Crypto Hipster Presents: Shooting from the Hip, Episode 1: The Meaning and Beauty of Bitcoin Maximalism, with Vlad Costea @ Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

[00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to the Crypto Hipster podcast. This is your host Jamil Hasan who

[00:00:07] are interview founders, entrepreneurs, executives, thought leaders, artists and today a fellow

[00:00:14] podcaster. I'm really looking forward to this interview. I have an amazing guest for you

[00:00:19] today. His name is Vlad Kastia. He is the host of the Bitcoin takeover podcast. I'm

[00:00:28] really looking forward to this. Let's give Vlad a warm welcome.

[00:00:32] Hi, this is exciting. I finally get to talk to another podcaster.

[00:00:37] No, it's great. It's great. I was thinking about making a whole new line of this. You

[00:00:42] know, instead of Crypto Hipster podcast or under the Crypto Hipster podcast, shooting from

[00:00:48] the hip with the Crypto Hipster. So I might just do that. So thank you for joining me.

[00:00:55] Let's kick things off and ask you first, you know, kick things off. What's your background

[00:01:00] and is it a logical background for what you're doing now?

[00:01:03] I spent way too many years in university. I guess I pursued a PhD. I was planning to become

[00:01:12] a university professor and then Bitcoin happened. I've been aware of it since 2013 but I was

[00:01:20] afraid of it. And that's also the reason why I wrote a magazine that's called Breaking

[00:01:25] Fud that I also open sourced. You can find it on bitcoinstakeover.com in the magazine

[00:01:30] section. Basically, I did not touch Bitcoin for four years after I first found out about

[00:01:36] it but when I did find out about it, everything changed. You know, I dropped out in my last

[00:01:42] year of my PhD to pursue working in Bitcoin full time to seek some work, understand how

[00:01:49] this works, do interviews for myself just to convince myself that I made the right decision.

[00:01:56] And then once I discovered that there's nobody really behind this project because you first

[00:02:01] get in, right? Everyone tells you, oh, it's a decentralized project. Nobody controls it.

[00:02:05] And you say, oh, yeah, right. That's just what you tell people to convince them that this

[00:02:11] is a good investment. But then you dig deeper and you keep on searching for answers and you

[00:02:18] discover, okay, there's really, you know, it's pure energy. That's what drives this project.

[00:02:26] It's pure energy. It's people from all around the world contributing. Of course, you have

[00:02:31] maintainers of the code but these people are also overwhelmed and clueless most of the

[00:02:36] time. There is no roadmap. It's just based on the best design and community feedback from

[00:02:42] it. It's incredible. It's punk rock. It's DIY. I love it. I would rather do this as opposed

[00:02:51] to stay in some university office and do pointless research. I did try to do Bitcoin research

[00:02:58] in academia. And at the time, it was rejected. They did not really understand what's the

[00:03:03] point of it. And also they told me that even if I'm potentially some sort of genius, they're

[00:03:11] not going to be able to review my work because there's no expert in Bitcoin in my department.

[00:03:16] And, you know, as a PhD candidate, you're always regarded with skepticism which is good. You

[00:03:23] need someone to be able to understand what you're saying there and where you're getting

[00:03:28] with this. And since there was no expert, I just dropped out. I realized, okay, maybe

[00:03:33] I need 10 more years before this becomes safe. And I can write what I want about it. And

[00:03:41] I'm fine with it. If somebody else does it, that's perfectly fine. I'm in a good position

[00:03:47] right now, I guess much better than before. I do this Bitcoin takeover podcast. I've been

[00:03:53] doing it for five years now. And I'm so excited. I still discover new stuff. I still interview

[00:04:00] new people. I don't get bored. Nice. So what year do you start in Bitcoin was 2019 or before

[00:04:10] that? No, 2017. That was my official quote unquote start because I did hear about it before

[00:04:18] and I did need it before. I just didn't know that it works like this. All I knew about Bitcoin

[00:04:25] is that it's used on the Silk Road to buy drugs. And that was it. Yeah, you and I both started

[00:04:32] in 2017. It's a different world today than it was back then. That was with a wild crazy

[00:04:37] West. Right? So I want to get into the wild crazy West and get into your Bitcoin takeover

[00:04:46] podcast which is basically difference for mine. I interview people from all over and

[00:04:52] different chains. Double your focus has been quite right. So what's your podcast all about?

[00:04:56] What has been some of the greatest lessons you've learned and how do you must you enjoy it?

[00:05:01] What's it all about? My podcast is intermediate level in the sense that I do my best to get

[00:05:08] developers, to get business founders and all sorts of people who are super hardcore working

[00:05:14] on this 24 seven. I get a lot of OGs. For example, this week I got Brian Bishop who was

[00:05:22] on the Cypherpunk mailing list and actually found out about Bitcoin today that it came out.

[00:05:27] And he was 19 years old at the time. He's pretty much a mad scientist, a genius from this

[00:05:35] point of view. But he didn't touch it. It took him also a few years until he figured out

[00:05:41] that it's not just another proposal and it's the proposal. It's the one that survives

[00:05:48] and it's the one that drives and ends up becoming multi billion and even a trillion dollar asset.

[00:05:56] It's really incredible, you know? You discover all of these people and you see that there's so much

[00:06:03] to find in this community. You don't have time to get bored. I'm pretty sure that you have founders

[00:06:09] from all sorts of blockchains and you have entrepreneurs and you have innovators and you always discover

[00:06:16] something new. But a pattern that you're going to figure out along the way is that the talk is always

[00:06:24] about something else. There's Bitcoin and then there's something that changes gradually. That

[00:06:31] is the new kid in town, the new cool project that everyone talks about and the next cycle of changes

[00:06:37] and Bitcoin remains a constant and maybe that it seems boring from afar. But you don't really have

[00:06:43] time to keep up with everything that's happening. There are so many projects, there are so many

[00:06:50] wallets, there are so many people working on them and tinkering and trying to work around the

[00:06:55] limitations of this project because Bitcoin is hard to change, you know? It's very hard to get

[00:07:02] the community to agree on anything, to upgrade it, to add any functions to it. So people search for

[00:07:10] all sorts of workarounds just for the sake of adding some extra functionality or having some

[00:07:16] feature that they desire. And it's fascinating to talk with them, I think right now with season 15,

[00:07:24] I've interviewed mostly developers and people who came up with innovative ideas about Bitcoin.

[00:07:32] And if you listen to it as a whole, there's a YouTube playlist if you want to do that. I think

[00:07:39] it's future proof. I think five years from now, you're going to be listening to it again.

[00:07:43] Maybe some of this will become more mainstream as in there's scaling technology like zero knowledge

[00:07:50] rollups and there are some pretty avant-garde side chains that are being presented

[00:07:57] and all sorts of ideas on how to make this work more efficiently. I think five years from now,

[00:08:03] it will still not come to fruition entirely. And it's still going to be under debate but people

[00:08:09] listening to this will understand where this comes from and where it originates. And for better

[00:08:17] and for worse, Bitcoin is taking it slow. It's worse because right now you can't onboard six

[00:08:24] billion people at once, not in a non-custodial way. Of course they can buy paper Bitcoin from someone else,

[00:08:31] ETFs or whatnot. But it's also good because whatever gets added to Bitcoin is the most mature,

[00:08:38] the most tested, the technology that makes most sense. It's not the one that's on the cutting edge

[00:08:46] on the bleeding edge. That's the stuff that ends up in altcoins and that's the stuff that gets

[00:08:50] tested for a few years. But if if it ever comes to Bitcoin, it must be very well tested. And

[00:08:58] somehow there's some reassurance in this. You sleep better like knowing that nobody's doing

[00:09:04] wild experimentation with your asset. There's this there's this terminology back when I work

[00:09:12] in corporate America, so that the proper technology build is slowly incremental technology and not

[00:09:21] fast, immediate, high-based technology. And I put Bitcoin in that category of slowly incremental

[00:09:30] technology. If you look at some of the most successful companies right now in electronics,

[00:09:37] you're going to see that Apple is not necessarily the most innovating when it comes to hardware

[00:09:44] at least or adding software features. They're always like five years behind Samsung or Google Pixel

[00:09:52] or whatever, but whenever they add something it's more mature, it has a much better user experience.

[00:09:59] It's something that you don't need the tutorial to understand. And I can also think,

[00:10:07] I'm not sure if you're into video games, but I do pay attention to that scene and you have Nintendo,

[00:10:14] which for a few generations now hasn't had the most powerful hardware, but they do understand

[00:10:19] the importance of software optimization and working around some well-defined limitations.

[00:10:26] And it seems to work very well for them. They sell a lot of units specifically because of this.

[00:10:31] I see Bitcoin somehow within the same category even if it's not a company.

[00:10:36] And I'm pretty proud of the project, even though sometimes I'm frustrated and I realize okay,

[00:10:44] if we had better scalability then there would be no point to have all of these outcoins

[00:10:52] to help it scale, to have low fees and stuff like that. If we had proper privacy,

[00:10:57] there'd be no reason for Manero and Zcash and stuff like that to exist.

[00:11:02] But I guess I have to be more patient and understand that this stuff is still very young,

[00:11:10] is not mature enough. And you also need to figure out how to add it to a system like Bitcoin in a

[00:11:17] way that doesn't break it. So it takes experimentation first and then it takes elegant engineering

[00:11:24] to make it happen. I just hope that the Wall Street suits don't entirely take control of the

[00:11:32] narrative and we're not going to end up with a version of Bitcoin which never gets improved,

[00:11:38] you know, just because everyone is complacent and they only care about that number go up aspect

[00:11:44] of it because it has very cypherpunk roots and it's supposed to be this form of internet money

[00:11:53] that you can transfer around the world. That is sustainable in the sense that it builds a fee

[00:11:59] market over time but at the same time it should also be accessible. So there is a very fine

[00:12:07] line there which intersects these hopes and expectations. Another aspect is fungibility which means

[00:12:15] that one unit should be equal with any other unit of it. That's something you have with cash but

[00:12:21] it's not something we have with digital cash up to this point. Monero does a pretty good job

[00:12:27] accomplishing that but it's still not perfect, it's still not that fine design that is needed

[00:12:35] because right now it seems like there's there's this triangle where you have to choose your trade-offs

[00:12:43] you know. There's this concept of the Zuko's triangle that you find in computer science and especially

[00:12:49] in this space. In cryptocurrency, Zuko's triangle has been translated as scalability, privacy

[00:12:58] and what's the other one? Security. You can have all three of them you basically have to choose

[00:13:03] two and work around the limitations. Maybe one day we're going to be able to have proper cryptography

[00:13:12] but today it is what it is you know. The only thing I'm going to disagree with you on,

[00:13:20] I agree mostly what you said is calling Bitcoin internet money. I don't consider it internet

[00:13:26] money. I consider it probably the hardest form of money ever created. Other than that I agree with

[00:13:32] you. Let's talk about, let's talk about it often, I actually want to find out from you

[00:13:42] what is Bitcoin maximalism and then we'll get into some of the myths and facts about it once

[00:13:51] you explain it what that means. I spent a lot of time thinking about this my background is in

[00:13:58] political science and I had a fascination with political philosophy and I think that Bitcoin

[00:14:04] maximalism is one of the most interesting political philosophies of our time. If you look at it,

[00:14:11] it makes a statement. It says either we should maximize Bitcoin because there are multiple

[00:14:17] schools of taught and they originate either from Yastra and economists or from the Cypher punks.

[00:14:24] Yastra and economists think that Bitcoin maximalism is monetary maximalism which means that you should

[00:14:32] only hold BTC and nothing else. The Cypher punks on the other hand believe that Bitcoin maximalism

[00:14:39] is about maximizing what Bitcoin can do and you're going to build everything on top of it.

[00:14:46] The term originates from a 2014 or 2015, I'm not sure exactly but it's a blog post by Vitalik

[00:14:54] Bouterin the creator of Ethereum and he was appealing to an article that somebody wrote at the time

[00:15:03] and said whatever you do on Ethereum we're going to do better on Bitcoin. And he analyzed the

[00:15:10] aspects of what can be built on Bitcoin and he called it Bitcoin maximalism. So this is originally

[00:15:18] what this was about that whatever happens in Outcoins Bitcoin is going to do better but I think

[00:15:25] over time it became more of a new lucid term everyone started defining it however they want

[00:15:33] to sum it means that you only hold BTC and nothing else. To others it means that you become part of

[00:15:41] a cult where you only eat meat and you have to join regular meetings with other people and you

[00:15:49] have to show off your status with certain items that you're buying I think right now maximalism

[00:15:55] has reached the more absurd points where it's a lifestyle and you have to signal your lifestyle by

[00:16:01] buying all the right products and being friends with the right people and going to the events

[00:16:08] and that's how you show basically that you're part of the community and yes that that's what makes

[00:16:13] you a maximalist. There's also the toxic maximalist aspect of it which means you're going to be

[00:16:19] mean to anyone else who doesn't agree with you which is something that every cult has to some degree

[00:16:27] but in here it's justified by some virtue of ideas I don't know how I should present them like

[00:16:35] you're supposed to tell people that they're idiots and that they should sell all of their

[00:16:40] outcoins and column shit coiners and stuff like that and think it's for the best and tell them

[00:16:46] that over time you are the one who's holding the better performing asset and they're basically gamblers

[00:16:54] there are some merits to this idea but it doesn't always apply and to some extent I think Bitcoin

[00:17:03] maximalism became a dogma which sometimes is trying to hide its head in the sand away from market

[00:17:14] realities because if you look at Ethereum or you look at dodgecoin you're gonna see that their

[00:17:20] market performance very much mirrors that of BTC of course they're more volatile on the way down

[00:17:27] and sometimes they also pump harder but there's some correlation between certain coins and they

[00:17:34] have been around for years and some of them are useful for some use cases so it's easy to deny

[00:17:42] and say yes we don't need this because Bitcoin is enough but there's a whole market out there for

[00:17:50] trying new stuff and it's good to understand that the intentions behind this market is to mature

[00:17:57] the technology to mature proposals that maybe are not ready for Bitcoin maybe they will never be ready

[00:18:02] for Bitcoin but it's good to try them and there's another aspect to shit coinery that's what

[00:18:10] maximalist guys will call it I think shit coins are very useful for keeping regulators busy with something

[00:18:20] because if there was only Bitcoin they would focus their attention only on Bitcoin but if you have

[00:18:26] safe moon and all of these camps they're gonna keep everyone busy they're gonna grab the media's

[00:18:33] attention and they're gonna make Bitcoin look like a saint project or whatever and they're also

[00:18:39] gonna keep government agents busy with investigations and everything else so to some degree these shit

[00:18:48] coins are useful but it doesn't mean that they're good investments usually they pump during the

[00:18:54] bull markets they pump harder some people talk about 100x 1000x whatever but you never know

[00:19:02] when you should sell and that's the problem because people buy into them they buy into some narrative

[00:19:09] these outcoins are organized in a way that they have pre-mines they have initial investors who get

[00:19:16] more tokens and they get the largest majority of the supply and then they pay for marketing and

[00:19:22] by the time you hear about it it's probably kind of late so you should not be too greedy because if

[00:19:29] you get into this game and you follow some youtuber or influencer or Twitter should poster or whatever

[00:19:37] cartoon character they're going to tell yes this is the investment you should get it now but

[00:19:42] you're not going to know that they get paid to say that and you're not going to know that you

[00:19:47] might be pretty late at the party and you should not get too greedy because if you do get too greedy

[00:19:53] you're gonna end up becoming the bag holder and this is where the shit coin aspect comes around because

[00:20:00] very few of these coins come back after a bear market you get this bear cycle people move on to

[00:20:08] the next thing BC investors already set up their portfolios with shiny new ideas and new narratives

[00:20:17] and you're gonna end up holding the bag but if you only buy Bitcoin that's not going to happen because

[00:20:24] it's how should I put it the centerpiece it's the center of the world when it comes to this

[00:20:33] industry and for as long as the industry is around Bitcoin is king and everything gravitates

[00:20:40] around it nothing can succeed unless Bitcoin succeeds but you have to not be greedy I guess if you

[00:20:51] care about the long term you said a couple of things I want to follow up on one you made very

[00:21:02] interesting distinction that I had not made before Cypher Punk versus Austrian economics

[00:21:11] I've always viewed Bitcoin as from an Austrian economics perspective as money and all the other

[00:21:18] shit coins as technological advancements that are necessary coming from the world of corporate

[00:21:25] America how I would apply that into certain departments your areas right I never looked at it

[00:21:32] from a Cypher Punk point of view so maximalism is different from Austrian economics and Cypher Punk

[00:21:39] right what do you see as the ideal world for both those maximals under both of those different

[00:21:45] situations it's hard because Austrian economists basically they only care about BTC the token

[00:21:55] and they look at the network and they say is it secure right now yes then we don't care about

[00:22:00] anything else it's kind of hypocritical because some of them endorse custodial ways of handling Bitcoin

[00:22:09] and they say yeah banking is natural banking is normal we shouldn't brace it it helps scale the

[00:22:16] project why are you so angry about it but then Cypher Punk will say but the points of Bitcoin

[00:22:23] is not to pump indefinitely the point of Bitcoin is to be able to hold your own keys

[00:22:30] to be financially sovereign in a way that no government can confiscate your money

[00:22:35] no government can stop you from transacting and ideally you should also have a degree of privacy

[00:22:42] against the government so this is the Cypher Punk point of view it's not necessarily about sound

[00:22:47] money or getting rich it's more about having these advantages that Bitcoin as a system has

[00:22:54] as opposed to traditional financial system so it's delicate there needs to be a fine line where

[00:23:03] Austrians can agree on certain upgrades to keep the Cypher Punk happy and the Cypher Punk

[00:23:09] agree that they should not create inflation or something like that because that's what destroys

[00:23:16] the Austrians and makes them go away the only care about the fixed supply and this whole narrative

[00:23:25] of Bitcoin becoming maybe the only form of payments or the store of value I think I think Cypher

[00:23:33] Punk's are more concerned with medium of exchange but being able to make vast payments around

[00:23:39] the world and that's when economists are more into savings and store value so they're not

[00:23:47] polar opposites there is some middle ground between these two but it's delicate because it's hard to

[00:23:55] meet everyone's expectations and I think Bitcoin underwent a Cypher Punk upgrades with Taproot

[00:24:04] and Segwit and the Austrians who have been around and stuck around with the project they don't seem

[00:24:10] very happy with the fact that Bitcoin added some extra functions that they were not aware of

[00:24:18] and it's going to be interesting in the future I personally follow Paul Stortz

[00:24:25] and he's proposing this side chain system is called drive chains where everyone gets their own

[00:24:32] side chain to do whatever they want and this the point of this is that every project if

[00:24:40] in the future they're no longer profitable with their own coin they can just migrate to a Bitcoin

[00:24:45] side chain they can have all the features without having its own token it's going to be all backed by

[00:24:52] BTC everything is going to be under this 21 million system nothing that's pretty beautiful

[00:25:02] interesting um I want to talk about I want to talk about the you know what I got in when I got

[00:25:10] in the when I got in the Bitcoin in 2017 because I was in Bitcoin first and then I discovered

[00:25:15] a theory months later um I got an after I was laid off in corporate America right I was

[00:25:21] throwing onto the sidelines right I filled Bitcoin back then was a way for people who were throwing

[00:25:28] onto the sidelines to get back into the game um and that's what it peeled to me over the years

[00:25:36] you know Wall Street got involved you know you have all these ETFs you have you know um

[00:25:43] you mentioned earlier you hope that you know Wall Street doesn't bastardize the future in the

[00:25:48] current of Bitcoin you know um how is that freedom that was once promised by Bitcoin is that

[00:25:56] freedom still available or is that fading because of Wall Street there's still freedom and you can

[00:26:03] use Bitcoin as non custodial sovereign system you can run your own node you can transact with

[00:26:09] anyone around the world you can mine it you can participate this system in ways that don't

[00:26:15] necessarily mean that you interact with the financial layer the beauty of proof of work and Bitcoin

[00:26:21] is that you can get Bitcoin without buying it from someone else you can invest in some mining gear

[00:26:30] and get some rewards and that's gonna be your Bitcoin it's not the most efficient way but it's

[00:26:36] an indirect way and it's really beautiful because in proof of stake systems everything is pre-mined

[00:26:42] and you basically buy coins from the wealthiest people in the system if you don't want to do that

[00:26:49] you can just mine and in Bitcoin you're gonna be able to let's say that you are in a country like

[00:26:55] Venezuela where the electricity is cheap but the inflation is high if you get your hands on some

[00:27:02] sort of mining machine you're gonna be able to have some steady revenue which helps you pay bills

[00:27:08] because the bills are pretty inexpensive in that country so there is definitely the freedom aspect

[00:27:14] of it it's just that I think it's becoming more expensive over time as both the mining difficulty

[00:27:22] keeps on going up so one machine that you might be buying is not enough it might make you maybe

[00:27:28] a couple of dollars a month and there's also the transaction fee aspect of it which is natural

[00:27:36] in order for Bitcoin to become sustainable on the long term it needs the fees to increase

[00:27:42] or it needs for miners to collect more fees because every four years you have this

[00:27:48] have a name that's what we call it where the supply that becomes available through mining gets

[00:27:56] gets halved, gets split and half so if you're going to have in the beginning Bitcoin was

[00:28:03] issuing 50 bitcoins in every block for years later it was 25 then for years later it was 12.5

[00:28:12] now we're at 6.25 and next month it's gonna become half of that and for miners this can be pretty

[00:28:22] brutal unless the price doubles every four years so there needs to be a balance with fees what

[00:28:29] users being willing to pay transaction fees to make up for the diminishing block reward

[00:28:36] this is part of the controlled supply that's going to 21 million right now I think we have about

[00:28:42] 19 something that's on the market but yeah it is still a free and the freedom system it's just

[00:28:55] that it doesn't get promoted too much as such you still benefit from all of the freedoms that

[00:29:02] the system grants you but you have to educate yourself about it and most likely this cycle in

[00:29:10] the coming years there's gonna be fewer people talking about this as Bitcoin becomes more

[00:29:18] entwined with the mainstream financial system it's gonna become even harder

[00:29:24] to figure out what's the point of this people will just refer to the fixed supply and to the

[00:29:32] verifiable amount of coins that are out there they will say oh the open ledger is so great

[00:29:38] but they'll forget why this project started in the first place it wasn't I mean the first

[00:29:44] people who got into Bitcoin maybe some of them saw dollar signs and thought okay I'm gonna get rich

[00:29:49] because there will only ever be 21 million of this and look at me I can get 50 just by mining with

[00:29:56] my laptop but most of them were more ideologically driven and they were trying to basically use a

[00:30:07] form of money that the government cannot control they were trying to get off the dollar they were

[00:30:11] trying to live off grid or do some sort of cypherponc or anarchistic experimentation and project

[00:30:22] their own ideology into the world and that was super cool while it lasted right now I think there

[00:30:29] are fewer of these people even though some of them might still have a lot of Bitcoin so they have

[00:30:34] more freedom today than they had back in the day when they were sending to each other thousands of

[00:30:41] Bitcoin without knowing if it's worth anything or if it will ever be worth anything but yes you can

[00:30:49] still enjoy freedom with your Bitcoin and it's beautiful I guess there are some elements in

[00:30:56] me that are cypherponc or anarchist you know you mentioned that having it's next month what do

[00:31:04] you see happening as a result of it what a miner is gonna have to do because it's gonna be

[00:31:08] capitulation right how are they gonna remain in business how are they how is Bitcoin gonna continue

[00:31:13] to be you know mind with this upcoming having I think it's pretty convenient that the price doubled

[00:31:22] so I'm not sure they will be affected as much as some people expect we shouldn't forget that

[00:31:30] back in October the price was in in the range of 30,000 and as we speak right now it's around 70,000

[00:31:41] so the price more than doubled I think it makes up for the mining revenue of course

[00:31:46] the amount of miners increased when the price increased and when the reward is gonna go down I think

[00:31:55] the least efficient miners are gonna drop so the ones that don't have access to a sustainable

[00:32:04] form of electricity are not gonna be around for long but I see a lot of initiatives and I know

[00:32:12] that you're from the US I know that there's this trend of mining centralization in United States

[00:32:19] and there's excessive regulations but what's happening right now in Asia and Africa and Latin America

[00:32:27] with mining companies and individual miners going there and choosing these villages where they build

[00:32:34] the infrastructure they pay locals to manage it to protect it and protect it not just physically

[00:32:44] but also politically with the local authorities and it's really beautiful because this is

[00:32:50] sort of the point a bit point and this is what we always said would happen and it's beautiful to see

[00:32:55] it happening for many years most of the mining happened in China and this was happening for multiple

[00:33:02] reasons because manufacturing of chips mostly happens in China and it was very easy for these devices

[00:33:09] to get shipped to nearby villages and it was also because you had the communist party building these

[00:33:16] power plants sometimes there were water wheels and these sustainable ways of getting electricity

[00:33:24] and they were planning ahead maybe for the next 50 years so a lot of energy was getting produced

[00:33:29] and wasted it was getting produced and there was no way to store it so they found that they could use

[00:33:36] these Bitcoin miners to use that electricity and also bring some money to the local community

[00:33:43] but after the Chinese kicked out most of the miners and there was a migration to the US I think

[00:33:51] it was a very important step towards decentralizing Bitcoin mining and proving that it's resilient

[00:33:58] and it plays this geopolitical game and now that is in the US every senator and their mom once a share

[00:34:06] wants to get a piece of the pie get into this business and regulate it over-regulated get as much

[00:34:13] money as they can from it while they can and I think at one point it's not going to be super profitable

[00:34:20] and the miners have some leverage I think because they are important for local communities

[00:34:29] in some situations they even use energy that is super wasteful like converting

[00:34:36] May 10, May 10 I'm not sure how you pronounce that but it's

[00:34:40] the emission from oil flares so where they have these oil digging operations there is a flare

[00:34:51] and that one is very polluting and you can actually turn that through a chemical process

[00:34:57] into hot air and that's super cool because you take that methane you turn it into electricity

[00:35:06] and then you power up Bitcoin mining that's super bullish it's the best of this fossil fuel

[00:35:13] economy and it's used in a creative way that actually helps the environment

[00:35:19] but this is in the US in the rest of the world I think it's going to get super competitive

[00:35:26] because prices for energy are lower the only challenge is dealing with the local politicians

[00:35:34] and in some situations I guess you have to bribe them especially if there is no framework

[00:35:40] for legislation or something regarding this and to them it seems like colonization or something

[00:35:47] like that just some foreigners who are rich coming into your community and trying to do stuff

[00:35:53] with your electricity infrastructure but it does provide jobs it does help

[00:36:00] bring some technological advancements into that community and it will keep on happening especially

[00:36:07] as these wealthy western countries decide that they don't want mining and they think it's wasteful

[00:36:17] here in Europe they're doing their best to discourage mining and say no it's bad for the

[00:36:22] environment we should not be doing this it's the same situation as with electric cars they say oh

[00:36:28] we should not have any more combustion engine cars and cities and then you ask them okay but what are

[00:36:37] we gonna do get electric cars how how is the grid going to support that how how well the resources

[00:36:44] for lithium and all of these rare metals going to sustain a situation where we only have that but

[00:36:52] they don't have answers for that they just have virtue signaling and I think at one point it's gonna

[00:36:59] strike them back but until that point it's useful to have alternatives and the third world is

[00:37:07] waiting for these opportunities to make money basically to become part of the global economy

[00:37:14] and the fact that Bitcoin provides them this opportunity and the mining industry is coming to

[00:37:20] their village or in their small city is really beautiful and I'm hopeful that this will lead

[00:37:28] to some sort of rapid accelerated development in a way that these communities are gonna get

[00:37:35] stronger wealthier and they're gonna be in a much better position to negotiate and to keep their

[00:37:43] position it's beautiful really it's capitalism accelerated all of the developments that we saw with

[00:37:51] the industrial revolution now they're happening at a much larger scale with information

[00:37:57] floating around the world instantly and everyone wanting to become part of this well except for

[00:38:03] some European countries and some US states but other in Canadian but otherwise it's really interesting

[00:38:11] I love it capitalism expedited you know immensely expedited around the world that's great you know

[00:38:22] there are some thoughts you know with us upcoming having that

[00:38:27] miners are gonna have to do additional stuff right one of them is to be able to really

[00:38:34] make Bitcoin you know DeFi make it decentralized finance or find ways to to invest so that

[00:38:42] it becomes more decentralized finance such as you know wrapping it you know in Ethereum

[00:38:49] or you know offering it on Ethereum L2 chains you know as DeFi products you know how do you see

[00:38:59] uh that happening and um what are your thoughts on perhaps a multi-chain world

[00:39:08] well the multi-chain world is a reality right now because Bitcoin does not scale in is not private enough

[00:39:17] so there's a lot of room for experimentation and there are lots of ideas out there which

[00:39:24] to to an extent is incredible it just proves that people are interested in solving very

[00:39:30] sophisticated and complex problems the problem with the multi-chain world is that

[00:39:37] if the project is useful then you basically have an inflation to the expected 21 million points

[00:39:45] you have for example projects like Bitcoin Cash which is a carbon copy of your original Bitcoin which

[00:39:52] even has the copied UTXO sets so owners of BTC before the date of the first of August of 2017

[00:40:01] can claim their bch and become part of that network and i think it exists for blackmailing purposes

[00:40:10] because it clearly did not get traction it's clearly not the real Bitcoin

[00:40:16] but it's there and it has lower fees and it has 21 million coins of its own

[00:40:24] and people can buy into that and then there's Litecoin which has been around for

[00:40:30] almost 13 years now and that one is a different beast in some ways because it has its own

[00:40:37] hashing algorithm it has its own monetary policy even if it's very similar with Bitcoins

[00:40:45] and that one is super useful it's being used by merchants in the US

[00:40:50] for its low fees and for the fact that it's pretty not stable in the sense of

[00:40:59] monetary stable but it's a network that has 100% uptime and people can use it anytime for

[00:41:07] sending money cheap around the world and for payments processing that's pretty useful

[00:41:13] so there are all of these use cases and there are all of these

[00:41:19] blockchains that are being used for them i don't see that going away maybe in the next decade but

[00:41:26] as Bitcoin Motors and the community figures out that they should be having more of these features

[00:41:34] it will also be i think we'll have a situation where it becomes more clear how you're going to

[00:41:41] add these features right now when you say let's add privacy to Bitcoin most of

[00:41:48] the proposals that exist out there have large transactions meaning that the cryptography behind

[00:41:56] privacy makes everything more cumbersome slower and more costly and it occupies more block space

[00:42:07] that's not the elegant design for which Bitcoin is looking but there are some

[00:42:12] current experiments for example in zcash they have these mixing pools where the average transaction

[00:42:21] they made it almost to the size of the average Bitcoin transaction and once it becomes much

[00:42:28] smaller i think that's going to be discussed within the Bitcoin community because Bitcoin and

[00:42:34] zcash are very similar in design and i think that was on purpose the people behind zcash were very early

[00:42:41] Bitcoin adopters and they wanted to see how they can use zero knowledge proofs for this purpose

[00:42:48] for scaling that's going to be more delicate because the community has this sort of PTSD from

[00:42:53] the scaling worse that took place in 2017 and they think that increasing the block size is a

[00:43:01] bad idea even if it's with unreasonable and well documented and researched limits

[00:43:09] because at one point when Bitcoin was more centralized there was Gavin and Risen he was the

[00:43:15] maintainer of the project and the chief scientist or whatever of the Bitcoin foundation

[00:43:22] and he was trying to push this idea that every few years the block size should double just like

[00:43:30] more law and it was excessive in a sense but at the same time you have to understand that storage

[00:43:39] becomes more cheap internet becomes faster and some of the excuses for running a node and stuff

[00:43:47] like that making it harder they don't hold water after a while if you tell people yeah one megabyte

[00:43:55] is reasonable because everyone even in the middle of the desert can synchronize a node in 10 minutes

[00:44:01] that's pretty reasonable but when you think about it 5g internet is getting more widespread

[00:44:09] and maybe that Bitcoin could use some sort of block size increase for the purpose of

[00:44:15] allowing more users to access it non custodially and basically have more transactions that pay fees

[00:44:23] I think that can be beneficial of course some people right now will say well if we have more space

[00:44:30] for transactions are gonna be used for storing JPEGs and your dental inscription people are

[00:44:36] gonna take advantage of the cheaper block space to use it for that purpose but I don't see any issue

[00:44:46] with more users you know if I think Bitcoin is competitive and Bitcoin is permissionless

[00:44:53] and anyone around the world regardless of reasons can use it that's beautiful

[00:44:59] I don't think we've ever had that and it's something aspirational it's something that the pirates

[00:45:07] of the 17th century and 18th century really wanted to have a form of money that the government

[00:45:15] cannot control and that they can use sometimes I think of Bitcoin as pirate money because it

[00:45:21] leads to these parallel economies and it builds stuff but unfortunately right now these

[00:45:29] altcoins are useful to scale and to make Bitcoin private and to experiment with features

[00:45:36] I don't see them staying around for too long even Ethereum as solid as it seems right now because

[00:45:44] I guess they did something smart with paying developers and investing in these development studios

[00:45:53] I think it's being challenged very profoundly right now by Solana and it's interesting because most

[00:46:01] of the concerns that they had about centralization are being proved somewhat wrong by Solana and

[00:46:09] Solana is like yeah we don't care that it's centralized we're trying to provide features and we want

[00:46:14] to make this cheap and we're gonna keep regulators at bay we're gonna prove that we're not as security

[00:46:21] and stuff like that with huge legal teams and whatever of course it's a security but the process

[00:46:28] of going through all the steps can take years and by that time it's likely that they can figure out

[00:46:36] something that can help them sustain the system and make it less centralized I don't know I'm

[00:46:42] speculating at this point but the only constant over the last 15 years has been Bitcoin

[00:46:50] I'm not sure about anything else but Bitcoin is getting increasingly better at incorporating

[00:46:56] features from other chains either on second layers or side chains or off chain solutions like

[00:47:04] there's bit VM which is a way to do computation off chain Ethereum right now does computation on chain

[00:47:11] and stores all of that computation forever in full nodes Bitcoin is trying to do that off chain

[00:47:20] and I think it's really beautiful because it opens up lots of use cases that previously we're not

[00:47:26] considered for Bitcoin and we're gonna have much better contracts we're gonna have maybe trust

[00:47:35] minimized side chains because so far side chains have been sort of like federations where you had to

[00:47:41] trust some companies that operate the nodes now it's gonna get much better and whether or not in

[00:47:50] the next 10 years we're gonna talk about a multi chain world that's debatable but there's always

[00:47:56] room for experimenting with new features and I guess for that purpose there will always be more

[00:48:02] blockchains until I guess we figure out a way to do censorship resistant internet money without

[00:48:10] blockchains but that's like a trillion dollar problem to solve maybe maybe multi trillion dollars on

[00:48:19] so wow thank you um yeah I understand that off get off code I used to I was in my corporate days

[00:48:27] and efficiency guy and technology where I would take stuff out of the code and put it in mapping

[00:48:33] tables you know so I completely get and understand what's going on with the you know off code

[00:48:40] it's important for efficiency so I want to I want to thank you very very much for coming on today

[00:48:50] I enjoyed speaking with you and I learned a lot and appreciated greatly um I have one last question

[00:48:56] as probably you know it's probably easy so um how can how can people find out more information

[00:49:03] about you how can they find out more information about the big coin takeover podcast how can they become

[00:49:08] listeners how can they do that and um and also you know you're coming to the like point uh

[00:49:14] summit in July how can they see you speak there yeah so first of all go to btctkvr.com that's an

[00:49:25] abbreviation for a bit coin takeover if you want to take the long route you can also type bit coin

[00:49:31] takeover podcast into your search engine you're going to find it I have more than 200 episodes which

[00:49:37] I published in the last five years all of them are interviews with very interesting people

[00:49:43] you're gonna find something you like I'm pretty sure you're gonna find some big names that you

[00:49:48] might have heard of you're gonna find small names that are worth discovering and it's a pretty cool

[00:49:56] project and it's not because of me I'm not I don't consider myself a cool person but I do have some

[00:50:04] of the best guests and I'm super humbled by their presence and by the fact that they shared their

[00:50:10] knowledge with me I think podcasting and you're going to agree with me on this one is a very selfish

[00:50:16] way of getting information from people who maybe spend tens hundreds thousands of hours researching

[00:50:24] something and then you get that in a one hour format you get some answers and you're gonna be a

[00:50:30] much smarter person afterwards you're gonna be able to navigate into the unknown with more

[00:50:39] certainties than before and that's really beautiful I also regard podcasting as being first and foremost

[00:50:47] for myself for my own learning for my own growing or my ability to understand what's going on

[00:50:54] and to keep myself updated with insights from people who are much smarter than I'll ever be

[00:51:01] and yeah that's what Bitcoin Takeover podcast is all about if you are into learning about Bitcoin

[00:51:07] and you have questions or concerns and you're afraid to get into it I created the Breaking Fud magazine

[00:51:15] on the Bitcoin Takeover website you have the magazine section I have three of them right now

[00:51:22] that I published each year since I started doing magazines and you can download them for free

[00:51:29] you can print them you can sell them I don't care I publish them under an open source license

[00:51:36] and the point of them is to spread knowledge and to find a way for this information to get across

[00:51:43] and the beauty of open source is that once you publish it it takes a life of its own

[00:51:50] it's gonna be available out there there's a Spanish translation of my work there's a french translation

[00:51:56] there's a german translation there's someone working on an italian translation

[00:52:01] and you never know what's gonna happen in the future and where this content is going to end up

[00:52:06] and I'm super happy that I'm able to help some communities I know that

[00:52:12] some of my magazines were distributed in El Salvador to locals

[00:52:16] and I guess they learned a little bit about Bitcoin from my work which was translated to Spanish by

[00:52:23] somebody that's very beautiful you can do that of course if you're listening to this your

[00:52:29] fluent in english so you can read the originals and once again they're on the bitcoin takeover website

[00:52:35] btctkvr.com as for the light coins summit I got invited to speak to that one

[00:52:41] I'm gonna speak specifically about Bitcoin Maximism and where it sits in this debate about

[00:52:48] altcoins and to which extent altcoins are still relevant I think light coin is very interesting

[00:52:56] for Bitcoin because it activated segwit in a time when Bitcoiners were saying that segwit is not safe

[00:53:04] they even went as far as putting one segwit adress out there with a bounty of 1 million dollars

[00:53:11] and if anyone could break and find some vulnerability in that they could take the money

[00:53:16] to this date nobody was able to do that which proves that segwit as an upgrade was a safe choice

[00:53:24] light coin also was the first network to do a main net lightning network transaction

[00:53:32] and it was considered to be a contender for a long time for the lightning network

[00:53:38] it's just that it didn't get too much traction on light coins specifically because the fees are so

[00:53:44] that it makes no economical sense to bother opening and closing channels and stuff like that

[00:53:50] but right now light coin is also doing some interesting experimentation with a mimble wimble extension

[00:53:56] block or what they call the mweb and that one adds both privacy and scalability to the protocol

[00:54:04] it's a proposal that was first introduced in 2016 for bitcoin and they were able to figure out

[00:54:10] how to put it into practice and to me it's interesting i want to learn more about that i'm

[00:54:17] invited to speak i'm super honored to be part of the natville scene i'm also going to the bitcoin

[00:54:24] conference that takes place in natville just after the light coin conference so for me it's the perfect

[00:54:33] storm i can attend both events and i need to get a visa to travel to the u.s so it's hard to even get

[00:54:43] there maybe i should go to the mexican border or something and just walk in that's much easier

[00:54:50] for some reason but yeah i hope i'll see you there if you're listening to this i hope you're

[00:54:57] coming to the light coin summit or to the bitcoin conference by bitcoin magazine and yeah that's

[00:55:04] how you can follow my work i'm always excited about bitcoin and everything that's new about it

[00:55:11] and you should be too awesome awesome awesome thank you very much for your time to learn