Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What is up, guys?
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Welcome back to the show.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: This is bitcoin audible and I am
[00:00:05] Speaker C: Guy Swan, the guy who has read more about bitcoin than anybody else, you know.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: And the roundtable is back and we're
[00:00:13] Speaker C: gonna actually do something a little bit different today.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: We're gonna talk about bitcoin a lot, actually.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: And one of the big questions that we got into on this show was whether or not bitcoin mining can even
[00:00:27] Speaker A: be profitable or if it should be expected. Expected to be.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: Or is this actually a sunk cost,
[00:00:32] Speaker A: an infrastructure cost that has less to
[00:00:35] Speaker C: do with the security budget than we actually assume. Plus, we dig a little bit into the war.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Some fresh input on the BIP110 news
[00:00:45] Speaker C: about Ocean, what's going on in the markets, and a ton more really. What the hell is going on in bitcoin today? With a few OGs sitting down to talk a little bit of pistachio. And no bitcoiner is worth their salt unless they've reminded you at least once today that you should be holding your own keys. And you can get a bitbox nova with my discount code and link. It's right down in the show notes. This is a super easy and intuitive device to hold your keys. It's an all in one. They've got great hardware security. They've got simple software stack. It is bitcoin sovereignty in a package.
It's open source, it's Swiss made. And if you use my link and discount code, not only do you save sats, you also support my show. So check them out right down in the description. And with that, let's get into today's episode. We have got bitcoin mechanic back. Simple Steve, my brother Jeffrey and myself on guy's roundtable.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: This is the fight is never over.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Foreign.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: What is up, guys? Welcome back to the show. Everybody is here. Everybody was on time.
We get to talk about anything other than bitcoin. So exciting. How's everybody doing?
Mechanic, lay it down for me.
[00:02:14] Speaker D: I'm good.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: I thought that was it. It's like, I'm good.
[00:02:21] Speaker D: I am good. Yes.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: How are you fighting? Fighting the war?
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really good.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: How's that going?
[00:02:28] Speaker A: I can't complain.
[00:02:29] Speaker D: We're winning the war. We'll be fine.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: We're winning. That's good.
[00:02:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
I've got questions for you all about that.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: All right, all right. I'm e. I'm. I'm excited. Let's get into it. Steve, how you doing, man?
[00:02:42] Speaker E: I'm doing good, dude.
New version of utx, Oracle Is awesome. Coming out in two weeks. But you know what? Thing that I'm terrible about is like, I will find a curiosity in the blockchain and I would just go on these exploratory things. Now that I have this Claude back end database that can give me answers about billions of data points in seconds.
I just, I've got, I got. Here's an example. So like I was noticing that
[00:03:17] Speaker A: I.
[00:03:18] Speaker E: Well, first of all, I don't let UTX Oracle deal with transactions which have inputs and outputs recycling like in the same block.
You know how like you can, you can send a transaction with some outputs and then you can spend those outputs as inputs in the same block.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Like child pays for parent kind of thing.
[00:03:42] Speaker E: Yes, that kind of stuff.
[00:03:43] Speaker D: There's a bunch of different ways in a specific order, otherwise the block's invalid. But it works. Exactly.
[00:03:49] Speaker E: So in my mind and when I built UTX Oracle, this was like a small percentage of transactions. This is now 50% of transactions.
[00:04:00] Speaker D: Yeah, it's just bullshit token trading and.
[00:04:04] Speaker E: Yeah, and like it's 75% of taproot transactions and it's. If you take taproot transactions out of this, then it's 10% of transactions like it, like it always used to be.
And I was just like, I mean we all knew that the, the average amount of money in a Taproot transaction was 50 cents. Like, we all knew that. But you can do this with time preference too.
The average time preference of a taproot transaction is less than 10 minutes.
Like, it's just insane.
So I've been like, I don't know, I do, I go on these curiosities, I find these things and I plot some of this stuff on Twitter or I show.
Never gets much traction, but I kind of feel like this is my contribution to the effort is to show people how there really are two different communities in bitcoin. It's not like there's a, a blend. You know, there's people that use bitcoin as money, spend $50, $100 on average. It's a nice beautiful bell curve. They hold onto their coins for another nice bell curve of time preference going back to a whole year, and then it's a bimodal distribution. You have people spending bitcoin as money and people spending bitcoin for data or whatever, and they're half and half like transaction amounts. But if you just look at their time preference and their amount spent, it's just two completely different communities. There's nothing, there's nobody in the middle.
I would say it's like men and women and humans, but I can't say that anymore.
[00:05:58] Speaker D: But
[00:06:01] Speaker E: it's like, I don't know, I feel like people don't understand that these communities are just completely distinct. It's like there's bitcoin used to be one community. Now it's very clearly two.
It's not a million, it's just two.
So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I should keep making these plots or not because I don't get any feedback on it, but it just seems important to me to keep showing them.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Well, I don't. I don't think I respond very often, but I like them. You post them in our chats or whatever. It's like, oh, Steve's got a new plot and I'll. I'll be, like, interested in it, but I won't have. I won't have, like two paragraphs worth of something to add to it. I just, I'm observing. So never forget that. There's lurkers, all right?
[00:06:46] Speaker E: There's lurkers.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: It's probably one of those things that, like, after you post 10 things, something. Something might click eventually and somebody be like, oh, my God, think about what you've shown us.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: You know, oh, no, I guess I carry it around. I probably haven't responded to like a single thing, but I use it. Like, I. I think about it when I'm thinking about how to. How to frame these things or whatever, and I'll be like, man, like, tap really has no, like, because, like, a big thing for me is like, do we have a good use for taproot? Like, like, well, not, not even. Not taproot per se, because taproot in Schnorr signatures are just like a different signature type. But is there a use case for taproot with no witness restriction? Is. Is there a reason to have the large witness size that anybody has found that is actually meaningful, that actually has some sort of a valuable concept?
Because that was a meaningful change to the protocol that clearly has one use case that is purely for. And this is the thing that gets me. And we were arguing in the. The Raleigh bitcoin group, and this is the thing that, like, gets me so much is people conflating the use or the censorship. The censorship or the restriction of bitcoin, the money with the use or restrictions of what you can do with the chain and constantly making a moral argument that you're not allowed to restrict or control what goes into the chain, what type of data or format of a thing goes into the chain because you're censoring the money. And it drives me up an, like an absolute wall that.
And I don't even care. I don't even care if you have a technical argument to the contrary. Like that's fine. It's a technical argument. There's, there's plenty of nuance. There's plenty of technical reasons to do this or this or, or reasons for efficiency or centralization. Those are, those are decent arguments. Those are the things that we should unpack. But the second you go back to some moral grandstanding that like you, you can't, you can't force transactions to have transactions IDs that are valid because it's a, it's a free market. You could do whatever you want. You can't censor Bitcoin and require them to have validation valid hashes. Like, that's what it sounds like to me. And I'm like, what the is wrong with you? Like, it's not. It would never work if you don't have a restriction as to how the chain is used.
[00:09:15] Speaker D: That has nothing to do with protocol, has rules.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: I know it just like, it's like. And it's, it's not even that. It's not even that. It means that oh bip110 has to happen or you have to kick Taproot out. That's not even the point. It's the fact that you're saying that you're ethically sound and everybody else that disagrees with you is morally inferior to you because you think you're defending censorship resistant money because you want to stick JPEGs into the. Your dick butts into the chain. It's like, it's not, you're not morally superior. You're just an idiot. And has nothing to do with whether or not we should do anything about spam. That's a totally different argument. You're saying that you're morally superior for saying JPEG should be allowed in the chain. Whether we can do anything about it instead of just thinking about what the difference is between the money and the chain. And it's the exact same conflation of price inflation versus monetary inflation. Is it? There's no price inflation, so why would we care about money printing? It's the same thing. Is because the Bitcoin chain is still referred to as Bitcoin, you can say it's monetary censorship to say that a transaction is forced to have a transaction ID or a transaction is forced to, you know, only spend the UTXOs and they'll, you know, go through all these hand wavies of like, well, that's a different utxo. That's a totally different issue. It's like, no, it's just a restriction about how what is allowed to go in the chain.
But it has nothing to do with bitcoin. It has nothing to do with censoring bitcoin. And it is infuriating. And all you. And if you say anything or you have an opinion about it, you're an anti spammer or you're a bit one tenor or whatever. You can't actually hone down. Like, I am a maximalist for useful arguments. And that one drives me up a fucking wall. Anyway, Jeff, how's it going, man?
[00:10:59] Speaker E: All right.
Hell yeah.
Get deep quick.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: What you just described sounds like the entire libertarian world these days, though. Like, like, oh my God, so many, like the libertarians have like completely lost the plot. They've shit the bed and rolled around and it like, they just, they're like, what?
[00:11:18] Speaker E: You don't, you don't support people who shit the bed?
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Like, I don't. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, whatever it is, like, you have to like, embrace like complete degeneracy in order to, like, be a libertarian or something.
[00:11:31] Speaker D: Yeah, that's true.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: So stupid.
[00:11:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't even. Haven't been paying attention to anything in bitcoin lately. I don't even feel like I'm a bitcoiner anymore.
I mean, I am.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: But you sold. You sold everything. You're going right back to fiat.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: I am in exile in Canada still, and I'm doing what people in prison do is I'm writing. I'm just. I'm just writing and writing, writing.
And hopefully I will have some sort of, you know, thing that is. Appeals to everybody's emotions and people want to hear and will help get. Attend, bring attention to the insanity that is this whole situation.
[00:12:19] Speaker E: But that's when the best stuff is written in prison. Dude, you're on it.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: I mean, I mean, I can't. I literally can't do anything else. Like I said last time that it feels a little bit like having my arms cut off to not have my tools and stuff when I'm like, like I'm used to being able to go outside and do something. And so now, like, I don't know. It's not, it's not. I do not get the same stress relief from writing, but I do, I do get.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: There is a dopamine if I can't
[00:12:45] Speaker E: like, God, it's the opposite.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: God.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: I do get a bit of, I do get a bit of like, dopamine. When I, like, realize that I've improved something significantly. I'm like, hey, I did this thing that I just read about for, you know, a week or whatever. So it's, it's coming. There's, there's things happening, so.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Nice. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying prison and making good use of it.
I want to actually kick this off talking about bitcoin. I know this is crazy, but there was just a really, really cool story.
Actually, this is going to be a conversation about AI.
The story about the dude that used Claude to recover a wallet that was a lock that was locked for 11 years.
Let me just. The, the thread's actually like super short.
I got it pulled up here somewhere. Nope, those are my notifications. Someone's complaining at me about how Keat doesn't do a thing because they think I made Keat, apparently.
[00:13:54] Speaker E: I thought you made Keat.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Holy crap. Claude cracked this anthropic. Thank you. I'm naming my kid after you, Dario.
So I tried like 7 trillion passwords, found this old mnemonic a few weeks ago that ended up being the old password before I had changed it. But I thought I was screwed. My last ditch effort, I dumped my entire college computer into Claude and found an old wallet file. So as I understand it, he actually deleted his wallet file and he found an old copy of it that was not deleted and the mnemonic successfully decrypted it. So, so he was locked out for 11 years because he got stoned and changed the password and spent $250 on each.
[00:14:43] Speaker D: Don't take drugs.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Don't take drugs. The best part is the pass. The password was lol420, the police, exclamation point, asterisk, smiley face.
Oh my God.
But 3.5 trillion passwords. 3.5 trillion passwords was the recovery effort.
3.5 trillion. But I just thought that was just, just so wild that, you know, when you have a computer that can just go and do things for you, it's, it's weird that, especially in the age of, you know, like when, when we're in the kind of the zone of like wanting to recover bitcoin and stuff, I still have hope for an old wallet that was lost.
Even though it's a, I, I, I know I don't know the password. It's a 13 character, random generated. And what's funny is the, the bit.
What is it?
God, I can't remember the name. Bit 48. I think the one that. For how you generate passphrase.
[00:15:55] Speaker D: Well, it's a combo, right? I don't know, it's like 39, 49, 39, 39.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's 39 and one of the other ones right there.
You're right.
But it's how you generate the pass. The key from the passphrase that is really what, because 13 character random generated. If you have enough hash power
[00:16:20] Speaker C: or
[00:16:20] Speaker A: if you have enough, you know, compute power.
I think, I think it was something like 140 years or something to generate it to generate all the options. And it's like, oh, that's actually. That's a lottery ticket, right? That's. That's within a lifetime you could.
In 70 years, you got a 50% chance of finding it.
Except that bip39 then hashes it 1000 times and uses that as the actual key.
So you have to take that 140 years and then multiply it by a thousand. Because the made it too secure and decided that it should be brute force resistant. Even if it's an easy password.
Because the passphrase isn't actually the key. It's hash it a thousand times and that's the key from the passphrase.
So even if you know, it's like, you know, the hills are filled with the Sound of Music. Like you still have to generate like it doesn't matter. You don't know what the key is until you generate a thousand hashes or whatever from it.
But it's brutal. Just a. Just a really, really cool story though and hope that we get a lot more like that.
But curious Yalls thoughts on it and Yalls experiences. We've all been in bitcoin for a long time, so I bet everybody has an old wallet story.
[00:17:49] Speaker D: I got a wallet I'm locked out of.
[00:17:52] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Do we all have a lot wallet that we got locked out of?
Has everybody lost a wallet?
[00:17:58] Speaker E: Dude, knock on wood.
I mean, I'm crazy about my shit, but yeah, I have not lost one.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: I don't have a. I don't have a wallet that I was locked out of, but I'd got Mount Goxed, so that's really worse.
[00:18:13] Speaker D: Like, did you get that back yet? Like they gave everyone like 10% of it back eventually.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: They fucked me so hard on that whole thing.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: So the lawyers didn't get effed and the owners didn't get effed. They walked away rich.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: I apparently I didn't even realize, like, they kept sending me, you know, for years. I'm just getting emails, like, every time I, like, basically get over the fact that, like, there's this, like, money gone. It, like, they'd send me another email
[00:18:44] Speaker A: like, God damn it.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Like, I don't even. Just leave me alone. I don't even want the hope of this thing. And then there was always some bullshit thing I had to do, and I didn't realize that I was technically considered a zombie account.
And so I got like some fraction of what everybody else got. I thought that I was, like, it was so brutal because I thought that I was going to get like a bitcoin and a half or something back. Like, like something, you know, significant. And then it was like, no. Well, it was still. It was still significant.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: But, like, didn't you get, like $6,000 worth? You got, like, what it was.
Didn't you get, like, what it was worth in dollars at the time that you lost it or something?
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it was basically 1,000th of, like,
[00:19:31] Speaker A: what it was supposed to be worth because it was like 11 or 12 Bitcoin, right?
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was something like that.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: So, yeah, totally effed.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: It was like less than.
I don't know, it was like half a bitcoin or less than. It was. It was very. It was very bad compared to what it was where it originally been. But it was, you know, whatever. Money's money.
It's not. It's not. It wasn't completely gone, I guess was a unexpected surprise.
[00:20:04] Speaker E: No, I'm good, man. I got. I have a really long password. I mean, obviously I use, you know, cold storage and the. The words and stuff now, but not for those old school wallets. I've got a really long password that I have maintained private that I use for everything.
[00:20:27] Speaker D: Nice. What is it?
[00:20:31] Speaker E: I do not have bitcoin that I've never moved. No, I got some old ones, but no, it's actually like. It's a sentence.
But in between each word of the sentence, I do special.
[00:20:45] Speaker D: What are you doing?
[00:20:46] Speaker B: What are you doing?
[00:20:47] Speaker E: Stop, stop, stop. Straight.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Don't tell me.
[00:20:50] Speaker E: I don't mind. I don't mind saying this. I don't mind saying this.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: No, my favorite one. I actually made a password generator just for fun with Claude, but I. I just do five random words and five random symbols, like in between or whatever. It's kind of. Kind of similar, Steve, to what you were talking about. Yeah, like, that's super, like, easy to memorize. It's so easy to Memorize.
[00:21:17] Speaker E: And it's impossible because, like, even in,
[00:21:19] Speaker A: like, the entropy, I, like, calculated the entropy. Entropy is retarded. Entropy is, like, awesome. It's. It's better than my 13 character, like, random generated password. And.
No, no. Hell enchants in hell that I'm gonna remember that one.
No, I. I read a really fascinating book called Moonwalking with Einstein.
Anybody read the imminent book?
No, it's. It's basically a book about memory, and it's a writer who followed around and, like, interviewed a bunch and, like, went to a bunch of memory competitions and followed around people who were, like, the. The champions or whatever of this memory competition. And basically what everybody does and, like, some of the savants and, like, what their stories were of how they memorize things. And one of the interesting things that one of the guys that he was following talked about was that our memory is actually vastly better than we give it credit for.
[00:22:22] Speaker E: Oh, yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Or that we realize because, you know, you can only hold, like, you know, seven things in your head at once. But. But our visual memory is profoundly. And, like, just amazing. Incredible. And he used the example. It's like there was like, a professor in a class teaching, like, how memory works and what it is that we do and don't understand.
And he flashed a bunch of images up. It was like a hundred images or like a thousand images or something, and they only all stayed up there for, like, a second or something crazy.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: And.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: And then he, you know, talked to the class or whatever after. He's like, you know, y' all pay attention to this and watch these images.
And then he said, do you think anybody could repeat back, like, put name all the images and in what order and whatever, like, that I just showed you or whatever. Everybody's like, no, of course not this.
And he says, well, watch this. And then he would put, like, two images or something up on the screen and then ask them if one of them was in the set of a thousand images or whatnot that they just saw. And, like, across the board, pretty much everybody got it right. They could always pinpoint. Yeah, I definitely saw that one. I definitely saw that one. I definitely saw that one. And they, like, got it right. So, like, their memory was able to, like, it's able to differentiate but not recall in, like, a really fascinating way that's entirely tied to, like, visual stuff. And that's why if you do, like, random words, you literally.
You. You literally. You put an image in your mind or whatever of what your password is as an image, and you place those things or you create, like, some sort of relationship and it's vastly easier to recall it, like, very, very quickly.
But, you know, just a. A fun little aside. And it's a really cool book if anybody's interested.
[00:24:24] Speaker D: I. I like that a lot. Like, understanding how your brain filters things is super interesting. I remember learning, like, about blindsight, where there are people that are blind because they can't process things into pictures, but they can still process. Their eyes still get images. And the bit of the brain that turns them into pictures doesn't work. But the bit of the brain that picks up movement works. So, like, if you throw something at them, they'll duck.
They. They can't see anything. They don't see a picture. But the part of their brain that, like, that lower part that processes, you know, visual input still works. It's just like the brain, the. The back part. The. The back part of the brain that processes it all into complex pictures that doesn't work. So, like, there are, like, you hear these stupid rumors about people being, like, blind people, not really being blind. Like, someone threw an apple at Stevie Wonder and he ducked. Like, it's like, yeah, because that part of his brain actually still works. And you can feel it is the really fun part. If you just go into, like, the outside and just go stand somewhere where there's loads of hustle and bustle and activity, just, like, disassociate from what you're focusing on. And, like, don't stare at anything and just let your eyes sort of rest somewhere and notice how everything that moves is registering one part of your brain. But there are all these things in your visual field that aren't moving and you won't notice them unless you specifically try to notice them. Like, if you're in a room and someone's arm moves, you're aware of that arm. But there might be, like, a couch and a fridge in the room that you just weren't aware of because it's a different part of your brain, like, and you can. You can see why that would be there.
But it's kind of cool to feel how these. The different pathways, those inputs go down.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: That's really interesting.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: That's really interesting.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: It reminds me of the story about the.
Especially when it comes to, like, adaptation of the human brain and stuff, is that there was that kid who was blind who.
I think he.
He died. He passed away when he was like, 16 or 17 from, like, a tumor or something.
Which is really sad because I was looking it up again. I was like, I wonder where that where that dude is, because I saw a report or like a news thing about it, but it was a kid who had gone blind from some, some. Some disease of some sort. And he, but he would like walk around. He's like, he would just do that all the time. He could literally pinpoint where he was. And he was like, walking down the street with this reporter or whatever and describing like, what's around him or whatever. And it was so funny when he was like, like looking at stuff. He would. He would kind of like, like lean and then he would like click louder and like faster or whatever to try to see something, to. To be able to like, oh, that's a car. That's a, That's a, That's a mailbox right here. And he was like, wait, what's. What's this? What's this? And he like, leaned in and like, was clicking louder and he's, ah, it's a trash can. He kicked the trash can. Like. And it was just. It was just crazy to be like,
[00:27:31] Speaker D: I probably smelt that.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: There was also. What it made me think of was like, I read something which maybe it's not true. I don't know.
No way to confirm it one way or the other. But it was. Supposedly there was this thing where they. They connected some sort of analog leads to a guy's tongue. The guy had gone blind. They put a camera on his head and connected some sort of analog thing to his tongue. And he said at first it just made him want to throw up. And then like after an hour or so of like experimenting and playing around, he said it was not at all. He had been. He had originally been able to see. He said it was not at all like being able to see, but he actually had an. A real awareness of things in the room and somebody could throw a ball at him and he could catch it.
So, like, you know.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: No, I remember that same story. I think you and I have talked about this before because I, I want to find that and find out if it's. If it was like Internet clickbait back in the day.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Well, maybe, yeah, it. But. But the idea was that. The idea was that, you know, you could, you could. Your brain could adapt to all sorts of outside signals if, you know, given some time and. And, you know, dedication to it. So, I don't know,
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Random note on Bitcoin stuff. I've been.
You know what I found?
There's. There's like a handful of accounts that will report on, you know, in the nature of like, price and market stuff. Is always noise.
I followed. I follow a few accounts or whatever that keep up with it. And it's. It's so funny too, how, like, really hard it is to dissociate from it when you. When you are thinking about the price. Like, how easy it is to kind of get like, roped into it. It's kind of like crypto and gambling and like, like anything is if you allow yourself to pay attention to it or to give it any credence. How easy it is to trick yourself with kind of like Gilman's amnesia is that, like, they have no idea what they're talking about, but they're very confident.
But it was just really funny because in kind of digging through, like, you know, AI, like what. What are the reports for the last month? There were a bunch of like, ETFs reported huge inflows or ETFs reported huge outflows and all this stuff. And, and it got me thinking because I've been watching a couple of accounts that talk about, like, volume and inflows and outflows and all this stuff and like, record this and record that and oh, my God, the price is going to go down. And invariably I've discovered that all of the news just tells you what already happened. It's like, like every bit of it. Every single bit of it. It's like the price went down and then they're like record outflows of the ETFs. It's like, well, yeah, that's what it means when the price went down and then the price recovers to $80,000. Like, there have been huge boost. There's a huge flood of inflows in the ETFs. Everything's going to be great in the next couple of months. All the, all the technicals are setting up. Wonderful. It's like, no. And we just went from 60,000 to 80,000. You are seeing. You are telling me about the past that I am already aware of.
[00:30:56] Speaker D: I think it's like the analogy for trading where they're like. It's like steering a car looking out of the back window.
The road just went that way, so we're turning left. That must be the way the market is going.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Oh, no, that's exactly right.
[00:31:11] Speaker D: Like, so I think it's just.
And. But also people. People want to kind of pump and dump, right? So if they bought, then they're gonna. They bought because it swung up. So they're gonna try and get everyone else to buy. Like you really. It is the. The boat swaying from left to Right. Like you have to run to the opposite side. That makes sense every single time.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: What's amazing to me is how trivial like, like how the tiniest moves, they will turn into some sort of noise. Like, and you know, they just give you. They just will post a five minute chart if there's not. If nothing's happening. Well, look at what, like, oh my God, Bitcoin moved $100 today.
[00:31:53] Speaker D: You know, Like, I love those charts with no Y axis and ridiculously short X. So it's like a massive red candle. And I'm like, that was not even a 1% move. You just zoomed in so far. Like it.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Look at my chart. It looks, it looks exactly like it did two days ago. And I'm like, what do you. Where are you?
[00:32:13] Speaker D: There was like a thing before. Like, it needs to be a law that news channels can't post charts without a Y axis because it's always bullshit. It's like your g. Your, your range on the Y axis is between $72,000 and 72,100. Like, like it didn't move, guys.
Anyway, I was going to say the thing about. I was just. Someone was giving me like a rundown on Saylor's stuff because he's below M Nav now. And he's also kind of been a little bit disingenuous with representing, you know, using the numerator in the M Nav calculation as the com, not the company valuation, but something else. And I don't know what it is, but he gets to use a bigger number.
Um, but apparently he's not that leveraged. So microstrategy is probably fine. Like on the books, it's probably fine. But at the same time, once you go below M Nav, that's non. Not a fun position to be in.
And I don't know, I personally would happily crash bitcoin down to 20, 30k just to get rid of all this crap, all these stonks and these treasury bros and all that. I would love to get that out of here because for me it's just, it's so stupid. It's such noise.
The whole point of bitcoin is to. It was. Was to get away from this sort of bullshit. And it's very frustrating seeing it become all infected with all this crap.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: I haven't finished the piece, but I'm going to read it on the show because I'm.
I go back and forth on like. Like I feel like this type of thing was always inevitable. Right? Like, it's not like finance in and of itself is like a bad thing. The whole. The whole reason for finance was to, you know, you. You harvest cotton at one part of the year and you have a massive supply and you have a low supply while you're planting the seed for the next crop.
[00:34:08] Speaker E: So the.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: The idea of finance was to smooth the difference, you know, to create a derivative so that you can buy cotton before it actually harvests.
And what you do is you level out the price of a shirt is that the price of shirts is the same whether you're in harvest or in seed season.
So it's not like that's a bad system. But structurally, when you have fiat money, everything about finance becomes horrifically distorted. Fake and gay, faking just nothing but fake and gay. And what, like, finance becomes its own thing? Like, like, you start finance was only ever, like, it's like a vault for a bank or whatever. Is that it? Don't. It's only there to store stuff like. Like valuable stuff. Like the vault in and of itself. You wouldn't trade on the vault. Well, like, finance is supposed to, like, allocate things that actually exist. And finance has literally become like its own thing, is that you trade the thing, the finance of the finance, the derivative of the derivative of the derivative, and it's become such a casino of nonsense that you just invent tokens and then trade them. And crypto is such a perfect allegory to how insane it's all become.
And so, like, I. I can't. I have this mix of, like, you. You have to have financialization of Bitcoin in certain respects. Like, like something like Unchained is the financialization of Bitcoin, but it's bitcoin in multisig, offering a fiat loan. It's far more direct and, like, connected to the actual thing.
[00:35:51] Speaker D: Yeah, that's reasonable.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But all the, like, bitcoin treasure, like, the idea of a bitcoin treasury company, like, having an overhead on just buying bitcoin and then selling a stock, even if you're opening it up to people who don't have exposure, it's still just.
I don't know, it just seemed crazy to me.
[00:36:10] Speaker D: I like bitcoin. I want to have more bitcoin. Buy my stock so I can buy more Bitcoin.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:15] Speaker D: Like, I don't know if it really needs to be any more nuanced than that. Like, because the whole theory with MSTR seems to be Bitcoin goes up 30% a year on average. So if you buy our stock, we will exploit that 30%.
And I think the expectation is for the people that are effectively loaning him money through the common stock or preferred. I forget which one it is, but basically it works out like I owe you 11% every year, but I'm making 30% a year because of the way bitcoin works. But it only, I think it only works out if you own those shares. You're effectively buying bitcoin through a proxy and making 20% instead of the 30% that you would get if you just bought bitcoin.
Um, I think that's how it all shakes out. So you basically just need to be a bull on Michael Saylor and think this guy is a visionary. I think he's awesome, he loves bitcoin, let's support him.
But there isn't really anything there as far as I'm, as far as my understanding goes. The actual straight up business microstrategy, the business intelligence is like gone. It's all been absorbed by Microsoft apparently. So it really is just a guy who wants to buy as much bitcoin as possible, you know, quite reasonably and cheaply, but who needs, who is now in a position where the market can't really crash because it's going to ruin up.
You know, the higher the bitcoin price goes, the better his M Nav looks. But it's a bear market.
So the fact that he's already below M Nav by his calculation he's at like 0.98.
But if you use the proper numerator rather than the cherry picked one he uses, it's more like 0.88 if I remember.
So yeah, it's not great. Like at the end of the day, why did, why unless. Yeah, like you were referring to those people that can't get exposure any other way.
They can still just buy the BlackRock ETF.
Like just buy that.
Why do you need to buy like if you really just can't buy natural, you know, whatever you call it, physical bitcoins, which is a weird term, then just buy, buy one of the direct ETFs like this just, I don't know, I'm very ignorant about these whole things
[00:38:38] Speaker A: but dude, I've read so many little threads about, of people like going either direction and I just haven't done the time.
So like really like I'm constantly like, I, I know like a lot of like the preferred stock and the this, that and the other but so many of the terms just kind of get like mishmashed in my, in my head and I haven't really done the, you know, the, the segwit versus, you know, naked pub key versus, you know, all this stuff. I haven't done like that specificity on all of it and I just, honestly, I just don't have the time or
[00:39:15] Speaker D: the whole point of bitcoin is I don't have to care.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: I can't care that I don't care about to like know for certain whether I think micro strategy is going to go bust or if they're doing like a brilliant arbitrage, you know, because I
[00:39:28] Speaker D: don't, I don't think he'll go bust.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: I'm not going to have my money in the stock market anyway.
[00:39:31] Speaker D: So he's not that leveraged. So like as much as like the, the true sailor haters might want bitcoin to tank to 5k and to liquidate him, it's very unlikely because he's not that leveraged if I understand correctly. So it's more a case of like it can get quite ugly where he's not in a bad position but his stock just looks crap and he can end up in like a NACA kind of situation where it just looks like things have been mishandled and you over bet you overplayed your hand or you were too bullish on bitcoin and you didn't account for a proper bear market. And if that happens, it's a case of well, who does he team up with then to bail him out? And that's where it becomes a thing. Do you end up like everyone else, which is basically some sort of unholy thing where the benevolent hand of Tether or Howard Lutnick shows up or something like that.
And it's like, is this now all just Fiat apparatus combined with stablecoins slowly but surely getting their hands around the entire bitcoin space. Like they just by default own all the bitcoin, all the mining infrastructure, all the companies, like all these formerly independent companies are now just part of, you know, they're all just tied together with Canada.
If that happens then that, that sucks because it all bleeds into the funding and it all kind of makes bitcoin
[00:40:51] Speaker A: super fiat dude Howard Lutnick some of the. And again, this is also something that I don't really proclaim to know. Just a massive amount of about like all the tether and everything. Like there are times where I've dug into it but then years go by and so much more happens and like I, I really like Paolo but you know, I wonder how much a CEO or like how much Control. Does any one person in any, like, huge institutions like this even have.
But some of the stuff that I have read and what have seemed verified, you know, it's easy to. It's easy to be like, you know, for somebody, like, he did it because of this or something.
But some of the. Still just even trying to put that aside purposefully, like, trying to be objective about it. That dude's a vicious, like, do not care about anyone.
Yeah. Just like, I will screw you at a drop of a hat sort of things that I wish. I wish I had carried away specifics from some of the things I'd read recently. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll do it on the show if it was. If I dig it back up.
But do y' all know anything on basically that whole debacle or how Cantor Fitzgerald or whatever ties into it?
Because it's something I've.
[00:42:21] Speaker E: Nope.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: I've mostly only touched on.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: I was going to say that lotteries, they say lotteries are attacks on people that can't do math. And it seems kind of like treasury companies are attacks on people that don't understand Bitcoin.
But I don't know anything that touches the Epstein stuff.
I feel like the world.
There's a tribe of people.
[00:42:49] Speaker D: Oh, really?
You sound like. You sound pretty antiseptic with.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: There is a tribe of people that, like, rape their own children in order to make them so psychopathic that they can do anything.
And, and they just literally.
They like. I'm. I'm not kidding. I literally think that's what it is, is that there is a, you know, call it the Rothschilds call it. It's not, It's. It's. It's not connected to any particular religion. This, this tribe of people likes to, you know, stand behind, you know, a religion. But. But I don't think it has anything to do with that, actually. I think it is literally just a tribe of people that likes to play victim and they will stand behind what. They would use anything as a shield that they possibly can.
And, And I think they're, you know, they have. If you look at like, these old families, they all have like 10,000 names, you know, like, like their, Their. Their name is, you know, like a bunch of names so they can launder themselves into other families and pretend to be different people and legally get IDs that are their name, but not actually, you know, their name. And, and they just, they just play these games where, you know, like, like they have no, they have no morals because, like, the, any one of them that has any feeling left that just gets sacrificed to something because they're like, ah, this one's too weak. We can't. We can't allow it to live. So. So they just. They just like torture people. And. And if you're. If you're able to be a. Like a lizard person, you get to. You get to be part of their tribe.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: What was it that. Oh, man, it was like Epstein's like, sister or somebody. It was somebody in.
In the family who actually has done interviews and talks about this stuff.
And no. Maybe.
Oh, God, I don't know.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: There's a. There's a lot of people.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: I'm gonna watch the connection. But it was. But it was some girl who was like, she. She basically said, no. The way. The way it works is that because she basically in. In like interviews, she confirmed the whole like, ritualistic rape and.
And like human sacrifice stuff.
And she said the thing is, is that like, if you're blood related, there is.
She said, I could probably do something that gets me. That gets me killed. But there's like this subset of like, you're absolved because you're kind of like permanently blood tie involved in this is that you can kind of get away with things, but they'll let people in from the outside. But the second you're not useful or the second you pose a threat, you're just. You're gone.
And she. I think she used the example of like Diddy or somebody like that of. Of like somebody who, like celebrities or like powerful people who were invited in, and then they'll. They'll just, you know, slit your throat, put. Throw you into the. The trash can or whatever when you go off script or something.
But it was. It was really wild because it was somebody who, like, literally like a direct family time. She's like, oh, everybody hates me. Nobody talks to me anymore, but they still haven't killed me. I haven't been suicided.
I'm gonna have to look up.
[00:46:17] Speaker E: I think I understand why your algorithm feeds you what it does, guy.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker E: Because I love.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Tell me about my algorithm, man. Tell me about.
[00:46:27] Speaker E: I don't come across any crap like this ever.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: I. I did a good job.
[00:46:32] Speaker D: I come across stuff like this all the time.
[00:46:34] Speaker E: Really?
[00:46:35] Speaker A: I do too. I do too. Yeah, it's.
[00:46:38] Speaker D: It's all true, man. Half of it was in the QANON stuff because they used a bunch of true stuff there to mislead everyone into
[00:46:44] Speaker B: inaction and on stuff was the most infusion.
[00:46:48] Speaker D: Infuriating thing well, because half of it was true. That was what made it.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: So it's like Craig Wright. It's like Craig Wright say just enough that's true. So that when you lie in the middle of it to make it sound insane or like go.
[00:47:02] Speaker D: Basic brain chemicals. If you teach people stuff and you make them feel like they're finally seeing behind the curtain, they're going to just become addicted. That's, that's literally dopamine addiction there.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Like the same thing with that Zeitgeist movement. Does anybody remember that?
[00:47:17] Speaker D: Yeah, I, dude, that was, that was my first red pill. Was.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:22] Speaker D: I was like 20 years old.
You know, I, I don't even forget about like climate change and Covid. I was like, I don't know, I still thought like rich people were bad or something. Like, I was like that ideologically stupid back then. And then, I don't know. Like the whole thing with the 9 11, that was. He denied being a 911 truther, right? He was like, that film was just a documentary about what other people believe. I don't believe 911 was an inside job. Like, and I think I just watched Kratter's interview with Eric V. Stacks and this, his estimate was like 50% of America now thinks 911 was fishy. It's like, you know, I think the band Aid has pretty much been ripped off.
I'm, I'm genuine. Like, most people think Trump staged his own, you know, the Butler assassination was all staged. Like, most people think that now. Like back in the day that was unheard of. So I don't know, I'm just kind of impressed with how much everyone's gotten red pilled, not just me.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: I don't know if most think that the Butler thing was staged, but the thing is, is that they, I, I know that most think that this recent, like the recent, like attempted, you know, attempted shootings or whatever.
[00:48:34] Speaker D: Yeah, that one was, that one was before it even started. Right.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: And, and the, that, that sort of makes you look back and it's like, yeah, nope, it's all fake. It like this, this is just trying to like, you know, it's like this is like a sympathy note or whatever. Like we're, he's losing in every way. So it's like, oh, they're trying to kill me. You know, but then at the same time, like, I, part of me is like, like, what guy was saying about how much power do you have if you're at the top of a major company or whatever? And I felt honest. I felt legitimately kind of felt bad for.
What's his name? Jack. At. From Twitter.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Dorsey.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Is it like.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: I thought about that all the time, is that that guy was probably.
That guy was probably changed tighter for what he could say. Because they're all legally responsible.
[00:49:23] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Like, they're considered having fiduciary duty. And, like, the perfect example of that is Elon Musk, because he is literally the exception.
He will say stuff that specifically tanks Tesla stock, and somehow. Somehow he gets away with it. And everybody screams, lawsuit. You're. You're. You know, we're gonna get you by the. We're gonna put a noose around your neck, like, you're dead. You're done. You're never allowed to say such a thing. How. How could anybody. The amount of attacks that I remember him getting a couple years ago when he started just, like, you know, going off on Twitter, doing whatever the hell he wanted, and then he. He literally, like, it's. It's the exception. Proves the rule thing that I. I genuinely think, like, CEOs and people who run any cor. Any company that has, like, shareholders and stuff, they are probably more deeply imprisoned, even being some of the wealthiest people in the world, more deeply imprisoned about what they can say and who they can say anything about and what they can tell the truth about the company or whatever than pretty much anybody, because they'll be destroyed by everybody around them.
It's like, you just lost me a billion dollars because of your stupid comment.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: One of those, like, cyberpunk novels or whatever, Snow Crash or something like that, where they were talking about how the people that work for the government were the ones that were most controlled and, you know, like, they're the most surveilled and the most controlled. Like, the government kind of becomes its own cult, and the people inside the cult are the ones that are, like, most trapped and, like, forced to do, you know, the bidding of the. Of the cult.
And. And I feel like that. I mean, like, we know that the surveillance state has turned inward, right? And.
And so, I mean, like, that's what Epstein basically was.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: And so.
So I wonder at the same time, like, okay, is it Trump that's faking all of these things? Like, what. How much of this?
[00:51:24] Speaker C: Is he.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: Is he really, like, in on this completely, or is he in this sort of situation where they're sort of like, wwe, kind of, like, pretending to threaten him, but also threatening him? You know, like, yeah, this is what we're gonna do. If you don't, you know, continue this war or whatever, and then at the same time, it's like, it's like Everybody, everybody says BB's pulling the strings, but if BB doesn't continue the war, Bibi goes to jail because he's, he's only, like, he's only in power right now because the war prevented his trial for corruption. So it's like they're all, it's, it's literally like this weird monster where they're all tied into this horrible situation.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: Giant, interconnected, like. Yeah, it's this, it's this web of
[00:52:12] Speaker D: we're all effed together and it's all very desperate. Right? Like, they'll go up there and.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Destruction.
[00:52:18] Speaker D: Yeah, they're all very desperate in it. It seems like the, the figureheads and puppets are like, the ones apparently in control are like, they have to do horrible U turns in public and it's very embarrassing for them, surely, like, but happens all the time. Hey, did you know that there's a secret conspiracy that the Jews control Israel?
[00:52:39] Speaker E: That's funny.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: What?
[00:52:41] Speaker D: Wow. Someone asked. It was a chatgpt is Israel secretly controlled by the Jews? And ChatGPT said no. This is a.
[00:52:54] Speaker E: I mean, like, doesn't. To me, it feels a bit like men reach a certain age where they realize that all of politics is just completely corrupt and then they start voicing it for a little bit and then like, nothing happens. And this has been true for every generation, for all of humanity.
And like, it always ends up in like a Occupy Wall street situation where it's like, oh, if I just, if I'm just the one that gets the awareness out there and you know, gets people to realize that 9, 11 was this or like, you know, get people to see that this was actually conspiracy, then I can change stuff. And it just, it never, it never works. Like, nothing ever works. Like, it's just so pointless to investigate this stuff from my perspective. And that's why, like, I'm so happy about bitcoin because I think like, mechanic had that same experience. Like, you see what happens with stuff like Occupy Wall street or protests or anything like that.
[00:53:54] Speaker B: So you're saying, you're saying I should just buy a plane and come home.
[00:53:59] Speaker D: They would work if people had the slightest bit of discern for infiltration. That's the problem is that like, Occupy was a really good tactic. It really did work. And then all these communists showed up and started ruining everything and there's no mechanism for getting rid of them. So it became a complete farce, like all of those movements do and devolved into left wing nonsense.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: That is Actually, that is actually the problem that Bitcoin faces. This is the problem with all decentralized
[00:54:29] Speaker D: movements, is infiltration and coordination to maintain some kind of focus on a specific tactic. Occupy Wall street was very specific. It was find the financial centers in the big European capitals and be annoying and be visible and public and stop people from being able to ignore the fact that they're completely rigging the economy in order to gamble at everyone else's expense. And I don't think that would have been successful.
It was though. It was for a time.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: It was the same with the Tea Party, right? Like the Tea Party happened at the same time as Occupy Wall street and they almost figured out, hey, we're on the same side.
And. But then the Tea party became John McCain somehow and Sarah Palin.
[00:55:16] Speaker A: They both, they both got co opted and that was exactly when. That was exactly when all the. It's always going to get co op and everything exploded.
[00:55:24] Speaker E: There's a reason it never works.
[00:55:26] Speaker D: It wasn't the co option though. The co option was bad, but it was the distraction. Like I've seen people constantly say, like 2008 blew up. And the context of that was Occupy Wall Street. We finally had enough of it. The economy's rigged, Fiat's a scam, yada. But there wasn't really much else going on. Like this wasn't that insane. Like it really was just the banks are rigging shit and they are, they are in control of everything.
And then like a few years later was the rise of. Woke the rise of insane leftist politically correct culture. And by the time of 2014, 2015, that's all you ever heard about was gender and racism and like inequality. Like all this stuff completely artificially overtook everything.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Like this massive cultural nonsense.
[00:56:17] Speaker D: Well, but it was all artificial. Like the gender war as well.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: Yeah, the general gender war, the, the transgender stuff. Like there was nothing. There was, it was, yeah.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: One of the gay pride at one of the gay pride parades is like Goldman Sachs actually had a float. Like it was like it couldn't have been more obvious that your, that your whole movement was like just completely manufactured by the same people that you were supposed to be, you know, opposing five years ago or whatever.
[00:56:46] Speaker D: Dude, it was artificial entirely. Like even the stuff, the anti immigration and the pro nationalist movements, now they feel so justified. They're completely artificial. And it's like even people like Rupert Lowe, like the resistance, backlash to the reform, which is just the resistance, even all this stuff, you can feel it a mile away.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: This is, this is why I think it like, so many movements depend on one person, they hinge on, like, a Charlie Kirk character. And like. Like, who doesn't think that. That.
That that whole thing hasn't been rug pulled, you know?
[00:57:27] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, well, Erica.
[00:57:28] Speaker E: I don't.
[00:57:29] Speaker D: Erica Cook is 180. The whole thing.
[00:57:31] Speaker E: I. I don't think that.
Don't think about it ever.
[00:57:35] Speaker D: Oh, fair enough.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: You win.
[00:57:37] Speaker E: I'd encourage everyone to never think about it ever.
[00:57:40] Speaker D: I'll just have to be twice as depressed on both of our behalves then. Just.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: I love thinking about, like, how societies and why societies move, because I think. I don't think it's a situation, Steve. Like, you're saying that it doesn't matter to shine a light on any of this. I think it's that there's a current and you can't swim against it.
And like society and like humanity itself has currents and there is a. There's this ebb and flow, but every, like, tiny.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: There are narratives, Steve. Narratives. There's narratives.
[00:58:16] Speaker E: I don't even know what that word means.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Narratives. It's the narratives that matter.
[00:58:21] Speaker E: There's descriptions and their narratives, and those words are different.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: But think about how, like, 20 years ago, how little. How few people believed that, you know, 9, 11 was an inside job or that, you know, there was something fishy going on and. Versus how many today.
[00:58:39] Speaker D: Yeah, but the.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: No, but the momentum builds insanely slowly. No, it's not. It's not even. It's not even about. Technology is the only thing that fundamentally changes things, but. Exactly. But we're talking about. We're talking about generational distrust. Zoomers do not. Do not believe anything. Zoomers believe that their future is hopeless. They don't. They don't have the perspective that they have about, like, where things are headed is totally, perfectly opposite of what boomers grew up with. And that was, what, three generations? Four. Four generations. Zoomers, Gen X, Millennials. Gen X and zoomers.
[00:59:17] Speaker D: I don't know, man. I don't trust it. I think that disillusionment is so easy to weaponize. It's apathy.
[00:59:24] Speaker A: Like, I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm not. I'm not. Don't get me wrong. I'm not. I'm not saying that that's, like, a positive thing. I'm saying that there is so much distrust in the system now that it actually. That is actually pressure for change to occur. More often than not that change is bad. More often than not, that change is bad, especially from a political position.
The Only sustainable change I think is removing central points of control over.
It's not ideology, it's.
It's narratives, Steve. It's narratives.
[01:00:03] Speaker E: Narratives, bro.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: But, but like 6 foot 2 is, is removing, removing repositories of manipulation so that you can actually have organic movement of, of currents and ideas.
And that's literally why I think decentralization, why I think the Internet has had such a huge impact on the undermining of authority.
Why, why centralized platforms have started to push in the opposite direction. Like why we're ebbing back, so to speak.
And why like Bitcoin. That's why I generally think bitcoin and peer, peer decentralized noster like all this. I think this is the only stuff that actually fundamentally matters is granting access and, and ways for people to actually obtain information without someone else's filter on it. That gives them some power over, over letting them because, because we only ever get to see one 1% of 1% of 1% of anything about the world.
So if someone else is able to decide what that.001% is, then they get to decide what our entire worldview is.
And that is where I think that, that's why I think technology, you know, it was only gunpowder. Like there's all these stories about politics and this and that. It was the longbow, it was gunpowder. It was the Internet, it was it's technological change that is Bitcoin. It's the technological change that will actually make a sustainable difference and give momentum to one current or another.
[01:01:34] Speaker D: But anyway, that's very interesting. I think unfortunately modern technology is so disproportionately empowering to surveillance apparatus that I don't.
[01:01:47] Speaker B: I disagree with that. It isn't.
[01:01:49] Speaker A: It isn't. It isn't. It isn't.
A little bit go back and forth.
[01:01:54] Speaker E: I thought you were cypherpunk. Technology freezes guy.
[01:01:59] Speaker D: Oh yeah, I am, dude.
[01:02:00] Speaker A: Julian Assange goes back and forth too. I have some of the best quotes from Julian Assange of like the Internet is the worst surveillance thing ever to ever create it. And then the cryptography and the Internet is the only reason why we have any, any semblance of hope for privacy and stuff in the future. So like there's, I think there is a bit of this in the cypher funk world is that like we have this hope, there is this possibility for a better future. But then also this is literally causing like the worst possible future is also a path.
[01:02:34] Speaker B: Despite being slightly slower, my local LLM is as good as anything that I use online. Like it truly is like, like I don't, you know, I, I don't have like the image generation and stuff like that that I'm. But as far as like asking it to help me edit things and help me, you know, I come up with ideas. And what hardware are you running?
I've got a 128 gigs of unified memory on a MacBook and a Quinn 32 billion parameter model and it's fantastic.
I am convinced that when they say they have no moat, I really think that is in a lot of ways true. Like there is, there is still used to have to spend a decent amount of money on a computer but, but you can have like basically a compressed version of the Internet in your house, which is what you know these LLMs are, right? And so, so I think like, I think this is a much more, a much more freeing technology. I mean it does give them the ability to now sift through all of the, the dragnet like bullshit they've stored forever and target, you know, people for any, anybody people that get in their way for any reason.
But, but it's, it's. I think the. If you look at the amount of infrastructure they have to build and they have to have in order to enact this, you know, surveillance state versus the amount of infrastructure a single person has to have to have, I don't know, maybe at some point defense drones or something like, you know, like what is the.
Like, like I do think that technology tends to be freeing in. I mean like if you look at the, the automobile, right? Like, like previously you had to have a whole bunch of people to manage stables and you know, have your horses and whatever else, you know, like, like the difference in cost when the automobile emerged was, was dramatic. Like normal people had access to, you know, the ability to travel beyond their town or whatever.
And so, so like at every step of the way like we get, we get more like a dishwasher. Like you no longer have to hire a person to, you know, be a maid or whatever. Like you have a dishwasher, you have all this automation that's happening and I think AI just does that on steroids.
The problem is it's not going to be like the real problem is money because how things are distorted economically determines who has access to what. But if costs continue to come down, it does mean that, you know, I don't know the, the means of what is it? Ownership of the means of production are within your reach, comrade. That's.
[01:05:42] Speaker D: Let me, let me comment on something guy said a while ago. I'M going to go off topic and talk about Bitcoin a bit.
So.
[01:05:49] Speaker A: Man.
Yeah, sorry, he's mechanic.
[01:05:52] Speaker E: Yes.
[01:05:53] Speaker D: You were talking about like if it's like a person then you have something, then you can have something special. Right. That can remain self congruent. Right.
[01:06:04] Speaker A: And I just mean that movements, movements usually that's why they center around people is because if there's no like one mental perspective to essentially grasp onto or to follow and there's not one person who's strong enough to kind of hold on to that idea and continue to iterate on it and respond in kind to everything that's happening, then movements so easily just become dispersed.
[01:06:33] Speaker D: And I. Yeah, I agree. Yeah I agree. And I think it's like because we've been putting together funding for Knots, right? So there's an organization that exists to fund Knots developers and stuff and we haven't publicized it yet but it started and there's devs getting grants and stuff like that.
But anyway like through all the due diligence and stuff and people trying to establish processes around it like who has keys to the GitHub, you know, what happens if something happens to Luke? Like all these kinds of things. And basically it just got me down to thinking like so you know, is not good.
Like is there any process you can put in place that means it wouldn't suck if Luke wasn't around anymore? And there isn't really. And I basically was like well that already exists because of Linux. Like Linux is good because of Linux and if Linux wasn't around then Linux would suck. And that's just like.
Just kind of a reality of how it works. Like it's. And there's. There's no procedural substitute for it. And then I guess someone brought up Charlie Kirk too, right? And it's like, you know the, the whole Turning Point USA thing it was just him and his perspective and now he's not around. It's just a stupid thing. Like it's a completely moronic thing that's done a 180 from what it stood for. I wasn't like a fan of it when it was under him anyway. I always thought Charlie Kirk was gonna milk chocolate. But at the same time like yeah it does. If you want these things to kind of work you need a kind of a person usually at them that can be trusted to do things a certain way and can lead things.
So I don't know.
[01:08:08] Speaker B: Well, but talking about like in. In the.
With Charlie Kirk is like talking about Thomas Sal and like cultural sanity was was at least something. Right? And now they've. This happens every time. If you, like, guy and I went to some Glenn Beck thing. Like when Glenn Beck was like, at the end of his Fox News thing, he was actually talking about like, all sorts of like, really accurate. He actually called governments tax farms and like, created this whole really good episode
[01:08:43] Speaker A: of like, this whole grid of like the Federal Reserve and like, all this stuff. I remember. Yeah.
[01:08:48] Speaker B: And he got this. This whole like, sort of movement together. And we, like, we went to D.C. to like, see this thing. And dude, the energy at this place was incredible. And they were talking about. I heard Thomas Sal was going to be here. I heard all these things. And then we get there and it was like all religion.
And like, it was like, okay, well, that was nice, but kind of a waste of time.
[01:09:09] Speaker A: It was also the worst. Yeah, it was the most impractical. Like, there was nothing of consequence. There was nothing. No call to action or said there. There was no call to action. It was literally like, like, we got together and then it was just like, yay, we got together.
And. And like that. That was what we did. And it was like, what.
Why did. Why did we do this? What even happened right now?
[01:09:36] Speaker B: I think the same thing. Like, basically, like my. My theory is that Glenn Beck has like, an alcoholic past and whatever else. I think all of these people, when they become, you know, influential, they get a call of some sort. And I think. I think that whole thing got diffused then.
And if you look at what happened to Charlie Kirk is they. They were already creating the TP Fate, TP USA Faith, you know, department or whatever. And they've tried to turn the entire thing away from economics and to. Into some sort of religious movement. And.
But religion with, like, feminism or something on this, like. Like, like they've. They've like flipped. It's not even culturally decent either. Like, so. So without Charlie Kirk, it's just become the same and more of the same. Woke in a different form.
So I think that's literally like the goal is to twist anything. Like, think about it. If the slaves start to get the right idea of like, what's going on, then you need something to distract. You gotta distract them with religion or music or some other thing.
Like, I think that's, you know, basically what it boils down to. And it's not that, you know, there aren't valid things in some of that, like religion or whatever, but it's just way too far from reality, way too far from the metal, as, you know, is what I Like, it's, it's the farthest. So it can be. Religion and philosophy can be wrong for, like, for the longest time. Engineers have to actually, like, you know, prove their ideas in the real world.
Like, if they're, if you're teaching somebody religion, you can teach them all kinds of, and, and spin it in whatever way you want. And so, so like, don't, don't let the slaves control group.
[01:11:21] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's. I got to do bip110, guys, because.
[01:11:27] Speaker E: Let's do it.
[01:11:28] Speaker A: I'm curious. I haven't kept up with anything on it, so I am curious.
[01:11:31] Speaker D: Well, yeah, my question is it's mainly at you, guy, because I know you're like, I know that, Steven.
And I'm guessing Jeff kind of on side already. Not that I want this to be a sides thing, but like, I keep getting straw manned, right? People, like, I talk about the asymmetry principle of soft forks. Like a minority can activate a soft fork in Bitcoin because as long as the rest of the people are kind of ambivalent, they just don't want their chain to get wiped out. So if they see some activity on the soft fork chain, if there's enough of it, they'll go, all right, we'll adopt this, right? So that's why only a few nodes running bip148.
You know, it wasn't everyone running it, right? It was, it wasn't zero and it wasn't everyone. It was somewhere between. So I got into one of these arguments with that idiot Czech matey who like, insists on straw manning it. They're like, the asymmetry doesn't work. You think every soft fork is going to be adopted by miners. No, that's exactly my point is that there's some threshold of adoption that isn't a majority necessarily where it works. And that's what happened with bitpoint48. And I'm. And so I'm asking where everyone's thresholds for credibility around soft forks are. Obviously, if like three guys show up and they run a node that enforces a new rule and they say all the miners are going to obey it, like they're going to fall over themselves to obey it because of the prisoner's dilemma and all that, all those game theoretical scenarios, obviously that's not going to happen. But if everyone ran the new rule, then it would definitely happen, right? If almost all nodes were enforcing a new rule on the network, you'd expect minus to go along with it. They might wait until the last minute. But they'll probably do it. So basically my question is, I'm get like, I'm guessing guy, just give me the information like, so I can lay out the hypothetical for you. You're, I'm guessing you're running just knots or not even knots, but not bit 110 at the moment. Is that correct?
[01:13:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:13:28] Speaker D: Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:13:29] Speaker A: Not, not bitpoint.
[01:13:32] Speaker D: What would happen if, what scenario of adoption of nodes or blocks or some sort of big businesses analysis support for it. Do you go, oh, this is happening and now I'm not going to be running a node anymore if I don't update to this? Like, where's your threshold?
[01:13:50] Speaker A: Well, I might. That's a good question. I don't know.
[01:13:55] Speaker D: You agree with the principle that there has to be one right. Somewhere it becomes a thing that you're probably going to have to enforce.
[01:14:02] Speaker A: Sure.
And some of my complaints or some of my like pushback against bip110, like really, I would be much more supportive of bip110. I mean granted it's one of those things like nobody can agree on something that's outside of consensus because the problem is you don't have consensus on which path to take.
But I really think the one big thing was just the script witness or the, the, the size or the witness size that taproot just basically ballooned to as big as it could possibly be. And I give a lot of credence to like, Steve, you put it in a way that I thought was really, really interesting, was just if we made a mistake, how do we prove that we can undo a mistake and that especially if somebody is benefiting from that mistake and they resist the correction of that mistake.
How does bitcoin fix itself? Do we just like forever live with any stupid thing that has made its way into bitcoin? Because it's just like, well, that's just now how we do things.
So like some of it is like, like the whole idea that like the removal of OP if. I still don't think op, the removal of OP if is necessary.
But like digging into like how taproot works and like tap leafs or whatever, I realized it's, it's, that's not even that big of a deal. Like some of the people. And I, I knew it wasn't quite that big of a deal, but I didn't have all the specifics on why it wasn't.
But like when you're paying out or when you're spending a tap root, a tap leaf, when you're, when you're using a leaf to basically prove that you can spend this with these certain conditions, you only ever have to reveal one leaf. You only ever have to reveal the path that you're actually using.
And when it comes to a witness limit, it only applies to that one path.
And while miniscript does multisig right now using something like OP, if where you have like a couple of different branches and if you remove that in Taproot, you wouldn't be able to do that. Well, you can still just do it in a different leaf.
So you can still do all of the exact same constructions. You would just have to not. You'd have to do it in a way specific to Taproot, whereas Segwit and like Legacy Script does it a different way.
And that difference in construction wouldn't be, wouldn't really be that big. Like it doesn't change any meaningful functionality there.
And then importantly, you still can only. You're still only spending one leaf. So if you still have a witness size limit on that, you, you still limit how many like, you know, you have to blow out 50 transactions or something or a hundred transactions or something to actually produce a JPEG or like to use it for spam. And the big thing is it minimizes the discount, right? Like it, it, it basically corrects the discount, which is really the, the supposed problem, right, is that spam is being discounted by 75% to actual transaction data because it is purely in the witness.
So as far as like some of the specifics of BIP 110, I'm still just really kind of on the fence about it. The threshold probably 10 to 20% of like nodes running it, at least 10% of miners running it. I'd be like, I'd be weighing the cost of, you know, does it matter to like, I would immediately be like, well, I'll just make my blocks bit 110 compatible, you know, just so that, so that I don't end up on a chain. Because like they'll be, they'll work with the normal chain whether or not, you know, I'm, I'm doing like a simple filter or whatever for you know what I do.
[01:18:18] Speaker D: You can't mine on top of the normal chain with only bit 10 rules. You, you have. That's hacky. Like you can't make your nodes do that because you're, you're. Because if you're able to make a node generate bit1.10 compliant templates, that means by default it's going to reject all the non bip110 compliant blocks. You'd have to hack it to say, all right, I accept these core blocks, but I'm only going to build bit one zero stuff on it. You wouldn't be able to do that because all the BIP 110 actual nodes wouldn't have come.
[01:18:48] Speaker A: Oh, you mean if there was a fork. You mean if, if there was a divergence.
Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:18:54] Speaker D: No, sorry, I didn't make sense. That makes sense.
[01:18:56] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I was just meaning, just generally speaking, in, in lieu of a potential fork happening, I would go ahead and make it bip110 compatible because like.
[01:19:06] Speaker D: So give me the numbers then what do you lose? Because my job is now to go make this happen in the next few weeks.
[01:19:12] Speaker A: You say 20 again is really hard, is really hard to say, but I, I would be nervous and, or interested at the same time at like 20%.
[01:19:22] Speaker D: But you're not going to URSF. It is the point. Like.
[01:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I don't feel, I don't feel, I don't feel compelled to be
[01:19:30] Speaker D: cash yourself off the.
[01:19:32] Speaker A: I don't feel compelled to be cash myself off.
[01:19:35] Speaker D: Yeah, off the minority software. Well, that's been my estimate. And there's been an increase in the number of Bitpoint 10 blocks. There's about a dozen of them total. I think a bunch of them. Like most of those were found in the last period.
And the pleb hashes are mining so much, dude. Like it might not sound like a lot, but share wise, they've already found, you know, around seven blocks and seven blocks is a lot of work. That's a lot of money.
And those haven't shown up in the chain just because of luck. But I can see what's going on just with the kinds of templates Ocean miners are submitting. All right, maybe there's some doing lotto as well and they haven't been lucky either. I don't know.
[01:20:17] Speaker A: But dude, I saw super testnet posts that Ocean is now a top 8 mining pool. I thought that was pretty dope. Congrats.
[01:20:25] Speaker D: Thank you. We've grown a lot and I think we're about to grow a lot more. Actually, like significantly more. And I think, I don't know, I'm expecting a lot of bip110 hash rate to come in quite soon. And then I'm hoping the conversation just continues going. I want people that are actually against this to explain why without making stupid straw man arguments.
[01:20:47] Speaker A: I hate the censorship argument. Oh my God, it's so infuriating.
[01:20:52] Speaker D: Yeah. The one you were ranting about. Right. Thought.
[01:20:55] Speaker A: I literally think there are plenty of great arguments to, like, dig into, but the whole, like, I'm morally superior because I'm not censoring bitcoin.
Like, and, and like, there's easy proof and I. Oh, my God. Every time I bring it up, everybody ignores it. Everybody ignores it. They literally dodge it is if there is one UTXO going to another UTXO and they're sending one bitcoin or it doesn't even matter, they're sending any bitcoin from one to the other and they have a snuff film attached to it in the chain and then that gets filtered out. But if you take that exact same UTXO and you send the exact same amount to the exact same second UTXO and it doesn't get filtered out because it's not got a snuff film, you're not censoring bitcoin. You're literally not censoring bitcoin. You're censoring the media. You're censoring the thing that they've attached to it. Like, it is not. And the idea is, like, why people can use bitcoin however they want. You're talking about the chain, man. You're talking about the chain. It's the exact same type of problem as someone being able to use an exploit to get a transaction without a valid transaction ID or to get in one without the. The exact right amount of bitcoin, or to get one that tricks miners into thinking it pays a fee when it doesn't actually pay a fee. You know, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It's an exploit that has nothing to do with actually moving bitcoin around and using bitcoin as money. And it is. It is categorically different from anything about censoring somebody because they bought drugs with it or something. That has nothing to do with that.
Rather, God, it just drives.
[01:22:28] Speaker D: I'll cut you off before you do the entire rant again, because you're right and I agree with you, but that's twice. Like, I agree, but where are the good arguments? Because Greg Max is supposed to be the. The fricking brain of the whole space.
And I'm arguing most of it jumps
[01:22:43] Speaker A: on the censorship, which is what drives me crazy.
[01:22:46] Speaker D: He does. But he's also got a bee in the bonnet about confiscation. That's another thing that he won't let go. He's saying it's confiscatory, and I'm saying it isn't. And I said, as a matter of fact, there are zero UTXOs that would be made unspendable. And it's not like almost zero, it's literally zero because there's a UTXO height checker inside the fork. So if you make some ridiculous contrived utxo.
[01:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's wrong.
[01:23:09] Speaker D: Like, that cannot be confiscated by it. What can be made unspendable is if you have some sort of real world commitment to generating a UTXO that doesn't exist yet. That cannot be realized until after activation.
[01:23:23] Speaker E: That's not on chain. That's a social commitment that you made to someone else. That's not on chain. That's not bitcoin confiscating.
[01:23:32] Speaker A: That's like saying that, like, if you create something with a time code or a time.
[01:23:36] Speaker D: Greg has lost his mind over this, guys. He's threatening lawsuits.
He's threatening lawsuits against all of ocean over this.
[01:23:44] Speaker A: It's just heel digging into like, I'm right.
[01:23:46] Speaker D: Honestly, it's frivolous obstructionism. That's what it is.
[01:23:50] Speaker B: When smart people make stupid arguments. When smart people make stupid arguments, it's because they are. They have a motivation they don't want you to know about.
I'm telling you there is.
[01:24:00] Speaker A: When it's I disagree. Because smart people are better at convincing themselves of dumb things than dumb people are.
[01:24:08] Speaker D: There you go.
[01:24:09] Speaker A: Smart people are incredibly good, are incredibly good at making those conflations of like, well, if I restrict what goes in the chain, I'm telling people what they can do with their bitcoin. They're good at coming up with as many different ways to explain or make that fake fit together so that they can hold on to what they think. Or importantly, they can hold on to the idea that they got called an idiot for because then they get defensive. And this has become such a cultural, social thing of like, my friends want me to do this or want me to believe this and every. And I brought it up. And here's 20 Nazis came in and called me an idiot. And they're absolute lunatics on Twitter because everybody's a lunatic on Twitter. And so they fall into that camp. Like, BGC Sessions was just talking about it the other day. Is that like, somebody told him he had to. He had to make a stance on something or whatever. And he was like, this is insane. These people, like, are crazy. And. And like, that's. That's his impression of quote unquote Nazis. Right? Is. So now he's. Now he's now he's going to be against BIP110 just because of that conversation. Because. Because of the social sphere and the separation of, this is my group and this is your group. And.
[01:25:21] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. I had to get the hell off of Twitter.
[01:25:24] Speaker A: Smart people are just.
Smart people can explain anything. Smart people can explain anything. Smart people are the ones that came up with Earth was at the center of the universe. It was the smartest people in the room.
[01:25:37] Speaker D: They can rationalize inaction forever, which is why Giacomo's against it. But in the case of Greg, it's, you're clever and you like learning to admit you're wrong is a skill.
And I guess the dumber you are, the faster you learn it because, like, you're always wrong.
Well, if. If you're Greg, it's not often that someone comes along, especially if they're a Twitter anon, and points out that your argument's retarded. Like, he cannot accept defeat in a fricking argument. And he will literally sit there and just ignore. Like, the first thing he said to me back when we started arguing about bip110 was about. No, just about filters, was that it will mess up your fee estimation. And I went, that is not how fee estimation works. Fee estimation takes what it knew about in its mempool and sees how long it takes to get into the block. And it has a bunch of heuristics based on that. All of the fee estimation in core is designed around the fact that you can't predict what's in other people's mempools because it's not a reliable source of information.
So limiting spam from your mempool in a world where there is one miner out there with a similar mempool to you, makes your transactions probably just a little bit cheaper. That's not worse. The. If you. If you have your mempool full of absolute trash that no one is mining, then you're just going to pay more, and you can't undo that. So saying it makes your transaction fee predictability worse. I said, this is. This is completely untrue. It's not how fee estimation works in Bitcoin Core. And he refused, and he didn't respond to that. And I said, I need you to acknowledge that what you just first brought up about fee estimation being ruined by spam filters is not true, because that's not how fee estimation works. He refused to ever address it again.
And I'm just. There's no intellectual rigor there. You can take back that Point and say, okay, but I still think spam filtering is bad for other reasons. But the fee estimation thing, you brought it up. It was wrong and you're not prepared to admit it was wrong. And. And that really annoys me because he remains someone that Mandrick will say, I'm gonna go with Team Greg on this. Without even reading anything he said, I'm like, well, he's not particularly honest, he's very clever and he's been very influential and a good leader in the past. But he does lie about stuff and you have to be prepared to call him out on that stuff. Otherwise you're not trusting, you're trusting, you're not verifying and that's that that can lead us into a bad place. If Greg gets sufficiently Luke deranged that he's talking about, you know, Craig writing everyone and suing people. And I'm just, I'm sorry, this is. You have to call out the heroes in the space when they act this badly. Same with Andy back.
[01:28:15] Speaker E: I do think you're right.
But I'll give the Steel man for Greg's argument, even though it's not the argument he makes. I think he is caught in a spot where he can't admit that he either made a mistake or he did something bad intentionally. When it comes to lifting those script size limit with Taproot when you can use the OPIF bug that by the way, Guy Opif is the bug that is used to do the inscriptions exploit. It's not just that it allows the parallel processing. It is what you can make that unreachable path on.
Greg, I think either did that intentionally, maliciously, or he realizes now it was a mistake that that bug was in there and he can't admit the mistake. My Steel man for the other side of the argument is it was. It was a mistake, but it's not really that big a deal and it's not really worth fixing because the chain would be a ghost town anyway without this stuff and having this small mistake with this little spam that they still think it's going to get priced out via fees, which I, I don't think is right.
But the mistakes just be there because otherwise Bitcoin would just be a ghost town. That. That's my.
And it's not doing that much damage. That. That's my steel man.
[01:29:43] Speaker D: Yeah, that's.
That's not far from.
[01:29:45] Speaker A: See, I think that's an actually argument to. To unpack. Like I would. That would actually be something I would be interested in.
[01:29:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:29:52] Speaker A: Digging into with Somebody. I think that's an interesting perspective to take, especially with the way fees are.
[01:29:57] Speaker D: That is a derivative of the security budget. Fud, though. Like, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the blockchain being a ghost town and filling it up with arbitrary data that creates an incentive problem for people that don't want to store other people's data isn't an unequivocal.
[01:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You can't fix one problem by creating a new problem.
[01:30:16] Speaker D: I really do think the security budget is a fundamental result of economic illiteracy. I think bitcoin mining demonstrably is done by people that are prepared to lose SATs doing it. And that's true of anyone that ever bought a bit axe. And not everyone lotto mines with a bit axe for fun. Some people pool mine with them. So they spent 200,000 sats buying a bitaxe and they will mine 50,000 ever. That's economically irrational. People do it anyway because they want to feel like a part of the network and they want to help secure it. So the idea that miners have to earn money goes against the case studies of all the miners that don't.
[01:30:50] Speaker B: I think just the fact that heaters exist means that, like, bitcoin heaters exist means that we can, we can mine at a loss. Like.
[01:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah, the episode with Tyler Stevens was really, really interesting about that. Is.
Is the idea that, like any, any electric comfort heating anywhere, if it is still being done, can be done better with a hash board or it can be done more efficiently, more cost.
[01:31:22] Speaker D: I love Tyler Stevens, but I don't agree.
[01:31:24] Speaker A: You don't agree?
[01:31:25] Speaker D: No.
[01:31:26] Speaker A: What's. How much.
Why is that specifically? Is it.
[01:31:30] Speaker D: Does it have to do with household utilities? The main thing people want is reliability and the minute you start introducing stuff like semi efficient ASICS into the process, your plumber needs to be efficient. Your plumber needs to now be, you know, a hardware technician for, like, you can. You cannot ever be in a position where it's Christmas Eve and your boiler broke and you need a plumber that actually knows how to replace a hash board in a, like retrofitted S19.
[01:31:57] Speaker B: Nah. Because. Because as these things become modular, you've got. You've got jack building like modular, like miners. Right.
It's going to be just like replacing an element, replacing an element in a heating element in a hot water heater.
[01:32:14] Speaker D: I hope you're right. I don't want to be a naysayer and I don't want to interrupt people doing it. Like I said, I love Tyler and I love the Heat punks. I just know that I've tried to use bitcoin for heat for the better part of a decade. And the only time I made it really work without it being a fricking hassle was an Avalon Q because it's actually designed for that. I didn't have to make a 220 volt outlet anywhere that it didn't want to be in my.
[01:32:36] Speaker B: We're still very, very, very early in that, in that whole thing.
[01:32:40] Speaker A: I was about to say there's no infrastructure for it. Like I bet most of your problems where most of my problems is the tools and the cost.
[01:32:48] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean the, the, the cost with time is high, the cost with the hardware is high. Like literally a Home Depot heater for like 35 will heat my office the same way my 1600 dollar Avalon Q heats it. That was probably Canadian dollar. So I'm like, yeah, and it's, it will never mind sixteen hundred dollars worth of bitcoin ever, even if the price didn't go up. So it's like that's, that's not a particularly rational thing to do. And when it breaks I have to go further and actually think about replacing it. And it's like the two buttons mean with the domain renewal, do I, do I sink more money into trying to heat my house with bitcoin miners or do I just give up naturally do it in a conventional way that's going to be more reliable and cheaper. Like I love bitcoin and I will do it irrationally, but I'm still pissed off about how much money I spent fixing the S9 and like, you know, and that's me. Like I'm obviously going to do over the top stuff out of the love of bitcoin. Right. Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on that whole time.
[01:33:46] Speaker A: I'm curious, I'm curious because Steve, you had a line or you had posted something about is bitcoin mining ultimately an infrastructure cost instead of a profitability thing.
[01:33:57] Speaker E: Yeah, that's Mechanic's point and I think he's right about it. But Mechanic, you are so far ahead of everyone. Like you have to remember we have lived for 16 years with beating the drum that went like this.
The chain is going to become for high value settlements and fees are going to rise and the miners will be compensated by the fees. And when you know, the reward runs out, the subsidy runs out, the fees are going to pay for subsidize the miner. Like this was, this was the religion for a whole 10 years. And so like Trying to turn this ship around is like trying to turn around like a cruise ship on a dime.
It's going to take a long time for people to realize that you're right about this. And mining is ultimately a loss. Infrastructure cost.
It's going to take a long time.
[01:35:00] Speaker D: It's bizarre. I appreciate you saying that because yeah, I do. Like, it's not me really that did. It was unhosted. Marsalis and Guy, you should do like a rip with him one day. Just you and unhosted.
You know, he. He just said, you know, the whole point is Satoshi designed it that way. Right. It's like the difficulty adjust if it's ever profitable for a normal person to mine, it will keep getting more and more difficult until it's no longer profitable. And even if it is temporarily profitable, a halving comes and then it's no longer profitable. Like, it's just fundamentally designed to spank you back down every time you've got something that works and is profitable. So like that's just.
That is native to bitcoin, is that like, it can't upset miners too much because then they'll start turning off and the difficulty will drop. But there's always someone that can take a little bit more pain than you can and they can always force the difficulty up as a result. And there are way too many people out there buying bitaxes for me to ever think it would drop down to a level where you could go out naively buy a bitcoin miner, plug in at residential power rates and actually make a profit. And ultimately those are the bitcoiners and those are the people that have the biggest need for the chain to be secure. So those are the people that are going to end up mining and are more incentivized to do it. Even if they lose money doing it.
[01:36:21] Speaker E: I'll do it. I'm going to rent at a loss for bip110. I don't care. I'm exactly the kind of person you're talking about. The health of the bitcoin network means something to me. I'll pay a little bit per month to do something small to protect the health of the network.
[01:36:37] Speaker A: Like, I don't appreciate it.
[01:36:39] Speaker D: I'm the same. And what annoys me about it is that I'm like this.
I'm going against the dogma like you just pointed out, Steve. But what's killing me about it is I'm like, I'm obviously right because that's the situation today.
Most, most mining entities are in the Red. There are miners that are in the green every month. And maybe they represent a lot of hash rate. But with regard to individual entity, you know, on an individual entity basis, how many people are actually running some kind of mining hardware somewhere in the world? Maybe there's 50,000 people doing that. I would guarantee you 45,000 of them are spending more on everything they do collectively than they are ever bringing in in terms of dollars. And if you do it in terms of sats, it's even worse than that.
[01:37:25] Speaker A: I was about to say anyone that
[01:37:26] Speaker D: ever bought a bit axe.
[01:37:27] Speaker A: That's true for always bad in SATs.
[01:37:28] Speaker E: What about barefoot, though?
[01:37:30] Speaker D: Isn't one of the exceptions. They're one of the exceptions. They're not many people like barefoot. And I haven't been through Bob's numbers. I don't know what he claims around this. I know that they can mine a bitcoin for like $30,000, but that doesn't mean that much when you talk about
[01:37:45] Speaker A: the fact it's mostly their energy.
[01:37:47] Speaker D: They had to buy all the ant miners. They had to buy the facility. They have to deal with downtime, repairs, all that stuff. They are also a host, and hosts do make money. But hosts aren't miners. Hosts are doing annoying parts of what the mining process is for other people.
So I think Bob is probably one of the people that can make it work and balance it out. And there's people who get paid to balance grids. Like, they literally get paid if they consume power. Like, those people can make money. Sure. But like the big pubcos, they definitely don't. And their numbers are all public. So I've seen enough times Mara and riot be like, that's why I say Mara. Yeah. Mara was nine figures in the red for one of their quarters. Like, that's unbelievable. American bitcoin came out with their statements too, saying, you know, we've published this as a $90,000.
It costs us $90,000 to mine a bitcoin when you take into account all of the liabilities and the price is in the $70,000 and we still carry on doing it. That to me is corroboration for my theory that miners will mine even if it's lossy. It doesn't matter where they are in the ecosystem.
It's just not a thing that's going to be profitable. Most people that think it is have misjudged something.
[01:38:58] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah.
[01:38:59] Speaker A: It can only ever be profitable for a short period of time. Like, and it's profitable literally in volatility.
[01:39:05] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:39:06] Speaker D: What's Funny is when they don't. When you see people doing the maths, they're like, heat your home for this much money. I'm like, you left out the cost of the equipment. Or they're like, heat your home for this much money. And I'm like, you just listed the cost of the equipment and ignored the electricity price. Okay, I'll include both of them.
But they always leave something off. Like an American bitcoin did that. I think that was the critique of the guy that wrote the thread. He was like, I designed all this. I set up all this hardware. They're leaving out one of the major liabilities. They're talking about the electricity consumption, what they pay for it versus how much bitcoin they get.
As if they didn't live in a world where they had to buy all the machines, which cost like a hundred million dollars and the facility and all the stu. You can't do that. That's not. That's. That's so misleading. And people, again, people just kind of fall for it.
[01:39:55] Speaker B: You know, there is, I mean, it is the case though that like a home heating unit is wildly expensive.
So, I mean, there is.
[01:40:06] Speaker A: My S9 was pretty cheap. It doesn't do much hash, but it was also pretty cheap and it's a huge.
[01:40:13] Speaker E: If you have to buy the heater anyway, then it's a different calculation.
[01:40:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:40:17] Speaker E: Hey, mechanic, before we get too far away from it, I wanted to make a suggestion to you. When people bring up the topic, that this sets a precedent that any soft fork can be done like this. And your response was, yeah, that's true. And you know, people are going to have to do ursf. People are going to have to actively reject these kind of forks.
I think you're probably right, but this isn't a fully fleshed out idea. But inside of me somewhere I know, I have a feeling that there is a very big difference between a soft fork, which is a consensus restriction, and a soft fork which is trying to add in features in a sneaky way.
And I feel like there's going to be a technical thing here where the mechanism is true for any soft fork that's trying to be a consensus restriction. Because all. Because just like bip110 is, all of those transactions are valid already.
If you try to do a soft fork when you add features, you have to do something really bizarre like anyone can spend. You know, that crazy construction that we think is normal, that. That Luke came up with, that is nuts. That is crazy. Like when, when. When you're a Non updated Bitcoin are gone.
[01:41:43] Speaker A: If the software doesn't work, you're screwed.
[01:41:45] Speaker E: Just let me finish this. Like without that any that anyone can spend. If you don't update, your node sees that and it's like anyone can spend this transaction. How come no one's spending it? And it requires, that's why that requires the 95% consensus of the miners is because of that anyone can spend nature. But when you're doing a bip 110 style where the soft work is literally just reducing the amount of transactions, there's not going to be anything crazy in there. And I haven't fleshed this out fully, but I think that dynamic right there means that the, you know the thing people are saying to you about this precedent, anybody can do this now. I think anybody can do this now. Only for consensus restrictions, which I'm actually fine with.
I think removing features in Bitcoin has to be easier than adding them.
[01:42:37] Speaker D: You might be right about that. But it would take me a while to sort of reason.
[01:42:40] Speaker E: Yeah, I know it's, it's super complicated.
[01:42:42] Speaker D: I don't immediately people are going to jump on UTXO blacklists because that's just removing a feature in a sense. Right. And like I said yesterday, UTXO restrictions and stuff like if.
[01:42:54] Speaker E: No, but that would result in a fork if, if, if one node had the blacklist and one didn't.
[01:42:59] Speaker D: I don't think people understand the game theory. Like, and this is not to say that I'm, I, I can look wrong if I, I, if I'm a good chess player and I walk into a room full of people that don't know how to play chess, I'm not going to look smart because no one else knows the rules to even adhere to any of my predictions or skill. So my, my assessment of Bitcoin is that once a soft fork has some threshold of adoption and enforcement that everyone has to go along with it if they know what's good for them. But I don't, I'm, I've been let down on that front before. People don't necessarily know what's good for them. But I think BitPointen has hit the threshold where it needs significant like withdrawal from the participants or everyone is just going to get on board last minute and because there's enough people like Guy out there that aren't running it at the moment that have no real objection running it if it gets a bit more adoption.
And like, I think basically it's going to be a case of momentum and trend. And if at the 11th hour, there's suddenly a lot more blocks and a lot more nodes running it, every single other person that is ambivalent about it, which is 99% of the people that aren't running it now are going to go, okay, how do I run this? Like, I just think that's a foregone conclusion.
[01:44:15] Speaker E: I love bitcoin, dude. I am here for the fireworks, man.
[01:44:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be fun either way. It's going to be crazy.
[01:44:23] Speaker D: I have the most impure motivations about it. There are people that are so arrogant about it losing, I just have to see their response if and when it wins. I just have to know how they react to that.
[01:44:33] Speaker E: I'm okay with it losing, like, my position. If it loses, it's just going to be like, I still think it would have been better. I'm not going to rage quit bitcoin. I get your sentiment the other day on what bitcoin did when you were like, I'm just gonna withdraw for a while because, like, it's just not. I don't know if it's gonna be fun anymore.
I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm gonna be a bitcoiner for life, man. Even if it's not as good as it could have been.
[01:44:59] Speaker D: I don't think you can fail.
[01:45:00] Speaker E: What's that?
[01:45:01] Speaker D: It sounds so overly arrogant. I just don't. The failure scenarios don't make any sense to me.
[01:45:06] Speaker E: Oh, it means it's captured. It means, like, it might be on its way out, but, like, I'm still gonna be with it until there's something better. I mean, like, I'll still have everything.
[01:45:17] Speaker D: I'll still have the bitcoins. They don't automatically sell because I'm in favor of Bitcoin 10 and I'm running a bit 110 note, so I'll still be there. But I really just think the people keep asking me, what if it fails? And I'm just like, I don't know. Really, like, I'll figure it out. That will suck. Don't.
[01:45:34] Speaker E: You don't address that. The politician. When they say, like, what if you don't win presidency? Or will you be vice president? You don't answer that.
You're gonna be like, I intend to be president.
[01:45:43] Speaker D: What if it succeeds? What if it succeeds? That's the thing where people are like, have you thought about that, by the way? Because you're so busy defending it. Like, good point. What if it succeeds? Then we have survivorship bias. There'll be.
We'll have stopped a bunch of data that people won't be able to see. So they'll say. Every time there is a bit of spam in the chain, they'll point it out and go, you failed. And I'll say, well, there's a bunch of spam that isn't here because of Bitpoint 10. And they'll say, where's that? I don't believe you.
[01:46:11] Speaker B: Well, Steve. Steve will be able to show that. Steve. Steve will give us a plot that
[01:46:15] Speaker A: Steve will have the charts.
[01:46:17] Speaker E: No, I won't. If it's not on chain, dude. I only show shit that's on chain, dude.
[01:46:21] Speaker B: No, no, no. I'm saying the before and after. The before and after.
[01:46:24] Speaker E: Before and after.
[01:46:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:46:26] Speaker D: That will help, definitely. But on the, like, again, on hosted, came up with contraception as the best example. He's like, you're trying to tell us condoms don't work because there's babies in the world. Like, this is.
This is like. But apparently 30% of Americans can't conceptually wrap their head around survivorship bias. Like, literally, I will be talking to a concrete wall.
[01:46:49] Speaker E: Statistics in general, dude. Just statistics in general.
[01:46:52] Speaker D: Survivorship biases is, for some reason a cognitive block for most people. They're like, if I can't see, doesn't exist.
Or it couldn't have existed. Oh, yeah. Like, we've prevented a thing. You can't.
The thing that doesn't exist, we prevented it from existing.
So the prevention mechanism works.
[01:47:11] Speaker B: This is why economics is the dismal science, because you just can't like the scene and the unseen.
The unseen is the scene in the unseen.
The main part of the. That's what you got to understand.
[01:47:22] Speaker A: And everybody literally just believes that the thing that is is just the way it works.
[01:47:27] Speaker E: I'm just so excited about bitcoin, I've
[01:47:30] Speaker D: got to jump off. But let me ask you guys.
[01:47:33] Speaker A: Me too.
[01:47:33] Speaker D: Do me one solid, all right? I've never given you any for being a core cuck or something like that. For not running B10.
[01:47:39] Speaker E: I probably have. I'm sorry.
[01:47:40] Speaker A: I'm going to cor cuck so hard now. Good God. You don't even know.
[01:47:46] Speaker D: Set a threshold that you'll say, like, publicly, hey, I don't run bip110. If XYZ happens, I am going to switch to run to bip1.
[01:47:55] Speaker B: 21%.
[01:47:55] Speaker A: 21% feels dangerously like science.
[01:48:00] Speaker D: 21%. I know it's easy because everyone just says it's a sybil. Attack.
[01:48:04] Speaker E: Yeah, it's gotta be blocked.
[01:48:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:48:06] Speaker D: You want 21% of blocks to signal.
That's a bit. That's a bit steep, I think.
[01:48:13] Speaker E: No, it's gonna happen, dude.
[01:48:15] Speaker A: Think about it. I'll think about it.
[01:48:16] Speaker E: As soon as more hash comes on for rent. You know, it's just brains right now, man. There's no competition. It's hard, it's clunky, dude.
[01:48:23] Speaker D: Nice hash.
[01:48:25] Speaker E: Nice hash.
[01:48:25] Speaker D: Doing it nice. I should have a lot. If you can get through the kyc,
[01:48:29] Speaker A: I would expect more will come on just because, like, because people are kind of desperate for profitability, you know, especially. Especially in the bear market. So that will be. That will be really interesting.
[01:48:42] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:48:43] Speaker D: This is the best timing for a bear market I've ever seen in bitcoin's history.
[01:48:46] Speaker E: Oh, my God.
[01:48:47] Speaker D: Wipe out all of the scammers and the treasury bros. And make it cheaper to rent hash.
[01:48:52] Speaker E: Dude, we didn't even talk about Prime Trust, dude. I love this bear market. I love what's going on right now. It makes me feel like bitcoin's alive again.
[01:49:00] Speaker A: Prime Trust trying to claw all of their bitcoin back, dude. Or all of the customers. Bitcoin back to the share mock trial.
That is wild. That is wild. Yeah. We owed all of this bitcoin to your customers and you withdrew it because you knew that we were insolvent and we were about to go bankrupt and we would like it back from you and your customers so that we can pay out our shareholders. And it's like, oh, oh, man, that's a. That's a messed up.
[01:49:33] Speaker E: I think Prime Trust is going to win, dude, because they did it at the expense of the other customers.
Because, like, if you're an investor in a company, then, like, they're not going
[01:49:42] Speaker A: to give it to anybody.
Oh, my God. Dude, I don't know.
[01:49:46] Speaker E: Prime Trust is trying to pay out all of its people equally, you know, in the bankruptcy proceeding and they're claiming that they can't do that because Swan, you know, took this out. So basically, Swan gets paid out totally. And all their other customers don't get paid out.
[01:50:01] Speaker A: I don't understand though, how, I don't understand how some like, like if I. I suspected Mount Gox might be insolvent and I withdrew my bitcoin, like, how could Mount Gox then come to me and be like, you suspected we were insolvent.
We need the bitcoin back.
[01:50:22] Speaker B: You made our problem worse.
[01:50:24] Speaker A: Stayed in. Like that doesn't.
[01:50:26] Speaker D: That can just be a term and a Condition. If you withdraw Bitcoins and, dude, something happens, then we still legally own them. That can literally just be a term and condition, and then they sue you over it.
[01:50:38] Speaker E: I mean, it's Corey's fault in the beginning. Did you see that post? Or there's a screenshot. Corey literally telling someone that their coins are safe at Prime Trust through Swan because Prime Trust does not rehypothecate when Prime Trust was probably literally re. Hypothecating the moment Corey made that tweet because Prime Trust lost those coins a long time ago and didn't tell anybody.
And it's like that. That's like the original sin right there. Is Corey doing that, like, promising somebody that their coins are safe when he has no right to promise that to them?
[01:51:13] Speaker D: I don't know the situation. I want Corey without knowing whether that's true or not.
[01:51:18] Speaker B: I was gonna say, did Prime Trust lie to Corey? I don't.
[01:51:21] Speaker E: You know, I don't buy on Corey. Little pretty boy, California pretty boy.
[01:51:26] Speaker A: It immediately makes me think about the whole, like, if you're the CEO, you're hamstrung. Like, what can you say?
[01:51:34] Speaker E: You don't run the company if you can't custody the coins. Like, people are always like, oh, I'm not. I'm not legally allowed to. Custom coins. Then don't run the company.
[01:51:44] Speaker A: No, I mean, in the context of, like, what?
Like. Like, think about how many. Like, it's probably illegal or some sort of fiduciary, like, lawsuit liability, no matter which way that goes. Like, no matter what you say in the probably, you know?
[01:51:59] Speaker E: Yeah, probably.
[01:52:01] Speaker A: So it's. I don't know.
[01:52:02] Speaker D: I will say one good thing about Prime Trust. When Ocean paid someone into an address from Prime Trust, it didn't work because it was a generation transaction. And when I emailed them about it, they fixed it within 24 hours. So that was good.
I mean, it should have just not been broken in the first place.
[01:52:20] Speaker E: But I like the name.
[01:52:22] Speaker A: Way to go, guys.
[01:52:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
And, man, I had another point, but I. Forget it anyway. I should go.
[01:52:31] Speaker E: I should go.
[01:52:32] Speaker A: We'll end on that. We forgot what we were going to say. All right.
[01:52:35] Speaker D: Sorry for all the talk about Bitcoin at the end there. We'll try and get back on topic.
[01:52:39] Speaker A: We'll get back.
[01:52:40] Speaker B: We'll.
[01:52:40] Speaker A: We'll fix it next time, and we'll make it really about AI and quantum on this.
[01:52:44] Speaker D: We didn't talk about quantum computers this time. That was.
[01:52:46] Speaker E: I got to go. All right. See you guys later.
[01:52:50] Speaker A: Out. He's a everybody and everything Quantum.
[01:52:54] Speaker D: I'm out, too. See you.
[01:52:59] Speaker C: And lastly, if you want to hear more about what's been going on with my brother and you actually want to get that story and in any way that you can help, we have a petition and you can check it out at help us home.org that is help us home.org.
seriously, it actually makes a huge difference, and it looks like there's literally no way for him and his wife to ever come home unless we get someone with some arbitrary political power to care about it.
[01:53:29] Speaker A: And it feels kind of hopeless.
[01:53:32] Speaker C: And I really hope that you guys
[01:53:35] Speaker A: can show a little bit of support and help us out and any way
[01:53:38] Speaker C: that you can support this show so I can keep getting the word out
[01:53:41] Speaker A: there and keep you guys updated.
[01:53:44] Speaker C: The more that you guys care, the more it will actually matter, and hopefully something will get done and I'll get to live in the same country as my brother and his wife one day. So with that, thank you guys so much for listening.
I will have more updates to come and some really exciting news for the show. Actually, we're. We're changing the format up a little bit, and we're doing something new, and I'm really excited about it. I think it's. It's something that I've been wanting to gear toward for a long time, and we're finally being systematic about it. And I hope it will also bring some. Some fresh new takes and some great stuff that I think you guys have really liked. So stay tuned, stay subscribed. Check out the YouTube channel. I never mentioned the YouTube channel, but I'm actually gonna put a little work into it now. And stay tuned.
[01:54:31] Speaker B: We got.
[01:54:31] Speaker C: We got a lot of fun stuff on the way. So with that, I am Guy Swan. And until next time, everybody, that is our two sets.
