{ "episodeId": "SLP81", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "dan_held": { "name": "Dan Held", "role": "guest", "tag": "DAN" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 9.15, "text": "Hi and welcome to the Stefan Livera podcast focused on Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Learn the economics and technology of Bitcoin. So today for episode eighty one, my guest is Dan Held, and we're talking about this idea of whether Bitcoin security is fine. But first, a quick word for my sponsors. So first, Kraken. Over my years in Bitcoin, I've been impressed with the way Kraken operate. They have a very strong focus on security and acting ethically in the space under Jesse Powell's leadership. They are one of the longest standing Bitcoin exchanges since two thousand eleven, and they're consistently rated the best with a high quality platform offering the best liquidity in the industry. They've got high trading volume and low fees, no minimum or hidden fees. Kraken have twenty four seven support and on the institutional and business solution side, they're very popular with institutions as well, funds, asset management, trading firms, crypto businesses. Kraken offer the highest available APR rate limits, there's a Kraken OTC desk, Kraken offer five fiat currencies and also offer margin and futures trading. To learn more and sign up, go to the Kraken link in the show notes. Secondly, have you looked into Unchained Capital? They're a Bitcoin financial company offering a really cool two of three keys multi-signature vault product. You can use Trezor or Ledger wallets, and you still maintain control with your two keys and reduce the single point of failure risk. Multi-signature helps protect you against the proverbial five dollar wrench attack, as you can distribute your keys. I've set up a vault with Unchained and found it super simple and easy. If you create an Unchained vault, you also get three free months of access to SafetyNet's Bitcoin Standard Research Bulletin. Unchained also offers Bitcoin collateralized loans, allowing you to get US dollar liquidity without selling your loans, meaning you don't trigger a capital gains event. Consider your own scenario, but this can be tax efficient for a hodler, enabling you to continue hodling rather than selling your bitcoins. When that loan is outstanding, your bitcoin is stored in a dedicated multisig address under collaborative custody with Unchained holding one of the keys, you hold a second key, Unchained's independent third party key agent holding the third key. So for those of you who don't know, Dan is a return guest of the show. He is a well known writer and speaker. In the space, he is also a co-founder of the company Interchange. So, onto the interview with Dan. Dan, it's, been a while, but it's a pleasure to have you back on the show, and I've seen you've been quite prolific, writing articles and things." }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "02:30", "start": 150.16, "text": "Yeah, I've, it's been a little while since we last talked. Yeah, glad to be on the show today. And, I've got a couple different pieces I've written in between the last time we talked and now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:40", "start": 160.5, "text": "Exactly, and, I'd love to talk about, this, Bitcoin's security is fine article that you wrote, because obviously this comes up in Bitcoin discussion quite often. Do you wanna just set the context? Why did you write this article?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "02:54", "start": 174.03, "text": "Yeah, so there's a common, common fear in the space that When the block subsidy runs out, and the block subsidy represents the newly minted bitcoins per block, when that runs out, transaction fees alone won't be able to compensate miners properly in order to secure the network adequately. So Essentially, the i-idea being that transaction fees by themselves won't be large enough on an annualized basis or on a, on a per cost basis in order to compensate miners and keep them from being, you know, dishonest." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:28", "start": 207.94, "text": "And it also plays into this idea that if there were censorship, that fees are one way to help keep Bitcoin more censorship resistant, as opposed to the, subsidy model. And, one other point with the subsidy model is, obviously, as most of the listeners probably know, the full subsidy won't run out until 2140, but in practice, the actual amount, it's gonna start becoming very, very small within another, let's say, 12 or so years." }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "03:58", "start": 238.12, "text": "Yeah, I think, ninety-nine percent or so will be minted in the next, like, few decades. So ess- essentially, the block subsidy drops to close to zero. And not, not the actual number, but, you know, very, very small percentage of coins won't-- will, will be minted in the last hundred years of that time period." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:15", "start": 255.01, "text": "Yeah, so it leaves then a bit of runway, then, it's sort of like this idea of, you know, people talk about like burn rate and so on, that there's kind of that ten, fifteen, The revenue must rise as a component of the block reward. But do you wanna-- In your article, you touch on some of the different ways to conceive of security, so you got threshold, stock, and flow. Do you wanna just outline some of that for the listeners?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "04:42", "start": 281.88, "text": "Yeah, no problem. So, you know, first of all, we're not sure exactly how to measure what a proper rate of security or proper level of security or proper value of security would be for the Bitcoin network. We can only hypothesize what it might be, and I think Nick Carter did a really good job, and that's where I pulled this information from, was Nick Carter's presentation at the MIT Bitcoin conference. And what Nick highlighted was three different ways we could come up with, you know, three different, ways we can come up with, valuation for what a security spend might look like. So stock would be as a percentage of all, like as a percentage of market cap. Flow would be a, as a percentage of transaction value, and then, threshold would be a certain level to where Bitcoin, essentially, the security becomes, hits a certain level to where it becomes very, very secure. For example, let's say just a hundred billion dollars. Might be an optimal level, right? So I dug into what I thought might be the most appropriate method, which I think is a combination of stock plus threshold. I think threshold does make sense after a certain while. so sorry, threshold makes, sense after a certain amount of money, because with threshold, you essentially, if you exceed the defense budget or if you exceed some massive amount of money, that only the biggest governments in the world could possibly muster up in terms of wanting to burn that money. I think that gives the Bitcoin network essentially, its permanent status as secure, which would be, you know, you can hypothesize how much this might be, but in the hundreds of billions, I think would probably be that threshold level. and then until that, I think as, as a percentage of stock is, is a really good way to measure it because miners- you know, do-- if you do flow, it's really, really hard to-- I, I think it's, it's not necessarily advantageous to use flow because miners don't play short-term games, they play long-term games. They bought ASICs, they bought electricity, and they-- that gives them, a certain amount of hash power, and that hash power gives them a certa-certain percentage of future block rewards based on competition or difficulty, right? So I, I don't think they're going to play short term games with flow and, you know, try to manipulate transactions on a minute by minute basis or a block by block basis at the expense of their future revenues. So I think, I think stock makes the most sense, which eventually becomes a threshold level." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:15", "start": 435.07, "text": "Excellent. And I think another point that people commonly think of with Bitcoin and the game theory around it is they say, \"Well, part of the reason why it doesn't make sense...\" sense to do a fifty-one percent attack or so on, it's because you can make, if you have legitimate hash power, you can point it at the network and legitimately earn bitcoins out of that. Now, one counterargument, and I think that's kind of what you're getting at with threshold, is certain actors, such as a nation state actor, may not be motivated by bitcoin rewards. They may instead want to neuter or grief the network or stop the network from operating to maintain fiat Dominance. So, do you wanna comment a little on that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "07:59", "start": 478.98, "text": "Yeah, essentially the security spend is the, the, you could come up with a mining revenue number representing whatever, whatever time period that mining revenue is over. mining revenue or the, you know, at a minimum, the cost to mine Bitcoin is a representation of the security of the network, because miners have the option of A, acting properly and receiving their block reward and not disrupting the flow of transactions, or B, engaging in certain sort of behaviors like getting fifty-one percent of the hash power and doing fifty-one percent attacks. Which would damage their long-term cash flows. So there is the threat of a nation state willing to burn the money. And that's where the security spend level reflects the amount of money that a malicious miner, whether it be a nation state or large corporation or individual It represents the value they'd be willing to burn, the, the amount of value that they've sunk in terms of CapEx and, and some OpEx, and essentially the amount of mon-- the, the cost or the amount of money they've sunk into buying these miners, that represents the amount of money they're willing to burn by destroying the value of the network." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:02", "start": 542.05, "text": "Interesting stuff. And the other thing with this is if they were to try This kind of attack, it's not just like, \"Uh, do it once and Bitcoin is dead.\" It's more like, \"Uh, they would need to start it and then sustain this for a long enough time for people to feel like, 'Oh, we failed, it's over, let's give up now.'\"" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "09:21", "start": 560.79, "text": "Totally. Yeah, it's gonna be a sustained attack which requires continuing OpEx, so it's continuing cost as the value of Bitcoin decreases. It won't necessarily succeed, 'cause you can have other people see this attack happening and maybe summon up hash power to defend the network. And You know, if they're a last minute or a last sort of ditch effort, there are measures to deal with malicious miners. I don't think any would be very advantageous, but it would-- it's still not, still not an end kill stroke sort of event. Fifty-one percent attacks don't destroy the Bitcoin network, they simply make processing new transactions very, very difficult. It doesn't destroy the UTXO set, which is the representation of all of our collective time and energy in the form of money that we've decided to store in the Bitcoin ledger. That is the real value. Bitcoin is a UTXO set, which is protected by the thermodynamic guarantee of proof-of-work mining. if that all of a sudden that thermodynamic guarantee gets, gets more complicated or, or gets muddled or gets, you know, has a huge massive attack on it, there are other ways that we can- essentially fork from that moment and then add new rules in our, our system to thwart that attack from the same, same attackers." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:29", "start": 629.32, "text": "Okay. So the other question I think someone might be thinking, if they're not as experienced or knowledgeable, they might be thinking, \"Oh, can't they just use an altcoin?\" So Dan, can you explain exactly why is it that Bitcoin's block space is scarce and unique in that, in that sense?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "10:47", "start": 646.54, "text": "Yeah. So this is, you know, Paul Stork. Oh, sorry, not Paul Storks, but, yeah, it was McIntyre's article that he wrote, which I think did a really fantastic job on quantifying why, you know, essentially quantifying why Bitcoin's block space is a prime real estate and why its block space is unique because of several different reasons. And the reason why he wrote this is because, and this is one of the sections of my article, you know, the reason that he wrote this was a lot of people, especially Roger Ver, point to Bitcoin's block space becoming full and then point to Bitcoin's market dominance dropping, and I think that's Very disingenuous, and in fact, probably intellectually dishonest, in terms of looking at, trying to infer cause and effect. And so I, I don't think that's necessarily the case. And he had a really great quote. Donald McIntyre had a really great quote where he said, \"The sudden multiplication of altcoins and ICOs during the last bull run was a race to mimic the wealth creation that happened in Bitcoin. It wasn't millions of people suddenly using blockchains to transfer money across the world and seeking to minimize those fees.\" I, I thought that was a great quote because he's totally on point here. And so the way that we can look at Bitcoin's unique block space is through a couple different, perspectives. The Bitcoin's block space is u-unique due to its security, its exchange, its volatility, and its coordination. So when you transact, you have to consider all of these factors when you transact across a block space. So some of these, for example, the exchange costs. So when you buy and sell a Bitcoin, I think the most minimal fees you can pay in the US is probably like ten bips. So you're gonna have to pay 10 bips on your transaction across Bitcoin's block space. You're gonna have to pay 10 bips before you even get your Bitcoin, 'cause then when you get your Bitcoin, you have to pay 10 bips on that. So you've got essentially exchange costs, you have the transaction fee itself, which by the way, a transaction fee in compared to real world sort of transactions is too high no matter what the value is. Because when I use Venmo, it's free. When I use my credit card, it's free. When I use cash, it's free. Or at least, it's perceived free. I know there are merchant processing fees that are socialized across all transactors, but it's not explicit. So the idea of even paying a transaction fee in and of itself is actually quite a terrible user experience for any normal consumer. So when someone transacts across a block space They have to, they have to not only factor in transaction fees, but exchange fees and volatility fees. So I buy Bitcoin on a certain date because I wanna go buy pizza with it, and by the time I actually go spend that money on that pizza, or spend my Bitcoin on that pizza, the fluctuation in price or the volatility, that's an added fee as well. And then finally, the coordination. So When you look across, coordinating across multiple different merchants and consumers, there's a convergence upon a sort of standard language or a standard protocol. And the, no one's going to simultaneously think about twenty different cryptocurrencies and, and think about, oh, well, which one has the lowest fee, the transaction fee, volatility fee, and exchange fee today? No one's gonna do that. It converges upon a common sort of language or a common, block space that everyone decides to transact on, and that, that is the Bitcoin. Bitcoin block space. And so that's a, that's a little bit of the highlighting how the unique, you know, Bitcoin's block space in terms of its uni- Now, so that, that, so what I covered there was the costs in-incurd upon a user transacting across a block space, which users aren't simultaneously scanning hundreds of, of blockchains in order to transact. But then as well, we can look at the uniqueness of Bitcoin's block space through a couple other factors which are, is like security. Bitcoin's block space has the highest thermodynamic- Guarantee, each block confirmation, each confirmation permanently cements your transaction in time, and so that essentially is that Bitcoin's block space is unique because it has the highest thermodynamic guarantee, on the exchange cost side. So, exchange fee, you know, Bitcoin slippage, whenever you wanna buy or sell Bitcoin, is the most minimal out of all the other cryptocurrencies, so there will always be, less of, less slippage cost for your, your transaction Bitcoin also has lower volatility. So volatility, it has a really nasty side effect of scaling with the, with the size of your transaction. So a ten percent volatility on your holding period, so I buy it Monday and I sell it Wednesday, let's say I buy and sell Bitcoin on Monday and then I sell, I buy Bitcoin on Monday, I sell it on Wednesday. You know, ten percent on a ten dollar transaction is only a one dollar, you know, volatility fee. but if the transaction was a hundred dollars, a ten percent price movement would be a ten, you know, ten dollar fee, so that can be really, really nasty. And considering that all the other cryptocurrencies have a higher volatility cost than Bitcoin is a hugely detrimental to that block space being equivalent to bitcoins as well. and so that's kind of the, the summary on, on why Bitcoin's block space is unique and then why when people think about transaction fees, they aren't thinking holistically because they also have an exchange fee and volatility fee that they pay." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:15", "start": 975.42, "text": "Excellent articulation there around some of the unconsidered or the costs that aren't so easily front of mind for people when they're just thinking, \"Oh, the price of this is less,\" or \"Oh, the-- just the naively considered transaction fee is less.\" That really they need to consider the, those additional factors, you know, liquidity and so on. so look, let's talk a little bit about your modeling then. So in this article, you go into some of the modeling around why you believe Bitcoin security- is fine. So do you wanna just give an overview on that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "16:48", "start": 1007.89, "text": "Yeah, so to, to be clear, this is a, a very large guesstimate, but this uses the best available data that we have with, I think, conservative assumptions. That's why I made the model available for anyone to go play around with, because I felt this was a, a good first attempt, and other people should take this and criticize it and dig in a little bit deeper. So essentially what I wanted to know was post-block subsidy, so after all the newly- mined bitcoins get created, what will transaction fees look like? And there, there was a, a pretty nice way, a pretty elegant way we can project, future mining, reven- future mi- annual mining revenue. And what we can do is we can look at transaction fees as a percentage of Bitcoin's market cap, and we can look at that percentage over time. And so we've got ten years worth of that data. Approximately ten years worth of that data. as we've, and we can plot that into the future. And what it looks like is that Bitcoin's transaction fees as a percentage of market cap. Are trending to point zero zero one percent annually, so, or one point zero zero one percent daily, which comes out to point three six five percent annually. So that gives us, annual mining, revenue, and we can take that number, so we, we plug in a hypothetical market cap, which I chose ten trillion and a hundred trillion. And then we take that market cap, we multiply it by the projected, annual mining revenue as a percentage, a percentage of the market cap, and then we look at transactions per second on Layer 1. Transactions per second on Layer 1 are very, very hard to come up with an average because transactions can be of different byte sizes, which means there only can be, there could be a varying amount of transactions in a block. So plug in all these assumptions, I plug in as well transaction byte fee efficiency. So over a hundred and twenty years, will we make transactions on layer one smaller? Is essentially what I'm, I'm plugging in there. And then as well, will there be a block size increase in the next hundred and twenty years? And so I plug in a, five x block increase. So I think over 120 years that's somewhat conservative, but I also don't wanna ruffle too many feathers. I'm not proposing a block size increase, I'm just plugging in something into my model, but people are free to plug in a value of no block size increase. And so if we look at, if we look at Bitcoin's market cap at ten trillion with some of the variables that I plugged in, in a post subsidy environment, we're looking at eight dollar transaction fees, in term, in terms of like the median or, or average transaction fee. Certainly some people will, transactors will pay more or less to get their transaction included in the block. So this, this transaction fee that I came up with would be someone with a, I guess, middle time preference or a median- Time preference would be kind of a more appropriate way to, to put it. And then at a hundred trillion dollar market cap, we're looking at eighty dollar transactions. So essentially, you know, I, I think a future where we're We're between eight and eighty dollars is, is totally fine. I think people are more than willing to pay that. And if we want, we can jump into the price, the, the, the, section around price elasticity or, you know, is eighty, eighty dollars reasonable or is it really expensive?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:20", "start": 1219.88, "text": "Yeah, look, let's talk about price elasticity. So, what, what are we getting at in this section?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "20:24", "start": 1224.34, "text": "Yeah, so price elasticity is essentially how much are people willing to pay to transact on Bitcoin's block space? And I think the best way to, to look at this would be to look at other stores of value and then look at the cons- or the transactors price elasticity when they go transact in that other store of value. I think that's probably the best data we, we have, and so what I looked at, there's a few different, ways I, I came up with sort of a, a general price elasticity. One I looked at wiring, fiat dollars in, in the United States, and so domestic wires cost between thirty and forty Forty dollars and sixty-five to eighty dollars internationally, and wiring money in the United States is very, very common, and so that seems to be a very acceptable price elasticity for most transactors of large values. the offshore banking industry as well has a good measure for price elasticity. The co-- the setup fee for opening an offshore bank account is between two thousand and thirty-eight hundred dollars. So that's quite a substantial, setup fee just to be able to transact, and store your value. So, even if you set up an offshore bank account, you still have to wire money internationally to it, which would cost you sixty-five to eighty dollars per, per time. And then real estate, which is a two hundred and fifty trillion dollar market, we can look at some data from the Chinese, which Chinese bought forty thousand units in North America between April twenty seventeen and twenty-- and March twenty eighteen, so in a one year time period, and they spent thirty billion dollars with a median spend of four hundred and forty thousand. If you look at the average closing cost of a home Which is, it depends on, on, on, how the, how the broker works with them. But you're talking a certain percentage of that total home value that they have to pay to the broker, and that is a substantial amount of money when you're looking at a four hundred and forty thousand dollar transaction, and the Chinese are willing to get their money out of their country probably at a small loss. Wire that over to America or get that over to America somehow, buy a piece of property that has maintenance costs, and then, and then they also have to pay a transaction cost just to make this transaction go through. And also, this is a very feasible asset. If the United States wanted to seize your real estate, it would be quite easy to do. And finally, physical gold delivery, which gold is worth seven point five trillion, physical gold delivery for the Bundesbank when they took all their gold back from the New York Fed, which was three hundred metric tons of gold, or twelve billion dollars at the time, took three years and cost five million dollars, which is an absurd amount of cost and time just to, just to move a store of value. And if you're talking about smaller gold purchases, like gold coins and stuff like that, you still have to get insurance and they weigh a lot, so the shipping Costs are gonna be high. You might have to have physical protection if you're buying a lot of mount- you know, buying a very large value of gold. So price elasticity for Bitcoin's block space is more than-- it's, it's gonna be more than adequate if fees go much, much higher from here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:33", "start": 1413.24, "text": "Yeah, fantastic points, Dan, and I think it's, you know, it's quite well-researched. You've got a few different angles, and I'll just point out as well that with pretty much all of these, you are still exposed to other risks. So quick examples The, you know, let's say you own Hong Kong real estate and the Chinese government is now trying to encroach further into that, well, what's the value, what's that gonna do to your value? or even if you have an offshore bank account, those banks will still be required to do all sorts of AML and sanctions and FATCA and CRS compliance, they may block your transfers, whereas Bitcoin is much more permissionless and unstoppable. So that's also another important factor distinguishing Bitcoin above These other alternative methods." }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "24:21", "start": 1460.84, "text": "Right. Yeah, this is just the price elasticity of highly seizeable assets. I mean, gold isn't as easily seized as the other assets, but these assets aren't exactly, you know, great stores of value in terms of being, you know, seizeable resistant. And what, what is the premium that someone's willing to pay on a transaction fee just to transact in this really hard-to-seize new asset? Probably a lot, based on what they're willing to pay for assets that can be easily seized." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:48", "start": 1488.22, "text": "Fantastic. And now, I love this point, another section, and I think Nick Carter touches on this as well, is this whole idea of increasing transactional density. So do you wanna just touch on that idea for us?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "25:00", "start": 1499.69, "text": "Yeah. So increasing transactional density or transactional, or improving transactional density Man is about increasing economic and semantic density of transactions. Increasing semantic density would be essentially like VeriBlock, so VeriBlock using the Bitcoin blockchain to root, their data and, and verify it and, and timestamp it. And then economic density is essentially lightning. So how do we increase the amount of, transactions that can occur on the base layer through layering technology or through, you know, potentially like snore signatures? And, you know, we're seeing right now some really cool things with Lightning where there was a block a few, a little while ago where twenty-five percent of the transactions in that block were the opening and closing of Lightning channels. So that the reason why, this is important, or the reason why the increasing the semantic and economic density of transactions is important, is because it increases the overall demand for Bitcoin's block space. a lot of people though have, have come up with some fud around Bitcoin's block space being used by Lightning, because they go, \"Oh, well, Layer two will suck transactions and suck transactional, demand on Layer one away, because people will just transact on Layer two.\" But that's not true. We've seen increases in-- we've seen transactions increase on Layer One as transactions on Layer Two increase as well, and that's called the Jevons Paradox, by the way. Jevons Paradox states as things become more and more efficient, we use more of it, just like miles per gallon or kilometers per gallon of our, of our gasoline. as cars became more and more fuel efficient, we drove more and more miles, we didn't drive less miles. So Layer Two brings about new use cases and, essentially cheaper, smaller value transact- actions for Bitcoin while still preserving the transactional demand on Layer One to open and close those channels. And of course, as well with Layer One, a transaction fee is based on the, the amount, the, the, transaction size in bytes, and the, the fee that you pay on Layer Two, on Lightning, is based on the value that you're sending. So there's a natural organic trade-off between the two. Eventually it'll, or not eventually, but there's a, a trade-off to where you'll always wanna transact on Layer One depending on the size of your transaction. And same with layer two. So, yeah, I think, you know, we're, we're seeing definitely higher use of and higher density of Bitcoin transactions representing more and more, many more transactions above that on layer two, to where, you know, two on-chain transactions to open and close a lightning channel may reflect tens of thousand, tens of thousands of transactions on layer two." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:39", "start": 1659.41, "text": "Fantastic. And so, yeah, so we've got multiple different ways. We've got off-chain scaling with things like Lightning, and then we've also got the- Not as good model, but custodial scaling in the sense that, say, Zappo to Zappo transactions are occurring, they are Bitcoin transactions, but obviously you're trusting someone like Zappo or whoever to do those internal accounting transactions. Now, I think this might be a good time to kind of bring up the kind of B-casher argument, which is Now obviously I'm not a B-casher, but the B-casher argument of, \"Oh, you're, you guys are advocating Bitcoin as this system that's gonna become inaccessible to people who don't have a lot of money.\" But at the same time, I mean, my view on this is that we will have ways that, that keep Bitcoin accessible using things like, say, channel factories or similar multi-party channels and other technologies like that. Do you have any views on that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "28:38", "start": 1718.23, "text": "Yeah, so essentially, the joke Okay, I'd like to make is this is the Bitcoin double standard, where, and yeah, this is a pun on Safa Dean's book, The Bitcoin Standard, but Bitcoin double standard is where people go, \"Oh, wait, Bitcoin won't have enough security 'cause there's not enough transaction fees,\" and then simultaneously, these same detractors also go, \"Oh, wait, but transaction fees are too high.\" It's, it's a, it's a lose-lose, and they're not happy with either answer. And so, yeah, I think, you know, a lot Farmer, he can't afford to open up a channel. And like you mentioned, there are other ways that we can go about this to where they can still access Bitcoin. And I'd like to point out that even if the people don't access Bitcoin directly, they're still being benefited by Bitcoin by bringing back sound money to the existing financial system. So I think that is a huge, huge, amazing step forward and leap forward in humanity. so I'm not exactly super worried about a poor rice farmer. Who makes ten dollars a month not being able to access the network because the amount of economic activity that they drive in the world is extremely minuscule, and bringing them online and the unbanked and underbanked is more virtue signaling than it is really productive, because the rest of us who are producing a majority of the world's GDP, this impacts them, and this impacts the majority of all value stored, not very, very small amounts of, of very, very poor individuals, which I feel for their plight, however, they're not really that impactful in the world economy, they still will have a massive benefit given to them through Bitcoin bringing about greater, govern-- more, like reducing government control, reducing government expenditure, that overall impacts their life and whether or not they, you know, interact with the network directly." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:26", "start": 1825.59, "text": "Excellent. And look, I think the other thing with this whole idea of increasing weight of every Bitcoin transaction or increasing density is people will have to take that whole idea that people used to say in Bitcoin Bitcoin, it's probably, probably not as commonly said nowadays, but be your own bank, right? And they'll have to take that a little bit more seriously, and they may be the one who sets up a Bitcoin and Lightning full node and may in, in fact, set up channels for other people to kind of operate on your bank, that is your full node and Lightning channel, and you are the, you know, bank operating the chan-Lightning channels and so on. Do you have a view on that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "31:03", "start": 1863.08, "text": "Yeah, I think, you know, Lightning, you know, even if transaction One, on layer two, all of the lightning payments that are occurring, essentially all of the fees incurred there represent, in aggregate, represent the amount it would cost to open and close a channel on layer one. I think Lightning, you know, individuals can open up channels for other individuals, to where individuals can still access and use the Bitcoin network without actually having their own channels open. I'm, I'm of the opinion that Lightning will still be massively successful, even if it's only between custodial parties. We don't necessarily see that happening right now, and I'm not predicting that. I'm just saying, even, you know, a lot of people go, \"Well, Lightning's experimental, and we're not sure if it's gonna work,\" and I think even in, in its default state of, of Just being useful for custody arrangements, it's extremely beneficial as you can reduce on-chain transaction volumes between different counterparties like let's say Kraken and, and, GDAX, and that would be hugely beneficial. I, again, I don't think that's the case. I think individuals as well can open up their own channels. I think that people can do non-custodial, arrangements with their lightning channels, and that UX can be solved over time. Right now, that UX is, is a bit difficult, so I think it's gonna take quite a few years until lightning Around opening and closing your own channels makes a lot of sense, and even at that, I think it'll be more advanced sort of functionality. I'm not sure if this is something that like the average consumer will Will do for, for quite a long time. I think in the future they will, but I'm not sure if they'll even know that's happening. They'll just open up an app and the app does it all for them, right? I mean, people don't know how their car works or how their cell phone works or how their computer works, they just know what buttons to press." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:44", "start": 1964.1, "text": "Precisely. And I think another interesting observation is that, you know, how everyone basically talks about the ten thousand BTC pizza, right? So they say, \"Oh, Laszlo,\" and, and obviously And I think he's helped with the Mac OS version of Bitcoin and some other stuff as well. But people look back to that and think, \"Oh, wow, you know, ten thousand bitcoins back then wasn't that hard to get.\" But you think to now, another parallel might be the amount we're all spending for Bitcoin transactions right now in satoshis, right? Could be a lot. Whereas ten, fifteen years from now, we might all look back and think, \"Oh, wow, all those on-chain transactions I did, I could have saved so much if I had, you know, tried actually, save those sets. Yeah. So we're gonna be much more judicious, I think you want to open-" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "33:37", "start": 2017.27, "text": "Oh, go ahead." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:38", "start": 2018.05, "text": "Oh, yeah, so I was just saying we're just gonna be much more judicious about our channel opens and closes and, you know, trying to really, really minimize our use of the blockchain." }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "33:48", "start": 2027.9, "text": "Yeah, I think with any scarce resource, we wanna be, cognizant of how we use it, and Bitcoin's scarce resource, which is Bitcoin's block space, we all bid on using that. That block space and being efficient with our bids makes sense for your own pocketbook, so I think in the future we'll definitely be very cognizant in terms of how we spend, our coins, in terms of moving them and our time preference and, and the duration in which we need to move them. And I think this is also where hodling is another good trait here, where, hodling Is the core use case for Bitcoin right now, which is preserving your wealth, storing your wealth into something that is extremely hard to seize and is immutable to where you can transact or you can send that Bitcoin to any other address in the whole world. I think that's, that's extremely valuable, you know, as a goal two point oh. So minimizing your time preference and minimizing, you know, the need for you to move your coins and how, you know, and what you spend your coins on, I- I'm, I think you know this pretty well, but I'm pretty anti using Bitcoin for, for payments. I, I, I have w-wrote a tweet storm that ruffled a lot of the feathers of the B-cash community. And I, I think that, you know, every single time I've spent Bitcoin, I've regretted it. Every single time. It's-- I mean, I mean, what the hell was a piece of pizza really worth, right? I mean, why would I-- You know, I, I don't, I don't have the expectation that I can spin gold at restaurants. I mean, nowhere in San Francisco takes gold. but I still find gold very valuable in its utility as a store of value. And this isn't necessarily a mutually exclusive sort of arrangement for Bitcoin, it's just at Bitcoin's stage in its lifecycle, it's more useful as a store of value until its daily volatility, you know, is lower than the volatility of the fiat currency that most people use. Right now, that's a terrible user experience if that volatility is higher. So I think Bitcoin in a future date will be used for every payment that we ever make. and will also be the unit of account, but I think that's a very long time from now, and I think we-- I, I think the Bitcoin is useful for payments crowd definitely kind of muddled Bitcoin's narrative and set really bad expectations because, because Bitcoin wasn't- Useful, to pay for coffee. A lot of journalists and a lot of people have been critical of Bitcoin, saying that it hasn't achieved its real purpose. And so I, I find that really annoying that, you know, that narrative still sticks around. And I, I appreciate Laszlo's first dip in, you know, dipping his toes into the water. And a lot of people, I, I kind of was critical of him on PTA Day, and a lot of people were kind of taken back by that, but they go, \"Oh, well, you know, you could have spent, you know, you could have taken your dollars and bought Bitcoin.\" And, \"Well, yeah, our value is fungible, but not our, not our knowledge.\" Laszlo was one of the first people to touch this. so I just, I really wish that he would have spent it on dollars or gold instead, because pizza really certainly set a certain type of, expectation." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:56", "start": 2216.34, "text": "Right, I see. Yeah, yeah. look, so let's, while we're talking about this article, let's also talk about some of the responses that we've seen from other people in Bitcoin. So, I, I know on Twitter there was Rusty Russell from Blockstream, who's, you know, one of the key Key men, and architects behind Lightning Network, and one of his concerns was around how, okay, now I'm just gonna try to sort of fairly characterize his views here. He was essentially talking about how The enforcement cost. So in Lightning, you need to be able to access the Bitcoin blockchain in or-- in order to open your channels, close your channels, and also to, if somebody's trying to breach you, then you need to be able to do the, like, the justice transaction, right? And so I think f-- from his context, that's p-- that's potentially what he was trying to get out there, and he was suggesting that, oh, there might still be some concerns here that, you know, even if it's, say, seven hundred dollars per transfer, that it might be Infeasible for people to use Lightning in that environment. So, do you have any views on that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "38:02", "start": 2281.66, "text": "I think Rusty was trolling. I, I have to take his comments as trolling because he's too intelligent for these to be real. Because he claims there's gonna be a hundred thousand dollar transaction fees, so I don't really know how to reply other than I don't know, I, I really can't. Give it a good reply because I don't think it was a real honest opinion as to actually having a debate. right. And then he, and then he consistently repeated, like I consistently clarified for him, and he consistently acted like he consistently played dumb. And so after that, I was like, \"I don't really have time for this.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:38", "start": 2317.93, "text": "Fair enough. I think it brings up this whole idea, and I think you even mentioned in the article as well, is this whole idea of the Yogi Berra quote, \"Like nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded,\" right? Right. And we can't be too- At the same time, we should recognize potential threats to Bitcoin, but we can't be too sort of afraid of the success of Bitcoin, right? Like even if the transaction costs went into one thousand dollars per transaction, and people were willing to pay that, would that not on its own imply that there are people who value Bitcoin transactions that highly that they would do that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "39:10", "start": 2350.0, "text": "Yeah, exactly. It's a marketplace, so transactors are free to transact, and if no one's willing to pay that fee, then, then Bitcoin security will be poor and then its value will drop. It's sort of a- A kind of self-perpetuating sort of success or failure here. So, you know, fretting about if the, if the transaction fees will be high enough is sort of like, it's a, the TLDR is like, they're worrying about, oh, well, will Bitcoin ever be valuable or will, will the world value Bitcoin? and that's what I found really annoying with a lot of these, academics who also modeled Bitcoin security, far out into the future in a post-subsidy environment, from, I believe, Princeton, Harvard, and Pr- Yeah, believe Princeton and Harvard, I forget where else. I mean, the assumptions that they plugged in were basically egregious. I mean, some of them assumed that Bitcoin's value would never increase. So I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, of course the transaction fees alone will fail if Bitcoin's value never increases 'cause the total security spend will be minuscule, duh. It's sort of like, okay, sure, but you're plugging in like the most ridiculous assumptions. It's like, well, of course it'll fail if that doesn't happen. And yeah, that's where, you know, I really feel that a lot of these assumptions that these individuals had plugged into their models were crazy out there in terms like, you know, Bitcoin never, Bitcoin's value never increasing, efficiency on layer one never occurring, like snore sig, like they act-- they acted like snore signatures were never gonna happen, or that a block size increase will never ever happen, which it might not, but they should certainly have plugged in a, you know, be like, \"Oh, we, we modeled out two outcomes, one with no block, size increase and one with the block size increase. and then finally, like coming up with a, you know, a lot of them used flow in terms of what they would want to quantify Bitcoin security spend needed to be on a block-by-block basis, and it was extremely large, so that would require the transaction fees to be extremely large as well, versus, you know, putting on a sensible, rational hat of, okay, I'm a Bitcoin miner, I'm not gonna play games on a block-by-block basis. I've bought equipment that's gonna last years and that needs to have cash flow for years, so I'm not gonna meddle on a block-by-block basis. So they were all using flow security model in, in terms of quantifying the security spend, and I found that to be pretty ridiculous. They considered miners to be totally irrational and be willing to burn their money for short-term, short-term benefit at the expense of their long-term revenues." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:43", "start": 2503.34, "text": "Precisely. Let's now, and related to that as well, is, Hugo Nguyen's, response as well. So- For the listeners on Twitter, you can see him at hugo hanoy. And so he had some supportive responses to your article as well, and I think he was essentially supportive, but just not as confident as you are around that. So I think he was maybe a little bit more cautious. And he actually mentions, as well, Eric Budish, who's, one of the professors at University Chicago who did, some, work on this. Now, I think some of Hugo's, commentary was around Okay, there's probably one main point was that he was saying, essentially he was questioning, \"Is it right to extrapolate the fees at a certain time period in Bitcoin's history?\" Which is, I think, kind of like that, you know, November, December twenty seventeen, when there was a crazy FOMO and lots of people were paying because it was worthwhile for them, and I think he's essentially saying, \"Is it right to extrapolate that transaction fee out into the future, or are there other methods?\" What's your view there?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "42:49", "start": 2569.12, "text": "So I, I really appreciated Hugo's feedback on the article. he actually dug in and read it, and I think had some good quality sort of rebuttals to certain things that he felt needed pushback. For him, Hugo's, I think, you know, one of the arguments, and I think this is what you're touching on, is that we don't have enough data He's right, we, we don't, but by the time we do, then there won't be an issue or there will be an issue. I took all the data that we had and then extrapolated that into the future, so using that's quantitative, and then I applied the qual-qualitatives. so yeah, I took the quantitative, which is taking all existing data we have, modeling that into the future, and then on the qualitative, looking at the price elasticity of a transactor on layer one, in terms of other stores of value. And looking at other trends and what we're seeing in terms of Bitcoin's adoption and, and why Bitcoin's block space is unique. So I don't disagree with him, I just also think I don't know how else to think about this, And the reason why I titled the article \"Bitcoin Security is Fine\" is that almost everyone's like, \"Oh, we don't know,\" or \"You know, it's gonna explode.\" you know, a lot of Ethereum enthusiasts use this as like one final, final piece of thought where they go, \"Oh, well, you know, you haven't figured out your security model long term, so don't criticize our, our, you know, monetary policy,\" which I find completely ridiculous. So I don't disagree with Hugo, I just think like we've got ten years worth of data, that's not bad considering, I mean, ten years worth of data for a company is quite a bit of data. yes, we've only had a few market cycles, but there's reasons to believe those market cycles will continue. Essentially, the block reward with the block subsidy and transaction fees Block subsidy, as the block subsidy decreases, in those halving events every four years, we've seen those halving events cause speculative bubbles, and those speculative bubbles then bring about greater transaction fees due to the new speculators, the new hodlers, the new believers in this protocol. So I don't see, you know, if the speculative bubbles continue, I see that as greatly beneficial to increasing transactional demand on layer one. we've seen that empirically happen in the past, and there's no reason to believe that it won't happen into the future." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:07", "start": 2706.75, "text": "Excellent thoughts. I, I think we pretty much agree on that. So look, I think that's pretty much it for Bitcoin security is fine, but I was also interested to just discuss, I know you recently attended or and spoke at the Value of Bitcoin conference, which as I understand, had, you know, a few well-known Bitcoiners, but then also some conference attendees who are more from like the financial industry. Do you wanna just give a bit of Of that conference." }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "45:32", "start": 2732.44, "text": "Yeah, so I had a really great time. Daniel Wingen coordinated the conference and was the conference organizer. He did a fantastic job in terms of venue, caliber of people that he brought in. And the, the core theme of the conference was, let's take Bitcoin experts or people who can talk to bankers or brown Bitcoin, essentially people who've written about certain topics on Bitcoin and can cover it in a way that's easy to understand. Let's take them, let's take Bitcoin critics, like Alex Debrise, the guy who believe That Bitcoin's energy will boil the ocean. Let's take those two, and then let's take German central bankers, American central bankers, and German investment bankers, and put them all into a room and, and enable them to have a, a really candid and open conversation. And I really like how it was structured as well in terms of the amount of time per speaker. It was only twenty minutes per speaker, which meant that the information you had to get across had to be really compressed and, and get the point across right away rather than if it's an hour and a half presentation, people- People kind of, kind of lose interest after thirty minutes and don't really pay attention. So I think the twenty minutes kind of kept everyone really interested in, and engaged." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:40", "start": 2799.55, "text": "And so did you see many people making that category error of thinking of Bitcoin in the wrong way, like they were thinking that it's like an investment that should throw off, you know, like a stock that should throw off dividends or a bond that should throw off in-interest? Was that, was that, was there that kind of thinking on display or were people more advanced than that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "46:59", "start": 2818.74, "text": "there was still a lot of very early stage thinking I think we've all gone through that cycle ourselves when we first learned about Bitcoin, and I think we saw, low to medium, I would say low to medium expertise, out there, but I think there was a willingness for some to want to learn more. For example, my talk was on proof of work, and a few of them had actually dug really deep into proof of work, so I was impressed with that, and also a few Took the words I had to say and, and, and allowed them to kind of permeate their brain and, and really let them, think about it for a little bit, and, and it was encouraging to see them at least open-minded enough to take my argument that proof of work is efficient and, and let that, you know, 'cause Germans are very, environmentally conscious. You know, recent, recently, I think a few weeks before that, a German politician had wanted to ban Bitcoin mining due to its environmental issues. So I felt like that was a really important topic to cover, and it seemed like I got my point across because they were open-minded enough to it. If, individuals aren't open-minded enough to ingest or allow new information to come into their, into their mental model, then they're never gonna understand it, and I think people are at least open to understanding potentially something new." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:09", "start": 2889.1, "text": "Excellent. And did you end up, getting into a bit The debate with, Alex De Vries, or also known as, I think, Digi Economist, was there a bit of a debate there around, you know, proof of work, environmental impact?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "48:19", "start": 2899.41, "text": "Yeah. So that was kind of fun. It was, twenty minutes. So I, I presented solo on Bitcoin's proof of work for twenty minutes, then Alex went right after me to present his, counter, which is that Bitcoin's energy usage is super wasteful, and then we both went on stage to have a debate, and I thought it went, went really well. Separate us like we were about to fight, you know, we, we, we weren't, we weren't to have blows or anything like that, but it was a funny little, you know, comedic routine. but yeah, I think it went really well. I wish we had, would have had a lot more time to dig in. Because, I think this is something that a lot of people have wanted to see for a while, so I would definitely be willing to debate Alex Debray's, via podcast sometime soon." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:05", "start": 2945.43, "text": "Oh, well, maybe we, need to think about making that happen then. Yeah, I think that'd be fun. Yeah. So look, I think, I think part of it though, from my understanding, like, now I've spoken with guys like Has McCook, who's done similar kind of mining analysis, although Has is a Bitcoiner and, you know, likes From, from when I was chatting with Hass, it sounds like he was saying he, he, Hass and Alex come up with similar numbers, it's just that they have slightly different perspectives on whether it's, quote unquote, worth it or ethical. Was that your sense of f-from the debate as well?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "49:37", "start": 2977.27, "text": "Yeah, I mean, like David Gerard and Alex Debrise, the big detractors of Bitcoin's proof of work consumption. I actually debated David Gerard, I think on the proof, I'm blanking out on the podcast right now, but I debated, I- I debated David Gerard about Bitcoin's proof of work and its utility and its function, and I got him to admit that he doesn't believe Bitcoin is worth anything, and that's the core of their argument, is because every use case of electricity in the world Is, if, is fairly bid on through a marketplace activity of me buying the electricity. Who, who has the fucking authority to go and say, \"Hey, oh, excuse me, you're watching The Kardashians, that's not an appropriate use case of electricity.\" I'm like, \"What the fuck, I paid for it.\" And they're like, \"Oh, no, but, you know, on our, on our super subjective moral, moral spectrum, that's not savory anymore.\" Which is, like, ridiculous, right? I mean, I'm, I'm not walking around at a restaurant and I'm like, \"Excuse me, sir, that chicken? That chicken cost a lot more electricity than that burger. you should feel ashamed for yourself.\" You know, we have a nothing. It, it's, it's just so crazy that, like, and that's where I think the core root of the argument is that we just need to call out how absurd this is. if you're willing to criticize Bitcoin's proof of work and the total subjective value that Bitcoin Bitcoin brings, then let's criticize everything. Let's look at, how much Alex's t-shirt costs to make. Let's see, is he, is he reducing his consumption in, in his apartment? Does he go on vacations? Has he ridden an airplane? Is the airplane using, you know, more fuel efficient, you know, more fuel efficient fuel? or like a higher, you know, like better fuel. You know, and that's the thing is the market automatically reflects the, the efficiency of the energy utility. Because if my process to create a T-shirt was really wasteful with electricity, it would cost me a lot more money to make it, which, which would make the price higher, which would make less people want to buy it because the price is too high. Naturally, our markets through capitalism are trying to optimize for lowest cost or highest utility of that electricity. And so by default, all consumptions of electricity by businesses is an attempt to be as efficient as possible with it to make more money. Bitcoin similarly, Bitcoin miners wouldn't mind unless the total aggregate subjective value of what Bitcoin's worth was high enough, and that's where Bitcoin mining annual cost in terms of its electricity consumption Basically mirrors the amount of, shared, shared belief between hodlers and believers of Bitcoin, and that's a good thing. I mean, if we look at other shared belief systems like the US government and the US monetary system, that requires an enormous amount of energy, including the political, judicial, military, and financial apparatus to keep that financial system going. So Bitcoin is efficient with its energy usage." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:37", "start": 3157.0, "text": "Fantastic comments. I think the last area I was keen to ask you about is just around possibilities for getting to people through influences, right? So sometimes that can be through celebrities or, in this case, you know, at the conference, through financial, if someone's, say, a wealth manager and they might tell their clients, \"Oh, hey, you know, you might have a small allocation in Bitcoin.\" Were you seeing many possibilities for that kind of, adoption driven through that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "53:08", "start": 3187.78, "text": "Yeah, I think that's why I wanted to participate in the Value of Bitcoin conference, was that these are individuals that can make bigger change happen than maybe other types of individuals, and to have a, have them sit down and pay attention for a little bit and give us a chance to vocalize our, our rationality behind why we believe in Bitcoin and the different facets of how it works is super valuable. I think, you know, getting everyone into Bitcoin is great, getting key stakeholders who have a bigger impact, say members in the financial system, that's even better because they might have a little bit more leverage to hasten Bitcoin's adoption." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:42", "start": 3221.62, "text": "and I, I suppose, one more thing just came to my mind now, the point Safdie often makes is that central bankers will be the last to understand Bitcoin. Did you have a sense for that?" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "53:51", "start": 3231.34, "text": "Well, I can't name the central bank, but one central banker did whisper something to us. And he whispered, \"My religion is bigger than yours.\" And so, which does, does show that he understands. He understands at a primitive level what this really is about. It's about a belief system. And so, that was, that was encouraging, even though it was kind of a sarcastic comment, you know, very sarcastic, I still considered that encouraging because it, he understood that, yes, this is just a shared belief system. And our beliefs are different, and I think that, you know, that, that's a kind of a, I think I, I would consider that a successful step forward in terms of at least acknowledging how this all works and, and where we're coming from, Yeah, I think Safes probably right though, like their, their job depends on them not recognizing their flaws. And the existing academics, academia, at least in the United States, is partially, you know, on the economic side, is partially funded by the Fed annually to different econo-economists all across the US. in addition, like you're not gonna get a job at a university or an investment bank if you believe in Austrian school economics. So to, to break that cycle it will take a lot of effort, and I don't think a lot of people will signal their allegiance to Bitcoin's, Bitcoin's monetary policy or, or Austrian school of economics until it's financially beneficial for them to do so." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:15", "start": 3314.98, "text": "Fair enough. Alright, looks, I think that's just about all we've got time for, but if you wanted to just, tell the audience, actually, if you've got anything coming up that they can look out for in terms of, what you're working on, and also where they can find you, that'd be" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "55:28", "start": 3327.76, "text": "great. Yeah my, my articles. My next article that's coming out is on Bitcoin's monetary policy or why choosing an inflation rate is impossible. So basically going through The problem with central banking coming from like a local knowledge problem, like Hayek's local knowledge problem, essentially that it's a data problem, and that all economies are just information economies. I don't know if you read George, George Gilder's The Information, The Information Theory of Money. That money is just, oh no. Yeah. so kind of going down that rabbit hole and looking at how the economy is really a super chaotic system. You know, the way to, the way that I liken it is that the Fed is, is a driver and the car is the economy. And all they can, all they do is they just look through the rearview mirror, 'cause that's historical data. And then- You've got the front windshield which you can look through, but it's extremely foggy and really doesn't give you any data. And then as well, when you feel a pothole on the road, you know, to steer the steering wheel or to press the brake or to press the gas, when you do so, it takes ten seconds for that to kick in. And that's essentially what central banking looks like right now, is you've got a, a blind driver that has no idea how to, how to drive on these crazy chaotic roads because you can't predict the future. And so the only way to really build a monetary policy that's, that's lasting is to have one where no one's driving, the car drives itself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:58", "start": 3417.64, "text": "Fantastic way to end the episode. Thanks very much, Dan. I hope, the listeners really enjoyed this one, I think they will. And, look, lastly, thank you very much for your time and thanks for" }, { "speaker": "dan_held", "time": "57:09", "start": 3428.57, "text": "Around in the States sometime at a conference." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:11", "start": 3430.75, "text": "I hope you guys enjoyed that. Make sure you share this episode with your friends who might be confused about Bitcoin's long term security. Check out the sponsors, Kraken and Unchained Capital. You can find the show notes on my website, stephanlivera dot com, and you can also subscribe to the podcast there. You can help me out by leaving a rating or review on the podcast platforms such as iTunes. If you got any feedback for me, just DM me on Twitter, my DMs are open, or you can email me at stephanl Lastly, just a reminder, I'll be at Bitcoin 2019 conference in San Francisco next week, so if you're around, don't be afraid to say hi!" } ] }