{ "episodeId": "SLP479", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "jess_jonas": { "name": "Jess Jonas", "role": "guest", "tag": "JESS" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.53, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics, brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Today's episode is with Jess Jonas. She is the chief legal officer of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, and as you may know, there are some lawsuits on against Bitcoin developers, and I thought it would be interesting to get an update on where they're at and what does it mean for the- future of Bitcoin and open source development. This show is brought to you by Swann dot com. Are you a business owner or entrepreneur? Have you considered future proofing your business by stacking Sats as part of your business, nonprofit or trust balance sheet? You can use Swann's Bitcoin treasury services to help you out here, or if you are interested in using the Bitcoin benefit plan, if you've got employees and you would like to pay out a set amount of Bitcoin to them every month, and remember, with Swann, Swann can help you along the pathway for this by helping set up wallets, help Doing the education and help onboard your employees to having this Bitcoin benefit plan. So if this sounds interesting to you, whether you want to stack Sats as part of your business balance sheet or you want to engage in the Bitcoin benefit plan for your employees, go to swan dot com slash business. Now, for those people who like to watch the mempool, which should be you if you are sending Bitcoin on-chain transactions, mempool dot space is my favorite place to do this. They are a comprehensive Bitcoin explorer that covers the ecosystem from multiple layers. The mempool, you can see the blockchain, you can search transactions, you can even see what kind of fee rate you should be attaching to your transaction, and of course, you can even view second layer networks like the Lightning Network. With mempool.space, you can host it yourself, it's free and open source software, and if you are with an enterprise, mempool.space offers custom mempool instances, you can have your company's branding, increased API limits, and more. Go find out more over at mempool.space/enterprise. Now, as we all know in Bitcoin, not your keys, not" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:00", "start": 120.0, "text": "Hardware, products and accessories that you can use to help secure your Bitcoin, most notably the Coldcard. This is my favorite hardware device, you can use it in all kinds of configurations, it's very reliable, and it's actually quite easy if you just directly plug it into a computer, if you're a beginner. Now, of course, if you're a more intermediate or advanced, you can use it in all kinds of different configurations, whether you wanna have a duress pin, a brick me pin, a pin that bricks the device when you input that pin, you can use it as part of multi-sign" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:30", "start": 150.1, "text": "About Bitcoin, make sure you've got a backup there. So go to Coincard dot com, use code Livera for a discount on your cold cards. And now, onto the show. Hi, Jess, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "02:40", "start": 159.69, "text": "Hi, thanks for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:41", "start": 161.11, "text": "So the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, and, it's, certainly a lot of things that have been going on with that, and, yeah, interested to chat a little bit about that. Do you wanna just give us a little bit of a background on yourself so, we know who you are?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "02:57", "start": 176.8, "text": "Sure. So, I'm the chief legal officer of the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund. I am a lawyer, and I've been practicing as a lawyer for over a decade now. For the last several years, I have worked in different in-house positions with financial institutions, both at a crypto company as well as traditional finance. So I've sort of run the gamut in the financial sphere as a lawyer, and now I'm working in this position as the lead lawyer for a non-profit Organization." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:28", "start": 207.76, "text": "Got it. And so what is the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "03:31", "start": 210.84, "text": "The Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit that was established by Jack Dorsey, Alex Morcos, and Martin White to help Bitcoin developers with their legal needs. As you know, and I know we're gonna talk about this in a little while, several individual Bitcoin developers were sued, in lawsuits in the UK, and these talented individuals are shaping the future of Finance and technology, and they deserve the freedom to innovate without the constant threat of legal action. So the fund, by providing legal support, allows them to focus on what really matters, which is building technologies that will create a better future for all of us." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:16", "start": 256.29, "text": "I see, yeah. And as I understand, the way these things work is somebody with a lot of resources can really force you to spend a lot of your own resources in defense, right? that's, is that, is that like a fair characterization of how these things work?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "04:30", "start": 270.14, "text": "Well, yes. you know, I, I wish I could say that the legal system is set up in such a way to quickly and efficiently deal with individuals who bring lawsuits that essentially are weaponizing the court system, but the legal system here in the US and in the UK and essentially all over the world, when somebody brings a claim, the court has to hear the claim until they can come to the point where the claim is adjudicated, either dismissed or what have you. So unfortunately, you know, even claims that are frivolous, the court system has to deal with, and you're absolutely right, somebody has a lot of money or has a lot of resources behind them that can create quite a lot of problems for the people who are being sued." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:22", "start": 322.19, "text": "Okay, gotcha. And I suppose it also gets a bit more technical in this case because- We're dealing with Bitcoin, open source, and there's all these aspects where now part of the barrier is, or part of the difficulty is to actually educate at the same time to also win an argument at the same time." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "05:39", "start": 339.22, "text": "That's right. The subject matter that the court system is dealing with is, you know, the, the legal area is somewhat uncomplicated, but the- Factual underpinnings of the case are extremely complicated, extremely technologically difficult for people to understand, and so there's an aspect of this is making sure that we are properly educating the court about how the technology works and what that means in a way that's comprehensible to somebody who isn't a software developer, who doesn't live and breathe Bitcoin, and I like to say when I'm talking to our outside counsel or I'm talking to The developers, you can use me as a proxy for the court, because I myself am not an expert in the technology, I'm a lawyer, and if I look something and I read it and I say, \"Uh, this doesn't, this doesn't make any sense to me,\" then it's probably not gonna make sense to the court. So being able to speak about how the technology works and what the developers do and why that's meaningful in this case is really critical." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:46", "start": 405.7, "text": "Yeah. Okay. So let's get into some of the- Detail in this specific case, as I understand, the main case we're talking about here is the, it's known as the, Tulip Trading case or Tulip Trading Limited, v. Bitcoin Association for bsv and others. So could you give us a bit of a background here just to help us understand what's going on?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "07:05", "start": 425.4, "text": "Okay, sure. So, Tulip Trading is a company that is owned and operated by Craig Wright, and Tulip Trading brought a lawsuit against several individual Bitcoin developers alleging breach of fiduciary duty. essentially Wright claims that, Bitcoin isn't in fact decentralized, and as a result, people who work on the software should be compelled by the court to aid him in accessing funds that he claims to have owned and claims to have lost due to computer hacking. And the story of, you know, the alleged, hack he suffered is sort of like this salacious open, Ocean's Eleven style hack he claims that's, you know, this thing happened and that thing happened and that thing happened and then he lost one hundred and eleven thousand Bitcoin. But ultimately, the story isn't really what's important. What's important is that he has brought a claim in the UK that the courts are willing to hear, alleging that these individuals should be recognized as an ad hoc class of fiduciary. And just for context, because m-most people don't live and breathe all the duties that exist under the law, the English court has said that a fiduciary duty is a duty of single-minded- Loyalty, where the fiduciary is obligated to put the principal's best interests above all others, including their own. This is an exceptional obligation, far beyond any ordinary duty of care to deal honestly or without negligence. In fact, it is the highest duty of care under the law. So, you know, essentially what this case is about is, it's, it's a tort, it's a, you know, it's a tort case. Somebody was injured, and they're looking, allegedly injured, and they're looking for re- Recourse. But, you know, factually, both the claim itself is questionable and the remedy that Tulip Trading is seeking is also, you know, it, it doesn't make a lot of sense if you understand how Bitcoin works. It doesn't make sense because even if the court were to find that a fiduciary duty is owed, and I wanna come back to that because it's sort of a very critical piece, and, you know, has really no-- it doesn't make any sense under the two hundred plus years of legal theory on duties. Even if the court were to go that far, which we, we don't think will happen, the remedy that Tulip is seeking here is just impossible. Essentially, the remedy that Tulip is seeking is they're asking the court to demand that a group of individuals write a backdoor into the code that would allow Tulip to gain access over these funds, and that's just not how Bitcoin works. It undercuts the entire conceit of Bitcoin, and, you know, taking it a little bit farther If Wright is who he claims to be, he could write this patch, but all that would do is essentially fork the software. So there are-- that, you know, this is sort of a very surface explanation of what's going on here, but The reason why I'm bringing it up is to point out that this is a very-- this, this case has a lot of frailties, both factually and legally, and the fact that it is where it is is sort of makes all of us question how, how can the court system continue to allow this abuse? How can the court system allow itself to be used as a weapon?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:09", "start": 669.47, "text": "Yeah. So as I understand, this suit is being brought against a dozen Bitcoin developers, and some other people also, and yeah, it just doesn't seem to make sense, right? Because he's trying to claim coins that, yeah, I mean, I'm sort of, I'm curious, like, okay, so even on their own terms, even setting aside the fiduciary duty part, even setting aside, you know, that such a thing would just be crazy Whose coins is he claiming to hold, right? Because if they were stol-- if they were, quote unquote, stolen, they were somebody else, and they may have now passed hands multiple times, how would it even-- how would it even make sense to try and claim coins that have probably now passed multiple times, passed ownership multiple times?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "11:54", "start": 713.74, "text": "Well, the, the-- there are two wallets in this case that he claims to have owned. one of the wallets, and I would probably have to fact-check this, but if I recall- Wallet, one of the wallets, which is a well known wallet, it's the one Fiechs wallet." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:10", "start": 730.05, "text": "yep, yep." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "12:11", "start": 730.75, "text": "Hasn't had, yeah, so you're nodding, you know what I'm talking about. That's one of the wallets that he claims he owned, which was stolen. That wallet is the subject of, you know, everything that's going on with the Mount Gox bankruptcy, and there's been no activity in that wallet since, I don't know, 2011 or something like that, so- You know, as I said, there are factual frailties in this case which will be adjudicated and bored out. But this case, the, the way it works in the legal system, both in the US and in the, in the UK, if you're trying to get rid of a case summarily, which means before you've gone through the presentation of facts and evidence, the court is obligated to take the facts as alleged by the claimant as true. So there has been no opportunity up until the defend- had put in their defense a couple weeks ago for the defendants to contradict any of the allegations made by Tulip in the statement of claim. Because that's how the case has to make a decision summarily. They have to make an assumption that the facts are true, and on the basis of those facts, where does the case go? Now we're at a place in the case where the defendants are able to put in their defense and actually contradict the state, the claims that have been made by Tulip in this case." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:33", "start": 812.75, "text": "Gotcha. And so have the individuals actually been named or are they all anonymous here?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "13:37", "start": 817.43, "text": "They haven't been named, like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:38", "start": 818.25, "text": "as in the-- They" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "13:39", "start": 818.83, "text": "haven't been named. Okay," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:40", "start": 820.03, "text": "gotcha." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "13:41", "start": 820.51, "text": "And I think another curious- thing of many curious things about this case, but another curious thing is that doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why these twelve Bitcoin developers were named. It's You know, it's not every Bitcoin developer that works on Bitcoin Core. It's not the quote-unquote most important Bitcoin developers who work on Bitcoin Core. It's sort of just an amorphous group of Bitcoin developers who work on Bitcoin Core, plus other developers who work on other protocols. So, you know, there's even a question mark as to why, why was this the group that was selected? Why are these individuals who are essentially being punished for working on free open source software?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:24", "start": 864.23, "text": "Yeah, and so, well, I guess that, that's, that's really the question, as you're saying, we don't know why, but, is it that, individuals have been chosen based on who is like popular or influential or, so that, you know, it, it, it's like, trying to send a message, to, to the maximum number of people?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "14:41", "start": 881.38, "text": "I mean, I can't, I, I would never presume to know the inner workings of Craig Wright's brain, but many of the individuals who were named don Quite a long time. So as I said, there doesn't seem to really be any rhyme or reason as to why these were selected, but I do think it's worthwhile to say," }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "15:07", "start": 906.7, "text": "some of the things that Wright has said publicly about what he's doing here and why. So, he has declared publicly that he is the punishment of God in cryptocurrency, and he's threatened nuclear Armageddon and jihad against those who don't share his view that BSV isn't the only true Bitcoin. He's also made public comments abusive of the defendants in this case and evincing his intention to cause them personal devastation. He's devastation. He's-- Some of these things that he said include, \"The cases will be like a lottery. Most BTC developers will fold, a few will be bankrupted, lose their families and collapse, and I will personally hunt every dev until they are broke, bankrupted," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:04", "start": 964.27, "text": "Wow, that's, very confronting. And so what's the timeline here? So I, I was just looking on the website, it looks like he, he alleges that he lost access in 2020, and then, you know, this has been playing out for years now." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "16:19", "start": 979.04, "text": "Right. So he brought a lawsuit, and the first thing that happened in the Tulip Trading lawsuit was a jurisdictional challenge. So many of the developers who have been dragged into court in London don't live in the UK, many of them are US residents. The test to, exert jurisdiction over a foreign individual in the UK is very different than it is in the US. And so the first thing that happened in that case was a jurisdictional challenge. Essentially, the defendant said, \"You don't have jurisdiction over us, you can't sue us in the UK.\" And the lower court, in response to that jurisdictional challenge, found in favor of the defendants and essentially said, \"You know, this case should be dismissed as against them.\" Tulip appealed that decision, and the appellate court found in a decision that came out earlier this year that in fact there was jurisdiction. On the basis that the court thinks it's an important question as to whether Bitcoin is indeed decentralized and, open source developers like these Bitcoin developers should owe fiduciary duty to people who use their code. So it was sort of, you know, typical of what you would see in appellate decisions, sort of. So anyway, it survived the jurisdictional challenge essentially as a result of this appellate decision finding that it is an important question, I'm using air quotes, that the UK court should answer. And so now we are into the substantive case. So that's why, why when I said before, when a judge is reviewing a case And making a decision summarily, they are only able to make a decision based on the facts as alleged by the claimant. Now we're in the substantive stage of the case, which means we're actually, you know, going to fight about what are the facts and what law should apply to those facts." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:10", "start": 1090.23, "text": "I see. And so the actual trial is yet to occur, right? That's, that's in the future?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "18:16", "start": 1095.81, "text": "That's right. I, I don't know exactly when it would happen. It would certainly be in twenty twenty, at the earliest in twenty twenty For, potentially twenty twenty-five, but I'd say that's sort of the, the outside window." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:30", "start": 1110.28, "text": "I see, yeah. and I think people might also be curious, is there any relation between this case and what people might have seen other very publicized cases with involving Hodler Nort and with Peter McCormack? Is there any relation in there or is it like a totally independent thing here?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "18:46", "start": 1125.73, "text": "These, these cases are totally independent of each other, and the only relationship that exists is You were to find one is that they were all essentially brought by the same person or representatives of the same person. It's all being driven by Craig Wright, but that's the only relationship. These places aren't linked and they're not formally related at all." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:06", "start": 1146.28, "text": "I say, yeah. So it's sort of, I'm curious, does that play into, well, could that play into the judge's, decision as well? Because he might see that this same individual is sort of going after all these people, and claiming all kinds of, you know, big-- making all these very big claims that, you know, it's sort of difficult to believe all of these different claims, right?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "19:30", "start": 1169.54, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I, I would hope that the judge would take into account the sort of macro things that are going on, but The, the judge is obligated to sort of review the case in front of him or her" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:46", "start": 1186.08, "text": "in each case individually. Right. So," }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "19:48", "start": 1188.36, "text": "you know, it would probably be somewhat inappropriate, but there are avenues to have- a litigant de-de-declared an abuse of litigant, for example, in which case that would be taken into account, and they would have a lot of trouble continuing to bring claims. I, I will say the system in the US is, is different in that abusive litigants are, it's easier to essentially have somebody deemed an abusive litigant. It's not what it's called in the US, but, you know, the judges might take that into account a little bit more freely than they seem to in the UK. The, the, the UK courts seem to give quite a lot of rope to claimants. And it's us American attorneys find it somewhat flabbergasting how the system works over there. It just seems so different from our system, but at the same time, our system is overburdened. So there just isn't as much time, the dockets are overflowing. maybe it's different in the UK, maybe there, there's the dockets aren't overflowing like they are here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:55", "start": 1255.35, "text": "Yeah, I see. and so bringing back to the open source licensing question and the MIT license, you mentioned As well that there, you know, there might be some implications there, or it's been said that there might be some implications there for other developers, even for non Bitcoin things. What kind of, what are those implications?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "21:14", "start": 1274.17, "text": "Yeah. So, I, I-- This is a great moment to sort of transition away from Bitcoin for a moment and think about the wider and graver implications, if the English courts were to find that open source developers code owe a fiduciary duty to the users of their software. So in practical terms, this could potentially mean that such developers could become fiduciaries to users of software that they contributed to. To without any formality or assumption of duty. It could mean that a developer could undertake such a role without knowledge of who their principles are and how many there are or what jurisdictions they're located. Something like this is sort of unknown, uncapped Potential liability would certainly have a chilling effect on the willingness of software developers to agree to involve themselves in open source projects going forward. The risk would just be too high. and, you know, just as a reminder, I, I always find Having some numbers around this to be helpful, ninety-seven percent of the world's software runs on open source. So, you know, the implications of this are extremely broad to the world at large, if, if, if The potential downside for working on open source software is that you could be dragged into court and a stranger could allege that you owe them some sort of duty and that you are obligated to save them or make them whole or, Put yourself in front, put your interest behind their interest. No one would do it, right? What, what, what would be the point of taking that risk? So, you know, those are the potential implications for the fiduciary duty claim, but there also is a challenge to the MIT license here and in one of the other cases that were- Fighting inherently, there's a challenge because Bitcoin was released under the MIT license, and the MIT license has some pretty strong protections, and I just wanna read it, because I think it's, it's important what the text of the license said, says, \"The software is provided as is without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages, or other liability, whether in action of contract, tort, or otherwise, arising from, out of, or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software. So that's a pretty strong license, and it is a very broadly used license in the open source community. There are several open source licenses, including the MIT license, and without the protections of these open source Licenses like the MIT license, again, people just wouldn't take the risk. It would be too high to write open source software, o-offer it to the public for free without any sort of protection for the work that you're doing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:35", "start": 1475.31, "text": "And in many cases, it's volunteer work as well, so it's important to point that out. Like, in many cases, it's unpaid work, so it's, it's sort of like a double whammy negative because you might be this unpaid volunteer developer trying to contribute to a project and then And then later, some-somewhere down the line, somebody says, \"Ah, you made a mistake here, or you did this thing wrong,\" and not even a mistake, but just you didn't do it the way I wanted, and now reassign things to me, right? It's, it's just completely, breathtaking to see how far it's even gotten, and I think- Especially in the case of someone like Craig Wright, I think a lot of Bitcoiners have rightly or wrongly thought, \"Oh, I'm just gonna push that out of my mind, I'm not gonna mention that because, you know, he's crazy, I'm giving him ammunition.\" But then what unfortunately seems to happen is a lot of media just take him seriously and take his claims at face value that he is somehow, you know, this, authority or the, the, you know, and because in some sense he's been out there un-unchallenged, right? In the media," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:37", "start": 1536.61, "text": "Tricky thing because people don't wanna stick their head above the parapet and, you know, risk getting shot, but they also don't wanna just leave him unchallenged, right?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "25:46", "start": 1546.16, "text": "That's, that's exactly right. He's a litigious guy who comes after people, and he has been the prominent voice in this space, spinning his yarns. And you're absolutely right, a lot of people don't wanna, Stick their head above the parrot pit, and at the same time, you know, I think there's a level of laziness in the reporting about this as well. Dig deeper. The information is all out there, it's all public. You know, his claims have been discredited, both in the court of law in a case in, in Norway, as well as, through, through the," }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "26:25", "start": 1584.81, "text": "evidence being uncovered that it's just impossible for what he says to be the case to be true. And so- So, you know, the information is out there, it just takes somebody, somebody just needs to read it and pay attention to understand that this is, this, these, these claims have been disproven and will continue to be disproven. And if you, you know, it would be great to, to sort of not, not give this fellow airtime, because he's proven himself not to be worthy of our limited attention, but, you know, regardless of the fact that These lawsuits are frivolous and these claims he's made have been discredited. We have to take them seriously because what's at stake in these cases, and in other cases as well. Raises, raises an existential threat to Bitcoin and open source development more broadly. And if the UK court is willing to take his claim seriously, then we better be ready to fight back forcefully. I, I wish it weren't the case that somebody could wreak so much havoc. And do so using what we believe to be, you know, our judicial system, what we believe to be the thing that stands up high above everything else, that stands up for right and wrong and makes those decisions. But that's what's been happening, and it will continue to happen, and so we need to fight back and show once and for all that this is, that, that, that this, this This story, is these allegations, these claims are not true. These stories are fabrications. They have been proven to be fabrications, they will continue to be proven to be fabrications. There's no more room for this sort of abuse. Why don't we, why don't we spend time on something more important?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:14", "start": 1693.63, "text": "I see. And so coming back to what I was, what we were talking about before, the technical complexity and, intricacies of this, maybe that's also part of why it's- It's difficult for people to understand why it's impossible, and so then is there a bit of a luck of the draw aspect here that we're hoping that the judge is a little more tech savvy and able to grasp the concepts, you know, of what's going on here with open source, how it works, and Bitcoin and hard forks and soft forks and, and how just the things that are being claimed aren't, you know, either not possible or just not feasible, in terms of what, you know, quote unquote, should be happening?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "28:53", "start": 1733.13, "text": "I have faith that the judge will understand this. Part of our job is to give the information to the judge in a way that's comprehensible and digestible, and so if we do our job, we, we believe that the judge will, will understand it. And we'll be able to make the right decision on the real facts, and that, you know, and we will come out victorious." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:16", "start": 1755.67, "text": "Got it. And I think the other aspect, as I'm sure, and I'm sure you'll, you'll explain this in, in your defenses, some comments related around soft forks and hard forks, but it just, it seems-- I mean, to, to some of us who are more, let's say, in the Bitcoin world, it's kind of breathtaking to think that this is even-- that you would even think this is possible, right? Because obviously, If a bunch of Bitcoin core developers said, \"Let's just like put in some kind of, you know, as you said, a backdoor or some kind of special, hard fork to reallocate the access of coins from, you know, some people to another person,\" there's no obligation that the network would run it. And so it clearly just, you know, there's just no, it's just infeasible. The very idea of it is infeasible. But I understand where, let's say, if you're talking to a judge or somebody who's not really in this world" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:08", "start": 1807.66, "text": "person who says it's possible or that it is feasible when in actuality it's not." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "30:13", "start": 1812.91, "text": "Yeah, so that's why I was saying before, the remedy that Tulip is seeking in this case is fundamentally flawed. It is impossible for- This remedy to be exacted, even if ordered by the court, even if, even if, even if it's not possible, the court cannot order the whole world to run this fork, right? Everybody decides what type of Bitcoin software is the type for them. it isn't up to these developers or any other developers to make that decision for the public that uses Bitcoin. And I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding, and there has been, you know, some reporting recently about how Bitcoin works and, you know, if there's a group of people who control Bitcoin. And I think, as you're saying, this is a complicated concept that's not being- Explained in a way that the public can understand, but the point is, the takeaway is, is that these developers don't quote unquote control Bitcoin. In fact, nobody quote unquote controls Bitcoin. The people who quote unquote control Bitcoin are the people who decide what type of Bitcoin software client they are going to run. And that's the story. So if this backdoor is created and it creates a fork of the network, people can decide to run that fork, and that'll be fine. People can decide to use a different fork, and that'll be fine. But there's nothing that the court could do, or indeed the developers could do, that could force everybody onto a different chain. That's just not how-- it's just not how the software works." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:53", "start": 1913.03, "text": "Right. can you give us an idea of the cost of running this kind of- Defense. Is there like a ballpark figure you can give people or some context you can give for people to understand the costs involved?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "32:07", "start": 1926.75, "text": "Sure. So for people who are unfamiliar with the court system in the UK, it's very different than the court system in the US in that there are two different types of lawyers in the UK. There are solicitors and there are barristers. So in the US, if you're sued, you need to hire a lawyer and- That person can appear in court on your behalf and argue your case from start to finish. You will pay one lawyer, if you're at a firm, maybe a few, but essentially you only need one. In the UK, you need two lawyers, because only barristers can appear in court, and solicitors are there to sort of liaise with the client and opposing counsel. So right off the bat, you're necessarily paying for two individuals to represent you minimum. Also, in the UK, they have what's called the English rule, which is essentially a fee shifting rule that we don't have in the US. In the US, we have the American rule, which means everybody pays their own legal bills unless there's, you know, some statute or contractual provision that requires otherwise. In the UK, they have a loser pays rule, which means that throughout the court- course of a case, there will be decisions where one party wins and the other party loses in, you know, in, in whole or in part, and then the fees will shift. So throughout the case, fees are being sort of paid back and forth for services that have been performed to get up to that point. So this is all to say that it's an extremely expensive proposition to litigate in the UK, and for any point of the case where you may be unsuccessful, you will be paying A portion of the other side's fees for those minimum two lawyers that they need to have to represent them. Litigation that goes all the way through to trial, it's in the many millions of dollars." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:54", "start": 2033.64, "text": "Okay, yeah. And, that's financially, and then of course, there's an emotional or psychological stress or toll that it takes on the individuals, and that's also a difficult thing as well, because if you are a contributor and it's, you're trying to, you know, do Bitcoin code or other open source code while at the same time- Same time you have this legal battle hanging over your head, that's another whole thing too." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "34:17", "start": 2056.58, "text": "That's right. And several developers who have been named in this case have said, privately or publicly, that they're no longer going to work on the software because it's just not worth it. So as I said before, it has a chilling effect on the development of these important technologies. We're already seeing it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:38", "start": 2077.53, "text": "Yeah, and that's a real shame as well, because in the Bitcoin context Long time contributors' knowledge is extremely valuable, right? So this is one of those things where, there are different projects where maybe newer individuals can come by and make certain contributions, but I think with Bitcoin, because of the accumulated history and the way it works, the technical complexity, and the fact that the machine is, you know, they're trying to change the plane while it's in the air aspect, like the network is running, you can't really take it down, that it's very difficult to find people who have built up enough time and knowledge about how The different aspects of the code work, and so that's also another difficulty there. So certainly it would be good, if, individuals can get defended or have, community funded defense, or, in this case, looks like, Jack and, Alex and, was it Malcolm, have, also helped fund this case. so do you wanna just talk a little bit about, if there's any way for listeners to help or chip in?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "35:36", "start": 2136.35, "text": "Sure. So we have been community funding now, we've been doing it for a few weeks, we've been taking outside donations, and we think, we think it's important for people to have skin in the game. It isn't so much about raising enough money to support the defense, although that would be terrific. It's about making sure that the community that cares about this, that uses Bitcoin, that believes in the technology, that believes in the importance of open source, has skin in the game, even if it's- Ten dollars. It's important to buy into what we're doing because what we're doing is really important, and it's important to people who care about Bitcoin, who don't care about Bitcoin, who like Bitcoin, who hate Bitcoin. It really has sort of existential, it, it, it is an existential threat, and we need people to buy into what we're doing. So that's the reason why we're fundraising, and anybody who wants to contribute, we would be grateful for your contributions. You can contribute via Bitcoin. Bitcoin or fiat on our website, which is bitcoindefense dot org, and, you know, we just are happy to have people supporting what we're doing, supporting these devs in their fight for what's right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:51", "start": 2210.92, "text": "Fantastic. actually, one other area just to touch on, there's, as I understand, there's another case, the database rights case. So do you wanna just quickly overview that as well? Although of course, it, it involves, the same individual, Craig Wright. could you just give us an overview there briefly?" }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "37:05", "start": 2225.33, "text": "Sure, sure. So this is a case which, Craig Wright is bringing his individual capacity against a similar group of Bitcoin developers, as well as some institutions. So, Coinbase is also named as a defendant in this case, as is Block, as is Copa, Blockstream, and some others. So, in this case, Wright is alleging that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. So in this case, he's alleging that he's Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and that as consequence, he's claiming that he owns the copyright in the Bitcoin white paper and the database rights in the Bitcoin blockchain. database rights are a type of obscure property right that we don't have in the US, but in any event, he's claiming that his copyright and database rights are being breached and seeking injunctive relief to prevent certain developers and exchanges and intermediaries, which he considers are responsible For Bitcoin from continuing to work on Bitcoin without obtaining a license from him to do so. Now, this case is in very early stages, we've only just filed our defense in this case about a month ago, and there are several things going-- and, and the other defendants in this case, not all of them have filed their defenses yet, so it's still, as I said, very early stages. there are a few different things going on in this case, but one thing that I think is important to point out is that when Satoshi- Nakamoto first released Bitcoin, they did so under the MIT license. So, you know, there, I think there are quite a few factual and legal frailties in this case And this is something we talked about a little bit already, but, you know, even so, even though Bitcoin was originally released under the MIT license, and now Wright is claiming that to continue working on Bitcoin or using Bitcoin, people need to obtain a different license directly from him, even though that claim seems pretty lu-ludicrous given the known facts. The developers and other industry participants are being put to significant expense of having to respond to these claims, and respond they must in order to protect the industry at large." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:22", "start": 2361.55, "text": "Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it just seems, like all these crazy claims and kind of a lot of the same material that we spoke about earlier about things that are just not feasible and not realistic and just not in line with the facts and the history of wh-what things were, how things were put into, you know, the, the- Commons, right, in the, in the open source. And so, yeah, certainly probably a lot of the same, kind of, pieces, talking points, arguments will apply, but also a lot more costs, I'm sure. So, okay, well, I think, yeah, I think those are probably the key points. Do you, do you have any, I guess, kind of closing thoughts for listeners there? and, we'll, we'll leave it there." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "40:00", "start": 2400.2, "text": "Closing thoughts. Thank you for tuning in, thank you for supporting us. I think what we're doing is important. I think it's important to make sure that the court systems are used for good. And not ill, and that we support people who are doing the important work of building free open source software for the public. I think it's important to remember that in the US, software is protected speech. So what we're fighting for here isn't just Bitcoin, it's not just open source software development, it's for fundamental freedoms such as freedom of speech." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:34", "start": 2433.88, "text": "Excellent. Well, yeah, listeners, I'll make sure I'll put the links in the show notes at bitcoindefense dot org and Jess, thank you for joining me. And, helping explain, what's going on here." }, { "speaker": "jess_jonas", "time": "40:43", "start": 2442.67, "text": "Thank you so much for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:45", "start": 2444.73, "text": "Get the show notes at stephanelivera dot com. Thanks for listening, and I will see you in the Citadel." } ] }