NIFTYNEI: Doing Magic With Magic Internet Money (Bitcoin Talk on THE Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You go to a conference like Riga and like payments, you just expect it to work and it just works magically.

(00:06):
And you like, you know, it's a fraction of payment. It's Bitcoin sent instantly.
Like it's literal magic. Like we're doing magic with magic internet money using free and open protocols.
And a bunch of weirdo and cyberpunk like hackers built because they cared about financial privacy.
They cared about being able to do peer to peer stuff.
Like it exists and it's here, but like this is like what we're competing with.

(00:28):
We're competing with like this credit system and this like the only way you get wealthy is if you own debt.
Like owning debt is good because the government's going to inflate you out anyway, right?
They're just going to print money out like to save you.
So if you took a loan out, you ended up becoming like your asset is your loan.
It becomes this like weird thing, right? It's like, like owning debt suddenly is like the best thing you can be holding in an inflationary environment.

(00:53):
One of the reasons that working on lightning is such an important thing that for me to spend my time on is because I believe that
if we don't have something like lightning or maybe e-cash, our financial
privacy is gone. Like forget it. Like it's we you can no longer have private

(01:14):
transactions between people like, you know.

(01:44):
That guest is Nifty Nye, aka Lisa.
Nifty is an open source developer, Bitcoin and lightning protocol expert and educator through her base 58 Bitcoin Engineering School.
She also hosts developer conferences around the world called BTC plus plus.
And there happens to be one coming up in a couple months in Berlin.

(02:04):
So if you're interested, you can grab a link in the show notes for that.
Nifty and I get into a bunch of topics from Bitcoin education to scaling Bitcoin, the lightning network,
e-cash, Fedemans, Covenants, the Bitcoin ecosystem versus the fiat banking system, and a whole lot more.
Nifty is brilliant and it was great to pick her brain.

(02:25):
I think you are going to enjoy the heck out of this episode and you're going to definitely learn a lot too.
Before we dive in, do me a favor and subscribe to the Bitcoin podcast wherever you're listening or watching
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(02:51):
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(03:14):
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(03:36):
hit me up on social media or through the website BitcoinPodcast.net or send me an email.
It's hello at BitcoinPodcast.net. Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Nifty Nye.

(03:57):
Lisa, Nifty, welcome. Thanks so much for coming on another fucking Bitcoin podcast. It is great to have you here.
Thanks for having me on Walker. I'm really excited to be on another Bitcoin podcast.
Yeah, you can't have too many of them.
You code, but those that can't code, I think ultimately just end up podcasting.
It's like you code and you teach about coding, but I don't do either of those.

(04:22):
So it's like, well, what's left for a Bitcoin or to do but start a podcast?
It's a natural progression, I guess.
It's awesome too. I think it's Rob Hamilton, Rob Ham, one on Twitter or X or whatever it's called these days.
I was just joking that at some point in Twitter, in Bitcoin, you start a podcast or start running
conferences, events. Yeah, I think that tracks pretty well, I think.

(04:50):
Not a bad thing though. You realize that as much as being within the Bitcoin echo chamber,
it seems like everybody you talk to knows about Bitcoin. As soon as you step outside of it,
it's like, oh my gosh, wow, we really are so early because everyone else I talk to has no idea what's
going on. Yeah, I mean, talking to normies is a whole subtopic I feel like we can get into.

(05:11):
Because I don't do it that often is the thing I realize. I live in Austin, I hang out at
12 lab all the time. Most of my friends are at Bitcoiners that are also in town.
Most of my non-Bitcoin friends at some point, I just kind of stop talking to.
When I talk to people that don't know anything about Bitcoin, I'm always like,
I don't know what your life is like. You can still me in on what it's like out there,

(05:34):
outside the orange bubble because it's almost like stranger in a strange land.
I really want to try going to other conferences, not Bitcoin conferences for once, as a break.
I don't know. It's like the people of equivalent of touching grass. You can be like,
what do you know about the world that I don't? Because-

(05:58):
What kind of conferences are we talking here? Are we talking crypto conferences? Or you mean
just totally outside of any of that? Something else. I don't know. I'm really into Ninja Creamy.
Is there a Ninja Creamy con?
So just completely step outside of it. I like that. It's a palette cleanser,
basically, from the Bitcoin space a little bit.

(06:20):
They don't care about Bitcoin. What do they care about? I don't know. These are things I think about.
What do you guys talk about out there? If not Bitcoin and it's
both short-term and long-term ramifications, I don't know.
So that's just me. If you're in Bitcoin long enough, you come up with ways to hang out with
other Bitcoiners and talk about things you want to talk about like a conference or a podcast.

(06:44):
Yeah, that was basically my driving force behind starting this. I was like, well,
I just want to talk to Bitcoiners more. What better way to do it than to
nag them into coming on another Bitcoin podcast? It's perfect. It works out.
Oh man. So Nifty, Lisa, I'll just probably use both of them throughout this,

(07:09):
both Niman name. Before we dive in, I'd love to just for folks that don't know you,
can you just start us off with who are you? How did you get here today to be doing a ton of
different stuff in and around Bitcoin and not talking to hardly any normies at all?

(07:31):
That's a great question. I'm a software developer by trade. So I got into Bitcoin from the software
developer side of it. Originally, I started my career in software engineering over a decade ago
in New York City in this little program called RecurSenter. I was doing Android Dev after RecurSenter

(07:51):
as I worked at big, pretty well known name companies. Well, I worked at Etsy and then I
worked at a small startup that was doing digital art before NFTs were a thing in New York,
doing Android stuff for them. I used to joke I ran a botnet because every device that we sold
ran might was exclusively my code. I was the only one of the company that shipped code for Android.

(08:14):
So every time we sold a new device, I got a new machine in my army. This is like hanging on their
wall and talking to their Wi-Fi. Anyways, I did a little project where I was logging everyone's
Wi-Fi because we were having Wi-Fi problems. I made a little dashboard internally for our head

(08:35):
of engineering so it could pull out support calls. He could pull up a little graph to be like,
well, your Wi-Fi doesn't look that good. Can you move it like here? At some point,
posted a picture of one of them at the White House and I was just like, wow.

(08:55):
Just infiltrating. Oh my god. Kind of makes you wonder about their security practices,
actually, if you could dig in there so easily. But that's maybe a different rabbit hole. Yeah. I mean,
anyone can build any, I guess, what devices are you bringing in? You don't think about it. You're
like, oh, I got this new digital art screen that goes on the Wi-Fi. Man, it's kind of a

(09:23):
good infiltration technique, actually. Now that I think about it, I need to go make sure I don't
have any digital art screens hanging around the house now. Or computer. Anything that has a Wi-Fi
chip in it, it doesn't even have to be connected to the Wi-Fi. It can snoop and see what's available.
Anyways, yeah. I did that before I got into Bitcoin and then I got tired of Android. I could only

(09:49):
build work on Android apps so much before I was like, I don't want to see another login form if I
have to write another login form for a mobile app. I'm over it. I'm going to kill myself.
So I was kind of tired of Android stuff. So I was looking around at what my next thing was.
One of the teams that I got to know pretty well from going to a lot of Android conferences,

(10:12):
apparently I've been into conferences for a long time. I used to go to bunch of Android
conferences to talk. I would do a new talk for every conference, which I realized it's
on point. It's weird because other people were just reusing the same talk. I was like, no,
I want to make other stuff I want to talk about. That's old news. Let's do the new thing. I want

(10:34):
to talk about it. I did a lot of that. I live in New York so I was traveling a lot and doing
whatever, but I decided I needed a break. So I moved to San Francisco and tried to get out of
Android. So it was a long story. Anyways. Long stories are good here. Again, you have Ramble on.
Yeah. One of the teams that I got to know through Android stuff was, I thought, honestly,

(10:55):
one of the best engineering teams in Android at the time, which was the Cash App team.
They were really pioneering a lot of new and interesting ways to do logins or not have logins,
rather, on mobile phone stuff and how to make digital payments through mobile apps,
really nice and intuitive. I really liked hanging out with their team and getting drunk at all

(11:16):
these conferences. So when I was looking for a new job, I applied at Cash App. So I was like,
these guys are legit. This is a team I want to work with. I don't know. You want to work with
people you know. So it's okay. Not that I would necessarily get to work with people I knew, but
it was like, because it's a big team. They had 100 people in the engineering organization,

(11:36):
even back in 2018. Anyways, I ended up joining them in the spring of 2018. I was going to work on.
It's also all Java shops. So doing Android stuff, I knew how to do Java. I didn't want to do Android,
but I still wanted to do something I was familiar with. So I could take my Java skills
sort of and still do JavaE things, but on totally different kinds of problems for a back end. I was

(12:02):
like, oh, I get to work on one thing. Okay. So one thing working as a mobile dev that you don't
only think about is I write an application and then it gets distributed hundreds of thousands of
devices. I think the Etsy app was on a million plus phones. So my code was running a million plus
devices all around the world, which is pretty cool. But the kinds of problems and challenges

(12:24):
that you have as a developer who ships apps, ships software to bunches of devices, is very
different than people who work on websites back ends, literally at Etsy. So Etsy had both
very good mobile apps and we also had a big website. The big website part is a freaking super
computer. You're running one version of your application runs, but it's an application

(12:50):
that millions of people will interact with, as that makes sense. So it's kind of interesting.
Okay, I have millions of copies of my application, but really just one person's going to interact with
it at a time kind of thing versus working on the back end. It's like, okay, I'm going to work on
one big application. There's only one instance of it running. So it's just a really different

(13:12):
engineering challenge. And it's like, okay, but millions of people need to be able to talk to
this one super computer that we're building across the cloud or maybe Etsy had on their own
machine. So at Etsy, I don't know, maybe this is fun if you're not in computer stuff. But
whenever people talk about on cloud versus not, really, Etsy wasn't on cloud. Etsy was a really

(13:34):
great place to start your engineering career because they did almost everything in-house.
Most days, these days, if you want to accept payments as a dev, you just use Stripe, right?
Because this is just like an existing payment processor, whatever, they handle the credit
card stuff for you. Stripe didn't exist when Etsy got started. So Etsy basically has an in-house team

(13:55):
that runs its own infrastructure that basically does what Stripe does. So that was the payments
team at Etsy. So if you want to learn about how payment engineering work, there was someone at
Etsy that was doing it. We had our own internal logging set. Anyways, it was just like, Etsy
was really, we do it ourselves. We're a craft company. We do craft with code as well. So for a

(14:18):
long time, and it was just when I was leaving, I was at Etsy from 2012 to 2014. So just two and a
half years. When I was leaving, they were starting, they had new management, or trying to go public
or something. So they were like, kind of getting away from some of that. So they were going to
like move everything into the cloud or something. But before that happened, you could like go to

(14:38):
this place. And I want to say it was in New Jersey or something. And there's just like massive super
computer with wires running everywhere. That's like that is Etsy. So when you deploy code, it's
like going on to, it's going to run. So we make one copy of it, and it's running on this like
super computer that other people at Etsy patch together with cables and stuff. Anyways, in the

(15:00):
cloud, it's like your stuff's patched together on someone else's computer somewhere. But
Right. Let AWS handle it. Like, yeah, just ship it on over there. Yeah.
But it's still kind of the same thing, right? It's just like, who's super computer are you
running it on? Is it one that you bought and built yourself? Or is it a super computer that
Amazon put together and is letting lots of people like read time on? Anyways, like most like websites

(15:25):
and applications, like most web applications, you know, the back end of it is really just like
one application running a super computer. Anyways, I wanted to be a super computer programmer.
Well, in a way, now that's kind of what you do program on, you know, in its own way,
is not Bitcoin just a big old distributed super computer? This is interesting because like,

(15:49):
I feel like it's a lot more like mobile apps and that you write a copy of Bitcoin. So like the
core lightning stuff and Bitcoin D is the same way. You like write what's kind of like semi ish
super computer like stuff, except you don't really as many requests to deal with. It's like,
what that does, like there's not tons of people trying to talk to you and get info.

(16:09):
But it's like similar, but like, but then you distribute it. So there's thousands of computers
that are running your software. So it's kind of this weird mix between the two of like, you write
the software and it's not like I'm going to deploy it on my machine and then I'm like,
responsible for keeping it running, etc. I do run like my own lightning notes. I am responsible for
that, etc. But it's like also on like thousands of other computers. So I think in that way, like,

(16:35):
developing for Bitcoin, the D or for like any lightning node is a lot more like the kind of
package distribution thing. So yeah, I don't know. It's kind of interesting.
So, so then when you so did you end up working at cash app for a little while?
I did and they put me on the Bitcoin team. Nice. Okay. Was that your first time working with

(17:00):
Bitcoin directly? Or had you been okay? So you hadn't been like dabbling just in like spare time
before that. So that was your your entrance to working on Bitcoin. Wow. How was that? We're
working at cash app because they've been like for a for a bigger and like really,
I mean, they've I don't know how many downloads they have on their app, but it is like an astronomical

(17:23):
number. They have been obviously at the forefront of a lot of this is as far as it comes to Bitcoin,
like they're, you know, light years ahead of like the, you know, the Venmos of the world, who yeah,
I know they like implemented some some crypto stuff, but I still don't even know if you can
withdraw from there if you end up buying it on there, like, but cash apps like gone a completely

(17:46):
different route. Like it seems like it's actually like a they have a Bitcoin focus. Was that your
experience there too? Yeah, it was probably one of the best places I could have accidentally
done to that makes sense. Like it's like, like, I feel like incredibly lucky that it worked out
that way because like, it was kind of having a front row seat onto one of the first companies

(18:07):
it was building a custodial Bitcoin thing in Lake Elite. I don't know if they launched in 2017,
I joined an early like late 2017, I joined in like spring 2018. So I wasn't there for like the
initial build up, but I was there when they started like bringing on more engineers to like
run the project basically. Yeah, it's really cool. I learned a lot. They were using BitcoinJ. I'm

(18:29):
pretty sure they might still be using BitcoinJ. I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, I haven't
worked there since 2018. Spend, is that 60 years to use this anyways? Time flies.
Yeah, so yeah, they were doing BitcoinJ stuff. So it was a lot of just like, I don't know,

(18:51):
like what is Bitcoin? I don't even know like how Bitcoin work like I like first week on the
Java is reading mastering Bitcoin by Andreas, whatever his name is. And really quickly kind of
got myself really deep down the Bitcoin technical rabbit hole. And they managed to like, nerds
tonight Rusty Russell is working on lightning accidentally. I didn't think Rusty was a random

(19:14):
person, an email, and it just so happened to be the like, I'd like to call him like editor of
the lightning spec. You know, there was a lot of people involved in lightning, but he was kind of
like the driving force, I think, around the spec process. I accidentally emailed him about a burning
question I had about a Bitcoin bug I found while reading mastering Bitcoin. And then like,

(19:36):
he's finally got back to me a few months later, and was like, do you want a job working on lightning?
I was like, actually, yeah, that's like more fun. I mean, cash it was great, but I was like, it was
like, I don't know, it was like opportunity lifetime to be an open source to that, to have
working on like an open source thing. I was like, forget the super computer programming stuff,
I'm going to go back to, I'm going to go learn about programming for protocols and also like

(19:58):
go back to where he had distributed like programs again, I don't know. Since we're talking about
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That's awesome, though. So this was all the results of basically having fun at conferences with a
cool team of engineers and then sending an accidental email. And then now here you are

(21:34):
today. Life's funny, isn't it?
So many conferences, still random, like messaging people.
That's amazing. And now you have basically been working on open source development ever since.
You haven't gone back to any, let's say, corporate type role since then, which is pretty impressive.

(21:58):
And you're not only now developing, but you are actively educating. Can you talk a little bit
about base 58 and what you're doing with that? Because I think it's really cool.
Yeah. And I wish, honestly, Walker, I wish I was doing more. It's kind of taking a backseat to
running conferences, which makes sense. I can only do so many things. But yeah, so base 58 is my

(22:20):
attempt to help explain how the Bitcoin protocol works. It's like a protocol engineering school.
It's like how I think of it about it. I'm not teaching out of program yet, maybe someday.
But it's like, okay, I want to know how Bitcoin works. What is going in a bit? And I started
from the place that I had to start in lightning. So it's basically like, I had to learn a lot of

(22:42):
stuff about how Bitcoin works in order to be effective at writing lightning spec stuff and
working on lightning. So I had to learn a lot about how transactions work. And through the
process of learning how transactions work, I was actually really good. Sometimes I'm not as good
about this. But I sat down and started writing a manual for how transactions works while I was

(23:03):
learning about them. So I would do stuff. So I almost come up with little challenges that I need
to find the answer to. And then as I was doing it, I write little exercises almost of how it
works together. So it was basically figuring out how transactions work in Bitcoin at the byte level
and what that means and why they work that way. And so I wrote this. Basically, I have 80% of a

(23:27):
textbook done, which I haven't been working on. I don't know. It's one of those things, another
infinite project list. I hope I can get that done sooner rather than later. Because I feel like it
would be a really great resource for a lot of people. But I didn't publish a textbook. Instead,
I started just teaching classes, like going through what is in the textbook, basically.

(23:47):
So yeah, that's like the base 58 thing is like, how does Bitcoin work, but just at the transactions
level? Yeah. Now, I love it. And you also mentioned you're now fairly busy running conferences.
Hence the textbook on the back burner for a little while. Can you talk about that a little bit?

(24:08):
I know you have your, so it's BTC++, right? And these are developer oriented conferences, right?
They're like, bring your technical chops and get to work. I love it. So can you talk about these
a little bit? You've done a number of them already, right? And then you have one coming up in October,
if I'm not mistaken. I've done six in the last two years. In four countries, three different

(24:33):
continents. We're going to have our seventh one in October, so just about seven weeks away.
It's going to be about eCash. Yeah. So I started running conferences because I was an idiot. No.
I started doing conferences because this is in 2021, 2022. I don't remember if we were in

(24:57):
like a bear market or what, but I felt like, well, there are a couple of things. One, I was
like starting to get students coming through base 58. And I was like, how do I keep them more
involved in this like open source community? Like if you come through base 58, like how do you,
and I really, really wanted to like, I really wanted to do, and I still think it would be a great
thing at some point. I need help. I don't know. But at some point, I want to have like recruiting.

(25:21):
So like you could take base of day classes and really help you find jobs so you could stay in
Bitcoin and like use the skills that you just developed. Like, you know, like a pipeline. I
wanted to get more people working in open source kind of thing or more people working in Bitcoin.
The good engineer is doing cool and interesting things in Bitcoin. So like my idea was like,
all to a conference and I will, it'll give people an opportunity to get to know each other.

(25:43):
I'll also get an opportunity to like interface with companies and like get them to know me,
whatever, and like so they could come be involved in this conference. And then the other like,
I mean, I never do anything for one reason. There's usually like 10 to twined reasons and like,
oh, this is a good idea. But the other thing was starting Bitcoin plus plus was like, working

(26:04):
at Blockstream. I was seeing all this really cool, amazing tech that Blockstream is really good at
working on, but terrible about talking to other people about. So like a good example of this is
miniskrip. Have you heard of miniskrip before? I have, but only because I am, well, for a non-technical
person, I try to follow these things fairly deeply. But like, I hadn't heard about it until

(26:27):
fairly recently, let's just say. Yeah, recently and not from Blockstream, notably, I would
bet not hear about miniskrip because of Blockstream. I think like the miniskrip guy has been Rob Ham,
who I mentioned before, but he works at anchor watch and they're using miniskrip to pioneer
new ways of like custody for institutions, right? Hand wave. Anyways. Yeah, but like,

(26:51):
but the my point kind of is like, okay, Blockstream developed miniskrip. That's like an
internal Blockstream R&D project. Blockstream was not telling anyone about miniskrip. Like,
it wasn't like it was a slowly getting out into the community, right? And it's like, okay, what if
we like have a technical conference and everyone can come tell everyone else what they're working on?

(27:14):
And has it been working? I think so. I think it's been working. I'm not, I'm not sure. I think so.
I think our last one was a big success. We got everyone who'd worked on scripts together to
talk about what they would want in a Bitcoin script. And I feel like the conversation changed
online. CTV still gets talked about a lot, but I feel like OpCat since then has like kind of taken

(27:38):
up more of the center stage sort of. And I feel like, I don't know, I feel like all the people
that came really like got a better understanding of like what they were looking for in a soft,
like in an upgrade for OpCode. So yeah, I think it's, I think it's been really good.
Yeah, I don't know. They're fun. It's also fun to get everyone together. I feel like the narrative of

(28:04):
like cool things don't happen in Bitcoin. That's happening. It doesn't happen anymore. I think
like Casey Rodimiro was a big part of changing that with Ordinals, which fun fact. He did his
first ever Ordinals presentation at Bitcoin Plus Plus. So like the first ever Bitcoin Plus Plus
also had the first ever like Ordinals, whatever you want to call it, like workshop, with like a

(28:25):
free alpha like version of what he's working on. So I think Casey's been super responsible for
helping bring like people outside Bitcoin, like building these stuff, kind of like trying different
things. Yeah, a lot of shit coinery, I'm going to say that, but shit coinery in a UTXO fashion.
So like, is it better? I don't know. But yeah, I feel like, I feel like Bitcoin feels like it's

(28:50):
like people, engineers are in it. And it doesn't feel like we're as worried about engineers leaving
because they're not having a good time and don't have friends and can't find other people to do
cool stuff, etc. It's like that. It makes a difference. Like those meet space, physical world
interactions genuinely make a huge difference. Like it, it's what like, even if one is an

(29:13):
introvert, like those things, you do need that, you know, from time to time, even if it may make
you feel slightly uncomfortable, like you end up having a good time. And you know, I think it's
such an important thing that you said the whole like, the narrative of like, oh, like nothing's
happening on Bitcoin. But then you look around and you just like from my again, non technical

(29:34):
viewpoint, I see so much stuff getting built on and around and because of Bitcoin or related to
Bitcoin, you even look at stuff like Noster, which is, you know, completely separate protocol,
it's communication protocol, doesn't have to use Bitcoin for Zaps, but it does because Bitcoiners
built it. And because why would you zap a shitcoin, you know, but there's so much stuff happening

(29:55):
and so many actual companies doing real things. And then individual open source developers doing
all kinds of stuff like Kali and, and cashew and E cash, you know, FETI just launched on top of
Fedement, you know, like there's there's stuff happening constantly. But it's like, if you don't
tell people about it, they don't know about it. Like it's there's not like that if you build it,

(30:17):
they will come thing. It's like, well, they have to know where to go to, you know, in order to
come to the thing you built, even if it's really, really cool. Like, but sometimes that gets, I
think that gets lost upon folks that are so focused on the technical side of things. And that's not a
bad thing either. It's like, not you can't be good at everything. Like if you're a brilliant
programmer, you're not always going to be the best promoter of what you build, you know,

(30:40):
I definitely don't think I'm the best promoter. Like I'm running a conference series now and
I'm like, someone's is helping promote. I mean, it seems like you finally like people know about it.
I like to joke it's because we're in our third season. This is like, we're going into year three
of the conference series happening with TV series. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but like

(31:00):
most people find out about a TV series in its third season. So like season one and season two,
like you find out about it because all of its fans, like it's kind of like built up momentum of fans
that everyone starts like watching, I feel like in season three, which is usually like third year.
So like Bitcoin plus plus is like kind of in season three territory now, which is fun. So like
people know about it, but like I'm not, I like, I can't promote anything like it's.

(31:27):
Yeah. Hey, you tweet, you know, I don't even know if we call it, do we still call it tweeting or is
it just posting now? I'm not even sure. I can't, I can't keep up with the times. I'm going to keep
calling it tweeting just for what it's worth. It feels right. I don't know.
Can I date ourselves at some point, Walker? It's not the future. Like this is the thing that people

(31:47):
like will be like nothing else. You could like everything else you could be like totally hip
and up with. And then you're going to see tweeting and someone's be like, oh, you're not as young
as I thought you were, you know, okay, boomer. Like, yeah, I get it. I don't know what the new word
is though. I think you're right. Like, do you want me to call it like cross posting or like,

(32:08):
you know, like, yeah, yeah, posting but spelled P O A S T I N G maybe. I don't, I don't know.
I think that may have some alternate connotations as well, but I'm also not hip enough to know.
So, you know, I'll just, I'll remain in darkness and call it tweeting.
So, yeah, I mean, no, you know, okay, so there's, I'm trying to figure out the best way to start

(32:31):
because there's a bunch of things that I want to get into with you because I think it's a lot of
people that are similar to myself, maybe that have been studying Bitcoin for a while who have
perhaps come at it from more of like an economics type angle just because that's the way that we're
wired more so. I miss a lot of maybe what's happening at the technical level or feel just like

(32:57):
so overwhelmed by it and not wanting to feel stupid by asking the questions about like,
what even is that and do and I think the big thing that people wonder is like, oh, that's a nice,
you know, you know, BIP you mentioned like, do I need to care about that? Do I need to worry
about that? Does that actually matter? Oh, are these things happening that are happening on

(33:18):
Lightning? Like, does that actually affect me? Do I need to care? Does like, does that matter to me?
Because a lot of it comes down to selfish stuff, right? Like, does it matter to me?
Maybe we could go from, let's back it up even a little bit more. You are, I think at this point,
it's fair to say an expert on the Lightning Network. Fair statement?
Yes, fair, yes.

(33:38):
Okay. And I said it not you, so then it's okay. You know, it's not tuning your own horn. So,
so how do you describe the Lightning Network to folks who are, because I have realized that there
are even Bitcoiners who like have never used the Lightning Network, which blows my mind because I've
got like 15 different wallets on my phone that I've played around with in various capacities and

(34:02):
then realized like, oh, actually, some of these like aren't real Lightning wallets like Moon. I was
really confused for a while. And then like, actually, they were really good about like
messaging with me back and forth because I was just asking questions and, you know, very confused
about it, but like, not actually really a Lightning wallet per se, but like you, they use the
Lightning on the back end kind of, but you're still doing it on chain. So like, how do you describe

(34:25):
the Lightning Network to, to somebody, let's say who, let's assume you already have done like
a Bitcoin based chain transaction, or you broadly know about what Bitcoin is, but that's where it
stops. You've never touched Lightning. You don't even understand like, well, what's the point of
this whole medium of exchange thing? I just want a pristine store of value asset. Yeah, I think

(34:46):
that makes a lot of sense. I think, I mean, I think of Lightning like the Visa Network,
making an on chain transaction is like doing a bank transfer. This is where I'm like, how much to
normies? I don't know how much normies. No, I'm like, do people know about AC? Just like, you know
about them if you like, I don't know, send money, places, but most people like, don't really write

(35:09):
like that's like, almost like business level thing. You know what I mean? Like, like the, like, oh,
I have to send money to like, I don't know, pay for whatever. That's like, like, at some point,
you realize that moving around here is kind of an elite thing. That sounds weird, but like, you
know, you got to be like, whatever, but like, the best example is like, oh, you know, like, oh,

(35:34):
you auto pay your bill with like an AC or like direct deposit, right? Think about, okay, maybe
this is it. I'm like, workshopping this analogy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. But like, okay,
direct deposit is like an on chain transaction rate where your employer like sends you money
directly to your bank account. And then it's in your bank account. Money in your bank account is

(35:56):
usable, but like, you kind of have to like, send it to other services like Fenmo or PayPal,
in order to like, directly like, have it be more almost like a useful that makes sense or like,
or you have to have like a credit card, which is like instant cash. And then at some point,
you like, manage to move money from your bank account to your credit card statement to like,

(36:17):
an on chain transaction, let's say, right? So lightning, I kind of think of is that super fast,
like, I need to make a payment between like, use a credit card, like I need to pay someone
instantly, or I need to Venmo them, or I need to send them cash out money, whatever. So it's like,
this like instant cash way of interacting versus like on chain is like, oh, I need to like, move

(36:39):
money out of my bank account over to like, my credit card to pay off my credit card is like,
an on chain. I think, okay, I think that's my, I think that's my analogy. What do you think?
I like it. Well, that's the difficulty. It's like, how deep do you go? Because I've also heard
on chain compared to like, like a Fed wire, or, you know, a Swift type thing, like it depends, like,
but again, that's the difficult thing about using these analogies is like, you could make a really

(37:03):
perfect analogy with using the different layers of the existing monetary and financial system.
But then if the person you're making the analogy to like has no idea that Fed wire even exists,
well, then that's not very helpful, is it? Or like, or if they think that like, when you use
your credit card, that money settles instantly, like, or do they even know what settling means?
Like, like that's, that's the thing. There's so many like abstractions there. I don't know.

(37:28):
Settling means, I mean, if you like my like, I like to, you know, like, you know, like, okay,
you can use your Visa card today, like credit card, and the money will move out of your account.
You like, you'll pay it off like a few days later, right? Like that's kind of, I don't know.
Ideally, yeah. You know, I think Americans have like record credit card balances right now. So

(37:51):
maybe they're not doing so well at paying that off that month. There's not much settlement
happening there, but hey, that's a different problem.
Total sidebar, but it's so, the American economy is like, world famous for like our consumption,
right? Like just the amount of money that we seem to like, move amongst ourselves, whatever.
And it's crazy. Like at some point, and like, it's like getting into Bitcoin, like you suddenly

(38:16):
become like a monetary expert and like understand like, like money supply stuff and like credit
questions. Anyways, it's total rabbit hole. But one of the interesting things is like,
just thinking about it, like, so like, lightning isn't like a credit card in that in order to
spend lightning, it's like a debit card, you have to have the money in your account already.

(38:37):
Can't spend it unless it exists. If it exists, do you spend it? If it doesn't exist, you can't
spend it. Like that's kind of the thing with some like a bunch of what I'm going to call like
caveats around lightning things, but whatever, you have to have the money to spend it. Whereas
like most Americans famously have credit cards, right? Which means you have like, you know, let's

(39:00):
say 30 plus stays, it's like a personal loan of like, and you can pay off like a very small
fraction of what you owe every month, but you get like basically on like anything you can buy.
We have this like, we have this like open credit line. Most Americans have an open credit line on
literally like, because everyone takes credit cards now, anyone online doing e-commerce takes a

(39:23):
credit card. It didn't used to be this way. Used to be only a few things to credit cards, but
today because of how easy it is and amazing as an experience, you don't have to carry a lot of
cash with you. You don't know how much money you're going to spend before you go out for
to a night at the bar. Imagine having to know how much money you were going to spend before
you arrived at the bar. Would that be tragic for something? I don't know. But like, you know,

(39:44):
we take a lot of these things for granted, but it's crazy. Like literally every walking American
has like, you know, usually like that couple thousand dollars plus, and people have lots of
credit available credit, but they can just walk into a store and like keep buying things. So,
you know, when recessions come through, if you look at it makes the American economy actually
a little more like resilient. Like, I mean, yeah, like you talk about people's balances are going up,

(40:08):
but to some extent that means that like people are still able to like keep buying things, because
they have this instinct credit cushion like built into the American economy. So everyone can keep
just doing stuff that they've been doing and figure out how to pay for it later or not. Yeah.
Yeah. Now, it is an interesting point because it gets back to the idea of like, okay, you know,

(40:31):
you have your means, and then if you have a means to spend beyond your means, you often do like if
the money is available, people find a way to spend it. It's like, even though that money is not yours,
but you haven't even earned enough money yet to be able to pay off those expenses. You know,
you're just kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul, except it's all just yourself on various

(40:51):
rotating credit cards and like hoping that you're not, you know, maybe you're opening new ones,
because they're giving you, you know, okay, like no, you know, no interest on this for the first
however much, and we'll give you a bonus for the payments. Like, I don't know, maybe it does in
some ways make the consumer like consumer spending more resilient in more difficult times, because

(41:12):
people just them, there's money to spend that they don't actually have. But I feel like that also
gets us into this like, deep trap of debt, which like is not just at an individual level, though,
like we know our government has that same problem. Like they just like, we're never going to pay off
the 35.1 or 2 trillion that we have as public debt, like, that's insane that we have that much.

(41:34):
And like, it's just never going to happen, because the buck keeps getting past every election cycle,
and then you get to blame the other party for how much the debt's ballooning. And nobody really
cares. It's just a talking point. And then it's like, okay, well, it doesn't matter anyway, because
the entire monetary system of fiat is based on debt, like without the debt, the money doesn't exist.
And so then you're like, well, fuck, okay, I guess none of it matters at all. Like,

(41:59):
it's, it's all just made up, right? I don't know. It's crazy to me when I meet people who are like,
I can't have any debt to my name, it really bothers me. I feel like as an American, and what
that sounds very, I mean, I know there's people like this in America, maybe I'm like, showing myself
off a little bit as American, but you're supposed to have debt. Having debt is good. Like, how else
are you going to become wealthy one day if you don't have debt? No. Just like, it's just the mindset,

(42:24):
right? It's like, no, like the debt is how I get to like a more wealthy future. And that's true.
That's not, that's not necessarily true for credit card debt. I think it's more true, like,
business loans or like owning a house, that kind of thing. Like, you do kind of have to fake it
till you make it. But if you don't end up making it, or if the economy crashes in the meantime,
and you lose your job and like, you know, you didn't really have that many savings, but all

(42:47):
you've got is this credit card, like, yeah, that can get out of hand really quickly, I think.
Oh yeah. And it's interesting, because we're so incentivized both at the individual level,
and then also at the business level to take on debt, because like, if you do understand how the
monetary system works, you know that your debt is going to be at least partially inflated away

(43:09):
over the like over time. So like, if you're not like, especially when money is cheap,
when borrowing money is cheap and interest rates are low, it's like, well, that's basically free
money. If your interest rate is below the inflation rate, like that's, that's literally free money.
And granted, again, people get into problems with this, but those who know how to work the system well,

(43:29):
like they, that's how you do a game that fiat system and build and maintain wealth, like,
not an easy game to play, but some people have figured it out very, very well.
Well, that's a great point. How do you build wealth in an inflationary system without debt,
right? Because owning stuff, if you actually own the money, you don't want to own the money,

(43:52):
you want to own debt, you want to have someone else's money that you're using,
that you're supposed to be paying back, because that's like, you know, like the person with the
money isn't doing well. And honestly, the person who lent you the money at that rate less than
inflation is doing even worse, like, I don't know where they got that cash from, probably the government,
right? They just snapped their fingers because it just came from a bank who snapped its fingers.

(44:15):
And then that before that is, you know, coming from the Fed who snapped its fingers, everybody
just kind of snaps their fingers and money appears and it works out somehow magically.
But this is what's okay, right? Everything okay, so bring it back to lightning a little bit.
This is what lightning is competing with, right? This is what lightning was competing with. And
lightning compared to this is like a little more costly. Like, it's slightly like, I have to have

(44:36):
the money in the account, it has to be Bitcoin. Also, it's like, like, I have to like, figure out
how to find the Bitcoin so that I can make lightning payments, if that makes sense. Like,
there has to be liquidity, whatever that's kind of like a thing. Like, the Bitcoin has to be in
the right places for you to be able to use it in order to use lightning. And all of a sudden,
it's like, oh, like, what a miracle that the system works at all. I think it's incredible that

(44:57):
lightning has been, I think lightning has taken off hugely in the last couple, like, I don't know
how long it's been around now, like, six, eight years, seven years. And then, like, it's incredible
it's been around that long that it's working. I feel like it's working better than ever. Like,
more people, I don't know, someone had a great, maybe it was you, no, I think it was Gigi. Gigi
had a great post on Doster today or yesterday, where he's talking about, like, I was at the

(45:23):
lightning conference in 2019, and we all really wanted it to work and payments were failing,
like, half the time at the conference. Now, I think I'm pretty sure Gigi's and Riga, you go to a
conference like Riga, and like, payments, you just expect it to work, and it just works magically.
And you're like, you know, it's a fraction of payment, it's Bitcoin sent instantly, like,

(45:43):
it's literal magic, like, we're doing magic with magic internet money, using free and open
protocols, and a bunch of weirdo and cyberpunk hackers built because they cared about financial
privacy, they cared about being able to do peer-to-peer stuff, like, it exists and it's here,
but like, this is like, what we're competing with, we're competing with, like, this credit system,

(46:03):
and this like, the only way you get wealthy is if you own debt, like, owning debt is good,
because the government's gonna inflate you out anyway, right, they're just gonna print money out,
like, to save you, so if you took a loan out, you ended up becoming like, your asset is your loan,
it becomes this like, weird thing, right, it's like, like, owning debt suddenly is like, the best thing
you can be holding in an inflationary environment. Yeah, anyway. It's well, I, it is incredible,

(46:31):
like, I have not been around the space, like, I only really went down the rabbit hole in like,
2020, after hearing about Bitcoin multiple times, and you know, now kicking myself for like, ignoring
it, like, for many years before that, but like, that's everybody ignores it at some point, right,
but you know, yeah, even like, 2020, like, okay, you know, started going down the rabbit hole and

(46:52):
then like, start playing around with like, lightning wallets, because I do like to, you know,
mess around with things, I spun up a lightning, I did like a raspy blitz situation, you know, and
I had a lot of fun with that. And, but then I even remember like, 2022, I was in El Salvador, and we
were trying to like, pay for everything we could with lightning, I was, I was using moon at the time,

(47:16):
and maybe a couple other wallets, didn't know then what I know now about how moon actually works, but
like, remember trying to pay for our hotel, like, our like week long bar tab at the hotel, which was
at the hotel, which was like, fairly decent sized, because we've been drinking a lot. You know, it's,
it's sunny, it's hot, like, you're at the beach, what are you going to do? And the payment like,

(47:38):
could not get it to go through, could not get it to go through, like, because there just, there wasn't
an available channel, there wasn't, you know, any, any liquidity there. And I don't think I've had that
happen, like, basically since then, like, like, in the last couple of years, it has not been an issue
whatsoever. Like, even for decently large payments, there's liquidity. And I'm kind of curious your

(48:03):
take, because I think a lot of people, maybe the reason that sometimes you see the criticism from
some folks, I won't name any names, but who say like, Oh, like lightning, lightning is just,
you know, a LARP or lightning doesn't scale, lightning doesn't actually work. I think it's
because there's this notion that lightning is supposed to be this certain thing, which is like,
everyone is supposed to run their own lightning node. And unless you're running your own lightning

(48:25):
node, well, that's not really lightning. Like if you're using custodial lightning, that doesn't
count. Or if you're using a, you know, an LSP, that doesn't count. You have to run your own node,
open up all your own channels. Otherwise, it's like not real lightning, which I think is kind of silly.
Like, yeah, like, it's weird, it's weird to me. But like, how do you, yeah,

(48:45):
not really emailing, unless you run your own email server. And I feel like the,
like, actually do this quick tiny, but it's very tiny. But I'm curious, like, from your perspective,
okay, it is the future of lightning really like kind of a, I don't know if this is the
right analogy, but like a hub and spoke model, where you have these large hubs of liquidity
that then connect with each other. And maybe those like, I know Bitfinex supplies like,

(49:10):
a massive amount of liquidity in the lightning network and has for years, like I want to say,
it's like, was it like a third, a half? Like it's, it's a, at least it was like a couple years ago,
last time I checked, like it's a lot. But like, is that the model where you like that actually
scales where you have these larger pools of liquidity that open up fat channels with each other?

(49:31):
And if you, yeah, you might be using custodial lightning, but like, that's okay, there's trade
offs for everything. Like how do you see what lightning is now and then how lightning scales
into the future? And like, I don't know, what are people missing when they say stuff like,
you know, like lightning doesn't work? I think when they say lightning doesn't work,

(49:51):
I feel like they don't, sometimes I'm like very confused about what they have in mind when they
say working. Like, I think maybe they, like, they probably, I think a lot of it's like hypothetical,
right? Like, and it tends, I feel like a lot of the like lightning doesn't work stuff comes around
when people have like something else, they're like trying to sell you as a solution to that problem,

(50:15):
if that makes sense. So it's like, here's a problem lightning has these problems. And this
is how this new thing that I'm trying to make work will solve them. I don't think most of time,
like people have like legitimate, like those things that they're mentioning are legitimate
things that you probably could improve on, right? But there's usually trade offs around like,
switching those out, if that makes sense. So I feel like a lot of the, a lot of those, like,

(50:41):
I'm going to call it spot around lightning not working, has to do with hypothetical limits,
if everyone in the world was to try to use it, which I think is a little bit premature, I'm
going to say, as well as like, fantastical, because I don't even think there's like every human in
the world that uses the internet, like, like it's like, whatever, that's like, that is a future

(51:05):
problem. But it's not a future problem. We have to leave the luxury of ignoring it for a little bit,
maybe I'm getting in trouble for that. I think it's fair. Well, I mean, another one that another
example of this kind of problem that we see pop up on Bitcoin, usually when someone is like, I feel
like trying to sell you the solution to a problem you think want you to think you have. It's like,

(51:25):
and it maybe is like, oh, how are we going to like, what's the word for it? Oh, the, what happens
when miners aren't making fees on blocks when like, oh yeah, when the block subsidy goes away.
That's the word. Yes. That's the other piece of fun. And it's like, see, what is this person selling?
Like, yeah, maybe that's wrong. Like, again, as an engineer, I also know sort of people,

(51:48):
there's also a type of person as an engineer that really likes running numbers and can like,
run the numbers and be like, based on a like, hypothetical calculation of the numbers, this
is impossible and will not work. Therefore, we should x, y, z, try something else, whatever.
I mean, didn't what's his name? Malthus, Thomas Malthus is a super old name. This is a guy who
came up with this thing. I want to say in the 1800s, this type of guy exists. He's existed forever,

(52:14):
as long as humans have been developing new technologies. And he sat down and he said,
there's not going to be enough food. He's an Englishman. And he's like, we're going to have
a population crisis. Everyone is going to like run out of food or we're all going to like die or
like whatever. And he wrote this like book, like a very famous book. I don't remember what it's called.

(52:34):
But he basically was all doom and gloom about how like the world is going to humans, we're going
to cease to exist because we weren't going to be able to feed ourselves, right? And it was like,
I feel like like, I get that feeling, the same feeling that I get when I read Malthus, when I
read people talking about black subsidies or like the unscalability of like everyone in the
planet owning like a UTXO or like maybe that's more true than whatever. I mean, owning UTX is

(52:58):
can't be expensive, whatever. Right. I know, I think that's fair though. That's where the
idea of like a Malthusian like prediction comes from. Like it's, it's basically like, like there
have been instances like this, like a cross history though. Like this is not, you know, like you
said, like this is not a new thing where people it's like, well, look, what, what's going to happen

(53:20):
in, you know, what's going to happen in the year 2140 when the block subsidy runs out. It's like,
if you think that the same sets of conditions in terms of how much block space is going to cost,
how much the price of electricity is going to cost all these, like you're making all of your
assumptions about the future based on present data, but then you're trying to scale that out to the

(53:40):
future without actually making any changes to the initial assumptions, which is just flawed.
Like, because we know that things can change in the space of a couple of months or years.
Like, so it's just, it's kind of like, okay, yeah, it could be a fun thought experiment, maybe,
but then it's like, you know, you know, Bitcoin doesn't scale, lightning doesn't work,

(54:01):
eCash is a shit coin, like all of these things, it's like, yeah, but they work right now and
there are trade offs. Of course, there are trade offs as you go down the layers, right.
And I think that's something that people miss is like, first of all, projecting the same set of
preconditions into the future, which will no longer hold. And then second, saying that something
doesn't work that's already working is just kind of like insane to me. It's, it's like, oh, like,

(54:26):
you're like, your lights don't work. It's like, but they're on right now. Like, I've got them
turned on, you know, like, I don't know. Walker, I can tell you right now. Right.
Like, I don't know. So, okay, so I think again, there's misconceptions around this. And I think
you're also right that some people, it's like, you've got something to, yeah, like, yeah, you know,
Bitcoin sucks by my shit coin type of whatever the meme is. But there's also obviously some very real,

(54:54):
very real things that like Bitcoin at the base chain will run up against. For example, the UTXO
set, like not everybody is going to be able to have a UTXO. Like that's just, but like, maybe
that's also okay. Maybe not everybody needs a UTXO. Like, where do you fall on that? Because

(55:16):
I don't know. Again, there's a lot, I know it's a, like a heated debate about it's, it's essentially
debate about sovereignty. I would, I would posit that no one can ever be fully 100% sovereign,
like it's not possible. It's like kind of like the pencil, you know, like eye pencil, like
you cannot control every aspect of everything. Like, did you build the phone that you're using

(55:36):
to interact with this? Did you build your node from scratch? Maybe some people did. But like,
sovereignty is a spectrum, right? We should try to get further along it towards the sovereign side.
But like, we can never get fully there. We're asymptotically approaching it like Bitcoin will
21 million, it'll never fully get there just by halves, you know, I don't know if we're,
where do you fall on that like scale, you know, Bitcoin sovereignty scalability debate?

(56:01):
I mean, I feel like I definitely feel like I, unfortunately, I think it fall more on the
elitist side and that sovereignty is going to be as expensive like sovereignty has sovereignty has
a cost, right? Like it's not free. Sovereignty is not free is maybe where I fall on that, which like,
I wish that wasn't the case. Like, but I feel like it is like, you know, you kind of have to put

(56:25):
some amount of work into being free. Like it does, it does require some of your own resources to
attain a level of sovereignty. And some of that is like level of self-sufficiency, like self-sufficiency
takes some a lot of like time or access to resources or like, you know, like being self-sovereign
means that you have this space to be free and like, you know, like from a food perspective,

(56:50):
like I'm not self-sovereign from a food perspective, I am reliant is all get out on industrial farming
in the United States. If I want to get off of industrial farming in the United States, that's
going to cost me money like in time, like either I'm going to have to like acquire land that I can
farm, which I don't have like access to right now, right? Or I'm going to have to like find local

(57:11):
networks of farmers that I can directly buy from where not as inexpensive, they're way more
expensive in terms of like time, like logistics of picking that stuff up all of a sudden gets way
more complicated. I can't just drive down the road to grocery store to buy what they have immediately
available when I need it, right? Which also like that's pretty incredible. But like, you know, like
it's not like maybe I have to go to farmers markets, like I don't know how far away that is, like

(57:35):
or the people who are selling stuff there, like all that I need to like make what I need at home,
like it's like that's that's expensive in its own right, right? Like that takes I need the luxury of
time. I need the luxury of the money it's going to cost me to pay the premium to get that kind of
like sovereign food, so to speak, right? Like this actually getting in this I've been grown by me,

(57:56):
you know, we're just talking like literally just going to the farmers market, right? So it's like,
okay, when you look at Bitcoin, it's like, if everyone can access it, does that mean that it's,
I mean, that obviously would be the ideal, right? But I think that if you say there is a cost to
sovereignty and that cost, you know, might be a higher than some people have the means to be able

(58:19):
to afford, like, yeah, I don't know how to solve that, I guess, it's like, I guess I'm saying like
this exists in other systems of sovereignty, and I don't know anyone's managed to figure out how to
solve it. I don't know, maybe tech is magic, and we will figure it out. Maybe there is some magic
covenant thing that we can add to Bitcoin that will make it, but I don't like even looking at those

(58:42):
like schemes when you like start doing the economics on like how this is going to function for like the
like last mile every man, right? It still becomes this thing where it's basically the same as custodial
because you really just can't afford to own a UTXO. And if anything ever goes wrong, you just
don't have the resources to take it to court, which in this case is like getting an UTXO on chain.

(59:04):
The cost is much lower than it is in the existing system is kind of the point, and it's way more
accessible, and it's like way more like public and readable. And if you understand tech and you
understand code, again, this is why base 58 exists, because if you don't understand these free and
open systems, how free and open are they really? I don't know, feels like reinventing democracy

(59:28):
from scratch and Bitcoin land, it's like, wait, we've developed a system which is great and perfect,
but no one understands it, and they can't understand it, they can't interact with it as an individual.
And if they can't interact with it from an individual, what is it worth all this time and
effort? So we have to teach them about how it works, so they can be self sufficient in making
their own Bitcoin transactions and not just like reliant on the wallet in the app software,

(59:53):
you know, if that stops working, we still be able to use Bitcoin, can you write a transaction from
hand and like, you know, um, so like, yeah, there's like levels of sovereignty thing. Um, anyways.
No, no, can you actually, can you, uh, can you give the, the layman's breakdown of what covenants
are for those that may be listening and saying, I've been too scared to ask about what that is?

(01:00:18):
Yes, I can explain what a covenant is. So, general idea with Bitcoin is that when you're,
you're taking, so we've been talking about UTXO, UTXO is like a little bucket of Bitcoin,
and it usually has someone's name on it, and only the person whose name on that bucket of Bitcoin
can decide what happens to that Bitcoin next, right? Oh, that's cute. I don't know, it's taking

(01:00:39):
a little hard. Oh, it's a nice animation there, yeah. Um, so right now, like those, those names
that you write on those buckets of Bitcoin are usually public keys, so then you have to have
a private key to be able to spend the bucket, pour the Bitcoin bucket into someone else's
buckets, you get to decide what new buckets it goes into, that's like part of the rights afforded

(01:01:00):
to you as a UTXO, aka like Bitcoin bucket holder. It's not a bag holder, we're bucket holders now.
I like that. So if you've got like this bucket and it's got your name on it, like your public key,
your key is attached to it, then you can prove that you have the right to leak. You basically can
create new little buckets, right, and like pour your Bitcoin into the buckets. Um, double snow,

(01:01:25):
double spending means you have to like pour your bucket out all into all new buckets all at once,
whatever, so that bucket away once you've spent it, and now it's now it's a spent transaction
object, not an UTXO anyways. So that's kind of like, okay, so you have this like system, right?
Right now, those little bucket labels are written in something called Bitcoin script.
Um, and Bitcoin script, like you get that those labels you can put on the bucket to say who belongs

(01:01:50):
to and who's allowed to like pour it into new buckets. Um, that is like a kind of like, it's
not like a programming language. Sometimes people throw out the word like non-turing complete,
which sort of means, I don't know, doesn't really matter. But like the general idea is it's like,
so we talk about programming languages. One thing, so this is like, all right, I promise we'll get

(01:02:11):
it there. Um, people like to say like one term when someone's talking about a programming language,
is we'll talk about how expressive it is. This is useful for Covenants because Covenants is
basically like, how do we make Bitcoin script, those little labels that you put on your buckets?
How do you make it more expressive? How do we make it so we can make more complicated,

(01:02:34):
like if statements on that bucket? So good example of an expression statement you cannot make,
but the label you can't put on a Bitcoin bucket is this Bitcoin bucket can only be
spent on Tuesday. You can't say that right now. There's no way in Bitcoin sit Bitcoin script to
make that statement that you can't put that label or restriction on a bucket. There's only so many

(01:02:55):
restrictions you can put. You can say, you put a label on the bucket that's like, this Bitcoin
bucket is not to be used until 10 years from today, right? Or this Bitcoin bucket can't be,
can't be used unless I get signatures from three different keys, right? So those are like labels,
or expressions. Like you can say the expression and put that on the bucket. And that's like good
and valid. And the Bitcoin network will like basically uphold those labels and like, you know,

(01:03:20):
it says it can't be spent until 10 years from now. And the Bitcoin blockchain to like, uh,
label on the bucket says 10 years from now, and it is only nine years and 364 days. So like,
you sir have to wait one more day, right? That's like, that's expressivities, like what you're
able to express on these labels you put on these Bitcoin buckets that you've got. So Covenants is

(01:03:42):
the idea that when you put a label, so one thing we can't do. So like one thing we can't do is we
can't say a label is like Tuesdays only, you know, that's not a label you could put on the bucket.
You can't another thing you can't do with a Bitcoin bucket, like for these labels on the
buckets is you can't one label you can't do one thing you can't do is so like, remember I said,

(01:04:05):
you're going to take the bucket, you're going to pour it into more buckets, I mean, we just want
big other bucket. I don't know if you're going to make new buckets and the new buckets are going
to have different labels on them. So you could send Bitcoin to a bunch of people if you have like,
you take one big bucket, port it to 10 small buckets, put different labels on each of the
buckets. Now there's 10 you take so whatever. But uh, where are we going with this? Okay, so now

(01:04:26):
you've got like these 10 buckets. One thing that Covenants basically all that Covenants lets you do
is win seed this big bucket right now. If you can't put a label on the bucket that says what
those next buckets have to look like. So if you have a bucket with like Bitcoin in it,
it can go anywhere in any new buckets. There's no rules. There's no way that you could enforce

(01:04:50):
that this bucket must go into these like buckets. So Covenants, now you're standing with them,
is that you would be able to say that when you put a label on this bucket, it says this bucket
can only be poured into green buckets. So then whenever you're going to make new buckets that
you're pouring the Bitcoin, your UTXO into, those buckets must be green. And if they're not green,

(01:05:13):
well, that's not a valid transaction. You can't actually pour that bucket into stuff. You'll
have to try again. So Covenants is the idea that you can create new kinds of labels to put on the
Bitcoin buckets like UTXOs. And those labels are more expressive, which means they can say new
things. And one of those new things might be only into green buckets. But basically the idea is that

(01:05:34):
it gives you this like only into statement, like you can now say only into XYZ buckets,
which we can't say currently. You currently cannot make the statement only into XYZ buckets. And
this is the thing that people want because it lets them build more complicated stuff. Like

(01:05:59):
if you can guarantee that this Bitcoin can only be spent into these ways with these new conditions,
now you can make more different promises about, I don't know, systems on top of Bitcoin, whatever.
Okay, so it's adding basically the not just like the current state set of rules, but the forward
state set of rules. So it's not just what is happening right now with this current UTXO,

(01:06:24):
this current bucket, but it can determine what's going to happen or what is allowed to happen
where this current one goes into future buckets. It's giving a future state for the buckets that
it may go into. Right. Only with Bitcoin and other buckets. So one of my things, this is like,
I mean, so it's currently possible you can have a Bitcoin bucket, you can put a label on it,

(01:06:45):
which is unspendable. Like you could lock it up to a public key that no one knows the private key to,
and then that bucket would be unspendable forever. But one of the things that like, you know, so
I'm saying there's currently ways you can make labels for Bitcoin buckets that are nonsensical,
or like literally no one knows how to like answer like whatever that bucket that label requires.

(01:07:07):
Mike, like one of the things people worry about with Covenants, and I think to a large extent,
amongst the engineering community, we've mostly gotten over it because you can already be dumb
about like buck labels on Bitcoin. So we're like, well, if we expand the set of labels you can put
on buckets, right, is kind of the thing like we can, you know, put different all different kinds
of labels on the buckets now. Well, you could already be done with existing labels. So it's

(01:07:31):
adding more labels, really making it worse. Like, well, what if we add a label that someone could
be dumb, this super dumb with, and it's like, well, they can already be pretty dumb with the
current one. So like, should we really like prevent people from being putting more different
interesting labels on their Bitcoin if they want to? You know, I think that's kind of one of the
debates that people got into. Should we expand the label set, the number of labels you can put

(01:07:54):
on your Bitcoin buckets? One thing that I like to point out that I think was people get really
concerned about, oh, they're changing Bitcoin, what does this mean for my Bitcoin? Probably a
good point, I feel like, so like kind of make is like, we're adding new labels that you can add to
your Bitcoin buckets, right? You have to opt into putting your Bitcoin into a bucket that has this

(01:08:16):
fancy new labels on it, right? So all the Bitcoin you currently have with its existing labels,
ideally, this is why we call them soft forks, will be completely unaffected by the addition of
like new labels to the like total label set, like all the label options, lots more label options
now. Whereas like prior to like, so I think this is like complicated. So like, you know, people are

(01:08:39):
like, oh my god, they're going to change Bitcoin. What does that mean for me? It's like, no, your
Bitcoin is still held in those buckets, it's got same labels on it, those labels still work in the
same way as they always have, and that's not going to change. And you can continue using the same
labels that you've always been using. And as long and the way that you can make sure that you're using
labels that you know and are comfortable with is by you pick what address the Bitcoin goes to. Those

(01:09:04):
labels that I was talking about, those are all hidden inside the Bitcoin address. That sounds
crazy. But inside that Bitcoin address is the labels that you're going to put on the new Bitcoin.
So as long as you're picking the Bitcoin address that you give to someone to send you Bitcoin,
you can still like rest assured, even if all these crazy labels exist, right? Like the green
bucket label, like, oh my god, I don't want a green label on my buckets, like that would be

(01:09:26):
terrible, right? Whatever. I don't know where to get a green bucket from, like whatever. Where
do those green buckets go? Anyways, I don't know. But like as long as you're using, you're able to
like tell someone like, it's only my Bitcoin, if I can give you that Bitcoin address that you send
it to on chain, you still basically maintain sovereignty. Even though there's all these fancy

(01:09:47):
labels, like no one can take any address that you give you them and still send it to that same address
and like, I don't know. They can't enforce a rule set on an address that you are controlling.
Exactly. You can't push a rule set on like, and it's like, oh no, yeah. You can't add extra labels

(01:10:08):
to an existing address, which is like it's own little label set without changing the address.
So it would go to a different address, like it wouldn't go to your address. Like that wasn't,
I mean, I don't know, in the court of law, you could be like, well, I gave them a Bitcoin address.
So no, I don't count it as them sending me the Bitcoin because they did not send it to the address
I sent them. Right. So that's kind of like, you know, like, there is that like, I don't know,

(01:10:32):
safeguard is the right word, but it is possible that like people who own Bitcoin have to decide to
put it in buckets with those labels on them. Right. So to some extent, engineers are betting
that people who own Bitcoin currently are going to want to put their Bitcoin in these buckets
with these new fancy labels on it, for some reason, right? Like that's kind of the whole
bet and people like, why would you do that? And it's like, well, because it lets you get a billion

(01:10:55):
people onto big on lightning or something. This is a part I probably should figure out exactly
what we can do with the new fancy labels. But no, I really, I think that was a really helpful
analogy. Because I've read into it and I understand like the the rule sets that you're adding on there.
And it makes a lot of sense though, in terms of like, this is a rule set you're applying in the

(01:11:18):
future buckets. I thought that was a nice analogy. But there's there's a there's a good like animation
in there somewhere, I'm sure with green and orange buckets like, but no, so, you know, because I
think so many of these things come up as a result of the scaling Bitcoin debate, right. And again,
that and that comes back to to sovereignty comes back to these things we were just discussing.

(01:11:41):
And people kind of fall on either side of that. And there's a lot of people, like, and you see
this in various altcoin chains, like that's why certain change exists, like, oh, it's got so much,
so many transactions per second. And that's the only way that you'll have a gold money. But then
people seem, I don't know if they fail to realize or they just realize there's a lot of money to be
made. But it's like, well, without the base layer, being decentralized and secure and being hard money,

(01:12:08):
everything else you build on top of that is just building on a sand foundation, instead of building
on bedrock, which is Bitcoin. And so I think the layered approach to this that Bitcoin is currently
in the midst of where you actually have these layers fully working, like this isn't just an idea,
this is actually working in this is this is in in production, you know, that actually makes sense

(01:12:30):
to scale for me, because then you're not sacrificing the decentralization or security of the base layer.
You are building out the functionality you need with tradeoffs at the subsequent layers and lightning
is one of those layers. And then you also what I wanted to get into a little bit here is eCash,
because you're having a whole conference about this. And so for anyone who feels like a trip to

(01:12:51):
Berlin and diving into this, you can can go to be it's btcpp.dev. Okay, wow, amazed I pulled that
out of there. My brain still works. Awesome. But so so eCash is really fascinating to me. And
I know people people have people have strong reactions to everything, I guess, like it doesn't

(01:13:11):
matter what it is, it could be just like an egg sitting there and someone be like, fuck you egg.
But eCash to me is really cool. And it's has its tradeoffs, obviously, with the the base,
like it's not base chain Bitcoin, it's not trying to be. Can you talk a little bit about why eCash

(01:13:33):
is interesting to you? Why have a whole conference about eCash? Yeah, so why are we having an eCash
conference? Great question. So I think it's a little skeptical about eCash. Maybe this is why
I'm having a conference. I like to have conferences, especially like Bitcoin plus plus is like the

(01:13:54):
only Bitcoin technical conference that picks themes. And so like every conference has like a
little spotlight, we shine on a different part of Bitcoin tech. I don't know if I'll keep doing
that. It's just generally it's just in the way it's happened so far. But what I really like about
it is someone who knows a lot about lightning is I get to invite a bunch of people who know a lot

(01:14:14):
about some new protocol e thing in Bitcoin, some new decentralized peer to peer like privacy oriented
thing in Bitcoin, right? Is like eCash. So it has different tradeoffs, but I feel like it still
really speaks to most of the values that I have about why I like Bitcoin. Privacy is a big one

(01:14:39):
of those. Like one of the reasons that working on lightning is such an important thing that for me
to spend my time on is because I believe that if we don't have something like lightning or maybe
eCash, our financial privacy is gone. Like forget it. Like it's you can no longer have private

(01:15:02):
transactions between people. Like you know, anyways, and I think eCash is another part in that
particular like arsenal of open source protocols built on Bitcoin that helps preserve privacy.
So again, like it's not something I spend every day on. I don't know a lot about it. So I get to
hold a little conference and invite everyone there and we can all talk about how great privacy is

(01:15:26):
and how great what eCash is doing to help improve that kind of thing. I think again, one of the
tradeoffs and the thing where I'm like, I don't know about how I feel about this thing is that it
is, I mean, if you look out across the Bitcoin protocol landscape, it's incredible how fast
we're speedrunning reinventing the banking system. So we're going to get canceled at some point for

(01:15:51):
saying that. But like the more you look at how banking has worked and developed, you know,
banking is like a series of technologies that have developed over like hundreds of years, right?
We're in like the current modern form of it and like Bitcoin is like trying it new. Like
what if we did banking with private keys and proof of work? Like what would that look like? And
it's like, oh, you end up with like problems. Like it's the chain global state, only so many people

(01:16:17):
that becomes expensive. Like how do you have enough sovereignty to be able to transact with others in
a sovereign fashion? Like eCash, like things start looking like settlement accounts between large
financial institutions. This is a thing that's existed forever. You talk about FedNow. I feel
like that's like at the root. So that settlement accounts are at the root of FedNow. So it's like,

(01:16:38):
oh, we have our own sovereign settlement system, which is late in, which is cool. And then you
look at something like eCash, eCash is like, okay, how do you do, for my opinion, it's like,
how do you do not everyone can own a UTXO? Like not everyone can like have, not everyone has
enough commerce to justify settlement accounts. That sounds, I know that's like, that's a spicy

(01:16:59):
take around lighting. It's a fair analogy though, I think. Yeah, not everyone has enough commerce
to have settlement accounts. What's really cool about all these protocols and stuff is that it
takes the cost of being able to like have your own settlement account from like here to like here,
if that makes sense. But people are still like, I don't know. It's like, oh, you know, you do probably

(01:17:21):
need a couple thousand dollars to run a lightning node. I'm just going to say it. Like if you're
running a lightning node, you probably need a couple thousand bucks in liquidity to make it really,
like really worthwhile investment in terms of time and cost, etc. to like get it going, right?
And just like set it up, etc. Just, you know, Bitcoin being what it is today. But that's like,

(01:17:43):
millions of dollars less than I feel like it would take to like get like an actual settlement
account or like actually being like a node on the Visa network, you literally must be a bank and
I think bank turtles like a couple million dollars these days, like 50 something like, you know,
yeah, thousand dollars to join free and open private payment settlement network versus like
millions and everyone's like, oh my god, that's so expensive. I'm like, okay, but like zoom out.

(01:18:09):
10 things. Anyways, okay, sorry, that's about e-cash. What? No, that's a really good point,
though. I just one thing I just before we jump on the cash, because I think that's a really
important point is that sometimes people expect or believe that Bitcoin like ought should be
ought to be something like it, it should be whatever I think is the ideal vision of it, right?

(01:18:33):
But like nothing is free. And ultimately, it's like, we don't have like Bitcoin doesn't have to
be perfect. It just has to be a heck of a lot better than what we're working with initially,
like right now. And what we're working with right now, in addition to being so expensive and clunky,
is completely opaque. And it's also built on a foundation of fractionally reserved sand,

(01:18:57):
i.e. fiat money. So like, not only do we have a better, more just, more transparent, more
more fair base layer and sound money, but everything on top of that is orders of magnitude,
lower barrier to entry. So I just wanted to throw that in there because I thought that was
a really great point that people like miss the forest through the trees sometimes. Like, this is

(01:19:23):
still like leaps and bounds better than the shit we have to deal with now and the barriers to entry
while they may still be high in some areas are lower and getting lower because of things like
eCash. Yes. So I feel like, you know, mutiny wallet, rest in peace, famously, you know,

(01:19:44):
I think really struggled was getting lightning to work for like the Venmo use case, right?
I'm going to be honest when I say I think something like eCash is probably the right
technology to solve that problem. And I hate that. But I honestly think that that is like true. Like,
I do think eCash is like the last mile, like lightning has a last mile problem.

(01:20:07):
It's funny, I almost did a presentation on this at the lightning conference, I feel like in 2019,
then like, or whatever, but decided not to for like, because because at the time that was not an
invoke thing to say, it was like, I would like bring it up with like my coworkers and be like,
guys, like lightning just doesn't scale. And everyone's like Lisa, we're not gonna, I've got

(01:20:29):
to find from other people, like, that it was like, you know, lightning lamps is leading the PR on
lightning for a lot of the early years. I feel like that's changed. And maybe this is why there's
more fun is I think lightning lab is to some extent lost some of the narrative control that they used
to. And I was like, we're going to scale Bitcoin to a billion people. It's going to be a great

(01:20:49):
big scaling talk. And it was like, I was like, okay, like, we're like, we'll talk about it later.
Great, you know, it was like one of those like, you know, it's not important, like, great, lightning
is going to go wherever it's going to be great, like everyone should run a node, like whatever.
Anyways, but like, so lightning is I think, like, you know, more settlement tech stuff,
I think that like, eCash is unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, because I do think it is like

(01:21:14):
decently risky, I think fedamins are like, definitely the right, I think fedamins are
definitely the right idea and the right move, famously, an idea that spawned out of blockstream,
but you know, who's kind of like the unrecognized king of federations in like in Bitcoin,
would be, you know, it's like, liquid is basically a federated solution. And they took some of the

(01:21:37):
stuff that they basically pioneered with liquid and were like, okay, we're going to start making
fedamint stuff. One of the co founders of Fadi is like, the fedamint guy is from blockstream.
Anyways, so like, there's, yeah, so eCash is amazing though, for like, venous stuff, like,
it's just, you can't beat it. It's like, it's great. It's almost perfect. Like, it's almost perfect.

(01:22:02):
The unperfect thing is the fact that there's a bank holding your money at the end of the day,
if that makes sense. And auditing that bank is quite difficult. I think fedamints though,
like have some of the highest, I think the fedamint solution, like the fedamint idea has some of the
best, I think that's kind of the best of best option in this world. And I think that they,

(01:22:28):
I think there's like a good, there's a good chance you can make that what the fedamint is doing
with the cash and reserves way more transparent than you can with a cashew style mint. I feel like
I feel like the cashew side of things is trying to solve this problem, not by having formal federations
in the mint, if that makes sense. So, but rather having like, you will have like,

(01:22:48):
may a thousand mints bloom, and you will just have tiny amounts across, like it's like,
what do you call it, like not spray and pay, pray, but kind of. Yeah. Yeah. But like, it's like,
okay, like there's like 5,000 mints and you might have 10 sets in each of them because you can afford
to do that. Like cost is so low, you can literally afford to stretch your money out across like,

(01:23:10):
5,000 e-cash things. And then we can nicely build this interface on top of it, mostly with
lightning interfaces, which is pretty cool, that nicely build this interface on top of it, where
you can just like pay out of them seamlessly. So you could pay from like 5,000 different mints on
a single lightning invoice. And not have to worry about like the rug risk of any one mint,

(01:23:32):
because you're across like so many of them, you don't care if you lose 10 sets today, you know.
Anyways. No, no, I think that's because that seems to be the biggest and rightly so, like the
biggest concern that people have with, with e-cash. And I talked to, to Kali about this,
for anyone who wants like a really deep dive into e-cash, there is an episode of another

(01:23:54):
fucking Bitcoin podcast on that subject with Kali. And it's fascinating stuff. But even he
says, look, there is a rug risk. Like, yes, they can rug you. Like, I'm not trying to control for
rug risk. I'm trying to make near perfect privacy. And literally like instant transactions that cost

(01:24:19):
nothing. Yeah. And that privacy part is huge, because like Bitcoin base chain is literally
transparent. Like that's the whole thing. Yes, you like, if you're non KYC, like you can have a UTXO
that maybe nobody knows that belongs to you. But like the vast majority of people come in through
KYC. And that's a whole different problem of like, that's just what a garbage dumpster fire KYC is

(01:24:44):
in general, like that doesn't actually work. But like, we could talk for literally just hours about
what an abomination that is. But okay, that sucks. It's the reality of how most people got their UTXOs,
right? On e-cash, literally, no, there is no, there is no transparency there, which again, it's like,
okay, maybe you could get rugged is your mint fractionally reserving you. Well, how do you

(01:25:07):
control for that? I'm sure that there's going to be a bunch of inbuilt functionality in wallets.
It's like, okay, I want to auto sweep my mints every two days, every two weeks, every two months,
whatever it might be, like just wipe them all, cause a bank run on them. And that just and maybe
some of them didn't have the the sats that I thought they did. But 98% of them did. And so, okay,

(01:25:28):
I'm not going to use those mints anymore. I'm going to use these other mints like
one thing about it is how cheap accessible it is to move money between mints, right? And it's like,
oh, like all of a sudden you can, what do you call it? Yeah, you could have like a hot potato
mint wallet, right? That just like, where are my mints? Any where's my money any given day?
Like, I don't know. I'm just running it between like 1000, whatever. So the chance that anyone

(01:25:53):
goes down, I don't know. Yeah, it is risk though. And it's risk you have to manage is maybe a good
way of putting it out there. The other was one of those things I wanted to point out. But okay,
so now, okay, like here's a picture that we've got this amazing base layer of Bitcoin, which is like
the asset itself, right? Then we've got this really cool settlement network, which is like

(01:26:14):
rowing takes works great has been like decentralized, maybe it's got some of those
hub and spoke model, but that ideally follows like majority of like trade, right? Like, you know,
who's making use who's exchanging sats between each other, like, you know, that's kind of where
lightning is going to end up and then you have these little banks, it's kind of become the hubs,
right? Or you anticipate becoming the hubs. It was like, basically reinvented a banking system

(01:26:37):
for Bitcoiners with like, super private, fast decentralized protocols that like exist internationally
and you could just send money anywhere in the world using like, any of these three different
systems depending on what your tradeoffs and like time requirements are and like set up costs, etc.
And it's accessible and you can do it today. And it's like, okay, that's, that's kind of cool. Like,

(01:26:58):
I don't know. Yeah, it's like, I like to think about like the like,
Fedements specifically, as like these federations, it's creating like a free banking structure,
essentially, except you have the soundest money that has ever been discovered at the base layer
of that free banking, you know, system, and you have auditability at the base layer, and some

(01:27:23):
auditability at the second layer and then less auditability at the, I don't know if you can,
like if Fedements are considered like another layer beside like, are they layer three,
or are they still layered? I suppose that's just a matter of like preference, right?
Either way, I'm just, yeah. Some people don't even think it's a layer too, because like it's not
actually, like you don't actually hold Bitcoin, you hold a thing that represents Bitcoin. I don't

(01:27:48):
know, you can't like exit, but again, it's like, for me, the question always comes down to like,
is this a heck of a lot better than what we have now? And I would say yes. Like,
and it's not perfect yet, but like, it is improving by like so quickly also, like we are
still early in this, like you've, so now you've been developing on Lightning for six years,

(01:28:14):
like how much has that changed just in your personal experience since when you started and now
everything else you see being built? Like, I mean, being working at the implementation level,
sometimes it's really hard to see what's going on outside, because you're so focused on
almost like the future, if that makes sense. Like, you're going to build things today that like,

(01:28:36):
hopefully people build on tomorrow or the next year or two, but like, maybe like,
might even not like so, you know, a lot of what I worked on were like, almost like,
new protocols for Lightning that like, only a couple implementations have shipped right,
like the splicing stuff Dusty did and builds on some of the stuff that I've been working on for a
long time and Asank has implemented it, Core Lightning has it, but is everyone using it? Like,

(01:29:00):
maybe today, maybe not, you know, it's like, it's, it's hard to see what impact your work
has or will have because there's so much of like the day to day of just like, building out
things you think people might need in the future and how you think it should work like later.

(01:29:21):
I've been super impressed at like, I don't know, just how big adoption has been like,
getting the exchanges on board was huge, I feel like, like, I don't think
enough people really understand how important it is to have exchanges with Lightning capability,
like that's really crucial and Lightning did it without like, without a token, without like,

(01:29:42):
maybe this is the thing that like, this is the thing that people maybe miss about Bitcoin a
lot is like, we did it without a token, I mean, Bitcoin, yes, but like, it's not like anyone like,
it's not like, it's not like people were incentivized to include these things because it
was going to be beneficial to that and personally immediately and like the short term, it's like,
they're doing it because it's like, no, this is like the new financial system and we want to be a

(01:30:06):
part of that new financial system. So we're like building into it. Like, I think that's
one of the more exciting things about the Lightning grow out over the last couple of years.
I agree. I mean, it's longer time horizon thinking, it's lower time preference thinking,
like it's, it's a lot of work upfront and to hopefully build something that is like,

(01:30:28):
exceptional and, and way better. And you know, I'm curious on a, on a more like,
let's say, consumer type level or user level, what do you have a go to not, I mean, so you run
your own Lightning node, are you using like Zeus for your like on mobile, I assume?

(01:30:50):
So for a long time, I just play Ice Phoenix, which isn't, I think they pulled it from the
US app store. So if you're in the US, you can't use it, but that's my absolute favorite. I might
have figured out a way to get it back on my phone recently, because it's my favorite thing to use
when I'm on the go. But I do use, I do use Zeus for connecting to core Lightning nodes. Yeah,

(01:31:12):
when I'm finding to get stuff done now these days, more recently, you used to just be like,
I'll have to pay you when I'm at my computer, because I have to log into my little banking,
my little Turtles, like do stuff. I also feel like, like, I get really uncomfortable talking
about banking. This is actually maybe worth saying, it's like, I feel like banking is so
regulated in the United States. So like, I get really worried about saying the banking word

(01:31:36):
when I talk about Bitcoin things, which is like, where's freedom? Is that freedom? Is it freedom
if I can't talk about something? Like, I'm afraid to talk about banking on a podcast, because,
like, in public, especially, because I'm afraid that that's going to cause problems for this,
like, basic growing system. I don't even know if I should be saying that, you know? But like,

(01:31:57):
I feel like it's worth, like, it's like, it's like, you know, there's, you know, some amount,
like, regulations and like, fear, like, takes what you're able and like, willing to say and like,
carves out places where you just don't want to go because it's like, scary to. And so that's like,
I don't know, maybe I'm not having a good spot even like, in the name of the beast.

(01:32:19):
But you're okay. No, I think it's a fair, a fair statement because it's also just this sad irony
that like, the banking system is so regulated and so controlled and are you a money transmitter?
Do you have your money transmitter license? And it's like, but then it's like, meanwhile,
yeah, they're regulated and controlled for any outsider who wants to partake in it.

(01:32:42):
But for everyone inside, it's just an absolute shitshow. They're all backstopped by the Fed.
Nobody ever goes like, the fact that like, what, one guy in like Iceland or Finland went to jail
after 08 and he was like the only poor, poor son of a bitch who got nailed with all this.
And everybody else just like, oh yeah, we're really sorry. We won't, we won't do it again.

(01:33:03):
We won't, and then like, back to business as usual, massive bonuses the next year. Nobody
does any jail time. Like it's just a joke. You've got multiple Federal Reserve presidents who in
the last three years, Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan and maybe one other, if you're listening
to this Kaplan and Rosengren, I've got your number. But they were insider trading as Federal

(01:33:26):
Reserve Board members or Federal Reserve presidents, excuse me, they were individual
regional Federal Reserve bank, Reserve Bank presidents, and they were caught insider trading.
Like that's disgusting. They're literally as far as like the Cantillon effect goes,
they're the closest ones to the money printer and they're literally insider trading on the most
material non-public information you could possibly imagine. So like this just is all to say that

(01:33:48):
I just think it's kind of bullshit. Like I think it's bullshit that people who are trying to build
freedom tech have to be worried about having a corrupt kleptocratic system crack down on them
when they're just trying to build tools that are going to ultimately help people escape that corrupt
kleptocratic self-serving bullshit system. And now I'm ranting. But yeah, sorry, I digress. But

(01:34:13):
I think it's absurd. Like you shouldn't have to worry about that. You should be able to build
open source freedom tech without needing to worry that somebody's going to knock on your door and
slap you at the fine or throw you in jail for writing code. Like that's nuts.
And it's not, it's like, it's money code. It's like, it's not, we're not talking like weapons,
great tech y'all. Like it's not like I'm programming a drone army. I mean, I used to have my bot

(01:34:36):
network, but I retired from the night. I'm on to like, you know, much less dangerous things.
Like just like accounting. I'm, you know, think I spent a lot of time lately literally like the
accounting software and core lightning. Yeah. Like, you know, very exciting. But it's important stuff.

(01:34:57):
I like it's, but again, not stuff that I think that you should be able to get,
get in that kind of trouble for from a corrupt system that is so full of hypocrites that
makes me sick to my stomach. But again, I'm going to start ranting if I, if I go down that road.
Well, what I wanted, what I wanted to also ask you, because I want to be conscious of your scarce
time, you know, like Bitcoin, your time is scarce, but these Bitcoin podcasts are so abundant.

(01:35:21):
But I wanted to ask you what that you're seeing makes you really hopeful right now.
Like what, what, uh, of all the things you're exposed to, like what, what makes you really
excited and hopeful about the future? What makes me really excited and hopeful about the future?
You know, honestly, it's gotta be like, who shows up to Bitcoin plus plus conferences. Like,

(01:35:42):
it's people who care. Like it's, you know, it's people who support Bitcoin plus plus and like,
come to the conferences and like, want to see like, like people want to see these technologies
exist and they're excited about contributing and building. And like, I don't know, like, like, I,
I'm like super excited about seeing the eCash stuff. I feel like that is like popping off.

(01:36:04):
And you know why it's popping off? You know, it's popping off because it's cool and it's accessible.
And it's like something that you can like get your hands on and immediately start building with.
Unfortunately, the lightning is like, hasn't been as accessible that way as like eCash is.
So I'm excited that like, Noster, I think also like really hit the nail on the head around

(01:36:24):
accessibility terms of like, how to get a bunch of people who have already existing skills that
they can easily port over into like, building in this like new ecosystem. Yeah, so that's super cool.
Yeah. I love, I'm curious, do you think you'll have a BTC plus plus
Noster or Noster themed at some point? Do you think it's, is it in the cards perhaps?

(01:36:51):
No, it's like, it hasn't been something I've been thinking about, but I have.
I did comment about how this, I think this Bitcoin plus plus the eCash one is going to have more
Noster crossover than any other conference. The Austin conference tends to be a little like bigger
and like more of a, they usually do a theme, but it's like grab bag. They got also a lot of

(01:37:11):
lightning stuff. The last one, I think two years ago, we had like a good Noster contingency that
I managed to pull people in. So I don't think it's like, I think if there's like, at some point,
I feel like I want to try and have like, maybe a bigger, more general like Bitcoin plus plus
conference, not just like, okay, this edition. But so hopefully I feel like that would be great
to get more of the Noster people in. I feel like one of the reasons that I think my thought, my

(01:37:37):
thought around this is that I want to keep Bitcoin plus plus focused on the like monetary aspect of
it. Noster has huge amounts of Noster development overlaps with that. I feel like, you know, there's
a great example of like the project that Negrent down in Argentina is doing with Nostro, which is
like a peer to peer exchange network that uses Noster. Like it's all, but it's like monetary.

(01:38:02):
There's a ton of stuff in Noster that is not monetary like new social media and new like
whatever. And I feel like that probably won't be something that I like seek out to include,
but all the stuff they're doing around like zapping or cash integration, like that stuff,
I think, I think, I don't know my vision for Bitcoin plus plus is that it stays more focused on
like the payments part or like the money part of it. Totally fair. And I mean, if nothing else,

(01:38:29):
like it seems to me that Noster is this kind of almost like a testing ground for a lot of the
like, like in terms of volume of zaps being sent, like number of, you know, micro payments being
sent on the Lightning Network and people doing it with, with eCash as well. Like that's really cool.
I know FETI implemented some, some like social proof and social discovery into their federations

(01:38:52):
as well. Like it's, it's cool to see these things all working together. Like that's really neat.
Like, and I think that that interoperability, because ultimately a lot of people just
sounds bad to say, but just like, they don't care about censorship resistant money or
censorship resistant social media or, or sovereignty, like they actually just don't care.

(01:39:14):
What they do like is really cool stuff that's easy to use and provides them with a great user
experience. And like, that's not true for everyone. Obviously, the people who are here now building,
they do really care about those things. But like that next wave of people, I think,
they just want stuff that works well and lets them escape something, you know, that's not, not as good.

(01:39:36):
I feel like this is where like, I go back to like that early conversation we had about like
sovereignty of like food, right? Like the work it does to get like, I don't know, fresh produce
from a local farmer. People, I don't know. This is where I go like, I'm like, hmm, like the system,
like people could argue, like, I feel like it could make a really good legitimate argument of like,
how do we get, how do we scale that to everyone? Right? That would be an important, that is an

(01:40:02):
important experience to scale to everyone, but we haven't succeeded as a society. I think it's
awesome that Bitcoin is called ourselves up to that standard. But part of, I guess, I'm like,
I love usability. I feel like it definitely could be made like a thousand times easier. And like,
I would love to see better tools for lightning, like node management out there, particularly
around like business use cases, because that's my personal like need for as like, you know, a human.

(01:40:27):
But yeah, I don't know. Like, yeah, like, I think the sovereign thing is like, maybe it always will
be as like difficult as going to a farmer's market, you know, like, that sounds weird.
No, no, I know what you mean. I mean, again, there's like, there's trade-offs with everything.
People have different preferences. They value things differently, like value is subjective,

(01:40:48):
like not everyone's going to care about sovereignty. And that's okay too. Like, it's good to have lofty
goals. But like, if you don't meet those goals, but you still end up with something that's a lot
better than what we have now, like, I'd say that's still success, like in my book anyway.
Yeah, but I guess it's also like, I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to like water down the
milk so that we can also serve it to, you know, I'm like, I don't know, maybe I'm like,

(01:41:12):
I don't want to say the leadest. I'm just like, no, man, like, people use it learn to care or
they won't do the thing, you know, like it's, I don't know, everyone should grow up in school.
I'm kidding. Right. No, it's like, hey, like the old adage, like, you can lead a horse to water,
but you can't make a drink that sovereign water, you know, like you can put everything there and

(01:41:34):
people still won't use it. So it's like, do you need to cater to the lowest common denominator?
Or do you need to build what's the best and most robust and then build other things that are still
good, but maybe not as sovereignty forward? And that's okay. Like, because not everyone's going
to want to use those sovereign tools anyway. I don't know. But well, okay, I have kept you

(01:41:56):
a little bit late here. And I'm sure the pup there wants some of your attention as well.
But is there anything we didn't cover here today or anything you want to BTCPP.dev?
If people are curious about BTC plus plus conferences, anywhere else you want to send
people or anything else we missed? Open floor here. Yeah, that's a great question. We didn't

(01:42:20):
talk about the Bitcoin LARP, which is great. Oh, yeah. Maybe you'll have to have me back on so
we can talk about this. I'd love to. What would be really fun, I think, is to get some people that
went through our first facilitator training, LARP training on at some point and let them talk about
the LARP and kind of talk it. That'd be a blast. Because I mean, I love LARPing. And so in Bitcoin

(01:42:42):
LARPing, it's also, I love that you called it a LARP too. It's beautiful. I get feedback on that.
Sometimes they're like, I don't think people know what that means. We said if they do,
they get scared of it. I'm like, okay, you're right. Anyways, but yeah, I think we should,
I think that would be a really fun thing to get. I don't know if you do group conversations with
people on. And I don't know, that's just kind of fun. For me, it'll be like, what do you call it?

(01:43:09):
Almost like user fee. It'd be like, live. A little focus group action. Yeah. We can do it live.
Yeah. I love it. I love it. You can host the focus group. It'll be fun. No. But I think that'd
be great. But yeah, other than the conferences and working and getting one in Brazil,
I think it's going to be in January in Florianopolis. So that's super exciting. And then also in

(01:43:31):
May, we're going to be back in Austin. I'm looking at new locations because I'm crazy. I'm literally
insane. Why am I doing, I don't know why I'm doing all these conferences, but they're fun.
Where else for like, I'll link your, your accent, your no-ster. I'll link your Twitter. Yeah.

(01:43:51):
And your, your no-ster. Anywhere else you want to send people like other websites or anything
like that, they should check out. No, check out what we're up to on base58.school. And then
BTC, you can also spell it out plus plus dot dev, but BTCPP is dot dev is like,
sort easy one. I just really say it out loud. I just like, oh, like BTCPP. Yeah.

(01:44:13):
Yeah. That's the one. That's it. That's exactly right. That'll get you there. Yeah. Easy to say,
but you know, yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, I've got titcoin.org redirecting to bitcoinpodcast.net.
So I feel the, I feel the redirects that, that's, that sound funny, you know? Yeah.
Absolutely. When you talk about why you call it TITCOIN, I think it's hilarious. I just,

(01:44:35):
I don't think I've actually talked about it on the show, but it started out as just like a joke.
Carl and I were just like, I'm Bitcoin rhymes with TITCOIN. Like, you know, and then we got real
drunk after a conference and floated this idea to some other people. And we were like,
and we also need to launch, you know, TIT hub as a replacement for Github because like people
will actually care about this shit more if there's boobs in it. Like, and they'll think that they're

(01:44:57):
finding boobs, but really they get open source freedom tech. Like, gotcha. You know, it's just
like a little, come for the TIT stay for the bits. But yeah, that's pretty good, actually. I'm going
to have to put that in a T-shirt or something. But yeah. And then just decided to buy too many URLs
and was like, well, this one's funny. Like, and fun fact, the, if you, so TITCOIN.org redirects to

(01:45:22):
my website, TITCOIN.com redirects to Mises.org. So it's the Austrian economics website, which is
like, I'm wondering like, did they buy that? Or did somebody else buy that and redirect to it?
Like, I don't know, but I'm sure there's a story there. But yeah, also, I just like a good,
I like a good joke. People take things too seriously. Like, we should laugh a little bit.

(01:45:43):
It's, it's okay to have a little bit of like, you know, 12 year old humor thrown in places.
Like, we need more of it. Well, Lisa, Nifty, thank you so much for joining me. This was a pleasure.
I have, I have learned some things and I would love to have you back on again. And we'll do
that focus group. I'm super down for that. And I want to, I want to come LARP as well. And I

(01:46:05):
know Carla does too. So love to do it. Ben, they'll be great. Yes. Yes. I love it. Well,
thanks so much. Appreciate you sharing your scarce time and take care. Take care. All right. I'm
going to

(01:46:46):
Bitcoin doesn't care, but I always appreciate it. You can find me on Noster by going to
primal.net slash Walker. If you want to follow the Bitcoin podcast on Twitter,
go to at Titcoin podcast and at Walker America. You can also find the video version of this
podcast at youtube.com slash at Walker America and at Walker America on rumble. Or just go to

(01:47:08):
Bitcoin podcast.net slash podcast and find links everywhere. Coin is scarce. There will only ever
be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time to
listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.

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NIFTYNEI: Doing Magic With Magic Internet Money (Bitcoin Talk on THE Bitcoin Podcast)

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