Is Everything Good For Bitcoin?

You know, Bitcoin adoption has never been about equity in terms of like how it happens in practice. It's been about equity in terms of the end result of getting onto a better system. So it's like we need to be accurate with this.

Hi, you're watching Stephan Livera podcast brought to you by swan dot com. Today we're talking about this idea of is everything good for Bitcoin? We're talking a little bit about ordinals, inscriptions, stamps, et cetera, and BRC twenty, and, are they good for Bitcoin? And what's, what's, you know, what is the way to think about this? What does it mean to be a monetary maximalist? Is it descriptive or is it prescriptive? We also get into some of CK Yeah, I think this is an interesting episode, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it onto the interview with Christian.

Christian, welcome back to the show.

Stephan, it's always a pleasure to

be here. Thanks so much for having me back on. Right, so we're gonna talk about a bunch of things. I think we can talk a little bit about, you know, monetary maximalism as contrasted with other ideas like platform maximalism or whatever, and, of course, we'll talk a little bit about, the spam because, that's, pretty hot topic these days. So, do you wanna just start with your, some of your thoughts on, I guess how would you define, you

Yeah, so I think, this conversation was inspired by a post that you put out. It was a survey on X, and you said, like, "What is your alignment? Monetary maximalism, use case maximalism, or on-chain maximalism?" and then I think like show results. and I thought that that was very interesting framing because pretty much leading up to this debate, my definition of monetary maximalism Was kind of different than the framing it was being used in the, the ordinal spam debate. you know, I, I have a history of debating altcoiners about Bitcoin, like that. I did a show about that, with David Hoffman, who is, now at Bankless for like two years, and Using monetary maximalism and like defining it and explaining it was a really big part of why I explained Bitcoin as like the only real use case for a blockchain, to people who had like a general blockchain Worldview, right? and when I explained monetary maximalism, a lot of it was inspired by like work that you had done and, and other like monetary thinkers. It was always described like, "This is a description of how economics and data works." Not a preference, right? So it's not like I prefer Bitcoin to be developed this way. It's if you are using a blockchain that has monetary tokens that take data to transact with, then by definition, over time as the blockchain gets adopted The monetary use cases are gonna price out the other use cases. Like, so I would talk to these like people who are sympathetic to ETH or Solana or whatever, and I'd be like, "Okay, let's just hypothetically talk about ETH becoming the thing." Okay, well, all this like general purpose stuff gets priced out anyways, because that is kind of how the world works. Like this observation, i-it's not like a preference. So then when I hear monetary maximalism as regards to like a preference for a attitude towards Bitcoin usage and, development, I'm like, like, this doesn't compute to me. It's not a preference, it's an observation of how the world works. So it's like, you can't- I don't prefer that Bitcoin is a monetary maximalist technology. Over time, the monetary use cases of Bitcoin will be more dense. It's like definitionally a fact So as part of the game theory of how Bitcoin is designed and how it's been, you know, developed moving forward, or so far. So I just don't see That changing, and I don't see that, again, being a preference. So I'm kind of curious, like, w-when did the pop- I thought the popular definition of monetary maximalism aligned with what I just described. So like, when did that change? Like, when did it become like a debate or a preference? because that, to me, that is, is kind of confusing and it, it feels like a double standard that's emerging, in order to like make a point on X.

That might be a fair point, you know, I think it's ha- it has been debated back and forth over the years whether this idea is it descriptive or is it prescriptive, and I think maybe that's where the some of the confusion is. So I think it is a descriptive statement That, you know, for, for most of us who are, you know, Bitcoiners, we believe Bitcoin is going to be the money of the world. But I think you're right that maybe the terminology is getting confused and, I should have maybe I should have worded that better. I should have said it more like, "What do you believe?" Bitcoin should be used for. Now, of course, there is kind of, it gets into some of the debates about, okay, information theory, you can't stop it, spam is generally a hard thing online and just in, in general. But I'd, I'd put it this way, I think it's like, do you, what do you believe the purpose of Bitcoin should be, right? If you believe the purpose of Bitcoin should be for money, then naturally you're going to be a bit, you're not gonna be supportive of, let's say, adding arbitrary data to the chain. And Maybe this kind of recent, let's say last few months, the debate has sort of come up a bit again. Now, I think in practice what might happen is that, you know, The, some of those uses, as you say, they actually will shift away or they will try to minimize their use of the chain. And as an example, now, I, I guess just for context, just for listeners, we're recording this on the twelfth of February, and as I, you know, as we speak, next block confirmation price is twelve sats per vbyte, or in fiat terms, it's about eighty-one cents. So that's down from the high, like at least, it seems to me the dynamic seems to be that, you know, normal monetary trans- Transactions are kind of going through all the time, and then when it's low, there's JPEGs, and then what really drives it high is when there's this BRC20 mint. That seems to be the dynamic is when there's a, a deploy, and all these people are minting, and that's what's driving that, but, I guess- Yeah. I mean, but here's the thing,

Stephan, everyone wants to print money So if there's a mechanism in which you can print money and theoretically, and I'm not a lawyer, it's not gonna be a security, there's a massive monetary Benefit to that, like economically speaking. So it's like while BRC20 is like a loophole that can be leveraged, like it monetary make, monetarily makes sense that, that, those would be transactions that demand a premium. Like, again, like, I, I don't give a shit about feelings. Like, I don't give a shit about how you want Bitcoin to work, and neither does Bitcoin. Like, that's why we're here. So it's like, let's use economics, let's use rationale to try to understand what's happening. So like, this is my frustration with the entire conversation. It's like, the whole conversation has just devolved into like, "What do you want Bitcoin to be?" It's like, sorry, like, that's not what I got into this thing for, is what You want. I got into this thing because this is a permissionless emergent technology that is economically sound, I believe to be economically sound, and I believe it's Economics makes sense into the future, like you can count Bitcoin. Like our current system is clown world. You can't count it, you can't understand it. Like Bitcoin's an economic system you can actually observe. Like it's frustrating to me when Bitcoiners don't do that. When Bitcoiners like go on, on the internet and like spew BS and, and because that makes us look bad, it makes our, our, our economic theories look stupid, it makes our businesses look irrelevant, like To me, it's about being right and it's about being accurate, and I just, like, Bitcoiners were right three or four years ago, and I'm just, I just think that we should be consistent. Like, I think that some of us have- Have, have become a little bit off base because of the unexpected nature of, you know, kind of what's happened over twenty twenty-three. Twenty twenty-three is a hell of a year, man. Like, I'd love to go play-by-play, you know, and I, I don't necessarily know, like You know, if people have really taken time to reflect, but it was a hell of a year for Bitcoin, a lot of stuff happened.

Yeah. So we'll do that. Let me, one point I wanna make, which is that, I think at the end of the day, it came down to whether you believe filtering would work, and my view is still that filtering is probably not going to work. And so in the end, our actual positions are probably not that far apart. It's more just that I would say the dif- the distinction or the line that I would draw is more like, I wouldn't, you know, be out there investing in, quote unquote, ordinals or actually all the other BLC20 or whatever, all this other stuff. I wouldn't be promoting it. I think that's probably the big difference Is where some of my opposition, I know you're not, I know you're at HRF now, but you know, that's where maybe some of my opposition with, you know, as you've seen, I've sort of gone back and forth with other people like Pete Rizzo or others online. Or even in recent episodes, where I just see it as like, it's not something to be supported. It's like something be-- to be treated more like email spam, right? It's like, I'm not-- and I don't believe that Bitcoin is gonna, it's like an existential threat to Bitcoin. I just see it more like, it's more like a nuisance level issue, but the pro filter people would see it like, no, this could become an issue if you just let it fester. That's probably what they would say. But what do you,

what do I think everything is good for Bitcoin, you know, I've been reflecting on this. At, at first, I was vehemently anti-filter because for me, my heuristic around Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is permissionless, that fees are the spam prevention mechanism, and I would say like over the last year, like today, Monday, fees are relatively low, and they, you know, for the most part, they've worked against like JPEGs, right? They have not worked against people minting money, literally minting- Money and potentially getting around regulatory barriers to do so. so like that, that makes economic sense to me. so like for me, Bitcoin's permissionless nature is part of why it's genius and part of why it will win, because, you can't have a bunch of armchair idiots saying, "No, this isn't a good idea, don't do it." Like the, the good ideas will naturally emerge because it is emergent technology. So I was very anti- The filter. But then I started seeing like, "Wow, there's a lot of misunderstanding that is very prevalent amongst Bitcoin enthusiasts, Bitcoin best practices, the Bitcoin self-help group that is, speaking English on the internet and meeting up at events. There's a lot of misunderstandings here. So actually, this whole thing is good. Like, I ultimately think that like Bitcoin is anti-fragile technology that we are just- Just learning to understand it over time, and we are all engaging with it. So, as part of that, like, we need these processes to learn, right? Like Satoshi learned all the way to the last day of him contributing to the project, and I think that like the history of Bitcoin is Bitcoin enthusiasts like building up false narratives. Having reality crush those down, and then the process in which we grapple with that, and I think that that's just never ending, and, and that's the process. So I've actually become pro-filter, I'm pro, not filter, I'm pro having a conversation, and I think ultimately, like, let's get back to like the theories that we were talking about two or three years ago that I think hold true today. You know, like it was really funny, I was listening to your last podcast where you talked to Giacomo, and he said, like, " And any like innovation is just bringing in gamblers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, trope, huge tropes. And then later in the interview, when he said that like nothing good can come of the shitcoiners, he talked about how, oh, he likes zero knowledge proofs and zero sync, and like those were ETH heads, like those were literally ETH heads. So he like contradicted himself in the fifteen minutes he was with you. Like, look, Bitcoin's either anti-fragile or it's not. It's either emergent or it's not. It's either all the

Or they won't. Like, it's like, no, the good things do come out of it, it's just point zero zero one percent of the things. So like, I think Bitcoin is working, that's my argument, and I would tell Bitcoiners, like, stop the rhetoric on the internet, you're only making yourself look like fools. And ultimately, Bitcoin's working, it's still working, and like, the, the, the filter talk, like, I think the best thing it has done is created a conversation in which we can start making these distinctions again.

Right. And so I There's some things like, there's some things where, okay, there's like this meme of, "Oh, everything is good for Bitcoin, right?" I don't really think that's serious analysis, right? Like it's, it's like, it would be like if I said, "Oh, if my-- if you cut off my left arm, my right arm would get stronger because of the natural-- I'm using it more, yeah, but you're not big, but I'm not stronger at all."

You're not a decentralized network, so that's, that's not-- I think it is serious. I think it is serious. Someone said bombing a city is, is not good for the city. Okay, but the city is centralized. Bitcoin is a decentralized system. So I, I really do think like- It's either you think that the decentralization and the permissionlessness makes Bitcoin anti-fragile, which means that it actually benefits from volatility and from stressors. So there's fragile, which means volatility and stressors break it. There's robust, that means it is resistant to volatility and stressors, and there's anti-fragile, which means that Volatilities and stretches actually make the system better. So let me give you an example of this. China banned spot exchanges and bans fiat on-ramps to Bitcoin. Okay, well now the market goes 100% P2P and becomes exponentially less regulatable, right? Like that is a demonstration of Bitcoin's anti-fragile characteristics and nature. So it's either Bitcoin is that or it isn't. Like you can't, I, I don't-- these, these are, again, I think these are observations. So when you say "everything is good for Bitcoin," that is just a trope that you can say easily on the internet that aligns with this idea that Bitcoin is in fact an anti-fragile system.

So let me put it this way, I think it's true to say Bitcoin is antifragile, but it's also true to point out that there are things that are, you know, all other things equal, not good for Bitcoin. Or, or, or, and here's the other point, which is that Bitcoin doesn't just magically become antifragile, it's because there are developers, it's because there's a network, it's because there are people plugging in, you know, mining hash rate, and because there are people running their Bitcoin node, and all of those things,

Having the conversation now, or it's a good thing, it's a good thing for people to talk about it and actually try to understand, okay, what is this and figure out how to make it useful for, you know, for Bitcoin users.

Look, I, I 100% agree. Bitcoin's anti-fragile because of the distributed network of, of, of compute. There is a physical distributed network of compute, and then every action that you describe that people interact is how they interact with that network of compute, run a node Write and develop code that you can deploy, within the consensus rules, mine Bitcoin wherever, wherever you're located, and the end result is an anti-fragile distributed network of compute, and it has very specific parameters for what is and isn't a valid transaction, and that is governed ultimately by the code and the fees And that's it, really. So, like, I, I, I think that like the network itself works, and I think that the network itself it actually shows us what we couldn't understand without the network because it's objective truth. So it's like, look, I could say that I don't like these transactions and that I don't think that anything good happens because shitcoining activity But ultimately, the network is showing us that, like, okay, I will absorb good things that happen from shitcoining activity. And guess what? This activity is actually coming on chain, and there's economics associated with it, and I can understand those economics rather than putting my head in the sand and going, "La la la la la," like, "I don't like this," you know? And again, I think that the filter people, like, the reason I actually like the conversation that they've stimulated, and I, I, I actually engage with, With Giacomo's ideas, like, the thing, he-- his argument is like, "Don't tell me that I can't, you know, fight this, right? Don't can-- tell me that it's fruitless." And, like, I like that, you know? Like- They built a, a mining pool. There is a market for that mining pool. There is now more choices in the ecosystem for mining pools and ways that I want to express, my economic preferences on the Bitcoin blockchain. I think like that is good for Bitcoin. at the same time, like I, I think that, okay, let's say, you know, some of the pro filters people, like their ultimate goal is, they want the filters in Core. That's the, that is kind of like their ultimate goal, like that's how they think that they can ultimately maximally distribute, right? And there's been a long standing economic argument about like Core's dominance, as well as like, can there be another implementation, to compete with, Core, and how would that happen? Like, I can't think of something that would potentially- Stimulate a new implementation faster than trying to cut out a large economic interest from the network. Like, let, like, let's play this out. Okay, Core puts the, the filters, cuts out all these people. One, people don't have to upgrade. So now there's gonna be like a pretty, like, interesting partition of like what is viable in the different versions of Bitcoin. And then two, it's literally trivial to just fork the previous version. Maybe there's enough developer bandwidth to start Building future iterations off that fork. And like, maybe now there's exchanges and there's, there's miners that want to run that. Like, again, is that good for Bitcoin? Maybe. Again, that's an idea that's been debated for a long time. Like, maybe it would take core doing something as drastic as cutting out all these people in order to actually economically incentivize people to, like, "Oh, shit, I should actually run a different version, and I should fork this and do that." Again, I don't know. I, I'm very interested to see how it plays out economically, but again, as a Bitcoiner, I feel pretty sound in the fact that I have a distributed permissionless network that is going to really let the best ideas emerge. And again, like, I'm trying to understand it. I'm o-obviously expressing my opinion to the public, but I'm also open to like learning. And, I think a lot of that is because I have the network. Like, the network is a tool to help me feel secure and feel confident and learn, right? Again, I, I, a lot of this is like, I wanna talk to Bitcoiners because I think like we are the people who are running around talking about this system all the time. Like, I want us to have a good composure, I want us to be confident in the network. And like, I, I personally think I, I've been seeing a lot of people who have had chronic bearish behavior, and they have, you know, they, they ex- they express a opinion that aligns with like this idea, like, Bitcoin's broken and we need to fix

And, and disintegrate, right? And like, I just, I can't-- I don't think that's accurate, I just really don't. And then again, I, I think a lot of the re- rhetoric around that is, is getting pretty negative.

Yeah. So I, yeah, I think I, I probably mostly agree there with you. I think it's that, it's not an existential threat, it's not some big systemic issue, it's more like mild nuisance, and maybe we'll get something out of it, but I think the point where I was maybe disagreeing More is this kind of, oh, all the bu- any building is good sort of thing, and maybe that's not exactly the argument. It's sort of just like, there seems to just be a bit of a, a softening of what counts as a layer two and what counts as building, and that, oh, all these people are just kind of, you know, and I think that's where Giacomo was sort of getting at this idea that there's this kind of new narrative of like shitcoins on Bitcoin, of like this kind of, oh, we're, we're,

we're Community scam, and that's sort of maybe that's really what people are kind of concerned about.

Yeah, I mean, look, I post this all the time. Like, Bitcoiners are obsessed with giving investment advice, but like, let's call it what it is. Like, don't buy illegal securities, like those are scams. Like, there's no equity raised there, there's, there is no value there. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, this layer two is just an excuse to print. Like, that is all investment advice. So it's like, hey, This is how I got into Bitcoin in the first place, right? I, I would actually make the ob-observation that most Bitcoiners have really bad personal finance, like e-c-etiquette, and that they could probably have a much more stress-free life if they, they thought a little bit more about personal finance. But despite that, most Bitcoiners still are obsessed with giving investment advice. And look, let's go into that. I'm curious. Let's hear, let's hear a bit more on that topic. Yeah. But like, look, what are most

Bitcoiners getting wrong on personal finance?

Okay, well, in my opinion, when you think about Bitcoin as a investment that has asymmetric risk reward You eliminate so asymmetric risk reward means that you can invest a little bit and you can have outsized gains, right? So it's a very, very small risk gives you massive gains. I think that's like one of Bitcoin's best features as an investment in this early stage. So with that observation, if you go all in or you go mostly in Bitcoin, you actually eliminate that, that asymmetry. Now you're all in, so it's like if Bitcoin succeeds, obviously you have massive gains, but Bitcoin fails, you lose everything, right? You actually eliminate one of Bitcoin's best investment properties. So I'd say like from that first principle, like you can look at most Bitcoiners and be like, "Wow, like your investment strategy isn't one that is going to..." Elongate your life, increase your happiness, and improve your lifestyle. actually your, your investment strategy puts you at risk. but with that being said, like, I think Bitcoin is going to win. I think that there's three logical scenarios for Bitcoin. but this idea of like being all in while we're in this stage, to me, it doesn't necessarily make sense. For a lot of people, they can afford it. Like, I think Bitcoin puts you on zero by itself. You don't actually have to do anything. Right? It's like over time as you're accumulating Bitcoin, it becomes a larger percentage of your total value. Like it does that by itself. If you buy it in twenty seventeen, like it has enlarged in terms of your, your total amount of your value without you doing anything. If you buy in two thousand and eleven, it's, it's even greater. Like you don't have to do anything for Bitcoin to put you on zero. You don't have to change your lifestyle at all, just accept. So again, like I, I would say, like the investment advice around Bitcoin Bitcoin is like stacks that withdraw to your cust-- to your self custody wallet. Not all, and a lot of times it's like get it off exchange as fast as you absolutely can. Like, there's not a lot of like nuance around like, oh, maybe you should worry about how big your UTXO sizes are. Like, maybe you should worry about these different elements that are also important. So it's like, I, I think that a lot of times Bitcoiners, they over-index on like buying Bitcoin and they under-index on all the other elements around like the personal finance of Bitcoin. And I think like they under-index on all the other mount-elements of the personal finance of living in the world today. So like they just give unrealistic advice, and then like most people that aren't like fully bought in, they aren't fully orange-pilled, which is like ninety-nine percent of the world, like they don't take you seriously. or they're like, "Oh, I have to take only partially of what they're saying, like the Bitcoiners can't give me a complete answer." And again, like, I'm being overly critical of Bitcoiners. Like, I think b- I largely think Bitcoiners are way more right than most people. Like, but we're engaging with clown world, and ninety-nine percent of people are still living in clown world, and we actually all live in clown world too. so I know that I've kind of gone on a big tangent here, but from the personal advice perspective, asymmetric

and then in terms of taking out uncertainty, just understanding how early we are in Bitcoin, you don't have to go all in. It actually makes no-- very little economic sense when you are optimizing for your life to go all in. Yeah, I mean, like that's-- that, that's kind of how I, I view, at least Bitcoin investment advice and, where I think a little bit, like there's bad investment advice being, being given, okay, amongst, amongst the hardcore people.

Gotcha. Yeah. So, definitely some arguments Get on zero people. I know I've had my debates with them also, but, nevertheless, let's, let's bring it back to, as you said, let's talk a little bit about what happened in twenty twenty-three. I guess, do you wanna just walk through a little bit from your perspective?

The reason why against zero, it just doesn't make sense, is because it, it removes the asymmetric risk reward feature. Because, yeah.

But I guess, let me, let me steal that for a second though. They would say, we're that con- we're that confident, and Bitcoin is gonna go up that much, that, you, you know, you just naturally, you know, you wanna promote that system, and you want to, I guess the get on zero argument would be, I'm not making this, they would say, well, you wanna minimize the amount of fiat you're holding

Plebs are holding isn't really that material. Really, it's more like all these high net worth people and big pension funds and all these big funds who are holding T-bills, right? Like that's really what's kind of propping up the fiat system per se. But, you know, I guess a get on zero person could argue to you that, hey, every little bit counts, every little bit helps.

Totally. I mean, look, as religions spread, there was a lot of martyrs early in the day. So that get on zero people is good for Bitcoin, it's just not good investment advice. It's maybe it's like really good, like philosophical advice. Maybe like you wanna harden yourself to be a martyr, but like call-- again, call it what it is. Like, we can separate these ideas out. And I think from an investment advice perspective, most people want to live a happy life, like the assumptions I'm making when I'm looking-- thinking about the investment advice People want to live a happy life. People want to have security. People don't want to think about constantly selling assets. people want an easy way to preserve and accumulate wealth. So like when I think of like what do most people want? You know, stacking sets is great advice. I think like staying humble, stacking sets is great advice, and I think that one of the reasons it's such great advice is because it doesn't assume that you are going to take too much risk in terms of your, your cash flow, in terms of your asset, diversification, in terms of anything. It just assumes that you are going to accumulate Bitcoin over time, and I think that that's the right way to do it, and Bitcoin's gonna put you on zero by itself. Like, again, I think most Bitcoiners- Really like they underestimate how early we are. But like if you, if you divide Bitcoin by any number of measures, like we're not even at one percent So that means we're at the early innovator stage of the adoption, curve. So, you know, people have said we're, we're crossing the chasm. Like, that's a joke. Like, there's no math that supports that we're crossing the chasm. And that's a good thing. Like, like, it's gonna take time. It's gonna take time, and that's a good thing because peo- we live in clown world. Like, people are literally, like, they're operating every action based on the economics of clown world. So, like, it's gonna take time to convert them, and we have to convert every person at a time. And ultimately, utility is the ultimate conversion mechanism. But, like, that's gonna take time. So if you wanna be a martyr, that's cool, but that's not good investment advice. Alright, let's get back into the, the ordinals. So

let's go now back to the, ordinals inscriptions, BRC20 stamps conversation. So, do you want to just walk through from your perspective, how, you know, this conversation and, you know, this kind of played out in twenty twenty-three for you?

Yeah, I mean, I have to admit, you know, I have biases. I would consider myself a friend of Casey Rodemore before Ordinals came out, like I was the third guest on his podcast, Hell Money podcast. So I, I heard of Ordinals like as he was like talking about it, hasn't even shipped it, and he didn't really talk about the inscriptions part that much. He mostly talked about The meta protocol, which is effectively the Dewey Decimal System for Bitcoin, you know, what mo-- the one of the biggest frustrations is like amongst the Bitcoiners I respect, there's a lot of like conflating. They call everything ordinals, even though there's like seven or eight different things here. So ordinals is specifically the Dewey Decimal System. again, you don't have to opt into it, you don't have to think it's smart. The reality is, is that, like, like let's just assume it's very stupid and it's a hallucination. Okay, so It's a very stupid hallucination. Effectively, is there's a bunch of people who are under a stupid hallucination and it's causing them to, to, to do Bitcoin transactions Like that, that is, that is ultimately like what is happening. So it's like, what can you do to Bitcoin to stop people from having the hallucination over there, right? That's causing them to do Bitcoin transactions. Like, I don't know, but I've been, I've been privy to the idea longer. I'm friends with the guy who made it, so these are my biases, going into it when it actually got launched. It was at the same time that Noster really started getting A lot of like attention and, and traction. And I remember, like, this is January twenty twenty-three, I posted, "Like, this has already been one of the greatest months ever for Bitcoin. Like, you know, when I think of Bitcoin, I think of like, Bitcoin's this permissionless emergent technology, and it's viral. And like, now we attach Noster, and now we're bringing back the degenerates. Like, what is more viral for Bitcoin than those two things just being added on top of the stack? So like I, I had a positive view of it from the beginning. Again, I think from a Bitcoin maximalist, monetary maximalist perspective, I just think that like Bitcoin Adoption happens from utility and virality and not from education or best practices or things that, that, you know, hardcore Bitcoiners, you know, focus most of their time on.

Yeah. Okay, so let me, so this is

January 2023. That, that's where I'm at.

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Yeah, I would say I'm, I'm not a big fan of the umbrella term, just like I think like inflation is an umbrella term, and I'm not a big fan of it because They, those terms actually skew accurate and thoughtful conversation, and they pretty much create inaccurate, inaccurate talking past each other. Yeah. So like, I just don't like them. I think people should just be clear about what they're speaking of, you know? Yeah. In the same way that, when

you say inflation, do you mean monetary supply expansion or debasement, or do you mean CPI inflation, like consumer price inflation? Yeah, price is going up,

right? Which, I mean, prices going up can be caused by a lot of things. Including war supply chains. Yeah. and so in this case, it would be like, do you mean

Ordinals the protocol or do you mean Ordinals and the associate? And here's the other thing, some of those protocols do leverage the Ordinals lens, right? I believe BRC twenty does leverage a little bit of the Ordinals lens, Inscriptions does leverage the Ordinals kind of lens. So there is a relation there, right? It's just that you have-- we have to be clear what we're talking about, right? You mean Ordinals protocol or Ordinals umbrella term,

right

To mount a defense against what we perceive to be spam, I would say it's really important that you understand what is it that you are mounting a defense against, right? So, yeah, I, I just think that the umbrella term, it just doesn't help, especially if you're like trying to create like real world strategy, because like the real world strategy needs to be accurate, ultimately to actually work. Yeah. So for, for what it's worth, yeah, again, you can't stop people from having a hallucination that is causing them to- To do Bitcoin transactions. If you wanna tease out like which Bitcoin transactions are negative, then I'd, like, I'm happy to have that conversation.

Right. And that's where for me, and I've tried to be clear about this, I see BLC20 and stamps as really the more thing-- issue. Like, that's really more of an issue to me because that's bloating the UTXO set. It's sort of, you know, and you could argue that it's kind of prematurely pricing out people from self-custody, right? Because if you sort of are I believe, and I guess in this case, in this sense, I'm talking in the prescriptive sense, not the descriptive sense we were saying earlier, right? If you're prescriptively a maximalist, monetary maximalist, you want more people to be able to self-custody, and if a lot of people because of artificially high fees, let's say, or quote-unquote, you know, prematurely high fees, less people self-custody and more people just go to like custodians like Coinbase and whatever, does that make it the, you know, easier to be captured, you Kind of the, that's the argument, right? How would you, what do you think about that?

Totally. Look, I mean, one, I, I think that the, the prescriptive monetary maximalism isn't super helpful in actually prescribing what you should do, because ultimately what you just described, like, that's only gonna marginally change the, like the self-custody environment. It's only marginally changing it, right? And we need to change the self-custody environment exponentially. So like it's a waste of our time, it's a waste of our energy. Ultimately, the monetary denseness of moni-- or the denseness of monetary transactions is what drives monetary maximalism in regards to Bitcoin, in regards to a distributed compute network for money. So I, I just, I don't waste my time on the odd. I, I, I, I, I spend my time focusing on what is and understanding what is going to happen so I can have good predictions.

Yeah. So I guess one other point. So again, I, I, as I said, I'm not, I'm not necessarily the pro filter camp, but the pro filter people would say Look, the node runners are the network. So if the, if enough node runners do run some kind of spam filtering and enough-- and I think crucially it's important to point out, there's two to Tango here, right? Like the spam is on the spam, but the miners wanna take that money. And so they would, they would sort of argue there's three to

Tango. And there's the developers who are doing what they wanna do, right? And taking part of their process. And then you, you can see some of the pro filters people starting to have an animosity towards developers for their Or what they're perceived to be the goal. And that's where I think things can get a little toxic, and I, I think like, you know, we've seen people want to fire the core devs and create their own repo before, and like have their own version of Bitcoin that aligns with what they want, and that turned into some-- that was the toxic thing. Ultimately, it was good for Bitcoin, like we needed to shake that out, we needed to reset the narratives, we needed to do all those things. But like businesses were lost, reputations were burned.

Yeah. Well, there are, and here's the other thing, I could see that happening again. It might well be good for Bitcoin, but not good for existing Bitcoiners. And there, you know, 2017 was quite a, there was a lot of fallout in future years, right? Like we, some well-known Bitcoin contributors You know, maybe they would still be here contributing, and, you know, maybe some of them, they, they, you know, they, they'd been going for like ten years or whatever, and it was time to kind of give it a rest anyway. But, you know, there were prices to be paid for that, and even if you look at all the Craig Wright, you know, stuff, his, you know, his vexatious sort of lawsuits that have arguably had some chilling effect on Bitcoin developers, right? We can't really say that's good for Bitcoin, right? Like that, You know, well-known, experienced developers. And, and yes, you could say, yeah, it cre- creates new developers. Maybe some of them will be pseudonymous, but the reality is it takes time to sort of ramp up and be a really skilled contributor, and it's difficult to actually be a true pseudonymous contributor because oftentimes you need a certain level of resources and buy-in, and you-- it's hard to get that if you're pseudonymous. Sometimes you have to meet up, like they-- sometimes they have in-person meetups, or they might need to go to conferences to

That's what HRF

is doing in Bitcoin right now. Yeah, that's great. And that's a great thing that you guys are doing that. So it's important. Yeah.

Yeah. but yeah, so that's why for me, I don't quite agree with this kind of everything good for Bitcoin narrative. I think there are some things that are good for Bitcoin and things that aren't so good. So, so anyway, let's bring it back to kind of advance, let's advance from January twenty twenty-three. How are you seeing the rest of that year play out from the, let

Yeah, I mean, again, I think it's really interesting to like think through what emerged, right? So ultimately, there's a meta protocol, and like you said There's other pro- there's other like better protocols and for- transaction styles that like leveraged the ordinal's lens, right? So BRC20, if you were to like think of BRC20 like as it pertains to on-chain, like it's literally a transaction that has it, it's like a yapstone that represents X amount of tokens. And then the, the way that you can like move or, or like categorize the yapstone is based on ORD, because like the- That's how you can own like that Yapstone. And then you actually need cent-- you need another layer on top of Ord, which is like a centralized layer which is called an indexer, which actually allows you to like move a single token. So it's like it requires lots of centralization to do this, and it's like layered on top I would say like, yes, there's a lot of bad things that are happening as associated to that, but it's also really interesting to see like the emergent nature of this stuff. And like, yes, there's a, a lot of stupidity, but there's also like a lot of like ingenuity that is kind of like now kind of unleashed to Potentially do things, right? And again, I'm not trying to like make the Pete Rizzo argument that like, that actually this ord ecosystem is good and good stuff will happen directly out of the like, the development of this stuff. But I do think that like, it's an interesting lesson on like how Bitcoin works, because like ultimately, Bitcoin allows these transactions, and it's going to allow the market to figure it out. and again, like, kind of like going back, zooming out into like more of a philosophical Lens, you know, antifragility doesn't mean like, repellent to, to volatility and, and, negative, you know, kind of, corrosive behavior. It just means that the system actually improves over time being exposed to it. And if that system is amongst fragile systems or even robust systems, that because that system is antifragile, it actually gets better while those things get worn down. Broken down. So when I see like, you know, a, a lot of these things happening on Bitcoin, like, yes, like Bitcoin is taking punches, right? But if Bitcoin's an anti-fragile system, over time, like, it's going to kind of like grow around like that attack vector and get hardened and get better. So like you brought up the example of like the developers being attacked by Craig Wright. Well, now there's things like COPA that are like discrediting him, like Officially in, in Clown World law, and there are, there's other kind of like funding resources that are now being used to harden that attack vector. So it's like, yes, the network and the apparatus can be attacked, but like, the, like we're getting stronger by now addressing that attack. So again, that's why I, again, like I used to be very anti-spam filter or the anti-fix the filter, now I think they're good. Like now I, I'm glad that it's happening. At least, like, I, I'm not upset that, like, these people are going down this thought track. but I would say, like, yes, now, like, first there's Ordinals, quickly after, there's BRC twenty, or, I guess, first there's Inscriptions, that's what makes it all go viral. BRC twenty comes quickly after, BitVM comes quickly after, OP_CAT comes quickly after, like, these are actually really interesting conversations that are, like, emerging over the course of twenty twenty-three and at the same time, I would say like maybe like the dissenters, the, the disrespecters, they're also like building and they're also like pushing things forward, right? So they're building wallets that can now operate better in a high fee environment like Aqua Wallet, right? things like, like Liquid are actually getting like a fourth of the fifth-- Look, you know, it feels like Liquid is going to absolutely need to a extremely high fee environment for anyone to, to even consider leveraging it, but people are starting to- Trying to take a look at it, and Ocean comes out, and I think Ocean is very interesting because like they weren't very forthright with their filtering intentions. It was something that kind of like got discovered. So I can't decide if that was like really bad business or if that was actually super genius because now, Ocean protocol and, sorry, Ocean mining, is something that's on ev- the tip of everyone's tongue and like, that could have been like a genius marketing play. So like, I can't even really understand like if it was good or bad. I don't think they were hiding,

I don't think they were hiding the filtering aspect though, but I, I don't know, yeah.

Hey, they had this big release that, that talked about decentralizing, the, the choice of your block filter over time in Stratum v2, but they didn't really talk about like, hey, this is also gonna be a way to express a dis-respector perspective, and that had to be discovered via like the people observing like their, their actions and the, the blocks that they mined. And I think like, again The samurai thing went down, was, was, I don't know, like I can't make up my mind if, if that was good or bad ultimately for, for Ocean as a business. But again, like as a, as an observer of, is like the development of all this good for Bitcoin? I, I would say yes, even though I have been relatively frustrated with like Bitcoiners' rhetoric.

Okay. So when we're talking about the- You know, good or bad. Like for me, it's more like, I'm seeing it more like, there are certain things that are just more like low level issues, not really a big deal. Bitcoin is, is kind of strong enough anyway. And, you know, I think it, it, to me, the thing that kind of, I got a little more annoyed about was more this kind of narrative of, "Oh, see, the builders are coming back to Bitcoin now because of the spam," right? Like that to me felt very disingenuous, right? Because it was sort of disrespect You know, think about how much work Bitcoin protocol developers were putting into save every little byte, right, for transactions, and then boom, these BRC twenty and all this other stuff just comes in and just completely like blows so much of that away, and you could say that it makes it harder to run a Bitcoin node or to sync, to download and sync, to do that initial block download, but at the same time, you could also make the argument that, look, really More people being interested in running a Bitcoin node is gonna massively outplay that anyway, so, so in the end, maybe it's not a huge, huge deal either way, because there'll be all these new people who wanna use it for other things anyway, or just more people coming into the ecosystem, such that even if it's like a little bit relatively harder to run a node, there's just so many more people who want to do it.

Yeah, I mean, again, like, I think what you're talking around from a philosophical, and kind of like observational perspective perspective when I think through like, what are your considerations and how does that apply to like a worldview of Bitcoin? It's like grappling with Is Bitcoin anti-fragile or is Bitcoin robust? And then like how much of Bitcoin's success is centered around the rightness of the prevailing narrative right now versus the economics of the underlying network? So, like, I wish I could have the answer. I'm relatively confident that Bitcoin is anti-fragile and the economics of the underlying network is what is ultimately gonna, govern these outcomes. But It's a learning experience. I could be completely wrong. We could be, you know, my perceptions of, of what happened in twenty seventeen and the lessons that, you know, emerged from there could be off base, and we might not even know for another five years. Like that's the tough part. But like me as a, as like a, an observer, as a bitcoiner that's like experiencing this in real time I have really two ways to like grapple with, with the fact that like my understanding of the system right now is r- is right and or wrong, of based on, you know, in, in certain directions. And, you know, I can either get upset when the network and the reality like disproves that, or, or I can, or I can accept it and update my, my narrative. so I think I'm go-- again, I'm going on a tangent, but, yeah. Yeah. But let's, let's bring it back to the Like, to bring it back, like, to your considerations, like, I, I am not necessarily worried because my mental model on Bitcoin is that, like, it's the underlying economics that govern this, and that, like, these narratives that we're spinning are, are-- they can't actually align with the network a hundred percent, and so therefore they're gonna be proven wrong. So when you're upset about, like, these narratives, the shitcoin on Bitcoin narrative, the whatever, like, the only thing that matters is are people using the network? Is Is the network actually peripheralizing? Are there more nodes being synced, and then by how much? And like, the, the, there are objective ways to measure this stuff, i- and like, your opinions on the narratives that are being spun. Like, yes, I think it's good to be expressing that in the battlefield of ideas, but ultimately, like, there's a way to measure this. And like, I'm not gonna get upset because the, the VCs are coming back and they want a shitcoin. Like, I'll, I'll tell people like, that's There's probably legal implications to that, I'm not a lawyer, whatever. Like, I could tell people like, it's a hallucin- it's a hallucination, like the Bitcoin protocol doesn't actually support your ownership of any of this arbitrary information. It, like, the Bitcoin protocol does support, that information becoming extremely, extremely difficult to remove from the world. so that's a, a feature that the Bitcoin protocol supports. Like, I'm happy to have, make all of these distinctions in an intelligent conversation with people. People. But like, when it comes to like, hey, we need to like get core to put these filters in because of all this stuff I'm upset about, like, that's when I'm like, hey, let's slow down. Like, now you're talking about making, making updates to Bitcoin.

Yeah. And I agree with you on that particular point, right? Like I said, I'm, I'm a, I, I like what the Ocean guys are doing in general, right? Having Stratum v2 and so on, I just don't believe the filtering approach will work

You, you've had a,

you've had a mental battle with, with like coming to that decision that you don't think filtering will work. I would love to hear your perspective of like kind of like going through that process of, okay, yeah, gotcha. So let me, let me talk to you a little bit, like, I guess my history

with it. I guess for me, it was like in early twenty twenty-three when people were sort of, "Oh, what's this Ordinals thing?" I think I wrote, I might have even written an article for Bitcoin Magazine, I think I

I was basically pointing out to people that there's probably not a good way to stop this thing. That was kind of mainly what I was saying, and I was trying to explain a bit about what it was. Then later in the year I was sort of thinking, well, maybe we should at least call a spade a spade, right? Like, I think it is spam, but we just can't stop it, because realistically, even if Bitcoin Core did filters Realistically, spammers can find a way to route around it, right? There have been-- and here's the thing, like if we look back in Bitcoin history, there have, there has been this kind of thing before. Satoshi Dice, there was Counterparty back in the day, there was Veryblock, all kinds of other things where people were putting their stuff on the chain, and so even though in practice they, they went away, I, I'm not sure, I'm not convinced that filtering, you know, I basically, I sort of, I was on-- at one Maybe there should be something done about it, and then I sort of come back to saying, "Uh, look, it's probably not gonna work, it's likely to be a stalemate. We're better off just, you know, ignoring that and focusing on Bitcoin adoption in the monetary sense." That's, that's kind of where I'm at at least today.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's, that's pretty fair. I mean, and I think that we're all in the same place. Because this is the other thing to add, I think, one other thing

that I'll just point out that, there was a lot of confusion because people weren't clear on, as you said, this kind of umbrella term was happening and there was the distinctions. So really, it's BRC20 that's been really driving the fees crazy, right? And then I think that is maybe what's setting off some of the people who are, let

Teach people Bitcoin, and now they're kind of stuck in this very high fee scenario when that just, that's a recent phenomenon, right? Or it was only a bull market phenomenon, it wasn't just kind of like, you know, happening in normal times. Whereas these BLC twenties were- Protocol and the minting dynamic created there was what was pumping the fees so high, kind of pricing out a lot of the global south people. So I think there was maybe there was a bit of a concern of equity from that perspective. Now, look, I think we all agree it's gonna go that way long term. So, you know, better, better to, you know, it's a good thing now that people are learning that and also now learning that, hey, we need to learn about, minimum UTXO sizes. I will point out that Swan has like a one million sat threshold Minimum threshold, and you should ideally be above that if you wanna be safe in, in a future high fee scenario.

Yeah, big UTXOs are, are-- I guess like, this is a nuanced thing, and people are still figuring out optimal UTXO management. Like, I, I got into this, this space in late 2017, and like the best practices around UTXO management, batching, all that stuff has- Escalated exponentially, right? And, the, the future development in this front is also like very, very robust. so like what I would say is that pretty much after, like, let's call it the resolution of the big block debate and then, you know, really the break of Bitcoin and crypto, there's been a very unfairly cheap Bitcoin, price. It's, it's been unfairly cheap to get space on the most secure monetary- Network on the planet. it, like, making a Bitcoin transaction is equivalent to shipping gold, like in terms of the, the current monetary stack. So that has, in my opinion, been relatively good for adoption around that needs cheap adoption and needs a payment infrastructure that's already like available, which is the, the core Bitcoin payment network. But ultimately You know, because of that, like mispricing of the base layer, it's driven up models that aren't economically sustainable, and those models have people that are now affected, and those people are having people-- human reactions to having their model break, and they're grappling with that, cognitively, technologically all the above. So this is just part of the process, and like, you know, Bitcoin adoption has never been about equity in terms of like how it happens in practice, it's been about equity in terms of the end result of getting onto a better system. So it's like, I agree, we need to be accurate with this.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. So let's talk a little bit about, I guess, what you think the future might hold. Of course, predictions are difficult, but I guess, let me start with this one. I think There's now this Ruins protocol, it seems to be gaining some traction, and, Casey, is creating this Ruins protocol. It, it competes with other ideas like RGB or others, but I guess it's seen-- it's more simple and- There's not as much off-chain data storage as, there would be with like RGB or maybe Taproot assets. So maybe some of that transactional demand will come over to using runes, which is actually a bit less pollutive and at least a bit better from the UTXO set perspective, and so we'll see what happens there. But I'm curious if you have any predictions or any thoughts on where things go here.

Yeah, I mean, look, I, I'm not really a token expert, like I'm a-- I love Bitcoin, and a lot of like my a deep care and, and, passion for the system. I think that Casey is really smart. I think that Casey understands the Bitcoin network and the, the TAM around, the potential TAM around Bitcoin better than most developers, and I think that it's objectively true when you see at what he's built and the what, the virality and, the in, and the economic activity that- That has, happened around it. I also think that Vic, that Casey, has a very good understanding of the economics of Bitcoin, and therefore he builds things that are pretty well aligned. So I think, Pete Rizzo's made this point that the Ord protocol is actually, like, if you're going to shitcoin, like, it is the most, like, kind of clean way to do it. No token, a clean airdrop to all Bitcoin holders, something that- That, was permissionless, like it didn't require you lobbying changes to, or, or building consensus, it just happened, you know, it was possible around the technology that's already at hand. Like, I think that there's a lot of admirable things there, and now that he's building runes, based on like his observations of like kind of like the Shitcoins on Bitcoin ecosystem thus far. I mean, I'm sure that it is well thought out. Is it gonna be successful? Is it gonna take off? You know, I think that there's some lessons in like how Bitcoin works and what-- and how markets work that we can potentially learn from observing what, what goes down there. In terms of like what's gonna happen with Bitcoin, I think we're entering into a bull run. I think the degeneracy is going to exceed-- is going to increase, That's inevitable, and I think that there's going to be a lot of bad behavior and there's gonna be a lot of, not Bitcoin best practices and there's gonna be a lot of pitfalls, but price is gonna be going up a lot and it's also gonna be really good for the Bitcoin only ecosystem. I don't think anyone is bullish enough. Maybe people are too bullish on this next four years, but on Bitcoin long term, if it is what we say, the maximalists say it is, I don't think anyone's bullish enough. but part No one can anticipate the permissionless emergent things that Bitcoin will provide us. and I think that again, the whole ordinal- Craze, is, is proof of that, because, you know, the maximalists were in control this whole time, yet how did all this happen, right? How, how did we miss this? How, how did this, how did this craze happen that is so misaligned with monetary maximalism? I think it's time to reflect and try to be like, okay, well, how can we update our worldviews?

Right. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's more just that I think it's just calling a spade a spade, right? Like, I The whole idea that, yeah, people want to use, right? Well, there's, put it this way, there's a famous, I think there's a quote by Peter Weller, you know, well-known Bitcoin developer, "Model blockchain demand as infinite, right? Like just, there will always be people who want to use the chain, right? There will just always be people who want to use the chain, and maybe that's also part of the argument against like a block size increase, because maybe there'll just be more spam on the chain, you know? Maybe that's something that 23, when there was all this BRC20 and all this other spam, that's what we got when, you know. So who knows? but yeah, I agree with you, we're go- we're probably going into a bull run. I mean, as we speak now, Bitcoin is, pumping over forty-nine thousand dollars per, you know, per coin, and that is likely- Let's go. Yeah, and it's, likely to- Pump the, the block space market as well, right? Fees will get more expensive, right? Even, even taking out all the Ordinals, BLC stamps, whatever, just transacting on Bitcoin is gonna get more expensive. So, you know, get ready for it, but at the same time, it's, it's winning. So we have to be careful, you know, be careful what you wish for. Did you wanna win or not, right?

Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like, there's like an addiction to losing amongst libertarians, And ultimately, we are winning, but we're less than one percent adoption. So any marginal person added to that coalition is powerful for Bitcoin, even if Like even if you think that they're shitcoiners, because shitcoiners rub shoulders with bitcoiners way more than a no-coiner does.

So I guess the only other point I would make here is, what about the point of confusion, right? Here's the other thing, as you've seen, and I'm sure you've seen this too, right? There's a lot of people who've been talking-- Bitcoiners spread confusion, bro. Well,

that's true. I love Bitcoin, I love Bitcoin best practices, but bitcoiners also spread confusion. Like, I'm all about having an

There's lots of confusion, a lot of it is spread by Bitcoiners, not because they're malicious, but because we need to update our narratives over time.

Or people just-- And false narratives break down. It's not narratives, it's more like people need to sort of-- Well, I think I sort of disagree a little bit there. I think it's more like, okay, yes, there's a point of people knowing really, like, what's actually going on, right? And sometimes people are sort of talking about things without really knowing what's going on. But there's also an element of Of giving up that narrative, giving up that sort of, frame of like, "Oh yeah, that's legitimate building, you're building these shitcoins on Bitcoin," and then people who come in will be like Oh, I, you know, oh yeah, CK, I didn't, I didn't buy that Bitcoin thing, but I bought the Ripple token, right? Like that kind of-- like that's, that's a, that's a problem, and I'm sure you and I have both-- I've, I've dealt with that kind of thing as well. People's come to me being like, "Oh, yeah, I bought this other token, isn't that-- aren't they all the same? Isn't Bitcoin the same as all these other things?" And that to me is maybe there's a Is still, you know, I, I still have a legitimate angle of criticism there, but I agree with you overall that, you know, we're going into a bull cycle, we're winning, and I agree with you that there's a lot of libertarians and bitcoiners who sometimes, they can't see a, a win and just take the win when we've got it. Sometimes they just have to always find an angle that is negative, and, maybe that's a psychology thing, who knows?

I mean, look, they're not used to winning. Bitcoin has been winning since two thousand and nine, and, you know, it's time to get used to being on the winning team. what I would say in terms of like the confusion element, we're at less than one percent adoption in Clown World Like confusion is the base. We are operating from a state of confusion, and we're all trying to emerge from that state of confusion. So therefore, it's like, can you bring clarity? Like only marginally, and you mostly need to work on yourself, because you're starting-- everyone is starting from a state of confusion, because Everyone's economic backdrop is the fiat system. So like, that's why Bitcoiners have routinely created confusion, this is historically true, about their own system The entire fucking time. It's been false narratives that get broken down by the reality of the network, and then new narratives get built up, and then a repeat of that process. That's been the whole thing, you know, the whole twenty-seven debate and a lot of the confusion because Microsoft and all these companies adopted Bitcoin based on confusion, false narrative around payment technology. Yeah, that was confusion spread by Bitcoiners. Yes, there are, there's a lot of confusion spread by fiat economists and altcoiners, and they all have an economic incentive to do so, right? Everyone has an economic incentive to spread confusion. We're in the baseline of fiat, and I know that that is like a, a trope, and I know that that is, you know, not sophisticated worldview, but like at the same time, I think that it's pretty helpful to like think of it that way, and, and have some humility in terms of like- Like us truth finding, because like that's ultimately like what this whole journey is about, right?

Yeah. So, I think, I'll put it on, you know, let's say narratives. I think really it's that You know, it just comes down to, you know, there's twenty-one, no more than twenty-one million coins and, you know, hodl. Like I think that's probably like the simplest I could make it for people, and what, what we've seen over time is kind of different ideas come around that and different, you know, narratives and propaganda, but really, if you're trying to get to the truth as much as you possibly can, it's that, it's that you, you know, that's really the, the, the base of it, and I think there are Let's say memes or ideas that kind of align well with that, right? Like I think the idea of savings technology really aligns very well. That's, you know, it aligns with stacking sats, hodling, like that's, that's, I think a very accurate way to put it out there. I think Yeah, I think some of the, the shitcoin on Bitcoin narrative is kind of inaccurate and propagandistic, and so maybe that's really the, the critique that I would have. but anyway, let's, let's finish up here. Do you have any closing thoughts? And where can people find you?

Stephan, I really appreciate you having me on. this is a really fun conversation, and I think I've experienced a lot of growth preparing for this conversation, so, thank you for the opportunity. my closing thoughts are, you know, if Bitcoin's an antifragile system, then false narratives over time are ultimately going to make system a Bitcoin a better system, and help us as a Bitcoin ecosystem, learn how to describe Bitcoin more accurately. accurately. so that's a process, we're all undergoing that process. No one here is above that process, you know, not even Satoshi was above that process. If you do a decent amount of research on that, you know, the history of all this stuff, you know, I, I would say a lot of developers would say like his kind of final action to like secure the Bitcoin, network and to make sure it was robust from any attacks was to take away all the opcodes. and a lot of people would say like a lot of the drama that's been, Built up from the development space, from that moment has, you know, kind of been around like, how do we bring back some of this functionality because we need it to scale? So again, no one is above this learning experience, right? And ultimately, we have this tool, that's the Bitcoin network, and we're engaging with it, and it is, showing us the reality, because that's what Bitcoin does, it's mere-- it shows us what is the economic reality that's at hand. So we, we can have a choice, we can, we can Stick to our narrative, we can understand what's happening on the econ- with the economic reality, and we can engage with the system. So that's how I view this whole thing. you know, again, I, I'm not defending shitcoining, but I'm defending- What I view to be like Bitcoin's kind of nature, and, and my understanding of that, and I'm really open to, to continuing this conversation, I think it's an important conversation, I'm really open to changing my mind and, and updating my worldview. I think that has to be like a fundamental element of how Bitcoiners approach the world. in terms of my work, I was at Bitcoin Magazine for five and a half years, now I'm at HRF, directing Financial Freedom there. we have a big stake in Bitcoin adoption in the- Global South and places where people are economically disenfranchised, but looking to do it in a scalable way, looking to invest in developers, looking to invest and, and, and put grant money into, emergent technology, so we have a Bitcoin development fund, that people can apply to, and there's a lot of other great stuff out there that we are trying to push forward. would really recommend people keep an eye out on CBDCs, that development is, is truly scary and, is profuse. So, CBDC Hrf dot org is a great resource I would recommend. but yeah, engage with me on, on Twitter, on Noster, c k underscore snarks, in all those places.

Fantastic. Well, thanks, CK. It's been great to chat with you, and, let's, let's get used to winning. Let's go.

We are winning.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure to subscribe, share it out there with family and friends, let me know what you think, and of course, make sure you check out my website, stephanlivera.com, and weekly newsletter at stephanlivera.substack.com. Thanks, and I'll see you in the citadels.