{ "episodeId": "SLP313", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "gigi": { "name": "Gigi", "role": "guest", "tag": "GIGI" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.75, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin. Today, for episode three hundred and thirteen, I'm speaking with Gigi again. So he is an author, a speaker, and a developer working in the Bitcoin space, and he's got some excellent writings. Famously, he wrote twenty one lessons, and he's got a lot of other excellent insights to offer, and we talk about various insights such as this idea that Bitcoin is time, as well as why US dollar is going down to one sat. Have you automated your Bitcoin sat stacking? With SwanBitcoin dot com, you can accumulate Bitcoin either with a lump sum purchase or to set up your automatic recurring buy, or as we like to call it, Bitcoin savings plans. It's fast to set up and cheap. SwanBitcoin also takes a focus on education. There's all sorts of free content and free books out there, such as Inventing Bitcoin, available and written by the CTO, Swann, Jan Pritzker. So go and check out Swann. Bitcoin, and if you're interested to purchase larger amounts, go and sign up at swanprivate dot com. We can help you get you onboarded and give you some more personalized guidance and handholding along the pathway of learning about Bitcoin. So go to swanbitcoin dot com slash livera to sign up and get ten dollars of free Bitcoin dropped in your account when you start your Bitcoin savings plan. Are you interested to borrow or lend? Well, Lend at HodlHodl is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin-backed lending platform so you can lend or borrow stablecoins globally and anonymously using Bitcoin as collateral. Need some fiat liquidity? You no longer need to sell your Bitcoin, you can borrow stablecoins against your Bitcoin, and you will still hold one of three keys throughout that deal. While stablecoin owners can earn some extra interest by lending their stablecoins out and defining the terms and the APR for their deals, so with this platform, you set your own terms and you put up offers depending on how long you want to borrow or lend and the interest rate. Go to lend dot hodlholdl dot com, that's lend dot h o d l h o d l dot com. So Bitcoin Bitcoin mining and the hash rate has come roaring back, and if you wanna get involved, Compass Mining are helping you. If you don't know where to get started, if you're not sure where to source your equipment or which facilities to send that equipment to, well, Compass Mining are helping you with this. You select an ASIC, you can have that shipped to a hosting facility, and then you're paying the hosting fees, and then you join a mining pool, and so after that, you're, you're receiving Sats. So it's a great way to earn some Bitcoin, and it's a great Or access to very cheap power rates, as most of us have residential rates that aren't very competitive. So go to compassmining.io to find a range of content that educates you about mining, whether that's mining at home or if you just wanna get started, go and select your ASIC and get started that way, compassmining.io. Now onto the show with Gigi. Gigi, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "02:52", "start": 171.99, "text": "Hey Stefan, thanks so much for having me again." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:54", "start": 174.49, "text": "Love your work, man. You've been doing so much awesome stuff. The way you write and speak in the space, it's, unmatched, I have to say. you've done some really cool pieces of work over the year, and I just wanted to get you on and talk a little bit about it. And of course, there's gonna be lots of crazy things happening in, in the Bitcoin world right now. I'm actually in Dubai right now for, Tonve" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:19", "start": 199.29, "text": "Getting ready, getting a few things around ready for that. But yeah, I guess let's start with, where's your head at with, Bitcoin these days?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "03:27", "start": 206.51, "text": "Yeah, I think, I think you're absolutely right, it's gonna get crazier and crazier, and it's, it's almost impossible already to keep up, you know? Like, there was a time where it was possible to attend every conference and just, also keep up to date with all the developments, and I think this, this kind-- this time is coming to an end now. So you," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "03:48", "start": 227.57, "text": "you On Lightning, others on mining, others on the pure energy side of mining, you know, and, like there's so much stuff going on, it's very hard to keep up. And I just, I, I try to keep up, I, I try to, to, kind of have an overview of what's going on, but I also want to drill down into some topics, more deeply. And, and currently, I think, to me, Lightning is one of the most exciting things. I mean, there, there are many exciting things going on, but That it's, that's awesome that's used, it's awesome that it scales, and, yeah, I, I feel like we are at a tipping point where, Bitcoin is kind of ready for the next step." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:30", "start": 270.28, "text": "Yeah, that's awesome to hear. So what's, the latest on your Twenty One Ways, which is the follow up to Twenty One Lessons for listeners who haven't already, make sure you check out Gigi's book, Twenty One Lessons. But, what's the latest on that?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "04:44", "start": 284.39, "text": "Yeah, I'm still working on it. I actually, started sitting down again seriously and writing more, so I'm back to trying to write every day. You know, I'm trying to do other work during the day and writing, either very early In the morning or late at night. And yeah, it's coming along. I would say it's approximately forty to fifty percent done. so I have some chapters that I'm polishing off and I intend to publish soon. So most people probably have read Bitcoin is Time, which is one of the chapters, and I want to, you know, like if, if, if a chapter can stand alone, then I want to publish it, even before the book, book is published. And again, my plan is to do it very similar like I did with Twenty One Lessons, just release everything out" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "05:30", "start": 330.0, "text": "And yeah, in the end, I hope, book will pop out. I was aiming for end of twenty twenty-one, but that's, that's probably way too optimistic now. But I'll, I'll say like, you know, early next year might be a, a good time to see everything come together. But I also know, you know, like the, the last five percent of a big project, is, is always, the most difficult one. So I have no, no illusions that it's gonna be done on its own or, or go" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:00", "start": 359.9, "text": "And Bitcoin is Time is one of the chapters from that book, which is a great post, and that's available on your website dot g g dot com and also on the swan bitcoin dot com website. Can you tell us a little bit about that article? I thought it was really fascinating in terms of reframing a few things and putting things in an interesting light, and obviously in preparation for my discussion with you, I, I went back over that article. But, tell us a little bit about that." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "06:22", "start": 382.41, "text": "Yeah, I, I think reframing is the right word, because, I think Work in and with Bitcoin and just discuss Bitcoin a lot, we're all trying to figure out what Bitcoin is, and that's also what twenty-one ways is going to be about. I, I try to look at Bitcoin in twenty-one different ways, and one of the ways you can look at Bitcoin is just purely using the time aspect to make sense of it, because one of the things that Bitcoin does is that it decentralizes time itself. So one of the unsolved problems in, like, a digital cash system in doing money on the internet was digital timestamping, because you, you, you need to tell the time in order to make sense of the events that are happening in a network. So you, you need, an, an error of time to be able to tell like A came before B and so on and so forth. And for money that is terribly important, because if you mix up the events, you, either create money out of thin air or, you know, you, you're suddenly able to double spend money and so on and so forth. And so what Satoshi, like, Satoshi's main insight was that Decentralize the timestamping server as well, and we have to decentralize time in a way, and that's what proof of work actually does. So that's what miners are actually doing. Miners are kind of offering, a, a new timestamp to the network that you can't cheat because it's, it's rooted in, in proof of work. And, and you kind of have to do it this way because, like, there are very-- I think there are very deep reasons why you have to do it this way, because in, in our relativistic universe, there is no absolute" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "08:00", "start": 479.88, "text": "work in the first place. And so I tried to explore all these things in, in Bitcoin this time, and I, I tried to, you know, go through all the relevant literature that, also Satoshi referenced in the white paper, you know, like I think five out of eight references were about timestamping. So it's, it's a very important topic, and I think not, not a lot of people, looked at Bitcoin in that way, and I think that's why it resonated so well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:24", "start": 503.91, "text": "Yeah, I think that you're right there. And one thing that I have People who are maybe newer to Bitcoin and first learning about it, they think of it in a different way. They're thinking of it like, when they mention time, they're thinking of it like, \"Oh, it's stored time. Like when you work, you go and store away some time.\" Actually, that's wrong. It's, that's not, it's not precise. Money is the most- It's also true," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "08:44", "start": 524.41, "text": "but that's not what the, what the piece was about. Like it's a, it's a fair point that money is stored time and stored energy in a sense. Artifacts like, you know, curry shells or gold coins or silver coins or something, something that you can't pass around, something that, that truly has a physical instantiation in the real world, something that you can give to someone else, something that you can hand over, you know? And this, this money works really well because it keeps track of itself. Whoever possesses the gold coins has the money, period, you know? And this has downsides of course, you know, you can steal it, you can forcefully take it away, and so on, you can lose it, and so on and so You don't need a centralized authority to keep track of who owes what to whom. The coins kind of keep track of themselves or the shells and so on and so forth. And, the second way to do money is lists, and then you will always have a list keeper, and then you immediately run into the problem of timekeeping, because you need to, you need to make sense of the order that is kept in the list. So, so every, every ledger is kind of, it, it, it records what happened in the real world, and this is exactly the, the, the What happened in the real world, and you have the real world. And if you use tokens or if you use gold coins, then, then the coins, they keep track of themselves like the physical artifacts keep track of themselves. And once you create a record of things, the record and the real world, they are inherently disconnected. And this is, I, I had a, a thread that kind of blew up, and, I also gave a talk in Germany about this topic, that in general, the map is not the territory. Like if you, if you create a The territory itself, and if the territory changes, you have to update the map. The map doesn't automatically update itself magically. And this is also true for, for money, if you are using a list as your source of truth as your money, and which is what we are doing, which is, you know, like central banks have a list of all the entries and, like banks in general, this is how money works. And if you go back thousands of years, like those are the two forms of money that we have. We either have physical artifacts in terms of shells or coins and Take care of the list. Someone, usually a centralized auth-authority takes care of the list. And if you have a list, you also have like a single source of time. And this is, this is a huge problem. And in the, in the, in the digital realm, you can only have lists. Like, you can't have tokens in the, in the digital realm. Like, you can't have something that actually moves from A to B. Like, this is the root of the double spend problem, because you're, you're dealing with information. So to move information, you Copy it and delete the original. Like this is, this is the whole problem." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:34", "start": 694.2, "text": "Exactly. And so that even comes to digitally when you're trying to have this idea of digital property. Well, in-- on the internet, anyone can copy things. And so this also comes into, I think a more deeper way of thinking about what even is a property right. And so people like Stephan Kinsella, who have done very well on the intellectual property aspect of it, and if you talk to him, the way he might explain property rights is to say, \"Look, you can only have property rights in things And so in that sense, I guess he would argue that you can't actually own a Bitcoin, but I guess we would say really you can be the unique controller of that Bitcoin. Maybe that's another way to think of it, right? So just for listeners who aren't, who aren't familiar, when you hold Bitcoin, really it's like you're holding the private key for those coins. And so that private key, it's actually like a huge, huge-- imagine just like a massive, massive number. And really what our Bitcoin wallets and our Bitcoin nodes are doing, the software, will kind of take Here's the private key, here's the public key, here's an, and then from that, here's an address. Okay, Gigi, now you can pay me to this address, to which I control those coins or that unspent output, right?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "12:40", "start": 760.1, "text": "Yeah, I think that's a great point, and I love Stephan Livera's work. we had a, a brief exchange on Twitter. I don't think he read Bitcoin's Time yet, because he, he had some questions that are actually answered in the piece, but, I think he, he didn't," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "13:00", "start": 780.24, "text": "When it comes to information, and I would also agree, this is also why I use, you know, open source licenses and very permissive licenses for everything I do online, because, I, I think bits and bytes shouldn't be owned. I think, you know, something like DRM or something like paywalls, it, it just doesn't work, you know? Like, you can, you can copy-- The reason why it doesn't work is exactly to his point, because it is not scarce. You can, you can copy information at zero marginal cost, you know? It doesn't cost That's, that's just how information works. If you can, if you can make sense of the information, if you can read it, then you can also copy it. That's why every, anti-copying mechanism will always be pro-- broken and like you have to go through insane lengths to stop people from copying digital information, and it, it never works in the end. But anyway, like to your point about ownership and control, I think also Max Hillebrand wrote about it, very nicely, where he, he says it's about, simulating ownership, so to And you simulate ownership by, by having like you're the only person that has knowledge about this information, because it, when it, when it comes down to it, as you said, a private key is a number, and it's, it's a, a philosophical argument that doesn't really hold up if you say you can own a number, you know, like I, I own the number three, like this is nonsensical to say. And it, the, the argument doesn't really change if the number is so large that no one else will ever come up with the number, you," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "14:28", "start": 867.73, "text": "you still I could theoretically, guess your private key, for example. I could come up with the same number and, then, and, and this is, this is why ownership in Bitcoin is so tricky because, this isn't like a, a theoretical point, because you can tweet out your private key, and then the question, who owns these Bitcoin, becomes very difficult, because it's, it's a lot of people that suddenly have access to, to your Bitcoin and can move it and have the, have the power to control it. And I think ownership always comes down to control in a Because, in the end, you know, what do you own? You, you, you own your body, hopefully, you know, like this, I think this is one of the base axioms, even though, it seems that this axiom is currently under attack. And if you own property, it is about you can do with this property like what you please, like you can buy something and you can throw it away the next day. And if you have a house, if you own a house, you are in charge of what happens with this house. But" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "15:27", "start": 926.97, "text": "it's" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "15:32", "start": 931.82, "text": "You're not owning your house anymore because you don't have control of, of what happens, and then, it, it won't be your house any longer. So I think ownership and control, they, they are, kind of two sides of the same coin, if you will. You know, like it's, if you own something, you have complete control over it usually, and in the informational realm, ownership is kind of knowledge. So you, you are the only one who knows about this number." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:55", "start": 954.77, "text": "Yeah. And speaking of time and the way Bitcoin works, is this sort of decentralized time-keeping in a sense, because we have to keep track of the order of the transactions. And so I guess that's a very important part in Bitcoin. Now, there are different ways to talk about this. For example, Peter Todd explains it very simply. A blockchain is a chain of blocks, and so it's about what is that order of blocks and the, you know, the transactions that get included into each of those blocks. And so there's a certain sense of- Causality in that chain, and you explained some of this, you explained this in the article around how Bitcoin as a system creates that chain, and we actually have to rely on some level of unpredictability in order to get that." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "16:38", "start": 998.1, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, I think Peter's comment about the blockchain being a, a chain of blocks, it's, he came up with, with the saying, when everyone was talking about blockchain and every, everything, like, you know," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "16:51", "start": 1010.99, "text": "sixteen, seventeen around, those times where, the whole thing and the word kind of lost its meaning, and he just tried to point out, I think, that it's a very simple data structure that also existed before, you know, like it's, it's not a new idea to chain things together, so to speak. And, like even, even outside of computer science, this, this idea exists in, like, there are some, some folklore songs, for example, that always refer back to the previous ver- verse, and you have to include what you said before in what you're saying now. Or there's this children, children's game I'm going to a holiday and I'm packing this and that and that in my suitcase, and the next child has to, say everything again what the previous child said and add, add one more, you know? Like that's, that's the same idea basically, because, it makes rewriting history very expensive. That's what it's about, you know? And the problem with, rewriting history for computers is, like, even if you, even if you chain everything together, a computer can trivially rewrite history. And this is the problem with proof of stake, by" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "17:54", "start": 1074.49, "text": "The world, I can take my computer and generate a valid proof of stake chain, that is as valid from an outsider's perspective without any additional information as the, the quote-unquote correct chain. And what, what, Bitcoin does so beautifully is it, it takes a physical anchor via proof of work, it takes real physical energy, and embeds it in the data. And this builds up over time. So, you know, people use metaphors like amber, like, if, if you build something up over, over time, I, I also like to think of, Or, you know, like a large tree, and you have the rings of the tree that build up over time. And this is how Bitcoin works. So it, it takes time and energy to, to build up the, the time chain, you know, like, and that's why, why, why Bitcoiners are also switching, to the terminology of the time chain and, and refuse to say blockchain because it kind of became meaningless over the years, you know? Like, if, if someone comes to you and tries to explain to you how the, the blockchain will revolutionize everything, the," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "18:54", "start": 1134.49, "text": "A proper reaction to just, you know, kind of give up the term maybe, and switch to something else that might be more appropriate. And, yeah, you need a source of unpredictability to build up time in the, in the first place. Like if you could predict it, it wouldn't be a good arrow of time, because you could say what, what's going to happen in the future. And so you need a source of unpredictability, and in, in Bitcoin of course, this is the proof of work puzzle. But it's not only that, it's also the transactions Multiple sources of unpredictability in Bitcoin. And once, like, once the block is mined and once it's, it's a valid block and it gets added to the chain of blocks, then it's kind of embedded in time. So, so I, I view, I view, for example, the mempool, the transactions that are in, in the mempool as timeless, and as, as soon as they are embedded in the time chain, they, they have a time assigned to them. And so, in, in a sense, Bitcoin slows down time, and it has to do that, you know Too chaotic. Like you, you can't syn-synchronize anything without slowing down time because of relativity and other effects, you know, like that, it, it's absolutely impossible. And so it slows down the ticks of the clock so that it ticks every ten minutes on average. And it-- but it still needs an anchor to the real world, like that's absolutely to our human time, that's absolutely essential. And this is actually one of the problems that Nick Szabo was not able to figure out, because the problem with digital cash was computers get faster and faster and faster all the time. And so Mined something with proof of work, and you use those like, reusable proof of works and all, all the systems that, that came before, you, you always had to see when were the coins mined, because, you know, like if the computers get faster and faster and faster, and they're now like ten trillion times faster than they were like twenty years ago, then I make all your past coins worthless, by just being able to produce so much more. And this is very important also for issuance and issue, issuing coins fairly, because you want to spread out the issuance over long periods And if we wouldn't have the difficulty adjustment, and if we weren't able to keep, constant ten minute, block time, then all the bitcoins would be mined already, you know? Like, you, you would get, you know, as, as soon as this thing has any value, some people that are in charge of supercomputers, just, you know, kick in the door and mine everything and, and then the party is over. So the difficulty adjustment is the, is the magic sauce that makes everything work. And the important thing about the dif-the difficulty" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "21:24", "start": 1284.45, "text": "Energy, not to hash rate, not to anything else, you know? Like if you want to build the soundest money on earth, you have to link it to time, because time is the ultimate resource. Time is the only thing we can't make more of. If you would link it to energy, for example, like people would, would build like, you know, cold fusion, fusion reactors or something, and then again, you know, you could, you could make bitcoins for free basically. And so you have to link it to time. And, I mean, there are other reasons as well," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:55", "start": 1314.97, "text": "excellent explanation there. I loved around the difficulty adjustment, it is such a crucial thing. And so an interesting point for listeners is that many of the pieces existed, it was actually that Satoshi found a way to combine them in a novel way and add the difficulty adjustment in this way that made it feasible and possible where other projects had failed and other, other attempts had failed." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "22:18", "start": 1338.44, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's very hard to kind of see at first what is the innovation in Bitcoin. Because as, as you were saying, you know, everything kind of existed before. He just took existing puzzle pieces and, and glued them together in this weird game theoretical, like very esoteric way. And also, most people didn't think that it would work at first, you know, like that's the, that's the, the, the first reaction to Bitcoin is basically, you know, this will never work, like it, it, it can't probably be gamed or broken or, or whatever. But it turns out that it works beautifully and, and by, a combination of genius insight Consensus parameters that, that actually do work, you know, like because there is no reason why it's like, a hundred million sets in a Bitcoin and twenty-one million Bitcoins and ten minute block time and, and so on and so forth. And like even the block size, everything was like, you know, like, let's guess what, what, what kind of parameter we, we should pick here, let's see, let's see if it works, you know? In the very early days, I, I think that, that, that was the, the approach, This is the, the, the most important thing about Bitcoin is the, the, the promise of the unchanging system and the promise of the scarcity. You know, like you, you have this scarcity promise that is embedded in the promise that this, that the consensus rules will not change. And so this is why the history of Bitcoin is also so important and, and no other, like no other project has this history where, you know, it was attacked, it, it, a lot of people with a lot of influ-influence tried to change it, and I, I can urge, To read the, the block size war and just look into this period of, like, of history of Bitcoin, which was insanely important, and I think this is why the confidence in the system grew so dramatically, after this period, because Bitcoin was actually able to fight it off, and we see how resilient the system is now, like with, you know, the, the China mining Exodus and things like that, and Bitcoin is just able to shrug it off and chug along, and I think this is what a sound money needs to do, you know, like it, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:25", "start": 1465.03, "text": "Yeah, very interesting, and I think that's also keying back to what Mises explained about sound money. He mentioned it in two ways. One is that it's freely chosen by the market, and two, that it's not inter-- by government intervention. And so Bitcoin's ability to resist government intervention is actually part of the system, it's part of the deal, and it's part of how we're actually gonna make sound money again, rather than the unfortunately the gold bugs who seem to think that asking the government nicely is gonna work when clearly it hasn't and it's never gonna- Going to, and even if we did go back to a government gold standard, who's to say in another five or ten years when there's a crisis, they'll say, \"Oh, it's an emergency, we need to end the gold standard again.\" \"Oh, don't worry, this is just a temporary suspension of your ability to redeem in specie, meaning your ability to actually change your fiat coins or fiat tokens back for the real gold, which was back in the old system, that was the promise.\" And unfortunately, the fiat system simply can never make the promises that the Bitcoin system can." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "25:24", "start": 1523.57, "text": "Yeah I have a lot of sympathy for people that, that have their, trouble wrapping their head around it, because you kind of, you have to understand what, how the fiat system operates. You have to understand gold in a deep way, you have to understand the evolution of money, you have to understand the history of money and everything that went wrong, and you have to understand Bitcoin to make a sense of it all and to, to see the promise of Bitcoin and, to see how powerful it is. And it's also very hard to kind of parse apart Bitcoin in a way, because it is" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "25:56", "start": 1555.61, "text": "like I think the most apt metaphor for Bitcoin is that it's, it, it has to be seen as its own like biological organism. It, it is its own kind of thing, and very much like you, it, you know, I, I can take you apart, Stefan, but you wouldn't be happy about it. Like if I, if I take out your, your arms and your heart and your liver and, and, and just inspect how everything operates, you will stop operating, you know? The same is true for Bitcoin, and it is this like two parts math, one parts" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "26:25", "start": 1584.77, "text": "biology, you know, because i-in the end, it's, it's users that run the nodes, and i-in the end, you, you have a, a sort of, rough consensus around, for example, soft forks before the consensus is written into code and before the, the code becomes active, and the code is the, the consensus rules are adopted by nodes and the network upgrades and so on and so forth. So, so you have this biological, social aspect as well. And, I, I like to think about the different types of monies" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "26:56", "start": 1615.69, "text": "as a vector along multiple dimensions. And fiat money, for example, is like purely political, and you could, you could-- like, political sounds so positive, it, it, it has the force of violence behind it. So, so you have to force people to use it, otherwise no one would use it. And that's your point about, you know, like, sound money has to emerge on the free market, like that's, that's just, Austrian economists take this as, as a given because, you know, like the best money will emerge without the For example, you know, like gold isn't mathematical, gold is purely physical, but gold also has the property of, of allowing for individual sovereignty, you know? You can go out and mine gold, you can create your own gold coins, you can store them under your mattress, you don't have to ask anyone for permission, you know? I mean, it's, it's, in this day and age, it's very hard to, you know, do this at scale and so on and so forth. But I, I think Bitcoin combines like the best of multiple worlds, and it is like purely Mathematical in a sense, and it is also physical. It puts the individual at the center. So that's, I think that's one of the hardest things to explain about Bitcoin, that you are in charge of Bitcoin. You definitely are Bitcoin. You are the Bitcoin network. You are who is running it if you use Bitcoin properly. Because a lot of people speak about Bitcoin as like, you know, it's this democratic thing, for example. But Bitcoin has nothing to do with democracy. Like, you can, like, you, you are, Bitcoin is like a, a group of kings, and" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "28:25", "start": 1704.55, "text": "That's a good one. Bitcoin is a group of kings. That, that's what's going on. Yeah, it's, it's like, if, if you use Bitcoin properly, like if you run your own node and if you hold your own keys, that's what's going on. Like no one can interfere with your idea of Bitcoin. No one can force anything upon you. And, and so, so Bitcoin scores well, very well on, on the, individual sovereignty dimension and on the math dimension and on the physics dimension, and it scores very badly on the politics dimension, you know I mean, Satoshi kind of did with version zero point one, but you know, that's it. Like, that's, that's what we have, and that's why, you know, like twenty-one million is non-negotiable. That's like, and I'm not saying this to the world, I'm saying this to myself. Like, if, if you want to change Bitcoin, be my guest, but I'm, I'm gonna keep using my Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:12", "start": 1751.9, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. Have you thought about upgrading to the coldcard? The coldcard is my favorite bitcoin hardware wallet, and it's by a very long standing company in the bitcoin space, coinkite dot com, and they've been around in the space for ten years doing various products and services, and now they're focused on hardware, and they have a product that, in using, you'll actually learn about bitcoin, and so that's a really cool feature about the coldcard in that way, because you have to learn a little bit about how bitcoin works under the hood. You can use Wallets like Sparrow Wallet or Specter Desktop or Electrum, and you'll really end up learning a bit about Bitcoin as you learn about this. There's all sorts of video guides on the website, and you can use the code Livera to get a discount on your cold card over at CoinKite dot com. And if you are interested to improve your security, Unchained Capital are helping you with multi-signature vaults. So this is a special kind of wallet that uses multiple keys to hold and store and sign the, sign the transactions, and so you will hold two hardware wallets. And they will hold one of the keys for your multisig vault. Now, it's important to eliminate single points of failure, and so we can be vulnerable to this if we're, especially if we're leaving our coins on an exchange or a custodian, or potentially even with a single signature hardware wallet. So if you're unsure about how to get started, they've got a concierge package, it's really popular, and you can get set up even if you have never held your own Bitcoin private keys. They will ship you the hardware wallets, they'll do calls with you, and deposits in Bitcoin in So go to unchained dot com and select the concierge onboarding program, use the code livera to get a discount on that also. And finally, don't forget to back up your Bitcoin using products from cyphersafe dot io. You can go and buy a metal backup product instead of trusting that piece of paper, get a metal backup. So the new product coming out is the Cypher Grid, this is the best value in the industry, you get everything you need for fifty nine dollars, it's got two plates for all twenty four seed words, and you stamp them with the automatic center punch You get a tamper-evident seal so you, you know that if somebody's opened that package, and you can lock it with a padlock. And just like all CipherSafe products, it's fireproof, rustproof, and waterproof. So go to ciphersafe dot io and use the code Livera to get a discount on your metal backup. Back to the show with Gigi. Yeah, and on this whole idea of time, it's an interesting one that I see a lot of Bitcoin people use block time as a marker, and I see even in, for example, in some of your articles or on your website, you might mention, okay, the block was, you know, here was the block height, this is the block height of the network, so meaning this was the chain tip at the time that my article was published, or other people do things like maybe the block height at the time their child was born that, or the time they got married or different things And I know, actually you mentioned Max Hillebrand, he's a bit of a block time maximalist himself. So, do you think we are, going to move into a world where block time becomes taken more seriously, Gigi?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "32:10", "start": 1929.78, "text": "Oh, I'm, I'm definitely already living in this world. So, I, I helped launch a, a, a German podcast, called \"I know 21,\" if anyone speaks German, just, check it out. It's just the num- the number 21, but like written not And, we started adding Moscow time when the meme popped up, so it's a very nice-- If you go back and, and you, you, you, you listen to the block times and the Moscow times, it's, it's very funny. But I think, you know, because the, the past in Bitcoin doesn't change, like if you go a, a, a few blocks down, it's a very nice, record-keeping device, and, you know, there are no time zones in Bitcoin, which is also very nice, you know, like" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "32:54", "start": 1974.17, "text": "it's," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "32:59", "start": 1979.13, "text": "You know, the time this thing was published. And you're free to look up this block and figure out for yourself what the time was in your timezone. You know, like I, I don't have to figure it out for you. Like it's, it's, it's very easy. It's a way cleaner system. The problem with block time is that it's very hard to, define events in the future. So if you, if you're saying like, \"We, we want to meet at block time,\" I don't know, like eight hundred thousand, that, that it's On average, it's gonna be ten minutes, but of course it depends." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:31", "start": 2011.44, "text": "Right, let's say, you and I are gonna meet at the steakhouse to eat some steak, and I'm like, \"Oh, Gigi, I'm late,\" and you're like, \"Oh, how, how late will you be?\" I'll be like, \"Oh, I'm one block away.\"" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "33:41", "start": 2020.54, "text": "Yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:42", "start": 2021.94, "text": "yeah," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "33:42", "start": 2022.14, "text": "yeah. Yeah, so, so it's, it's very good time in, in some sense, but it's for, for human affairs, I think we're, we're stuck with our regular clocks for the foreseeable future." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:53", "start": 2032.9, "text": "Yeah. So actually, while we're on this, you mentioned the topic of Moscow time. So what's Moscow time for people who weren't following that?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "33:59", "start": 2039.27, "text": "So, so for people who aren't aware, this, this, this was born out of, I'm not even sure who it was, it, it might have been some journalist or just some regular guy" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "34:10", "start": 2050.28, "text": "was, appearing on TV and he had his, block clock, block clock behind him, and the block clock was displaying the satoshis per dollar. So how many satoshis will you get if you buy one US dollar worth of Bitcoin? And I think it, it said like eighteen hundred something or so. And this guy was, you know, going four D chess in his head and coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories how Russia is involved and like, \"This is the time in Moscow right now,\" he, he tries to, to tell us. Something, and all the Bitcoiners of course knew, you know, that, that it was not, was, was, what was going on, and it was very hilarious, like it was, it was a, a, a hilarious evening on, on, on Twitter, and this is how Moscow time was born. So when Bitcoiners speak about Moscow time now, what they mean is, how many Satoshi's you get for one US dollar. And I think currently we're at, in the seventeen hundreds, hundreds already, like seventeen, I don't know, seventy or something. I only" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "35:10", "start": 2110.3, "text": "Exactly, it, because I, I used to be a complete time chain maximalist and only had the block height, displayed, but now because it was so funny and it's also a nice way to keep track of the horrible price of, of, of the US dollar, it's switching between block height and Moscow time. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:26", "start": 2126.43, "text": "And so recently, Gigi, you commented that US dollar is going to one sat, implying a one hundred million dollar price per Bitcoin. So, explain yourself." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "35:37", "start": 2137.45, "text": "I mean, I think it's, it's kind of obvious, I, I mean, I, I don't say this lightly, you know, and, and people also have to put this into context, you know, like, I mean, Twitter, like, there is no nuance on Twitter, so you, you just have to say outrageous things and, and put some oil into the fire. But what I, what I mean is, that all fiat money's transitive zero, that's, that has been true historically always. So because it is made up and you can't produce it, it's, it's, it's zero marginal cost, you It's always, trends towards zero because people, the, the urge to print money is too hard to resist, you know? Like there will always be some emergency. We see this over and over again in history, and, and so, governments and central banks tend to inflate the money supply, and we see this like everyone should, have this visualization of the US dollar in their head, where you just see how it devalued, how the purchasing power of the dollar declined over time, and it's just- A, a graph that goes down and down and down. It's, it's like, it's, it's like the Bitcoin graph but inverted. It's like the opposite, you know? Like it's, it just goes down, down, down, down. And it, it goes down exponentially. And it's, it's, it's kind of wild to see how much, how much purchasing power the US dollar lost over, like, a hundred years. And also, make no mistake, like the average lifespan of fiat currencies is like, I don't know, like thirty years" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "37:10", "start": 2230.42, "text": "Old girl now, and, and I think, she's taking her last breaths kind of. And it's, it's, if you, if you agree with, with the fact, kind of like the historical fact that fiat, tends to zero, and if you agree with the proposition that Bitcoiners make, that Bitcoin is the hardest money we ever had, and so the purchasing pow-power as Bitcoin monetizes is bound to rise, you have those two curves, and I think they're about to intersect, like you have- The parabolic rise of Bitcoin and you have the, like, exponential decline of the US dollar and other fiat currencies, and there will be a point where Bitcoin takes over, and there will also be a point where the US dollar is worthless, just like the German Reichsmark is worthless, you know, you can only find it in museums and it's like, I mean, it, it, it has some value still as like a collector's item, maybe, you know, but all other paper currencies, like everything becomes w-worthless if it's, if it's just paper, and that's what The question is, there will be a point in time where one single Satoshi buys you one dollar, like that's, that's, that's just the way it is, you know? And if Bitcoin truly finds global adoption, which, which I think, it will, I think it will be the refer- the reserve currency of the world, then, you know, the purchasing power of one Satoshi will be larger than most people think, and I think, you know, we see this already with the Lightning Network, for example, like the base unit on Lightning is a million Satoshi, which is, one thousandths of a Satoshi. And so there, there is no, there is no issue with, you know, having one Satoshi being worth a lot. You, you can still break it down on, on higher layers. But for global settlement, which is, I think, Bitcoin's final stage kind of, all the-- Like that's, that's what we, we're still, we're still using gold bars for global settlement, kind of, you know, like gold bars and warships. And so Bitcoin is just, evolution of money in, in this- Sense, and that's how I see Bitcoin reaching dollar set parity." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:14", "start": 2354.46, "text": "Yeah, that's a very bullish prediction there. And, look, I, I mean, I basically agree with you, I don't really disagree with you. I think it's just interesting to see that go on. It's also funny because if you're looking at it in sats per dollar as an example, two thousand sats per dollar implies a Bitcoin price of fifty K, one thousand sats per dollar implies a price of a hundred K, and then each time it's like, you know, halving on" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "39:35", "start": 2374.69, "text": "one is In, sets per dollar and, and kind of by default to telling everyone that the US dollar is the shitcoin here, you know? I think it's, it's, it's refreshing for a lot of people that haven't thought about these things deeply, because you have to break your fiat reference frame, otherwise you will never be able to make sense of Bitcoin, you know? Like if you, if you always use the US dollar as your base and, and the base depreciates massively, I mean, just in the, in the last eighteen months, I think the, the US expanded Every, every, every model you built in the last eighteen months is wrong by at least thirty percent, like if you use US dollars as your denomination, you know, like it's, it's absolutely ridiculous. That's also why, when, Plan B came up with his Dr. Flow model, you know, my first reaction was like, \"This, this model will completely break to the upside because the US dollar will be worthless, quite soon,\" you know, like, I mean, imagine if the Eurozone collapses and, and some, some other like geopolitical waves are made and" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "40:40", "start": 2440.26, "text": "If there is nothing else for an anchor, then you're in deep trouble because you have, you have a hard time modeling this and making sense of, of the numbers kind of, you know, like if, if only Bitcoin is the anchor and you try to put a price on Bitcoin, then, you know, it's like a self-referential loop that doesn't make sense. And I'm saying this because, I mean, I, I know he, he later, did it with gold and so on, but I think Bitcoin will devalue gold, so you have the same problem, just Five thousand years. So I don't buy the, you know, like gold was always money, it will always be money argument, because at one point in history, cowrie shells were always money, you know? Like as far as you look back, cowrie shells were always money, like it's five thousand year history. Like, what the hell? Cowrie shells won't devalue, we will always use cowrie shells. Yeah, no, no. And I'm sure at that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:30", "start": 2489.81, "text": "time, people would have said, \"Oh, look, it might have been...\" You know, people think of it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:40", "start": 2500.34, "text": "In the gold context, people say that, like, \"Oh, it's jewelry and family heirlooms and things like that.\" But things will change, you know? It, it really is like people expect that just because, you know, humans used horses to get around for, you know, hundreds or thousands of years, that they're not gonna use cars when cars become available. Well, sorry, got some, you got another thing coming." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "42:01", "start": 2520.55, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think most people aren't prepared for this, you know? Like, just, just mentally, like, I, I, person, but it, it doesn't change the fact that, you know, there are some kind of other dynamics at play. Very much like the internet, it, it, it ate up everything because everything you can transform into information will be eaten up by the internet, you know? Like there is a reason why, you know, we didn't step on the plane and, we're now speaking virtually and why you don't buy newspapers anymore, you know? Like this, this, this was an absolutely outrageous thought that people will stop buying newspapers, you know? And yet here we are. And I All the time in, in this day and age, kind of. And I think it's not outrageous to, to say that gold, just like silver before it, will lose most of its monetary premium, you know? I mean, you can always keep it as a, you know, like absolutely doomsday scenario hedge, you know? But, but even, even if this do, doomsday scenario comes, you know, guns and food will be way more important than gold coins, so, you know, you might just want to sell your gold and build a bunker and get some" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:10", "start": 2590.32, "text": "Look like, look and sound like the crazy ones now. If you thought back to, let's say, the mid or late nineties, can you imagine someone then saying, \"Oh, hey, you're gonna have this little device in your pocket and it can connect to the internet and you can like instantly call and talk to people almost free, you can buy things online for free, and you'll...\" And I remember when it used to be people used to feel really afraid about typing in their credit card details for any online website. It was like, \"Whoa, I'm not putting my credit card" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "43:36", "start": 2616.27, "text": "details It was terrible. Like credit card fraud is like, I think, I don't know, it's a high percentage, still. And, you know, back we, we didn't have, HTTPS and SSL by default, so most of the stuff online was plaintext, so people were rightly concerned, whether they knew it or not, that they were rightly concerned, yeah. But I think the, the, the smartphone point is such an excellent one because everyone, like, it's just the default now, everyone is used to smartphones, and it's like, you" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "44:10", "start": 2650.3, "text": "You everywhere you wanna go, like you can or- you can order food and it just appears like an hour later or whatever. You can, you know, go, step into virtual realities. It's a mapping device that will bring you anywhere, everywhere on the- like, you have the Library of Alexandria at your fingertips, and all of that is normal. Like it's, it's completely outrageous that this works, and it's also, I think, completely outrageous that everyone takes it for granted. And I think that's, that's why also Bitcoin will be taken for granted completely, and no one will think I think that makes the, the internet work, you know, there's, there's so much magic and engineering going on underneath, very much like in Bitcoin, you know, there is a lot of magic and engineering g- going on un- underneath, but you don't have to think about it, it just works. And I think the same will be true in Bitcoin, and we see this emerge now already, you know, like I, I expected this to happen, I'm, I'm, I'm still like, I, I feel like I'm not bullish enough most of the time because" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "45:10", "start": 2710.28, "text": "You know, stuff like, Apple Pay and Go- Google Pay, and you just tap your card and you, you pay at the grocery store and you don't have to think about anything and you don't have to do anything. And this will work on Bitcoin, period. It will. Like, it's an absolute no-brainer that, people are already working on it and we see now, thanks to LNURL and other, technologies, built on Lightning kind of, you know, that this already works. And I, I've built it myself, you know, like" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "45:40", "start": 2740.32, "text": "Map and you just, you know, hit, yeah, approve and that's it, and you paid. And, and that's the future we are heading to. And most people won't realize, the switch because financial services and banks and all of it and payment provi-providers, they will have to make the switch. They will have to change, just like telephone and telecommunication companies, they have to, they had to use the internet, otherwise they would die, you know? Like you can't, they have to switch to Voice over IP. They have to use the internet infrastructure Their telephone stuff and everything else, you know, like you absolutely have to, or, or you will die in the marketplace. And the same will be true for money, like banks and, and payment providers and everyone else will have to make the switch. But I think that, companies like Strike and, and so on, like Bitcoin native companies kind of, they will be the first, and they will, they will have, like, they will have an advantage, and they will have, they will pass on this advantage to their customers, so it will be cheaper to use Already. And very soon, you're just gonna tap your mobile phone and you're gonna pay with Strike or whatever, and it's, it's gonna, you know, like you, you have a, you have a Satoshi balance, you don't have a US dollar balance. And I think this, this, this switch, you know, it will take a while because it takes a while to drop whatever fiat currency you're using and just think in Satoshi's and not in dollars or euros or yen or whatever anymore. But it's, it's an absolute no-brainer to me that," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:05", "start": 2824.75, "text": "that this will come I don't realize how quickly things will change. And obviously those, you know, people like you and me and listeners of my show probably, we already are thinking much more about Bitcoin more seriously. But even for us, it, like, for us right now, it's kind of difficult to price everything in sats unless you've got like a computer app that does it. And occasionally I might do a quick comparison, but it, it's, it's just difficult to do that because how quickly the price moves and things. But over time, it will change, and I think as well, the user experience" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:40", "start": 2860.26, "text": "Getting easier and easier to set up and use. do you have any thoughts around where you think things are going in terms of wallets and the infrastructure that we use to pay things or to receive in Bitcoin and Lightning?" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "47:53", "start": 2872.6, "text": "Yeah, that's a good question. I think it will, it will go in the direction, stuff that we're already using. You know, like, I think a year ago or so, I wrote about the state of, the user experience in, in Bitcoin and how absolutely terrible it is, but it's also, you know, to Computer network in, in the early nineties or, or what have you, you know, like making computers work is, is not easy. And so not too long ago, we, we were at this point in Bitcoin where everything was very involved and you, you, you had to know, you know, what an xPub is, for example, and, and stuff like that. Everything now, I think we're already past that, you know, like the, the xPub discussion is kind of over. This, this is abstracted away, users don't have to really care about it. I mean And then you could suddenly have to care about how your motor works, you know, like you. That's just the, the way things work. And I think, in terms of wallets, I think we will see very similar things emerge than we had previously because it just makes sense, like, for example, you will have a vault, however this looks like, you know, it might be multisig, it might be collaborative custody, it might be time locked, and this is like your, your, these are like your family funds, you know, the, the, the inheritance for Kids and stuff like that. And this is the stuff you, that, that you don't touch unless you want to buy land or a house or, you know, something really bad happens. And, I think we, we will see, spending wallets, like, you know, money in your pocket, and, they will work on Lightning, and you will have to make different trade-offs kind of, for these different kind of, kinds of wallets, you know? Yeah. Like you, you might have, a desktop wallet or something" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "49:38", "start": 2978.01, "text": "or like a, a more And to make larger purchases or make recurring purchases and stuff like that. And, you know, like because you don't want to lose your phone and, just, you know, someone else has, I don't know, like a lot of purchasing power. I want to be able to lose my phone and the stuff I have in my wallet shouldn't be like a hundred x what is, well, worth my phone, you know? Like that's, it's, it's, it's, it, it all comes back to you, you're gonna have money in your pocket for daily spending, you" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "50:11", "start": 3010.6, "text": "Vault where, you know, things are run a little bit differently, where it's really hard to get money out, kind of, even for yourself, and this is where most of your Sats will end up. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:20", "start": 3020.26, "text": "And so breaking down to maybe one more level is things like teaching people the difference between a Bitcoin on-chain transaction and a Lightning transaction, right? So as an example, you're buying something on a store, and maybe that user doesn't understand, \"Oh, I've got a Lightning wallet, I need to use the Bitcoin swap out functionality.\" Or, maybe the store, they don't know, as a, as an example, they're using BTC Pay Server, and at the top, you need to flick, you need to configure it manually, or you need to sort of say, \"Oh, this is an on-chain payment, I would like to pay with Lightning,\" right? And there's little, little things like this where today, it's like, I'm, I'm out here trying to teach someone who's new, and they don't know these things. So we have to," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "51:01", "start": 3061.37, "text": "you know, what, what do, what do you careful to not abstract away, you know, there are some things that are insanely important to, the main idea and the main benefit of Bitcoin, which is, for example, running your own node, holding your own keys, you know, like that's, you, you shouldn't abstract away too much to, again, like, coddle the mind of the user and just, become a, a neo bank that is built on Bitcoin and you have the, the gold and warehouse problem all over again, and then we will have fractional reserve on Bitcoin and so on. To strike a balance to allow the user to be self-sovereign, but also make it easy enough for everyone to understand. And I think it's definitely possible, and I, I also feel like we're, we're kind of heading in that direction, but it will also be different for different types of, of users, you know? Like, most people just probably won't care, and they will have to kind of burn their fingers a little bit until they, they realize what's going on and until they understand. And I think, unfortunately, you know- No, like I really like this saying and I, I, I think I heard it first from Alex Wettsky and he was like, you know, there, there's two ways that people learn, it's either through curiosity or through pain. And, and unfortunately, I think, you, you know, like the, the curious population is, is not the majority. It's like most people aren't curious about money or Bitcoin and, they will have to learn the hard way. But I also think, you know, that people are definitely able to learn and understand this. And it understand what's, what's going on, you know? Like if your bank account gets frozen, it's very too easy, it's very easy to understand what's going on. Very similar to the Arab Spring, you know? Like if the internet gets shut down by the government, it's very easy to figure out what kind of DNS changes you have to make and how to connect to Tor and other things, like 'cause you have to, like your, your survival depends on it. So, so you're gonna learn. And I think the same will be true for Bitcoin, that, you once like, you know, they see someone else, suffering the pain or they suffer the pain themselves." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:16", "start": 3196.12, "text": "Yeah, very prescient comment, I think. I think a lot of people will unfortunately have to learn the hard way. Also wanted to touch on your thoughts on operating in this Bitcoin space as a NIM, right? So I, I suppose there has been some challenges for you, but also some opportunities for you, obviously as you're operating under a NIM, people don't know what your real face, you know, looks like, at least online, they don't. What," }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "53:41", "start": 3221.16, "text": "Haha, I definitely don't recommend the full body suit, like that was a mistake, but now I'm stuck with it. It gets very hot, but, you know, life is suffering, so I, I just bite the bullet and, I, I'm gonna stick with it. But re-regarding the, the OpSec and the privacy issue, I think, it's a very- Tricky subject, kind of, for people to wrap their head, heads around, because it's not immediately obviously what you are giving up if you're giving up your privacy. And, I think in, in the age of, Google and Facebook, a lot of people are saying that privacy is dead anyway, and I don't believe that, and that's, that's my main motivation behind acting as a NIM, you know? And like, to be fair, I, you know, I'm, I'm not an Edward Snowden, or I'm not, I'm not like, Someone who is actually afraid of, of toxing themselves or something like that, I wouldn't go to conferences, I wouldn't show my face ever, I wouldn't speak, you know, like there are ways to, to do something with your voice where you can, you know, like, guess how your face looks like, like there, yeah, yeah. Now, I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you, you have to be way more careful than I, than I am if you, if you're in serious danger, which I am obviously not. So for me, it's" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "55:02", "start": 3302.05, "text": "myself all the time to everyone, you know, like I think privacy is about selectively revealing yourself, and I, I choose to selectively reveal myself to, to friends and, you know, to people I, I work with and, to, you know, select individuals that, I, I trust. But, I just, I just want to also- Kind of, everyone should realize how, how, how fast things can change, and also like, if it's super easy to find out everything about you with like two, two minutes of googling, then that's not a good situation to be in. And it's, it's, it's, it's not that I'm, you know, like, truly afraid or anything like that. I, I just think it's not, it's not a good state for a society to be in, because with the ledger leak and other data leaks, for example, you know, Can figure out, okay, those million people, probably all of them own some Bitcoin or some shitcoins. Some of them, they're five minutes away from me, and I know their name, and I know their exact address, including, you know, the door I, I need to, to knock at. And this is, this isn't the situation you want to be in. So you, you should be careful about your privacy. And I think in, in general, more people should be more careful about their privacy or at least take steps to reduce their online footprint. And there are great tools to do" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "56:22", "start": 3382.21, "text": "Browsers, you can use better operating systems, you can just, you know, like not use your real name and your, your face for everything all the time. And I think I also like, you, you know, I think it's, it's deeply embedded in the, in the Bitcoin culture that, you know, identity isn't required. You can use your identity if you want, but it's not required. It's also not required in the Bitcoin system. You know, Bitcoin only requires a valid sig-signature. Who generated the signature doesn't matter. It could be a dog, it could" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "56:53", "start": 3412.89, "text": "like a group of people and so on. Like, like identity shouldn't matter for, for those kind of things, and I think also for, for example, for discussing ideas and stuff like that, I also think it shouldn't matter, you know? Like, I'm, I'm a huge fan of, of pen names and, and just people throwing out ideas and discussing them and not focusing so much on the people." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:10", "start": 3430.36, "text": "Yeah, and that's a interesting advice for people out there who might wanna start writing in the space or maybe they wanna get hired in the space, maybe they're thinking, how But you've got a name and a profile within the space, despite not doxing your real name and real face out to the world. So that's an example that other people can look at. And even things like if you go to a Bitcoin meetup, you could, you could sort of make sure you don't tell your real name or you might have a nickname that you go by that you're known as, someone like, say, like Openoms." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "57:43", "start": 3463.02, "text": "It's also, also the old tricks, you know, just put on a hat and put on sunglasses and no one will recognize you. It actually, it I think people underestimate, the, the facial recognition software that humans are running. But, you know, like speaking of that point, we are living in a world now where, we have superhuman facial recognition software and also speech recognition and all of it. So I think all of this should be taken into consideration if you're thinking about, you know, like just thinking about doing something online, you know, because, for example, I can, I can take your face, take a screenshot, and put it into a reverse, image Search engine, and there are special engines that do reverse, facial recognition search, and I will find, you know, your profiles and your LinkedIn profile and, and everything. Like this, this already works, and people, people should just be aware of it and then do with that information what they want and make their own decisions. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:38", "start": 3518.44, "text": "Yeah. Very good" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "58:40", "start": 3519.66, "text": "tips there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:41", "start": 3520.64, "text": "Alright, so as we finish up then, what's your, I guess, outlook over the next, you know, next year or so? What do you have any thoughts about what's coming to Bitcoin or what you'd" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "58:52", "start": 3532.25, "text": "I think Bitcoiners will continue to be right. I think that might be a nice summary. I think more money will come in definitely. I think, once we truly surpass the all, all time highs, more and more people will realize, okay, Bitcoin isn't dead. Again, you know, what's going on. I think, I, I think every individual needs like two or three touch points with Bitcoin, and then it really clicks sometimes, you know? Some people need four or five or, or just, you know, go the opposite direction, still think it's Stupid, but it's very hard to get Bitcoin at, at like the first point. And I think culturally, as like a global society, we will have, a lot of people will have the third touch point with Bitcoin, you know? Like there was Mt. Gox, there was 2017, and I think the next one is coming. And I think for a lot of people it will click, and I think for a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of power, it will click as well, and they will make the big moves" }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "59:53", "start": 3592.61, "text": "Well, I, I didn't expect, nation states coming in so quickly. Like, I'm still very surprised that this happened, like so early. I was, I was having this on my calendar for like, twenty twenty-four, twenty twenty-five, something like that. And here we are, a couple of years early, and El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, and you can go to the McDonald's and, you know, pay your cheeseburger with Lightning and, and, and all of it." }, { "speaker": "gigi", "time": "01:00:17", "start": 3617.54, "text": "I think this is, yeah, I think it's both, both I worry Bitcoin is that things are happening too quickly, because it, it will need some time for, a shared understanding to emerge, for, like sensible legislation, for example, to emerge, for people to know what they are doing, for, you know, just the liquidity to kind of flow into the system and, you know, also the volatility to decline and, and so on and so forth. And I think also Lightning and higher layers, just need time to develop and grow and, be battle tested You know, like there is a lot of value on Lightning already, and, it feels to me like it was yesterday when the, the Lightning white paper came out, you know? So everything happened insanely quickly. In terms of wallets and, user experiences, again, I think it will get easier to use, and I think also that, just for example, setting up your own multisig, it's already way, way, way easier than it was like one and a half years ago, you know? Like people will actually be able to do this. I'm, I I expect this to happen as well, where you, you know, like, you have a child and you time lock a few sets away for like fourteen years and then, again for eighteen years and again for twenty-one years, and that's like, you know, I, I think that would be a very nice thing to do. But of course, all of this, comes with certain risks. I'm, again, I'm most excited about Lightning and- Stuff built on Lightning kind of, so a lot of experiments were already built, like Sphigcat and other things you discussed a lot on your, on your show, where, you just have encrypted communication built on top of the Lightning network, which is a very censorship-resistant network. So I think this will be very important for a free society to have these kind of tools. And I think, I'm super bullish, for example, on new monetization models that are currently emerging, like the value of- Value model championed, by Adam Curry and just podcasting two point o, where you can stream sats, and, you know, you can, you can boost if you like something, which is like clapping with your sats, and you can send small little messages like boostergrams, and you can just, you know, set the Satoshi amount you want to stream per minute, and you can support creators directly, and I think this will completely destroy the advertising model, or at least change it in a very meaningful way, and I see this not only for podcasts, but happening across all media, As well, it will be very easy to integrate Lightning in all those platforms, and I think more and more platforms will integrate Lightning, you know, just like we saw Twitter integrated Lightning tipping natively, you know, not, not everyone, and not, not in the perfect way, you know, but like, you know, the Bitcoiners are up in arms that it's not perfect on the first day, but I think it will, it will get perfected over time, and I think more and more platforms will integrate that. And yeah, that's, that's where I see things heading." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:06", "start": 3786.85, "text": "Fantastic. Well d e r g i g i dot com or follow him on Twitter, same handle, d e r g i g i. Thanks very much, Gigi. It was great to chat with you. Thanks for having me again, Stefan. Get the show notes at stefanlivera dot com slash three one three. Make sure you subscribe to the show so you get regular episodes learning about Bitcoin, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }