjoy about doing what we're doing is because we're not a miner.

132
00:11:05,884 --> 00:11:08,364
We're not a miner. And that confuses a lot of people.

133
00:11:08,364 --> 00:11:16,164
We're a service provider. So we help people get Bitcoin in the same way that, you know, in exchange is not producing Bitcoin either.

134
00:11:16,164 --> 00:11:17,784
It's just selling it.

135
00:11:18,124 --> 00:11:21,104
In essence, what we see is we're competition for exchanges.

136
00:11:21,584 --> 00:11:27,004
In fact, we've analyzed our client conversations and almost never do we get talked about in

137
00:11:27,004 --> 00:11:29,424
terms of traditional hosting providers.

138
00:11:29,724 --> 00:11:33,204
We're always being compared to, is it cheaper for me to buy than to mine?

139
00:11:33,444 --> 00:11:35,364
Our competition is truly the exchange.

140
00:11:35,744 --> 00:11:39,804
And Satoshi designed the Bitcoin network for you to get your Bitcoin through mining and

141
00:11:39,804 --> 00:11:40,544
not through buying it.

142
00:11:40,884 --> 00:11:45,624
And so I think it's incumbent on everybody in Bitcoin to actually just, you know, diversify

143
00:11:45,624 --> 00:11:49,884
their acquisition strategy to get some through mining. That way you understand it. Because

144
00:11:49,884 --> 00:11:56,264
it's a different thing to think objectively about it than to be subjectively experiencing mining.

145
00:11:56,644 --> 00:12:00,124
And it changes the outcome. Just like, you know, you can go buy your eggs at the store,

146
00:12:00,204 --> 00:12:05,904
but they sure taste a lot better when you raise the chickens and make them yourself. And you use

147
00:12:05,904 --> 00:12:09,964
them differently as well. Not the chickens or the eggs, but the sats that you mine,

148
00:12:10,264 --> 00:12:15,364
you do use those differently. So as far as do I think that we have any sort of security issue,

149
00:12:16,044 --> 00:12:16,624
I don't.

150
00:12:16,724 --> 00:12:18,164
I have a different framing on that.

151
00:12:19,004 --> 00:12:23,584
The framing that I think of, though, is that it has more to do with adoption curves and

152
00:12:23,584 --> 00:12:26,544
that we are still proving out the store value adoption curve.

153
00:12:27,024 --> 00:12:31,344
And so necessarily that's that incurs more holding than spending.

154
00:12:31,344 --> 00:12:33,884
And I think that's dominated by Gresham's law.

155
00:12:34,104 --> 00:12:35,164
And there will become a flip.

156
00:12:35,464 --> 00:12:38,744
There'll be a flip at some point to where we want to use Bitcoin.

157
00:12:39,244 --> 00:12:41,924
And then block space will be filled, as Bob Burnett talks about.

158
00:12:42,044 --> 00:12:43,924
And there'll be a scarcity situation.

159
00:12:43,924 --> 00:12:50,084
there's block space and fees will spike and people will run to try to get an allocation

160
00:12:50,084 --> 00:12:54,964
of the network so that they can ensure that their transactions can be included in blocks.

161
00:12:55,144 --> 00:12:58,564
So I think all that plays out, but I think it's a function of time and we're just going

162
00:12:58,564 --> 00:13:00,704
through a necessary process at the moment.

163
00:13:02,204 --> 00:13:02,764
I love this.

164
00:13:03,044 --> 00:13:07,844
I can already tell that we can have a long, deep discussion about this.

165
00:13:08,024 --> 00:13:13,664
And I agree with all of what you're saying, but I need to do something that I hate doing,

166
00:13:13,664 --> 00:13:27,704
which is devil's advocate, the exchanges, because I don't like exchanges, but in effect, isn't just an exchange like what we want people to do other than mine and and get acquire the bitcoins that way is by selling their goods and services for Bitcoin.

167
00:13:27,824 --> 00:13:30,524
Right. We want people to use Bitcoin as money.

168
00:13:30,824 --> 00:13:35,184
And in a way, isn't an exchange just that this is the devil's advocate part.

169
00:13:35,184 --> 00:13:44,304
If you're trading, there's nothing inherently wrong with trading, and we should encourage people to trade their dollars for Bitcoin, of course.

170
00:13:44,984 --> 00:13:47,584
So what's the problem with exchanges?

171
00:13:48,664 --> 00:13:51,584
Why are exchanges necessarily a bad thing?

172
00:13:53,024 --> 00:13:58,644
I don't think that exchanges are a bad thing, and I don't think I stated that.

173
00:13:58,644 --> 00:14:02,404
I just think it's the wrong way if you're a Bitcoiner to get your Bitcoin and you're

174
00:14:02,404 --> 00:14:05,244
ceding the security of the network to other people.

175
00:14:05,924 --> 00:14:07,064
And most of those people.

176
00:14:07,324 --> 00:14:11,384
So, for instance, up until I would say about 18 months ago, Ocean coming on the street

177
00:14:11,384 --> 00:14:13,344
scene is starting to change this.

178
00:14:13,544 --> 00:14:17,364
But if you would go to a mining conference two years ago, Kanute, you not find a Bitcoiner

179
00:14:17,364 --> 00:14:18,584
there or very few.

180
00:14:18,844 --> 00:14:23,124
If you go to a Bitcoin conference, you will find very few miners at the Bitcoin conference.

181
00:14:23,124 --> 00:14:24,924
There was just a clear divide.

182
00:14:24,924 --> 00:14:32,804
And that, I think, is the issue is because there was the ability to other the two communities, even though they're inseparable from one another.

183
00:14:33,264 --> 00:14:43,664
And so I think it's the lack of understanding of mining by those that sit on on just the ledger and use just the ledger that has led to a lot of the downstream consequences.

184
00:14:43,664 --> 00:14:49,724
So are exchanges useful and serve a purpose? Absolutely. I'm all about the free market, you know, like people should use that.

185
00:14:49,724 --> 00:15:13,864
However, I think that that's actually worse Bitcoin. And I'm going to use look at the rabbit quotes. I'm not getting into the fungibility argument here. I'm just saying that I think it is a worse Bitcoin experience to buy it than it is to mine it. So you can choose to trade your dollars for Bitcoin. You can also choose to trade your dollars for hardware and produce Bitcoin from that hardware and hardware and electricity. Right. You need both.

186
00:15:13,864 --> 00:15:19,504
And to me, that's actually a better outcome because on one side, you're able to get Bitcoin at cost.

187
00:15:19,664 --> 00:15:28,124
So on an energy cost basis, so forget the mining hardware, because that actually is where most of the confusion on evaluating Bitcoin mining comes in.

188
00:15:28,124 --> 00:15:34,064
If you just look strictly down the down the shoot, how much do I pay for electricity each month and how many sats do I get?

189
00:15:34,164 --> 00:15:35,784
Let me give you accurate numbers.

190
00:15:35,784 --> 00:15:42,224
$164 per month will run you a 270 terahash machine in Texas with us right now.

191
00:15:42,224 --> 00:15:47,864
And that will generate about 350,000 sats, plus or minus that changes per difficulty adjustment.

192
00:15:48,124 --> 00:15:52,944
And if you simply do mathematical division between those two, you will get a cost per Bitcoin.

193
00:15:53,144 --> 00:15:56,364
That cost per Bitcoin is $47,000 right now.

194
00:15:56,684 --> 00:16:03,404
So your energy cost averaging into a Bitcoin position for $47,000 as opposed to what's today's price?

195
00:16:03,484 --> 00:16:05,084
$65,000, somewhere around that.

196
00:16:05,084 --> 00:16:14,124
65 something like that yeah yeah so okay you've got a 19 oh not quite 18 000 discount per per unit

197
00:16:14,124 --> 00:16:19,404
of bitcoin that you're mining right and that savings helps to justify the hardware investment

198
00:16:19,404 --> 00:16:24,924
and generally speaking that is a one to two year value proposition so what do you get when you

199
00:16:24,924 --> 00:16:29,244
produce your own bitcoin well first of all you're getting bitcoin directly off the network so

200
00:16:29,244 --> 00:16:34,284
therefore you're outside of the banking surveillance system that has benefits for a lot of people um

201
00:16:34,284 --> 00:16:44,744
Two, you skip the whole custody is an issue issue because with an exchange, you buy it and you necessarily have to have it there on an exchange before you remove it.

202
00:16:44,964 --> 00:16:45,904
You can't do that with mining.

203
00:16:46,204 --> 00:16:51,924
With mining, you have to decide where the address is, where your Bitcoin is being sent to, and you have to deal with custody.

204
00:16:52,264 --> 00:16:56,584
So there's no, oh my gosh, I bought Bitcoin and left it on exchange.

205
00:16:56,864 --> 00:16:58,444
Three, was this three or four?

206
00:16:58,524 --> 00:16:59,644
I might have lost count, Canute.

207
00:16:59,804 --> 00:17:02,924
But point being, continue to go by a little bullet point list here.

208
00:17:02,924 --> 00:17:05,424
The other thing that this does, and this is,

209
00:17:05,424 --> 00:17:07,824
I think the biggest miss by the Bitcoin community

210
00:17:07,824 --> 00:17:10,364
is we don't address unit bias enough.

211
00:17:10,364 --> 00:17:13,244
I do think for normies out there in normie land,

212
00:17:13,244 --> 00:17:15,324
unit bias keeps people away from Bitcoin.

213
00:17:15,324 --> 00:17:16,504
They think it's too expensive.

214
00:17:16,504 --> 00:17:27,588
like I would rather go buy a fancy car than buy one That sort of idea crops into people heads Well guess what Like right now I can tell you and this is not a sales pitch

215
00:17:27,668 --> 00:17:29,088
This is just the honest to God truth.

216
00:17:29,448 --> 00:17:32,768
For about three grand, I can get you into a 270 terahash machine.

217
00:17:32,948 --> 00:17:35,048
$3,000 versus $65,000.

218
00:17:35,348 --> 00:17:37,688
What do you think we can sell more easily, right?

219
00:17:37,748 --> 00:17:41,648
Like we should have people stacking mining rigs, not trying to stack Bitcoin,

220
00:17:41,848 --> 00:17:44,268
because by having them stack mining rigs,

221
00:17:44,268 --> 00:17:46,228
they're going to get better Bitcoin out the other end.

222
00:17:46,228 --> 00:18:11,868
They're not going to get trapped on an exchange. They're going to be outside the banking surveillance system and they're going to learn exactly how the network works and not have this confusion that I think our community does. And I say this specifically because if you actually go back and you talk to OGs from the 2009 to 2013 era, almost all of them got their Bitcoin through mining it because they're running their Bitcoin software and they hit that little toggle that allows you to mine your own Bitcoin. And that's where most of their Bitcoin came from.

223
00:18:11,868 --> 00:18:24,128
And so almost every OG you talk to from 2009 to 2013 has a different perspective about Bitcoin mining than people that onboarded to Bitcoin after that and only bought instead of mined.

224
00:18:24,128 --> 00:18:28,628
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.

225
00:18:28,628 --> 00:18:34,468
I mean, this whole hash renting movement is catching on.

226
00:18:34,468 --> 00:18:41,648
It started catching on this spring, I guess, with a lot of it was people wanting to put

227
00:18:41,648 --> 00:18:45,588
their Satoshis to work in order to signal for BIP110.

228
00:18:45,588 --> 00:18:48,148
I think that was most of it, to be honest.

229
00:18:48,148 --> 00:18:53,108
So the thing that for those who don't know, when you rent hash, you can do that for dollars

230
00:18:53,108 --> 00:18:59,568
or for sats and you get almost back to par you may get maybe 95 of what you put in back if you

231
00:18:59,568 --> 00:19:05,168
do it over a long period of time you can't get to 100 back unless you're very lucky but you can

232
00:19:05,168 --> 00:19:12,688
actually rent someone else's mining rig and and point it to whatever mining pool you want i guess

233
00:19:12,688 --> 00:19:17,508
preferably ocean since it's the only really really the only game in town now if you want to

234
00:19:17,508 --> 00:19:19,528
use your own block templates.

235
00:19:20,608 --> 00:19:24,048
So what are your thoughts on that trend?

236
00:19:24,208 --> 00:19:26,828
Like, is this the direction we're going?

237
00:19:27,168 --> 00:19:29,488
And what do you think about Ocean to begin with?

238
00:19:29,488 --> 00:19:32,428
And all of this, the ecosystem, how it's evolving,

239
00:19:32,688 --> 00:19:36,128
like observations and thoughts around it?

240
00:19:37,528 --> 00:19:40,448
So I think Ocean actually is the beginning

241
00:19:40,448 --> 00:19:43,068
of a very healthy movement and conversation.

242
00:19:43,488 --> 00:19:46,468
It is bringing the Bitcoin community back to mining

243
00:19:46,468 --> 00:19:47,528
in a more fundamental way.

244
00:19:47,708 --> 00:19:51,168
I think the hash punk or the heat punk movement also,

245
00:19:51,388 --> 00:19:54,928
the open source protocol and desire to create

246
00:19:54,928 --> 00:19:58,028
hash rate heaters is also a part of that.

247
00:19:58,188 --> 00:20:01,568
But there's definitely efforts to get the Bitcoin community

248
00:20:01,568 --> 00:20:03,128
back into mining and I applaud those.

249
00:20:03,468 --> 00:20:06,948
As far as the hash rate rental market, I don't know.

250
00:20:07,308 --> 00:20:11,248
It may be our equivalent of a ordinal moment

251
00:20:11,248 --> 00:20:13,708
from the Bitcoin community after Bit.1.10.

252
00:20:13,788 --> 00:20:14,628
Does it just disappear?

253
00:20:14,828 --> 00:20:15,388
I don't know.

254
00:20:15,388 --> 00:20:36,308
And that remains to be seen for me. And it's also why I have not participated in figuring out a product offering to the market. I think there's some value there for some people, but I scratch my head and look at that and say, well, why would you do that when you can't do the exact same thing and generate Bitcoin at a fraction of the cost rather than just having the ability to signal?

255
00:20:36,308 --> 00:20:46,408
The economics don't make sense to me long term, although I get that it's more accessible because you can size it in units that are maybe less than the cost of a mining rig.

256
00:20:46,628 --> 00:20:52,228
But in the bigger scope of things economically, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

257
00:20:52,568 --> 00:21:02,868
That said, there might be other reasons and it has long term staying power and we'll go compete in that market as well and allow maybe our clients even to rent out their hash rate directly to others.

258
00:21:02,868 --> 00:21:06,168
That would be kind of a cool feature if this has staying power.

259
00:21:06,308 --> 00:21:09,388
But as far as the ecosystem is concerned, you're right.

260
00:21:09,468 --> 00:21:12,288
If you want to signal for Bit.10, you pretty much have to do it through Ocean.

261
00:21:12,668 --> 00:21:18,288
And the hashrate rental market is a quick way to be able to offer some signaling potential.

262
00:21:18,288 --> 00:21:22,568
It also has the ability to convert dollars into Bitcoin at a loss.

263
00:21:23,388 --> 00:21:27,428
Maybe as Bitcoin's price rises, you would get that back.

264
00:21:27,788 --> 00:21:32,608
But if you're paying Bitcoin in versus Bitcoin out, you're probably not going to have the same Bitcoin as you started with.

265
00:21:32,608 --> 00:21:36,828
But in fiat terms, I think you could wind up okay over the long-term hold.

266
00:21:37,048 --> 00:21:43,248
Yeah, I don't know if you have more questions or more specific points that you want to ask about that.

267
00:21:43,288 --> 00:21:49,268
But I think we're trending in a more positive direction than we have been before Ocean was on the scene, is what I see.

268
00:21:50,068 --> 00:21:52,628
So let's dig into how SaaS mining works.

269
00:21:52,808 --> 00:21:57,588
You buy your rigs via SaaS mining, or how does it work under the hood?

270
00:21:57,588 --> 00:22:03,288
Like, what do I get if I open an account with you and start mining via SaaS mining?

271
00:22:03,428 --> 00:22:04,608
SaaS, SaaS mining.

272
00:22:05,188 --> 00:22:10,008
In Italian, it comes off as SaaS, which is kind of ironic, but not why it was named that.

273
00:22:10,248 --> 00:22:14,808
So we have an e-com store, like a typical Web2 product is how we're designed.

274
00:22:15,108 --> 00:22:17,268
So you go on, you can purchase your hardware.

275
00:22:17,428 --> 00:22:18,248
We'll make it quite simple.

276
00:22:18,428 --> 00:22:22,488
How much do you pay for electricity each month and how many SaaS would you expect to receive?

277
00:22:22,808 --> 00:22:23,268
Check out.

278
00:22:23,608 --> 00:22:26,268
ZapRite is our payment orchestrator.

279
00:22:26,268 --> 00:22:27,668
So we have all the payment rails.

280
00:22:27,788 --> 00:22:29,608
If you want to spend in fiat, great.

281
00:22:29,788 --> 00:22:34,368
If you want to pay in Bitcoin or stable coins, they give you a 5% discount for doing that,

282
00:22:34,428 --> 00:22:38,688
which is good savings and encourages people to use those rails instead.

283
00:22:38,988 --> 00:22:44,828
And then you have to set yourself up to mine, which is basically tell us what mining pool

284
00:22:44,828 --> 00:22:47,548
you want to use, Ocean or Luxor, the two pools that we have.

285
00:22:47,808 --> 00:22:51,188
Give us your Bitcoin address for payouts and then tell us how you're going to pay your

286
00:22:51,188 --> 00:22:53,428
electric bill, what payment method.

287
00:22:53,428 --> 00:22:57,268
And once those three things are done, you're hashing on your mining rig.

288
00:22:57,708 --> 00:23:01,448
We have, it's manual right now because for BIP-110, we do have signaling.

289
00:23:01,688 --> 00:23:08,628
You just have to tell us that and we point your hash power through a BIP-110 signaling node.

290
00:23:09,068 --> 00:23:10,588
But it's all taken care of.

291
00:23:10,668 --> 00:23:15,128
You get a watch on the dashboard, your payouts, you know, how much they were in dollar terms.

292
00:23:15,268 --> 00:23:16,468
You can download that in a spreadsheet.

293
00:23:16,908 --> 00:23:18,868
You can see all your invoices for your electric bills.

294
00:23:19,188 --> 00:23:20,528
You can see your rig performance.

295
00:23:20,528 --> 00:23:25,408
So one of the things that we do a bit proud of is we've actually got a guarantee for performance.

296
00:23:25,408 --> 00:23:30,248
And if we don't meet that, then we give you credits off your service fees on a monthly basis.

297
00:23:30,548 --> 00:23:37,168
And yeah, we've got data centers in Norway, Paraguay, and the United States right now.

298
00:23:38,288 --> 00:23:39,968
And how does that work legally?

299
00:23:40,168 --> 00:23:45,128
Like since they're in different jurisdictions, how do I know that I actually own my mining rig?

300
00:23:45,388 --> 00:23:50,028
Like in comparison to like owning a gold bar in a vault somewhere,

301
00:23:50,028 --> 00:23:55,268
How do I know that my mining rig is not going to get 6102 in Norway or something?

302
00:23:55,808 --> 00:24:04,008
Like, well, I mean, you're talking about jurisdictional risk and it's inescapable, which is also part of the reasons why we have a diversified footprint.

303
00:24:04,128 --> 00:24:14,668
And most of our customers that have been with us long term have diversified over that footprint for that reason, because the laws and regulations of Norway today may not be the same as they are five years from now.

304
00:24:14,668 --> 00:24:23,248
And, you know, a lot of U.S. miners are sort of surprised when I say like the area where we had the biggest issue last year was actually the U.S.

305
00:24:23,568 --> 00:24:27,468
The tariffs actually stopped the flow of hardware into the U.S.

306
00:24:27,488 --> 00:24:33,488
And so thankfully, we had opportunities to deploy hardware into Paraguay at that point in time.

307
00:24:33,508 --> 00:24:34,788
So it didn't slow down our business.

308
00:24:35,008 --> 00:24:39,268
But there is no place that's risk free when it comes to jurisdictions.

309
00:24:39,788 --> 00:24:43,628
As far as how you know that you've got ownership of the hardware, give serial numbers.

310
00:24:43,628 --> 00:24:50,748
You can plug those serial numbers into the manufacturer's website and see, you know, the born on date, T-Link, all that sort of stuff.

311
00:24:50,828 --> 00:25:01,768
So we've built our ecosystem, our software ecosystem around the individual mining rig serial number is the way that we prove provenance for all the hardware that our clients own.

312
00:25:03,328 --> 00:25:05,748
And of course, you have contracts with all the clients.

313
00:25:06,268 --> 00:25:06,888
Of course, yeah.

314
00:25:07,608 --> 00:25:09,248
You're beholden to them, I guess.

315
00:25:09,248 --> 00:25:14,828
I mean, Norway, I think, had a horrible suggestion a couple of years back.

316
00:25:15,088 --> 00:25:29,988
The Norwegian government wanted to outright ban Bitcoin mining in the form of, or they wanted to tax it differently than other computing, which is basically, we're going to control how you use your electricity.

317
00:25:30,288 --> 00:25:33,988
And I think that didn't pass, if I remember it correctly.

318
00:25:34,228 --> 00:25:38,428
And for all you Trump fans out there in the US, tariffs are retarded.

319
00:25:38,428 --> 00:25:42,028
They are a tax and we should fight against them.

320
00:25:42,028 --> 00:25:45,728
They do not make your country richer.

321
00:25:45,728 --> 00:25:49,228
They make your country poorer by limiting your options.

322
00:25:49,228 --> 00:25:50,528
It's retarded.

323
00:25:50,528 --> 00:25:55,328
And I'm so tired of people trying to rationalize them as a free market thing

324
00:25:55,328 --> 00:26:09,672
and this protectionism being good for America somehow I just don see it because I read too much Rothbard or something But anyway since we like dancing around the topic of BIP here why don we get

325
00:26:09,672 --> 00:26:15,572
into that? So what's your view on BIP-110 and how do you see this playing out?

326
00:26:17,452 --> 00:26:21,992
Boy, yeah, let me comment one thing on Norway because I think it's important that people know

327
00:26:21,992 --> 00:26:27,192
that and then jump into BIP-110. So the regulation you were talking about, it was coming down the

328
00:26:27,192 --> 00:26:33,872
pike and the the way that we sidestep that was we have a it's it's a data center that also provides

329
00:26:33,872 --> 00:26:39,052
heating uh for a building and we knew that if we were we had a heat contract that would largely be

330
00:26:39,052 --> 00:26:45,752
protected because that becomes a municipal issue more so than the state of norway issue so that's

331
00:26:45,752 --> 00:26:50,112
that's why we felt comfortable with that sort of risk in norway and going there is the heat reuse

332
00:26:50,112 --> 00:26:54,492
so we're in the arctic circle and it's it's a really cool project but as far as bit 110 is

333
00:26:54,492 --> 00:27:03,492
concern canoe. I spent a long time thinking about this and I'm a proud fence sitter and I don't say

334
00:27:03,492 --> 00:27:07,912
that lightly because I knew it was going to come up on the show and at the end of the day we're a

335
00:27:07,912 --> 00:27:13,312
service provider we're not a miner so it's our client's choice as to what they do and I will tell

336
00:27:13,312 --> 00:27:20,712
you of our hash rate we've got you know we're just over or just close to an exahash total that

337
00:27:20,712 --> 00:27:25,572
we're contributing to the network at this point and about 15 of our customers have chosen to signal

338
00:27:25,572 --> 00:27:31,352
and we've been very clear about that so it's it's not unlike the polymarket odds that i've last seen

339
00:27:31,352 --> 00:27:37,132
which is which is somewhat surprising to see the mirror there and as a service provider i think it's

340
00:27:37,132 --> 00:27:43,512
incumbent on us as a company to be neutral and it's your hash rate it's your choice it ultimately

341
00:27:43,512 --> 00:27:49,052
is the people that own the hash rate that have to make the decision in my opinion and my take from a

342
00:27:49,052 --> 00:27:56,892
cultural standpoint is, and you might, you might likely disagree with it, but I see BIP-110 as a

343
00:27:56,892 --> 00:28:02,052
battle and a bigger war. I do not see it as existential. I think that it is a natural reaction

344
00:28:02,052 --> 00:28:08,492
to something that I agree with, which is that core can't be trusted right now. I think it could

345
00:28:08,492 --> 00:28:15,512
be in the past, but I think that there has been either ego-driven reasons or statecraft that has

346
00:28:15,512 --> 00:28:21,152
entered core. And I think that the communities, the social layer of the Bitcoin network is reacting

347
00:28:21,152 --> 00:28:27,152
to that and BIP-110 is a reaction to that. And so in some ways, analogous to I've never met,

348
00:28:27,372 --> 00:28:31,852
and you could tell me that I'm full of shit when I say this, but I've never met really an avowed

349
00:28:31,852 --> 00:28:38,232
atheist that was actually anti-God so much as anti-religion. I kind of find BIP-110 in general

350
00:28:38,232 --> 00:28:48,232
to be people that are anti-core and are expressing a political vote with BIP-110 more so than

351
00:28:48,232 --> 00:28:52,592
I think it's a minority of the BIP-110ers right now that are truly in the camp to think

352
00:28:52,592 --> 00:28:54,572
that this is an existential issue.

353
00:28:54,872 --> 00:29:00,312
And I think that the knowledge that is gained from BIP-110, I hope it's successful to some

354
00:29:00,312 --> 00:29:00,692
degree.

355
00:29:00,952 --> 00:29:05,752
I have no problem with it being successful, so I'm not anti-BIP-110, and I'll go that

356
00:29:05,752 --> 00:29:08,152
direction if that's the way the network goes.

357
00:29:08,232 --> 00:29:16,192
But I think that if BIP-110 does not succeed, and that's my pragmatic just engineering perspective on it, I don't see it succeeding.

358
00:29:16,192 --> 00:29:28,232
That if it does not succeed, I think the information gained will allow us to focus on how we actually win the war and take information from this battle that's been fought.

359
00:29:28,532 --> 00:29:36,552
And to me, the long term approach to winning this particular issue is actually alternative implementations of Bitcoin.

360
00:29:36,552 --> 00:29:40,972
the alternatives to core to limit their influence on the network.

361
00:29:41,212 --> 00:29:42,212
So that's my take.

362
00:29:43,152 --> 00:29:46,792
So speaking of the smaller battle and the bigger war here,

363
00:29:47,052 --> 00:29:50,912
isn't there a risk that if BIP-110 should fail for some odd reason

364
00:29:50,912 --> 00:29:52,952
that you will lose the Vanguard,

365
00:29:53,272 --> 00:29:56,612
like you lose some of the most battled hardened soldiers

366
00:29:56,612 --> 00:29:58,892
that Bitcoin needs for the next war?

367
00:29:59,332 --> 00:30:00,612
Should there be a fork?

368
00:30:00,772 --> 00:30:04,092
Like regardless of if you think the core side is forking off

369
00:30:04,092 --> 00:30:06,612
from the real Bitcoin or vice versa.

370
00:30:07,152 --> 00:30:10,892
So given a situation where there's a fork

371
00:30:10,892 --> 00:30:13,172
and all the people on the BIP-110 side

372
00:30:13,172 --> 00:30:14,412
are no longer in Bitcoin,

373
00:30:14,592 --> 00:30:17,412
isn't the risk, the long-term risk bigger then?

374
00:30:17,652 --> 00:30:20,112
Do we even have the power to fight the next battle

375
00:30:20,112 --> 00:30:23,232
if we don't have these warriors on the front lines?

376
00:30:23,992 --> 00:30:26,492
Can we fight the next battle without Hodlonauts

377
00:30:26,492 --> 00:30:30,532
and without Mechanic and without the BIP-110 people?

378
00:30:30,532 --> 00:30:37,252
i i don't believe that framing i think that there will be some the most vocal people could

379
00:30:37,252 --> 00:30:41,772
likely fork themselves off if they're not successful here but i think the contingent

380
00:30:41,772 --> 00:30:47,032
of people that have observed core's actions and no longer trust core is actually much larger than

381
00:30:47,032 --> 00:30:55,312
the bip 110 movement and so i think that that the bip 110ers here that are have positioned themselves

382
00:30:55,312 --> 00:31:01,332
selves for an existential ego death if they're not successful they may they may not be here and

383
00:31:01,332 --> 00:31:05,512
that's sad and genuinely because some of those people i like and care about uh and i want to

384
00:31:05,512 --> 00:31:11,512
continue to wage the the battle with them into the future and i think that spam is a never-ending

385
00:31:11,512 --> 00:31:18,812
battle but i don't think that it is i question that they've been low time preference enough if

386
00:31:18,812 --> 00:31:24,612
if it's really become existential at this point and i think that being low time preference you

387
00:31:24,612 --> 00:31:29,552
You know, we may become a guerrilla war movement is what we need to be to win the war.

388
00:31:29,652 --> 00:31:33,172
But you look at I think time has a strong lasting power.

389
00:31:33,252 --> 00:31:35,192
Like look at Afghanistan and the U.S., right?

390
00:31:35,372 --> 00:31:40,672
Like the Afghan people were just like, we just need to outweigh you guys and you guys are going to leave.

391
00:31:40,792 --> 00:31:42,632
And that's exactly what happened, right?

392
00:31:42,852 --> 00:31:45,352
The Afghan people have their have their country back.

393
00:31:45,352 --> 00:31:47,392
Now, I can't say that that's great for Afghanistan.

394
00:31:47,812 --> 00:31:53,132
I don't think I want to really compare the Bitcoin 10 community to the Taliban or anything like that.

395
00:31:53,132 --> 00:32:01,032
I don't mean to when I suggest this, that guerrilla, but think on a bigger picture, I think that we're seeing a societal reorganization around networks.

396
00:32:01,272 --> 00:32:04,852
I do buy into Balaji's perspective on the network state.

397
00:32:05,032 --> 00:32:11,712
And I think that that's what we're seeing here is kind of a turf war for who owns the territory of the Bitcoin network.

398
00:32:11,712 --> 00:32:21,172
And I think in the long tail, over the fullness of time, we're going to see the right thing surface.

399
00:32:21,172 --> 00:32:27,052
And I don't think that we're going to lose the whole community over this, but I think we may lose a few people over this.

400
00:32:27,052 --> 00:32:51,872
Yeah, in the news today, I just saw this like maybe 15 minutes before we started the show, that strategy announces that they're announcing the Bitcoin Security Consortium, a group of leading financial institutions and Bitcoin companies supporting the long term security of the Bitcoin network.

401
00:32:51,872 --> 00:32:58,032
Big words there. Members have pledged $15 million toward this work over the next three years.

402
00:32:58,332 --> 00:33:14,072
And the security consortium consists of Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Galaxy and Strategy.

403
00:33:14,072 --> 00:33:23,612
To me, this sounds like even more proof that there's something rotten in the state of not only Denmark, but in the state of core.

404
00:33:23,812 --> 00:33:27,172
I don't want my core developers to be funded by BlackRock.

405
00:33:27,352 --> 00:33:29,632
To me, that sounds like a Bitcoiner nightmare.

406
00:33:30,332 --> 00:33:39,572
And if they are in any way, shape or form in charge of Bitcoin's security, I mean, I can't think of a bigger red flag than that, really.

407
00:33:39,572 --> 00:33:47,432
the sailor said in a famous interview like a year or two back that he wants bitcoin to be

408
00:33:47,432 --> 00:33:53,312
in the hands of institutions and regulated entities rather than paranoid crypto anarchists

409
00:33:53,312 --> 00:33:58,732
and at the time it felt like the bitcoin community just thought that he's just saying that to to

410
00:33:58,732 --> 00:34:05,692
appease his shareholders but apparently that's his that implies that he needs to do that and he

411
00:34:05,692 --> 00:34:12,632
needs to take that side. And I am absolutely 100% sure that without the paranoid crypto anarchists,

412
00:34:12,632 --> 00:34:20,172
there is no Bitcoin network. The nodes have to be in charge, otherwise this is the takeover

413
00:34:20,172 --> 00:34:30,752
attempt. What do you think when you hear those news? Not shocked. It seemed to me that it wasn't

414
00:34:30,752 --> 00:34:35,752
going to be inevitable part of Bitcoin's adoption is that corporate and or state

415
00:34:35,752 --> 00:34:40,232
interests were going to try to co-opt it because it's to their advantage to do so.

416
00:34:40,232 --> 00:34:43,012
I mean, look, at the end of the day, senior age is the

417
00:34:43,056 --> 00:34:47,716
most powerful force on the planet, most powerful social force on the planet, right?

418
00:34:48,056 --> 00:34:52,616
And the genius of Satoshi is that he figured out how to harm his human self-interest to

419
00:34:52,616 --> 00:34:54,316
bootstrap the Bitcoin network.

420
00:34:54,736 --> 00:35:00,236
And I don't think that there's any more powerful countervailing force than human self-interest.

421
00:35:00,236 --> 00:35:06,736
So basically what we've got is the key match is about ready to play out here, is what I

422
00:35:06,736 --> 00:35:13,576
see between human self-interest and the ability to maintain control over seniorage and the money

423
00:35:13,576 --> 00:35:19,176
printer. And that's the battle royale of our generation. And we get to be frontside. And

424
00:35:19,176 --> 00:35:25,056
that's why I think that getting battle weary from BIP-110 instead of being focused on the big war,

425
00:35:25,156 --> 00:35:29,216
I think is a mistake. And I will say that straight up. I don't think that if you are going to go down

426
00:35:29,216 --> 00:35:34,176
with a ship on BIP-110, and I get it why people are really up in arms on it. I'm very sympathetic

427
00:35:34,176 --> 00:35:38,696
to Bit.10, but I think you're missing the bigger enemy that's coming in right now.

428
00:35:38,896 --> 00:35:41,176
And this is what you just said is that.

429
00:35:41,456 --> 00:35:45,056
Now, I want to also point out one thing to just steel man the argument I'm making here,

430
00:35:45,116 --> 00:35:50,576
which is the development community has a garbage funding system, right?

431
00:35:50,936 --> 00:35:53,496
Our development community needs to be funded.

432
00:35:53,856 --> 00:35:56,296
And how are we going to get them funding, right?

433
00:35:56,336 --> 00:36:02,716
How do we pay for them to protect Bitcoin at the development level and to put food on

434
00:36:02,716 --> 00:36:03,716
the table for their families?

435
00:36:03,716 --> 00:36:25,716
And that's a problem that Bitcoin community, I don't think, has resolved. And I think that there is an attack vector through that coming in. There is an attack vector coming into the Bitcoin community because we've not resolved that. And so I think in the same way that coming up with alternative implementations to Bitcoin Core is necessary, I think we need alternative ways to figure out how to fund our Bitcoin development community.

436
00:36:25,716 --> 00:36:30,456
the community. And I think that the only thing that I can see that's actually functioning is

437
00:36:30,456 --> 00:36:35,936
something like the patronage system of the Renaissance era. And right now, the only patron

438
00:36:35,936 --> 00:36:43,536
that we clearly have that fits that bill is Jack Dorsey. I'm sorry, we need more Jack Dorseys out

439
00:36:43,536 --> 00:36:49,396
there that are helping to fund the development ecosystem to mitigate that attack factor that is

440
00:36:49,396 --> 00:36:55,116
being exploited right now by the corporate entities. So it's okay for us to sit around

441
00:36:55,116 --> 00:36:58,256
and wag our fingers at these corporate entities that are coming in.

442
00:36:58,496 --> 00:37:02,916
And I agree, I have very negative reactions when I hear that as well, Kanute.

443
00:37:03,236 --> 00:37:05,776
But at the same time, we're leaving ourselves open to that

444
00:37:05,776 --> 00:37:07,556
because we've not figured out how to fund our developer.

445
00:37:08,496 --> 00:37:11,076
So why didn't we need to fund them the first 10 years?

446
00:37:11,076 --> 00:37:17,356
Like the part of how I see this is that it was more pure when the Bitcoin developers,

447
00:37:18,716 --> 00:37:22,516
what was in them for them back then was that belief in the project

448
00:37:22,516 --> 00:37:25,856
and the Satoshis themselves made them rich over time.

449
00:37:26,016 --> 00:37:28,336
They managed to secure their stacks

450
00:37:28,336 --> 00:37:29,996
and understand Bitcoin properly.

451
00:37:30,436 --> 00:37:32,796
They got rewarded by the work itself.

452
00:37:33,036 --> 00:37:36,056
They got rewarded for securing Bitcoin

453
00:37:36,056 --> 00:37:37,916
by having their Bitcoin secure

454
00:37:37,916 --> 00:37:39,616
and seeing number go up.

455
00:37:40,016 --> 00:37:43,616
But yeah, Jack Dorsey is one guy.

456
00:37:43,616 --> 00:37:48,916
I mean, yeah, I think this is a tricky problem

457
00:37:48,916 --> 00:37:51,696
because there is no clean solution to it.

458
00:37:51,696 --> 00:38:00,356
There is no, there can never be like outside economic incentives like that without the risk of corruption.

459
00:38:00,876 --> 00:38:04,036
It just comes with the outside funding.

460
00:38:04,156 --> 00:38:09,836
And especially like I know most Bitcoin developers get their grants in fiat and not in Bitcoin.

461
00:38:09,836 --> 00:38:17,076
As John Attack told me this, he had to insist on being paid in Bitcoin, which is to me totally backwards.

462
00:38:17,076 --> 00:38:30,496
And then again, some of these big Silicon Valley brains, they have the other job offers from the Googles and anthropics of the world that want to harness their talents for AI and stuff instead of Bitcoin.

463
00:38:30,856 --> 00:38:32,976
And there is definitely a problem there.

464
00:38:33,016 --> 00:38:35,016
And I don't know how to solve that.

465
00:38:35,956 --> 00:38:42,176
But I think BIP-110 is a good sense, a clear signal to these people that this is not the way.

466
00:38:42,176 --> 00:38:48,936
And this has evolved into being one of the main reasons that I like the fork.

467
00:38:49,116 --> 00:38:54,316
It's this middle finger to the man that comes with it, that you're not in charge.

468
00:38:54,416 --> 00:38:55,856
You're not in control of this network.

469
00:38:56,076 --> 00:38:56,416
We are.

470
00:38:56,496 --> 00:38:57,196
We all are.

471
00:38:57,356 --> 00:38:58,956
And you just have to play ball.

472
00:38:59,656 --> 00:39:04,196
These takeover attempts will not go well with the community.

473
00:39:04,396 --> 00:39:09,156
And the immune system is, in my opinion, functioning exactly as it should be.

474
00:39:09,156 --> 00:39:12,776
And then that's the stance I have right now.

475
00:39:12,936 --> 00:39:21,156
And come August 8th and the period after, I will observe and see what happens and choose sides or whatever.

476
00:39:21,576 --> 00:39:23,616
After that, I don't really care about outcome.

477
00:39:23,756 --> 00:39:24,776
I care about principles.

478
00:39:25,216 --> 00:39:29,696
So my stances are what they are right now for this situation.

479
00:39:29,696 --> 00:39:34,596
And I'll assess reality again after things have played out.

480
00:39:34,736 --> 00:39:36,776
And I think this is the correct way to do Bitcoin.

481
00:39:36,776 --> 00:39:44,316
Like if you don't, then you might as well use, then you're outsourcing trust to third parties again.

482
00:39:44,396 --> 00:39:45,456
It's always back to that.

483
00:39:45,596 --> 00:39:49,276
Like if you're not taking part, then you are outsourcing trust.

484
00:39:49,716 --> 00:39:51,196
I'm not anti-Bip 110.

485
00:39:51,436 --> 00:39:52,196
I want to make that clear.

486
00:39:52,336 --> 00:39:53,816
I'm a proud fence sitter here.

487
00:39:54,556 --> 00:40:01,976
And if Bip 110 shows that it's going to be the winning chain, like absolutely we'll move that direction as well as a business.

488
00:40:01,976 --> 00:40:07,476
and we're not going to let our clients, you know, lose their economic power, their economic

489
00:40:07,476 --> 00:40:07,996
cash rate.

490
00:40:08,116 --> 00:40:09,676
You know, we'll see how things play out.

491
00:40:09,896 --> 00:40:15,896
But it is basically to insert like into the contracts, we'll do this fairly soon here,

492
00:40:15,996 --> 00:40:21,016
like a clause that basically says, hey, look, you have to realize in the event of some sort

493
00:40:21,016 --> 00:40:25,756
of fork opportunity that a few days before, a few days after, like things are going to

494
00:40:25,756 --> 00:40:31,176
be locked down and you have to subordinate your right on direction to SaaS mining.

495
00:40:31,976 --> 00:40:37,336
to play out. But, you know, we're planning on everybody that's signaling for BIP-110 to

496
00:40:37,336 --> 00:40:41,756
allow them to signal. It's not, we just want to make sure that after enough time, if it's become

497
00:40:41,756 --> 00:40:49,156
decisive, that we hop onto the winning side of the conversation. But I think the thing that

498
00:40:49,156 --> 00:40:54,396
you're saying there that makes the most sense to me is just recognizing that you have to assess

499
00:40:54,396 --> 00:41:00,136
reality now after an experience like that. There is a literal fork in the road, whether it's a

500
00:41:00,136 --> 00:41:04,836
soft fork, a hard fork, or however it plays out, you have to assess the reality of after that,

501
00:41:04,996 --> 00:41:09,656
that event has occurred. And I think it's important not to allow yourself to get spun

502
00:41:09,656 --> 00:41:15,116
out of the community as a result of that experience. You know, I went to TabConf last

503
00:41:15,116 --> 00:41:19,176
year and I'll say something that might be controversial here, but I walked away from

504
00:41:19,176 --> 00:41:25,856
TabConf last year with a firm conviction that we were headed more towards ossification than anything.

505
00:41:25,856 --> 00:41:31,696
And I think Bit.10 is directionally that same way for the community as well.

506
00:41:31,856 --> 00:41:36,616
And the reason why I say that is because everybody I've spoke to that is in Bitcoin for Freedom Go Up

507
00:41:36,616 --> 00:41:42,676
acknowledges that Bitcoin to succeed at that level has to be a thousand year plus institution.

508
00:41:43,116 --> 00:41:48,356
And if you look at the human institutions that have lasted for a thousand plus years,

509
00:41:48,596 --> 00:41:51,196
there is some hallmarks that they have in common.

510
00:41:51,196 --> 00:42:01,216
And when I walked away from TabConf, I saw that, A, nobody's asking the question of what does it take to make a 1,000-year institution successful?

511
00:42:01,436 --> 00:42:13,256
And B, the members of that community that are currently empowered with the decisions that are going to make this 1,000-year-plus institution are very, very limited in their skill sets.

512
00:42:13,356 --> 00:42:15,836
We just have a lot of subject matter experts that are not there.

513
00:42:15,836 --> 00:42:24,116
Like it's basically cybersecurity, math, computer science, folks that are that are protecting, you know, and building this.

514
00:42:24,316 --> 00:42:38,436
And so for me, what I see is as a result of there not being a clear value set, like if you look at the thousand year plus institutions that exist, one thing they all have in common is a very clear set of values that people that are part of those institutions adhere to.

515
00:42:38,436 --> 00:42:41,856
And I don't see that in our community. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

516
00:42:41,856 --> 00:42:48,676
I mean, Satoshi built the network and dropped it off and, you know, the clock is running, right, and can continue to run.

517
00:42:48,976 --> 00:43:06,481
But I think outside of having like the community rallying around a set of values that they making decisions against the most likely thing is a fragmentation of various tribes and camps that are just going to battle each other and nothing moves forward as a result and so we are headed more for ossification than anything here

518
00:43:06,481 --> 00:43:10,481
outside of an existential threat right next essential threat is what brings the clans

519
00:43:10,481 --> 00:43:16,001
together but i think since that tabconf that i went to as last october you see the movement of

520
00:43:16,001 --> 00:43:21,761
knots has grown up core there's production ready is coming up so i just see like there's a movement

521
00:43:21,761 --> 00:43:24,721
of all these countervailing like implementations happening.

522
00:43:24,801 --> 00:43:25,521
I think that's healthy.

523
00:43:25,601 --> 00:43:26,441
I want that right now.

524
00:43:27,101 --> 00:43:29,821
And I think that that just makes it more difficult

525
00:43:29,821 --> 00:43:33,501
to see anything developed on Bitcoin going forward.

526
00:43:33,681 --> 00:43:35,401
So yeah, I'm kind of in the camp

527
00:43:35,401 --> 00:43:38,701
that it's not that I want ossification necessarily,

528
00:43:38,701 --> 00:43:42,161
but I do think that that's more likely than not,

529
00:43:42,161 --> 00:43:45,461
given what I see out there in the ecosystem right now.

530
00:43:46,521 --> 00:43:49,201
Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts around ossification.

531
00:43:49,201 --> 00:43:51,961
The first one is that Bitcoin can't ossify.

532
00:43:52,321 --> 00:44:03,701
And for the simple reason that human beings are behind every node and every miner and every exchange and every wallet in Bitcoin, every private key has a human being behind it.

533
00:44:03,801 --> 00:44:06,021
Like it's governed by us.

534
00:44:06,361 --> 00:44:10,021
And human beings can and do change their minds and we can change this.

535
00:44:11,001 --> 00:44:14,961
So theoretically, like there's no such thing as ossification.

536
00:44:14,961 --> 00:44:19,221
And how would we know that we've reached ossification even if we did?

537
00:44:19,401 --> 00:44:22,381
Like there's no way of proving that Bitcoin has ossified.

538
00:44:22,581 --> 00:44:24,001
So it's like trying to prove a negative.

539
00:44:24,481 --> 00:44:28,081
The other thing, the thing you said about values, I really like that.

540
00:44:28,281 --> 00:44:38,521
And to build a thousand year religion of Bitcoin, if you want, for lack of a better word, because these institutions are the ones that have the most longevity, right?

541
00:44:38,941 --> 00:44:42,161
So the thing I want to see ossified is something like that.

542
00:44:42,161 --> 00:44:46,921
So the notion that Bitcoin is money, I would like to see that ossified.

543
00:44:47,181 --> 00:44:53,561
And this is also one of the reasons why I'm so pro this movement, because I don't want Bitcoin to accommodate other shit.

544
00:44:53,701 --> 00:44:59,881
I don't want NFTs or BRC20 tokens or any other Ponzi scheme built up on top of Bitcoin.

545
00:45:00,001 --> 00:45:07,201
I want Bitcoin to be money because I think since it's the internal revenue system of the system, then it needs to be money.

546
00:45:07,261 --> 00:45:08,401
Otherwise, it doesn't work.

547
00:45:08,401 --> 00:45:15,081
So the thing that I would like to ossify is Bitcoin is money.

548
00:45:15,821 --> 00:45:18,881
And first, would you agree with that?

549
00:45:18,981 --> 00:45:22,861
And if so, how do you ossify a set of values?

550
00:45:24,841 --> 00:45:29,161
I don't have an answer to the second, but the first question, yes, I agree.

551
00:45:29,261 --> 00:45:30,061
Bitcoin is money.

552
00:45:30,061 --> 00:45:34,921
I think if the shelling point of values for our ecosystem, I believe, at least when I got in.

553
00:45:34,921 --> 00:45:37,941
So I got in mid-2015, got my first,

554
00:45:38,081 --> 00:45:39,581
I started studying Bitcoin mid-2015,

555
00:45:39,741 --> 00:45:42,641
got my first Bitcoin like December 2015 for context, right?

556
00:45:42,941 --> 00:45:46,021
And the shelling point for the value,

557
00:45:46,361 --> 00:45:49,481
the primary value that seemed to hold the community together

558
00:45:49,481 --> 00:45:51,981
when I joined, and it's still what brings me here,

559
00:45:52,021 --> 00:45:53,681
is a separation of money and state, right?

560
00:45:53,761 --> 00:45:55,881
So Bitcoin is money, fits that for me.

561
00:45:56,001 --> 00:45:57,221
So fully agree with that.

562
00:45:57,281 --> 00:45:59,781
And I think that that is the most profound opportunity

563
00:45:59,781 --> 00:46:02,201
that we have with Bitcoin is to separate money and state.

564
00:46:02,201 --> 00:46:17,781
That said, I think on your point about ossification, I want to be clear that what I'm saying is kind of not the letter of the law definition of ossification, but the spirit of the law sort of argument of ossification is just pragmatically.

565
00:46:17,781 --> 00:46:38,941
I think you're right. Like things can change, but will they change is more what I'm pointing to. And I think it's less likely that they will. And it's going to be harder to bring anything together for consensus unless it's existential, unless it's going to mean like the demise of the network itself. I think that rallies people always. But outside of that, I think we're headed more towards ossification.

566
00:46:38,941 --> 00:46:47,121
But, yeah, I think having an ossified value set, I don't see any thousand year old institution that exists that doesn't have that.

567
00:46:47,301 --> 00:46:56,761
Like if we're going to if we're going to keep this thing around for a thousand plus years and it has to be driven by humans, like I think we have to do that.

568
00:46:56,761 --> 00:47:03,781
And I think that that is the big miss. And I also think, too, that we are a young movement, you know, 16 years in.

569
00:47:03,781 --> 00:47:15,101
And I don't think if you look to like our biological elders, you know, we've been we're basically the same creatures we were for a quarter million years at this point, as far as we can tell.

570
00:47:15,301 --> 00:47:20,421
And you can look at the rhythms of what have defined a good social adhesion.

571
00:47:20,681 --> 00:47:23,761
They almost always form some sort of like tribe of elders.

572
00:47:23,761 --> 00:47:26,821
And I think that Bitcoin has not developed that yet.

573
00:47:27,141 --> 00:47:28,841
I think it's in the process of doing that.

574
00:47:28,841 --> 00:47:35,301
But I think that that's what you pointed out there is a task for the tribe of elders in the community to help define.

575
00:47:35,521 --> 00:47:42,241
But the struggle with that, though, is how do you avoid that becoming a governance system that then has control of Bitcoin?

576
00:47:42,661 --> 00:47:47,681
I don't know. I don't know how organically this comes about without without it turning into governance.

577
00:47:48,741 --> 00:47:51,361
Well, we're both on our way to becoming those elders.

578
00:47:51,361 --> 00:47:54,861
We both have gray hairs in our beards, me more than you.

579
00:47:55,161 --> 00:48:01,161
But inevitably, the people who were early into this will become older.

580
00:48:01,501 --> 00:48:06,141
And people do look for authority figures to listen to.

581
00:48:06,221 --> 00:48:09,701
But the whole point of Bitcoin is that we're not Jesus of Nazareth.

582
00:48:10,061 --> 00:48:14,321
We're Brian of Nazareth telling his followers to think for themselves.

583
00:48:14,321 --> 00:48:22,341
You know, if you've seen Life of Brian, when he chants that we're all different and they chant back, we're all different.

584
00:48:23,961 --> 00:48:25,561
There's a bit of that going on.

585
00:48:26,001 --> 00:48:27,741
A couple of things came to mind.

586
00:48:28,021 --> 00:48:33,601
I made a video a couple of years back with Joni Appleberg where I compare Satoshi to Robert Oppenheimer.

587
00:48:34,101 --> 00:48:36,021
Because I think they're very similar figures.

588
00:48:36,221 --> 00:48:41,241
Because I view the consensus mechanism of fiat money to be world wars.

589
00:48:41,241 --> 00:48:44,841
And whoever wins the world war gets the master money printer.

590
00:48:45,221 --> 00:48:46,721
And who won the last world war?

591
00:48:46,861 --> 00:48:48,321
Well, the U.S. did, in effect.

592
00:48:48,741 --> 00:48:52,121
So that's why they could do the 1971 thing.

593
00:48:52,361 --> 00:48:59,501
And now they can print greenbacks and trade them for real shit from other countries and thereby get richer than everyone else.

594
00:48:59,501 --> 00:49:15,621
So what Robert Oppenheimer did by constructing the most destructive thing humans have ever invented, the nuclear warhead or the atomic bomb, is he found a way to harness the power of physics to change human incentive structures.

595
00:49:16,241 --> 00:49:17,821
And that's exactly what Satoshi did.

596
00:49:17,901 --> 00:49:21,901
He found a way to harness the power of physics to change human incentive structures.

597
00:49:22,301 --> 00:49:26,441
It's just that Satoshi did it in the most peaceful way possible.

598
00:49:26,441 --> 00:49:33,481
So he's changed from whoever has the biggest bomb wins and gets to dictate the rules for everyone else.

599
00:49:34,141 --> 00:49:35,181
Satoshi did the opposite.

600
00:49:35,341 --> 00:49:38,161
He said, like, no, the most peaceful actors win.

601
00:49:38,421 --> 00:49:41,341
The attacks are now much more costly.

602
00:49:41,901 --> 00:49:46,181
Defense is now less costly than attack, meaning world peace.

603
00:49:46,321 --> 00:49:51,861
Like, that's what the ultimate separation of money and state is.

604
00:49:51,981 --> 00:49:52,861
It's world peace.

605
00:49:52,981 --> 00:49:54,821
If there's no state, there is no war.

606
00:49:54,821 --> 00:49:58,521
Like, and it's to me, that's a very beautiful thing.

607
00:49:58,821 --> 00:50:02,721
That's just one thing that came to mind when we talked about these things.

608
00:50:02,941 --> 00:50:10,381
The other thing that came to mind is one of my favorite articles in Bitcoin ever written by Gigi about the map is not the territory thing.

609
00:50:10,881 --> 00:50:23,341
Because in everything else in science, in everything else that humans have ever studied, we can only at best come up with a map of reality, but not reality itself.

610
00:50:23,341 --> 00:50:27,001
Like the perfect model of the universe would have to be the universe itself.

611
00:50:27,201 --> 00:50:28,461
So we can only approximate.

612
00:50:28,861 --> 00:50:30,981
But in Bitcoin, it's the other way around.

613
00:50:31,501 --> 00:50:34,121
This is the TLDR of the article, as I remember.

614
00:50:34,581 --> 00:50:37,721
In Bitcoin, the map defines reality.

615
00:50:38,401 --> 00:50:53,321
So whatever happened in the blockchain or time chain, that's a record of what we now collectively or intersubjectively, is a better word, converged upon as this is now what we consider to be a big deal.

616
00:50:53,341 --> 00:51:13,561
And I really like those viewpoints, if you will. It's so different from anything else humans have ever even tried to do. And if it works, then we've built something that we cannot tear apart again. Humans built something that humans cannot undo.

617
00:51:13,561 --> 00:51:25,385
And that in a way a scary thought but when you think about what it does it not a scary thought at all Because back to the Oppenheimer dilemma it can only lead to better things and not to worse things

618
00:51:25,385 --> 00:51:30,325
I mean, all the bad things, theoretically, it's because you do them to yourself.

619
00:51:30,505 --> 00:51:32,205
Like you lose your keys or whatever.

620
00:51:32,745 --> 00:51:38,865
But yeah, just some philosophical nuggets there that came to mind from this conversation.

621
00:51:40,045 --> 00:51:41,025
I agree with you.

622
00:51:41,025 --> 00:51:46,925
It is a fundamental inversion of the money printer, you know, the decentralizing of it.

623
00:51:47,065 --> 00:51:50,225
You know, it's another case of software eating the world.

624
00:51:50,465 --> 00:52:00,685
And the ability for us to decentralize that largely helps us get past a struggle that we've had for 5,000 years.

625
00:52:00,765 --> 00:52:09,585
Like I would actually make the argument that the battle for the money printer has been the equivalent of like the Game of Thrones for humanity.

626
00:52:09,585 --> 00:52:15,905
Like if you if you're familiar with that, like the the actual Iron Throne, I think, is the equivalent of the money printer.

627
00:52:16,165 --> 00:52:19,705
Let's imagine Bitcoin is successful and it decentralizes money in state.

628
00:52:20,285 --> 00:52:29,525
Think of how much human creativity comes back into humanity that is no longer trying to vie for the ability to print money.

629
00:52:29,845 --> 00:52:36,445
Right. Like how much collective energy is going right now to fund wars, to be able to have that economic power.

630
00:52:36,445 --> 00:53:00,225
If we take it out of human hands, yes, we're going to become more peaceful. I disagree with us becoming peaceful as a species because I think there's always battle lines and territorial battles. And part of that is informed by, you know, I live in the high Amazon region here in Peru and tribal existence is always marked by one tribe battling to maintain their tribal territory against another.

631
00:53:00,225 --> 00:53:06,325
And it's not totalitarian war like we've seen since the industrial age of the early 1900s.

632
00:53:06,445 --> 00:53:08,685
And that's the major demarcation to me.

633
00:53:08,905 --> 00:53:16,285
And so it's not that violence disappears, but the world becomes a lot more peaceful and world war becomes a lot less likely.

634
00:53:16,505 --> 00:53:22,485
And so, you know, I've got kids and I want them to have a better existence and reality than I do.

635
00:53:22,585 --> 00:53:28,185
And so that's why, you know, I feel quite strongly about doing what I do to try to help the next generations.

636
00:53:28,185 --> 00:53:43,225
But I do think that you are correct that taking the power of the money printer away from humanity and putting it outside of our reaches is the only way that we can actually truly move forward as a species to see what we're capable of.

637
00:53:43,225 --> 00:53:50,045
because the best of us have been locked in a age-old battle of trying to vie for control of

638
00:53:50,045 --> 00:53:54,645
that and i think we're at its its absolute pinnacle right now so it's not surprising that bitcoin has

639
00:53:54,645 --> 00:54:01,545
showed up on the scene right when the whole world is on the precipice of of contagion for another

640
00:54:01,545 --> 00:54:09,665
world no i i to be clear here i'm speaking in metaphors and and uh not not in absolute terms i

641
00:54:09,665 --> 00:54:13,845
I don't believe true world peace for everyone is ever possible.

642
00:54:14,365 --> 00:54:17,905
Violence is a part of our existence and it's not necessarily bad.

643
00:54:18,045 --> 00:54:20,165
I mean, defending yourself is not bad.

644
00:54:20,405 --> 00:54:23,425
What Bitcoin does is it makes aggression costlier.

645
00:54:24,085 --> 00:54:28,325
And that is clearly a good path into the future.

646
00:54:28,325 --> 00:54:35,065
Like it's one of the most profound things humanity has ever come up with because it's very hard to make aggression costlier.

647
00:54:35,065 --> 00:54:47,205
If you view the history of weaponry, like the spear and the sword and the knight in armor, that's one thing that made violence more costly is armor, right?

648
00:54:47,325 --> 00:54:52,765
Because it's harder and castle walls and stuff that sort of made aggression more costly.

649
00:54:53,125 --> 00:54:55,445
And then you have guns and bombs.

650
00:54:55,905 --> 00:55:02,565
And now you have Bitcoin, which makes the attack itself less likely to yield profit for the attacker.

651
00:55:02,565 --> 00:55:08,745
And that's a way bigger innovation than it's getting credit for, I think.

652
00:55:09,545 --> 00:55:13,425
I agree. I think it's also because it's not physical.

653
00:55:13,585 --> 00:55:16,225
It lives in ID land that it's so hard for people.

654
00:55:16,645 --> 00:55:20,665
I think that you can see that by the people that have adopted it.

655
00:55:20,825 --> 00:55:27,525
So I've said that in other podcasts how I think the orange pill movement is largely over

656
00:55:27,525 --> 00:55:30,345
and we're moving on to the orange depository movement now

657
00:55:30,345 --> 00:55:40,985
Because I think the INTP and INTJ have personality types have already adopted Bitcoin because we are the ones that are willing to brace social ostracism.

658
00:55:41,585 --> 00:55:45,205
I can't say it. We're the disagreeable types, right?

659
00:55:45,525 --> 00:55:50,985
And we're willing to follow truth to its natural conclusion, no matter the social consequence.

660
00:55:50,985 --> 00:55:56,445
And I think that the rest of humanity that has not adopted Bitcoin is not necessarily that way.

661
00:55:56,445 --> 00:56:04,485
So I think they're going to need to have a lot of experience, a lot of pain and realize that Bitcoin eases that pain to move into Bitcoin over time.

662
00:56:04,525 --> 00:56:06,265
And I think that will happen naturally.

663
00:56:06,745 --> 00:56:13,405
But I think that what you're talking about is you've probably read The Sovereign Individual that had a profound influence on my journey.

664
00:56:13,885 --> 00:56:18,345
And I think what you're describing is a is what they call a macro political force in that book.

665
00:56:18,345 --> 00:56:22,945
And I think there's been a few of them along the along the way in humanity's history.

666
00:56:22,945 --> 00:56:26,925
So, you know, the printer, the ability to print books was one.

667
00:56:27,245 --> 00:56:31,665
Like it distributed knowledge, gunpowder distributed violence.

668
00:56:32,485 --> 00:56:34,045
You know, there's other of these.

669
00:56:34,165 --> 00:56:40,245
And I would actually say, so Bitcoin is a massive one because of its reinvention of money itself.

670
00:56:40,665 --> 00:56:51,165
But I also think that we're experiencing another that we've seen just this last year, which is drone technology is transforming warfare as we speak in real time.

671
00:56:51,165 --> 00:56:56,145
And I think the Strait of Hormuz this last year has been like a perfect example of it.

672
00:56:56,265 --> 00:56:59,565
Or the United States, which is the military superpower of the planet.

673
00:56:59,785 --> 00:57:01,545
Well, I don't know if we can say that any longer.

674
00:57:01,665 --> 00:57:06,805
Got put into a stalemate situation with Iran by basically ballistics and drones, right?

675
00:57:06,905 --> 00:57:08,965
Nobody thought that was possible until this year.

676
00:57:09,065 --> 00:57:17,005
So I think we just have witnessed this year a redefining of warfare and violence itself at a nation state level.

677
00:57:17,365 --> 00:57:19,565
Now, I have no idea what that means for the future.

678
00:57:19,565 --> 00:57:36,145
I'm not that smart, but I think that it's the ability for us to change those and change the way that power can be wielded for violent means is healthy for humanity and leads to new outcomes.

679
00:57:38,845 --> 00:57:40,605
Yeah, absolutely.

680
00:57:41,025 --> 00:57:45,765
Are there any topics we haven't touched yet that you want to talk about?

681
00:57:46,205 --> 00:57:47,125
Anything on your mind?

682
00:57:47,125 --> 00:57:54,605
jeez a lot of things on on my mind but i don't most of them are work related not not related to

683
00:57:54,605 --> 00:57:59,525
to philosophy and bitcoin at this particular moment i think the thing that i would just

684
00:57:59,525 --> 00:58:04,345
like to express the community or whoever watches this is this just to place bip 110

685
00:58:04,345 --> 00:58:11,445
within the broader context of a never-ending war that we're waging to separate money and state and

686
00:58:11,445 --> 00:58:17,105
not to allow a loss in one particular battle to define the outcome of the war for you personally

687
00:58:17,105 --> 00:58:39,245
Now, there may be people that disagree and think that this is absolutely existential. And I don't if that's if that's your your your viewpoint, so be it. But I think that there's a much longer war that has to be waged here for Bitcoin to be successful. And I'm convinced it will be because Bitcoin is the only thing that I have ever seen that leverages human self-interest.

688
00:58:39,245 --> 00:59:01,925
And so the outcome of this battle is going to be waged by those self-interested people that are going to fight for the outcome that they want. As much a grassroots social movement as it ever has been. And one of the beautiful things of BIP-110 to me has been to actually see the community start to come together again.

689
00:59:01,925 --> 00:59:09,965
And, you know, the core roots and that drumbeat of, you know, separation of money and state is coming back into the community.

690
00:59:10,105 --> 00:59:17,445
I think the community largely got a bit lost with the ETF and the Bitcoin wrapper securitization products.

691
00:59:17,765 --> 00:59:24,045
And I think it'll be good when that's in the rearview mirror and we get back to focusing on separation of money and state again.

692
00:59:24,165 --> 00:59:25,045
And I think we will.

693
00:59:25,945 --> 00:59:30,825
It's because of the self-interested nature of the people holding Bitcoin that we will.

694
00:59:30,825 --> 00:59:43,410
And so yeah anyway looking forward to continuing to be at it and continue to fight the battle with let see what reality looks like post august 8th maybe 9th 10th let see how it plays out but we in for a

695
00:59:43,410 --> 00:59:48,130
little bit of volatility here on the network and it'd be information gained no matter how it plays

696
00:59:48,130 --> 00:59:54,450
out yeah there's always information to be to be gained from from things like this this reminded

697
00:59:54,450 --> 01:00:00,930
me of a ronald reagan quote so i i looked it up here freedom is never more than one generation

698
01:00:00,930 --> 01:00:05,870
away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought

699
01:00:05,870 --> 01:00:11,010
for, protected and handed to them to do the same. Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling

700
01:00:11,010 --> 01:00:15,390
our children and our children's children what it was once like to live in the United States where

701
01:00:15,390 --> 01:00:22,230
men were free. And I think that's absolutely true for Bitcoin. We need to take part

702
01:00:22,230 --> 01:00:30,810
in these discussions. We need to run our nodes and mine. We should all be mining in

703
01:00:30,810 --> 01:00:38,310
some capacity if we can and make our voices heard because this is what at the end of the day what

704
01:00:38,310 --> 01:00:45,630
saves Bitcoin the every every node is a person yeah so where can people find more about you and

705
01:00:45,630 --> 01:00:51,410
more about SAS mining where do you want to send our listeners yeah I'd say SAS mining

706
01:00:51,410 --> 01:00:58,130
sasmining.com saz mining you know we've got you welcome to chat with all of our agents there so

707
01:00:58,130 --> 01:01:03,670
actual people, not, not, not agent, AI agents. I realized saying agents is, is a loaded word at

708
01:01:03,670 --> 01:01:10,030
this point. And then as far as me, like you can reach me on X, Twitter at Kay Halliburton is the

709
01:01:10,030 --> 01:01:14,290
way you find me there. DMs are always open, happy to chat with people that want to continue the

710
01:01:14,290 --> 01:01:19,590
conversation. And I think you are, you're absolutely right about freedom you passed on.

711
01:01:19,650 --> 01:01:23,950
It's sort of a real, a dawning realization I've had in the last year at Canute is that,

712
01:01:23,950 --> 01:01:30,950
You know, I've been looking around and being like, oh, shoot, like if it's not me, then who else is going to say these things?

713
01:01:31,270 --> 01:01:33,950
You know, who else is going to move the conversation forward?

714
01:01:34,050 --> 01:01:43,910
And so there's a certain realization that I think if you've been in Bitcoin long enough that you have to go through, which is that you sort of have to pick up the shield and spear and participate.

715
01:01:44,190 --> 01:01:46,870
You can't be a bystander in this conversation.

716
01:01:47,310 --> 01:01:51,430
Speaking up and participation is an obligation you have as a Bitcoiler.

717
01:01:51,430 --> 01:02:01,090
Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to get your way, but I think that you are obligated to participate because the outcome, you have no influence on the outcome if you're not participating.

718
01:02:01,090 --> 01:02:24,330
No, exactly. And Bitcoin teaches you all these things in steps, right? Because first you acquire a little and you think of it as a gimmicky thing. And the number goes up and then you realize, holy shit, I need to secure this stuff. And it just keeps on. You keep on learning and you keep on getting better at stuff, at understanding the stuff. And ultimately, you run a node and you make your voice heard.

719
01:02:24,330 --> 01:02:29,290
and I'd say conversations like this is a part of that too.

720
01:02:29,550 --> 01:02:31,870
I mean, there's a lot of talk about economic nodes

721
01:02:31,870 --> 01:02:33,050
and the weighted nodes

722
01:02:33,050 --> 01:02:35,610
and this node matters more than the other.

723
01:02:36,550 --> 01:02:40,670
But what do you think has the biggest impact

724
01:02:40,670 --> 01:02:42,930
on the Bitcoin network as a whole?

725
01:02:43,430 --> 01:02:46,710
Bitcoin Mechanics start nine in his bookshelf

726
01:02:46,710 --> 01:02:48,790
or Bitcoin Mechanics videos

727
01:02:48,790 --> 01:02:50,670
talking about Bit.1.10 to other people?

728
01:02:50,670 --> 01:02:59,890
I think just viewing the hardware and software as the only thing that has any influence of the network is missing the more important part.

729
01:03:00,010 --> 01:03:03,810
And that is that conversation is what leads people to make decisions.

730
01:03:04,330 --> 01:03:07,330
And that's ultimately what makes them buy the hardware and run the software.

731
01:03:07,790 --> 01:03:09,050
There's like no way around that.

732
01:03:09,110 --> 01:03:10,410
There's a deeper layer here.

733
01:03:10,510 --> 01:03:13,130
There's the incentive structure of human connection.

734
01:03:14,050 --> 01:03:16,510
And to me, that's the most beautiful part of it.

735
01:03:16,510 --> 01:03:19,990
It's not first and foremost about the technology.

736
01:03:19,990 --> 01:03:26,990
it's it's about human beings and human action are you trying to tell me social context matters

737
01:03:26,990 --> 01:03:32,030
is that what you're saying can you because i i i 100 agree with you if you try to objectively

738
01:03:32,030 --> 01:03:37,930
separate the human from the network you're wrong i'm just gonna say full on and so i think this is

739
01:03:37,930 --> 01:03:44,250
there's an information more at foot here right the battle of hearts and minds it's just a peaceful

740
01:03:44,250 --> 01:03:50,310
one that's not being waged with literal spears and shields but i think it is what is going on

741
01:03:50,310 --> 01:03:56,370
and and the argument over people's thoughts is is absolutely more important because people control

742
01:03:56,370 --> 01:04:03,050
their individual nodes mining rigs and so individual action in the aggregate is what

743
01:04:03,050 --> 01:04:10,750
makes the decisions that get played out on the network exactly the nowhere is the pen truly

744
01:04:10,750 --> 01:04:15,370
mightier than the sword than in Bitcoin land, or the keyboard mightier than the sword.

745
01:04:15,810 --> 01:04:17,470
We're all keyboard warriors here.

746
01:04:17,570 --> 01:04:18,690
And this is the beauty of it.

747
01:04:18,750 --> 01:04:22,350
There's not a single drop of blood shed in these wars.

748
01:04:22,950 --> 01:04:27,630
They're all peaceful and they're all, they're power struggles, sure, but they're peaceful

749
01:04:27,630 --> 01:04:28,410
power struggles.

750
01:04:28,670 --> 01:04:30,390
And those are healthy.

751
01:04:31,110 --> 01:04:32,150
Those are not destructive.

752
01:04:33,110 --> 01:04:37,490
So long live Bitcoin, I guess, is the ending catchphrase here.

753
01:04:39,110 --> 01:04:39,950
Yeah, agreed.

754
01:04:40,750 --> 01:04:42,950
It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

755
01:04:44,350 --> 01:04:49,290
And I'd love to have you on again here at some point in a year or so

756
01:04:49,290 --> 01:04:51,290
and hope to see you at some of the...

757
01:04:51,290 --> 01:04:53,470
Are you going to any conferences, by the way, this year?

758
01:04:54,290 --> 01:04:54,870
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

759
01:04:55,070 --> 01:04:58,330
I try to get out, I mean, to about a conference a month.

760
01:04:58,330 --> 01:05:01,910
So the next conference I have coming up is August Accelerando.

761
01:05:03,090 --> 01:05:05,230
Actually, I think I'll be over in your neck of the woods.

762
01:05:06,010 --> 01:05:07,930
I missed it last year.

763
01:05:07,930 --> 01:05:12,930
was it Baltic Honey Badger, but BTC Helsinki.

764
01:05:13,290 --> 01:05:14,530
And there's like a mining conference

765
01:05:14,530 --> 01:05:15,590
that's happening before that.

766
01:05:15,690 --> 01:05:16,710
And I wanted to participate.

767
01:05:16,930 --> 01:05:18,430
I mean, we do have a data center in Norway,

768
01:05:18,610 --> 01:05:21,750
so planning on coming over for that conference.

769
01:05:22,250 --> 01:05:25,030
It's a bit of a jaunt from the Proving Amazon,

770
01:05:25,250 --> 01:05:26,970
but I'm very much looking forward to it.

771
01:05:27,850 --> 01:05:29,710
We'll make sure it's worth it for you.

772
01:05:29,830 --> 01:05:31,350
You know, I'm part of that.

773
01:05:31,470 --> 01:05:35,230
I have a small finger in the BTC Health conference.

774
01:05:35,830 --> 01:05:36,170
Oh, cool.

775
01:05:36,170 --> 01:05:38,230
Luke is a bigger part of it

776
01:05:38,230 --> 01:05:40,690
We're in charge of the speakers and the schedule

777
01:05:40,690 --> 01:05:42,870
So we'll make sure

778
01:05:42,870 --> 01:05:44,690
You'll have a good time

779
01:05:44,690 --> 01:05:45,510
In Finland

780
01:05:45,510 --> 01:05:48,610
And Baltic Honey Badger is not happening

781
01:05:48,610 --> 01:05:49,530
This year I believe

782
01:05:49,530 --> 01:05:52,770
But it's probably happening next year

783
01:05:52,770 --> 01:05:54,890
Which would be their 10th anniversary

784
01:05:54,890 --> 01:05:56,490
So looking forward to that

785
01:05:56,490 --> 01:05:57,650
If that's happening

786
01:05:57,650 --> 01:05:59,570
Shout out to Anna and Max

787
01:05:59,570 --> 01:06:02,290
But see you in Finland I guess

788
01:06:02,290 --> 01:06:04,230
Any plans to go to Lugano after that

789
01:06:04,230 --> 01:06:05,110
In October

790
01:06:05,110 --> 01:06:13,550
no no i've got a past september it's it's a bit open territory what what fills in uh i've wanted

791
01:06:13,550 --> 01:06:19,530
to go to logano for the last couple of years so possibly but i've also been invited to the first

792
01:06:19,530 --> 01:06:25,270
bitcoin conference in india and i'm sort of convinced that india is a uh a late market about

793
01:06:25,270 --> 01:06:30,450
to explode because of their connection historical connection to gold i think when bitcoin takes off

794
01:06:30,450 --> 01:06:32,890
in India, it's going to go like wildfire.

795
01:06:34,390 --> 01:06:36,470
Yeah, they have a great community over there.

796
01:06:36,630 --> 01:06:43,090
And I've been invited to go to this conference in Bangor twice, I think, but I haven't made

797
01:06:43,090 --> 01:06:43,490
it yet.

798
01:06:43,750 --> 01:06:48,950
So that's one that a box that I want to tick off before Logano.

799
01:06:48,950 --> 01:06:53,790
I'm also going to Bitcoin Historico in El Salvador in November.

800
01:06:53,950 --> 01:06:55,330
No, that's after Logano, by the way.

801
01:06:55,590 --> 01:06:56,610
It's in November.

802
01:06:57,470 --> 01:06:58,990
So that's another fun one.

803
01:06:58,990 --> 01:07:05,890
yeah anyway i i think i think we last crossed paths in el salvador now that you're saying that

804
01:07:05,890 --> 01:07:12,210
at bitcoin plant you know what was it what was the name of it adopting big adopting bitcoin yeah

805
01:07:12,210 --> 01:07:16,750
yeah yeah yeah that's that's yeah that's where we saw each other yeah i don't think it's happening

806
01:07:16,750 --> 01:07:21,130
this year either but i'd love to get back to el salvador uh if for no other reason than to grab

807
01:07:21,130 --> 01:07:26,670
some waves while i'm there but um historical maybe maybe i'll see you there as well yeah fantastic

808
01:07:26,670 --> 01:07:28,950
Anyway, looking forward to seeing you again

809
01:07:28,950 --> 01:07:30,810
Thanks for a wonderful conversation

810
01:07:30,810 --> 01:07:33,530
This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show

811
01:07:33,530 --> 01:07:35,410
You should, you know

812
01:07:35,410 --> 01:07:37,570
Like, subscribe and brush your teeth and all of that

813
01:07:37,570 --> 01:07:39,550
And adios until next time

814
01:07:39,550 --> 01:07:40,130
Take care

815
01:07:40,130 --> 01:07:41,110
Thanks, Hino