EB77 – Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Mastering Bitcoin

Transcript

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trading today hello welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the technology projects and startups driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is Sebastian and my name is Brian faan crane uh we're here today with a man who needs no introduction in the Bitcoin space although we'll introduce him anyways Andreas M antonoplos he is one of the hosts of let's talk Bitcoin and he's also one of the most prolific speakers in the space and I think uh he is for sure the most Adept at just sort of selling Bitcoin to the world and I think he's he's done a fantastic job there um so yeah super excited to have him on and of course

he's also the author of this book here uh mastering Bitcoin I bought it and I I like it I think it's so I'm I'm not a programmer done a little bit of programming uh but I think it's perfect to get a better understanding so Andreas thanks for joining us oh thank you so much for having me on the show guys I've been wanting to join you for quite a while now and it's it's really a pleasure oh really we were aware of that that is so flattering thank you very much you have no idea uh yeah we're really glad to have you on what Brian was saying about selling Bitcoin to people that that's definitely a major role that you played in uh in my early uh education of Bitcoin when I first got into it listening to LTB and watching your different talks uh you definitely

played a big role in selling me on the technology and the idea I think interestingly enough I don't think I'm actively trying to sell anything to anybody um that's that's why it works part part of the appeal is that I I don't have any interest in any of this I don't really own that much Bitcoin I don't have um you know a brand I'm pushing or anything like that but you know what what I'm doing is I'm not selling Bitcoin I'm simply expressing my my own enthusiasm uh my own unique kind of geeky enthusiasm for this elegant technology and I I think that's enthusiasm is infectious and that's that's as far as the selling goes I just

really really enjoy talking about this technology because I find it exciting myself and uh so when I'm expressing that enthusiasm it's it's genuine I I really feel it it's I'm not putting on a show this is this is just me uh and if you turn off the cameras I'll then spend six more hours you know talking about Bitcoin to anybody who will listen and you know the event's over I'll take a uh a taxi back to my hotel and I I'll I'll get the taxi driver to to learn about Bitcoin and and give them some Bitcoin and then I get to the hotel and I'll tell the hotel reception is the best Bitcoin this is my life this is basically me uh 24 hours a day talking

to people about Bitcoin and just refusing to shut up when they tell me it's it's enough and then every now and then someone turns a camera on and I just do it under under video recording but so so on average how many people a day do you talk especially new people do you talk uh with about Bitcoin well it it really depends but I I would say at least two or three people a day unless I'm doing a big event event in which case or meeting lots of people or going somewhere public in which case it might be hundreds of people a day and then you know Twitter and YouTube multiply and magnify that re and so I can tell even more people about

the things that I find enthusiastic and weird and interesting um that's pretty amazing so so about like three people on average a day you like new people you tell about Bitcoin try to you know get some Bitcoin Try It Out start using it that that's yeah I I tend to give people Bitcoin I I feel the best way to uh to to deal with Bitcoin is not to try to explain it but to demonstrate it and to exper experience it as a new user so I help people set up a wallet and I give them some Bitcoin uh usually you know I'll get into a taxi I'll start a conversation they'll say why you in this city I'll say I'm here for a conference on bitcoin have you heard of Bitcoin let me tell you about Bitcoin and 20 minutes

later I'm you know they're passing me their Android phone back and saying okay just install a wallet for me I'll install a wallet it's amazing that they they trust you with with their phone like that after after a 20 minute conversation yeah I guess um you know well it's just gonna put Bitcoin on it no so it's yeah yeah it's it's funny I mean there's there's other people who do this as well there's a lot of people who do this in fact um a funny story is I was um I was always uh a bit I don't know worried about how how uh how I might be treated at say a border crossing right if if I'm going through customs and you know

because their their job is is to not allow people to carry currency over borders I generally avoid the word currency so so you know I'll say I went to a Bitcoin conference or if they ask me why I'm going into a country or out of a country I'll say I went to a Bitcoin conference or e-commerce conference and on one of these I had um I was behind uh Jeff garik who's one of the core developers and he was he was in the same flight as me returning back from a conference he's going through Customs and Border Protection and I'm thinking you know should I I I I'll say Bitcoin but you know I don't want to I don't want to really draw too much attention because I don't want people ask me a 100 questions I don't have any money on me I'm not transporting Bitcoin

but I don't want to you know cause an issue and so I watch Jeff in the line in front of me and he's literally four feet away he steps up to the custom Bard guy the guy says so what what are you doing and he says oh I was at a Bitcoin conference have you heard of Bitcoin it's amazing so you can take money and send it from one place in the world to another place in and he's waving his arms and he's like and he does basically like a 30 minute 30 second Pitch to the Border guy who's stamping his passport and he says uh and the Border guy's like yeah that sounds really interesting okay well um okay Mr garic welcome to United States it was just so funny I was

thinking I don't want to get into it he's like doing a you know a full-on pitch um so yeah I'm not the only person who just has a lot of difficulty containing their enthusiasm about this technology I think a lot of the um early adopters and a lot of the people who are really really into this amazing technology um you know they're they're that guy at the party or that girl at the party just won't shut up about Bitcoin yeah that that's cool so coming back to your your book um tell us how what's the reception been like oh it's it's really going uh very well it's um I think it's already sold uh just

over 2 and a half thousand almost 3,000 copies um which is really good for a technology book so it seems to be going very well it's a number one bestseller on Amazon's e-commerce online trading and digital currency section um it's selling both in print and in digital and most importantly it's available open source a ailable for anyone to read for free you can download it you can share it you can forward the PDF you can do whatever you want really with it and recently we changed the license because it was going well and so now it's under Creative Commons uh share like attribution uh which means that now you can also do derivatives and use it for commercial purposes and do translations

and there's a bunch of teams working on translations so the book can be used as a basis for courses and um videos and whatever else you want to use it's it's fully open culture license is that is that common for Ori or other Publishers to do that to allow the Books open source it's pretty rare for a publisher to do that uh O'Reilly is special and the reason I pitched it to O'Reilly was because of O'Reilly's uh very long history with with open source and comfort with open source and so um you know once once the book is doing well and showing that it can generate sales then they're very comfortable with gradually opening up the license and now we've reached a point where it's a full

free culture license and uh and and that's why you know oril is just an amazing publisher of of technical books but they're also an amazing kind of global Citizen and and supporter of um a free culture and free knowledge and bringing that knowledge to the people and honestly it doesn't affect sales badly it actually makes sales better uh a lot of the people who will download the book read it and then buy it copy so that they have it uh the people who can't afford to buy the book buy it and the people who can't afford to buy the book read it and then give it to others who may be buy it so it's all good our show today is brought to you by our friends at shapeshift shapeshift is the fast and easy way to trade altcoins they now Support over 25 of the most popular

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to give an exchange your passport tell them your shoe size wait six confirmations just to buy some popcoin with shapeshift conversions are instantaneous and your privacy remains protected so head over to shapeshift.io and start trading some altcoins today we would like to thank shapeshift for their support of we Center Bitcoin what made you when I write this book um well the the in the grand scheme of things I really wanted to uh get the knowledge out to people when I was trying to learn about Bitcoin um the sources that were available were extremely fragmented um the developer guide wasn't out there at the time the

Bitcoin Wiki was incomplete and partial and you had to roam all across it to find any information uh there was no single source that had you know a good collection of all of the basic information and how it works Soup To Nuts and described in a way that that has a consistent Nar artive and flow not just bits of technical information all Loosely dumped um and so I thought it would be useful to people um honestly I think that for Bitcoin to become mainstream the first thing that happens isn't you know millions of end users the first thing that happens is tens of thousands of software developers who are going to build great applications and great user interfaces so that users can uh adopt this technology it's going to

take hundreds of thousands of soft developers to make this uh what it can be and we're already seeing this happen but I I thought that would be an area to to contribute now there there's a second reason which is selfish reason um which is that you never really grasp a subject fully and in depth until you try to teach it um I did not have uh the focus and the ability and the and the programming skills quite honestly to be a full full-time core developer contributor or anything like that um I dabble in programming I've dabbled in programming All My Life um and I'm a decent program but I'm not a

professional and and I I can't keep the focus on something like that so my best chance to really really learn Bitcoin was to try to write a book about it and you know in writing the book um it brought up a lot of questions and gradually by answering those questions and learning I I finished the book and and now I know a lot more about Bitcoin than I did when I started the book that's seems crazy to me that uh that you would uh feel that you need to learn more about Bitcoin well oh and I I can tell you I there there's still so so so much I need to learn and even even the book I mean you know this is a book for developers who are trying to enter the space of

Bitcoin maybe they have a bit of background in cryptography maybe they have a bit of um uh you know softare development experience and they're trying to enter Bitcoin but you know any one of the core developers can open this book and and find 20 things that are you know from slightly wrong to quite wrong um and big gaps in in bits that are missing uh so don't for a moment there imagine that um I'm I'm certainly not even close to being the most knowledgeable person on on bitcoin I'm not um you know in in cryptography you know there there are some real hardcore genius Geeks Behind these uh behind the core development

team you know behind many of the projects involved in in Bitcoin who who do nothing all day but that um my skill is is really in explaining things in easy to understand terms and relating to an audience so I know enough Bitcoin to be dangerous and be able to explain it yeah I mean so for me as well right I've been working on this for now I guess almost two years that I've heard about Bitcoin and uh on the one hand I have a good understanding of it on the other hand I'm just scratching the surface no and there's so much I don't understand and and I think there are so much that fa frankly nobody really understands I

think especially when we start thinking of the longer term how it's all going to play out it's a it's so hard yeah everybody's learning I mean this is unprecedent ented stuff um but there there are some really really really smart people in this space with Incredible depths of knowledge and in in cryptography and security and distributed systems and software engineering um who who who were just blessed to have in the space and it's really amazing to watch yeah absolutely and I have to say I think you you did strike a really nice balance between sort of the technical and uh you know the non-technical so for you know for me someone like understands Bitcoin but I've never like programmed

Bitcoin uh it's I think it's nice because it it gives a a deeper sort of a deeper dive into the topic but it's not overwhelming right I think it's very uh very digestible so thank you a lot of work went into creating the correct analogies to be able to describe some of the more complex aspects of Bitcoin and ways that were easy to understand for someone who had a technical inclination but not necessarily was a a a professional programmer but you know the book is really designed for software Engineers um developers um architecture Engineers security engineers and Technical professionals it's it's not a beginner's

guide to bitcoin it's not for um you know people who do not have a technical background they're going to find it honestly too um too Technical and and there are other books that address that audience now would you say that perhaps for u a developer I'm talking about perhap myself you know uh getting getting involved and um you know trying trying some some things out technically like I like to dabble uh I'm not uh a really strong developer but I I have some development experience I've been a web developer before like getting into this book and um trying some command line stuff uh is that also sort of the audience you're going for or absolutely

that that yes absolutely it would be ideal for that um there's certainly enough examples in the book so you can try uh you know with relatively easy to use languages and common languages C++ python Etc you could try and a lot of command line examples uh so you could go beyond the surface of using a wallet or user interface and be able to you know roll your own key convert a key from one format to another um build an HD wallet Etc now that doesn't doesn't mean you'd necessarily build a secure system and I certainly would hope you wouldn't take these experiments learning experiments into production um you know we know what happens when someone who dabbles in programming tries to write let's say I

don't know an exchange and PHP and um yeah bad things happen I was thinking more like maybe uh some HTML or something no I'm kidding uh no but I I think to get I think that to get a a better understanding of the protocol you know someone who wants to get a better understanding of the protocol could absolutely read this book and uh and start getting their hands dirty with some some Python and maybe some CL command line stuff yeah and and the book is also um it's evolving so the second print happened uh 4 days ago contains a lot of Correction and a bit of new material uh and some

clarifications in various places um and and I'm getting contributions from the community um code examples uh uh new sections of the book and so it's going to continue to expand it's continue to evolve I expect uh by mid year we're going to have a second edition in the works and probably by late summer we're going to have a second edition come out uh with significant additional content uh you know I I look I work this book and the publisher works this book as a software project so we're doing minor version releases all the time and we're going to do a major release in the summer with a nice change log full of features and not just bug feet fixes

right and I suppose also as new versions of of of Bitcoin core uh come out you also have to update it yeah absolutely there's there's a lot of Keeping Up With The Changes you know just uh recently about um maybe a month ago um for example the um data storage uh capability ities with oper return changed uh so some new command lines were added the size of the maximum size changed from 40 bytes to 80 bytes you know that's important information so that required an update in the book and and the open source version keeps in perfect sync with a published version so if you download the Open Source One you can see all of that information so um is this is I presume

how you've been spending most of your time know I mean you give a lot of talks then at the book of course they writing and and now also promoting and reaching developers talking with them and trying to sort of I guess fuel that that slow Revolution or maybe fast Revolution that's happening as as more and more people start using this and cryptocurrencies well yeah uh speaking um uh conferences meetups I do a lot of community events meetups uh interviews and things like that that takes up a lot of my time I'm preparing a second book uh that I'm going to start working on in the summer with uh with another author um can't give too much detail on that and I'm launching a a startup to do some

some work in a specific area of Bitcoin that I'm interested in um can you share anything about that or well it's going to happen in the next uh three weeks but it involves uh cold storage for keys and so there'll be some additional announcements about that um so helping companies do cold storage and um you know second book more work I also work as a as an adviser for uh a number of different Bitcoin startups so helping them with strategic advice with um understanding the technology road map and where things are going and the trends uh customers um market dynamics you know how to build the best product how to

secure it how to launch it how to get it to Market and so work working with Executives at a number of different Bitcoin startups generally speaking if I'm an adviser to a Bitcoin startup you wouldn't know it because they're they're allowed to use my advice but not uh my name yeah know that makes sense I guess uh we had this B the Neo and B was a bit unfortunate how that turned out so uh yeah they ended up abusing my name and um and in that particular case that changed the way I um had to deal with companies because when I first started that relationship I really didn't have a reputation in the space to worry about um and so I didn't realize that someone

could um abuse my name make make it appear as if I was doing a lot more for that company than I was which was just a bit of Consulting and and then you know draw customers in by the idea that I was a participant which I wasn't so anyway um I had to change my practices to make sure that that couldn't happen again so now if I if I work for a company that's the last time you ever hear me mention it and they don't mention me today's magic word is Mastery m a s t r y head over to let's talk bitcoin.com to sign in enter the magic word and claim your part of the listener reward now we're going to want to speak

a little bit about sort of Bitcoin and where that is evolving but I wanted to dive or come back very quickly to uh the aspect of sort of communicating Bitcoin to like lay people non- bitcoiners anyone really um what are are there some things that people should avoid that they often do yeah I think it's first of all and this is something I've been doing consistently since day one is I do not recommend Bitcoin as an investment I recommend against investing in Bitcoin you do not treat Bitcoin as an investment vehicle um if you know what you're doing if you're a sophisticated

investor and you know how to build a diversified portfolio and you know how to make something that is extremely volatile a small part of that portfolio in a very structured way sure maybe you can invest in Bitcoin but for the average person this is not this is absolutely not a say a sane safe or wise investment because of volatility because of uncertainty it's it's a technology that can move very very fast so just like you wouldn't you wouldn't invest in biotech penny stocks even if they made the most incredible invention in biotechnology you wouldn't invest in those you don't invest in these kinds of things there are much much um safer Investments to play in so first of all

don't go telling people to go buy lots of Bitcoin that's a terrible idea um what it will do is it will give people the wrong idea about what Bitcoin is it it will feed kind of the getrich quick greedy attitude and and it eventually will end up with people getting burned um by making these Investments and then they'll um blame Bitcoin and that would be unfortunate I think it's also important not to try to oversell uh Bitcoin although I'm certainly very enthusiastic about it um the the idea here is to really help people experience it so rather than trying to project your own perspective of what Bitcoin can do

try to think about what it can do for the person you're talking to uh how can it help them solve a problem in their life and then basically address the benefits talk about what B what benefits Bitcoin could bring to their life um does it make it easier to do online Commerce does it make it easier to send money abroad does it make it um does it just simply give them an experience like listen this is a very futuristic form of money it'd be cool to try out and see how the future of money looks like so how about I give you a couple of dollars for free and you install a wallet and play with it and then we'll bounce some money back and forth and you'll see how easy it is and you know just get that experience so uh I think that's the best way to to to

Really um deliver Bitcoin is to help people experiencing by demonstrating it by giving them a bit of free Bitcoin and uh helping them set up a wallet and then showing them how it works uh in terms of a slogan as a whole I I just go with a very very simple idea I say you know Bitcoin is the internet of money um it's a network it's not a company it's you don't have to sign up you just download software that speaks Bitcoin and uh it will do to money what Skype did to phone calls and what email did to the post office and if you understand why Skype is really use ful technology then if you could do that with money how would it change your life and let me show you

some excellent yeah and then I think one um one big advantage of actually giving people Bitcoin and having them do a Bitcoin transaction is that when you explain it it seems so abstract right it's like this thing and then like oh maybe then I'm going to use this as well in a few years and and people maybe even understand conceptually that this is a powerful thing and stuff but they they don't see themselves like using it like right now here and then it's like wow this is actually I mean just just the fact that you could install an app on their phone and send them money um and then tell them that they could take that money and then exactly the same way send it to their cousin on another continent or uh someone they met

on Twitter just today or any of that it blows their mind because they start making comparisons to their banking system now if they had that application running for a bit and they they used it every now and then and tried it out um the good news is that uh eventually their bank will demonstrate to them exactly why Banks suck so um as long as you have the Bitcoin experience to compare with eventually your bank is going to freeze your money delay a check for three days charge you a ridiculous fee for something you never uh you know agreed to um or do some other thing like that they're really good at doing it and then you will suddenly think huh hang on a second so how come you're only open Monday to Friday 9 to5 uh or 9 to4 UM it

takes 3 days to transmit money from my account to another account in the same bank um you always hold my money but take the fees immediately etc etc etc etc why is this still happening in the era of the Internet isn't there a better way and then you realize oh wait that guy I met in the taxi showed me a better way hang on let me check this Bitcoin thing out again I think I still have that wallet installed you guys have pretty good in the states banks are open on Monday there wow yeah give about how Banks suck um no I think these are all really good points uh I think especially helping people experience it for themselves and not

projecting like your own uh aspirations about Bitcoin but sort of uh trying to uh help them find out how it how it could benefit them is a really good approach um but the reason you like Bitcoin is not necessarily the reason someone else will like Bitcoin it's a it's a technology that while it does have uh you know a liberal political bent to it and that it empowers individuals to control their money um beyond that really we all project our own aspirations and desires and worldview onto it and and it's important to remember the audience you're talking to and express it in a way that makes sense to them uh for many people you know some of the worldviews that are exhib IED in the Bitcoin community may

be a huge turnoff um and so they may not think that's a good idea now one thing that I've been challenging I've been CH uh that's been a challenge for me when explaining Bitcoin to people is sort of explaining to them that this is not just about money that every aspect of society will eventually be uh impacted by by blockchain Technologies um but most people seem to be at this sort of very low level explanation of this is money it's used for money laundering Etc um how do you go about explaining to people that yes this is revolutionary and it like in 20 years perhaps even less uh it will it'll be part of your

life just as the internet is part of every aspect of your life well unless they're there to watch a conference or video where they want to hear some kind of visionary statement about the future I don't I really don't um I I just I I give them something extremely practical and you know last last week I was talking to my driver I said you know where where do you come from um and they said they come from Haiti oh do you have family back in Haiti yeah do you send them money uh yeah I send the money every every couple of weeks uh do you use Western Union yeah well let me tell you about Bitcoin and I'm not I'm not going to

talk about how it's going to change the world I'm going to talk about how it's going to change their money transfer to Haiti not now but maybe in three years um from something that is a 8% transaction to something that is a0 8% transaction uh to something that can only happen by standing in line at an office to something that can happen from your phone directly and then their next question is how do I get this Bitcoin I say well you drive a taxi um you could drive a taxi and get paid in Bitcoin by people who have Bitcoin I could pay you for this ride in Bitcoin you don't have to go buy it you can earn it through your labor and and and that changes the

conversation it's it's I'm not talking about a revolutionary technology that Will unseed the governments of the world leading to you know a universal currency and decentralization wave that will sweep away nation states blah blah blah blah no I'm like you know just maybe send a bit more money to your in Haiti simple stuff cool good advice thanks um so you've also been uh quite active I mean you've spoken at uh before the Canadian and Australian parliaments uh on the topic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies what has that experience been like for you and what have you taken away from

that well I'm when I when I speak to to those kinds of bodies in the the two times that I have I think a critical component of that is that the presentation I'm making is simultaneously broadcast live and uncensored on a national television network which allows their constituents and the population of that country to watch if they're interested and then the video will be published immediately after for other people to watch which means that when I'm speaking to the um and they're speaking to me both of us are very well aware that half of it we're speaking to someone else we're

speaking to a giant audience out there not just to each other and that's really important because they give me a platform where I can speak without censorship uh to AB broad population and answer their questions truthfully um but in a way that allows me to to to establish I think the the important points about Bitcoin which allows me to dispel certain myths and certain um you know easy to to run to fallacies and statements about bitcoin's use for drugs and terrorism and pornography which is the same crap we heard about the internet in the 90s um and allows me to very directly address those questions diffuse them and and speak about the global potential speak about jobs and

opportunity and growth and speak about votes and a younger generation let me just say how great you have been diffusing Those Questions by the way I mean they they keep coming and you keep just deflecting them with such ease and Grace it's it's really amazing to watch you do that just before the show I was watching the part of the Australian Senate hearings and uh and one one of the Senators brought up uh something relating to the drugs and money Laing and you just took it took it like a champ thank you I mean part of that is practice honestly you know before I did either of those two I I spent quite a lot of time practicing with um with people asking me very hostile questions

and half of that is knowing how to answer the question and trust me I've had lots of practice because these questions come up again and again and again um it's part of the framing of the media to immediately go for a very sensationalist angle and they don't just do it to bitcoin it's not like a conspiracy against Bitcoin they did this to the internet they did this to the automobile they did this to electricity they've done this to every um new and disruptive technology but um part of it is practice and the other one is is simply um presenting an emotional story which is that um I'm not going to freak out and start screaming I'm not going to be offended I'm I'm I'm slightly amused by

the fact that that question has come up again and then I address it very very calmly and in a way that uh that shows that there's nothing to hide nothing extreme going on here is is really just a misunderstanding and and we have more important things to talk about um and so that's really a matter of practice but uh I I'm very glad I had the opportunity to do that a couple of times and and quite honestly I'm really lucky because both times it went very well so one of the concerns I had with the Australian Senate was I'm I'm one zero ahead in terms of Senate presentations if it goes well I'll be two Z but if it doesn't it will be a tie I'll wipe out my my score

you know uh and and keep in mind part of the you know you think it went well because they were open to the ideas and they discussed them in a non-threatening manner even if I had done the exact same job to a different audience they may have been extremely hostile extremely negative and dismissive um and then you would have assumed it went poorly when I did the exact same thing so I don't have control over that so far I've been lucky both the Canadian and Australian Senate were were very welcoming uh very open to discussion uh they they paid attention they listened carefully they had done their homework uh they didn't come in with some kind of crazy Mad conspiracy theory and and just Bluster and things like that which tells

you why I haven't done a presentation for the US and it's you know I'd expect more I mean some of them are okay but some of those committees are dressed like like whoa crazy um we have we have people getting up at the senate floor and throw throwing snowballs uh on the ground and saying look it proves no global warming exists like so you can't complete crazy you just you just can't yeah so what is what do you think is the most threatening aspect of Bitcoin for uh regulators and and lawmakers

I I think it's it's mistaking it's mistaking control for security it's um it's this assumption uh that because you can you have some control over something that gives you the illusion of security and then you rather than seeing security as a secondary symptom of that control you see it as inherently tied to that control and then eventually you think the only way to achieve security is through TI control um of everything and and then when you see something that doesn't have tight control you automatically assume it has no security or that it represents a threat so one of the main things about Bitcoin that confuses people is because we've never

had um a system that does uh decentralize security the two terms decentralized and security see seem to be until 2008 a contradiction in terms uh centralized control was security and therefore if you don't have centralized control if there's no one who's accountable if there's no one holding the levers of power then it how can it possibly be secure how can it possibly not be corruptable um you know of course from my perspective the exact opposite is true you know if you have someone holding the the leaves of power that's the one you corrupt and and then the system becomes corruptible from the top down and and it's very difficult to fix that uh and so the idea of diffuse power across a network is actually appealing

because it's less corruptible but that is not an accepted uh conventional wisdom that is a a pretty disruptive uh architecture and radical thought it requires a change in thinking and perspective uh it requires proof that this can be done and increasingly we're delivering that proof with Bitcoin but um it still challenges the basic assumptions and worldviews of a lot of people who associate hierarchy Authority and control with security and they associate the lack of hierarchy Authority and control with Anarchy uh and not Anarchy as some of the people in the Bitcoin community mean it but complete chaos the breakdown of civil

order uh you know uh people eating babies and uh rioting through the streets and burning all the buildings down uh and you know raping our daughters so so um therefore any any challenge to centralization hierarchy and Authority immediately leads to um you know Isis or whatever the latest Bugaboo is a complete breakdown of civilization and and Chaos uh that is obviously a very naive perspective in my opinion and I think it misses a lot of the really big challenges we have with hierarchical institutions and Authority um but uh it's still a difficult cell

and uh you have to do it carefully uh and it's also gener erational thing for a generation of people who grew up in a certain worldview in the past uh this is an established fact for a younger generation who see every social institution around them has failed them um the schools the courts the police the the government the jobs the corporations the electoral system uh all of these things one after the other are failing them and the one thing that isn't failing them is the internet um and so for a younger generation in fact it's very easy to sell this idea because they already get it like you know this is not the uh same structure as the one that

has failed you it's the same structure as the one you have hope in the internet yeah I think it's it's a good way of phrasing it that it is a even when maybe lawmakers and Regulators focus on issues like the consumer protection it's not really those issues they're concerned about but it's more just like vague fear of losing control and things descending into some some world that yeah they can't control anymore I think that's that that's really that's really it yeah I mean I I'd love it if regulation delivered consumer protection where was my consumer protection in 2008 because it didn't deliver and that and that's the fundamental thing that I

that I we have to address which is the it's nice in theory what you're saying but the truth is that when it mattered um regulation and centralized institutions did not deliver consumer protection they abandoned consumers um and they betrayed the social Compact and trust and that is a fact so we can either pretend it didn't happen or we can address why it happened how it happened and how we can solve it and uh I I think simply saying well let's do more regulation uh when regulation was at the root cause or at least the corruption of regulators was at the root cause of these failures uh until you show me actual consumer

protection I'm going to say well look why should why should we trust in the same institutions that have failed us at the time when they were most necessary let's take a short break and talk about Ledger makers of The Ledger Nano Hardware wallet now you may have seen this little thing before this is a USB smart card that contains a secure environment chip which hosts your private keys and signs your transactions you can plug this thing into any computer even if it's infected with malware your Bitcoins will remain safe Ledger provides a beautiful and easy to use Chrome app Wallet which is secured by second Factor authentication through their companion app for IOS and Android if you lose your device that's no problem your coins are protected by a

pin and the second factor and regenerating your wallet is really easy with the HD backup seed that you can store offline we all know about the importance of securing your Bitcoins but with a lot of solutions it's just a hassle and people delay it and that's how we've ended up with almost 1 million Bitcoins stolen but with Ledger Nano it's so easy that there is no excuse so don't delay acting now and making sure you have a secure setup for your Bitcoins to get started we have a special offer for you go to Ledger wallet.com and use the offer code eb09 to get 10% off your order that offer is valid until September 30th 2015 they also just lowered their shipping rate and to the US it now costs less than

$5 Leger Nano smart card security for your Bitcoins give it a try we would like to thank Ledger for their support of epicenter Bitcoin let's let's talk a little bit about sort of the the state of Bitcoin and where we're at so you know as as everybody knows the Bitcoin price has been dropping a lot and I'm curious what's what's your view there to what extent has that affected the startup activity and and the ability to fundraise for companies in Silicon Valley and in the United States I I don't think it's affected it at all um I think it's important to realize that most of the companies that

are fundraising in this space first of all in 2014 or at least in the last 12 months uh just over 500 startups raised just more than $500 million half a billion dollars which is the fastest rate of investment since the internet in 1995 in the tax sector in a specific industry it is uh an astonishing uh result uh a very promising result a and all of that money that has just entered into this space um has resulted and is resulting in hiring and training thousands of developers and none of that investment has actually produced Innovation yet so it's beginning to now and in fact what we're going to see is

the results of that wave of investment is are going to hit about a year or two in the future which is really interesting because we saw some incredible technology deployed in 2014 but that was really the result of technology written and tested first in 2012 long before um Silicon Valley started investing in this space Silicon Valley and the mostly us Centric Venture Capital space is investing in Bitcoin companies in US Dollars not in Bitcoin they're not using the investment funds to buy Bitcoin they might be buying a bit of Bitcoin in order to run some forms of or some parts of their operations uh but for the most part that money stayed in US Dollars

which means that the startups that were funded with that money were not really affected very heavily by the drop in price um and the investment hasn't slowed down and if anything it's accelerated we're getting use every day we just we just found out about a company that had raised a hundred plus million dollars two days ago um and we're still not sure what they do but yeah we're still not sure what they do and that's only the stuff you see on the surface you know these are the announced VC funds you've got to consider all of the private Investments and and Angel Investments and Investments and by Bitcoin angels and and all of the other activity that's like bootstrap little startups running off credit cards uh which in fact most

of the interesting startups in Bitcoin are they're they're not like giant invested startups their collection of two or three founders with technical skills building really interesting low projects so do you think that perhaps there there there's going to be a delayed effect since the price has gone down and you know investment rounds do take a long time to to get in place that perhaps in 2015 uh at least in Silicon Valley we'll see less investment or no not at all I think I think the the investment is accelerating because more and more people especially in Silicon Valley or seeing this uh for what it is they're realizing this is not a joke there is they see the enormous amount of talent

that is being sucked into this industry uh they understand the potential it has uh you know this is a force that can achieve uh disintermediation it can replace intermediate layers with technology and just like the internet replaced um several large intermediate layers um with direct access to Consumers but the difference is that the intermediaries in the financial industry are multibillion dollar uh Industries themselves and so Silicon Valley understands that this is the probably the first time that um that the software industry has been able to take on the banking industry and introduce competition and change and

disruption without having to ask for permission and that's why they can do it uh and that represents a very big prize at the end of the road because uh disrupting the financial industry means remov moving a lot of overhead a lot of fat um and streamlining things which will mean uh great results for those who achieve it so I think we're going to continue to see an acceleration in the investment in uh Bitcoin in cryptocurrencies in the startups in the space now quite honestly I think the real issue here is that the price of Bitcoin the exchange rate of Bitcoin provides for a very poor uh price discovery mechanism for the industry

it's not a price Discovery mechanism for the industry it's the equilibrium point which the outflow of money from Bitcoin in the form of mining uh Revenue to pay for electricity um matches or fall short or overcomes the number of new Adoption like at the moment in order for the price to stay stable we have to have 3,600 Bitcoin in new Adoption come in every single day that's a big flow of money and we're going to see I think a significant change when the reward halves in 2016 uh as that's going to naturally push the price a lot higher uh because the inflow of investments will will be

greater than the outflow of mining Revenue but you know this is this is really not a price Discovery mechanism I think it's a mistake to look at and and I certainly did make that mistake in the beginning I I I thought the Bitcoin price represented kind of an index fund for the industry you know like um uh like a like an investment fund but it it isn't um and the reason it isn't is because it it's affected by things that have a lot more to do with with currency Flows In and Out of the economy than it does with the fundamental strengths of the industry itself of the technology or its development and because it's a tiny liquidity pool it gets uh very seriously moved around when anybody makes a big move in this industry and um so largely

I think it's disconnected from the fundamentals and that means that it's great for speculators most of the movement you see is one guy saying oh the chart looks like um to quote the Dilbert cartoon the chart looks like a rabbit sitting on a clown Now's the Time to buy uh and then the other guy says oh now it's looking like the clown sitting on the rabbit so now we're going to sell and that kind of technical analysis in a tiny liquidity pool is a circle jerk if I can use that expression on radio yeah uh essentially it's it's a feedback loop where where the activities of one Trader are affecting the perspective and sentiment of the others and there's a bit of fundamentals in there but not enough to make a difference so I don't really pay

attention to that um I protect myself from volatility if I if I have expenses denominated in dollars I'll sell Bitcoin quickly to to pay my bills and if I um if I receive in Bitcoin or vice versa and so I won't stay in one currency for too long and I won't be exposed to Too Much exchange rate volatility and um you know I use it primarily as a means of exchange uh and it works fine for me um and so I'm able to ignore the price for the most part now the problem is um I'm human and uh all of our participants in this game are human we have emotions and these emotions are very easily affected by the price of Bitcoin so you know I'll

be having a fantastic day and then I'll see the price of Bitcoin tank and like browny face and then the next day Bitcoin like this week bitcoin's like shot up from I don't know 270 to almost 300 and and I like I don't care about the price of Bitcoin but I have a big smile on my face I don't know why it's it's hard not to be emotionally affected by it um it's it's I think it's interesting just how different the situation is is and the sentiment that the startup scene and the investment scene in the US from like in Germany and berin or or in France or in other European countries I

think it's uh I I guess hear that sort of wave of people becoming interest in Bitcoin saying oh this is the future it never it never really started or may maybe there was like the very beginnings of it and when you don't have like all colleagues talking about it you know like nobody is doing it I mean there's such a herd Instinct with people there and and then the price I think does pose a problem because for people who aren so in tune of it don't understand the technology yet uh it makes it so much harder to sell them that this is a lot of potential when you see like hey but then if that's really the case why does the Bitcoin price keep going down like

so I think it from people you know I know here who who have been trying to race investment from from investors they they've they've been having very difficult time and and the price definitely has exacerbated that a bit so yeah but Barry silbert had the best answer I think it was Barry who was asked you know why is the price of Bitcoin going down and when do you think it's going to start going up again and his answer was it's going down because there are more sellers than buyers it will go up again when there are more buyers than sellers that's it it's as simple as that and who are who are the sellers right now miners paying for electricity bills Merchants converting from Bitcoin back into Fiat as quickly as they can because

they're not using it as a store of value and the buyers are people adopting Bitcoin not just to use it but also to store value in it for the long term and and so is that the industry not really it's it's not the industry it's just one aspect of economic activity so in your opinion what needs to happen for that Trend to for for the to be more buyers sellers time it really is just a matter of time I think the overall adoption Trends in terms of uh brand awareness in terms of more people having heard of Bitcoin trying Bitcoin more people showing up at meetups uh the Grassroots Community the number of companies the number of developers the software being

built uh better software Slicker software easier experience more secure wallets all of those Trends are moving in the right direction and so over time it builds momentum and builds momentum uh and maybe at some point we're going to have a critical event a spark event that's going to turn it hockey stick like and we're going to see very very very rapid exponential growth um but until then it's just going know gradual hard slog and I'm not worried about that that doesn't frighten me I've seen this before I I first I first started dabbling with the internet really professionally around 1989 1990 and then I watched for the next seven or eight years and you know in my mind like this

was mindblowing stuff that it was obvious and it was going to be huge and then the market just took seven to eight years to start building up momentum and then it crashed in 2000 everybody said oh the internet's over let's move on to something else um so I'm not scared I mean I this Market sentiment happens the the the real question is is there something there is Bitcoin real is there a technological uh invention here that is disruptive that is uh effective that solves problems that does something nothing else can do uh that is truly remarkable and and the answer is yes and I'm I have no doubt in my mind that uh it is therefore just a matter of time

before this technology and it may end up not being called Bitcoin it may end up using the different currency even in fact uh but I actually think it is going to be Bitcoin and I think it's gradually going to gain a bigger and bigger foothold uh and it will eventually become the de facto currency of the internet the de facto uh Global transnational exchange currency for uh digital companies so we want to come back to this point uh the point of the sort of long-term outlook for Bitcoin because it's it's something that has been a topic again and again on our podcast

it's something we've been thinking a lot about uh the sort of long-term potential issues challenges that are in the way but maybe before we dive into that we for those who are interested in getting involved in Bitcoin maybe they read your book developers or or maybe they have other uh skills of expertise what are the big opportunities that you see in the space especially those that are kind of neglected and that nobody is doing free startup ideas yeah um so I I don't think for yeah um I I think it's always wrong to start a startup by by um starting with what is the idea that's going to be successful

um I think the most important thing you can do in any startup is look look hard at what drives you as an individual your personality what are your core principles what are the things that excite you and then try to find that one thing that that drives you so hard you can't put it down you can't sleep at night you can't stop thinking about it it drives your personality it's important to you it's important to the very core principles of who you are and do Bitcoin in that um because nothing can make up for the enthusiasm and focus and execution Drive of a founder or founding team that really really passionately

Drive behind an idea and and you know if you just go okay what's the thing I think will sell the most you're going to fail um now in terms of Bitcoin and and the future honestly I think there's there's a lot of really Visionary stuff going on and we've seen this whole Bitcoin 2.0 space Etc but I think for the next two years the vast majority of work we have to do is in 304 uh core infrastructure systems exchanges wallets uh ATMs and the surrounding applications making Bitcoin easier to get easier to use easier to secure um and spreading that reach to more people and and I would say you know

that's very similar to you're not to to the internet you didn't get the web out of nothing you got the web when the time was right because isbs had been deployed on the back of email all across the world and so every country had begun to deploy um ISB infrastructure and get out modems and personal computers and get people connected at least basically with email and that created the necessary um adoption density to be able to deploy something like the web and and lead the next range of killer applications Bitcoin as a payment mechanism is already here we've got the infrastructure we need to deploy a lot of exchanges a lot of ATMs and a lot

better wallets which is already happening but you know I assume there there there will be two or three exchang in every country in the world um and we're going to also see decentralized exchanges and multicurrency exchanges and things like that and we're also going to see more and better um wallets and that basic infrastructure as boring as it seems is what's required in order to get to the point where we can then P pull out more uh killer apps on top of this platform now um the the space has sort of evolved over time uh from being a I mean Bitcoin being an invention of of

cyer punks and crypto anarchists and a lot of that ideology is still there but as we move forward you know we a lot more business coming into the space uh we definitely see that at conferences there's sort of a dichotomy of like the people that are there um with uh soort the ideological foothold and others that are there just to to to to make make products and make money um do you think that there's an evolution of the space towards more like Bitcoin equal uh sorry business friendly products uh how do you see that play out in the future um yeah of course there is I mean this is inevitable in the majority of any technology most Technologies start out with a very focused uh set of principles

or um engineering objectives or architectural goals and then as they hit mainstream they gradually morph to adopt uh the principles of desires of mainstream and and they get diluted uh this is normal this is what happens in the maturity curve of any technology listen if I have the suits um you know uh playing on the blockchain architecture we're winning we just we just took a cipher Punk project and I mean not me personally but you know this community took a cipher Punk project inserted as a troan horse in the Global Financial Services industry and it got so good and so attractive that now it's peeling off suits from the

financial services industry who want to start playing on our turf with our decentralized protocols now are they going to change Bitcoin and make it more centralized sure they are but they're never going to make it as centralized as Visa or Mastercard or Swift or um the current banking system they're playing on our turf and that is a huge Victory and it will lead to Mass massive decentralization in financial services just like you know on the internet eventually the phone companies got into it and you had a whole bunch of phone company Executives and eventually they end up centralizing things and threatening net neutrality but they're still playing on the internet and that that decimated the close Monopoly control of the of the

long-distance phone companies and and nationalized networks and all of that crap that came before and I remember that and it was a mess um and we got been playing on the internet and guess what as centralized as the internet became as net neutrality hostile as it became as travailed as it became it gave birth to bitcoin because we won that time and now we're going to do it again so you know I'm not worried and and in fact if if we see the principles I looted too much um you know already there are a whole bunch of Cipher punks moving on to do the next most disruptive um protocol on the back of Bitcoin or is a trojan horse within Bitcoin again and again and again so we

continue reintroducing disruption uh that is the nature of change and you can you can only co-opt so much it's it's it's the Greek approach to Barbarian invasion you know you open the doors you introduce them to the idea of 12 gods and orgies and uh you wait to decades and they're Greeks you know the barbarians invaded you and your culture invades them and what are your thoughts I'm curious about some of these new sort of semi- decentralized solutions that we see entering the space like hyperledger like ARS Industries and others that are trying to um I'm sorry Ripple Ripple yeah uh that are trying to take the uh uh the technical technological idea of

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general and bring it to um to some sort of a semi-decentralized model that doesn't really carry all the ideas uh of the creator that's great I think there's plenty of competition what it will do is it will train more and more people in these a semi- decentralized idea is still semi-decentralized and it trains people who are steeped in a lifetime of thinking in centralized fashion to see how semi- decentralized works and what that does is it gives them a taste you know um so that's a bit like asking you know did compus serve help the internet or not sure it did it introduced a lot of people to CompuServe email and they saw compus serve email and said this is kind of cool but I'd like the thing can

I have internet email please and then comper was over and the internet picked up all of the slack um you can simulate um and create decentralized semi-decentralized things but the point is the pace of innovation the disrupt the disruptive potential the really interesting applications they come from the decentralized architecture and so if you semi decentralize you're only semi competing and we will we can we can beat that I it's it's not a problem at all yeah I I mean I think that has also been my point of view and it's funny because we actually used trojan horse before when we talked that the topic uh

discuss the topic because you know when you start having giving easy access to people right to to hold money and integrate in a banking account Etc of course the transition from there to a wallet that's for example um you know you know wallet that's hosted on your own computer where you control the private key that's a very easy step right the first step part yeah we're softening we're softening the edges we're basically creating easier onramps into these Concepts and and Technologies but but the whole point about decentralization is that um it has a cost uh decentralization is more expensive and more complex but it also

has a benefit and the benefit is that it fuels much more rapidly Innovation because Innovation can happen at the edges without permission from a central stakeholder in a very uh diffuse and decentralized fashion uh people can innovate on Niche applications that nobody would approve on a centralized Network and and that is is how you win because it's an endless source of surprises it's an endless source of new innovation and new applications and the semi decentralized things can never keep up with that let's take a short break to talk about Vol Toro the gold to Bitcoin exchange if you've ever tried to trade gold for Fiat you know how difficult that can be right you have to do a bunch of kyc wire some money over that takes a

week Plus cost a bunch of Bank fees and then you can only trade large amounts of gold and when you want to get the money out you got to pay even more fees and wait for another week volor does things differently it's so easy and so quick to start trading gold and Bitcoin on volor that you need to give this a try even if you've never traded gold before the Bitcoin Network makes deposits like in Fast and you can start trading after just six confirmations deposits and withdrawals are totally free and the trading fees goes low as 0.2% you can start trading gold as low as 1 milligram and because of the worldclass security transparency of volor you can rest assured that your funds are safe and

because you're trading Commodities you don't even have to provide them any kyc documents for deposits up to $5,000 worth of Bitcoins per dat volor combines the best aspects of the oldest form of money gold with that of the world's newest and most revolutionary currency Bitcoin so go to Vol toro.com and start trading gold today and we'd like to thank voro for the support of epicenter Bitcoin so in the long run you know it seems Bitcoin has a lot of advantages right now and if if you think of a sort of long run currency right I mean all the old coins they're basically you know irrelevant you could say uh and none of them have uh gotten any kind of

adoption that being said we have been talking about especially the the issues with proof of work and uh whether it can stay secure in the long run or what are your thoughts on that issue I think it's it's important to know to realize that Bitcoin is a is a dynamic system and some parts of it can evolve and some parts of it can't evolve so easily but um I think there's a lot of smart people work working on solving skillability issues and on making uh making Bitcoin work better now 10 years from now we'll probably have something called Bitcoin and it it will

probably resemble what we have today in in some of the fundamentals but but not in the implementation it will be quite radically different and so you know one of the analogies that I use often is the when I started in computer science in in 1990 we had ethernet and every year someone would writes an article about how ethernet can possibly get faster and how it's going to reach the limits of physics etc etc and every year they were wrong and now you know 25 years later we still have ethernet but how similar is the ethernet of today with the coax cable protocol we had in 1990 it shares some basic similarities it has some

fundamental um Collision detection and frame rate characteristics that are similar but it's like a car where only the steering wheel is from the original and you've replaced every other part is it still the same car um no it's not uh and yet it is and you still call it ethernet so uh we will have a Bitcoin that may have received many upgrades under the hood uh and the brand continues and the core principles continue and the decentralized architecture continues um Bitcoin is I think very difficult to unseat from that perspective but I think it's also important to realize that the idea that Bitcoin is competing against other currencies in a zero sum exclusionary game is a context of thinking that comes

from National currencies with national monopolies the idea that they can only be 194 currencies one per country and those are monopolies infects our thinking uh in the cryptocurrency space Bitcoin can coexists with tens of thousands of currencies and many of them can become equally valuable on finding n applications uh this is now a fully open ecosystem without barriers to Evolution and we will see these currencies evolve and occupy the niche that they are most fit to occupy um and coexist in in in layers and uh synergistic relationships and parasitic relationships and entire ecosystems of related currencies we are now living in a poly currency

pluralistic society um after 2008 and the idea of Monopoly currencies is dead so it's not Bitcoin against the world um Bitcoin will find its Niche it will probably be a very powerful Niche uh but it it's going to coexist with with thousands of other currencies yeah I mean this is somewhat where my own thinking on this issue is also evolved I think uh the to what extent or you know Bitcoin success will dramatically depend on the ability of the community to to evolve the protocol and to question also some of the sort of fun fundamental um design choices soshi made so I was I was in Spain uh two

weeks uh just shortly and I I was reading the the book of Satoshi and it was actually the first time that I was reading uh some of satosi is writing except for the white paper and and I think one of the things that just sort of struck me and it's kind of obvious but we tend to forget about it it's just how difficult this job was like what a Monumental task that was and how much he had to just make choices right because like you don't know how things are going to turn out and you don't have the time or capacity or skills or knowledge to try to model where things will be and that there will be as6 and Mining pools and all those

other things 10 years down the line but then I think those choices will actually be very crucial to the extent that you know the network is stable and survive so I think uh in my my own view this is I think the ability and the willingness to kind of think about these things and take action proactively not just when something goes wrong will be will be key and I hopefully hopefully Bitcoin will make that and you're certainly right it there is a huge advantage today in terms of network effects right it will be very very difficult for anyone to displace Bitcoin unless Bitcoin runs into some really big obstacles which even that they they have to not only be big they have to be

insurmountable and unfixable um or persistent over long periods of time which again is a rare situation the other thing is to realize there's a significant element of Observer Bias here you know it's not as if uh uh you know suppose you made all of the right choices and uh and you we can see that now the the thing is that the reason we can see that is because Bitcoin succeeded and therefore validated all of the choices that Satoshi made and we don't talk about the hundreds of other attempts at creating forms of digital currency from the early Beginnings in the mid '70s through the 80s and 90s and all of the other uh centralized unmined

Minds using different protocols different decentralized approaches all of the ones that failed we don't talk about so it appears as if uh one person came along made all the right choices and done no the reason we talk about Bitcoin today is because the choices that were made ended up proven good by by its ability to support a 10 billion market cap which is supported at some point and attracting the Investments that we've seen in the and the interest uh of people now the the great thing is that now it can evolve uh based on production use uh to to best fit um the needs of the people who use it and so it's now it's a live system it's it

wasn't necessarily the best thing but it was the protocol that was good enough and and caught on early enough just like tcpi is not the best uh set of protocols but it was good enough and it evolved fast enough uh and after that if it needs little tweaks here and there in order to expand its use um they make them and and and you know this the funny thing is that just as we see aites for Bitcoin people were writing aites for for the internet and its basic protocols throughout the 90s right and eventually they stopped only because it became obvious um that that it was refusing to die and and in fact thriving uh now we write different kinds of aites now the

internet is here to stay but the free internet is dead and it will forever be more and more centralized uh and again I think that's also shortsighted and the same thing with Bitcoin now we're beginning to see people say oh yeah but mining is getting so centralized that eventually it will collapse in on itself I don't think that's true either uh this a dynamic system it will e and flow it will get more centralized it will get more decentralized people will push against that um you know it it's it's a dynamic system with with influences and there are a lot of people now invested both literally and metaphorically in the success of Bitcoin so that's a b power I I I so coming back on these issues like you know scalability Etc I I had really

had my doubts about whether or not the ecosystem uh has the ability to uh take a step back and look at the problems as they are and fix them because people seem to get so emotionally charged and I I don't know I mean I was definitely there at that time I was too young to to know what was going on but with the internet I don't think people are getting so emotionally riled up about uh choices that were made in the design of tcpip for instance uh oh yeah they were they were oh yeah they were I mean they have I don't think they had such a an emo they wore t-shirts that said uh they were they wore t-shirts to to make fun of the asynchronous transfer mode ATM protocol

and its 53 by payload they made uh went to conferences and screened at each other about centralization and selling out to the suits and all of that it very very much the same and and there were a few important organizations within that fry that managed to uh just strike the right balance and and make good engineering decisions and steer um steer the main protocols in the way they needed to be to get here you know a lot of this happened because of uh organizations like the iatf and Ian and and various other standards bodies in w3c that managed to to strike water in retrospect some good balances um we're seeing that in Bitcoin too you know I see a very very healthy conversation on

the core developer mailing lists and among the community of Engineers and architects who are involved in Bitcoin about uh what needs to be fixed and how it can be fixed and there are a lots of competing proposals and they all receive healthy doses of skepticism and nothing is a sacred cow I think there there are some things obviously in Bitcoin that will not change you know the 21 million coin cap will not change no one will ever agree to that um but you know pretty much everything else is uh is up for redesign as necessary if it becomes a problem it will get replaced and the things that are becoming bottlenecks skillability issues ETC are vigorously discussed and a very healthy debate so I'm I'm very optimistic that

these things will continue to evolve in a positive way well that's really good to hear then yeah I mean I I think I think the Challen the the particular challenge in the Bitcoin example know is that you have money involved the different people have large Financial stakes and you somehow need to all get them aligned which can be a challenge depending on the issue of course in some some cases it's not right like uh yeah but the money is not an externality it's internal to the system which is really interesting because what it means is that if you make the wrong choice your money is worth less right um de facto so that also creates a very protective um environment where uh because people are invested more than just

ideologically um then that that kicks in Market incentive structures um for good decision- making and and you know in fact what we saw in in the past for example the internet it was a pure it was a pure battle between engineers and Suits if you like some who had just principled positions on engineering and some who just wanted to make more money on it uh with Bitcoin it's kind of a mixed mixed game because um you know the engineer are into money and and the money people have to do a bit of engineering too so it's it's engineered money it's a new thing we we'll see how it plays out but it it's going to be interesting again that's part of the really exciting thing about this uh is

that we have front row seats in um the development of a historic technology that is doing things that have never been done before and every day that goes by I just feel feel amazed at at having this opportunity to to to be a Frontline observer in and and sometimes influencer in in what is turning out to be perhaps u a historic generational uh worldwide impactful disruptive uh change in technology one that will create history and and that is an amazing feeling I I definitely agree with that I think Brian probably even more more so than I

because he works out the ethereum office I mean I was in Berlin last week and I walked in on uh metalic utaran and Gavin wood uh working there in the office and I I I just somehow felt like I don't know being in the in the Apple offices in the early 80s or something it just it just seemed like in in 10 15 years from now I would look back on this on these times and really uh look back on them as sort of being at the like you said you know being at the beginning of something just really huge and I think we all feel that I know what you think Brian I I couldn't agree more and I also think this is the the perfect the perfect note on which to to end our episode no I think we are very privileged to be part of this part of

this Revolution and you know um none of us doubt that this is going to be have such a big impact on on things and how how things are done and how we live our lives and I think it's going to have a tremendously positive impact and it's just super exciting to to be part of that absolutely part of the fun is not knowing where any of this is going the ride we're not in control we're not we're just going to see well Andreas thanks so much for coming on it was a you know great pleasure talking to you uh really enjoyed it and uh maybe uh one last time for those who want to do get more into into the into dep with Bitcoin spend some time you know trying some out maybe

sending some transactions from the command line I certainly will do that uh yeah check out this book mastering Bitcoin and uh it's on GitHub as well no or where is that yeah if you search Bitcoin book on GitHub you'll find it it's free it's also honestly it's being Seated on torrent sites as a PDF um people are exchanging the the the Kindle version and the mobile version um which of course is perfectly fine and uh yeah so you can you can find it if you're not a developer don't buy it go go read it for free um and and uh I hope you get something useful from it but do buy it or tip it or tip uh Andreas for for his awesome work oh that's

okay okay well thanks yeah so thanks so much for coming on and yeah to listener thanks very much for for listening to the show we you appreciate it very much if you want you can follow us on Twitter we at EP Center BTC uh and you can also tip us and uh you can do that well depends if you listen to it on let oft Bitcoin it's just in there or you can do it at EPS bitcoin.com tips so thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week uh yeah so just uh that I sent you a URL there in the chat uh yeah I've

already done it one second just hit generate make sure everything's uh correct and download the image how does that look oh perfect I think you're the quickest person to ever set that up ever is that background oh it's reversed on mine but not on your right fine yeah that's okay uh okay I like how they reverse it on mine so it looks like I'm looking through the screen as if the camera is like glass that I've pasted it onto same kind of size and centering my head look proportional to yours yeah if you could just uh uh let me see here um just move slightly to your to your

right that way no the other way uh I guess your right your left sorry yeah yeah yeah that way yeah okay I can May zooming B no how's that that's perfect all right can you see the microphone um no all right I'll bring it closer and you tell me if it gets in the way yeah but even if we see it it's not a big deal any we see ours it adds to the podcaster aura oh well I mean in that case I could do like oh yeah yeah that's that's what we talking about did Adam be LaVine buy you that mic because he's got the same one yeah it's the Electra voice yep be LaVine bought me that mic yeah I've got

all kinds of arms extending from different angles um I did a photo of it when I was doing the Australian Senate and it looks like I'm being interviewed by a robot cuz like my my desk is like extending All These Arms with lights cameras microphones headphones all of that anyway all right so I think I'm ready um all right I need to get myself some of those like big podcasty headphones 50 bucks man yeah I've got um in no that's we should get and they're taped

to taped to my neck use this like cloth tape to to tape them back so that they're invisible you tape yourself that's a lot of sacrifice I taped myself there you go otherwise they just fall out of my ears while I'm doing the thing so then I spend most of the time going like this trying to hold it and then it looks like it looks as if you're talking with the N because all of my lines are being fed by Illuminati Headmaster you know okay