The Future of Bitcoin with Nic Carter, Eric Wall, & Udi Wertheimer

Transcript

bankless Nation it's time for state of the nation we've got the topic that uh everyone is talking about right now who is in the Bitcoin driver's seat who's in charge of this thing right now who's running it at least from a social layer perspective of course I know David Bitcoin runs itself but there's been a disturbance in the force this thing called ordinals it's consuming a lot of Bitcoin block space and there seemed to be some maybe social fracturing as a result so what are we going to talk about today we're going to talk about yeah who is in the cultural driver's seat over the Bitcoin world uh Bitcoin fundamentalist Bitcoin Maxi zealots I don't know what to call them but that camp we all know what they look like and sound like uh

have been in control for a very long time until Taproot comes in until this ordinals protocol and uh our three guests uh just got back from Bitcoin 2023 uh and we want to uh ask them what they think about the current state of Bitcoin uh there's a lot of questions to ask uh mainly my biggest question is why is the most viral thing out of Bitcoin 2023 a video of Eric wall and Udi wertheimer dress up as Wizards dancing on stage I think that's the most important question of this podcast but also why are so many bitcoiners upset by this uh and so we're going to unpack all of these details about what's going on in Bitcoin culture land uh with three Taproot wizards but first before we get into that show we have to talk about this thing called diligence fuzzing which has nothing to do with taproots

wizards but is a similarly weird and funny name uh what is diligence funding fuzzing for smart contracts solidity devs Auditors Enterprises engaging in web3 and need to ensure that their smart contracts are secure before going to mainnet diligence fuzzing is an auto-grade security tool that helps you and find all of your code vulnerabilities in a automated way with fuzzing of course uh but diligence fuzzing from consensus there are other fuzzing tools on the market but this one is better it's an extra layer of protection for your smart contracts in addition to and Beyond typical code audits there is a link in the show notes so you can go fuzz your contracts yourself go pause yourself it's free fuzzing as we said before as well free fuzzing tools here all right David so uh

who do we have on and what size to the Spectrum do our three guests uh take in in this kind of I guess spectrum of full Bitcoin fundamentalism versus more open-minded bitcoiners um do our guests all occupy the same side of the spectrum how would you characterize them as we get into this yeah we have Eric Wall Udi wertheimer and Nick Carter who I'm gonna ask them what they would call themselves other than Taproot Wizards although Taproot Wizards is a great name uh also call them Bitcoin Builders Bitcoin progressives uh people that want to move Bitcoin forward instead of uh it being uh in the way that it it is at least with his culture um there's always nuances to pack apart with the people around Bitcoin uh versus

the blockchain itself but that is another topic of conversation that has floated to the top of crypto Twitter lately is the idea of a Bitcoin hard Fork because the last time that there was a cultural division there was a hard fork and so people are thinking like oh cultural division therefore hardcore because I want to ask that question as well uh and so these are the this is the context going into this but mainly I think the question is that you asked at the start who's in the Bitcoin cultural driver seat I think uh that this episode will be helpful for bankless listeners who are trying to predict where Bitcoin goes next I think it's been maybe one of the most interesting years for Bitcoin on record uh and uh I feel more bullish on bitcoin lately and I'm not sure where that feeling's coming from but I hope we

can find out through the course of this episode guys we'll be right back with our guests talking about who's in the driver's seat for Bitcoin but before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible including our number one recommended exchange they haven't failed us over 12 years and counting it's cracking go check them out Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry the place I use to check the charts and the crypto prices even when I'm not looking to place a trade on Kraken Pro you'll have access to Advanced charting tools real-time Market data and lightning fast trade execution all inside their spiffy new modular interface kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want

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is a previously ostracized bitcoiner and has recently entered the Bitcoin Citadel via the Taproot Trojan Horse committed to bitcoin and Sovereign Technologies through the best and worst of times Eric has recently begun seizing the current moment in bitcoin's history to steer Bitcoin back into the best of times he is also Taproot wizard number two a Bitcoin pfp project built on ordinals protocol Eric welcome back to bank list thanks for having me on Nick Carter is a partner at Castle Island Adventures and a long time reoccurring bankless podcast guest uh and also writer on the bankless newsletter who like Eric Wall has also had his fair share of run-ins with the incumbent culture of bitcoiners similarly has stayed steadfast in his support of the power and values that

Bitcoin presents to the world regardless of the machinations of the surrounding bees that buzz around in the Bitcoin space and Nick is also Taproot number three Nick welcome back to bankless thank you and thank you for making me your number one Bitcoin guest on this show Eric you can't come back I heard your number two so you actually you have to leave thank you and last but definitely not Rudy wertheimer is a perpetually beloved Bitcoin troll who was attempted to never say anything serious whatsoever on crypto Twitter yet still manages to run circles around the average Bitcoin fundamentalists who are frequently left days and confused by the layers behind Udi's ship posting Udi is also Taproot wizard number one

Udi also welcome back to bankless pleasure to be here again hey great intro guys I'm really uh really looking forward to this uh conversation and I really just want to get this one this big question kicked off Nick ericudi in the Bitcoin world is there a new party arising a new party in power um I'll start with you I mean we've always been there you know I think it's just like uh I think people are just sick of everything else at this point it's like it's been so long man of all of the macro podcasts and uh and just talking about how there is no second best you know you go to um the top Bitcoin figures at this point and similarly to the way I used to be on

Twitter like if you look at their Twitter feeds it's all about ethereum it's all about proof of stake it's all about how nfts suck it's all about it's like wait you're not talking about Bitcoin at all you don't have anything to say about between at all so so yeah we're we're just trying to you know break the mold and as bitcoiners talk about Bitcoin a little bit and and some people seem to be driven Driven Crazy by that Eric same question to you what do you think about this uh shifting cultural ties in Bitcoin land we've always been here of just uh find a way to express ourselves and to sort of find ourselves uh for the first time so we've always been here

it's just now that we're sort of congregating and making expression in a statement that we are bitcoiners we're not we're not like uh ostracized bitcoiners or altcoiners we're just bitcoiners and we you know belong under the same umbrella as other bitcoiners who choose to express their interest in Bitcoin differently so we're just bitcoiners Nick I recently learned that you actually uh observed Bitcoin 2023 from afar uh so what's your take on all the the recent events and how would you just describe and characterize them yeah I mean I live here so I didn't really ever here is Miami right yeah so I mean I was physically near the venue I did not go

in the venue I did pull out um I didn't want fruit to be thrown at me at you know Eric and nudie seemed like really interested in that happening and I think it'd be good for their brand if it happened there was no upside in me having Tomatoes start at me or whatever it's just not you know not fun so I I want to clarify this Nick so you felt completely unwelcome to even attend and how many previous uh Bitcoin Miami events had had you attended up to this point both yeah I think I spoke at both of the previous ones um I was due to speak at this one um and I didn't want to do anything silly like get armed security or whatever you know I think that's just

really unnecessary yeah but so the risk wasn't worth it worth it I mean there were there were actual threats so um I think you have to take that seriously even if you think that they're idle so despite that I think I'm the least ostracized of the of the three here um but I would Echo what they said I think there have always been moderates they're the majority of people are moderates I mean it's it they the uh the fundamentalists see they're disproportionate in the in the discourse but they are not actually the most numerous sect within Bitcoin and I think people are tired of their shtick I think they had their moment in the sun it from sort of the clubhouse era to present but

uh a lot of what they said didn't happen you know we didn't have hyper bitcoinization we didn't have some kind of Bitcoin Rapture if yet didn't go to zero stock to flow model was fake you know everything that they promised was ended up being false and people are now interested in new ideas and they're interested in actually using the Bitcoin protocol again which is nice so you know some people actually want to transact with Bitcoin as opposed to just sort of jealously guarding their coins and looking at them so you know thankfully um yeah I think there's a breath of pressure and uh both from the sort of developer side and the user side so it's great wait I I want to be clear about this kind of this division in Rift I I uh I thought it mainly occupied the digital realm I thought it was like

mainly like people on Twitter who were just like pissy and like you know add-ons and who knows who they actually are but and I would I would um characterize the three of you as as like basically Bitcoin Heroes at least that's what appears to me like I'm I'm a bitcoiner but I'm not sort of immersed in Bitcoin culture you know uh I've not ever gone to a Bitcoin conference but like ooh you haven't gone to a theory well that's that's true David but like uh the three of you guys seem like a year ago you you would have spoken at one of these events without worrying about having fruit uh thrown into your armed security how is it that you feel like you are no longer welcome I'm curious like Udi you went there Eric you guys were on the ground like was it tense I mean what's going on

I gotta say um the so it's funny up to the conference we did receive like multiple like a lot honestly of of death like actual death threats online from people who said like there are people who like started Twitter accounts to like go and reply on on tweets about us and say that you know they they want to pay people to hunt us down you know there's there's some crazy [ __ ] um and there's also been a lot of like very brave keyboard Warriors after the conference but at the conference itself I didn't feel any of it at all whatsoever um so at the conference we actually when you know there's been a lot of controversy in the last few days about the debate that me and Eric participated

in but actually at the debate at the audience almost everyone was cheering agent for us like literally I'm not even exaggerating um people enjoyed it it was fun um people had a good time of course some people didn't like it so I assumed they didn't attend or they just sit there quietly but um there was no you know I I didn't see any type of like violence or even you know um unwelcome sort of attention it was it was it was for me it was a very good experience yeah and I can I can just Echo that that actually surprisingly it was one of the the warmest events uh that I've ever been to there were a lot of people who were just very friendly and I just had a

great time at the conference and I didn't there were a lot of people that came up to me and told me why and asked me why Udi is such a douchebag but that's pretty normal though that's pretty normal they did that they did it last year and the year before too so it's like that's usual pretty much okay so give them I have a bone to pick with you guys though because the last time I did this conference like on this show I got in so much trouble because I did one I think summer 2022 when I had a falling out with maximalist in a big way at the time and I said in our Infamous phrase I said something like my star will continue to rise do you remember this I remember this oh I remember this I remember the songs someone wrote a song about it someone

got so mad they wrote a song I didn't actually listen to the song I trust that it's good but thank you leaving the Bitcoin religion with Nick Carter they hated the show they already hate Vegas they watched the show these are these comments they watched the 26 000 views that's a good shows they hey watch bankless we introduced them to bankless they they hated that they had to watch this show and some of them are in the comments right now oh yeah I then they say that my star has

since Fallen which is false to be clear I want to correct the record on that my star has indeed risen okay has indeed risen so the verdict is in the Star Wars okay the star Rose thank you now they're going to screen account this then they're gonna be another hit cycle and then we'll have to do a third show what do you want to say to the haters right now who are tuning in and watching Nick why don't you just suggest them right now um I don't know um I don't you know welcome to bankless Nation check out the sponsors um here's some fuzzing I don't know con smart contract fuzzing I don't know um check out topper Wizards it's a really great collection so there you go

that was probably the worst thing you guys did to Nick like before his episode you just showed the most horrible reel of ads before Nick gets to speak I think of an episode before it even starts yeah I know it's perfect it's it's engineered to uh trigger uh fundamentalists can we switch back to Nick's Temple wizard I want to make sure everyone noticed the most important part about it but yeah as long as we're showing here it's the worst honor so it's this one number three yeah it's wizard number three you can see that it looks like Nick but also you can see the rising star behind him notice that that is amazing

wow that's me I really do appreciate that the meme and cultural layer on bitcoin has been able to get really really nuanced yeah including with the help of these uh I don't even know how you want to call them the fundamentalists I have a bone to pick with whatever artist that you guys contracted to do these because the early honoraries are terrible the Art's really bad and then the later honoraries are incredible like this one I don't know like they're great so the early ones suck and so you're punished I'm yet again punished by virtue of my friendship with Udi and Eric that only brings me pain only brings me pain how

much are these things going for is anyone selling them no one is willing to sell I've I've I literally am not aware of any single person who was willing to sell their wizard so I don't know prices Infinity I mean they don't trade right they don't trade all of them have been given away for free uh so far so yeah we don't know what the what the price is sure okay so uh yeah at the uh Bitcoin 2023 conference just now um despite the uh dominance that the Bitcoin cyber Hornet seemed to have perceived to be uh dominating the the Bitcoin sphere y'all did a thing uh which was you went on stage when you guys had your talk and I

want to ask about like what you guys actually talked about but before you guys dressed up as Wizards uh did a fortnight floss dance uh and then proceeded to have your guys's talk uh and so I just uh Eric I want to just ask you about the thought process behind this this decision to put on some wizard costumes and to go on stage and uh what was the strategy here I mean it wasn't like some grand plan it was I mean of course if we're the Taproot Wizards creators or of course we're gonna wear a wizard costume when we go to the biggest Bitcoin conference and then sort of on the way there I just asked like I asked Udi if he wanted to floss he said that

he didn't know how you can see on his announced that he has no idea what flossing is or how you're supposed to do it all right I'm gonna play this oh wow that's a breaking Bitcoin song hey I'm doing some cheers Judy that's a good floss that's a good thing I mean the idea the idea is the problem with Bitcoin culture is that they uh you know what has been the problem with this conference and and the sort of General attitude around it is that people just take themselves way too seriously uh so this is a way to sort of prove that we don't take ourselves seriously we're here to explore and [ __ ] around and

improve the protocol by stress testing it uh not by like trying to pretend that this is like some perfect thing ordained by God or Satoshi or something like that so it's just like we gotta be a bit more humble with ourselves because I mean we try to like make uh a Bitcoin a nation state currency in El Salvador with lightning and like from all things that I've heard about sort of the lightning progress in El Salvador it's not a huge success like even the people are trying to use it in a decentralized way we need to be more humble with the actual state of some of these tools uh we definitely need to be more humble with sort of the

user experience and the privacy of these tools so I think bitcoiners we have a lot of more [ __ ] around to do before we can sort of go on these stages and be like we're saving the planet we're saving children in Africa there's a lot more to do here and I think you know Bitcoin is a bit of a clown show um a lot of bitcoiners are clowns so I think that me and Udi usually there are there are uh bioms at the conference that are dressed like Maxis this is the first time that you have clowns actually dressed like clowns David you mentioned like the um cyber Hornets before and I uh I learned to call them laser eyes

you know because uh previously we called them Bitcoin Maximus but it turns out we talked about this before it turns out they don't they don't talk about Bitcoin at all like these guys they talk about ethereum they talk about how they hate like nfts and how they identify and how they ate like exchanges like Finance but they they don't talk about Bitcoin at all so um so why call them Bitcoin maximally so we started calling them laser eye maximalists and because that's physical that's visually what they look like right and we the the the important point is that's not the majority of bitcoiners at all like the vast vast majority of bitcoiners I mean first of all I consider you guys bitcoiners like David and Ryan I I consider you bitcoiners I don't know if you identify as bitcoiners

but I think you are I think metallic return is a is a Bitcoin or I think that a ton of people uh in the larger like crypto ecosystem are bitcoiners in the sense that they hold Bitcoin and they want Bitcoin to succeed they're bullish on it right um but no one can identify as a bitcoiner anymore because what happened was there's this small like called that took over the Bitcoin brand essentially and when when new people are coming into you know Twitter or online or what have you and they look at like what is bitcoin that's what they see so they think that they represent it and in reality it's very small like there's like a few thousand people really that they're not big at all we assume that there's around 100 million bitcoiners in the world I think that's like the numbers

that people are talking about um even if that's off by like you know you know uh tenfold it's still much much bigger than the few thousands of laser eyes on Twitter so it's just it's just been captured like the discussion has been captured online but it is not reflective of anything that that Spirit of of you know [ __ ] around finding out just testing things out breaking things and seeing you know how they react and building from there that has always been Bitcoin culture for at least since you know 2010 to 2018 that definitely has been Bitcoin culture and somewhere along the way it kind of got lost but I think you know we're not in a state where we can stop doing that not at all like not even close so it's

basically I don't need to go back it's a it's a bit like you know that Kanye West's uh thing where he did and he went upstage and said Taylor I'ma let you finish that's basically like Max he's taking them they're taking the microphone and they're like bitcoiners we're gonna let you finish but you know we haven't finished yet we haven't finished at all but what we want to do with Bitcoin so Eric this is why I I describe this as Tapper and I know this from your memes actually so this is credit to you is that Taproot was a trojan horse and it's allowed Bitcoin to do things that uh previously to like Taproot I heard about Taproot just because like my friend CK at Bitcoin magazine and Bitcoin media and just a number of other like close to

being laser-eyed uh bitcoiners were like Tapper Tapper Taproot uh and then now it turns out Taproot allows for these things called ordinals that allows for jpegs on bitcoin that allows for Bitcoin to have um uh chain fees that allows a certain uh uh previously uh censored previously oppressed culture of Bitcoin to like have Foundation have like scaffolding to and like Market validation that there are these silent majority of bitcoiners that are allowed to like kind of say hey get out of the driver's seat like we're we're taking over now uh and so I'm just asking for your Reflections on on that Eric but also like where do you think this goes from here like is is is this like how big of a Tap Root how big of a

moment is Taproot in Bitcoin history uh so Taproot is a marginal uh just a margin it makes it marginally more easy to [ __ ] around with the Bitcoin protocol not by a lot but it it has shown that it was just enough to sort of get us across the hurdle and make it just easy enough for people to actually start uh to [ __ ] around with Bitcoin um I think it's I think it's probably the beginning of of something pretty big like if the genie is sort of out of the bottle once you have proven that yeah you can take the Bitcoin block space and you can do more fun things with it even if you try to put the genie back in the bottle um Andrew pulstra uh for example is one of the inventors uh of Taproot says that

you know it doesn't really make that much sense to try to uh block this at the technical level because they will just figure out even more inefficient ways to sort of embed data in public keys and stuff like that so it's it's a game that you'll sort of lose from the start um it's so it is it is a little bit frightening like I've tried the one point that I sort of want to make against this direction that we're going in is that I do have and I I have had a deep appreciation for the fact that Bitcoin and ethereum are very different systems uh and that's good because if ethereum fails in a particular way then maybe Bitcoin survives uh if Bitcoin

fails in a particular way then maybe ethereum survives if the two systems are very similar to each other then that gives us uh you know more of a mutual attack surface so you know we weren't I mean it wasn't me and Udi that made Taproot happen it was the Bitcoin maximalist and now we're just here trying to you know deal with the situation and I think the the best way to deal with the situation is by [ __ ] around with a protocol as much as possible so that we discover what actual situation are we actually in I don't think you know even though despite Udi being a Mossad agent I don't think that we are doing something here I mean hey Bitcoin should be resistant to both side agents like me like it it should be fine even if I am

yeah and I mean the important thing to remember is there's nothing outside of the protocol rules that is happening here everyone is still constrained by the same four megabyte limit it's just it was sort of a theoretical limit before and now it's a very practical limit as we figured out how to stuff more data into Bitcoin blocks nothing is fundamentally changed with Bitcoin people were inscribing data into Bitcoin arbitrary data from literally the first block you know it's in the first block right so can I ask a question it's here's why I still don't understand is like so why is everyone so up not everyone why are the fundamentalists so upset about this right right it's like one thing I I picked up um actually uh from you I give you a mass amount of credit for this and so I

was kind of understanding blockchain systems and the economics behind them of your emphasis on settlement assurances right and um the value of of block space uh just in general and it seems like ordinals and Taproot in everything that it's unlocked has been a revenue generator a value generator for Bitcoin block space right and it does seem like it's this is a a fair efficient market like who gets Bitcoin walk space the highest bidder it's the free market kind of like this is libertarian ethos type stuff I don't understand why are people so why are some fundamentalists so pissed off about the use cases that are happening as a result of the free market

right now well first of all because they don't believe in free markets and they're not uh austrians they're not Libertarians anymore actually um so any any free market style bitcoiner would acknowledge that it's an open protocol anybody can bid for the block space and anyone can be included and that means you to accept all types of transactions is valid Bitcoin fundamentalists have a different teleology geology meaning sort of the purpose of the thing right so the Telos of this chair is to be sat on the Telos of Bitcoin to them is to mediate monetary transactions exclusively with a preference for the global South

right for the underserved globally that sort of need you know a hard monetary asset right to them they see through things to the lens of sacred and profane so it's sacred for a Salvadorian to transact with Bitcoin to escape you know whatever authoritarianism or to to buy coffee or whatever it is it's profane to use Bitcoin to settle a JPEG transaction so it's not about Bitcoin uh having sustainability or accreting a vibrant fee Market to them it's about what's profane and it's about what's sacred and what Udi and Eric are doing is profaning

the Bitcoin system by forcing bull nodes to incorporate their jpegs because nfts under uh Bitcoin maximalist Dogma they are not an acceptable uh thing as are tokens like brc20s uh you know they're all unregistered Securities right so that's the problem is that they don't care about the long-term longevity of the protocol they just simply care that it's being used for the right things so they just have a different teleology but Nick even even if it's good for their bags like even if ordinals and Taproot is kind of good for its bag so one thing I've learned about sort of the crypto community and certainly the Bitcoin Community is number go up right number go up good can you make the case that like ordinals and

all of the the consumption that's going on the Bitcoin block space is actually good for the price of Bitcoin certainly good for the economic security of Bitcoin do they not respond to that argument I literally barely didn't barely own any Bitcoin well that's that's true they don't especially the newer ones they've only ever lost money with Bitcoin they see Bitcoin as something that you donate to like a tithe basically like it's your religious duty to put a portion of your page in a Bitcoin they've never made any money doing that because it's always sold off if you dc8 into Bitcoin starting in 2021 to present day you'll actually lost money so they see it more as an obligation to convert your savings into Bitcoin they're not actually in pursuit

of wealth right so as a religion there's uh an acetism to it right it's a religion that emphasizes privation it's not a religion that actually uh you know uh is like a a pursuit of Luca there's no it's not actually a financial motive it's a spiritual motive and also there I mean we have there is also a very strong like just social and cultural element to this that sort of shaped the arguments because when people were talking about Taproot in the beginning when people were thinking about sort of the actual uh intended use case for tablet was to use something that's called merkelized abstract syntax trees which allows you to do a little bit more flexible smart

contracts with with Bitcoin you can configure more spending paths for Bitcoin and that was celebrated you know you had people saying what we're going to do with taproad is going to blow your mind ethereum is going to get blown out of the water because we're going to be able to do smart contracts on Bitcoin now so when that was the narrative pushed by the right cohort of bitcoiner that was uh the opposite of profane then that was sacred uh now because it's sort of me and Udi and other sort of you know uh outcasts and degenerates then it's a bad thing so you know you can contrive any technical explanation for why something is good why something is bad but your starting point usually just

comes from your gut feeling whether or not whether you like it or not like if you take this is going to be like maybe a a take that's sort of out there but if you look like other social political issues in society like are you for or against immigration many times it sort of has to do what do I think about sort of the cultural impact of immigration but then the debate always becomes about sort of financial like what this does what does this mean for the financial strength of our economy in our country but if the immigration that we're coming is sort of where people that they like then then it's good so so people will make up Arguments for why something is good and bad on a sort of factual objective technical level but where and how how they contrive those arguments

and where they ultimately end up sort of has to do with do I want Bitcoin to be a place where Udi and Eric gets to [ __ ] around no if your answer is no then you don't like urinals and then you will listen to people who tell you why it's bad so it's it's just like it it's a pop like it's a power struggle between different cohorts of bitcoiners the reason that they don't like ordinals many of them just has to do with it they don't like me and Udi and uh sort of the community of Bitcoin is we represent because we uh which is understandable by the way that is one thing I do understand you guys are very disagreeable and frankly very annoying yeah nfts are perceived as an ethereum thing

they're perceived as a [ __ ] coiner thing right so it's their ordinals are um created by the other and they're not created by the English lightning Labs just introduced Taproot assets right it's also a protocol for creating nfts and for creating uh brce 20 tokens it's just you know it's still bringing tokens onto Bitcoins if if you're if your concern is about speculation and feet rating that happens through Lightning's lab to approve assets protocol now the argument will be be like no but that's actually okay because it's slightly more a slightly more efficient protocol but that's also funny because if you're saying that you want a very efficient protocol for [ __ ] coin trading you're basically saying that I want the protocol to allow more tokens to be

created not less at least you know the brc20s there's a limit to how many of them you can create so maybe that would be a good thing like you can always twist and turn these arguments however you want Nick I'm wondering for your from your Vantage at Castle Island Adventures and also just your um a deep understanding of the nature of the Bitcoin blockchain and also your connections to uh the outside world that that you get from just your relationships in the space how has this changed people's perception of Bitcoin from from the outside like is what's the deal flow like what's the outside perception is it changing is there any sort of um perspective that you can offer there yeah I mean from the outside I'm seeing for the first time Venture firms that would never have looked at Bitcoin are now looking at it

from an as an investable um like domicile for startups basically generalist Venture forms not even crypto firms that did a lot of crypto stuff no Bitcoin stuff and now they're looking at Bitcoin that's happening generalist firms that have never done a Bitcoin deal ever they realize that there's a whole new terrain here upon which meaningful uh you know value accretive companies can be built and they see an influx of new developers and developers are the lifeblood of startups right and I think that's a very meaningful phenomenon is we see I see developers that cut their teeth in ethereum so that their whole career is there now looking at Bitcoin Haze this is an interesting place to do

things it's a different properties that ethereum has like or any other um you know any other L1 blockchain so it has created a flood of new enthusiasm and I think you'll see many more financings happening in the Bitcoin space than you saw in years prior to a certain extent lightning did that I mean a lot of people thought lightning would be this unlock for an application layer on bitcoin arguably that hasn't happened right it's still a very very Niche um L2 um but yes from the allocated perspective uh certainly uh caused um even generalist firms to look at Bitcoin with a fresh set of eyes and I think also a lot of people on the

outside were fed up with the maximalists dominating the cultural terrain and so they also think it's extremely good that this change is taking place and also Bitcoin like bitcoin's long-term security looks better right the the possibility for actual fee revenue on Bitcoin in the long term it looks far more tractable now so it's it's good on all fronts there's basically no downsides after this Michael Saylor is sort of the one that's understanding all of this so he's the out of all the Bitcoin Maximus Michael Saylor has like triumphed and it's now above all the other Maxes in this sort of intellectual hierarchy because he actually understands that this is a a

not good or is at least willing to explore the idea the other ones are sort of so ingrained in their hate towards me and Ubi that they just they will not entertain you know any any reason for why this could be good but Michael Saylor is like perhaps is a little bit above that so he's like hmm okay it increases revenue for miners it makes it makes Bitcoin more secure it makes it more investable uh so that's uh pretty hilarious so sailor is saying these things now and that's a departure from like um Church of maximalism a Canon but like does he not just get um decried and Outcast and like uh the tomatoes hurled at him how is it that he's saying something similar but is kind of above

that can you explain that culturally I think it's a super interesting thing um no go go ahead Woody I'm gonna let you in I think a lot of the laser eyes don't know what Bitcoin was like before sailor um acquired some like they were not around and everything they know about um Bitcoin is essentially came from sailor's mouth um which is actually I mean I think that that's uh that's kind of impressive that he achieved that I think sailor has been very good uh kind of um repackaging a lot of the discussion in the kind of Bitcoin Twitter sphere and

making it more accessible for a lot of people so I think that a lot of people when they when they hear them say those kind of things they're like okay if he says so then it must be true and that's it um a lot of those new kind of laser eyes um I don't think they've ever had a um an original thought about Bitcoin in their entire lives to be honest they're just not so funny they're not there yet but and to be to be fair though look they're really new like I didn't dare to have any like you know out of uh consensus thought about Bitcoin in my first two years in Bitcoin literally I felt like I know nothing and I need to learn more before I even open my mouth and I think a lot of people are in that situation which is kind of

normal um the the other reason is that people listen to him because he's sort of a designated truth teller so in the in The ecumenical analogy right he is the conduit from satoshi's will to sort of like Earthly people right as the same way what's the word of Bitcoin and Catholicism you know the pope is the ultimate conduit between God and earth right sailor is one of the sort of half dozen people that's allowed to convey new intent from our Lord and savior Satoshi to the clubs and so no one will listen to UDI and Eric not none of the you know a vowed you know dogmatic Maximus they won't listen because they're not the approved

messengers of God's will satoshi's will sorry but sailor is so he's an acceptable place to get that message from so when he says that they actually have to listen what's the word you usually use as Catholicism yeah eschatology yeah it's the Doomsday cult element I mean it's not it's there's no analogy to religion it just plainly is literally is has it has all the trappings of religion it actually is when you remove God from your life you have a god-shaped hole and then you have to fill it with a new religion for these people that's what Bitcoin is it is an incredibly interesting data point you

David you asked me like where do I think this whole thing is going and I think if we compare this you know I really don't want to call this a civil war either you know we uh we're not like I'm not definitely not trying to like create a fork in Bitcoin and have these communities split off or anything uh we're working sort of within the confines of the protocol we want Bitcoin to be easy to sync on full nodes and one of the sort of counter-intuitive things is that the more we feel Bitcoin with jpegs the easier it is to validate the node because it's just raw data blobs like we have no we don't we don't actually have like similar opinions uh some of the you know previous big blockers that just wanted to throw away

full node validation in favor of uh you know more data on the blockchain we're not saying more data on the blockchain we're saying free uh free market for competing for that block space and the that sailor is sort of uh very much on the side of ordinals is an extremely interesting data point because it sort of shows you that you cannot draw clear battle lines in this divide this is why there cannot be like a a claim conflict between the laser eyes and the Wizards because there there are Wizards inside the laser eye Maxis and there are some laser eye Maxes inside like we're uh it's a it's a much more diffuse and mixed uh battle area which is why I

think there's not going to be like a civil war or a rift uh we're not going to throw out them they're not going to throw us there is no us and them it's just Bitcoin being a bitcoiner is evolving to incorporate more ideas and that is sort of the whole point of why we're doing this yeah and I really want to double down on this point because there are murmurings out there in the the rumor males like oh there's a Civil War coming the last time there's a Civil War in Bitcoin at hard forked uh by Bitcoin because then you can double your Bitcoins and so I really just want to drive this point home that this is not like the Civil War of 2017 where there was a fundamental fight over how the Bitcoin what the Bitcoin protocol ought to be this is more of

just a cultural war of over the brand of Bitcoin right can you just drive this point home for us Eric yeah I mean um yeah so there is no uh war in the sense that we want to Fork off and have our different chains uh but it is like a war of what is Allah what are what what opinions are you allowed to have uh what um what is actually like what is a bitcoiner really and we think that a bitcoiner is is someone who wants Bitcoin to be successful but you don't have to have uniform ideas about what that path looks like but what's very different from like previous uh conflicts is that we don't want to throw

out decentralizations we actually love we all of us on the both me and Nick and Udi we started out as Bitcoin maximalists we were Bitcoin Maximus because we want the centralized hard money to become successful it's just that lately the sort of small blocker camp and the religion that they created hasn't really been conductive to to that success uh so we're it's time to sort of experiment with different ways of achieving that goal we're not saying that one way is right right then the other one is 100 incorrect we're just saying let's let's widen the dialogue let's have more open dialogues because we can't just go narrowly in in One Direction do you two do you both agree with this

this will not cause a hard Fork this is yeah kind of a social Rift what do you think Nick yeah I couldn't agree more I mean the notion of fork based governance is it like completely like discredited I mean has there ever been a successful Fork ever you know where it cleanly spit split a community in half no right the the Big Blocks Forks were irrelevant ultimately right I've never seen an example of a community actually being driven by a fork meaningfully nobody's trying to change the protocol the protocol changed and it just so happened to accommodate more interesting ways to transact it's even is it would you say Nick it's even hard to know like

so if you were a Bitcoin fundamentalist like a Bitcoin Maximus how would you actually what code changes would you make in your forked version of Bitcoin to like prohibit something like ordinals yeah that you could even do that yeah as as Eric said you could try and uh and bar the inscriptions uh transaction type but uh again I mean people now have this bug in them or they want to take advantage of bitcoin's permanence and high quality assurances as to the longevity of the data the fact that uh the throughput is limited it gives you very strong assurances about the future availability of that data right so it's not just settlement insurance as its assurances of persistence so people want to take advantage of that so they'll

find a way to do it and people have been embedding arbitrary data you know in Bitcoin forever whether it's op return whether it's malformed signatures uh public keys if you remember the uh ASCII Bernanke in 2011 you know that was I think that was done with uh with public keys if I'm not mistaken um you know you're talking about a large database there's numerous ways to insert data into that and there's no way to prohibit it so it's a totally a losing battle and you just at this point the notion of ordinals and inscriptions is so widespread even within the fundamentalist Camp a lot of people acknowledge the usefulness of it um and so there's just no way to strip

it out unfortunately if it is an open protocol where anyone can transact people will find a way to insert arbitrary non-economic data if they want to what would you add to the city you know it's um in a couple of uh weeks ago we had um where the space where it's Torah space that we titled uh we broke Bitcoin me and Eric went there and kind of blew up went kind of viral and we talked about it was I mean it was actually kind of funny it was mostly parody like we just talked about the entire time about how we uh um because at the time the fees on bitcoin were going wild and we were talking about how because of us you know

Bitcoin is broken doesn't work anymore people in El Salvador kind of afford lunch um because the fees are so high it was it was a joke and um and people got really mad that we said we broke Bitcoin they they how can you know there are two camps one Camp was like how can they possibly say that they broke Bitcoin that's you know they never broke Bitcoin they cannot possibly broke Bitcoin inventors was the other camp that was really pissed off because they said why did they break Bitcoin how can they do this to us because of them Bitcoin is not broken so it was it was a very interesting two camps were like well you can't break Bitcoin Bitcoin is invincible and then there's this other game but was like how could you do the stupid coin you hate it why did you do this to us so that was

very interesting I think that um Bitcoin is really and this is something that I've I've talked about years ago I think Bitcoin is is is a social system um the the nodes are there to automate or to coordinate between social participants but it isn't the end of the day it's social phenomenon and what human beings do matter um it's not just code that runs on computers and and and humans don't interfere it's actually the other way around it's a system of humans and the code can help automate it just like any other type of software in the world um you know like Tick Tock is not a

software it's it's people and the software helps facilitate the the communications between them and the that's why I think that when we say we broke Bitcoin I think we kind of did I think we broke the culture in a way um and the the Bitcoin Community still functions just like he did before I think most bitcoiners are probably not even aware that there's an ordinals debate going on they're probably going going about their lives normally they they don't look at Twitter they don't go to conferences they don't listen to podcasts they have some Bitcoin cold storage and they don't care at all but the the small fraction of the community that is online and is tracking those things

um I do think it's bro it broke um that's that's honestly that happened I think you cannot ignore it like when you look at how furious people are about this they cannot stop talking about two people in wizard costumes on stage for like a week um they cannot stop talking about you know fees going high even though they wanted the fees to go high you know they they just can't stop talking about I think something did break and I think that um I think it's positive I think that it needed to break um I think there was this kind of fake gatekeeping um habits that was you know stopping the block space for for reaching its you know Market free free market Optimum

um and and other types of innovation too and I think that what a lot of people are realizing now and I think that's why a lot of people are so mad is that I think they realize that the conversation is about to change it's not really about me and Eric like there's there's so many builders that are getting into the space now and people who have been just sitting around talking about how beautiful the Bitcoin logo is and how great steak is and how you shouldn't eat vegetables these people are just gonna find themselves sidelined because their conversations are not going to be interesting anymore because there's going to be a lot of interesting things coming to bitcoin very soon so I think that's why they're so afraid and so upset because they know they're not going to be able to compete in the the

that landscape anymore and that's honestly that's a frightening thought it's not about Bitcoin it's not about their will for the number to go up it never has been they honestly I truly believe that I think most of them do not own a lot of Bitcoin um you know when they say that they want Bitcoin to develop slowly if they mean it they they need time in order to accumulate they don't they don't own a lot of it um and and I think they're truly upset I think they're seeing that there's all this interest coming into at Bitcoin I think they're seeing a lot of ogs are coming back they're seeing a lot of new people are coming into Bitcoin instead of other chains and they know they can compete so I understand uh but I cannot be their therapist unfortunately I'm too busy so like I I hope they'll find someone else

to take care of those concerns for them yeah if I can chime in there I think that's an excellent point Rudy basically for the last two to three years you could distinguish yourself within the Bitcoin Community just by effectively preaching so you could distinguish yourself as a knowing technical person non-builder uh with no credentials or anything just by preaching loudly on clubhouse and Twitter spaces about how the world was heading for some sort of Fiat apocalypse and how the Bitcoins were going to be the chosen people so if you just talked about sort of the monetary virtues of Bitcoin non-stop you could become sort of a leading voice in Bitcoin now with new interest new things new structures being built on bitcoin new ways to use it l2s ordinals

to distinguish yourself you actually need to build something right all three of us are builders on this call right uh entrepreneurs investors so to be relevant on a go forward basis you actually need to do something right you can't just talk you can't just have a podcast uh in a newsletter and so what we're seeing the consternation we're seeing with the the maximalist or fundamentalists is they're Reckoning with their loss of clout they know that they're not going to be relevant because merely preaching about how Bitcoin is a you know CDs on Fiat and fiat's going to zero and bitcoin's going to a zillion no one's going to care anymore we know that's not true and to be relevant in Bitcoin you have

to do something important and they're not capable of doing that they're only capable of talking yeah I really like this conversation because Udi said that the conversation is Shifting and and everyone knows it and and um Nick you're talking about in order to be a Bitcoin leader you now have to be a Bitcoin Builder there's another player in this story that we haven't brought up yet which is um Bitcoin media who are the organizers of uh Bitcoin 2023 and my beloved previous co-host CK over at the POV cryptopod is a is a a leader there and so I always think it's funny that CK went off to bitcoin media I went off to bank list and now we are like the respective spokes uh spokes orgs of our respective organizations and understanding the business model of of a media company uh nfts as a vertical has

been great for Content uh surface area for Content has been beautiful on ethereum because of the smart contract layer of ethereum that it provides it provides conversational surface area and so that in of itself is good for media it is good for conversation it's conversation is conversational scaffolding and so now like uh when I see these ordinals protocols and these brc20s understanding that Bitcoin media as a media company needs to make content and needs to have that content be consumed something like ordinals and something uh like uh tokens and all the drama that it comes comes with is aligned in their business models of they

need people to watch their stuff and so uh I I am bullish on bitcoin media and you can see this division play out because a lot of the Bitcoin cyber Hornets are very upset that Bitcoin media would even dare to like to allow the likes of Udi and Eric on stage in wizard costumes yet uh it is the thing that is actually going to be good for their business and so I like to if anyone wants to reflect on this like the the player that is Bitcoin media's role in this whole ecosystem I think that is a very important part of the story Eric do you have any any thoughts on this one I just want to give a shout out to you know um Bitcoin magazine pitch Rizzo um I think that it's it was it was Brave

what they did they knew that sort of this incumbent and loudest uh community that they would have been catering to for years were violently against the ordinals to the point where they were making uh like violent threats like I I personally don't care so much about the violent threats because of Mark karpeles like he um everyone said that Marco polis was going to get killed and then the only thing the bitcoiners actually did was standing with a sign in front of him you know saying where's our money man so I've I've never you know the only you know are the only people who are actually violent in crypto that I've seen are sort of the outside uh criminal organizations who kidnap us and and hit us but I've never seen like in you know internal crypto violence yeah so until I

see that you know I'm not that worried but um yeah I want to do I I do think it was sort of Brave of them because like this is this is the biggest Bitcoin conference this is a super important Organization for bitcoin's culture and Pete Rizzo is a Bitcoin maximum himself that's sort of where he has all his own personal cloud uh so to sort of go against the grain and create an ordinals track like at the conference that we're actually like they had a a wall where they had all the most uh no like notable ordinal inscriptions one by one after each other or the Taproot wizard one being the number two of course um and I just think that it was uh it was pretty brave uh for them to do that

and uh you know it goes to them yeah when the history books are written there's really two events that broke the spirit of the anti-ordnance anti-inscriptions people one is Sailor um speaking intelligently about it and the other is Bitcoin magazine releasing their um ordinals collection and maintaining more moderate stance uh in terms of the uh speakers of the conference we actually saw a lot of the hardliner Bitcoin maximalists sort of pull out of the conference disavow I don't know exactly what happened with your debate I think people pulled out of the debate on the fundamentalist side um so they were Brave and they went

against the grain they fired their most hardcore fans basically and deliberately picked a more moderate stance so I echoed that I applaud them for what they did yeah same uh absolutely wasn't it wasn't completely expected and it is a big risk on their end and I think it's paying off now so that's like really amazing um I do want to say that like you know David you you mentioned like this um um similarity between you know you on on Bank class and then there's Bitcoin magazine on the Bitcoin side I think it's a little different though you know in ethereum you have this very rich ecosystem of a lot of things going on and media is part of it in the Bitcoin side you only have Bitcoin media

and you don't have anything else there's nothing else there's maybe mining companies so those maybe are the and they're very quiet like intentionally so there's just nothing else um so the Bitcoin media ecosystem is is very very different than what you would find in the rest of crypto um because it is literally the only thing that the Bitcoin industry kind of has to say for itself there's a lot of um Bitcoin companies that claim that they're startups but they're they're just hiding in startups they're actually just media companies um they don't do anything else they're not Tech star sub startups um and that's you know that's part of the unhealthy unhealthy environment that Bitcoin is in

like it's very hard to be a media organization where there's literally nothing to report on except other media organizations that's a very confusing situation to be in and uh hopefully you know hopefully they'll find that it it gets better for them too like I think that I don't mean Bitcoin magazine specifically I think Bitcoin magazine is kind of pioneering that but the rest of it Bitcoin media companies I think they'll find that this is even though right now they're kind of kicking and screaming I think they'll find out this is actually good for them they're going to have a lot more things to talk about um I would expect that some of them are going to issue ordinals collections eventually you know they kind of don't want to talk about right now but eventually they'll find that it's probably a good Revenue stream um and they'll just have more things to

report on and and you know it's it's really hard for me when I try to think like who is this actually bad for it's really hard to come up with anyone except for those influencers who are just not going to be relevant anymore but other than them it's really bad for everyone it's sorry it's great for everyone you know if you're if you're a software developer if you're a Bitcoin protocol developer for example and you don't care about owner rolls you don't want to own nfts you don't want to trade them um it is still good for you because now there's going to be lucrative employment opportunities for you with commercial companies that are actually you know actually have revenue and doing them you know have real business um and you're gonna have you're gonna be able to employ your unique Bitcoin protocol skills doing that

um you're probably going to have like way above average salary for the first time in your life just like ethereum developers have for many years um because it's finally going to be in demand and then if you want to be you know an open source um non-profit developer in the future that's great it's a whole new skill scale and one of those commercial opportunities and then you can go and and be an open source developer for you know whatever um open source projects you want um so I it's just good for everyone it's really very hard to find someone who wouldn't like it like it unless you're just a podcaster who really doesn't understand any of this that's that's something that might be kind of concerning it sounds like sorry it sounds like um from from what you're

saying that that it's a profit motivated decision for Bitcoin magazine to support an ordinals track and maybe that should be the lens that we observe any company's choices from but uh is there no is that the whole thing like they're just trying to make money because then I can easily see it from the bitcoiner side that I mean it becomes sort of a sellout thing like yeah there's they're supporting ordinals because it's a profit generator but in order to support it like shouldn't it be also like a cultural thing not only a financial thing that motivates the decision for it to be the right decision I think the reason that it becomes a profitable decision to make is because there's a cultural movement right um because the culture supports this

because the culture clearly wants this hey look on chain right now most of the transactions for many of the blocks recently have been ordinals related you know so like clearly Bitcoin users want this literally the majority of Bitcoin users that's what they do so you know the the culture is there and I think that's why people see that this is a profitable thing now um and and still like being the first kind of domino to fall I mean you and I Eric we know how risky and just uncomfortable and inconvenient it is um because you do it first even if you know that the majority of the culture is on your side even if you know that it should be a profitable decision you're

still going to have the hardliner extremists laser eyes going after you and for a lot of people that's an inconvenient situation to be in and I assume that for many of the Bitcoin uh media companies they also have a lot of internal pressure um about this kind of stuff so even you know if you if you're running a Bitcoin blog and you're the CEO and you have like five employees like three of them hate this and you know that this is the right move what are you going to do are you going to fire them and get like it's it's a it's a difficult situation I think for for many of them and I think it's I think it's very impressive the Bitcoin magazine took uh took a bit early and it's it's very cool to see that it's paying off yeah there's definitely a few

markets at play one is the economic Market of course but the other is sort of the the truth market right and you're talking you guys have been talking about um Bitcoin as a social system as well and the truth is everyone who calls themselves a bitcoiner gets to decide what operating system what version of the software they run in their own brains are they going to run Bitcoin fundamentalism are they going to run a more moderate Bitcoin position that's why I think that the influence of the three of you and pushing Bitcoin media and sailor to a more moderate Bitcoin position it's got to be at least from where I'm staying that's got to be the position that that wins out over time the economics of it the Builder of it but just the straight kind of Truth and logic of it it just seems to make much

more sense from a Bitcoin Network perspective and I was I will say this I know Udi um you asked whether Dave and myself uh whether we consider ourselves bitcoiners we'll answer on behalf of David too because I I think um we've talked about this before but we do but it's been harder in recent days I'll say the past year and a half 18 months 24 months to actually say that publicly it's like if I if I were to say uh there was a time 2018 where no one cared if I called myself a bitcoiner but you know if I called myself a bitcoiner in like 2022 you're not a bitcoiner you're a [ __ ] coin or a bankless podcast is like no I actually like Bitcoin must my first asset I've never sold a Bitcoin that I have like it's just um Bitcoin is the

reason I'm here like I'm a bitcoiner and so what I really appreciate in the the work that you guys are doing on the social layer it's kind of a reprogramming of the social layers I feel much more at ease calling myself and labeling myself bitcoiner and so you'll lose some fundamentalists along the way but I think you'll broaden it the tent in a way that is actually good for this this movement that that we all call Bitcoin so I appreciate the work you guys are doing and thanks for uh explaining this undertaking to the bankless community Nick and Eric's been a pleasure to have you thanks so much guys yeah thanks this was great gotta end with this risks and disclaimers of course none of this has been Financial advice never is on Bank list Bitcoins risky so is crypto so are ordinals what

the hell so is attending a conference God I had no idea uh you could definitely list what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bakeless journey thanks a lot learning about crypto is hard until now introducing metamask learn an open educational platform about crypto web 3 self-custody wallet management and all the other topics needed to onboard people into this crazy world of crypto metamask learn is an interactive platform with each lesson offering a simulation for the task at hand giving you actual practical experience for navigating web 3. the purpose of metamask learn is to teach people the basics of self-custody and wallet Security in a safe environment and while metamask learn always takes the time to Define web 3 specific vocabulary it is

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