Roundtable_017 - Did Epstein Hijack Bitcoin?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: What is up, guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin Audible. I am Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about bitcoin than anybody else you know. And the roundtable is back. Today we are getting into some crazy stuff. I actually had a lot of general news items on the docket for some wallet upgrades and some investment, some news and regulatory stuff. Then Epstein stuff happened and it was like, oh, okay. And that took up the majority of this conversation, as well as some updates and some back and forth about BIP110 and what was happening there and some discussion of the dynamics of soft forks and how this could potentially play out, the positives and negatives, that sort of thing. So this was just a really interesting episode and it was a very, very interesting month. Some things happened that I definitely did not have on my bingo card. Let's get into it. A quick shout out to the HRF for their amazing work. Do not forget about the Oslo Freedom Forum. Tickets are on sale now. It is June 1st to 3rd this year and you can find details and a link right down in the show notes. And if you use my link specifically, it's a great way to let them know that I sent you. It's an easy way to help out the show. And there is no conference quite like the Oslo Freedom Forum. With that, let's dive into today's episode. This is roundtable number 17. Did Epstein hijack bitcoin? So, yeah, welcome back to the roundtable. We have everybody important here with us today and I think we want to kick off. I think we want to kick off the show because we got. Oh, Jesus. We have a hell of a hell of a. What's man, January or 2026. It's been a hell of a decade so far this year has been. And a hell of a year. Lots of stuff. So Epstein made bitcoin apparently, and he's satoshi and yeah, everybody's compromised. The whole world is run by vampire pedos. And we've got some. We got some fun like boring stuff with bitcoin too, you know, like norm. Like norm. Basic regulatory stuff like wallet of Satoshi leaving the EU and a bunch of little, I guess kind of minor thing. Well, you were busy probably in the Epstein file feed, but if we. So we got. We got some other news to to do and we'll probably get through that first before we really get into the. The juicy and try to avoid the most horrifying of the things. But Steve, I want to get called up because you had the FBI raid you FBI. You had federal Prosecutors raid you and you were imprisoned. Well, Steve, let's get into how the government destroyed your life. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Well, way to set it up so it's like way worse than people are expecting. [00:03:38] Speaker A: You got to get that hook. You got to get the headline. And then they read the article, and the article's way different. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Simple. Run in with the cops. No big deal. Just my friends think it's funny. I thought my days of cops being called on me were over, but that streak ended on Tuesday. Cops got called on me for apparently being a homeless person sleeping in the gym. So I'm 6:30 in the morning, snow outside, 10 degrees. I'm bundled up. I walk a mile and a half to the gym, freezing cold. I look like a ice mountain climber. Get there, lights are on, doors are open. But there's a note on the door that says, opening late 7am due to weather delay. But, well, lights are on, doors are open. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:04:32] Speaker B: I'm not walking home. I'm not waiting outside. [00:04:35] Speaker C: All right? [00:04:36] Speaker B: And so I just, I walk in the door, like I said, unlocked, and there's a little chair waiting by the check in booth. I was like, okay, obviously a janitor got here or something. I'm just going to sit in this chair, wait for the janitor to come back and check me in. It was a really comfortable chair. I'm talking like microfiber with a leg rest. I mean, like, it. This was a nice chair, which was the problem. [00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah, Was asleep. [00:05:07] Speaker B: Of course, at 6:30am I'm tired, bundled up, so I. I fell asleep. [00:05:13] Speaker A: So warm. [00:05:14] Speaker D: It's so warm. [00:05:15] Speaker A: It's got warm. Somebody's gonna come check me in. It's okay. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Yeah, somebody come check me and they'll tap me on the foot. And somebody did tap me on the foot. Cop. So there was no janitor that got there early. I was the first person there. And the first gym employee just assumed I was a homeless person sleeping in the gym. Because we're a city and we have problems like that. And, yeah, woke up to the cops. License and registration. You can't be here. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Wait, did he actually ask for your registration? No, it's just like, sorry, you can't be here. [00:05:55] Speaker B: I'm like. [00:05:56] Speaker A: I was like, what? [00:05:56] Speaker B: Oh, where am I? Oh, I'm here. Oh, no, wait, wait. No, I should be here. And then gave him my ID and, you know, talked my way out of it. But the, I think the more worrying thing was when I tell this story to my, like, longtime friends, they're like, that's the least surprising thing I've heard. [00:06:16] Speaker A: All day from you. [00:06:18] Speaker B: I'm like, what? Like, I told you I was. When I got married, I was gonna be done with my shenanigans, but I don't even try, man. They just come to me. They just. [00:06:30] Speaker D: I. [00:06:30] Speaker B: That was not weird. The cops just. They're attracted to me like a magnet, man. [00:06:37] Speaker A: That's hilarious. [00:06:38] Speaker B: So that's been a fun one to tell my wife and stuff. [00:06:42] Speaker A: Jeff. What you got going on, boss? [00:06:46] Speaker D: Dude, I have experienced something in the last couple of days that I. I don't know. I don't understand. My hand feels like it has been slammed in a door. And the cause appears to be the fact that I took my hand out of my glove and talked on the phone for, like, 10 minutes while I was walking home yesterday in the cold. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Oh, my God, frostbite. [00:07:10] Speaker D: So, like, it's like I'm walking back and. And I didn't even think about it. Like, it's cold out, but, like, I hold the phone up to my ear and I'm talking and I'm kind of distracted. And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, my God, my hand hurts so bad. I gotta get off the phone. And. And so I put the phone in my pocket. I put my glove back on. I put my glove in my pocket. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Cause I'm like, oh, my God. And I walk. [00:07:33] Speaker D: And it took the rest of the walk, basically, for my hand to feel normal again. And. And then, like, last night, I'm like, why the fuck. Like, it literally feels like my hand has been slammed in a door. Like. Like, all my fingers just hurt so bad. And last night it was just. It was. It's a little better this morning. So I'm. I'm hoping that I'm gonna recover, but. [00:07:59] Speaker A: But, like, they're gonna turn black and fall off. [00:08:02] Speaker D: It was so bad last night that I was really concerned. I started looking up, like, what the. You know? But there's no discoloration or anything, but, like, literally, my joints, it's like. It's like I got some sort of, like, Canadian bone disease from the cold. I don't. I don't know what's happened, but that's. Hopefully I'm recovering from that. I sold my desk, so I'm laying on the bed for this. This episode. Hopefully next episode, I'll have a. At least a. I'll be in a spot with a rented desk or something. [00:08:36] Speaker B: I doubt it. [00:08:39] Speaker D: Don't do that to me. [00:08:42] Speaker B: You still got a stack. You gotta stack harder now. [00:08:46] Speaker D: No, I'm Gonna, like, if I'm in Brazil, there will be a desk in the place that we've rented. It's furnished. Okay. All right. So just, like, let's pray that I'm out of this place, not dealing with cold hands and things like that. [00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Any updates on that? Have you heard anything back? Anything? [00:09:06] Speaker D: We have. So today is. I'm not sure if today is technically 15 business days or if Monday is technically 15 business days or whatever, but they're only supposed to keep our stuff for 15 business days, and. And they have, like, you know, our passport. [00:09:25] Speaker A: They have everything. [00:09:27] Speaker D: And so it's a really. [00:09:29] Speaker A: Seems like a bad. [00:09:30] Speaker D: Disconcerting. Yeah, it's a really disconcerting thing. You have to hand over all of your original documents to this place. But. Yeah, I don't know. We should hear something. Hopefully the first of the week, if not today, and. Well, actually, it's already too late today, so first of the week, hopefully, and then it should be good. I'm just gonna hope that it's good. [00:09:57] Speaker A: This is the Brazilian Embassy, right? [00:09:59] Speaker D: It's. Yeah, it's an embassy or a consulate. Yeah, but. [00:10:02] Speaker B: But yeah. [00:10:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Gotcha. Well, while Mechanic still figures out how to use his computer, I figured it out. [00:10:13] Speaker C: I had to use another. [00:10:14] Speaker A: Oh, you just took the. Oh. Oh, it's just not showing the video on my thing. Never mind. [00:10:18] Speaker D: It. [00:10:18] Speaker A: It came back. [00:10:19] Speaker C: Oh, wait, you don't. [00:10:19] Speaker A: It came back up. I didn't have my. My window big enough is what it was. It was like. It was truncating. You okay? Well, Mechanic, what's up, man? Catch me up. [00:10:33] Speaker C: Not much, man. [00:10:34] Speaker A: What's cosmic, but. [00:10:35] Speaker C: Yeah, pretty good. Just come back from El Salvador. You were there as well? It was a little bit quieter, a little bit. A bit more of a humble event than it was the year before, I think. I think the El Salvador market's been kind of exhausted by so much stuff going on there, and it's not the easiest place to get to, so I think that kind of accounts for it a little bit. Still a really good conference, though, and there was a debate I did, or panel, rather. Andy back was supposed to be on it, but he. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Andy. [00:11:11] Speaker C: Yeah, that is now his name as. Oh, yeah, I know. Andy himself. [00:11:17] Speaker B: Couple shots in, Adam turns into Andy. Just a couple tequila shots. Andy comes out. [00:11:22] Speaker C: Yeah. You Andy? No. [00:11:25] Speaker B: You don't like him, but he's Andy. He's been Andy on. On Twitter this whole past year. [00:11:31] Speaker C: You're making. All right. So, I mean, we had an email back and forth. I don't know if you want to transition into bitcoin stuff already. [00:11:39] Speaker A: But we had a yes. [00:11:41] Speaker C: He was supposed to be on that panel that I did and he pulled out saying no one cares about the core stuff anymore. It's all drama. What people are really interested in is a conversation about L2s and drive chain, which is so funny. I just, I couldn't believe he would say that because the controversy with core is so much higher than it was, you know, a few months ago before the wallet deleting stuff. And like anyone is interested in watching Adam back talk about Drive Chain for an hour. It's literally the most boring thing I can imagine. So he pulled out and then Tone Vase took the squad. [00:12:14] Speaker A: Is there any. Is there any indication that drive chains are any more feasible than they. Than they were? Like, because it still requires all fork and everything. I haven't heard anything about drive chains. [00:12:26] Speaker C: I don't think it does actually. I think you can just do it with multisig. I just think Paul wants to do it with the bip 301 and 302 or whatever they are. I don't know enough about it. I'm going to stop commenting. [00:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah, me neither. [00:12:38] Speaker C: But yeah, I mean, Adam wasn't on the thing and then all the Epstein leaks happened a few days after that. And it looks like he went to the Island Boys. Andy cover that. He said this is all lies. And I don't know, but it looks like he went to the island man. So that, that certainly serves as a reasonable explanation for me for all the arguing and stuff that's been happening over the last year. How about you guys? [00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's pretty clear that'd have to be a crazy typo and coincidence for that not to be. For Andy not to be Adam. [00:13:23] Speaker C: It was the same weekend and there's. [00:13:24] Speaker B: An email week the same. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'll say without a doubt like that, like, that's beyond suspicious and that the, that all this stuff with like Epstein, clearly they, they met and they had conversations. Like there's actual emails. Whether or not this actually went from the email of like, oh, he's going to come to the island to actually happen. But there are a couple things in line that suggest that might be the case. But I also don't from the context of like how it would affect an opinion on any of the debates around bitcoin or any indication that Epstein himself and any of the stuff that I read has an opinion on anything about bitcoin development at all that I don't see Like I could understand being nervous that something like this is about to come out or like definitely not wanting to be in the public face if you're going to be scrutinized or you're going to be held to that and have to have a conversation about that and, and. Or just like pulling away or just ignoring it altogether and being like drive chains is what people care about. So you know, I'm not going to get in front of. Up on stage in front of people like so all of that seems to align and make sense to me, but I have no. I could not find anything and I'm still looking. But everything I've pulled together suggests that Epstein doesn't know the first thing about bitcoin development or its direction or seem to even care. He never spoke about it in that way. So I don't know how it would relate to an opinion on let's say the opportunity debate or anything like that. Unless there's something that you specifically have. Have pulled out of it that I have not seen. [00:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Have you seen the P. ATL exchange? [00:15:25] Speaker A: No, which one? [00:15:27] Speaker C: All right. [00:15:28] Speaker A: There's one about money laundering. [00:15:31] Speaker C: No, not that. It's a. It's a huge smoking gun actually. And Joyce found this. [00:15:38] Speaker D: Well, while you're looking for that real quick. [00:15:40] Speaker A: No, he's got it. [00:15:41] Speaker D: Oh, you got it. Okay, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. [00:15:43] Speaker C: So Peter Thiel. So Jeffrey Epstein sends Peter Thiel an email that contains a dead link. We can't click on it anymore. Peter Thiel responds saying do you think this is the first step in upping the anti BTC pressure? Jeffrey responds to Peter Thiel saying it appears that there is little agreement on what bitcoin is. Store of intrinsic value, if any currency, property architecture, payment system, conflicting goals. Anonymous but transparent public ledger like the continuum now in gender classification fitting things into narrow boxes. Seems old school men man presenting as woman. Smells like property presenting as currency. Anyway, more than more when I see you. And he doesn't elaborate beyond that. But it. It's kind of two things at once. On the one hand he's kind of just pontificating about what bitcoin is, but the context is them trying to figure out how they can up anti bitcoin pressure. So the only thing that make that I can. I think it's reasonable to conclude. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Hold on a second. He said read that first part again about the anti bitcoin pressure because I thought the. The link that he was going to is that is this an indication of upping anti bitcoin pressure like he's referring to whatever is in the link. [00:17:05] Speaker C: He says, is this the first step in upping the anti Bitcoin pressure? But we don't know what he's referring to because the link is dead. [00:17:13] Speaker D: It's like saying, could this be our, our foot in the door to up the. [00:17:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Well, my thinking is that is this like I could, like, I could see that in a completely generic context of like if I hear like some about a regulation or whatever and I'm sending you guys an email is be like, could this be the first step in them cracking down on Bitcoin? You know, like, I, I don't, I don't immediately hear this is me trying to do anti Bitcoin. Especially when he was invested. Like he seemed to be the opposite. He actually showed interest whether or not I don't know. [00:17:55] Speaker C: Well, this was. When did he divest his Blockstream shares? Because this email in July 2014, which. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Is, that was 2014. He divested from Blockstream in 2015, early 2015. I'm not, if I'm not mistaken. And then he divest. He sold his shares in Coinbase in 2018 after the run up. But it's pretty quiet after the 2015 range except like an exchange or so in 2016 for like a short period. But the bulk of all the conversation and stuff that I was finding was 2014 to 2015. And he invested $500,000 in the first round of Blockstream and then divested. It was a very short time later because they did like another round. And then that's when Austin Hill was like the, there was this indication that he was investing in Stellar and, and like Ripple or something. Even though there's, that's not like confirmed, but they thought this was the case. And then he said you need to divest, you need to get out of this. This is conflict of interest. You're not going to invest in Blockstream and Shitcoins at the same time. And, and that was the thing that apparently drove the drop your investment with us conversation. Yeah. [00:19:12] Speaker C: So maybe that does seem pretty reasonable and maybe I'll, you know, let me consider that a bit longer. I think, I think then the remaining. Assuming that that's them being invested and observing anti Bitcoin pressure rather than plotting anti Bitcoin pressure. And I, I will make a final comment on it that it's interesting that Jeffrey drew the same parallel that I drew, which is about identity confusion, which was like if you, if you start redefining Bitcoin as a generic database or you know, A timestamp server or any other definition of than money. It makes it sort of impossible to defend, because you can't defend things if you can't define them in the same way. [00:20:01] Speaker A: Right. If you don't have a boundary. If you don't have a boundary of, like, what the thing is, you know, if you don't have a border, how do you defend a nation if you don't have a, you know, like, if. If it's not a thing that can be defined to defend and. Yeah, no, that's a. That's an interesting point. [00:20:18] Speaker C: It would be interesting if that just combined with the whole thing. Right. Because that was my assertion that they're trying to dilute Bitcoin into being a kind of crypto, that is the everything app and Wasabi knife and all that. [00:20:31] Speaker A: But this was the beginning of crypto too. 2014, 2015, this is when things started to pick up and everybody's like, blockchain technology. And then it accelerated into the 2017 bubble. So it would make sense that that conversation was had then, because that's when that conversation really started in earnest. I feel like. [00:20:53] Speaker D: My tinfoil hat interpretation of everything is that, like, the reason Vladimir left was probably because he received some sort of threats, and they were literally looking to pressure. Like, there's. How many ways can you attack bitcoin? Right now they're using the Epstein stuff to attack Bitcoin. Like. Like, I mean, it's very. Like, it's a concern. It's a concerted effort, though. Like, my Facebook feed is like. Like, I'm just being bombarded with it. [00:21:25] Speaker C: We had someone quit the circular economy because they were like, I'm not touching this. Jeffrey Epstein invented bitcoin. [00:21:31] Speaker D: It's so. It's so ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. But. But that's fine. [00:21:35] Speaker A: Invented Bitcoin. [00:21:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:21:37] Speaker A: That's so dumb. [00:21:39] Speaker C: Unreal. [00:21:39] Speaker A: But the lack of critical thinking is just profound. Like, I understand. I completely understand. Like, be adversarial. Like, okay, how could this have led to changes of decisions or influence over people? It seems like the only two serious connect, like semi serious connections were Adam Back and Blockstream. Well, three Coinbase, because he was invested in that, even though he's a very minority share in both of those investments. So it's like, okay, you know, how much do you pay attention to 1% of your investment versus the other 99% or investors? But if you know, you got somebody to your island, that's a very different story. And then Jeremy Rubin actually had direct communications with him related to the MIT Currency, Digital Currency Group or Digital Currency Initiative, whatever. Whatever the heck it is, which he was invested in and related to MIT stuff and like school stuff quite a bit or university stuff quite a bit. And, and they had conversations about like, like, basically like talent investment in talent, finding like, like direction and stuff. And, and then hit some of his money ended up being used to, to support Gavin and Vladimir during that time because the DCI was funding that. But they literally hid the fact that they were talking to him in, in private and that they, he even came and met with them. Which is the craziest thing to me is that why in the hell would you ever want to be associated with him in any way? Especially if you were all, all of your actions and discussion and everything was showing that you thought this was a bad person. They literally refer to him as Voldemort, but then met with him and took money from him and worked with him and had conversations with him. And it's just like, why, why would you, why would you do that? You know, I've got to have. I got to give a shout out to Gavin is that. It seemed like Gavin shut him down, said, no, I don't want to really talk to you or work with you, even though, you know, Coinbase was okay with it. And. [00:24:06] Speaker D: Yeah, well, there's, there's an email where they, they literally mention Vladimir as a, as a target. Like, it's because he was sort of like the, the, the, the, the gate to getting things, you know, pushed to GitHub. [00:24:23] Speaker A: Do you have that one right in front of you about like being a target? [00:24:26] Speaker D: I don't, no. I don't even know if I can't tell you for sure if I saved it or where it is. [00:24:34] Speaker A: So I'm sorry, but I'll see if I can find it real quick. I got a big database here. [00:24:38] Speaker D: I don't know if they said target, but they literally mentioned Vladimir a couple of times as he's the person, like saying he was a significant person they need to pay attention to or something. And, and so I don't know, it just if, as far as like really rough, like what I'm putting together in terms of pattern recognition is like, we have a bunch of woke tranny people involved now and they're all pushing this, like, would allow them to put CP into Bitcoin, which would be a perfect way to leave if you want to legally, even if you just trade, whatever the reason you're trading, you want to put some sort of legal pressure, you want to create make it harder to run a node. You can weaken the network in the long run. You want to, you know, like all these things, it just gives them a door to do for another avenue of attack that they don't have otherwise. The only avenue they have right now really is a social attack which they're doing with the Epstein files. Which is just kind of hilarious because this is like exactly how governments and these agencies do things. Is that there? It's like, oh, you're associated with us, then we can attack you for that. Like, you know, it's like a weird like gaslighting sort of thing. We, we tried to get our tentacles into you and now we can attack you with the fact that we tried to get our tentacles into you, you know, so. [00:26:04] Speaker B: Agreed. [00:26:05] Speaker C: That is a quite a way of putting it that I hadn't really thought of before. Like you can just. If it really becomes a thing where we manage to win the war and say, like, look, there are dodgy files in Bitcoin that can. They're wrapped up as consensus, valid transactions. People are relaying them. Those people are going to fight to be left alone and carry on doing what they do. Then you really, you weirdly gain a kind of immunity. Like if you just straight up are like, oh, if you want to do this nasty pornography, just use a bitcoin network, do it via a bitcoin node. Here's an app that sits on top of it that'll wrap everything up the way you need and then you can never get done for it because it's all just bitcoin activity. Like you can't do that kind of stuff using other protocols. You'll just get yourself in trouble. [00:26:51] Speaker D: So well, and you get the secondary benefit of, of being able to use it as a legal attack against something. I mean, you look at like, I think all of, all of the things that have been going on foreign policy wise for the last 50, 60 plus years are centered around central banking. And you have, you know, Israel doesn't want, they want to be subsidized by a currency that they can expand. Like that doesn't create a Triffin dilemma for them, right? Like they want the Triffin dilemma, which is the thing that like hollows out economies, right? When you're, when you're the, the hegemonic like currency, everybody else needs your currency. And so it hollows out your domestic economy. And so Israel doesn't want the shekel to be the global reserve currency. They want the shekel subsidized by some external currency. And so they Want all the money they can get from the US and then they want to help expand the US's like dollar dominance as long as they can. And then they'll just back the shekel by when, when the US is hollowed out and is destroyed, they'll switch to something else. And so if, if the goal is to just to fight anything that is threatening the dollar, maybe you want to acquire a lot of bitcoin, but you don't want a currency that you can't control really. So they would want to weaken it the same way they want to weaken everybody else. And, and I just, it just seems like this is a, a reasonable, like if you're trying to weaken Bitcoin and make it something that you can manipulate or control at some point in the future. I mean all these, these people are playing the longest games ever, right? Like, like they think in terms of. [00:28:45] Speaker A: You know, their time preference is shockingly low. Yeah. [00:28:49] Speaker D: And so, so if you want to destroy bitcoin in a hundred years, you make it so that you put it on a trajectory where you can't run a node in a hundred years. Right. And if you can just bloat the chain more, whether it's with something that maybe provides a legal attack in the meantime or maybe facilitates something else you're doing in the meantime, you know, like it, all of those things just sort of compound and fit together. [00:29:15] Speaker A: I can't imagine it has anything to do with the ability to run a node rather than it having to do with the reputational damage. I think that would be their, their route because I, I don't, I don't really see even, even if they're blasting, you know, CP on the chain for a whole freaking year, I don't really see it making a difference in regards to running a node really. Not in a substantial way, but like legally. But legally. Exactly. It is legally the reputational damage. The, you know, the, the idea that like the network is, is, is for what it is used for and you know, and if that's, if somebody wanted to fund and have that attack on bitcoin, that could be a huge, that would be massive damage in the social layer. Even though it doesn't have a significant technical effect. [00:30:17] Speaker C: I think keeping it simple is the way to go. Like the big blockers weren't trying to destroy bitcoin. They, they were doing things they thought were good for bitcoin, but it would have had a very negative effect if we'd had a few terabyte size blockchain now there wouldn't be like 80,000 nodes. There'd be like 5,000 probably. So that's. That's really centralizing. So I think, like, that's. That should. That should be all it comes down to. I don't think they're really like. I. I actually don't think Epstein was a particularly clever dude. He was just a very useful person. [00:30:52] Speaker A: From the perspective if you have no morals, you know, there's just a lot of philosophy about this in, in politics or whatever, is that the. The most brutal and immoral person typically wins. And they don't have to be incredibly smart. They just have to be willing to do things that the other person isn't willing to do. Um, and I think that's a perfect example of you can be moderately intelligent, but and just know how to get dirt on people or to put them in a situation where you can tempt them to have control, tempt them with power or influence or money and. And then get that. [00:31:37] Speaker C: I don't think anyone gets into positions of political power or even high up in large companies. I actually think intelligence is an impediment to success in those environments. I really just think it's about like. Sorry to say it, but look at Tone Vase. Like Tone Tone Andy. [00:31:59] Speaker B: Dude, they throw down. [00:32:00] Speaker C: He literally just doesn't understand the things he's talking about. But that's to his benefit because it allows him to speak clearly, concisely, with confidence. And people like that, they like clarity and simplicity and people that speak slowly and matter of fact and I'm sorry, intelligent people just don't see things that way. It would the same kind of black and white they're always listing. Well, it can't be this, it can't be that. It depends, it depends. It depends. And that just gets in the way. And if you're ambitious school that just make it black and white. I'm sorry, they're just like. Tone is an old friend of mine and seeing the kind of stuff he's been on lately has just been embarrassing. Like. [00:32:46] Speaker A: I can't. Haven't really kept up with it, so I can't personally say anything on Tone Vase, but it's so weird his decision. [00:32:53] Speaker B: To like, come back into the space with just so much energy to talk about things that he doesn't understand when it's just like, like for. [00:33:02] Speaker A: Are we all talking if they're talking about the filter stuff, Is that in soft forks? [00:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, for like four years he was just like, doing his marketing, doing his like, you know, chart trading classes and making some Money and occasional funny commentary on bitcoin. And then like a year ago, just, or maybe less than that, just decided to like, come back into the space hard and be like the host of discussions between high level bitcoiners. And it's just like, why did you, like, come back like this? Like, it's not a good fit for him. I just, I just don't. I just don't get that. [00:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:41] Speaker C: Yeah. So my, my opinion is that, you know, you get these idiots in positions of great influence because they're very simple in their thinking and they're very easy to understand and follow. I think Craig Wright's a moron too, and that's why he has so many people following him. Craig Wright pretends super, but he's really not. He's really just quite stupid when it. [00:34:03] Speaker A: Comes to really dumb. So. [00:34:05] Speaker C: Yeah, and it's, it's just raw, actual brain power, intelligence, iq. It's not even like a moral judgment at that point. It's literally just like. [00:34:15] Speaker D: Here's the other thing with people like Craig Wright. It's. This is, it's, it's hilarious. It, it, it's strangely like he so well mirrors the, like the, the, the antagonist characters in Atlas Shrugged, right? Like, he literally will just pose as anything. Like, this is. Politicians in general, right? Like, they want, they want to be celebrated for something that they have no, like, no bait. Like, there's no merit there. They don't care. They want the celebration. They don't care about actually earning it. I don't think. A lot of times they don't even know what it means. They don't even understand that things are earned. Like, they, they literally just want. I want you to like me too. Like, why don't you like me? You know, like, it's this weird, like, Donald Trump kind of like, you know, behavior, right? And, and so. Well, if you don't like me, then I'm gonna. Like, it's like you get pulled over by a cop and he's like, trying, like, Like, I had a. I had a friend who was arrested for, for weed, for dealing. I think he was dealing weed. But, like, he's like, the cops, like in, like, are in his house and like, you know, going through his stuff and like, one of them is actually trying to like, be. Make friends with him in this process. He's like, hey, don't worry about it, man. Like, he's like trying to be. It's like, it's like, man, this is not you. You can't be my friend. But, but the thing is, is, like, if you don't, like, play along, he's like, oh, well, if you're not gonna, you know, pretend you like me, then I'm gonna really make your life fucking hell, you know? Like, it's this weird, like, dynamic where they think that they can. They don't understand that there's, like, actual meaning to, like, being, like, friends with somebody or, like. Like, there has to be, like, a foundation for these things. I literally think there's, like. And maybe it's stupidity. I don't know, maybe it's ethics, like an ethical understanding of the world or whatever. But there is, like, there is, like, this disconnect with some people that they just don't get that, like, you can't. You can't both, like, stab somebody in the back and be nice at the same time. Like, these are not, like. Like. Or expect to be, like, cheered on at the same time. [00:36:32] Speaker B: Or. Wake them up while they're sleeping. [00:36:35] Speaker C: What's that, Steve? [00:36:36] Speaker D: Wake them up while they're sleeping at the beach. [00:36:37] Speaker B: Wake them up while they're sleeping peacefully in the waiting room. You missed a mechanic. I got the cops called on me this week for sleeping in the gym waiting room before they were open. [00:36:50] Speaker C: Seriously? [00:36:51] Speaker D: Like a homeless person. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Like a homeless person. Weather delay. But the doors were open, the lights were on, and we already went over this, but, yeah, there was nobody there. I thought there was somebody there. I was just waiting for them to open. I got the cops. [00:37:06] Speaker C: Did they arrest you or anything? [00:37:08] Speaker B: No, no, they let me go. No, they understood. [00:37:11] Speaker D: Did you go into the gym and work out after that? [00:37:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:37:14] Speaker B: Well, I tried to, but my. My head was just spinning like, oh, my God, why am I still doing this? Like cops again. Damn it. I thought I was done with these guys. [00:37:26] Speaker C: They're never done with you, unfortunately. All right, tangent. There's one thing that's like, again, Joyce found it and sent it to me last night. It's not bitcoin related, but it's Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Thiel again. And they have this whole plan where Jeffrey says, brexit's just the beginning to Peter Thiel. And Peter Thiel responds, well, no, Jeffrey elaborates. He says it's returned to tribalism, counter to globalization. Amazing new alliances. You and I have both agreed zero interest rates were too high. And as I said in your office, finding things on their way to collapse, way much easier than finding the next bargain. And then there's another email after that where they. Basically, the summary is they completely control the left right pendulum thing and take advantage of it. So it's like, it's completely for everyone's like the left is what's wrong with the world. So we'll just elect people on their right and we'll be good. And there's Jeffrey and Peter Thiel, two of the most influential people ever sitting there discussing about how they'll buy up real estate on the cheap when there's a. The swing back to nationalism. And so all this like all the people like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes and all the like right wing commentary around nationalism and Christianity and all that is all totally part of a whole plan. It's like flood it with immigrants. Do like make lefties defend it to the death, really annoy everyone, make it illegal to complain about it. In Britain you're thrown in jail for being Islamophobic or whatever. Then swing it back the other way and then make. It's so contrived. The culture war is so fake and gay. [00:39:10] Speaker A: It's so fake and gay. [00:39:11] Speaker C: It's right there for you to look at it. [00:39:12] Speaker D: They're just laughing at everything. [00:39:14] Speaker C: And then it's not even the blackmail. That was a thing that I hypocrite pointed out. There isn't really much blackmail in the Epstein stuff. It's just haha, look at all the idiot goyim doing what we tell them and they're all just kind of laughing about it amongst each other. So they're not blackmailing anyone, they're just conspiring, that's all. Like because Whitney Webb and the whole one nation under blackmail and all that stuff. Some of that is just kind of motivated reasoning in my opinion. It isn't really blackmail at the end of the day. That's that big of the story here. I think it's just people coming together, establishing agendas and then enacting them and then Operation Mockingbird style stuff to make everyone fall for it. [00:39:58] Speaker A: Well here's the thing though is that I don't think he would need to blackmail Peter Thiel. And like, like, you know, I, I think they're on the same level of like, you know, interests, interests and incentives. Um, but I think I, I genuinely think there's pretty strong evidence that a major part of the value out of the pedo ring was alignment. Was make sure that you're making the same decisions that we're making and that you're saying the same things that we are saying. [00:40:34] Speaker D: They even say these things out loud. [00:40:36] Speaker A: How do you even control, you know, a pendulum for the right to the left if you don't know for certain you're going to have consensus on exactly how those narratives are going to make their way through the high. The highest. [00:40:52] Speaker C: Because you own all the press, and the narratives are exactly how you present them. [00:40:55] Speaker A: But how do you own the press? Like, that's the. That's the question is, like, what. You know, it's not like Epstein. Epstein specifically has like. Like, monetary capital owning all of this. He. He has influence and control over the people who do have the monetary capital that own all of this. How does he do that? [00:41:14] Speaker C: Well, because it's not Epstein. It's the people that he worked for, which is the intelligence agencies, basically the combo of CIA and Mossad. And that's why they're saying right now, it turns out Epstein was a Russian asset. Have you seen this stupid thing that. [00:41:27] Speaker D: Oh, my God. Dude. [00:41:29] Speaker A: Dude. Oh, my God. I have to read. I have to read a tweet. I laugh so hard. Hold on a second. I just. I just did this. Hold on a second. [00:41:36] Speaker D: But they talk about mutually assured destruction. [00:41:38] Speaker A: This was so funny to me. [00:41:40] Speaker D: And. And I. I think that this is a. It's truly like a coordination. It's like a really powerful coordination tactic, right? Like, if you're all equally in. In, like, involved with. You all know each other's dirty secrets, then even if you're struggling against each other in some form or fashion, you're all aligned in the bigger picture because you can't actually, like, there's. You can only turn on each other so far, right? Like, the fracturing can only be so much before, like, you're. Somebody ends up really in trouble. So. So, like, they. It's a. It's an incredible coordination mechanism, and coordination mechanisms are, like, the major problem of society, right? [00:42:30] Speaker A: So here's the. Here's the tweet that just cracked me up is here's the proof that Epstein was a Russian asset. His girlfriend was the daughter of a Mossad agent. One of his best friends was Israel's lawyer. Another of his best friends was a former Israeli prime minister. He met with a current and current Israeli prime minister. A senior Israeli spy would stay at his house for weeks at a time. A friend invited him to bring his girls to Israel. He fled to Israel. When he was charged with sex crimes against a minor, he was pictured wearing an IDF shirt. He was funded by pro Israel fanatics. He worked for the Rothschilds. He donated to pro Israel student groups. He was responsible for the Wexner Group's pro Israel philanthropy. He supported Israeli settlement projects. His friends were all Zionists he's scathingly referred to non Jews as Goyim. He was involved in Israeli democratic dip diplomacy efforts. He brokered security deals for Israel. He aimed to profit from regime changes in the Middle East. A former Israeli intelligence officer said he ran a honeypot for Israel. His business partner confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel. One of his victims confirmed he ran a honeypot for Israel. As you can see, all of this was done for the direct benefit of Russia. There is no other explanation. Oh, God. That one killed. [00:43:46] Speaker D: Well, he had a Russian passport, so. [00:43:48] Speaker C: I mean, you know, that's case closed, boys. [00:43:50] Speaker D: Case closed. [00:43:53] Speaker C: Well, I mean, but that's the point, right? Who would humiliate themselves? What mainstream media lackey with hundreds of thousands of followers would humiliate themselves by writing something that was that unironically actually trying to say that was a actual real thing? Why would someone do that? It's because they've been either coerced into it or because they're on the payroll. And there's clearly like, the weirdest thing for me was Nick Fuentes going, you know, Charlie Kirk had nothing. The death had nothing to do with Israel. It doesn't matter that the day before he said he was leaving the pro Israel lobby, because they're living up to all the stereotypes. Like, the context of it was like he was leaving, you know, a mafia of sorts and. And got. And you don't leave the mafia. You get a bullet in the head if you can leave the mafia. [00:44:42] Speaker D: So, yeah, he literally said, they're going to kill me. Yeah. And, you know. [00:44:48] Speaker C: Yeah, but it's. It's very annoying when people come out and say, if I die, it wasn't suicide, it was this person. And then they die and everyone goes, yeah, it was just suicide. Obviously they're not saying Kurt committed suicide, but the narrative is nonsense. [00:45:04] Speaker D: Well, and Nick. Nick also was at January 6th with a bullhorn telling people to go into the Capitol building. And he was never bothered about that. I have had my, like, doubts about Nick Fuentes for a while. So I just. Too many. Too many things make me like. And the thing is, is he and Alex Jones, like, I think. I think they got. Alex Jones on January 6, was telling people not to go into the Capitol building, and then he got sued for a billion dollars for something that happened 10 years previous. You know, you know, whatever. Like, do up for the Sandy Hook thing. [00:45:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:43] Speaker D: And so. So after January 6th, Alex Jones gets sued for a billion dollars. And then all of a sudden, Alex Jones now all of a sudden Alex Jones and Nick Quintus agree on a lot of stuff. So I think that whoever bailed Alex Jones out of that is now like. Like, Alex Jones is just. I mean, he also always had some things that were, like, questionable in his positions. So who knows how much of what he had to say was, you know, bought and paid for too. But. But I think after the lawsuit, he's much, clearly, you know, much more like. I mean, he was trying to. He was trying to say, Trump, you can make me your, Your. What's the position where you answer all the questions from the press? I still think that would have been hilarious, but. [00:46:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The press secretary. Press secretary. [00:46:39] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have. Alex Jones is a press secretary. [00:46:43] Speaker A: The White House thing in the whole world. Spokesperson. That would be so epic. But so I pulled up the. And this is, this is my open call. My call bot, like digging through this. So I'm. I'm pretty sure I've never really seen it get quotes wrong in context, but I do know that just by how it works, it's very possible that one word could be off here or there. So, you know, take that with a grain of salt. And I haven't gone back and actually confirmed exactly word for word here, just because the summary is a whole lot easier. But that's the nature of AI. But the message thread that was related to this, that I think probably Jeff, you're referring to about the. Focused on Vladimir and like, quote, unquote, target says so, used gift funds to underwrite this, which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks. And this is. This is Joy Ito, who. This is who Epstein invested in Blockstream through and was a close associate with Epstein. And the underlying message was the way that Bitcoin is organized currently is that there are five core developers and about a hundred contributors to the core code. The five core developers are like Linus Torvalds of Linux. So he's like explaining very basic things to Epstein here. They decide what changes are made to the core code. One of the five is the lead developer, Vladimir, and one is the chief scientist, Gavin. Gavin, Vladimir and Corey. Corey Fields, an important contributing developer, were being paid out of a nonprofit organization called the Bitcoin Foundation. A few weeks ago, it blew up when one of the board members declared that the foundation was bankrupt or declared the foundation bankrupt. Many organizations scrambled to step into the vacuum created by the foundation and, quote, take control of the developers. We moved quickly, talking to all the various stakeholders, and the three developers decided to join the Media Lab which is the MIT thing. This is a big win for us. The usually rather feisty community has been overall supportive, and I think it is because of our strong research focus and neutral position. The initiative was strong support from faculty across campus, including crypto guru Ron Rivest, Arrivest and former chief economist of the imf, Simon Johnson, as well as faculty at the Media Lab, Sandy Pentland and Andy Lippman. Epstein's reply is, Gavin is clever. And that's, that's what I have in context. And then there's. Vladimir apparently responded to this at some point and said he did not know about this and that the DCI funding was not very transparent, especially not back in the day. And that there was essentially indicated that he didn't see influence. Like, he didn't know what that would be as far as, like, it was just funding. So I would like to, I'd like to see somebody interview Vladimir and like, talk about this and ask if there were any incidences where he felt the Media Lab or the people at MIT were trying to make decisions for him or push him in some direction if he ever felt uncomfortable about, like, why are you trying to get me to do it this way? Or something like that. You know, like, because that's, that's one of the big things is like, I've not pulled anything out of this that suggested especially his investments also never seem to indicate one way or the other, because this was before the block size war. So this would be the key thing to have an opinion about if you were trying to push development one way or the other. And he invested literally across the aisle. You know, he, he had money in Coinbase, he has money in Blockstream, and they were both pretty prominently on two different sides of that conversation. And the only investment that actually stayed through the block size warp was in Coinbase, which was, as we know, is the SegWit2.x and fired the developers side of the aisle. But I'm not even saying, like, I'm not even saying that like, oh, Epstein was a big blocker and he wanted to, you know, like, why would you also fund the core devs, you know, through mit if you were, if you were in, in the right hand funding an organization that wanted to fire the core devs because they weren't doing what you were doing what you wanted them to. It's like, why are you funding them? You know what I mean? Like, it just, I don't know. I'm, I'm having a hard time finding a cohesive narrative as to Epstein trying to Decide what bitcoin is going to do. Well. [00:51:26] Speaker D: And you would fund both sides if you don't know what the outcome should be or don't care, you know, making. [00:51:31] Speaker C: Chaos for its own sake. Yeah. And we. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Well, that just causing problems maybe. Yeah, yeah. [00:51:36] Speaker C: Like that. Like what did I just read out about? You know, the whole left, right, divide. The whole point would be do the. [00:51:42] Speaker A: Same thing in bitcoin. [00:51:43] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:51:44] Speaker C: There's nothing better than if that's what. [00:51:46] Speaker A: His goal is, is that like, that would be the strategy. That would be something that works. [00:51:50] Speaker C: I was waiting for that narrative start because Luke was part of early blockstream. Right. He didn't have anything to do with the investment. He never went to the island. He was always elbowed out of it. But I was waiting for someone to say hi. [00:52:02] Speaker A: Did he not get in? Did he not get in? He got elbowed out of going to the island. [00:52:05] Speaker C: We told you knots and all that stuff is just controlled opposition. Bitcoin is still co opted by blockstream and all that stuff. I was waiting for that narrative to start. I was like, I'm ready for that when it comes. Because, like. And Luke came out with a statement too. Like, yeah, I was a part of early blockstream, but I got elbowed out quick. And he was supposed to be, you know, given equity as a co founder. And he says Adam just gypped him out of it. And, you know, I believe him. So who knows? Who knows on that stuff? Man, I just think, I don't, I don't want to be bashing people like for convenient things, but I don't think it is. Once you go to the island and you're Adam back, those two things are just undeniable. Your atom back, which means half the planet thinks you invented bitcoin. That like so many people still think is Satoshi, you're the most influential voice in the space, bar none. And you've been to the island. Those two facts mean, at the minimum you have to say, I'm not listening to a word you say again or I'm going to place it under far greater scrutiny. I think that's just. That is a reasonable position to be in. And just from my perspective, having been like, from like August to about November last year, everything I tweeted, Adam would respond with just this seeming intent of wanting to create noise and go nowhere in the discussion and just confuse everyone until the thread trailed off and no one was watching it. And then he would just stop responding. And this happened to everything I tweeted and I made a Compilation thread of it being like, whenever I lock him into a position and I'm like, if you think this, then the thing you said before must be false. He would just not respond. And then, you know, people say it's bad faith. It's just bad faith. It's just bad faith. Just block him. And then this comes out. It's very convenient for me to say, all right, then it must just be because you went to the island. Though I agree with you guy, that it is a bit, it's a bit facile for me to be like, oh, well that explains it then. Someone that compromised him on the island. [00:54:14] Speaker A: He disagrees with me because he's been to Epstein's island. [00:54:18] Speaker C: I understand that. This I don't. Yeah, that's a bit low IQ for me to sort of be like there. That's a satisfactory explanation. But at the same time it's also just, it's plausible. Kind of obviously the case. [00:54:29] Speaker A: You can't not take it seriously. Yeah, like you can't not take that seriously regardless of what it means. And like I, and I, I tell you, I did not have on my bingo card that somebody like I knew personally and that I respected has always been nice in person. Like I've sent Adam messages and he's helped me with stuff, you know, like I. And that this was going to be implicated in the Epstein files. The same with Jeremy Rubin, that he just have conversations with this guy. And this is also a long time ago and I don't remember when it was in my mind. I want to like have a very sober perspective of this because I don't remember when it was that I knew well and had an impression of Jeffrey Epstein and who he was and that he would be somebody I would not want to talk to. And it seems pretty obvious to me that he also just made investments. He also just worked with people on stuff. It's not like he walked around and every meeting he was in, he had a chain around his, in his wrist of his 11 year old sex slaves. Like people also just had conversations with him and he also just invested in tech stuff and fintech and you know, all of that stuff. So like, I want to, I want to see or hear like legitimate evidence before I say, oh, this person's a pedophile or this person is totally compromised. And you know, Epstein's, you know, got him by the balls or whatnot. But regardless, in the, in the absence of like hard evidence to any of that, the notion that they were talking to him, that Adam had conversations with him may very well have gone to the island, that Jeremy, Jeremy Rubin was having conversations with him. He's not a good look and I cannot imagine, especially when other people are. Seem pretty aware that this is not someone to associate with that you would do that. Like, why would you put yourself in that position? What do you have to gain really to put yourself in that position? [00:56:42] Speaker C: Why isn't there any denial? Because I, in the questions I've posed, I'm sure he's blocked me, but I'm sure he's seen the tweet. I'm not saying he went to the island. I'm saying it looks like Austin Hill and you and a couple of others were planning to go to Little St. James that weekend. Did you go or not? And there's no response to that. Which, that can mean a bunch of things, but it's going to be. If you didn't go, you could just say, yeah, we were planning on going to it. It didn't end up happening. He can't say that. Why isn't he saying that before he. [00:57:21] Speaker B: Makes a response by that? I feel like he needs to run it past his VC investors. Like I think the Epstein island thing is important for all the reasons you. [00:57:33] Speaker A: Guys mentioned, but having investors sucks. [00:57:36] Speaker B: My deeper kind of like intuition on this stuff or patterns I've been noticing is that once people take a certain level of VC funding, like from a specific group, it really feels like their personality starts to shift. Like, I mean even if we go way back, like two years ago, remember how Adam Back was kind of like always talking about cypherpunk stuff and he wore the T shirt that was illegal and you know, he's deep rooted cyberpunk, right? Then like three or four years ago, Adam Back was just talking about okay, fiat funding and then like okay derivatives and like, oh, okay, now we're doing futures and like now, now we're spending our time raising money and like you just, you just like saw his, like he turned into Andy like slowly and like I also feel like we see this, like, we see this pattern that. [00:58:29] Speaker A: Meme is going to be like David. [00:58:32] Speaker B: Bailey is an obvious example. Like I feel I, I saw it with Jameson Lopp a little bit too. Brian Armstrong, like back in the day. It's like, I mean, I won't, I won't say Matt o' Dell has become like this, but it, but when I hear Matt o' Dell speak these days, he's, he sounds like a VC investor now. Like it's, it's like that when you get all that fake fiat money, social. [00:58:58] Speaker A: And monetary ties are really powerful. [00:59:01] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:59:01] Speaker B: It just starts to corrode your brain, man. [00:59:04] Speaker C: I agree. But then you add in the fact that it's all Howard Lutnick and Howard Lutnick. I don't know where you are on 9 11, but Howard Lutnick went there every day except 9 11, where he took his daughter to school that day. And he also sat there saying Epstein was disgusting. He was my neighbor. My wife and I agreed to never go there again. After all, we met him in 2005, and then in the email leaks, turns out he was going to the island bringing his kids and all this stuff, and turns out he was completely lying about that. And that was years later. [00:59:35] Speaker A: Wow. [00:59:36] Speaker C: So how Howard Lutnick is. And every time Trump is up there saying something like the Epstein files are a Democrat hoax or something, Howard Lutnick's always about two feet behind him, chuckling away to himself. He's just. He's. He's utterly the guy. Like, if there is a guy you want to look at that's, like, behind all this evil crap, it's Howard London, wasn't it? [00:59:56] Speaker D: Was it him and Dershowitz that were going to the island with the kids or whatever? [01:00:01] Speaker C: I don't know. [01:00:03] Speaker D: Was it? [01:00:03] Speaker C: Probably. [01:00:04] Speaker D: I don't know. Maybe I. Maybe I confused. [01:00:07] Speaker A: I mean, there's a lot of dirt on Dershowitz, man. [01:00:10] Speaker D: Yeah, dude. [01:00:10] Speaker C: It's crazy. [01:00:11] Speaker A: I don't know if it's specifically him and Lutnick, like, hanging out. [01:00:14] Speaker B: Somebody. [01:00:15] Speaker D: Somebody listed. There's an email where they're like, me and this other couple come in and we have kids, and they, like, listed the kids ages and people. I've seen a lot of people talk about this, like, they were assuming that this was their kids, but all I could think was, like, no, they just fucking captured some kids and just told them, this is the ages of the kids we're bringing. Because it didn't sound like, why the fuck would you bring your own kids and be like, oh, they're 911 and. And, you know, like. Or 9 11. They're 11 and 12 and whatever. And, like. But it sounded. It's. I don't know, the way it was working. [01:00:50] Speaker B: Nice playgrounds there, dude. Epstein island sounded like. [01:00:55] Speaker D: It sounded so the best to me, dude. [01:00:58] Speaker A: Some of the stuff is so horrifying. Like, I don't even. I was in, like, a really dark. [01:01:04] Speaker C: Some of it is like, that the woman that, you know, there was like, the perfect gene woman that was used for all the, like, baby Creating and stuff that kept having kids. [01:01:14] Speaker A: Like conversations about like 11 year olds pregnant and like talking about how to get rid of them. Like, and you've seen the stuff about the panda. Like, I just. I can't. I don't want to talk. I don't want to talk about that shit on the show. [01:01:29] Speaker C: Dude, I'm sorry, man. It's. It is horrific. It really is. [01:01:33] Speaker A: Like, I was in a really fucking dark place last night. [01:01:36] Speaker D: Like, it's good that a lot of this stuff is coming out though. [01:01:42] Speaker C: Because. [01:01:43] Speaker D: Because there are videos that have resurfaced and it's like the, The Mexican model that was like screaming about them eating people and whatever. Yeah, like. Like all these things are connecting in a way that is just like astonishing. [01:01:58] Speaker A: The level of coincidence that would have to occur for all of that stuff to be wrong is. Is. Is literally like, you know, do I want to bet that I'm gonna walk around outside and it's gonna be fine or that I'm gonna be struck by lightning 15 times in a bright sunny day? You know, it just like, like where you literally. Where are you gonna put your money, man? Like. Because there's no way there's this many coincidences and there's not some truth to. [01:02:27] Speaker D: This, to so many coincidences when two unusual things happen at the same time or whatever. When there's 10, it's not a coincidence anyway. [01:02:36] Speaker A: Like when there's a thousand and there's dozens of people talking about it and dozens of people like leaving the country when all of this, you know, just. It just doesn't. It doesn't. It's fucking crazy. Yeah. [01:02:50] Speaker D: That's the most hilarious thing. [01:02:52] Speaker C: It's just a case now of whether you have the capacity to actually believe it. A lot of people, they hear it, they go, damn, that's crazy, bro. But they don't really believe it because they can't bring themselves to believe it. It's too. It's too awful. [01:03:04] Speaker D: There are even people that, that seem to believe it, but they can't apply the. What this means to the. To life. Like. But if you think about the. The admission of guilt with Ellen DeGeneres is just like, leaves the country. Like, it's like, okay, your set looks like Epstein island and now you're just fleeing the. Like, it's like, you know, I don't know. [01:03:27] Speaker C: Yeah, she's amazing. Usy. There was one of her ex girlfriends that died in a suspicious car accident where the. The car like, was remote controlled and it sped into something and completely obliterated itself. And, you know, all the same thing with, like, the Boston bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing and all that stuff, none of it fits. Same as usual. Like, all the people involved that could bear testimony to it being weird die in. Die in suspicious circumstances. Like, all of them. [01:04:00] Speaker D: It just. [01:04:02] Speaker C: The incredulity you have to employ. It's annoying because you go from not knowing about it, happy, naive, to finding out about it and going, what's going on here? To seeing what happens to people that speak out against it. They get ostracized and mocked, or they end up dead. And you just sort of find your people and go, okay, there are other people that get this too. Like, and it just becomes a sick power thing where you get people like Netanyahu keeping the COVID syringe in his office, like, as a memento to his biggest achievement. Like, and, you know, the origin of all these awful things. And you can see it, and you just have to sit there and go, well, there's nothing I can do about it. And if you have kids, you just think, well, I have to protect my kids from it. I don't have any other options. [01:04:51] Speaker D: Well, I'm so grateful for bitcoiners because. Because bitcoiners tend to be aware of these sorts of things and at the same time still kind of be, like, positive. You, like, hey, we're going to make the future better kind of people. Because there's so many libertarian groups where these people, like, call themselves libertarians, but they literally are like, there's nothing you can do, man. These people are like, like, like, they literally talk about the elites, like they're gods that we have to, like, fucking worship or something. It's like, well, that's not helping anybody. Like, what. What is this? [01:05:25] Speaker C: You know, I mean, they're not wrong. [01:05:27] Speaker A: If you believe what they believe, though. [01:05:29] Speaker C: Like, they're not wrong. [01:05:30] Speaker A: How does that. [01:05:30] Speaker C: Like, what. What are you going to do about it? My whole thing. [01:05:33] Speaker B: Did you guys see the. The long interview with Epstein and Bannon? [01:05:38] Speaker A: I haven't watched it yet, but I've got. [01:05:40] Speaker B: It's an hour long. Like, I'd recommend listening to the whole thing because two hours. Epstein, like, really reveals some really deep philosophy of his, both on just, like, you know, science and finance and stuff. And the whole interview starts with him admitting fractional reserve lending. [01:06:00] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:06:00] Speaker B: He's like, what the people don't understand is that I turn $1 into $10 with fractional reserve lending. And I think, you know, on the optimistic side of this stuff, like, this process right here, A single person with a banking license turning $1 into $10 of fractional reserve. Lending is a major factor in all of this ridiculous behavior even being possible. [01:06:26] Speaker A: 100%. [01:06:27] Speaker B: You know, over the past week when we've had like the bitcoin drop and everything, I've had a lot of noobs because, you know, I still run the meetup. So, like, I. I still get reached out from noobs that are scared of shit. I don't know. [01:06:40] Speaker C: It. [01:06:40] Speaker B: You know, we kind of forget about our first drops. You know, we all got in early, they're like, oh, yeah, you're set now. And. And we like kind of forget that. That emotion and fear and like, you thought bitcoin was the only thing you believed in that was true and honest in this world. And you, you thought it was going to save everything. And here it is looking like it's going to fail too. And that shit's hard. But, like, I just want to remind, like, new listeners out there that, like, none of us have sold anything. Like, we are still in this. We're buying like hell because bitcoin is still our one fucking sly, roundabout way chance to fix all of this shit. Because all of this shit comes from fiat money, in my opinion. [01:07:23] Speaker C: I will, I will say. I will say on that. I did sell some last year because my confidence was pretty shaken by a lot of what was going on. But I have been aggressively buying these dips because this just feels like no brainer to me. And I think bip110, actually. [01:07:38] Speaker B: I mean, did you guys have that, like, back in 20? Whatever, the first dip you had 2012 or 2014 or whatever when you were like, really kind of shaken, but then you found somebody on bitcoin talk or somebody on bitcoin and you were like, you were like, fuck, yeah. Like, no, no. Okay. No, this is. It still is the one fucking thing I believe in. Sorry for cussing so much. [01:08:00] Speaker C: No, no, I. 2014 was my first bear and it was horrible. There's no two ways about it. It was a miserable period in my life. I just felt like all the things I believed in were falling apart and weren't working and then. But it wasn't until summer of 2016 that the passion came back again. And I thought, that's it. We're actually going to pull out of this. I remember the price just went up from like 400 to $700. And I'm like, we're back. Like, a thousand dollars isn't a crazy thing anymore. We're going to be Back there again. And yeah, that was the last time I worried about the price. [01:08:33] Speaker D: Our first me and guys first dump was the worst. [01:08:37] Speaker A: It was 95% in 2011. Yeah, 95 down to $2, three months or whatever. [01:08:43] Speaker D: 75 was the I threw up brutal thing. [01:08:46] Speaker A: You threw up and cried. I am not joking. [01:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The new people need to hear this stuff, guys. I'm telling you. Like, they're. They're freaking shaking right now. [01:08:56] Speaker D: So what's weird is that, like, we actually did pretty well during the whole, like, crypto winter thing because. Because we had, like, experiencing the 30 to 2. [01:09:07] Speaker A: We are just like, yeah, we've been decimated. You know, like, it was. That was something. That was something else, man. [01:09:16] Speaker D: Right now, like, so my wife, we just found she has a retirement account that we weren't even like, we just realized it, like, because we. So funny. So we were supposed to get some sort of check from Costco is like a cash back thing that we're doing. And we realized that it went to her previous address. So we went to her previous address and asked the girl that lives there if we could, you know, check the mail. She's like, yeah, I hadn't checked the mail in like a month. And so we went down there. The Costco thing wasn't there, but the a. Like a letter about her retirement was in there. And we were like, oh, my God. And so she's got like. It's like almost 10 grand. We're buying bitcoin right now with that. [01:10:07] Speaker A: Nice. [01:10:07] Speaker D: So. So that was. That was great. We still like Costco. This whole thing. Like, it's weird how companies can't. They said it takes two months to mail you a check for, like, your rewards or something. So we're trying. No, I mean, this is legitimately how their processing works. [01:10:28] Speaker A: No, no, I know. I'm. I'm. I'm just meaning that they're like, that. That's just on purpose. The money comes in quick, money goes out slow. [01:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that. [01:10:37] Speaker D: Well, maybe. But they. They have ways to speed it up. So they're going to give us, hopefully before we leave, there's going to be some sort of store card available in the next week or something. So maybe before we go, we can go buy a couple of things we need. But it's. It's only. [01:10:53] Speaker C: It. [01:10:54] Speaker D: It only ended up being like 130 bucks or something, which is. Which is like it was supposed to be. I. I don't know. I think maybe the cutoff date was part of the problem. The. [01:11:05] Speaker C: Whatever. Well, we Got two. Let's. Let's get on to two topics, because we got the BIP and we've got Gloria quitting. I think we should touch on those. [01:11:16] Speaker A: I forgot about that. [01:11:17] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:11:18] Speaker A: Well, does anybody have any details on that? Because I don't have anything concrete other than the tweet. Somebody snapshoted it. [01:11:24] Speaker C: Yeah, Gloria, her keys are revoked. She's no longer a bitcoin core developer. [01:11:32] Speaker A: Does anybody have any details on exactly what and how? Because that seemed totally out of left field, and we. We had a conversation about it with a couple of people at Plan B, and people were trying to speculate happening for a while. [01:11:43] Speaker B: I think, like, chaincode Labs had kind of, like, been encouraging her to leave, and then she finally, like, voluntarily, like, please delete my keys from the signers. And that happened officially yesterday. Right. [01:11:56] Speaker C: Uh, we're like, I'm more. If that's how it went down, I'm more on her side than people might think. Like, I left a comment on her leaving today on the. On the GitHub thing where she. Her keys are being revoked. I. I think she's just a scapegoat. I think she just, like. I think the devs think bitcoin is a really shitty people, and they really don't like us. But Gloria was just the one out here just flaunting, like, Just flaunting it. Like, I, I can't stand you redneck carnivore morons and all that stuff. And that was like. That made her a scapegoat, really. But she's not. [01:12:32] Speaker A: They just leaned it on her. Yeah. [01:12:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Like I actually said, I'm. I'm sorry that you've been treated really badly. You were also really unprofessional and disrespectful. I did say that, but I also said that I don't think, like, the disconnect between devs and bitcoiners leaves with you. I think that's a core thing, not a you thing. In which case you're just a scapegoat. And I'm sorry you're being used as a scapegoat. I said that sincerely. Even though, like, me, like, the things that I've said on this podcast as well, has led to her being, you know, dragged across the coals and having a personal life exposed and all this awful stuff, you know, is not a happy situation. There's some real, like, where's the transparency about it? No one knows if she was pushed or whether she walked away. Most people seem to be just sort of the People that are, like, on the opposite side of this, that are having a sort of struggle session on Twitter saying, everyone was so mean to her and this is terrible, and we've lost the best developer ever. And I'm saying, well, that's stupid. Right? She was obviously just, like, in complete contempt of Bitcoin and all of its values and all that. But they're not. They're not sitting here. Their narrative is that she had a horrible time here and that's why she left. But I don't really think that's the whole story. I'm pretty sure that there's too much loss of confidence in Bitcoin core, especially after the wallet thing. And it's just a standard political sacrifice where it's like, all right, someone's head's got a role for this Gloria. [01:14:00] Speaker B: That's what it feels like to me. It feels like some vc, whoever, the VC of chaincode Labs, is like, look, we gotta make an announcement about somebody getting fired here just for optics. That's what it seems like to me. [01:14:11] Speaker C: Sure. But they didn't do that either. They didn't say, we're getting rid of Gloria. We vowed to do better or something like that. [01:14:17] Speaker A: Basically, she just said that she was. [01:14:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:14:20] Speaker A: Step down. [01:14:20] Speaker C: So that implies that she very conveniently was like, everyone's being horrible to me. People are making memes about my sexual life and all that stuff. Like, I'm out of here. This is bullshit. I can see that. Like, I can see that being the thing, but then I just see that for Chain Code's perspective being like, well, that's pretty convenient for us. So, you know, then they don't have to act like they pushed someone else voice. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:43] Speaker C: So I. I don't really know him. [01:14:46] Speaker D: You get two. You get two, like kind of two birds with one stone. If you. [01:14:50] Speaker C: If she. [01:14:50] Speaker D: If she leaves voluntarily because the whole bitcoin community is evil to her, then you still get to frame the whole Bitcoiners as evil at the same time. It's like trying to like, oh, look, no, no, no. Core is different now because this woke person left or whatever, you know, like, I. I'm. [01:15:09] Speaker C: But they're not even making that claim, right? They're not saying, like, we're gonna change. That's why we got rid of Gloria. It's literally just. I. I really do think it's more that she left. Cause she was sick of it. And I can see that. Yeah. Like. [01:15:21] Speaker A: Well, I can see that too. [01:15:23] Speaker C: Yeah. So that tells me the power, the thing is still there. We control this thing. Like, we are not letting these, this populist movement of plebs that want to filter spam or whatever take over this thing. We are. We still maintain that they're idiots and that they chased Gloria out. And Bitcoin succeeds despite its community of node runners. So I mean, anything left to say on that? Because I want to talk about bit110. [01:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah, let's talk about bitpoint10. [01:15:52] Speaker D: Well, real quick, is there. And this is. Maybe we need to come back to this, but is there. So I was. Somebody was saying that, that regular nodes don't have, they don't have like as many outbound connections or I don't know how you say that. They don't provide upload. They don't like relay information. [01:16:13] Speaker C: Non listening nodes, regular nodes, depending on what you mean by that, only have outbound because they're not listening nodes. So they can't have inbound. Inbound. [01:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. [01:16:26] Speaker C: Or running tour or something. [01:16:27] Speaker A: Yeah, technically the reverse. [01:16:29] Speaker D: Yeah. So, okay, I'm with you. So they, they don't, they don't relay stuff. Is it possible that that's partially like a port port problem? Right. Like, this is like a networking issue, isn't it? [01:16:43] Speaker C: I don't think this is a thing. It doesn't matter what direction the connection was opened in. As far as I know, an outbound and an inbound connection do the same thing. You're just a relay of blocks and of, you know, mempool contents. [01:16:58] Speaker B: I think he wants you to explain the difference between when you enable that. [01:17:01] Speaker D: The listening node. [01:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:17:03] Speaker C: If, if you're a list, you. You'll have, you'll just have more connections. Typically there's no limit really in either direction. I don't know if max connection limits you manually connecting nodes, but it. Listening nodes are a bit more significant because they typically just have a lot more connections. That's all. But I mean, anyone running start 9 or umbrella is a listening node. They're just only listening on Tor unless they forward a port. Then they're listening on IPv4 as well. The distinction isn't really what it used to be. Back in the day when it was all desktop clients, then listening nodes were a rarer thing. But now, because Start Line and Umbrella are a thing and everyone has Tor by default, whenever there's these movements and loads of like noobs install an umbrel modified client, then they're all listening nodes and it actually becomes the non listening nodes that are kind of more like the og because they're just running it on a laptop or something. Core V25 or something, some ancient version. They're, they're non listening, but they're actually, they represent. Maybe some people will view that as more significant than a pleb running an umbrella with BIP1.10. [01:18:07] Speaker D: So then it is, it is actually safe to say, like pretty much in all cases, if you're a listening node, you are helping to secure the network, right? Like you're rejecting false transactions, you're verifying things, you're relaying things, and if you're. [01:18:24] Speaker C: Non listening, there's no difference. [01:18:26] Speaker D: There's no, there's no difference. Okay. [01:18:28] Speaker C: The only thing it means to be a listening node is that you make yourself discoverable on the P2P network so that other people can connect to you. But if you don't, you still connect to them. [01:18:37] Speaker D: You're still connecting. Okay. [01:18:39] Speaker C: Okay. [01:18:40] Speaker D: All right, so then why, okay, so I've talked to people on Noster and other places that literally say that it doesn't help the network for people to run nodes. What, what is, what is that? [01:18:51] Speaker C: It's, it's the same argument as it doesn't stop government tyranny if you go out and buy a Glock because they're, they're turning a general principle to a specific. They're saying, your AR15 doesn't stop government tyranny. And I'm saying, all right, but if enough of us have one, then the police act differently. And it turns out it does stop tyranny to some extent. So don't undermine individual effort. Every single node doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that there are people running nodes. And I don't know why people need to. Like, that's a real red flag to me when people are like, your node doesn't matter. Or I agree, it's because then what does matter? Like, bit main aren't not giving themselves a pay rise. [01:19:35] Speaker A: Why don't we just use a centralized database then? Like, what the fuck is the point of nodes? Like, like if you don't even if you can't accept or even like understand the nuance and the fundamental notion of decentralization of the network. And you think that, I don't know, miners control it or something? I don't know, you don't understand any of the power dynamics or the game incent the game theory incentives between all of the various entities and players in this and you just want to just throw out this. Nodes don't matter. Then why have a Node. Why are there nodes at all if they don't matter? [01:20:13] Speaker B: Not gonna node. [01:20:15] Speaker C: Well, this is. That's a meme. But, like, that's funny. I don't understand why so many people still. Like, the dunk on bip110 is there's no hash rate for it. And I keep just pointing out, like, if the network really worked that way, miners would just give themselves a pay rise every week. Like, the only reason they don't do that amongst the 10 or so miners in the world that actually make all the blocks is because they can't, because the network won't let them. So if the network says there's a new rule in town, you have to obey that too, then logically, they just do. Like, I can't believe people think anyone's in control of this other than the nodes. [01:20:52] Speaker B: Node signaling matters for BIP110. I agree with that too. One quick question about the listening thing. So is it the case now that if you are an OG and you're downloading bitcoin knots directly onto your laptop, that because it's TOR by default, that it'll all already be automatically, by default, be discoverable and therefore be listed in the count for Bitcoin 10 notes? [01:21:16] Speaker C: I don't know if it has a TOR daemon embedded within knots or if it will just use Tor if you have it running on the laptop too. Okay, but if you are running Tor, there is no distinction between listening and non listening because. [01:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I understand that doesn't work. Makes sense. [01:21:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:32] Speaker B: For some reason I thought bitcoin core and knots were like shipped with the Tor demons embedded in them now. [01:21:42] Speaker C: Maybe they are. I mean, they also have CJDNs as well. And i2. There are a lot of privacy heads trying to get this tech into Bitcoin, which is pretty cool, to be honest. Okay, I don't think they're shipboard payments, but I don't know. [01:21:56] Speaker D: Is even if you take the argument that like your AR15 doesn't stop government tyranny, it's like, okay, well, like, you. You guys remember the Bureau of Land Management conflict with like the Bundy ranch, right? [01:22:10] Speaker C: The guy that had like his family killed for having a shotgun that was like 2 inches too long or something? [01:22:16] Speaker A: No, no, that's the. That was the ATF in the Ruby Ridge or something. Ruby Ridge? Is that the one? The one where they burned the house down with the kids and women inside? [01:22:30] Speaker C: You see the blm? [01:22:32] Speaker D: No, no, no. This was like in the. In the 2000 teens. [01:22:36] Speaker A: This was. Yeah, this was like, 2012 or something like that or something. [01:22:39] Speaker D: I'm actually convinced that they created the blm, like, as a Black Lives Matter thing to cover up on the Internet, your ability to search BLM conflict because. Because it was. The Bureau of Land Management was all that blm. Like, it was literally the most embarrassing thing for the government, the federal government, is that they were trying to seize land that had been cattle, land that this family had used forever. And a militia group protected the land and had an armed standoff with the. [01:23:10] Speaker A: Federal agents for, like. [01:23:12] Speaker D: Like a long time. [01:23:14] Speaker C: That's hilarious. [01:23:15] Speaker D: And they won. [01:23:17] Speaker A: And so they did destroy his life in the years after that, though. [01:23:21] Speaker D: Oh, no. They killed people of the family and everything. Years later, like, it did not turn out, but they won that conflict. And it was this huge thing on the Internet. Like, people that were paying attention to this was like, this is. Here's the example of you can stand for what's right and beat these people. And the pr. It was a PR nightmare for the FBI and the people that were trying to, you know, like, threaten them. And. But literally, it was like a handful of people with AR15s and whatever. So did their AR15s not stop government? Like. Like, specifically, like when we beat The. The. The SegWit2x, you know, like, fork. Did our nodes not defend the network? [01:24:09] Speaker A: Some people literally say that they didn't matter. Like, just the fact. The fact that it was a week. It was less than a week before the UASF activation was just a total coincidence and that it didn't matter. And they. And they make this. They make this ridiculous. Like, Like. Like, just like, they don't. They cannot think about the nuance or the. The underlying logic, the principle that actually applies to this. Because they'll. They'll literally just say something. They'll make an extrapolation from, like, a simple thing, like, which is one of the things I hear all the time, is that you can sybil attack nodes and therefore they don't matter. It's like, yes, those do not have anything to do with each other. The fact that you can sybil attack nodes and the fact that nodes matter or not are not. They have nothing to do with the same underlying principle. It means that you cannot take nodes as a vote. It does not mean that your node does not protect you against changes in the network. They have nothing to do with each other. It means that. It means that you shouldn't treat this like a fucking democracy. It means that all you can do is trust yourself and your node and what it tells you that's what it means. And if everyone is individually doing that, then you don't have to worry about whether it's civil attacked or not. Because who the fuck cares what the civil attacker is doing or how many 10 thousands of fake nodes there are. If you hold your ground on what you believe that and define bitcoin is the only way of which you can actually do that is by running the node that says this is the bitcoin as I define it, then you do not have to worry about where anybody else goes on the network from the standpoint of your bitcoin and your rules. And that is exactly what holds consensus together. Without that, the whole thing is a fucking sham. There's no reason to do any of this if you do not have a node that defines your bitcoin what you believe it to be. And, and, and that that's the only reason why all of the incentives align towards consensus to not change the damn thing is because of the notes. [01:26:09] Speaker C: And that is so well put. And what Jeff said as well, like the surprising power of 15 or so guys with AR15s it you'd be amazed how well it works. And if it didn't, there wouldn't be the need to make all these derisory comments and I, I wouldn't be so. [01:26:24] Speaker A: You never have to disarm a population before you implement a tyranny, but they do it every single time, right? [01:26:31] Speaker C: And further, we have really good evidence of, we have historical precedent. BIP 148 was a very small amount of bitcoin is running nodes. And the minute that happens, you have the question posed to you. You can say it's just a sybil attack if you want, but you're not oblivious to the social conditions of bitcoin. Everyone can go to all of the different places like the GitHub and Delving if you want and Reddit and like Twitter and see the conversations and see the kinds of people that are saying what the things they're saying. You have like reputational proof of work. You have people like Hodler not out there saying I'm running BIP110, it's obvious that Bitcoin core is pulling in the wrong direction and things like that. If you witness things like that and you say, oh, you can't trust nodes because you can attack them with a civil attack, that just means I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears basically. And you have the evidence from bip148. You have a fact, a historical fact of A small group of node runners saying we're implementing a new rule and miners need to comply with it or we'll throw their blocks away and saying, oh, you don't have any hash rate, it doesn't matter. [01:27:42] Speaker A: My response, you don't need hash rate to throw away blocks. [01:27:47] Speaker C: Very true. That's the technical truth. But I'm saying right now there's on according to Luke stats, there's about 2, 300 people running Bitcoin 10 or 20, 120, 300 nodes, right? So I run a couple of nodes because I have to for testing purposes and stuff. So a lot of them could be duplicates, but that applies to core as well. So the percentage looks to be Luke stats lag. So the percentages suck. But According to Bitnodes IO it looks like there's around 6, around 5.9% of the networks running bit 1 10. So you have a couple of thousand people or 1300, 1400 listening nodes that have already said to miners, if you don't do this on August 4th, I think it is, then your block's going in the garbage. And I don't think miners are going to look at that and go, oh, I don't care that that can, I can ignore that. And I don't know if you all saw this yesterday, but I made a chart of disruption because I think when you have new soft fork, when you have a software proposal and you have nodes start to run it when it's around 4 or 5% adoption from nodes, that is when it's at its most disruptive because then it's still tempting to ignore it. And if you do ignore it, then 2000 nodes suddenly get dumped off the network when the fork hits. And that's disruptive. No matter how you look at it, that's disruptive. Especially when you know who those people are, they're running those people like me and Luke and stuff like that, getting forked off the bitcoin network is not a non event that that actually means something, right? They're not civil attack nodes that showed up out of nowhere that no one cares about. They're clearly people that have been in the space for a while. So already you have that potential for disruption. But at some point it plateaus. And specifically with this bit, once you hit around 50% of nodes is it's just an unmitigated win because everyone else just goes with it or they're just not enforcing the rules anymore. So this is basically my question is how do you know that it's one like what level does it have to get to? What are the indicators you're looking for? Where you're like, okay, bit 110 is just a thing now and any miner that doesn't go along with it, it's just committing suicide. Because right now there's a lot of, oh, these are just a couple of idiots. They'll go and fork themselves off the network. Like bcash. That's the narrative in the, in the camp against it. But I'm like, well, if we get bigger, are you going to ursf? I don't think so. Like, why would you URSF to maintain the things that bip110 makes invalid? Seems unlikely to me. And none of us are going to stop, really. Like, if there was a bug in BIP 1 10, would we all just leave? Like, would Luke and I say, oh, this is crap, actually, we're not doing it. And then maybe a few other people follow us and then the whole thing just kind of, you know, loses energy. That can happen. But I don't short of that, I just don't really see it. So it seems to me that it has to gain momentum and the more it gains momentum, the more stability bitcoin gets as people just agree to it. And after around 50%, it just activates and that's the end of it. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Another thing, there's so many possibilities that could play out here. One of the possibilities is that the miners kind of get together and they never signal for the official BIP 110, but they just stop broadcasting those transactions so that, you know, they've never actually produced a block that's invalid. [01:31:15] Speaker C: That's a good point. But if they don't enforce the rules of bit 110, they're also relying on all the other miners not to put. Then they might as well. [01:31:23] Speaker B: As soon as one does it, as soon as one does it, they have to choose. [01:31:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's it. That is a good way of not committing, though. But yeah. The problem again, though, is just if you don't enforce the rule set and someone does give you a block that breaks the rule and you start building on top of it, even for five minutes, you've just totally committed to a dead chain. [01:31:41] Speaker B: One point of view I have that isn't very popular is I think exchanges play a large role in these kinds of things. [01:31:50] Speaker A: They all do. [01:31:50] Speaker C: They do. [01:31:52] Speaker A: They necessarily do. Yeah. [01:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think you have any ability to stop Exchanges from listing BIP 110 Bitcoin as a separate coin. [01:32:02] Speaker A: That's just going to happen. [01:32:05] Speaker B: Have you guys thought about how that's going to play out? [01:32:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I don't really shy away from it. The reason segwit2.x lost and we won was because Bitfinex called our coin Bitcoin and they called SegWit2.x not Bitcoin. I mean, that was why that happened. Bitfinex, that, that is why the Tether FUD was always so violent, because it came from the big blockers and they never targeted the other, what do you call them, stablecoins? The same way it was because Tether basically went on our side in spite of all the other big exchanges. So that was a little different because it was a futures market as opposed to maybe what you're talking about, which isn't a futures market. That would just be a market at that point. But you still need to trust the exchange because there's no replay protection either between the two forks. So you'll have UTXOs on both chains and then you need to manually replay protect, which is not that difficult, but at the same time a bit beyond most bitcoiners. Like, you're going to have to deliberately attach a big OP return when you spend your UTXO to make sure it only happens on one chain and not the other. Right. So, yeah, not the easiest. [01:33:15] Speaker B: I'm sure there was a lot of conversation about whether or not to include replay protection with that. What. What were like the reasons that you or they decided not to do? [01:33:26] Speaker C: You know, I don't know. I'm not party to it and I. I don't think replay protection is. I don't know why anyone would really do it if they have the kind of intentions bit one tenors do. They don't intend for the whole thing to. [01:33:40] Speaker B: Right. They want it to be a soft fork. [01:33:42] Speaker C: That's right. [01:33:42] Speaker B: Replay protection is only if you're like, yeah, we're hard forking for sure. Right? [01:33:46] Speaker C: Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's right. And you want to minimize chaos in it. Like there's no replay protection for adding SegWit, for example, as you said. [01:33:54] Speaker B: I mean, during the soft fork, like after August, when it activates and some exchange actually lists you guys as a different coin. I don't think you're going to get the name Bitcoin because the name Bitcoin kind of has to be reserved for the nodes that didn't do anything. Like they didn't update, I think. I don't know. [01:34:12] Speaker C: But if that happens, then it's dead. [01:34:13] Speaker B: We'll see. Yeah, but it's it's a weird precedent to like force the name Bitcoin on the nodes that didn't update. [01:34:21] Speaker C: Well, the thing is, if that happened, and that implies a chain split and a persistent, well, a persistent two chain thing, but you would ever have to. [01:34:30] Speaker A: Be running the user rejected soft fork for that to actually occur. If there was a significant enough blocks accepted in, in the, in the 110, like the, the dynamics of this, because it's a soft fork is really interesting actually. And I really kind of want to do a deep dive in it because it's not, it's not so cut and dry. [01:34:55] Speaker B: There's going to be a chain split no matter what. [01:34:57] Speaker C: But no, I mean the one year is neither here nor there. It starts right at the beginning of it. That's the issue. If there is no URSF and they just try to ignore it, then if, but they keep the name Bitcoin, that to me is very risky because if the bit 110 chain ever got longer, it would just wipe them out. And that's quite well understood, then suddenly we'd be Bitcoin. But the thing the exchange had been calling Bitcoin would have just had its history wiped out since the fork height. Yeah, anyone wants that kind of chaos? So, so if they want to minimize that chaos, then they have to URSF and then there's no incumbent chain to just leave as Bitcoin. Do you choose the UASF or the URSF? I maintain that in 2020. [01:35:40] Speaker B: Either way they get wiped out though. [01:35:42] Speaker C: Well, no, no, URSF can't get wiped out because it, the URSF is a. [01:35:48] Speaker A: Permanent, is a permanent hard fork. [01:35:49] Speaker C: Essentially it explicitly rejects the soft fork rather than ignores it. [01:35:54] Speaker B: Oh, I see. Okay. [01:35:55] Speaker C: Yeah, it's never been done before. Well, except BCASH is basically the example of that. BCASH is a URSF in response to the SEGWIT activation. And that's why that, that's, that's why it's a hard fork because it hard forks itself off the, the SEGWIT chain. It also makes blocks bigger in combination with that. Because why not if you're hard forking but there is no core chain. In 2017 there were three ways to go. There was core, which was just the incumbent, where SEGWIT just never activated. There was UASF and then there was BCash and the core chain just died. All that happened is everyone went in two different directions come August 1st. Some people went with segwit, some people went with bcash and the inertia was just nothing. The People just sitting around. [01:36:46] Speaker B: But somebody that didn't update their node at all was still on a network. [01:36:50] Speaker C: They were, but that's only because SEGWIT existed in an activatable sense inside core. [01:36:56] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. That's what I think will be called Bitcoin. [01:36:59] Speaker C: There are those situations now still in Bitcoin, where if you're just running a node that doesn't enforce taproot, then you're that kind of node. You're not actually enforcing the rules of the network anymore. The blocks might be invalid, but you accept them anyway. That would be the case. That's why soft forks can kind of win, because they get all these inert nodes. [01:37:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Wait, can you explain URSF a little bit more? Is you can explain what that is? [01:37:25] Speaker C: It's a user resisted or user rejected. Rejected. I don't remember what the R stands for, but it basically means there's a soft fork I don't like, I don't want it, so I'm going to explicitly reject it. The fork I it activates on the first block that complies with it, I guess, though, I mean, they could also do it at the activation here. [01:37:44] Speaker B: Okay, so this is like somebody on the core side saying that I'm going to turn your soft fork into a hard fork. [01:37:49] Speaker A: Basically what they do is they say that the, the block. The block in which the soft fork, like the 110 soft fork, would say that you can't have an opera turn of this size and you can't use what is it? Op if or whatever, which is inscriptions or whatnot. [01:38:05] Speaker B: I know all that. Yeah. [01:38:06] Speaker A: And yeah, so the, the rejected soft fork would say that the next block that bit one 10 activates in has to have a transaction with an upper turn of this size of like. [01:38:18] Speaker C: No, it's not bad. [01:38:19] Speaker A: It's not. Because I had a conversation. I thought that's what it was. [01:38:23] Speaker C: No, it's not deliberately breaking the rule. You have to actually hard code in a rejection of it. Because if you just say we have a block with a big up return in it, then all that happens is when the 110 chain gets longer, it just wipes you out again, because you're still not explicitly rejecting anything about the tighter rule set. You have to actually say OneTen violates consensus for us unless you do URSF. [01:38:46] Speaker A: But that's the question is like, how, what's. Do you know what the rule is that says this is how it violates the rule set? Because I thought it was. [01:38:55] Speaker C: That's how you do the ursf, you can do it in a whole bunch of ways. You could do it by just saying any blocks that Signal on version bit 4 to try and activate bip110 are invalid. You can just do that as well. [01:39:07] Speaker B: You probably can't even release the URSF code until the. Till the chain split actually happens. Cause you probably don't have anything to write into the code that would reject it until you know what that first block on the bip1.10 chain is. [01:39:20] Speaker C: No, you can, you can figure it out prematurely. [01:39:23] Speaker B: You can. [01:39:24] Speaker C: Yeah, you just. Because it starts with signaling, it doesn't start with the new rules at all. All that happens with Bitpoint 10 is in August, miners have to start signaling if they haven't already activated it. [01:39:36] Speaker B: Oh, so you can say after this block height, if there is a block that has the signal in it, then reject it? [01:39:42] Speaker D: Well, the signaling's not. Not reliable. If somebody wanted to be a. Wanted to attack. But if you, if you are making. If you're making a fair attempt at updating or you know, in incorporating this soft fork and you want to signal, then I guess, but, but I mean if they wanted to turn it into an attack, you could just turn off the signal and, and still blow and. [01:40:05] Speaker A: Still do 1:10, right? Yeah. That's the thing is that I'm trying to figure out like what's the consensus rule? Because signaling isn't in consensus rules or anything. And like what's the consensus rule that defines that if this block comes in, it's within the 110 versus the one without. I really. And I, I totally could be wrong about this. [01:40:25] Speaker B: I agree with Mechanic. There's probably, there's probably a way to do it. We probably just had somebody did probably think of a way to do it. [01:40:32] Speaker D: Well, like Mechanic said, the replay protection would be to make it to include a large hopper turn. Right? [01:40:37] Speaker C: Well, yeah, you can do it that way as well. You can hard code it in just that block height. You know, split plus zero equals. That block itself has to be the result of a client that will put in a coinbase transaction itself that has. Well, actually that was exempt. Maybe you can just say. All right, transaction number two needs to have an 84 byte op return in it. If it doesn't, it's invalid. [01:41:07] Speaker B: Right. Even if it's not written now, they can write it easily after the. [01:41:11] Speaker A: That's what I thought it was. It was. [01:41:13] Speaker D: But doesn't that mean they have to spam their own chain, essentially? [01:41:17] Speaker C: Well, they'd be happy to do that. [01:41:18] Speaker B: They'D be happy to do that they. [01:41:20] Speaker A: Have to put in a block is. And I again I could be wrong about this, but I just thought it was this way that they basically have to have a block that is invalid on 110 that they hard code to say this is valid and then at that point that it has to be this way. There has to be some characteristic about this one block that is going to be invalid on 1110 so that, so that if you hard code that then, then it's permanent because 110 is always going to reject it and the other one is always going to leave it. I, I thought that that was the. [01:41:54] Speaker C: Mechanism is always going to reject them anyway in the first place. It's you wanting to reject 110. That's the problem because 110 is always valid to the UNURSF site. You have to find a way to invalidate the 110 chain. That's the point of it. [01:42:07] Speaker A: Yes, by making a block that's simply outside of the 110 rules but still within. [01:42:10] Speaker C: No, no. You need to make the 110 blocks. [01:42:13] Speaker A: Unacceptable to you arguing about this and I don't think anybody has any idea the specifics. [01:42:17] Speaker C: No, no. [01:42:19] Speaker B: It's an interesting thing to think about. [01:42:20] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [01:42:21] Speaker B: I mean but even if they don't do it now, they can do it immediately afterwards. [01:42:25] Speaker C: They can, but I wouldn't. That seems like a reckless thing for them to do to wait until then I think. I'm sure there's a preemptive way to do it. They just have to say one 10 blocks are going to look like this, therefore we hard code in a rejection of that and that's it. That should be sufficient. I don't know how they would do it, but they can do it. [01:42:43] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, of course there's ways to do it. Um, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get what grok. I'm gonna see if grok says anything interesting. Not that grok is a source or that it's gonna be correct. [01:42:53] Speaker B: Worst case they just like sit and like have a bunch of people just waiting to make a transaction, you know and they just pre code in like this address will has to be transaction in the block after the, the date and then they just make that transaction. [01:43:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I don't want to give them ideas anymore. I just don't see any energy for it. Like miners, Miners are not going to want to do. The UASF people get that but they're not going to want to do the URSF either. So, but they can't afford to ignore it because then that's going to create chaos and the price has fallen enough. So I just think ultimately this thing wins. I just know that sounds like overconfidence. So where, what do you guys think is going to happen here? What scenarios do you think go down? Because August 4th, 2000 people start throwing blocks in the garbage if they're not signaling before even any rules come into effect. [01:43:51] Speaker B: I think it's chaos either way. I think probably, I think, well, okay, August is still a long time. I think there's a chance. [01:44:02] Speaker C: Well, yeah, not long, August. [01:44:05] Speaker B: I think there's a chance that bip 110. A lot of things can happen just in the next month with this Epstein stuff, for example, where some big miners might get pressured and be like all of a sudden for BIP110, like right now it's still a minority and all the core people think there's no chance that any big player is going to switch over. I'm not sure that's true. Because some big players might get some pressure from outside or like you're saying, mechanic, you know, the, the node count for BIP 110 starts to get 25% and they're looking at their income that actually comes from this spam and you know, maybe the income that comes from the spam actually goes down and they're just like, what are we even doing? So I, I think that's, that's kind of my hopeful situation. So I'll just, I'll just go with that. I mean, otherwise it's going to be chaos one way or the other. Especially with the exchanges. [01:44:58] Speaker C: The two unchaotic scenarios are we walk away from bit 110 or everyone adopts it. Those are the only two scenarios where there's no chaos. [01:45:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I don't see that, I don't see either of those happening, honestly. [01:45:11] Speaker C: Right. [01:45:12] Speaker A: I mean, like, the thing that gets me is that the defense against like, oh, we need opera turn to be big and we need OP if and stuff regardless of. Again, I, I, I don't even support or really like the idea of like causing an enormous amount of disruption on the network. I think it could lead to a massive loss of trust in Bitcoin's reliability. But in the context of like defending the, the resistance of it, is that still to this day, the arguments of like, what, what's the purpose of like having a bigger opportunity or OP if is just kind of like a, well, maybe we could use it for blah. And I'm like maybe like if you don't have any actual reason or like consequential value to do, to use this, you know, this, this seems totally the opposite of conservatism to me of like being intelligent and careful about what is added to Bitcoin based on explicit valuable use cases. You know, Satoshi found a bug in one opcode and he deactivated like 20 because it's like, oh, I don't have any use case for these. He didn't say well, oh well maybe we could use this for this and we could use this for this. He just said like, oh well these are a risk to leave these here because I don't know if these are cause these could cause a bug or these could have a negative effect. And like that's being conservative about a high trust network. Something that's insanely, that needs to be insanely robust. And I just don't, I still just don't hear a good excuse as to what, what the hell is like why do we have these things if the only thing, the only meaningful use case has been spammed, has been creating like an exploit. And what's the great loss? What is the cost of losing them? [01:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah, let me, I gotta jump off here because it's four o'. [01:47:25] Speaker C: Clock. [01:47:25] Speaker B: I gotta go get my car outta the shop. But let me just leave you this one very plausible scenario I think where what I'm saying could happen. Let's say a medium sized miner mines image that's like illegal for some reason and they get a lawsuit. Just that lawsuit right there. And the amount that a mining firm might have to spend on defending that lawsuit might be enough for other big miner companies. Be like, dude, this income's not worth this kind of lawsuit. That's just something that could happen. [01:47:58] Speaker A: There's a bunch of gross stuff on the chain already. That's true. [01:48:03] Speaker C: The question is only in a steganographic sense. Like you have to reassemble it intentionally. You can look at like an ordinals block explorer to see like all the pawn they have in there and stuff, but it's not stored in file. Like there's a contiguous thing. I know Giacomo is going to like roll his eyes at the contiguity argument, but I think it's valid. And there's a. Two months ago there was a new PR merged into Core that allows you to pull arbitrary bytes from byte X to byte Y out of any block. Like this. This sailed under the radar completely. I didn't notice It. But it basically just says it turns Bitcoin a block, a bitcoin block into something you can just pull one string of text out of, essentially. [01:48:48] Speaker B: That's so stupid. Like who. Who wants that? So stupid. [01:48:52] Speaker C: If your image is broken up into multiple transactions over multiple blocks or whatever, no one cares whether it's illicit or something like that. It's ridiculous to sue people over there and you'd have a defense. But the intent is to turn Bitcoin into file storage. I'm. I'm clicking on the link now. Why isn't it opening? Sorry. It appears my signal has crashed. But anyway, yeah, there was a PR two months ago that was just, you know, did exactly. It just serves the file storage use case to the point where it's like, well, now we have to care about the content of data in the chain. You're right. I don't know. [01:49:27] Speaker B: That's crazy. Well, I'm sure you guys will continue, but I'm gonna hop off. I will see you guys later. [01:49:31] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us, Steve. See ya later, boss. [01:49:33] Speaker D: Later, dude. [01:49:34] Speaker A: Yeah, we should go ahead and close it out. We got none of the non Epstein news items, which is. I had a whole list of stuff. But you know what? None of it's all that interesting in the context of like the. The big things to talk about. There's a, you know, a bunch of wallet stuff and some investment things that I'll actually be breaking into a couple of these things on the show, actually. So we'll just. I'll just tell people to listen to Bitcoin audible and we'll cover all the stuff that's really worthwhile and if there's stuff that's still relevant. Next roundtable, we'll go through the list of the. The real good stuff. I'll save the real good ones for. [01:50:19] Speaker C: For next time and let me know for the. For the thing next. Next month. Just keep an eye on it. If bip 110. Like at this point for me, it's at the point where enough. It has enough support that even people that are kind of moderate should be like, yeah, if everyone adopted this, we wouldn't need to be sweating all July. Like that to me feels it's coercive. Like because people are maybe pushing you to do something you don't want to do, but at the same time, your stash needs to not be that disrupted. So I don't know. I know it's a bit coercive because that's the nature of soft forks. When an intolerant minority presents them, but it is what it is. Would you, if you're like ambivalent on the fork, do you think it makes sense for someone to be like, everyone needs to adopt this because it doesn't do any harm. It's definitely maybe a bit of a good thing, but if there aren't enough people running it, then August is gonna be completely chaotic. What do you, what's your opinion on that? Would you advocate. [01:51:23] Speaker A: I don't know if, if it became like 30 or 40% of the network and there were a couple of miners behind it, I'd absolutely, I'd be like, no, it's better to just do 1:10 because, because it's the least likely of causing like a, a serious split or a serious remainder. [01:51:46] Speaker D: I mean, I definitely don't like the spam. [01:51:48] Speaker A: So. Yeah. And like, because then at that point I think it's a bigger risk to do. The URSF is the bigger disruptor. They're the thing that would actually cause like a very serious problem on the network. Because BIP110 in that context is, is like, okay, well, we can keep it together. And what do you lose? What do you lose by not, you know, but in the context of like, if it's 10%, you know, if it's a, it's a small portion of the network, I think it's largely, it's more likely that they can, it can simply be ignored. And yeah, I think if it's big. [01:52:31] Speaker C: Enough, if it's big enough to justify ursf, then it's already too big for the URSF to work. [01:52:37] Speaker A: That is a good point. That is a good point. If it's big enough to justify the URSF and for people to actually use it and for URSF to actually have more like, you know, because at the exact same time, you can't, you can't. If you ursf with 10% or 5% and you don't have 30 or 40% running on the network, you kind of have the exact same problem in the reverse. Is that okay, well, what if you do have a significant portion that do accept 110 blocks now, now you forked off like you, you've caused, you've caused all the problems that you're trying to say. You don't, you don't want to. [01:53:11] Speaker C: Cause, you know, the URSF is an ideological thing that says all transactions are equal and we should never change the consensus rules and we should never put any UTXO in jeopardy. Like, because there's some, there's some like, crazy edge case UTXOs that are like, even though they're grandfathered in, they're still somehow using taproot with more than 128 leaves and op ifs and what's no key part. Like they do that whole combo of crazy things. [01:53:39] Speaker A: Wasn't that just done on purpose though, that like once they saw. [01:53:42] Speaker C: Yeah, it was the minute bit 1000 came around people actions that would be made, confiscated. But that is. You can do that to any soft fork. You can do that to segwit coins. [01:53:51] Speaker A: Before that to the transaction size. You can do that to. [01:53:56] Speaker C: Yeah, you can make your own coins, understandably. So, yeah, that the confiscation FUD is genuinely just fud. That's good to point out, but yeah, I just. I don't know, man. I don't know at what point. I don't know at what point. We just say everyone needs to run this. I don't even support this, but you need to run it. Like, when does that start happening? All right, what do you think, Jeff? [01:54:24] Speaker D: It's. It's really. It's really hard to say. It's. It's interesting. I mean, like, the thing is I'm. I would be more inclined to run it just because, you know, like, I don't like the spam and I don't want the separation. You know, we talked about this before. Like I'm. I'm not super excited about doing like, I would still prefer to just use filters and, and have people adopt knots and do it that way, but. But I mean, I don't know. [01:54:57] Speaker C: That is an important thing though. It's not an anti spam fork, it's an anti contiguous arbitrary data fork. Sure, the inscriptions envelope is data consensus, but they can just use another one, but it won't be contiguous. That's the point. I don't think anyone should be. Everyone's like saying hashtag rug, the spammers and all that stuff. I get it. And that is a motivation for people to be on this general side of the aisle. But Bitpoint 10 is not an anti spam for. It's literally just here are the ways you can insert large lumps of arbitrary data in a contiguous way in Bitcoin and all of them are closed. It's that and it's like a hardcore way of doing it because it kills upgrade hooks and means you can't activate other things right after it though you can activate CTV during its window. I don't understand why, but you can. But it does kill upgrade hooks. That's why it can't be a permanent thing. That's why it's temporary. But I do think people that are like anti spam, like it does have that effect, but it isn't. No one is being like, okay, filters don't work. That's why we're doing a consensus limit of this arbitrary data. I don't think that's the correct understanding of it. Like it's more serious than that. It's the big contiguous data. And you can even shoehorning poison blocks as a motivation for it as well because to my knowledge, it makes it impossible to do the poison block attack. So that was where it all came from, right? Was poison block. [01:56:17] Speaker A: Oh that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. [01:56:19] Speaker C: So it isn't an anti spam fork. Exactly. [01:56:23] Speaker A: That's the thing is that none of it can completely stop spam, which is the side of the other side of the aisle that I'm like, yeah, I completely agree, but that doesn't mean invite it, you know, Like I still can't get behind the strategy as being just make it so you can stick as much data that has nothing to do with transactions at all in the chain because maybe there's a use case for it. It's like what's the use case of non transaction data? Like, other than sticking it on everybody's nose? Like it just doesn't. It just seems so. It just seems so stupid and it. And it also seems so like technical developer thing. It's like one of those things like oh, you can do it if you just install it by terminal and you do these 10 commands and all of this stuff. And it's like, well that's different than putting it in the default iPhone app, you know, like it's not the same damn thing. And the perspective of like these are easy tools for me is not. Is not properly. It just seems like a total loss of perspective. [01:57:36] Speaker D: And. [01:57:40] Speaker A: What'S the term proportionality on like what. How to respond to something. And just mempool filters were the best thing and. And we should have just had like simple filters, low risk, low consequence like of just like oh well they're trying to do like if we actually all agree that bloated UTX oset for no reason that has. That are unspendable is bad. Just throwing a memple filter like you would have stopped the investment and the industry around NFTs and inscriptions and all that stuff forever actually developing. Because we just stopped and we just let them develop and we let them do this 1800 times over two years and they're like, well, now we can't do anything about it. It's like, well that's because we weren't doing anything about it. And we had the proportional response, we had the tool that was simple, easy, low risk, low consequence, and, and quick to deploy. Um, just, just, it's just really, it's really annoying to, to hear such a. Weak excuses as to why we should and weak defenses as to why we shouldn't. You know, it just really frustrating. [01:58:58] Speaker D: I'll tell you what the crypto space in general needs like, like talking to normie crypto bros or whatever. Like, they, they, they don't understand that you have to run a node for something to be decentralized. Like, we need to meme the hell out of like, if you don't run a node to verify transactions and relay. [01:59:19] Speaker A: Transactions for the network, you're not, you're. [01:59:22] Speaker D: Not, you, you're not engaged in a decentralized project. Like, I can't, it's, it's astonishing to me that they could be involved in something for some of these people for years and they know so little about it. I mean, which is, it's, it's a little bit understandable if you got involved through Ethereum or whatever. It's not like they're trying to teach you anything. You know, like, at least in the bitcoin space there are people trying to teach you. But, but like, it's just shocking. You know, I get, it's like, well, you could use Ethereum or something better and then, then Bitcoin. And I'm like, can you do anything about the fact that, you know, like, like, can you run a node? Can you run a fully. Like, and you have to distinguish fully archival in the case of, you know, Ethereum. But a fully archival node where you verify and help process transactions is not. [02:00:14] Speaker A: Possible to run anymore. [02:00:15] Speaker D: And they stole the mining reward from the miners and the founders who issued themselves 70% of the supply in the first place, gave it to themselves. And so now they're just like, the proof of stake is like, you know, they're like a Federal Reserve, you know. [02:00:32] Speaker A: Not to mention that all the staking is custodial. [02:00:36] Speaker D: Well, yeah, no, no, because you have to have enough. They, they literally is. All of this was done on purpose. So you didn't make these design choices on accident. [02:00:44] Speaker A: And staking is whitelisted. Staking is whitelisted. You have to get approval. The, the current stakers can stop you from being a staker. [02:00:54] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's clearly set up to be the most centralized garbage ever. And so, so like. But the fact that people don't understand this is just mind blowing. Like, oh, we're participating in this decentralized thing. Like have you ever run an, like, like a matrix server? Or like I think, have you participated, have you, have you participated in BitTorrent? Like, I mean like you have to seed to be part of a good BitTorrent network. Like, like how are you, do you not understand that there's a cost to being decentralized? Like if you're not paying some sort of cost, it's not decentralized. Like, you know, so there's gotta be some sort of. I mean, and Bitcoin's, you know, the cost of running a bitcoin nodes is not, not terrible. We're trying to keep it from being, you know, from getting terrible. But like it's, it's not that bad. You know, it, the setup takes a little while and you know, if you want to run a lightning node or something, like, you know, there are other things that can be more involved. But like I just, I don't know man. It's, it's crazy how bad the general understanding of these things are. [02:02:08] Speaker A: Well, I mean they think, they think Epstein is satoshi now. It's just like. [02:02:12] Speaker D: But, but I mean you would never believe the Epstein fuddle if you were educated enough. Like, like this is the problem is that the ignorance just begets more ignorant. [02:02:23] Speaker A: Do they care to be informed on any of this though? You know, I guess. I don't know. I don't, I don't know. Like somebody who, somebody who thinks or just says that, you know, Epstein was satoshi without even like slightly looking at it. It's just like, like how much time am I going to devote to, to teach this person who, who has believed something without any. Like, it's just so stupid. It's so stupid. [02:02:50] Speaker C: You've got to get ahead of these narratives. You've got. If there's truth out there, you got to know that the someone will come up with bs. And if they're the first one everyone hears, that's what everyone goes away believing. So like this was the thing that I learned about Ocean because we launched, we had an anti sperm policy and I never spoke about it. Cause I didn't really. It just wasn't a part of the launch. I didn't think about it. And then the narrative got out there. The Ocean was censoring people and now that's still just what people think. That's still the narrative around it, because it was the first thing anyone said. So I'm like, right, so if there's ever going to be a controversy and I want the truth to be known, or at least what my perception is, say it first and say it clearly so that people actually at least have that perspective. So this is what I'm trying to do with bit 110 because there's going to be a dumb narrative about what it does that goes everywhere. So I'm like, okay, I need to say clearly what it is and what it does and what it doesn't do. And that goes for anything, anything in bitcoin. So now it's like, who invented bitcoin? It was Jeffrey Epstein. That was the first thing a lot of people heard when it related to all the controversy with bitcoin and Jeffrey Epstein drops and now that there's just masses of people that believe it. And I think that's actually a large part of the price drop is because of this social contagion now. And it's so dumb. And I don't know how you could have got ahead of this by saying Jeffrey Epstein didn't invent bitcoin, by the way. [02:04:15] Speaker D: No, you can't, you can't do that. Yeah, this is very much in line with the people that thought the NSA invented bitcoin too though. Like this has been, this is not that. And this, it was the, the really dumb guy that wears the like ten thousand dollar suits. [02:04:33] Speaker A: It's like if you, if you knew who invented bitcoin, you wouldn't buy that. [02:04:39] Speaker D: You know, like, yeah, who? [02:04:41] Speaker C: Dan Penna? [02:04:43] Speaker D: Yeah, like, I mean, so it just goes back to like he said he. [02:04:46] Speaker C: Knew who Satoshi was as well. And he was like, I'm not going to tell you. And then he says it, it says that it was Vladimir Putin. [02:04:53] Speaker A: Right. [02:04:55] Speaker D: I mean that guy's a clearly an idiot. But like people are pointing to that video like, oh look, you know, it's like, okay, well they are, but they're. [02:05:04] Speaker C: Missing the context where he says it was Putin, not Epstein. [02:05:07] Speaker D: Right. We need, we need memes that are. [02:05:10] Speaker C: Why would Putin better bitcoin? [02:05:13] Speaker D: It doesn't make any sense. [02:05:14] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not even. [02:05:16] Speaker A: Russia's pretty antagonistic most of the day on the leader of Russia. But I, I, at night, in my off hours at night, I break out my C programming and hang out with cypherpunks on the cryptography mailing list. Jesus Christ. [02:05:36] Speaker D: But I mean, we need, we need some way to like, to meme the edu like, like, oh, Your doesn't. You don't run a node. Like, like, I don't know. Like, how do you. How do you frame this so that like, you sound like an idiot if you think you're. [02:05:50] Speaker C: I get you. The best one you got is sound vaccinated. Like you. You got. You sold me your coins at 50% off the ATH because you believe Epstein invented. Like. Yeah, yeah, that's great meme. If you can mock it in a meme, then you can bring back the truth. [02:06:05] Speaker D: Yeah, truly. I think a lot of them are just the. This. The signal to noise ratio is so bad. Did a lot of them just literally have not heard? Because generally my responses like kind of crush the conversation. Like they, they don't know how to respond when I say, well, if you don't run a node. And then, you know, like, like I post these just basic things and I'm not getting blocked. I'm not getting unfriended. Like, they're just like, oh, okay. Like, you know, like there just seems. [02:06:36] Speaker A: To be like there's just nothing more to say because they don't know how to go deeper on the conversation. So they just kind of like walk away from it. [02:06:43] Speaker D: Their understanding is just very shallow. And. And I'm not also not giving them a wall of text. I'm being very concise about these things. So it's like, I really think people are hearing it. It's just like, how do you get it to sink in? Like, I mean when, when Epstein coins being hammered into people's heads, like, how do you get it to sink in that, you know, that's not how any of this works. Like, you know, it just. [02:07:09] Speaker A: I'm definitely going to make a video about this one. I've got most of my details together, but I mean, yeah, meme them. But also I think it's like the people who generally, like, I don't. I don't think they're the audience anyway. You know, like the people who, who have. Who just jump on like something that like Epstein is satoshi. Like, we're never going to be buyers of bitcoin of any consequence. If. If they ever bought any of it, it would. They were going to be paper hands. They are always. That kind of a person is always going to be the one that simply buys it when they don't have a choice. Or bitcoin simply, like it's the thing on the Internet. Like it. They're. They are lagging indicators of it every single time. You know, they're reactions not. Not proact. They're not actors, they're reactors. That's. [02:08:01] Speaker D: That, that's fair in a sense. But like, there's also a sense that, like, how many degenerate gamblers have become hardcore bitcoin holders? You know, like, sure, sure. Bitcoin, like when you learn, when you do learn, you kind of wake up and see, oh shit, they're, they're forced to learn a future here. And you know, like, short, short, concise. [02:08:23] Speaker A: Video that hits the point hard. That's, that's, that's my strategy. I'll hit one on this just because it's so easy. [02:08:33] Speaker C: So easy. [02:08:34] Speaker A: I mean, like, there's perfectly good reasons to believe or be concerned that maybe he had some sort of an influence or that, you know, he, like some CEOs or companies may be. Could possibly be beholden to him or something. But even those, even, even kind of the worst case of like, did everybody he. Was he connected to, were they all, at the time that he was connected to them, compromised? I don't even think that spells like a disaster for bitcoin. It's just kind of like, okay, well, think about. Still make sure that you have an understanding of how bitcoin works and what's important in bitcoin and what should happen in its development and form your own damn opinion, which you were supposed to do anyway. And. [02:09:22] Speaker D: The code has been open and hammered on and everything else. [02:09:25] Speaker A: Like, like, even if he like totally compromised Adam Back, like, when did Adam back make some sort of a unilateral decision about bitcoin ever? You know, so it's just like, okay, like, you be concerned about that. Think about that. Sure. It's an attack vector. It's always been an attack vector. You know, like a dictator mined like 5% of the Bitcoin back in like 2013 and 14. Like, it just, it was a drug. Most of the people were related to an online drug market in bitcoin for like two years. There were multiple people who wanted to create assassination markets. Like, this is, this is where bitcoin was born, in chaos and conflict and adversaries. And you're worried now that like, Epstein put $500,000 into Blockstream is like, okay, well, yeah, but what about the other 50 times that this has kind of been a problem and people have had influence and there were shitty or shady people involved, like, do they not count anymore? Like, this was always a problem. This is, this is how bitcoin. This is how bitcoin works. This is how bitcoin survives. I don't know. It just it just seems so stupid to be. I guess Epstein's just the news. Epstein's just the news right now. And it's all so fucking horrible. And to think that he's like, connected to it at all. It's probably just. It's such bad publicity because he's such a disgusting and horrific individual. And everything around it is so disgusting and horrific is if you can't. If you can see an email where he spoke the word bitcoin, it's like, oh, God, I can't touch that. You see an email where he spoke the word Tom Hanks. Oh, God, oh, God, I can't touch. You know, just. Just whatever it is. Any association whatsoever is just kind of like poison right now. And I just kind of think that's what we're. What's happening. But bitcoin has survived, honestly, worse, you know, like, it's never had a good reputation. People like, see, I told you bitcoin was for money laundering. When the hell would nobody Was that not the. Everybody has said that since forever. The fact that Epstein said it, okay, go, duh. He heard it from everybody else. That's all anybody's ever said about bitcoin. Bitcoin is going to survive, though. It's for money laundering. Fud. I promise. You know, so, well, I mean, I. [02:11:39] Speaker D: Also keep posting like, glass node data or whatever. Like, all the wallets over 10,000 are acquiring the ones under 10 or selling or whatever. So. So, like, you know, okay, like, I'm. I'm acquiring, like, like, you know, that's just like, you're. You're just. We can selling to whales. [02:11:57] Speaker A: I don't know. [02:11:59] Speaker C: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm buying the dip. I'm not a whale, but. [02:12:05] Speaker D: No, me neither. [02:12:06] Speaker C: This is definitely, like, these are good prices to buy. [02:12:09] Speaker A: Wouldn't it be great to be a whale? Guys? What if we were whales? [02:12:13] Speaker D: That's okay. I'm gonna swim with the whales either way. [02:12:17] Speaker C: I remember swimming their way. I don't take Willy Woo super seriously, but he did make a pretty good point that, like, the smaller buyers are the ones that end up ultimately with a lot more. Whales tend to come along and get burnt and shot pretty quickly. Like, they move, they make big moves, they get burnt. But the. He. The shrimp or something, he called them the shrimp or the dolphin. They just sit there buying slowly and just get bigger and bigger. And then after a few price cycles, they're really rich. And they're not acting like whales, right? They're not dumping 10,000 bitcoins and buying it back an hour later. Like they're not that kind of thing anyway. I gotta go, boys. [02:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, man, Always a pleasure. Me too. Pleasure as always. Great convo. [02:12:56] Speaker C: Where are you at? What is the next one? Heat Punk. Are you coming to Heat Punk? [02:13:02] Speaker A: No, I'm not coming. I got invited and I felt really bad. I wanted to. I'm going to the time chain summit in May. I got bit block boom in April. I don't know when is. When is bitcoin? When is the. The big. The Vegas one this year? Because I got contacted about that and I'm not, am I? [02:13:22] Speaker C: I don't know, but I don't. I don't think I'll be going to that. If I am, then I'm disappointed in myself. But who knows? [02:13:31] Speaker A: I haven't decided. [02:13:33] Speaker C: I'm probably gonna end up going to the biggest but not snap. [02:13:36] Speaker A: It's the end of April. Oh, Jesus. All right. [02:13:40] Speaker D: All right, man. [02:13:42] Speaker A: Later, guys. Later, man. Thank you for joining us, Jeff. [02:13:45] Speaker C: Good to see you, man. [02:13:46] Speaker A: We are out. [02:13:47] Speaker C: Speak to you later. [02:13:47] Speaker A: That's the round table. Jmail world. In fact, I may try to put something online or host something somewhere so that it's easy to sort through all the bitcoin stuff in the Epstein files. Maybe that's worth digging into. Let me know your thoughts on that because I've done a lot of digging and collecting using AI to help search through this stuff too, just to get context and tried to pull what was meaningful from those. If you actually think that would be helpful to put that somewhere as opposed to just talking about it on the show, let me know. I'm not gonna go outta my way unless somebody actually thinks it would be useful to have. Obviously all of that stuff is out there that you can search and dig through it yourself. Let me know what you think and if there's anything I missed, feel free to shout out on NOSTR or X or anything like that. And don't forget to check out the HRF and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Tickets are on sale now. This is June 1st to 3rd as well as their amazing Financial Freedom Report, one of the best newsletters on keeping up to date on both the financial freedom technology, the tools to fight back, as well as the advancements of tyranny and financial control and capital controls around the world and the stories of how people are fighting back. I think it's really discounted how powerful knowing that information and hearing those firsthand stories are. So check that out the link again right down in the show notes and with that. We will catch you on the next roundtable and the next episode of Bitcoin Audible. And until then, guys, that's our two stats. [02:15:37] Speaker B: It.