Nic Carter: Bitcoin Core Values, Layered Scaling, and Blocksize Debates | Lex Fridman Podcast #173

the following is a conversation with. nick carter who is a partner. at castle island ventures co-founder of. coinmetrics.io. and previously a crypto asset research. analyst at fidelity investments. he's a prominent writer speaker and. podcaster. on topics around decentralized finance. and especially. bitcoin quick mention of our sponsors. the information athletic greens for. sigmatic. and blinkist check them out in the. description to support this podcast.

this conversation with nick carter is. part of a series of episodes on. cryptocurrency. that is a small journey of exploration. i'm on because i find decentralized. finance. and especially bitcoin fascinating. technically and philosophically. especially because it may be the very. mechanism that achieves. a global decentralization of power. giving more sovereignty to the. individual. and making our systems more resilient to. corruption. manipulation and in general to the.

darker side. of human nature please let me also. address something. for a few minutes that happened recently. that's been weighing heavy on me. if you find me annoying to listen to. please skip to the actual conversation. with nick. i had a recent podcast episode with. anthony pompliano. where we spoke about bitcoin and life. in general for three hours i was curious. inspired. positive or at least i tried to be as i. usually do.

someone clipped out out of context a. short segment of me mumbling something. about having a phd and i started getting. mocked. online because that made it convenient. for people. to mock me for being yet another. quote-unquote. expert who learns about bitcoin and. thinks he knows everything. i almost never mentioned that i have a. phd except to make fun of myself. as i was doing or at least trying to do. in the full context of that conversation. i brought up grad school as a random.

example of one of the many journeys i've. taken. that was hard but where the destination. was in itself. not very useful i was saying i enjoy. exploring with a curious mind. and i'm willing to be patient to learn. to listen. to humble myself with knowledge for the. sake of knowledge itself. grad school was an example of that the. phd means nothing. at least to me i never call myself an. expert. or at least try not to because that. would be dumb.

because i know how little i know i'm not. a. influencer or a thought leader or. whatever else. silly self-aggrandizing label people put. on their linkedin. i try to be the opposite of what i was. mocked for. i try to think deeply about the world to. look for the beautiful ideas in the. minds of others. and to be inspired by them i wanted to. say all this because. psychologically it struck a bit of a. blow. it made me realize that even when i.

approach things with love. i may be mocked i may be derided i may. be taken out of context or even. lied about with the growing platform. this is sadly only increasing. i now have learned that there's people. who are waiting for my missteps. so they can point the finger laugh and. say. see i told you so that guy's a joke he's. a fraud. as a fellow human being the knowledge of. this is painful. yes i know people tell me to toughen up.

and. my life has been about strengthening my. mind in the face of my limits. but i refuse to not be fragile and wear. my heart on my sleeve. it's who i am in some sense this is the. immune system of the internet. but let us be careful not to destroy the. good ones in the process. the bitcoin community had to endure many. years of attacks from quote unquote. experts. and also fraudulent cryptocurrency. efforts that scam people out of their. money. this created a powerful immune system.

that fought the attackers and the. scammers. i understand this and i also understand. that one of the beautiful aspects. of bitcoin is its community of humans is. decentralized. but some small part of this community. has come to enjoy the. us versus them battles sometimes for the. sake. of the battle in itself this happens in. political discourse as well. i understand this but to my limited mind. it sounds like group think which has.

powerful defense mechanisms against bad. ideas. but has dangerous consequences if taken. too far. as in many periods of human history that. i often talk about. where the us versus them thinking has. led to the suffering of many. again i understand the value of this as. many bitcoin is explained to me. but it's not the way i as a sovereign. individual. choose to walk in this life by the way. none of this podcast should be treated. as financial advice. before nick kindly gifted me with a.

hundred dollars worth of bitcoin. in hardware form i didn't own any. i'll probably buy some bitcoin on cash. app coinbase and. other platforms and also transfer to a. hardware wallet. just to learn how to do it but other. than that i don't necessarily make wise. investment decisions. money is not a motivation for me. personally i try to avoid it actually. i'm grateful for every day i'm alive no. matter how much money is in my bank. account. for long stretches of my life that.

number was very close to zero. and i was always fortunate to be free. and happy. so i encourage you to listen to people. much smarter than me. for actual good financial advice here. i'm just exploring ideas and as if this. has not already gone on too long. let me please make another comment on. the style of discourse among. some bitcoin maximalists on platforms. like twitter. that in my humble view i may be wrong. but i believe.

is not conducive to the nuanced. empathetic exchange of ideas. i very much look for and enjoy again i. appreciate their style of discourse. i think i understand the value of it but. it's not my thing. so i don't want to engage in it i want. to hear the quiet voices in the room. i look for people to inspire each other. and when we disagree. i look for disagreement that is grounded. in respect. and empathy i think that mockery and. derision. destroys the possibility of those. nuanced conversations.

it drives away the quiet thoughtful. empathetic voices and i try to give. those voices space to be heard. to shine to exchange ideas whether we. agree. or disagree so if i happen to block you. on twitter. i block you with love honestly. i will never speak poorly view or even. think poorly of you. i would love to hang out in person give. you a big old hug. and talk about life over some beers if. you see or hear me say something stupid.

which i'm sure i do often or something. you disagree with. and you still respect me as a human. being please show your love as i always. do to you. but also send me some links to blogs. books. videos podcasts where people describe. why. my stated idea may be totally wrong i. love this kind of long-form disagreement. i humble myself every day by reading. books and blogs by people. much smarter than me sometimes it. strengthens my ideas. sometimes it totally changes them but i.

always learn. this is a two long way of saying that. i'm here. trying to walk with grace and with an. open mind. a bit of patience and always love. if i make mistakes cut me some slack. like you. i'm only human allegedly. this is the lex friedman podcast and. here is my conversation with nick carter. what philosopher or philosophical idea.

had a big impact on your life. not just in the space of cryptocurrency. but in general oh so we're. we're going now we're rolling going. right in rolling because you majored. philosophy. i did i majored in philosophy i didn't. know what to do. with my life and my parents said do. whatever you find interesting it's like. okay philosophy great. i find that interesting yeah um and it. had way more of an impact on my career. actually. uh than i thought it might you know. typically i guess if you do philosophy. you go into a lot of finance so it sort. of makes sense but.

um there are a number of philosophers i. really admire. uh the big one of my favorites would be. descartes probably the notion of. skepticism. it's sort of a rabbit hole it's kind of. hard to pull yourself out of it. basically the brain in the vat theory. pulling yourself out of that. but yeah i really like epistemology you. know questioning what it is to have. knowledge. um so descartes was was one of my. gateways to that. do you think everything is noble like we.

humans can. can know fully the objective reality oh. definitely not. no i mean i reality is very much. processed through your own. you know subjective lens so. how much do you think do we understand. about this world. because a lot of your ideas a lot of. things we might talk about today. are kind of trying to figure out human. civilization how. humans how human behavior works at scale. all those kinds of things that kind of.

assumes that we have it. or we're able to somehow figure most of. it out. right so in your sort of when you step. way back. how much of it have we really figured. out well i think that's the conceit of. economics is. thinking that you can model human. behavior right in these unbelievably. complex systems. and then i think that's the modern. critique of economics like the sort of. tilapian critique. is that you can't have true knowledge. and they're much.

less predictable than we think they are. and you know we behave. according to our accumulated assumptions. and we're using tiny sort of. data sets trained on the last fifty. hundred years. and they turn out to be horribly askew. and that's when we have our grace wands. and our black swans. uh so i'm i'm much more on the sort of. you know reality is much less notable. than we think side of things. but it is nice to have very concrete. things like bitcoin that's for sure.

oh so you think so most of it is shaky. ground but there are some things there's. like islands of sturdiness. yeah bitcoin is one of them that's. that's a good way to put it yeah i mean. like look at the dollar system not to. pivot this into the dollar right away. but. the dollar is like shaky ground. who truly understands the dollar system. i mean the totality of it the euro. dollar system. the way that monetary policy interacts. with the economy. is monetary issuance inflationary.

what's the relationship between. unemployment and inflation. even policymakers don't understand these. things economists don't seem to. understand them. what is deflation how do you define. inflation none of these things are. really known. or knowable so a lot of people kind of. make a claim that there's a lot of. manipulation possible with the dollar. with the. with those currencies if you couple that. with. the fact that people don't understand it. and yet. there's claims that being manipulated by. centralized power.

how do you bring those two ideas. together if no one understands it how. can you manipulate it. i think what we don't understand are the. long-term consequences. of our structures so like the fed's. mandate. to target unemployment and steady. um you know exchange rates or low. inflation. you know what we don't understand is. okay what is the result of doing that. continuously for 40 years. right what is the net effect of that. what is the consequence of the long-term.

accumulation of debt. and you know basement interest rates. what is the net effect of that on. society. we might understand just much short. short term. features of the system but i think it's. the longer term features we don't. understand. do you think there's like malevolent. people. like people that don't have good intent. in central banks like. in the system you know uh. when you have centralized power any. forms.

it's susceptible to somebody hacking the. system. taking the power and in the shadows this. is where conspiracy theories come in. right in the shadows be able to. uh you know act. out things that have a lot of negative. impacts on the large percent of the. population. in self in greedy self-interest do you. think there's people like that or do you. think. fundamentally most people are good even. those. associated with the sort of central.

banking. oh i mean i don't villainize those. people i think everyone is the hero of. their own story. right so they all believe that they're. forced for good in the world you have to. are there any true villains i don't. think so i think. they get socialized into a world where. they believe. their particular skills and their. mandate. is you know what they should be doing um. i think they might be presumptuous or.

arrogant in some cases. and you know i think it's more of a. systemic issue where you have. a small handful of very homogenous. types of people with phds from the same. institutions that are brought up in the. same cultural context. that you know set policy and wield a. tremendous amount of control over. society. and i think they have this notion that. you can tinker. society you can play with a few key. variables and tinker society.

into a state that is desirable or good. and that's what they're trying to do and. i think the consequences of that can be. pretty bad. but no i don't think it's born out of. malevolence. there's an interesting idea i think. michael malus brought. up as a test whether you're on the left. or the right. the question he asks which is do you. think some people are better than. others if you say. yes he claims you're on the right if you.

start. answering if you start like saying a lot. of things. like uh uh you're on the left. so if you start explaining yourself well. okay. yeah it's a good term for it i was. really. so in this in this test i suppose. i would be on the left because i'm. uncomfortable with the idea. that some people are better than others. as a basic. feeling as a starting point in the way. you think about the world because.

as we're talking about everybody's a. hero of their own story. when you start to think some people are. better than others. as a starting axiom. it's like a slippery slope to where. you think you're way better than others. and then you start to like basically. it's okay to. take advantage of a large percent of the. population. for the greater good totally and then.

you go into stalin mode. in hitler mode where it's okay to murder. a larger part. of the population for the greater good. so it's like it's this. very dangerous slippery slope in my mind. so i tried to. not uh i was always uncomfortable with. that kind of test. or even that kind of thought and yes the. same applies and suppose. in in government in central banking is. if you think some people are better than. others. applying your idea what is good can have.

large-scale detrimental effects. of course yeah i i'm glad you didn't. pose me the question. i mean i think it maybe not the left. right axiom isn't. uh the disjunction isn't the way i would. sort of. put it but um you know to me it's just. if you reason in a consequentialist way. you know that lends itself to. authoritarianism. yeah where whereby you think you can. shape society and only you can shape. society in a positive direction.

according to your you know specific. objectives. so let's step onto the land of. sturdiness that is bitcoin. what is bitcoin and um in your view what. are. you know the principles the. philosophical foundations of bitcoin. well bitcoin the term i think refers to. two things specifically. so one is the protocol for conveying. value through communications channel.

so just a set of rules that we. collectively opt into. in order to transact online or just add. a distance. and then the other thing is the name of. the. asset the sort of monetary unit which. circulates. within the system and that always. confuse people a lot because it's like. well you've got uppercase bitcoin. lowercase bitcoin. why didn't satoshi just give them. different names like in ethereum you've. got ethereum. the system and then ether although.

people don't really talk about ether. very much but. they you know chose to distinguish them. in bitcoin for whatever reason they're. not distinct. uh so the two bitcoins get co-mingled. all the time. in the explanations did you find that's. a problem that confuses things. i mean what's what's really a. distinction between the protocol and the. currency. well they are sometimes uh distinguished. practically. like you can transact with bitcoin. outside of the bitcoin protocol for. instance right.

uh so you know you can transact with. bitcoin on. ethereum or i have bitcoin on an open. dime here. this would be a bitcoin transaction it. wouldn't settle on the bitcoin network. do you mind explaining what you have on. the table before us yeah so i brought. you. some presents this is awesome this isn't. a bribe this is just a proof of concept. okay so this is basically. um a bitcoin bearer. instrument so i put 100 bucks of bitcoin. on here.

and to spend it you have to basically. physically destroy. part of the device you have to poke a. hole and um you know poke off one of the. little transistors on this. so it can only be spent once uh. so and you can't extract the private key. from this device. so the private key was generated on. device always stays on the device. so what it means without uh. like breaking off like a small part so. this basically is a way to physically.

instantiate bitcoin. so it's um it's kind of. cold yeah effectively so here thank you. so much this one's limited edition it's. orange. so what is it called again open dime the. point is. if you wanted to settle a bitcoin. transaction instantly. the kind of same way that a cash. transaction is instant final settlement. right you would do it with a device like. this so. if i was buying a house from you you.

know. you might prefer to do it with a. physical bearer instrument. as opposed to waiting for a confirmation. on the bitcoin. blockchain so the moment i hand that. over to you. goes in your possession you're the owner. there's no way for me to have retained. the private key like. i could have created a bitcoin paper. wallet and given that to you but. you have no assurance that i didn't copy. down that you know the key elsewhere. so this solves that problem so this is a. physical instantiation. of the the bitcoin uh.

transaction outside the bitcoin protocol. that's right. this is you're transacting the currency. outside of the protocol so it's analog. bitcoin we're. we're running an analog which i always. like because bitcoin is this immaterial. thing. and so it's nice to have physical totems. how much does it cost to manufacture. this. you know like 15 bucks or something. is it so this is just kind of a almost. like a philosophical statement. versus um something that's scalable for.

for use like you know the point of. bitcoin is to be in the digital space. right but. this shows like bitcoin can be anywhere. it's useful for gifts but yeah i mean. i don't know if it would be a suitable. foundation for a physical. bitcoin economy in theory these would be. like cash-like instruments that you. could use to transact. well i just mean post-apocalypse yeah. yeah but. you still need you still need to plug it. into your laptop to actually verify. that there's coins on there so you still.

need the internet. so i have to take your uh word for how. much money is on here. no i mean you can you can plug it in. and check yeah but to transact to. extract. bitcoin from this i need to break yeah. you have to poke a hole through the. the little hole and that renders it. spendable exactly. so you know that's protection again so. you spending it and then representing. that it's still loaded that's. fascinating. cool yeah so that the other thing i.

brought you're basically dice. uh 12-sided they don't have any bitcoin. on them. so they just have a bunch of different. critiques of bitcoin on each side. uh we'll go through them then this is. awesome i i don't know if we have time. to do all 11. because there's one with my funds logo. on it but um. it's just basically a tongue-in-cheek. joke that. the critiques of bitcoin are so formalic. at this point that you can just put them. on dice. yeah um it's it's silly.

well some of them might be topics for. interesting conversations. oh yeah we can even arrange the. conversation that way you can roll the. dice and see what you got. all right but first uh the. the philosophical foundation is a. bitcoin like how do you see bitcoin. outside of just. a basic protocol and a basic currency it. seems to be like you said. uh it seems like sturdy ground so what. do you mean by. yeah yeah so it's not just any protocol.

for moving valley around it's not just. any currency it's got specific. rules and values that are embedded in it. and this is an important point as the. bitcoin is the encoding. of certain values which are often. misunderstood. or not acknowledged necessarily. um and so it's sort of impregnated with. values. and what they are specifically is a. topic of debate and there have been. civil wars fought over the values. inherent in bitcoin.

you know one of them was should bitcoin. be this. cheap scalable the base layer low fee. payments system. with an emphasis on pdp payments or. should it be more of this. like gold like digital commodity. that would eventually settle. infrequently. and mainly between institutions right so. that's fundamentally a conflict of. visions. right uh but the so. you know keep in mind that this is just. one man's opinion i don't speak for.

bitcoin. right so i would say the key the key. number one value that's embedded in. bitcoin is the notion of. non-discretionary monetary policy. so algorithmic monetary policy as. opposed to human. based monetary policy satoshi was very. clear about that bitcoin is an. alternative. to modern central banking where you have. constant tweaking constant intervention. which. satoshi felt leads to credit bubbles and. so on.

so bitcoin proposes a completely. non-discretionary monetary policy. um sort of decays over time 50. of the coins were issued in the first. four years and then the next 25. the next four years then 12 and a half. percent in the next four years. until you get to 21 million units and. none of those numbers really matter. like it could have been 25 million units. and it could have been a more aggressive. slope or more gradual slope. but what matters is that this schedule. was proposed.

even before the code was public the. schedule was proposed. and then we all collectively agreed to. stick to it. and that is kind of a first for monetary. system. i mean gold kind of has that property. right because. goal the supply of gold above ground. only really increases at one to two. percent a year. so it's it's sort of inhuman which is a. good feature right you don't want to. give humans that much control over it. bitcoin is a much more.

you know fastidious approach to that it. really is super concrete about what the. supply schedule is and the fact. crucially that it can't change. so we can't have a bailout of debt. debtors. a lot of people would say a lot of. people had debts denominated in bitcoin. and we needed loose. accommodative monetary policy to bail. them out that's not possible we couldn't. have a jubilee denominated in bitcoin. because the social contract. we've all you know bought into and.

committed to. is that it's not just non-discretionary. so that's sort of one of the first. things. um and i think ultimately that comes. back to. basically a strong respect for property. rights. because if we were to have unanticipated. inflation let's say. you know really charismatic leader. somehow commandeered bitcoin and. convinced everyone that we should have. 30 million units and not 21 million. that would basically be dilutive on. everybody that. held bitcoin and had opted into the.

21 million set of coins. an additional 9 million unanticipated. would have a dilutive effect on everyone. else. and that would be a covert way of. effectively stealing their purchasing. power. through inflation is that possible that. kind of thing i mean uh. what what's the mechanism of bitcoin. that resists that kind of charismatic. leader. well we've had people that have had. a lot of influence in bitcoin in the. past and they've tried to make changes. to the protocol not as.

dramatic as that but bitcoiners. have generally resisted those. individuals. institutions and they you know. bitcoiners have a good track record of. sort of staying true to. to those core values so that you know. the you mentioned. values and and like sticking to the. monetary thing. but there's bigger values uh. there's almost like psychological values. that are instilled in bitcoin uh you. make a point. that bitcoin for many is a vessel quote.

for their expectations hopes and dreams. uh can uh the bitcoin protocol support. this kind of complexity of. the human condition so like there's. ideas of freedom. that seem to be spoken about there's a. sort of ideas of um. of i mean even love yeah i mean. some people kind of use it as a meme. like you know bitcoin is love or. something like that. you know mostly to troll me because i.

talk about love all the time. but you know these bigger ideas than. just. the exchange of currencies yeah i mean. bitcoin itself is very uh simple i would. say like ultimately. it doesn't you know pretend to do very. much it really just settles transactions. um but people do superimpose their own. views on it for sure um and bitcoin's.

qualities give rise. to these perceptions of it having. censorship resistance. or giving you transactional freedom or a. measure of transactional privacy. so because anyone can. operate a node and join the consensus. process and because mining is a. competitive free market process. that means that it's likely that. you can't be censored by the miners so. that means you have transactional. freedom so you have these.

computer science technical features of. the system that cause it to have these. political qualities which is. it's very hard or impossible to censor a. specific individual. so it's it's interesting to see that. flow. but so that's one of the core values for. sure is the censorship resistance. then you have the fact that it's a. cryptographic based system. and uh you can hold value in your brain. by memorizing 12 words for instance.

that gives it seizure resistance which. is again a political concept if you. wanted to. desert your jurisdiction with your. wealth intact in your brain. you know that you know cryptographic. feature of the system the fact that it's. built on public key cryptography. and that you can encode a bitcoin. private key. in 12 words that gives it this political. salience. that you know you can you're now. empowered. relative to a despot basically yeah i.

mean. there's so many beautiful concepts. behind. cryptocurrency behind bitcoin that. stand for sort of freedom some of the. basic things that the founding of this. country. the one thing i don't like personally. behind. uh bitcoin and cryptocurrency is that. money's involved. and it's like people's life savings. sometimes are involved. so there is naturally a kind of. fear a self-preservation.

uh like instinctual kind of dogmatic. thing that comes in. where you're not the best of human. nature you're you stop being a george. washington. and you lose touch of the like. foundational principles which i think. are beautiful just like the founding. principles of this country. so that's that's just like um so i like. staying on the. level of like the philosophy versus the. level of like all my money is invested. in bitcoin. and that that becomes very tricky.

territory to have. principal discussions yeah about ideas. well it's an interesting intention i try. to stay balanced despite being very. exposed to bitcoin so. let me ask the ridiculous question just. in case. who's satoshi is it you. we don't know it's probably not me. because i was. um like 17 when satoshi mounted bitcoin.

16. so unlikely and also i'm not really. a programmer so um. there's a lot of theories but honestly. it's one of the greatest mysteries of. all time because. even bitcoins that have been around. since. day one really you know people that were. around. before bitcoin came out they're on the. mailing list they were active in the. cypherpunk community. you asked someone they sincerely will. not know and they may not even have a. good guess. as to who satoshi is is it important to.

know or is it like actually important. not to know. do you think that's a feature or bug. that you we don't know. some people don't like the uncertainty. especially you know folks on wall street. they really want to know. and uh if you read the coinbase s1 their. disclosure pre-ipo that's a risk factor. that satoshi could come back. so the the risk management crowd wants. to know. because they want to know if maybe. satoshi had you know. undesirable political opinions or.

something that would forever taint the. project. do you think they were just trolling. with that risk with the. satoshi's identity being a risk factor. or is that like actual. like was there an actual meeting and a. discussion of that being a risk factor. i think in the risk factor sections of. the prospectuses it's really just the. lawyers doing a total brain dump to. cover absolutely everything they can. think of so it's just lawyers it's not. like. uh you know it's like i think elon was. somewhere in the legal documents where. spacex.

mentioned that like uh earth governments. have no jurisdiction on mars. like they threw that in there and it. feels like yeah that could be lawyers. but it could also just be elon trolling. yeah so i wonder if it's like the. coinbase folks trolling. or if uh i don't know if it's lawyers i. hope it's the trolling not the lawyers. the the coinbase leadership they're not. as big uh. trolls as elon is but uh i mean it's a. it's a risk for sure from their. perspective because.

let's say satoshi returned doesn't seem. likely and let's say they decided to. spend all their coins. which also seems very unlikely um that's. you know. rumored to be or estimates have it at 1. to 1.2 million. bitcoin which is like 50 60 billion. dollars worth. so some people consider that to be a. risk you think it's. uh you know this is almost like a topic. of leadership. it doesn't feel like anybody any one.

person speaks for bitcoin. not there's not even like prominent. figures like you have for like ethereum. you have vitalik buterin. it doesn't there's a lot of like top. minds talking about. like yourself but it's not like one or. two. do you think again is that a feature or. a bug like uh. do you think for effective for bitcoin. to effectively. have a role in um society that like.

is as large or larger than the dollar. there needs to be like. leadership that represents it almost. like democratic kind of thing. well that's a real counter-intuitive. point because most bitcoiners including. myself would say no the lack of. leadership is. a great quality to have because if you. have a charismatic leader and a. foundation or corporation that controls. it. maybe they can control the features of. the protocol and maybe they can. expropriate holders of the coin or.

you know build in an endowment that pays. them off and. gives them privileged access to the. units of the coin for instance so. you know we call people that have. privileged access to the money spigot. cantillon insiders which is there's this. economist that pointed out that. as you know i think richard county on. that as money enters the economy has an. uneven flow right so you see this in the. last.

last decade or so before that too. the consequence of money printing in. this country is people that own. financial assets. made a lot of money and people that. didn't didn't so you see that. cantelon insider cantelon outsider. effect. and it's the same with a cryptocurrency. in many other alternative. cryptocurrencies that do. have these corporate entities or these. leaders and ceos. they're able to make specific decisions. regarding. the protocol and the currency of the.

asset the benefit themselves their. cronies etc. and that's not a good feature to have i. mean. it does grant you you know the ability. to orchestrate decisions. in a faster and more efficient way but. long term what you're trying to optimize. for if you're creating a money. is monetary credibility and soundness so. you don't really want it changing all. that often. and you don't want to have the. appearance of. you know these elites that are engaging. in rent seeking or anything like that so.

there's definitely people that are. influential in bitcoin there's core. developers that people listen to because. it's. i would say meritocracy largely and. they're sort of self-appointed high. priest of the protocol. i write a lot about bitcoin people. listen to me but it's a completely free. market. of ideas right i don't have any. authority within bitcoin whatsoever. i'm just a scribbler you know you use. the scribbles. so was aristotle uh socrates. and nietzsche okay at the high.

level uh technically how does bitcoin. work. is there interesting things you could. say like what are minors. what are nodes full nodes what are. blocks. what's proof of work is there uh a nice. way to wrap up. a clean explanation of the protocol oh. man. that's uh that could be a whole that. could be another five hours. is there interesting because i'd love to. talk to you about block size wars and. sort of the. the the politics psychology the.

principles around that but sort of. building up to that it'd be nice to talk. about how the thing works. that's fair i mean and the block size. wars are really fascinating. discussion of how governance debates. intersect with technical features um. so i guess we can yeah so basically. at the highest possible level bitcoin is. a. globally shared uh it's really a. replicated ledger that.

um any participant that wants to be an. equal peer on that ledger. they want to maintain that ledger and. they want to stay up to date with the. global state. of the ledger and really any monetary. system is just. a ledger with physical cash. we benefit from the physical. instantiation. of the money so the physics is the. ledger the physics is a ledger right. same with gold right you can't just. produce new units of gold. so we trust that gold atoms are hard to.

create. um although not impossible right um you. could uh. fire a bunch of protons and whatever is. the adjacent metal uh and create gold. atoms would be expensive. uh and the same with dollars you know we. trust that it's hard to counterfeit a. dollar. so we trust the physical analog world to. help maintain the state of that ledger. with digital money. like um you know the money in your bank. account. your checking account we basically trust.

our institutions or banking institutions. to keep a faithful record. and then ultimately we trust the central. bank to administer that system. so there's kind of a handful of nodes in. bitcoin we trust that the economic. incentives of the system. are carefully poised basically so. we trust that the free market mining. competition. will lead to the miners assembling. transactions. into blocks in a faithful and correct. way.

and that we are going to converge on a. global state of the ledger continuously. which updates every 10 minutes or so. with some variants. and then the miners aren't the sole. entities that control the system to. really. participate if you're a merchant and. you're accepting bitcoin. you really want to run your own full. node and check the whole history of. transactions. sort of something like when i say five. to 600 million transactions that have. ever occurred on bitcoin. so full node contains all the.

transactions ever transacted. on the the bitcoin blockchain and that's. i saw it's like 200 gigs or something. like that it's like 350 something like. that. it's doable on a regular consumer laptop. and that is going to be. really key later on in the discussion. sure. but so you know that's really the. ultimate trust models first of all we. trust that the miners that assemble. transactions into blocks and. they are the archivists you know they. inscribe those transactions onto the.

ledger. and they have an economic incentive to. sort of behave correctly because they're. getting. paid and no units of bitcoin that's part. of it but then really. you are also you're not fully trusting. them. you're actually if you want to run a. node you replay every single transaction. in the history of bitcoin. from the beginning to the current day. and you arrive at the present state that. way. so you don't really have to trust too. many people or entities. you can validate the correctness of that.

all the rules have been followed. that all the bitcoins that were created. were done so in the valid. way that the inflation rate was adhered. to. and that there's no covert inflation you. know that. if you're spending 50 units of bitcoin. uh you had that bitcoin to spend. in the first place uh so it's sort of. delicately poised between node operators. who who you know engage in this validity. checking. kind of anti-counterfeiting checking and. then also the miners which are an.

industrial entity. and they basically produce block space. and. assemble transactions in the box and. everybody so the miners are incentivized. to not mess with the system because. they're getting value from the system. so if they mess with it it's going to. decrease the value of their physical. work investment yeah so they have to. incur a real physical cost. to produce a block right so right now.

you get uh 6.25 bitcoins in a block at a. minimum and then maybe some fees. as well and how hard is it to produce a. block now. well challenging i mean you need uh. so six point two five bitcoins and a. bitcoin's worth fifty five thousand. dollars or so. so it's probably going to cost you about. that amount. to produce it because it's a free market. competition. and miners have very free thin margins. so. it's like if i auction off a dollar you. would pay up to 99 cents.

to buy that dollar for me it's exactly. what happens with miners. they're you know basically competing for. the right. to obtain new units of money so. logically speaking. they would pay up to the value of that. money in order to earn it. and for people who are not familiar the. process of mining. is solving a difficult cryptographic. problem. that's a computational problem it's i. would say it's not like. people sometimes represent it as like a. really challenging puzzle.

like the individual puzzle is very. simple like you can do with pen and. paper if you wanted. you know like shawn 256 it's just that. you're searching through the big. mathematical space to find the needle in. the haystack. you're just doing lots of iterations of. a simple puzzle that's just brute force. hence like the stability of of the whole. idea of the proof of work. if it was a if you if there was a. shortcut it wouldn't be. it wouldn't work exactly so let's hope. nobody. solves sha-256 yeah there's a lot of.

discussions in. from the quantum computing space but. everybody i i talk to. all my colleagues and that work on. quantum computers. uh say this we're quite a way quite a. long way away from that being an issue. in uh cryptography and then and. certainly in asian cryptocurrency. that should have been one of the sides. on these dice should have been quantum. because i don't think it is i forgot to. put on this edition. people should check out scott aaronson.

there's a lot of people that are kind of. um. selling quantum snake oil so you should. be very careful. i think it is a really exciting space. that might. change the world in the next decade or. 100 couple hundred years uh especially. for simulating quantum mechanical. systems. but in quantum machine learning uh. people should check out tensorflow. quantum. it's a nice way to sort of educate. yourself about the space.

and actually if you're pragmatically. minded to. you know through software engineering. explore how you simulate quantum. circuits how you run machine learning on. those quantum circuits. the the main point that scott makes. scott erinson. people should check out his blog too is. that like. there's not yet a single machine. learning application. that doesn't do almost as well on a. classical computer so it doesn't. like yes the dream is somehow.

uh quantum computers will change the. nature of. artificial intelligence but there's yet. to be an actual. algorithm that uh or a problem set or a. data set. where that would be the case so. skepticism is good in this space. anyway that said so you kind of. explained. uh how bitcoin works. you also wrote a blog post recently. giving a shout out to the new book. the block size wars.

what is the block size what are the. block size wars. its history its importance its uh. philosophical foundations. yeah i mean bitcoin at this point we. have our own civil wars if you're. wondering. about how politically intense it gets. it's currently not hot it's cold. it's oh yeah we're in a dayton right now. there's no tanks or missiles at least. not yet hopefully. it can get a little violent i guess i.

think one of the bitcoin core developers. or. one of the participants in the war got. swatted at one point. what's what it means when someone does a. fight a fake. uh phone call saying that you're holding. someone hostage at your house and the. swat team goes. it's pretty scary wow internet warfare. tactic. yeah but uh the block size warf i would. say effectively ended. um although we're definitely gonna have. more. civil wars in bitcoin for sure but.

basically the core argument was. a technical one on its surface but a. very deep. political one at its core the technical. question is. how many megabytes should be in each. successive block. so satoshi basically installed a limit. of one megabyte per block. so we should backtrack there was no. limit. in the beginning and it seems like. satoshi. what is this 2000 the war started in. what 2017 or something like that.

i don't know when the 15 was when the. you know. the battlecry what was the first battle. in the civil war. i don't remember but sort of satoshi i. don't know if you can comment it. on it like why does satoshi set the. limit to one megabyte. all of a sudden almost secretively. and in the beginning there was no limit. whatsoever. yeah i mean we can get into and people. have spent thousands of hours poring. over satoshi's writings to find.

you know which side satoshi was on and. you can find. like any textual exegesis you can find. evidence for either. side right but uh yeah i mean. effectively when bitcoin was launched. there was a block size because. if you made a block over a certain size. with the first edition of the code. it would have crashed nodes but then. yeah in 2010 satoshi added the one. megabyte limit. in a covert way with no comments or. anything. and uh that's stock basically and uh.

and then bitcoin blocks filled up and. people that had been socialized into. this vision of bitcoin as an effectively. free. transactional network like why pay a. transaction fee. if you're not at congestion if the block. isn't full the miner will mine your. transaction for free right. um people that had been brought up in. that. status quo from 2009 to kind of 2015. they noticed the blocks started to fill. up and they're like okay well let's just.

remove this arbitrary limit. right what what could possibly be the. harm right and then. a whole other faction said no you need. to. cap the data throughput of the system. because if you increase it it's going to. be highly exclusionary. and ultimately regular folks are not. going to be able to run a full node. so there's a fixed number this is a. fixed frequency of blocks. and so if you want to increase the. number of transactions. per second you want to increase the size.

of the block so. huge blocks allow you to shove in a lot. of transactions. right small blocks don't so that's what. you mean like constraining the system. so what's the benefit of a small block. size where transactions. when you can squeeze in only a small. number of transactions. and what's the benefit of a huge block. size where you can squeeze in a lot of. transactions. well it really comes down to the way you. think about the system. so a lot of people wanted bitcoin to be.

visa scale. so to have blocks sufficiently large. that you could accommodate. a visa level scale of transactions so. which is many orders of magnitude more. transactions that's right i mean. preposterously larger in terms of data. throughput. then you know bitcoin offers up or at. least it used to 144 megabytes of space. per day. and your average transaction is 350. bytes so. you know you could add a push to for 500.

000 transactions a day which is not many. so if you wanted to get to visa scale. you'd have to increase blocks. obnoxiously large uh the small blockers. claimed that this would. overwhelm the ability of any regular. person to. ingest that data and stay current at the. you know state of the ledger. to rebroadca to replay all those. transactions to ensure that the protocol. rules were valid so basically. the small blocker contention is that you.

eliminate the trustlessness. of the system by pushing a ton of data. through the system because only one or. two. industrial heavy duty nodes would ever. be able to run. the protocol at that point so by the way. in the civil war the two sides. as you as you're calling them the small. blocker and. the big blocker sides and so that. takes us back to the uh the thing that. you mentioned that a regular computer. could be a node.

and uh with a big with big blocks. that's no longer going to be the case so. just the number of transactions. is going to blow up the size of the. blockchain. that every full node has to store and so. then. as opposed to a regular mom-and-pop. type of node you're going to have to. have data centers. so they're going to have to be owned by. large organizations there's going to. have to be very few of them. and that's how you centralize the. control over this whole.

operation so the big blocker. yes it allows you to be visa and do a. huge number of transactions but it. becomes centralized and the small. blockers. you cannot actually do kind of merchant. style transactions. but you get the decentralized benefit. well i don't even think the big block. approach would allow you to be visa. frankly. because there's effectively one node at. the visa network. right so you don't really need to.

maintain this peer-to-peer architecture. at all. and the amount of data you'd have to. push through the network. to reach visa scale is a really. preposterous amount. i mean and we have now evidence for what. happens. when you try and scale up as a. blockchain and do 10 million. transactions a day which is still not. visa scale right you know. i've i've you know seen what it's like. to operate. those nodes and it's not pretty so there. are totally.

genuine computer science physical limits. because it's a it's a broadcast network. everyone has to be aware of every. transaction. and that model which gives you the. trustlessness the nice guarantees where. everyone's an equal peer on the network. everyone has audited the full. history of the transactions that model. falls apart under stress. so the small block of vision is that. ultimately you would scale in a layered. approach.

with the base layer transactions being. settlement style transactions. and you know payments happening at the. other layers basically. is that universally agreed upon or like. to a large degree agreed upon that the. small blockers have won in this. in this debate well where would you put. the the current state of affairs. there was a wave of competing bitcoin. implementations. in starting in 2015 with bitcoin xt. um actually gavin anderson who is the. guy that satoshi handed the reins to.

when satoshi left gavin supported this. large. block proposal uh and so that was that. didn't achieve. consensus and then there was bitcoin. unlimited. and then later on there was a genuine. hard fork. where the small blockers couldn't or the. large blockers couldn't push through. their proposals. on bitcoin itself so they just created a. competing version of bitcoin you know so. by the way uh. maybe you can comment on but sort of. hard fork versus a soft fork a hard fork.

is. when it's not no longer compatible. what's the right way to put it. they can't operate on the same. blockchain they say with the same. protocol. yeah so there's a few ways to define. them and it's. pretty it gets controversial as well but. um. one one way to define it as a hard fork. is. a expansion of protocol rules and a soft. fork as a shrinking of protocol rules. that's an interesting way to find it. it's not very intuitive so i don't like.

that way. um another way is that a hard fork is. backwards and compatible whereas. softwork is. in theory backwards compatible so in. august 2017 basically the large blockers. had had enough. and they said we're going to hard fork. bitcoin we're going to. create a clone an alternative version of. bitcoin. which has the same a shared history. as bitcoin itself but you completely. fork it and you create a new future.

and uh but you know everybody that had a. balance on bitcoin at the time. also had a balance on the alternative. coin bitcoin cash. and so that was really that's what it's. called bitcoin cash is the hard fork. that was one of them there were more. actually i mean what what the heck. is bitcoin satoshi uh satoshi's vision. bsv. bitcoin sv so this is all talking about. increasing the max. the limit of the block size more and. more and more yeah that was one of the. changes they wanted to push through uh. but bsv was the fork.

of bitcoin cash so hard fork of bitcoin. yeah so and so now there's multiple big. blocker. block chains floating around it's like. what are your thoughts about them. well i was pretty popular sorry to. interrupt. uh are they popular i mean if you look. at the metrics they're not and. oh they they don't trade they i think. each trade below one percent of the. value of bitcoin itself i see so. measuring popularity is like how much. they actually oh. value uh value frequency of trade oh no. no i mean.

they they do like a fair number of. transactions but there's an there's no. way to know that that is genuine. or just contrived so you know ultimately. the true measure i think in my mind is. just. where the market prices these protocols. relative to bitcoin. uh because that's like a prediction. market if. if bitcoin cash was being priced at 50. of bitcoin you could say. the market has given it a 50 chance of. unseating bitcoin. right but both bitcoin cash and bitcoin.

sv which was a hard fork from bitcoin. cash itself. are well i believe at this point well. below one percent of the value of. bitcoin. and in the so in like the ranking of. different cryptocurrencies. what is it bitcoin ethereum is ethereum. in value. uh yeah number two and then bitcoin cash. is the one that. it's in the top five right but it's just. a fast drop off. you know i haven't checked lately but i. think it's it's reached kind of. morbidity. you know it doesn't really have much. traction.

um the blocks aren't full so the whole. value proposition was. you know we will get all this merchant. adoption if we increase the block size. that just didn't materialize. in my view they had a flawed vision of. how adoption works. and what blockchain should optimize for. uh maybe maybe you get a bitcoin cash. supporter on the show they'll give you a. different answer. but yeah full disclosure you know i have. my sympathies and. i think the small blockers won that. skirmish for sure so at this time.

there's no. merchant adoption and so on so it's kind. of its vision the whole. reason for existence for at least for. now hasn't materialized. and so that's that's the indication it's. possible that. well it's a sign that perhaps that's the. wrong way to accomplish the scalability. well you know first of all i think the. layered scaling model is definitely. definitely correct i mean that's. absolutely the way these things have to. work. given the constraints of blockchains. what is the layered.

scaling model it's really how all. payment systems scale. blockchain or otherwise and i think a. lot of people don't understand this. is that there is no equivalent to. scaling at the base layer. in the regular payment space that. totally doesn't happen. all of them are built on layers so visa. is like the fifth layer. in the payment stack that ultimately. depends on these utility scale. settlement systems like fedwire. chips ach basically interbank settlement.

systems. so you've got these slow moving but high. assurance. settlement systems fedwire is probably. the number one. you know like when you send a wire. that's using the fedwar system typically. on top of that you know you have banks. and then you have payment processors. and then you build up these layers and. layers and layers and then you have. these fast payments you know. venmo paypal credit debit visa. you name it those payments are not final. when they occur.

you know a credit card transaction will. not be final for. 90 to 120 days so. that's fascinating you've decoupled the. payment the financial message. and the settlement those are distinct. concepts and the settlement happens on a. deferred basis. so that's how you get scalability is you. have lots and lots of. messages but that they don't settle for. a long time. they might settle on a net basis on an. end-of-day basis. but so that's really how it works and.

then you have fed wire where your. average transactions in the millions of. dollars. and there's only a few hundred thousand. transactions a day it's sort of an. interbank. settlement network so that's my. vision for how i think bitcoin will. develop. too bitcoin itself on the base layer is. the. slow moving high assurance final. settlement network where if you're. sending money to the other side of the. globe. to someone you don't trust where you. want that payment to be final. in a short period of time and both. counterparties know it's final.

then you would use that but if you. wanted to buy coffee you could do it on. a second. you know second layer uh lightning would. be one way. there's a bunch of side chains now or. you could. use you know a more centralized solution. if you wanted. it's kind of a profound idea that in the. space of transactions when you're buying. coffee or buying anything really from. merchant or exchanging goods and all. those kinds of things. that most of the time like basic.

honest behavior human behavior which. it does appear that most of our. societies is based on the fact that. we're all. most of us are honest is. like stuff is not going to go wrong when. you do the transaction. and you only need like the base layer. well there's bitcoin whether it's. uh i forget the terms you use for the. for the credit card version. but you need that just to verify. just to like resolve any disagreements.

or shady. yeah and and that's a really rare. occurrence. so it's okay for that to be handled uh. in this in the small block debate uh. handled at a rate that's much much lower. than the rate of the transactions. that's kind of it's a really interesting. idea that when we spend money. we didn't actually exchange the money. most of the time yeah most of the time. you're not getting final settlement when. you do a transaction.

and oftentimes that causes there. are there's pluses and minuses on the. plus side you have huge efficiency. if you use a credit network like visa. but that it's in the name credit. right visa is extending you credit right. they're kind of guaranteeing your. reputation to the merchant. but fraud happens all the time right. there's always fraud. because you have this reversibility. right. um and so you can you know engage in. fraud against a merchant. um if you have a final settlement.

there's no possibility for fraud so. that's one reason merchants kind of like. accepting bitcoin because. once you receive an inbound bitcoin. payment and you. deliver some good or service you know. that payment can't be reversed. but frankly most of the transactions we. you know undertake on a daily basis. do not require those strong assurances. of final settlement. there's one exception which is physical. cash with physical cash. or the open dime a cash-like product.

you actually are getting final. settlement but. online most online banking transactions. most p2p. digital wallet transactions in the. dollar system. they're not really final at all you. mentioned lightning. lightning network what is it what are. your thoughts. on it and what are your thoughts about. any kind of alternatives. so lightning is one potential.

payment solution built on top of bitcoin. where you have different assurances. different transactional assurances. but ultimately it's very proximate to. the base layer so if something goes. wrong you can always basically settle to. the base layer this layer two. yeah layer two you could say and. basically the intuition is kind of like. opening a bar tab. so you go to the bar and you might drink. a dozen beers over the course of the. night. maybe half a dozen um.

and well i guess nobody goes to the bar. these days but. let's say you did yeah you open a tab. and at the end of the night you settle. up once you're not. necessarily paying each time you get. another beer. so it's it's the same idea you're. opening a channel an ongoing. relationship with your counterparty. and so lightning has you open a channel. the counterparty and you're sort of. sending back and forth these. cryptographic commitments saying you. know i agree to send you some bitcoin. but you don't necessarily settle each.

time you make a transaction so you do. hundreds of thousands. of transactions in a channel the other. thing lightning proposes is saying okay. well. now that we have channels established. what if we interlocked a number of. channels together. so if you and i have a channel and you. know me and my buddy have a channel. my buddy can now pay you because you're. you have a relationship through me. basically and so lightning is this. network this overlay network that sits. on top of bitcoin. and allows people to transact in a much.

faster and less frictional way. without the need for bitcoin's kind of. slow periodic settlement. um assuming that everything sort of goes. well uh. do you see any downsides to this like. have you seen flaws in the whole system. from a security perspective from a. scaling perspective. any of that or is it is lightning. working well. it works i've i use it um when i. initially. sold those dice i sold them on lightning. i was one of the first.

merchants to use lightning back in the. day uh the first edition of the dice. so people could buy these guys somewhere. well they used to be able to i haven't. made a new addition. recently they're very scarce and very. special. they're like physical nfts just kind of. yeah i mean the flaw with lightning is. really that you. you know and this can be remediated a. number of ways but you have to sort of. pre-fund these channels so it's. it's a weird concept to have to inject. liquidity into a channel. in order to accept a payment you know so.

i'm sure those user experience problems. can be solved. but it's still uh in a state of relative. immaturity. so we'll see in terms of other ideas. that are. side chains or soft forks of bitcoin. you've mentioned something about schnoor. and taproot. what are your thoughts about this update. to bitcoin. and in terms of its promise to improve. privacy and scaling. and so on and what what other things are.

you interested excited about in terms of. the development of bitcoin. well schnorr and toproot that's the. first new protocol upgrade. since segwit in 2017 which was what. laid the groundwork for lightning to be. developed basically. and fruit is really the first protocol. change. in three almost four years now. so it's we're very excited about it. what uh what are i mean is there any.

something interesting to say. technically about what are the things. that's actually going to improve. and um maybe on a on the politics side. bringing a protocol change. uh on bitcoin what does that actually. involve yeah i mean it's a huge deal. because the last time we tried to make a. change to the protocol we had whole. civil war over it. and it was incredibly difficult to get. segwit activated in 2017. uh and it took all this bricksmanship.

and threats and all these campaigns. and it was this whole thing luckily i. think. things have quieted down and there's. much more consensus that schnorr top. rate is a good. change to bitcoin and everyone generally. supports it. but everyone kind of has ptsd over the. last time. when we tried to change bitcoin and so. we're sort of really dithering over how. we actually want to implement it. so it's taking forever because we're. trying to set the protocol. for how do you change bitcoin itself and. that. all of our assumptions went out the.

window last time so we're trying to. reset and decide. what is a legitimate way to institute a. change to bitcoin. so that's actually the big question. right now it's not should we implement. these changes we basically all agree. that we should it's a meta question is. what's the valid way to implement new. changes to bitcoin. what's a way that is scalable in the. long term and will last and people. consider credible. even if this one isn't controversial at. all so that's. where we're at we're basically debating. over how do we implement this change.

that we all want. if to get a feeling of how slow bitcoin. governance is and how deliberate it is. everybody collectively wants the change. but we haven't fully agreed on how we're. going to put it into bitcoin. so it's a classic sort of bitcoin. situation. but what it is is i mean schnorr is an. alternative signature scheme i think it. was encumbered by a patent. and it only just been unencumbered when. satoshi created bitcoin i believe. it's a better signature scheme than.

elliptic curves which is what. uh big than ecdsa which is what bitcoin. uses. and uh so it's been long enough that we. now trust it. you know kind of in cryptography it's. meant to be lindy you know it's sort of. you want to test it over time and then. it's considered safe to use so schnorr. has been around for long enough that. we've decided to rip out ecdsa. and insert snore which is just a. different signature scheme which is more. efficient. um and it has better properties like if.

you want to do a multi-signature. transaction where. many people collectively sign in order. permission a spend. that would be more efficient in a bytes. sense. than uh ecdsa for instance so it's. pretty incremental. and then toproot is all about. having transactional conditions. that are sort of withheld from final. entry onto the blockchain. um so it it's kind of a way to.

um have more private conditional. transactions on bitcoin. so both of them i would say are. incremental uh. changes is this an over-exaggeration. that channels approve might improve. privacy and scaling. which is it like at the high level. things that people mention. is that just like a dramatic way of of. trying to frame. uh what's fundamentally an incremental. improvement. yes but incremental is the word right. it's not we're not going to get an order.

of magnitude enhancement to either. privacy or scaling but we. will get a considerable enhancement. but privacy and scaling are actually two. sides the same coin because. you get more transactional privacy by. removing data from the ledger. so that there's less metadata for people. to surveil and analyze. and that's also you scale by compressing. and being really space efficient with. transactions. and the more parsimonious you are the. more economically.

dense each bite that everyone has to. retain on the ledger is. and so those are you know very closely. allied concepts. so do you mind if we go through some. potential criticisms. of bitcoin totally yeah i've spent the. last five years. you know tackling these every day so are. the. the dice the same uh those two are the. same yeah. there are three editions so let's go. [Applause]. okay go with the dice what do we got oh.

silk road. what does that mean road classic classic. situation. so i mean that was the darknet. marketplace set up by ross albrecht. in the early days of bitcoin that's one. of the first killer apps for bitcoin was. being. the payments network behind this darknet. marketplace. and uh you know where you'd go to buy. drugs and things. and so that became associated with. bitcoin if you remember the press. coverage from back then. but over time that faded and it became.

less of a critique but. so like the the critique is that uh. bitcoin is something you. would use for illegal activity for drugs. for crimes all those kinds of things. as opposed to for any kind of legitimate. transactions yeah. in the merchant transactions and today. bitcoin settles 10 billion dollars a day. and the vast vast majority of it is you. know completely legitimate it's just a. useful. alternative system but back then a huge. fraction of all bitcoin transactions. were related to the.

basically illicit marketplaces and if. you're just tuning in. this incredible 12-sided die has 11. common criticisms of bitcoin that nick. yeah in in a genius way has put together. maybe we could do a couple more. oh said that it was satoshi something. satoshi coins satoshi coins we we. touched on that early in the episode. what if satoshi returns and sells. all of their coins so we don't know for.

sure how many coins satoshi actually. mined or produced because there's a. degree of probabilistic analysis. that you would do there's a few. few thousand blocks that were mined by. what we think is a single entity in sort. of 2009. and so if you add them all up you get to. about a million so people think that. satoshi. mined a million coins and then they're. worried that satoshi would return and. market sell all the coins.

thus crushing the price of bitcoin. so looking at some of these uh. no ceo i think we touch we've already. hit on. the dice no merchants that that's. no longer true about that yeah. there's a scalability one and i think. that one has addressed. the idea that you're mentioning with the. block size debates and the lightning. network that. by adding extra layers on top you can.

you can achieve scalability. that's my vision that's my theory um. and you know you can do it in a. permissionless and a permissioned way. like coinbase. is a big bitcoin exchange they provide. scalability. they're a financial institution you know. you can settle up. internally on their own database and. then you know periodically settle to. bitcoin so. oh so they don't uh they do something. like the lighting network internally so. something like this the middle kind of. mechanism well honestly i'm not sure. exactly how it works they might have.

that. built in but just generally speaking. institutional scaling. is a model for scaling right where you. could have. banks holding bitcoin and they issue. notes against bitcoin and. those are your payments and then the. base layers the settlement. layer i think that's what you're getting. with the. boiling oceans is this is like the. impact. on uh weather and the environment and. the environment. so uh you know that is a concern that.

people have in terms of like the proof. of work requires that there's. a lot of computational resources and uh. being used and that. requires a lot of energy and like some. large percentage of the world's energy. is used to. to mine bitcoin what's how how would you. respond to that criticism. yeah i mean that's been the loudest. critique of bitcoin this year. in the press this year really yeah so i. mean it's not like a new. criticism but bitcoin is consuming more. energy than ever. so as the price rises the electricity.

consumption rises and so. we've we've heard renewed uh. you know bellyaching over this for sure. i mean it's. if you don't believe that bitcoin is. useful then you're inclined to think. that all the energy consumption is a. waste. so that's you know it's it's it's. something that's sort of unrebuttable. if you fundamentally contest the. validity of the bitcoin system. so if bitcoin is like a thing.

that will take over it will become like. the main. mechanism of financial transactions. or transactions period in the world then. you say well the cost of energy use is. actually quite low relative to the. benefit it provides. if you think it's not going to be if. it's just a. volatile uh way to. uh to make a little money in the short. term then you see the energy used as. really wasteful that's totally spurious. yeah yeah so.

so then there's no really response i. suppose. that's so i can totally you know get. into the details of bitcoin synergy mix. and things like that but. that's like at a high level what the. debate is it's this normative question. like does bitcoin have an entitlement to. consume any of the world's resources. and that's actually where the debate. should end much of the time. because a lot of people fundamentally. dispute. the the validity or usefulness of. bitcoin as a system.

and so of course they're gonna consider. the energy usage illegitimate. now there's a lot of mitigating factors. if you you know think the bitcoin is a. potentially useful system which is. bitcoin. consumes energy in a very peculiar way. which virtually no. other industry does which is that. bitcoin. is a geography independent buyer of. energy. which is not how we humans. typically consume energy like we need.

energy to be produced near to population. centers. and we need it to be produced at the you. know corresponding to the peaks and. troughs of our consumption. right because we have to 100 match the. demand and the supply at all times. right otherwise we have blackouts so. bitcoin doesn't care. about any of that it just buys energy on. a constant basis. and so it's you know indifferent to. where it's being produced. and so the the consequence of all that.

is that. bitcoin will buy energy that's otherwise. being wasted. basically so it will buy so-called. stranded. energy assets that would not make it to. a population center and in fact most. energy produced is ultimately does not. sort of make it. to you know your your socket in your. wall. um and so this is why so much bitcoin is. mine in china for instance. it's not because you know chinese. industrialists had a special affinity. for bitcoin.

it's because the chinese grid had a. massive overabundance. of energy in particularly in four. provinces sichuan yunnan. inner mongolia and zhang jing so in. those four provinces those are all. pretty distant from major population. centers. so because of that you can't really. transport the energy that easily and so. huge amounts of energy are curtailed or. basically wasted in all these provinces. and so miners set up shop there because. they could mine bitcoin with the excess.

energy they could monetize this thing. that otherwise was going to go to waste. so you know there's things like that. which you know. i think mitigate the the reality bitcoin. is not really. rival um with our consumption of. electricity it's not depriving anyone of. electricity it's mostly. these stranded assets that are going. into supporting the bitcoin network. so maybe let's do a last one since you. mentioned china says china control. so so much mining is happening in china.

how do we not uh how do we prevent. nation states from controlling much of. bitcoin yeah that's the flip side of a. large. portion of the blocks being mined in. china due to this energy feature which i. discussed. which is that there's a lot of chinese. miners for sure. now the question ultimately is what. degree of control do miners have over. the bitcoin system. right and that was part of the block. size.

debate i mean the miners when we. implemented sub-graded witness in in. 2017 the miners just. didn't want to do it eventually the. users the regular folks running nodes. rebelled and basically said look we're. going to implement this whether or not. you do it. and it was a threat to the value of. bitcoin because if. this threat had gone through it could. have split bitcoin and it had been. really messy. so the miners sort of capitulated so. i think the current consensus is that.

miners do not have unilateral control. over bitcoin. and the governance is more poised. between people that run nodes. developers and miners it's sort of a. triumvirate. where neither of them has you know total. control. uh so that's my current model for. controlling bitcoin. i think if you asked a minor they would. tell you they didn't feel that they had. sort of unilateral control over bitcoin. either. almost as a thought experiment can i ask. you to think about.

if you're if some of your predictions. some of your analysis. some of your understanding of bitcoin is. wrong. in in the following sense where it will. not have the impact. uh that you have a. vision for it that you will not have the. scale of impact and perhaps in terms of. value will go to zero to something very. low and other cryptocurrency or other. financial systems will. overtake it what would be the reason. for that in your mind like why might you.

be. wrong if you look back at it yeah in the. future. what did you not understand about. bitcoin that uh. will result in that yeah that's a great. question. i think for that to happen one of two. things would have to. obtain one of two things would have to. happen for bitcoin to just. be irrelevant basically um. either central banks totally clean up. their act and uh. you know stop engaging in rampant money.

printing. which i don't expect that to happen. anytime soon i mean it looks like we're. normalizing this new regime of inflation. you know pro-inflation just to remediate. the debt issues we have. uh so that would be one thing that would. make bitcoin. cryptocurrency much less relevant as if. everyone becomes totally assured of the. soundness. of sovereign currencies basically. namely the dollar like the dollar being. the main one uh. that it seems like we're going.

completely opposite direction. but most people seem to be noticing the. stirrings of inflation in society. and you might have noticed it too it's. showing up in commodity prices lumber. prices. and food obviously in financial assets. and. it'll show up in consumer prices. generally soon. but so that would be one way for bitcoin. to basically become irrelevant. because it's a you know it's a. dialectical thing. bitcoin is held in opposition to. the established monetary regime so if.

they. completely reform themselves and you. know the dollar becomes. super sound once again and the fed stops. tinkering. the way they constantly do then uh. then we wouldn't need cryptocurrency as. much the other thing would be if. a completely superior design. for a new sort of state independent. monetary system emerged. but it's really hard to even imagine how.

that would come to emerge. and there's good reasons to think that. bitcoin. the conditions of its launch were. extremely favorable and hard to. replicate. can you speak to some of those. conditions why it's a unique uh. timing wise uh moment for bitcoin to. emerge. yeah so obviously bitcoin was born in. the depths of the financial crisis which. gives it a nice. nice historical element but that was. kind of a coincidence honestly we know.

that satoshi had been working on it. earlier in back or in 2017. um the really special thing about. bitcoin was that. it was launched anonymously by an entity. that did not seek any glory or credit. for what they did. and apparently never monetized it at all. so they never really. moved any of their coins satoshi sent. one test transaction. to uh hal finney who's one of the. earliest bitcoiners. aside from that as far as we know.

satoshi never spent any of their coins. so you have this wonderful promethean. quality. whereby it's almost self-sacrificial i. mean. it's like this borderline god-like. figure in terms of their restraint. finds this monetary technology and. releases it to the world. and pays the price they never took. advantage of their filthy luger you know. they never. they never recognized any of the 50. billion dollars that they. made from bitcoin right and satoshi also.

didn't. assign themselves any privileged access. uh to the coins you know satoshi could. have just written in the code. i own ten percent of the coins but they. didn't they just mined. in the open free market competition like. everyone else it's just that. satoshi is an early miner to support the. network. accumulate a lot of coins for sure but. they didn't have any privilege. special access so that's one thing. that's. extremely special about the launch is. that we had a founder. that was truly committed to the monetary.

protocol and didn't seek. either recognition or financial spoils. and then also left you know satoshi left. in 2010. 2011 and hasn't really been heard from. since it's a very george washington. move gangster move where he didn't want. power and once he got power he let go of. it. precisely that was a key actually move. when that was that was uh probably one. of the most important moves at the. founding of this country. that's right george washington could. have been a king probably if he'd wanted.

and satoshi could have been jerome. powell. if he'd wanted and satoshi could have. held on to power. indefinitely but chose to leave the. other thing is that bitcoin. circulated for a long period of time. from january 2009. to about july 2010. without really having a financial value. so. there weren't really any marketplaces it. didn't have a value. and so that gave it this really great. distribution.

you know among a broad set of. stakeholders and there were no venture. funds or hedge funds. you know trying to aggressively buy up. all the supply back then. now when you have new cryptocurrencies. launched they're like aggressively. pre-mined. and some gigantic silicon valley venture. fund. is going to own 30 of it and so it's. sort of impossible to conceive of how. that could become a global money. because how could you know a. silicon valley investment firm own.

30 percent of the money supply that. doesn't make sense that's just so. oligarchical right it's unbelievable so. bitcoin by contracts is a very bottom-up. thing. it was the early enthusiasts uh. people that were you know really um. excited about the. technology they're the ones that obtain. those early coins and so. there was a real element of fairness and. just an organic nature to its launch. which would be incredibly hard to. recapture today let's say.

satoshi came back and they. said okay i made bitcoin 2.0 i'm going. to release it. there would be the most aggressive land. grab ever. by you know gigantic pools of capital to. sort of get favorable allocations of the. new system. right can satoshi with bitcoin 2.0 build. in. a resistance mechanism or a prevention. mechanism for the land grab. it would be hard to because you know if.

you have capital and resources. i mean if it was a proof of work chain. you just have people that would invest a. ton of money in mining for instance. but most new blockchains. cryptocurrencies are just. sold basically they're you know issued. in token offerings kind of thing so. so it's hard to enforce through the. protocol the decentralization of. control yeah power it'd be challenging. too and people have tried to do air. drops you know. where they you know distribute coins to. a large number of people basically. doesn't work.

most people don't care about the air. drop so it's hard to have an equitable. distribution. i think the conditions of bitcoin's. launch were so lucky. and favorable that they're very unlikely. to be replicated. so i do think it's going to be real. challenge to ever have a new competitor. that's as decentralized as leaderless as. dispersed sort of distributed as bitcoin. as has its credibility. i don't know how you could overrule it. on those important features. what about bitcoins comparison to other.

current cryptocurrencies so. bitcoin versus ethereum for example. why um is it possible that ethereum. overtakes bitcoin. that's certainly possible yeah i'm not. ruling it out. um ethereum leadership is sort of wise. enough to understand. that they shouldn't compete with bitcoin. on those. most profound qualities like ethereum. doesn't really aspire to be. more sound from a monetary perspective.

than bitcoin. right the in fact the ethereum. leadership are sort of constantly. tweaking the monetary policy. so they went for a completely different. trade-off right. they also don't compete to be as. decentralized from a governance. perspective right. because there's leadership there's an. eth foundation there's a charismatic. leader of italic. and ethereum has this policy of hard. forks. so in bitcoin hard forks extremely rare. in ethereum it's the default way to.

change things so it's a much. more adaptive system and it changes more. frequently. but that also means that it's sort of. they're incurring more risk. when they introduce those changes. there's much more complexity so. ethereum is smart because they sort of. understood bitcoin as the top dog when. it comes to a sound. money a digital gold type thing. and they went for all of the different. trade-offs they wanted to be. more of a platform they wanted to have.

more complexity the transactional layer. they wanted to take on more risk in. terms of changing the protocol they. wanted to change more quickly. they wanted to make the monetary policy. more mutable. so ethereum takes that completely. different tack of course. you know i'm not ruling out that it. could take over bitcoin from a market. cap perspective. it's just a very different system and i. tend to think the bitcoin is the most. disruptive one because it's. the most equipped to challenge sovereign.

currencies. in the grand scheme do you think they. can co-exist. so like in the future is do you see a. world where. you know uh ethereum captures. some large percent of the market and but. nevertheless the minority. a hundred percent 100 percent bitcoin. has already been tokenized and put. on to ethereum many units of bitcoin i. think over a billion dollars worth. so not only do they coexist they are.

actually mutualistic. so they're like two creatures that have. this you know it's like the. the rhino and like the bird the pecks. the parasites off the rhino's back or. whatever. yeah right so i don't know which is. which in the analogy but. yeah i don't know who the parasites are. yellow or you know the alligator and the. teeth cleaning fish or whatever right so. oh you know i always wonder why the. alligator doesn't just. eat the fish but uh i guess they're.

brushing its teeth. basically so um ethereum. is it gives you more transactional. flexibility there's much more. experimentation happening there. it has this whole decentralized finance. element. there's a huge number of bitcoins that. circulate on the ethereum protocol. right because ethereum is open to other. asset types. basically so i think that's actually. accretive to both systems. because ethereum gets to have this good. form of collateral bitcoin.

on the system which is good volatility. characteristics. and then it's a supply sync for bitcoins. which are sort of now they're injected. into this third-party protocol. and that i think reduces the velocity of. bitcoin overall and it's probably good. for the valuation. so you see it it quite possibly could be. a symbiotic relationship that's really. interesting. i think so i think so uh what are your. thoughts. about uh vitalik buterin.

what are your thoughts about some of the. other figures in the space. outside of bitcoin i think vitalik made. some mistakes with ethereum. ultimately like i disagree with some of. the decisions that were made. along the way like there's this infamous. case of this bailout. where 14 of ether was lost in the smart. contract. or really the this smart contract that a. lot of ethereum leadership were sort of. backing and supporting was hacked. and then the foundation with vitalik.

support. chose to make a change to the underlying. protocol. to undo the hack right so. to me that was not the most. prudent approach because you're. basically. violating the core protocol rules in. order to undo. you know to bail out a specific contract. which is failed. granted there was a lot of ether in. there but. i think that shook the credibility of.

the ethereum system. it happened back in 2016 i think uh that. was one reason why i. i became disenchanted with ethereum so. basically. even if in that case that might fix an. important problem that opens the door. to centralized like. manipulation of the protocol in the. future yeah it basically demonstrates. that there's certain elites. at the protocol level that can exercise. specific control.

over the system and you know. a lot of people have lost money in hacks. on ethereum and a lot of contracts have. gone south. a huge amount of value but they didn't. get a bailout. and it was just when you know this. specific. contract called the dao dao. was hacked that you know the leadership. intervened. and and you know to their credit they. haven't had a significant intervention. or bailout since then. but it did normalize the practice and i.

think it weakened the social contract. so i would prefer that you sort of bite. the bullet in that situation. and you accept the failure of that. contract. that would be a ballsy move to bite that. bullet. yeah i mean and then you would have had. like what they thought was a malicious. entity in. control of a lot of coins i think the. real reason they. sort of felt that they had to undo it. was because they'd always plan to move. to this proof-of-stake world. where your political control over the.

system is a function of your wealth in. the system. and they didn't want this attacker which. would have inherited. all this significant wealth to have. influence. over that future proof of stake version. that's sort of my theory. yeah i mean that makes sense this it. kind of reminds me. of the bailout of car companies. you know this this is difficult there's. a lot of people that criticize the. bailout of these. large companies you know but creative.

destruction i mean i. i was critical of the bailouts that. happened. during covid i mean i generally think. that it's healthier for society for. bad firms that aren't making money to. fail or be reorganized. under the various you know forms of. bankruptcy. and you saw what happens you see the. you know the corporate sector in japan. uh in the 90s. there was this like slow motion. insolvency where.

basically firms weren't allowed to fail. and the japanese corporate sector lost. competitiveness because. bad firms did not fail and so. you know the process of actual. capitalism for the market clearing. didn't occur. so i'm always in support of um. you know of the free market being. allowed to clear for non-profitable. firms to fail. it's complicated man because uh creative. destruction. seems to be in the long term a positive.

but human civilization is such that. short-term pain has real impact on. people. you know yeah policymakers don't ever. want to incur that short-term pain. because they have a short-term. outlook and term limits often. so but and also just it's short-term. pain. forget policy they just forget. politicians it sucks to lose a job. for an individual you know you could say.

the company the creative destruction of. a company. means the company was inefficient and. that's going to have a ripple effect. of teaching everybody else what an. efficient operation looks like. but like there's jobs that are being. lost there's families that have to. suffer because of that i mean. that's attention we live in society is. having a. basic safety net for our world um. because there's a level beyond which. like if through creative destruction.

that you have. some percent of the population that dips. below a certain level that you would. call. like suffering we don't want that and. that's a difficult. thing to live with like yes in the long. term. you want inefficiency to be destroyed. and. efficiency to be rewarded but there. there does seem to be a base level of. like quality of life. that we want to uphold that's a. difficult thing to think about i think. about that a lot there's a doctor called.

paul farmer that um. you know there's like a in in haiti or. in africa there's a child who's dying. and as a doctor. you want to give everything you have all. the money you have to save that one. child. but there you know and you do actually. but that's uh. that's a very human action it's not an. economic. it's not a it's not a rational action.

from a game theoretic perspective. because there's no way you can take that. action for every child who is suffering. but there's something deeply human about. doing that for that one particular child. in that same sense creative destruction. is an economic principle. but it's not it's not necessarily that. same kind of human principle. and there's a tension there i've i see. it i mean i think that's. the that's the issue with modern central. banking really is that. the central bank always has an incentive.

to. lower interest rates and they've been. doing that from the 70s. towards today on this you know well 80s. really on this slow march down. because whenever there was a hint of a. crisis in the economy. where financial asset prices started to. fall. their reaction is okay we'll inject more. capital into the economy we'll save it. but my view is that these political. short-term measures. cause the buildup of a huge amount of. fragility in the long term and then the.

ultimate collapse is much worse. than the counterfactual situation where. you raised interest rates. you you know you took your medicine and. the economy was healthier. so and that's sort of that's why you. know people like ray dolly. point out that you have these long-term. debt cycles. and we're sort of at the end of one now. is because we couldn't. take our medicine we couldn't you know. let interest rates clear. we constantly wanted to ward off any you.

know difficulty and we didn't ever want. to deleverage. truly and then when the when the debt. crisis happens and it hits. it's you know horrendously bad. so do you think bitcoin might reach. a million dollars in value it's. uh it's having a current resurgence a. crazy one in 2021. in the recent months of uh over 60 000 i. guess it is now. do you think it's possible it goes over.

a hundred thousand do you think it's. possible goes to a million. you can't rule anything out with bitcoin. so. i mean i'm not you know wanted to put. price targets on it but. one way it could reach a million dollars. is bitcoin's value stays unchanged in. real terms. and dollars crashes all it appreciates. against. um not that i expect hyperinflation but. yeah i mean. look bitcoin is worth about one tenth uh. slightly under one tenth the value of. all the gold in the world. and uh you know gold is worth ten.

trillion eleven trillion dollars in the. aggregate. do i think bitcoin can be more. culturally and economically salient than. gold in two decades time. 100 bitcoin was unknown. 12 years ago and today 100 million. people worldwide. own bitcoin so just extrapolate that. what is the level of penetration you. think we'll get 500 million a billion. you know it you can easily tune these. adoption curves.

however you like i i don't think it's. done. you know monetizing and being adopted. globally. do you think it become it can become. like the base layer for a lot of our. financial operation like you become. the main base layer for all our. transactions so like even. banks will use bitcoin essentially and. like visa would use bitcoin. as the base there like it would actually. operate very similarly at the. at the surface layer but at the base. there would all be bitcoin. that's precisely what i expect and banks.

and visa are already using bitcoin. so visa has uh. embraced bitcoin in a really big way. actually and it's always funny to the. people saying bitcoin has to. change in a certain way so you can. compete with visa no visa adopted. bitcoin. right uh paypal adopted bitcoin. square adopted bitcoin obviously they're. not tearing out all of their existing. infrastructure but. they're totally engaging with this thing. uh banks.

have now begun they got the green light. to provide custody. for bitcoin for their depositors that's. the first step. uh eventually like you know it'll happen. one of two ways either bitcoin native. financial institutions will become. banks that's already happening there's. bitcoin exchanges that have gotten. banking licenses. or banks themselves will start to engage. with bitcoin. as a reserve asset it'll converge either. way that's. totally happening uh and yes i mean i. don't think bitcoin is going to power.

every financial transaction i think it. will coexist. alongside sovereign currencies but i. think it's a. great reserve asset it's a very powerful. asset to build a financial system on top. of. because it's highly highly auditable. it's something you can take physical. delivery of very cheaply and those are. great qualities. if you're a depositor in a bank they can. prove to you how much bitcoin they have. they can't really easily prove you know. in the old system how much gold they.

held on deposit. and you can easily conduct a run on the. bank you can hold them accountable. because you can withdraw it because. you know making a bitcoin transaction is. pretty easy at the end of the day. unlike fiat currency it's like kind of. you can't really withdraw all your. dollars from the bank i mean. you sort of can but you're not going to. want to take delivery of. pounds of cash or anything like that so. it's a good modern asset upon which to. build. a financial system basically you you.

mentioned square and. visa sort of investing in bitcoin what. do you make of uh. probably one of the higher profile big. investments in bitcoin which is tesla. and elon musk but there's also a few. billionaires like chamath and all of. them. investing what do you make of this whole. movement why do you think they're doing. it. i mean tesla is an interesting case why. do you think tesla's putting uh. buying so much bitcoin i honestly don't. know and i would love to truly know. elon's genuine thoughts on bitcoin. um because he's kind of sending us mixed.

messages. honestly with his embrace of dogecoin. which is sort of playful not exactly. sure which one. what point he's trying to make there so. you were involved with deutsche kern you. mentioned offline a little bit. in like in the early days or at least. like uh. played around with it what do you make. of deutsche coin what do you make of. elon and doge. what do you make of this particular. meme coin is it is it one like a. legitimate cryptocurrency.

or is it too like a. funny internet way of saying fu to the. man. yeah it's it's a good question i mean so. i wasn't like a figurehead in dogecoin. or anything but that was totally my. introduction to crypto was. mining dogecoin in my dorm room and then. tipping people online in dogecoin which. i just. thought was the funniest thing. so i guess that was really easy to. entertain back in 2013. but it was very playful at the time.

there was a culture around dogecoin. and the people liked it because it was. in opposition to the bitcoin culture. which was really serious and involved. lots of austrian economics. and rothbard and hayek and stuff like. that so. that was my introduction to. cryptocurrency was because. i thought the bitcoin people were pretty. lame yeah and they were like way too. serious about all this stuff. and i was like okay i'll just be a part. of the dogecoin community and they did. all these funny publicity stunts like.

they paid to send the jamaican bobsled. team to the olympics. you know like great stuff like they put. the dogecoin logo on top of a nascar car. yeah um and i just that tickled me so. much because it's like this. made-up internet coin this was back when. crypto was pretty novel and still like. kind of funny and stuff. and that was really entertaining fast. forward. seven eight years dogecoin is way less. entertaining now frankly because. it's the leadership left the community.

spirit. evaporated um the meme didn't persist i. mean doge itself is not really a. contemporary meme. right i mean it's an old meme although. that new refresher the meme like doji. haven't heard that name in a long time. like where does like in a hat smoking a. cigarette i mean there's some sense. where elon is reinvigorating the meme. and it's funny because like one. influential figure could. do just that which just speaks to the. tension that you're talking about.

like tesla is investing bitcoin and yet. elon he also tweets about bitcoin but. yeah he's i mean who am i to question. the meme right like yeah i i can't. you know dissect internet culture and. financially sit here and tell you it's. an invalid meme. yeah you know if if people believe in it. then it's real. is there a space for meme coins at this. at this time. like like doge or somebody or somebody. else to almost like. um you know there's it does serve a lot.

of purposes which is. like you said it pulls in people into. this. whole space of digital currency in the. digital in. uh into cryptocurrency allow them to. explore alarm to have fun. as opposed to taking everything very. seriously is there still space for that. yeah yeah and i mean the crypto. landscape is very broad. today so whatever you know cultural. element you seek to find within crypto. you will find. it was a bit different in 2013 because.

bitcoin was kind of the only game in. town there were a couple altcoins. and so dogecoin made a lot of sense as a. counterpart to bitcoin as the less. serious counterpart. today crypto is just this like gigantic. cultural. and economic trend so it's you know very. multifaceted. dogecoin is one of the many you know. ways that people have to engage with it. i think. a lot of people that buy dogecoin based. on elon's. implied guidance are going to lose money.

because. fundamentally there's nothing enduring. about dogecoin it's an ancient. fork of bitcoin it's unmaintained. they're you know it's probably at risk. actually from a protocol perspective. it's merge mined with litecoin i think. um. if there was an inflation bug on. dogecoin it's unclear who would sort of. be able to remediate that. you know so it's not technologically. very sound. um so i wouldn't recommend that anyone. stores wealth in it.

you know yes it's funny because. cryptocurrency. like my interest in cryptocurrency is in. the exploration of technical ideas. but cryptocurrency is also like in the. case of dogecoin. uh like for lols at least. originally like a meme coin but it's. also a uh mechanism for investment. and so those are sometimes attention.

100 and it's unclear sort of like yeah. you know there's the meme with those. just almost become to take it to. i guess to a dollar trying to drive the. price of the value up to a dollar. but you know implied in that is like. this overlap of the meme. coin and like legitimate investment and. so you have a lot of young people i. think. who almost start getting greedy and want. to make money like as opposed to. uh having fun and that becomes a.

different beast then because you're. essentially. making financial decisions that can have. a long lasting. like you know money is freedom. and uh if you make stupid financial. decisions. it you can remove freedom from your life. and that's. it could be detrimental in that sense so. i don't uh. it's difficult i don't know what to do. with that with that set of ideas because. a lot of cryptocurrency including.

bitcoin is very volatile. because it's new so you're trying to. figure out the space of like. what's actually going to be a large part. of. like you speak of network effects like. what's going to take over the world. and uh through that process there's. going to be a lot of volatility. and if you're talking about. cryptocurrency. as a investment mechanism. then it can have a real detrimental. effects on people's lives.

yeah and that's really the challenge. with operating in the crypto space. talking about it overlaid on top of. everything that's interesting. politically or culturally about it is. the financial incentive. yeah and so you know it's not. all fun and games because they're. literally billions. over a trillion dollars at stake now so. if you buy dogecoin because some. influence around tick tock said so. yeah you've now made a financial.

decision right so. i'm not gonna scold any dogecoin buyers. or any. crypto asset buyer for that matter but. be aware. that there are like billions of dollars. of really elite hedge funds that are. trying to front run all of your. decisions and. evaluate social sentiment things like. that so it's water full of sharks. basically. and by the way if you're listening to. this uh don't take this podcast. or anything i ever say is financial. advice that's definitely not my interest.

or expertise level. the the interest here is to explore. different ideas. speaking of which you've written a. little bit about nfts. i'd be interested to hear your opinions. on this space of ideas these. non-fungible tokens. they seem to have a cultural impact. currently but do they have a long. lasting technical financial or cultural. impact or is this just a fad.

what do you think of nfds yeah i think. the in current enthusiasm. for nfts and the financial metrics you. see. the growth there in that sector is. partially a function of where we are. in the actual credit cycle so. oftentimes when inflationary events. occur. you have correspondent speculative. manias that. occur at the same time because people. intuitively feel. that the fiat currency that they hold is. being debased.

and so they frantically look around for. other places to put it so. stocks property commodities. and then other asset classes. nfts are an asset class and this is the. case with. any inflation you look at in history you. saw these corresponds speculative. manias basically speculative episodes. so a lot of us feel that inflation is. occurring. whether it's in cpi or not the basically. lots of dollars are being injected into.

the economy. we've all seen stocks massively. appreciate even as gdp contracted. and so a lot of people sort of got. caught on to this notion that. wow as the fed you know lowers interest. rates and. congress spends a huge amount of. stimulus dollars into the economy. financial assets going to go up so i. better have exposure to all that stuff. and so you see virtually every asset. class is awash with cash right now. people are. investing like their lives depend on it.

investing trading whatever. whether it's options volumes on robin. hood you know like. kind of retail brokerages things like. that whether it's stocks. whether it's crypto and then other. collectibles baseball cards. their valuations have been skyrocketing. and so i think nfts are part of that. it's a new asset class it's basically an. opportunity to invest in sort of. art or collectibles in-game items things. like that. i think that explains a large degree of.

the. enthusiasm the excitement is that it's a. novel asset class that people can trade. and right as you know these inflationary. tailwinds pick up. now as for the sort of virtues of the. actual technical. phenomenon nfts are actually not a new. idea at all. so you've had nfts i didn't call them. nfts but. in 2016 built on bitcoin for instance so. it's been around for a while.

what it is is a serial code basically. a string of data that is inserted onto a. public blockchain. and then circulates as a unique token. and then the question is. okay well what does that data refer to. what's the external reference. and that has to be defined there has to. be some entity which says oh yeah this. unique. string refers to like this piece of art. or digital content. or you know trading card or whatever so. nft the concept itself is like an. incredibly broad idea it's just well.

what if we took. uh you know barcodes and put them on. chain so that they could be traded. and so they could circulate freely on a. peer-to-peer basis and. plugged into exchanges and things like. that so that concept is super valid. clearly has protocol market fit right. people are using it for a really wide. array of purposes. it's completely going to exist may the. valuations contract. of nfts in the aggregate definitely.

possible probably likely. uh but i think the notion of. creating enduring collectibles or. artworks that have accompanied you know. accompanying signatures. basically autographed art on the. blockchain that has totally been. validated i think that won't go away. i wonder if there's ideas like big cloud. for example i don't know if you saw that. if there's ideas built on top of this. concept it doesn't have to be enough. like ethereum an ft it could be just the.

concept of non-fungible tokens. whether those kinds of things can take. hold. and they it's less about financial. transactions. and more about almost like. um i don't i don't know how to put it. but. like staking identity in some way. whether it's big cloud or. identity of objects like there might be. some way. of connecting physical reality and.

digital reality in some interesting ways. so just the financial aspect is a way to. like put. some validity behind the identity. i don't i wonder if there's like ideas. there that are yet to be. discovered or ideas that. yet to be take hold like big clout seems. interesting yeah it seems shady as hell. seems a little scammy yeah i don't know. if i like the idea that you can. bet on people essentially right.

yeah i think my market cap on big cloud. is like 90 000. and i haven't done anything there so. uh did you take did you like take uh. like verify yourself or whatever. i have not i think people would yell at. me on twitter if i did. so and it's unclear whether it's a scam. yet or not right it's unclear where it's. coming from. well there are some details about the. you know investors it's it's backed by. some pretty big name investors so. i probably wouldn't use the word scam to.

describe it but it's got. ponzi-like dynamics like everything in. crypto. yeah so is very questionable and then. also is. using using people's likeness without. their. permission which is i think a legal. question you know so there's. open questions around it but you know is. are public blockchains and you know. that sort of architecture is that going. to be useful for decentralized or. alternative forms of social media. yeah a hundred percent yes you know i'm.

super super bullish on that idea. basically creating open protocols. open name spaces ways to organize. without the dependence on a single node. effectively in silicon valley you know. the twitter node or the facebook node. i think it's a matter of urgency that we. create. you know digital gathering spaces where. you have strong. property rights you know you have a. claim on your identity you have a claim. on your data.

and open architecture is our way to do. that i don't know if it'll be a. blockchain. but certainly i think the the general. you know concept introduced by. blockchains is a good template for. how to you know organize these systems. yeah. value freedom value decentralization. of power whatever the mechanism. let me ask you about love so uh there is. a bitcoin maximalist. community that.

sometimes so those folks in general. have a strong belief that bitcoin is. good for the world. and it's almost an ethical imperative to. to sort of uh help bitcoin succeed. which i think is uh as a member of any. community i think is beautiful to. believe in the vision of the community. right there does seem to be some. properties of what.

some may call like toxicity or derision. and mockery and those kinds of things. um so you know uh some folks have. criticized this. right that uh bitcoin maximalism is not. necessarily good for the world. even if bitcoin is good for the world. what are your thoughts about this kind. of approach. philosophically or practically to uh. the spread of bitcoin and is there a way. that we can add more.

love to the world while we add more. bitcoin to the world. oh that's a great question i mean i you. know bitcoin is sort of what you make of. it so. you can define your own path as you. uh advocate for bitcoin or don't for. that matter. so my chosen approach is the approach. you see here. which i try to minimize the amount of. sort of harshness or mockery. although i've been known to be mean on. twitter too. you know what twitter is a specific.

sorry to interrupt there's a specific. medium where this takes. its worst form so i'm learning listen. i'm actually. because of this podcast but in general. i'm part of different communities. and some are full of like unabashed love. and some more like when i experienced on. twitter. the bitcoin community at first i was off. put. yeah in terms of the intensity the. mockery. i bet the layers of lull.

like the layers of not taking anything. seriously. and i think there's power to that. there's freedom to that i appreciate it. i have respect for it but it's not my. thing. on twitter it's just not not the way i. enjoy communicating on twitter. i retired from twitter i hit i hit a. hundred thousand followers and then i. retired. so i'm free now i don't have to tweet. anymore it's great. but i i totally can see the point i wish.

that. bitcoiners were gentler in their. approach. not all bitcoiners are like that of. course there's you know 50 to 100. million of them worldwide. and a few tens of thousands on twitter. so. i'm not going to claim that they're. necessarily representative the toxicity. though. is kind of a learned habit because. uh bitcoin has had so many episodes. where. strong willed institutions the dice. billionaires. the dice were pretty toxic you could say.

right i'm. basically mocking critics of bitcoin but. at the same time. you're saying that the criticism has. been predictable and repeatable and all. it's been the same throughout yeah and. that's a that's a pretty. you know dismissive thing to say right. that i can reduce you to a. an algorithm of you know with 11 uh. right yeah permutations um. but you know the thing to remember i. guess is that. some of the best funded companies in the.

bitcoin space the most powerful miners. billionaires have tried to change and. co-opt and alter bitcoin. um to shape it to their liking. and without these incredibly hardcore. sort of high priests of the bitcoin. protocol. it would have been hopeless hopelessly. malleated in all number of ways. and so there is a reason. why someone would be incredibly. protective. of bitcoin uh does that justify.

immense toxicity on you know on social. media. probably not but it's a leaderless. uh protocol so the whole point is that. it's money for enemies. and you know some of the bitcoin. maximalists came for me too. when i made suggestions that they didn't. like um. but you know i'm happy to use it the. protocol because. i know that that transaction will be. final regardless of how odious. my counterparty is or how how you know.

politically disfavored their opinions. are. see i mean and this is where there's. there could be disagreements but i. i think you have to think about what's. effective. as a defense mechanism of strong ideas. and i personally think that. uh like kindness and thoughtfulness. and like is much more effective because. it lets the idea shine. as opposed to the personality of the.

individual humans. overriding it but there's debates on. this. you know i i mean i take your side on. that. i think a patient and careful approach. is the way to go. now do all critics deserve good faith. engagement right. no i would say a lot of critics of. bitcoin operate an extreme bad faith. and the reason why is because we're not. just talking about technical questions. in fact most of this conversation has. not been technical it's been political.

because bitcoin is an intensely. political idea. and so a lot of people are predisposed. to totally hate it. and to wish you know death on bitcoiners. i mean there was a professor at gw. this i saw earlier this week that was. amusing about. getting all the big corners on a boat. and sinking it it's like in what other. context would a. you know upstanding professor muse about. mass murder. but in the context of bitcoin it's sort. of okay. um you know within his peers because.

you're talking about something that most. people don't like you know it's a. concept that's alien to them. that doesn't jive with the way they see. the world and so. because it's so you know pitched from a. political perspective. uh there's a lot of critics as well as. defenders that operate in bad faith. i would say but that's the nature of the. beast it's because we're proposing a. very disruptive thing. and there are people that would be. disrupted by it. you wrote a blog post titled on writing.

you're i think an excellent writer. so let me ask what does it take to be a. good writer what does it take to. write some of the blog posts you've. written. sort of condensed set of ideas in your. head the mess that's probably in your. head and putting down on paper. in a way that's uh communicates the idea. clearly and powerfully so that was.

basically the point of the blog post is. that being an. impressive writer is different from. being an effective writer. you know so i think the answer to your. question is humility. basically so i think. if you let pride and vanity seep into. your writing. then you risk uh creating a very noisy. signal. you know creating very inefficient. channel for communicating. neural arrangements from your brain to.

someone else's brain and that's what i. think about when i write is like. wow i have the power to at scale. change the literal physical composition. of people's brains. right to rewire them if i make an idea. that's so persuasive that's so sticky. if i coin a phrase that is so pithy. then i can alter their brain that's. crazy. i mean you're letting someone reach into. your head and like mess with it a little. bit. that's unbelievable and that's like a.

superpower and if you could do that to a. hundred thousand people at once. how powerful is that right you mentioned. descartes i think therefore i am. that's like literally rewired millions. of brains throughout history. right i mean that's one of the most. powerful like cocodo or gosam. one of the most powerful phrases ever. written. and that sent a zillion philosophy. undergraduates on a rabbit hole of. skepticism. that some of them didn't make it out of. you know and they're convinced that. you know with the brain in the vat.

theory is true and there's no way to. know. you know what our tangible experiences. um but yeah that so that's the beauty of. writing. and um the thing that interferes with. that. is our pride our desire to you know. impress people and. you know look good to them and show off. our uh. our vocab and stuff and that's. that was the point of that piece is that. i went on this journey where i. eventually realized that.

i don't know if i'm any better of a. writer for having realized it. but i think that is a necessary. condition so does that mean. there is a value to striving for. simplicity in. in the words as opposed to. i mean complexity i think so for sure. and we deal with complex topics all the. time in crypto. and that's always a huge red flag for me. i mean if you can't explain something. simply do you understand it. you know yeah so if you're talking about.

something. complex if you can't find simple ways to. discuss it. my presumption is that you're actually. obfuscating the truth. and this is what orwell railed against. with political language. you know he really hated political. language because he felt that. its authors were using deliberate. obfuscation. uh and you know he hated euphemisms and. i hate euphemisms too. you know i i much prefer you know.

forthrightness and clarity of thought. but most people when they write don't. really endeavor. to be particularly clear they might be. writing. to show off their startup or you know to. demonstrate to people. how cool they are or how well red they. are. you know they're displaying it's like a. peacock style display. what fraction of people write to. actually communicate meaning. small fraction it's especially difficult.

because. what i've detected is something in us. humans as readers. assign more credibility to people that. obfuscate. so like simple clear communication of an. idea. is not like the immediate reaction. uh is is not one where we assign. credibility to the person like. like that was uh that was brilliant. there's a lot of people that i kind of.

listen to without really understanding. what the heck they're talking about. and but it sounds musical and smart and. then. i see a lot of folks assigning. credibility to that person. and it's unfortunate. uh it's unfortunate that there's that. tension as a reader. that we appreciate the be the beauty and. power of like. complex weaving of words.

without assigning as much uh. value to like actual clear communication. of an idea. and i'm almost skeptical in speech as. well when someone. will describe someone as articulate i'm. always. immediately skeptical of the valley of. what that person is saying. uh because if you articulate you can. make bad ideas sound very acceptable and. great. and norm chomskis has said this before. he uh as a way to defend the way he.

speaks. he said that like he's suspicious of. charismatic people because they can. basically sell any kind of idea. he speaks in a very monotone and boring. way so that. whatever the value his ideas have. they'll it'll shine through. there's something to that there's. something to i love that but it's a. difficult journey it's a difficult path. because then i i think it's the right. path because ultimately you focus on the. quality of your ideas and in the long. term that wins. i agree just by way of advice.

is is there if people are interested in. bitcoin or cryptocurrency. in your work what are good uh books or. resources on bitcoin. now from you and from others that you. can recommend that. in your own journey helped you or you've. seen help others. well it's very easy or it's much easier. today. to make the bitcoin journey because the. quality of content is so much better. than it was when i started i mean. when i learned about bitcoin there was. the bitcoin wiki.

and the bitcoin stack exchange and the. subreddit and that was kind of it. and you had to just pick up everything. the economic theory hadn't really been. worked out very much. so you'd pick everything up from scratch. the good news is that there's a huge. abundance. of content and that's actually one of. bitcoin's greatest strengths. is that people are totally inspired to. write about it and. it's almost a rite of passage at this. point if you're like. a bitcoin thinker to have your book i. don't have a book yet i would love to.

recommend my book i haven't written one. are you thinking about writing a book. yeah i think it's my duty 100. everyone that has created a lot of bit. of bitcoin content probably should. condense it into a book. to give it an enduring status it's. interesting because you mentioned uh. block size wars. and you've written on a lot of different. topics so you could both write. a like a big like sapien. style book about bitcoin or.

cryptocurrency right. but you can also write a book on each. like a specific. thing and now that you put pressure on. yourself. and talk talk about simplicity right. yeah. where do you lean on those different. book journeys that you might take on. like do you have a new uh. eventually like a like a bitcoin book. i mean i tallied up the words that i. wrote in the last couple years on. bitcoin it's like over a hundred. thousand words a year. so that's two novels there um.

but yeah i think i do um i think there's. so much. underexplored space in bitcoin i mean. uh a systematic interpretation of. satoshi's writings. for instance and a lot of people don't. want anyone to do that because they. don't want it to have these religious. overtones where you're engaging in. interpretation you know but. that's you know something that should be. done there's a lot of bitcoin histories. that haven't been written.

there was a great bitcoin history. recently published that's this is one of. my recommendations. is on the block size war by jonathan. beer. who runs probably the best research desk. in the industry. so there's huge amounts of history that. has transpired. that hasn't been chronicled and some of. the accounts. are indifferent you know they're often. written by. outsiders you know journalists that. maybe don't fully engage with the.

bitcoin system. but do you think the humans are. interesting in the story too. of course they're the most interesting. thing you know i mean bitcoin itself. doesn't really change that much. it's kind of this cold you know protocol. that just sort of takes along but the. characters are just fascinating i mean. and there's so many unbelievable. characters in the bitcoin story. unbelievable yeah that's the cool thing. about bitcoin. and uh cryptocurrency and just internet. is like. the weirdos the brilliant weirdos like.

all the people in uh in the stuff that's. already established are boring. like economics professors are all boring. right but the interesting people the. wild ones. are are the ones that are innovating on. in the crypto space which. uh is you know that's where the. dangerous weirdos are. and the exciting brilliant weirdos well. you had to be kind of crazy to adopt. bitcoin in. in the first sort of five years of its. life so. there's a adverse selection element.

there i don't know if that's an. uncharitable way to put it but. like some of bitcoin's earliest. evangelists are not the evangelists i. would have chosen. yeah but they were the ones that we got. so it's one we got but is there uh is. there resources. you're basically saying just throw a. dart. and uh most books are going to be good. or is there something that stands out to. you i mean your average book is you know. terrible for sure but. uh not on bitcoin specifically but just. in general um.

it depends whether you like the computer. science the economics. or the history but my recommendations. would be. you know obviously the bitcoin white. paper that's uh and. satoshi's complimentary writings that's. very important. is to try to understand the intentions. behind the system and also to understand. the system. without having your view colored by some. third parties. description of it most descriptions of. bitcoin are really bad. uh so the just go to the originals go to. the hal finis.

post satoshi's post on bitcoin talk. there's a huge amount of lucidity there. and actually most of our questions about. bitcoin today that we have a decade. later were really answered in those. earliest days. people just don't know it the canonical. economic. work relating to bitcoin a lot of people. don't like it. i think it's fine would be uh the. bitcoin standard. a lot of people don't like it i just. read it it's good yeah i like it i think. it's it's. a good uh description of sort of the.

austrian perspective. and then how it relates to bitcoin there. isn't that much about bitcoin in there. but i think the point is. once you've understood you know. safedeen's view. of monetary policy bitcoin makes a ton. of sense so you don't actually need to. argue for it that much. so the bitcoin standard is a good. introduction to sort of the orthodox. thought. in bitcoin um there's a more recent. book called layered money which i liked. um by nick battia. which goes into more depth about what i.

was talking about earlier in the. conversation the layout approach. to scaling and that's a really critical. thing to understand. then technical books about bitcoin i. like grocking bitcoin. uh which is a very computer. science-heavy one. there's a good textbook um called uh. bitcoin and cryptocurrency technologies. um by arvind naranian. i think he's um a princeton um. computer science professor which is.

really good at building intuition. um antonopoulos's books uh mastering. bitcoin. are good then there's like simpler. intuition building books that aren't. hardcore on the economics or the. protocol design. so you have like inventing bitcoin by. john pritzker which is good you have. bitcoin clarity by qr bickers. as you can tell i have like a my. bookshelf is like mostly bitcoin books. okay well that's a good selection and of. course like you said your. your writing and your book that comes.

out. this year or next year next year i think. i'm gonna need 18 months. okay uh but you know they're most of the. good bitcoin content is just. online on medium on twitter so. um it's it's a decentralized you know. consensus kind of thing what about. the book recommendations that you could. give people love these. outside of the world of uh crypto that. maybe had an impact on your life. fiction like sci-fi maybe technical.

philosophical. is there something you recommend that. people might read i really liked the. three body problem but that's a really. hackneyed recommendation but it really. made me think and i like the hard sci-fi. you know the commitment to science and. science fiction. so i thought it was very clever is there. one uh is there something that really. annoys you. in terms of the opposite of hard sci-fi. like that doesn't get stuff right. movies or um.

i mean i have issues when i watch like. ostensibly sci-fi. or fantasy films that are not consistent. about this. the rules for the universe that they've. laid out. or where they're just impossible to. comprehend like um. uh christopher nolan's latest film oh. yeah. you needed like a spreadsheet to. understand that yeah. yeah i trust that maybe he was. consistent about the rules of his. universe i just did not. understand it yeah at all in that sense. i. i really probably one of my favorites is.

the 2001 space odyssey. it's a it's so obviously it's many many. decades ago but. it's quite brilliant in both its. consistency. and the depth of thought put. into like what the technology would. actually be. uh not in like visually not. in kind of silly graphical ways. but in um.

in terms of function and its impact on. humanity. so right but that takes care that takes. that takes a lot of work and that takes. genius actually which is why kubrick is. regarded for what he is. what advice you've taken an interesting. journey through your life. uh you've you worried fidelity your. philosophy major. uh you're now uh one of the seminal.

minds in the world of bitcoin and. cryptocurrency. who the hell knows what the next five. ten years looks for you. if you were to give advice to somebody. uh young today. uh you know making their way through. life making a career. what would you what kind of advice would. you give. see the problem with advice is that in a. world where so much of success is. defined by. luck and serendipity is that. the advice givers often don't know why.

they've been successful. right and so yeah they might say you. know i was wearing a green tie. on the day of my job interview and so. you should go out and wear green ties. and so they might just get the causality. completely wrong. right i mean i'm not gonna claim that. i'm. super successfully at it but um. see that's the problem is that i don't. think my journey is replicable. necessarily so. um you know who am i to give advice. although the one thing i will say.

is that the thing i did right. was to become completely obsessed. with um a domain i found really. interesting. and held promise like if i had been. really interested in like magic the. gathering. i wouldn't have been able to like do. much with that aside from build like a. killer. you know card pack or whatever um. and i wasn't afraid to. you know really put myself out there um. and.

you know float my thoughts online and. see how people reacted to them even if. i said stuff that was completely. erroneous or wrong all the time. the rewards to writing and just. publishing content are immense. as you know obviously it's the most high. leverage activity i think most young. people have available to them. um and i was very lucky. and i benefited from a lot of favorable. coincidences a lot of people that took a. chance on me. um and if i had more time i would sit.

here and name them. but is there something you in your. actions that. made you more open to the uh the. benefits of luck. sort of uh you know luck can bring you a. lot of positive and negative things. so saying you're lucky means you were. able to. ride the wave of whatever positive stuff. luck bring brought you. well that's right you have to put. yourself in a position to be lucky. and most people don't so you just have. to get as many shots on goal as.

and of course luck is plays an. undeniable role in any career path. for sure but you do have to. make yourself available to it. and you have to take a ton of chances um. but yeah that's the problem with advice. it's just so hard to replicate it so i i. find it illegitimate most of the time. uh you heard it here kids don't listen. to anything nick just said.

exactly wear a green tie to your. interviews it'll work out well. uh do you think there's a meaning or. reason to any of this. this existence this life well we we make. our own meaning. for sure i find a huge amount of meaning. in what i do. um i find it beautiful i feel very lucky. and blessed to be in the line of work. that i'm in. uh you know to have your hobby and your. passion and your job just be a. completely integrated thing.

so that's where i find meaning but. you're just a bag of like. cells and bacteria that eventually. dissipates dies and it goes into the. ground. and disappears back into the universe. i mean that doesn't make any sense well. that may be true but. uh i find the sublime in things like. bitcoin i find it. incredibly inspiring to work on it i. believe it's a 100 year. plus project and uh you know it stirs.

those aesthetic. emotions in you as i'm sure your work. does. so you find it beautiful absolutely. absolutely. and and inspiring more than just. beautiful so you have hope for human. civilization. and bitcoin is part of that hope yeah. it's a very optimistic view. and people accuse us of being pessimists. and saying that we are you know rooting. for the collapse of civilization. completely false. um bitcoiners are compl are wildly.

optimistic. because they believe that you can. monetize a completely new system from. scratch. and compete with the strongest. superpower in the military in the dollar. and. everything that goes with that that's. the craziest. most ludicrously optimistic proposition. imaginable. so i think bitcoiners are the most. optimistic people out there. i don't think there's a better way to. end it on that hopeful. vision of human civilization nick i've.

heard a lot of amazing things about you. i was binge watching. your interviews binge reading your blogs. i fell in love with your work you're a. good dude. inspiring brilliant thank you so much. for wasting all. your valuable time with me today my. absolute pleasure. thanks for listening to this. conversation with nick carter and thank. you. to the information athletic greens. for sigmatic and blinkist check them out.

in the description to support this. podcast. and now let me leave you with some words. about freedom and beauty. from stephen king some birds are not. meant to be caged. that's all their feathers are too bright. their songs too sweet and wild so you. let them go. and when you open the cage to feed them. they somehow fly out past you. and the part of you that knows it was. wrong to imprison them in the first. place rejoices. but still the place where you live is. that much more drab.

and empty for their departure thank you. for listening and hope to see you. next time.