Citadel Dispatch

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EPISODE: 68

BLOCK: 742458

PRICE: 4704 sats per dollar

TOPICS: the clark moody dashboard, interstellar bitcoin, block propagation, KYC, fedimints, hard forks, fungibility

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[00:00:32] Unknown:

Happy Bitcoin   Sunday, freaks. It's your boy Odell here for another Citadel dispatch.   I am very excited for this conversation. We got Clark Moody in the house before we get there.   Just a huge shout out as always to the to the rider dive freaks who continue to support the show and keep it ad free, sponsor free, and purely focused   on actual discussion. The easiest way to support the show is through podcasting 2 point o apps.   Fountain Podcasts   and Breeze Wallet are my favorite.   You simply   load up,   your app   with some sats, with some Bitcoin. Choose how many sats,   per minute are you think this content is worth to you. And then from there, it'll just stream automatically to my note.  

Through podcasting 2.0, you can also do something called boostograms.   That's when you send a specific amount of stats,   to support the show, and you can include a message with that. Pretty cool. You end up with this comment system,   that has value attached to it that is readable on all podcasting 2 point o apps.   As always,   the top 4   boostograms   from the previous,   episode will be read on air. We have Chad Farrow who gave 33,000   sats 33,333   sats,   and provided no message. I appreciate you, Chad. We have Eric Rome who provided 25,000   sats to support the show. He said thank you to Slim for providing   sound information relating to cattle deaths. So useful. I'm now looking into the beef initiative.  

We have poor Ben Gunn who provided 5,000 sats without a message. Shout out to Ben. Your support means a lot to me. I have a lot of respect for that dude. Great dude. And we have Nomad Joe with 3,000 sats saying thanks for Bitcoin Thursday and interviewing Texas Slim.   There's a bunch of other boostograms here,   at lower amounts. You can view them in your favorite podcasting 2.0 app at your leisure.   I also want to say that if you cannot part with Sats currently,   you can also support the show by simply   searching Ciel dispatch in your favorite podcasting app   and clicking the subscribe button, potentially leaving a good review. It really does help. So thank you all.  

Also, while we're here,   a reminder that you can join the live chat both via Twitch. That's twitch.tv   /cildispatch   or via our matrix chat. Our matrix chat is   just constant awesome discussion all throughout the week. You can get the link to that at sill dispatch.com.   So with all that said, we do have a very tight time window here.   Clark is simply passing through and, has dedicated some time. We're gonna be about 45 minutes   here, to chat with us all, and very grateful for that. How's it going, Clark?  

[00:03:23] Unknown:

It is fantastic to be here on Citadel Dispatch.  

[00:03:26] Unknown:

Welcome to the new studio. What do you think?  

[00:03:29] Unknown:

There we go. It's amazing. Got my LaCroix.   We've got the hospitality going.   It's great. The studio is excellent.   It's quiet.   Beautiful. The soundproofing is insane. Soundproofing is, wonderful. I'm actually jealous. It makes you A lot jealous. Yeah. I feel like you can hear your thoughts in your head way more. Yeah. It gets Perfect. For better or for worse. You know? So, Clark,  

[00:03:51] Unknown:

I think you're most famous for your dashboard,   Clark Moody dashboard.   What was the what was the   thought process behind releasing that in the first place?  

[00:04:04] Unknown:

If you remember back to the fork wars,   we had lots of   stats people were looking at   user agents, people were typing in for their, UASF   nodes,   block signaling from the miners, all that sort of stuff going on.   And   you were looking at 4 or 5 different websites at a time Right. Just to see one number.   So I'm going to   what was it? Fork.lol   or whatever, like, old school, all these things, and you're looking for one number. Okay. What's the percentage of notes here? What's the percentage of signaling there?   And I was thinking, well,   it would be really nice to have all those numbers in one place with no frills,   just the numbers, just a big wall of numbers.  

And so that was the idea. I don't wanna have to go to all these different sites. And, like, 6 different tabs open. Yeah. All these tabs. You know? I don't wanna have to go all those different sites. I just want it all in one place.  

[00:04:59] Unknown:

Super clean, completely donation based,   proud supporter of your dashboard.   What is the website? It's is it clarkmudi.com?   Bitcoin.clarkmoodi.com   /dashboard. I just put cl in my browser now and just automatically just fills it out. Sure. If you just search for Clark Moody dashboard.  

[00:05:19] Unknown:

Yeah.  

[00:05:21] Unknown:

Awesome. I also just wanted to do a quick shout out to you. Your donation page is one of the cleanest donation pages in the space. I feel like you don't get enough credit for it.   The finest donation experience in business.   Anyway, freaks, if if you appreciate his dashboard, consider going and supporting it.   So, Clark, I mean, we're all yours today. What do you wanna talk about? What is what gets you excited when you think about Bitcoin? You've been in the space for, I think, longer than I have.  

[00:05:47] Unknown:

Yeah. So,  

[00:05:48] Unknown:

you know, stuff happening stuff happening on the privacy front is really exciting. First of all, you know, the FEDI Mint, Minh Mint stuff. What do you think about that? Is that is that am I am I right to be excited about that? Because I've been getting a lot of shit because I've been,  

[00:06:02] Unknown:

I've been I've been hiding it a bit. Bullish on it just since day 1. I mean, I read the the script cash paper from the Right. Smuggler and the,   you know, prog guys, and   I was I was looking at script cash on, like, how do how do we implement this? How do we make it happen? And then,   Sirion comes out of nowhere at HCPP last year, drops a prototype. Right.   And it's just, you know, the federated Chaumian Mint is the way you get well, Chaumian Mint is the way you get amazing privacy.   The federated spin on it gives you a little bit less,   custody risk.  



[00:06:37] Unknown:

And so it's And then the cool part to me is I mean, that's all   well and good.   But the cool part to me is this idea of the lightning gateway so you can pay and receive from basically any Bitcoin wallet. Yeah. Lightning interop, I I think, is is the magic the magic. Because if you look at something that's federated, I mean, it doesn't have Chomini cash, but it's federated like liquid and just no one uses it. Right.   I gotta gotta imagine part of the reason is the friction moving between   the federation and  

[00:07:08] Unknown:

Yeah. And and the weight of you don't need a blockchain   for eCash. Right. And so   that's the whole that's part that's part of the magic there. So it's just these instant transfers of these eCash tokens.   You don't need blockchain. Interop with Lightning means that you can go in and out very fast.   So if you have concerns about,   solvency of the of the mint or inflation or whatever,   you can get your funds out at the speed of lightning the lightning network. Right.   And so there might be a lot of people that dip in a little bit, come back out, dip in, and it's and as long as that that Mint is keeping up that trust of, hey. Any any of your lightning withdrawals   that are going out,   they never they never get pods, so you get more trust  

[00:07:53] Unknown:

in them. Well, I don't know if you're aware of this, but one of the cool parts of how they have it currently set up or, like, the plan in place is that, essentially,   anyone who's a part of the Mint, not just the federation members, can be running these lightning gateways. So you could actually have multiple lightning gateways, and and there's almost a free market competition  

[00:08:10] Unknown:

among the lightning gateways of a specific federation. Right. There's a lot of cool stuff going on. Yeah.   But, yeah, I find that very promising. What else what else you got for us? Well, I've been thinking about Bitcoin in space Yeah. Again. So I wrote one article called Bitcoin and the interplanetary frontier   back in 2017.   And, I'm a lot faster at writing code than I am at writing prose, so I haven't written the follow-up yet.   But,   you know, I thought that   we're hunkered we're we're hunkered down in the citadel.   You know, the the world's going crazy out there. Right. The bear market's on. We've battened down the hatches, and we're we're in build mode.  

And we could go doomer pod,   but I was thinking we we look outward. There's a lot of doomer pods out there. We look forward. Something new, you know, some sort of evergreen content for the, for the next bull  

[00:09:00] Unknown:

market. So, like, the 2 the 2 space Bitcoin space pros, I guess, in in the in the space. Are you in the space?   Are you and Dhruv from Unchained? Mhmm.   Dhruv is pretty sure that   people in space are gonna be using shitcoins.   Where do you fall on that? Are are are Martians gonna be using shitcoins, or are they gonna be using Bitcoin? So this was this is the big this is the big question for me.  

[00:09:28] Unknown:

I don't think   you can go interstellar   with Bitcoin.   Okay. You know, Citadel Proxima, right,   in the Alpha Centauri system   is 4 light years from Earth. Okay?   So I don't know if you can have 10 minute block times and transfer that much data for light years for the, you know,   the, the the the plebs over there on, approximately The trust model breaks down. But, yeah, the trust model breaks down.   Then you back it you back it up a little bit, and you're getting into one of these ships to go to another star. Alright? Okay.   You're set you're set you're setting out with, like, a 1000 people in this generation ship. It's gonna take you 5,000 What years is this? I don't know.  

2025, 2026.   No.   Soon, though. And,   we need to get it we need to get off this planet. Anyway,   jump on the ship. You jump on the ship, and   do you the big question to me is do you hard fork   Bitcoin   and keep and and take the UTXO set with you?   Do you try to launch something new?   Because then the the mining comes into play and, you know, the the premise of Bitcoin. Right? Right.   Internet cash without a trusted third party. Right.   In a space exploration setting,   you've got a really closed ecosystem. Like, one ship is the entire universe for these Right. 100 people. That's their economy. That's their whole economy,  

[00:11:00] Unknown:

all this sort of stuff. There might be some connection back. They might still have financial obligations back home or something.  

[00:11:07] Unknown:

Right. But if yeah.   But you gotta can't you kind of sell all your property before you, you know, head on a ship to another star. You're not coming back. It's a one way trip. Yeah. Your great grandchildren are not coming back.   So   so so it'd be awesome to have this sound money to kick off the new human civilization.   It'd be cool if you could do it off of a few UTXOs   from the original Bitcoin chain and carry that through.   You have to fork because   if you separated the chains for, like, a 1000 years and then they came back together,   one would wipe out the other and you'd lose, like Right. A 1000 years' worth of chain. Okay. So you don't wanna do that. You gotta have some sort of separation, some sort of fork.  

But the question is, do you bootstrap it off of UTXOs, or do you try to launch something new maybe even when you get there?   So I don't know. This that's that's pretty far out. That's pretty cosmic. Alright.  

[00:12:03] Unknown:

Oh, you wanted to get cosmic. Usually, we talk about,   more like hands on stuff, but we're all yours here. So   just grateful to have you in the studio. Yeah.  

[00:12:13] Unknown:

But if you roll it back, like Mars, right,   moon is perfectly fine.   So the moon is, you know, 1 and a half light seconds away.   You could potentially have a video call with somebody on the moon. Okay.   Mars is 3 to 22 minutes away,   light time. So you need you need block confirmations. There's a couple more block confirmations   to use Bitcoin on Mars,   but you could use Lightning Network locally on Mars. And then settle   And if you had to, you could on the main chain. That's right. And so it's just 2 blocks extra confirmation time that you need.  

[00:12:49] Unknown:

Maybe 4 because you need there and back around. But that's doable. That's doable. That's doable. So the Martians aren't gonna be using shitcoins.  

[00:12:57] Unknown:

I don't think they have to. No.   What I've also been thinking about is, like,   you've got this period where   from Mars or from the Earth, it's behind the sun in certain parts of the orbit. Right? So it's like   you can't communicate with it because it's in this solar   blackout zone.   So, of course, you need You've really thought about this. Yeah. You need   like comm satellite   you know, relay stations in different orbits   to relay the information   around the sun   so you can still have this   sort of back and forth   communication between the split civilizations of Earth or of of humanity. Right?   Which also takes which also, I think, partly alleviates   Dhruv's   concern that you need hash power in both locations.  

The center of hash concept that he introduced Right.   Makes it to where the Earth based miners   could   reject all the transactions from Mars if there's some sort of   conflict.   Right?   Right.   But   if you can relay the data, then some miner will mine the blocks because how can you tell this one comes from Mars? And,   you just put a fee on it and they respond to incentives. Right.   So it's kind of the old the old They don't mind you keep increasing the fee or whatever till they mine it, till someone mines it. Right. You spend all day waiting for, you know, did it come in on a in a block? You know?  

[00:14:27] Unknown:

Using using the dashboard would probably be pretty slow. But have you looked into are there massive energy resources on Mars? I just kinda feel like I assume there are.  

[00:14:38] Unknown:

I don't I don't actually know. I haven't look I haven't looked into the energy there. It's got it's got less solar,   so it's just farther away. Right. There's less atmosphere,   so you couldn't do as much wind, but I'm sure they'll bring nuclear nuclear generators with them Right. In the in the colonies. And you could just do that wherever. But then you can do that wherever. That's right. Yeah. So they won't have a there there's no cost advantage if if it's if it's nuclear. Oh, the real thing is is chip fab. You know? Can you get You'd have to bring all the chips up with you, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Like, a ASIC ASIC fabs are essentially   one of the few, like, pinnacles of human, like, capitalistic   economies. Like, it's there's so much that goes into building a chip fab,   so much supply chain, and so much,   high technology and smart people and all sorts of stuff   that getting that getting a chip fab up and running on Mars   would take a long, long, long time. And it's hard enough to just get the chip fabs in America. It's hard enough to get them here, you know, where we need them. Yeah. And they're not under the control of foreign powers that are potentially hostile to the US. So Have you ever read or watched Expense?  



[00:15:49] Unknown:

I read the first book. What'd you think of it?   It was cool. I like how they had a a colony in the asteroid belt. That was pretty sweet. Well, so that's how so the way it works in Expanse is there's the Earth civilization, and then there's the Mars civilization, and they're basically   equivalent in power. They're they they work together to a degree, but they're they're frenemies.   And then there's, like, the belters that have only grown up in the asteroid belt on, like, space stations and stuff. They're starting to diverge from humanity because they're low gravity and stuff like that. But, like, as a sci fi nerd, one of the things   I mean, Expanse is really cool because they, like, try and make it as,   connected to physics and realistic as possible as someone who's doesn't really know any of that shit. Pretty sure.  

But all most of all the sci fi books always   just throw out the money question. They just say, like, credits.   Right? They they never tell you, like, how the money works or how that communication goes, how that how that consensus happens. Right. It's just they're using fucking credits. Yeah.  

[00:16:52] Unknown:

There was one there was one set of books that I read that were more of, like, an end cap author,   the Aristides   series.   Pretty low quality books, but he did think about a lot of this stuff in this in the,   context of a lunar colony.   So, it's kind of like   an anarcho capitalist lunar society   in It's like seasteading on the moon. Right. In the vein of the earth as a harsh mistress. You know, that that sort of,   Yeah. Usually, sci fi ignores the money question.   But even even in, you know, post post scarcity, post money, like Star Trek, there's still conflict. There's still scarcity. Yeah. So it's   it's kind of like disingenuous. Right?  



[00:17:35] Unknown:

So I mean, let's just bring this back to Earth a little bit. I mean, these types of these types of questions,   I mean, we're extrapolating them or you're extrapolating them for space.   But this goes   hand in hand with the idea of, okay, someone's in China and someone's in the United States. How can they use,   Bitcoin in a trust minimized way?   Right, which is reducing latency in terms of block times, like an actual block propagation, not block times. Mhmm. Making sure that data actually hits all the participants in a relatively quick amount of time, keeping that data overhead,   as low as possible.  

Can you explain to the freaks, you know, why that is necessary?  

[00:18:20] Unknown:

Yeah. Because if if,   the longer it takes to learn about a block,   the less of an advantage any miner has.   So you have this median   10 minute block time,   and if a mine if it takes   30 seconds to propagate the block to the miner,   they've just lost 5% of the time, so they'll probably lose 5% of their revenue. They'll they'll produce more orphans, you know, in case a block was found in that in that little bit of time. They'll now be one block behind, and they will have wasted that wasted that time.  

[00:18:56] Unknown:

And in practice, it's   so the the miner who mines it has an advantage in that situation.   And in practice, it leads to minor centralization   rather than what we want, which is as as much mining distributed as possible, in many hands as possible.  

[00:19:11] Unknown:

Yeah. The even, like, a with like, a block withholding attack is where you you find a block,   and you mine a little bit on it   to try to find another one before you You don't broadcast it right away. Yeah. You release both of them to the network at the same time. Right. And this is an attack that  

[00:19:28] Unknown:

that, basically, you need you need to have a large amount of hash under a single control to try and pull off that attack. Right. And the pools may be doing it. You know, maybe the bad actor pools are doing it.  

[00:19:38] Unknown:

And it may not be an attack  

[00:19:40] Unknown:

depending on how you I mean, it's a greedy it's just a normal incentive play. Right? Right. Because they can lose if they if they play that game and someone else comes out with a block and it propagates really quickly,   then they can just get fucked and they can lose out on the first block. So they're taking a little bit of risk. Which is why the whole system's propagation needs to be Right.   As fast as possible. Right. Low latency as possible to basically incentivize,  

[00:20:05] Unknown:

quote, unquote, good behavior. And that's what the that's what the fiber   network is all about. Right. It's just communicating all the transactions ahead of time and just the block ahead of time. The thing Carvala, the thing Corello created. Right.  

[00:20:18] Unknown:

And it's spelled   fibr   e, I think. I think so.  

[00:20:23] Unknown:

Yeah. Fast Internet block relay.  

[00:20:26] Unknown:

Basically, it's miners are connected without they're not actually propagating it through the   the normal gossip p to p network or whatever of Bitcoin. Right? Special connections. Separate. Special connections and then way more data  

[00:20:38] Unknown:

so that you so that every miner has,   hopefully, all of the transactions in the block   prior to just receiving the header   from the found block. So that's only 80 bytes that has to go   over the Internet and then, like, the list of transactions,   just the just the TXIDs,   not the full transaction data. Right. So you can relay the found block very, very in a very lightweight   way.   And that's kind of the best you can do,  

[00:21:06] Unknown:

as far as, you know But that's, like, opt that's opt in on a minor basis if they wanna use it or not. But I'm sure there's a there's a financial advantage to doing it. Unless you're a bit unless yeah. Otherwise, you're just getting full blocks, you know, getting whole blocks from the network. Yeah. Unless you're,   unless you're, like, a very large miner and you're trying to basically do block withholding attacks. Right.   And I guess you read from the you read from fiber, but you don't broadcast on it or something like that. Right?  

[00:21:32] Unknown:

I guess you could.   But I don't  

[00:21:35] Unknown:

know. But I I so I guess, like, we can't really extrapolate something like fiber for   space travel because   there's a physics limitation. It's like it's not like humans can   because, I mean, besides money, there's a massive incentive for humans to try and make communication with the outer planets as easy as possible. Right. But there's there's a physics limitation there. Right? Like, you can only make it speed of light. We can't go past the speed of light. Right? Not yet. Are we gonna ever be able to? I don't I don't know. You heard it here first, guys. Clark, is bullish on  

[00:22:06] Unknown:

faster than speed of light communication. All all you CERN all you CERN physicists who are listening in, hit us up in the, in the comments.  

[00:22:13] Unknown:

I just wanna say that I'm  

[00:22:16] Unknown:

I'm I'm proud that you're you don't think the Martians are gonna be using shitcoins, because I was pretty sure they weren't gonna be using shitcoins. No. You just need a couple you need a couple other lock couples block confirmations. But I I think that, you know, the main so if you talk about communication, so   this really incentivizes   people to set up these Calm Relay systems and sell   bandwidth,   because if it's all just one dish and you just knock out that dish, then Mars is shut down. Right?   So it's gonna take lots of lots of entrepreneurs to set up. Do you think Mars will be settled?  

[00:22:49] Unknown:

It's a really great Bitcoin question. Do you think Mars will be settled,   by governments, or will it be privately led?  

[00:22:59] Unknown:

Probably private. The cost the cost to governments when they're all bankrupt at this point would be way too high. And and it just couldn't be done politically. Do you think it'll be a single corporation  

[00:23:09] Unknown:

that controls Mars, or do you think it'll be multiple corporations?  

[00:23:13] Unknown:

I think it'll be independent,   independent groups of Bitcoiners.  

[00:23:17] Unknown:

Like, what are the char chartering rockets? I mean, I think I so I disagree with DeRue's premise that, like, Martians have to use Sheik coins and, like, they're incentivized to use Sheik coins. But I   I wouldn't disagree with this is not his premise, but I wouldn't disagree with the idea that   shake corners tend to ruin all the good things. So I wouldn't, like, what are the chances that   the 1st successful colony is, like, led by one of these shit corners that has a shit ton of Bitcoin, just funds it all himself?   If they're funding it with Bitcoin, you know, I don't know. Well, that's, like, the biggest part of the shitcoin scam, right, is that they all hold huge back like, they shitcoin to have Bitcoin. Right. Right. Like, I'm thinking, like, the EOS guys like, the EOS guys, like, have, like, a 140,000   Bitcoin or something like that. Right?  

Like, they could just make it Eos planet, or   I'm not even gonna say his name, but the guy, like, dresses in Prada all the time or something. Right? It's like,   it's his planet,  

[00:24:11] Unknown:

Mars Corp. Well, when the scam Mars is in the whole colony, like, dries up and all the people die, then  

[00:24:16] Unknown:

maybe there will be some repercussions. You know, We have winsome hacks in the comments saying you can bet some scammers already cooking up a narrative for interplanetary  

[00:24:23] Unknown:

defy. Wasn't there a Mars coin at some point? Probably. There's, like, every, I mean, there was a there was a Luna coin, right, that that fucking collapsed. So you could you could make an argument for an interplanetary settlement coin   that has really long block times,   like one day or 1 week or 1 year long block intervals or something.   And it's potentially tied to the Bitcoin chain. And how would you tie it to the Bitcoin chain?   You would say to mine this thing, you have to put   the hash of a Bitcoin block that's   100,000   higher than the previous   block in our chain. You have to put the Bitcoin hash in it. And so, you have to validate both chains to   do it, or you just do enough proof of work that it takes a year to find a block or whatever.  

And then you have this really long  

[00:25:19] Unknown:

to connect everything, and then each economy has its own local whatever.  

[00:25:23] Unknown:

Right. Yeah. The the the center of hash, right, could be very, very large. The total hash horizon or whatever could be very large because block propagation,   the the latency   wouldn't be as as high of a fraction of the block time.   So, you know, it's, like, 10 minute blocks.   You can only go about   a light minute out or something. So, like,   maybe to Mars or whatever. If you're if you're if you're mining if you're mining. Well, I have a feeling that I'm not gonna be alive for these  

[00:25:55] Unknown:

for these hash wars, but,   I think my grandkids are gonna have a really fucking fun time with it. It should should be,   I love all the adversarial stuff that happens in Bitcoin. Yeah.   And send incentivize incentivize people to to follow the rules. Like, I think some people like, I'm glad the 4th course happened.   Are you glad the 4th course happened? Yes. I'm glad I got to live through them. I'm glad I got to be heavily,   attentive and involved during them. Yeah. It was a very special moment in Bitcoin history.   Very exciting.  



[00:26:30] Unknown:

Very exciting.   It was it was essential, though, to to   allow   people to make changes and see what happens.   Right?   They got to find out. Exactly. And Look around and find out. That's right. And so they found out,   and people   if they if they dumped all their Bitcoin for the other chains, they just got hosed. Absolutely wrecked. Absolutely wrecked.   So,   you know, and it also it it's a pressure release valve. Right?   Oh, we're we we can't change Bitcoin, so we just gotta go do something else. We can't, You know, we're not gonna steer this ship. Right.   No stopping this train. You know?  



[00:27:13] Unknown:

Do you think there's going to be   so I feel like some people took the wrong thing from the fork wars,   and and and that being   I guess, this is a leading question.   Do you think there'll be successful hard forks in Bitcoin in the future?  

[00:27:31] Unknown:

I think unless well,   unless we have to unless we find a way around it, we have to hard fork at least once. So the 21 40 thing? Because of the time stamp.  

[00:27:40] Unknown:

Yeah. What is that, 2140? Am I makes up my years? It's been a while. 2106.   2106?   Yeah. That your 2106 problem. It's like the it's what the Unix timecode something  

[00:27:52] Unknown:

we run we run out of we run out of   seconds   on an unsigned 32 bit integer.   So once you do that, you go back to 1970,  

[00:28:05] Unknown:

and the network would halt. But that's not what I mean. I mean, so, obviously,   there's gonna be a lot of   support for doing something like that,   because we have no choice. You guys have no choice.   Yeah. And, you know, there'll be years of discussion, maybe decades of discussion on how to do that.   So part of my Bitcoin Zen in holding   Bitcoin long term is   that I believe that the fork wars showed us   that Bitcoin is extremely hard to change by default, and that's one of the key value props of Bitcoin.   And to change it significantly, particularly to have a hard fork, you need to basically have this groundswell   of,   support for it. And it's really hard to measure. You can't really measure it until after you fork, so it's like a very rough consensus type of situation.  

But, ultimately, the way I look at it is the value of Bitcoin is   abstractly   in the   in the actual UTXO set, in the actual ledger of transactions. This is a this is a   basic living document,   living ledger of   everyone's wealth over time. That's immutable.   So   if there was, for some reason, some kind of thing that we needed to,   if there was some reason we needed to change Bitcoin   and add something to Bitcoin or   adopt some kind of new technology that doesn't exist today,   if we hit a a a point where, like, there was a lot of there was a lot of pain, there was a lot of push, there was a lot of   support consensus   around   changing Bitcoin to that thing,   there would be a hard fork,   and that, potentially, that hard fork   could become the dominant chain. Right.  

And if you were holding Bitcoin, you could just go into a coma. You can go to sleep and just not even pay attention to it. You have on you have on both chains anyway. Right.   But, ultimately, whichever one the market values as the sounder money is the one that succeeds. I mean, because the thing is, like, BCash,   and then later, SV,   like, they had just really shitty developers   running it. There there was no real momentum or motivation to change   to it. Like, I I I think it's caught like, people should be careful about   extrapolating   too much from that situation.  

Is there not could there not be a situation where   there was,   basically   first of all, anyone can fork at any time. No one stop them. That's part of Bitcoin. Right?   Do you do you think there could ever be a situation where there is a fork?   That's not the Unix time related   that was successful?  

[00:31:09] Unknown:

I I well, so so   just one note about b cache. Right? It it required a second hard fork almost immediately   because   planning for a hard course hard fork is really hard.   And you mentioned that it's quality of developers that there wasn't enough. I you know, there there were some time on it   to say, okay. Hey, we're we're actually introducing a reason for another hard fork within weeks. Right. And so, you you know, you don't want that first hard fork followed by a second emergency hard fork because then you just lose all credibility, but Right. So, you want it planned ahead. I think if there's a Bitcoin hard fork with strong consensus,   it will probably have a 5 or 10 year,   a 5 or 10 year It won't be like an impulse thing. Right. It'll be like,   hey. Everybody remember, in 10 years, we're we're forking. You know? Get ready. 10 years. Make sure your stuff is ready. Right?  

People will still wait till the last minute. You know? But   Everyone will last. Big, long advance on it. There's big, long advanced runway on it.   There's maybe something with   maybe something with quantum attack. If a quantum attack becomes apparent,  

[00:32:20] Unknown:

maybe, but I don't know how you could But there's, like, a bunch of things that we can't even conceptualize.   Right? Right. That's why I thought about it because we were talking about space. Right. Like, we have no fucking idea what's gonna happen in space. However,  

[00:32:32] Unknown:

you know, mathematics, right, is   we think is at least a universal language. So,   if you can if you can prove something mathematically, then maybe that that proof would hold everywhere in the universe. So I don't know. Well, like, one of the things I took away from BCash was,  

[00:32:50] Unknown:

so anyone can fork. Mhmm.   And   then the other takeaway is that   only one fork will be successful.  

[00:32:59] Unknown:

Right. So  

[00:33:01] Unknown:

so whichever whichever chain wins,   the other one's gonna trend to 0 is my is my,   is basically is my thesis. Right. And so the question is,   will there ever be one   that is not the   because, presumably, with the the UNIX thing, the time code thing,   there'll be a hard fork, but no one will keep the chances that someone tries to keep the original chain alive is is probably very minimal just because why would you do that? You still have a you have a ticking time bomb on the back end.   So so I would almost say that that's probably not even relevant to discussion for that reason. Well, do they I think I think that the hard fork,  

[00:33:45] Unknown:

does it does it preserve the   does it preserve the ASIC compatibility with the existing Of course. Install base? Or does it, like Well, if you take that out, then it's it then you're a whole different ballgame. Right? Okay. So it's so it's AC compatible. The miners It's still shot 256.  

[00:34:02] Unknown:

We're still using that whatever year this is.  

[00:34:05] Unknown:

The mine the miners still have that   incentive to be on the winning chain because the other one's going to 0. They have to they have to choose. Right. Like, I've said many times with Ethereum and the proof of stake thing,  

[00:34:16] Unknown:

like, if you fork out the miners, the miners have   every incentive to just continue   to continue on the original chain. There's no they have they have absolutely nothing to lose Right. Because they can't buy the new chain. Now their hardware is all worthless. Maybe ETC will come back. The ETC people are gonna   I don't think so. I think if they ever actually successfully do an ETH,   fork to proof of stake, which is still yet to be seen if that actually happens   soon, soon, 2 weeks.   I think the miners just continue the original chain. I think they just fork out the difficulty bomb or whatever, and then they just continue,   because they have absolutely nothing to lose. I think,   I said I like the adversarial stuff when it happens on Bitcoin. I like it even more when it happens on shit coins because it doesn't affect my money. Right. So I think that could be, like, the new   fork war learning experience   for, like, the new class without  

[00:35:06] Unknown:

it affecting me at all, which could be good. Yeah. Yeah. There's the there's the hashtag change the code crowd that wants to just Yeah. Switch the devs can just switch to proof of stake. Come on, guys. This is not hard.  

[00:35:18] Unknown:

So that This takes a 5,000,000 donation to,   the scam that is Greenpeace, and you can Right. Hashtag change the code. I think that,  

[00:35:27] Unknown:

there will be a proof of stake   fork at some point to try to be compliance friendly, ESG friendly, whatever.  

[00:35:33] Unknown:

I think someone Bitcoin? Yeah. Someone will try it. I hope so. And then you just get a free dividend. Right. Just sell our proof of stake token and get more Bitcoin with it. If it even has  

[00:35:43] Unknown:

If it even has appreciable value. Like, Bcash   did have   a sizable value relative to the main chain  

[00:35:50] Unknown:

for a while before it just petered off to almost nothing. Well, that's why we need to get the ESG funds into Bitcoin first, then have the proof of stake   Flip guys were ESG from? And then and then they'll all   bag hold the proof of stake fork. While we And then and then  

[00:36:05] Unknown:

we dumped onto them. Yeah, the ultimate dump is Bitcoiners dumping on the issue. It'd be nice to get  

[00:36:11] Unknown:

another 30% dividend on Bitcoin. Ian Burner: The issue dividend.  

[00:36:14] Unknown:

Someone will   hard fork the supply cap.   Eventually, at some point. At some point, someone will say, alright.   Annuals you know, after the next having,   annual monetary inflation goes to   0.7%   or something like that.   So, harder than gold   and not that much new supply coming online.   So, someone will say, Hey, we need either a constant number or a constant percentage or something   growth   because   inflation people never stop. Right? Right. We gotta have inflation. Gotta have inflation.   So some of the hard fork And, also, like, the transaction fee FUD, which we're already seeing. Every bear market, you hear the fee FUD. Right? It's the death spiral. See? Yeah. The fees drop off, the price drops, and the hash rate goes too big, and the chain dies. That's  

[00:37:05] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, someone will do it at some point. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Death spiral FUD will never die.   Transaction fee FUD, energy FUD. It'll probably be, like, in a at a time of low fee environment   while Bitcoin's in a bear cycle.  

[00:37:19] Unknown:

Right? It will have crashed from, like, 30,000,000 a coin down to, like, 2,000,000 a coin,  

[00:37:25] Unknown:

and people will say, it's gonna die. See, I love this shit. You wanted to go cosmic, but I like controversial. Controversial stuff is more exciting.   So, I mean, we have citrinity in the comments. He goes, do you think ride or die freaks, citrinity. Shout out to you. He goes, do you think Bitcoin is fungible? Do you have any concerns with Bitcoin's current fungibility?   Do you think we should be pushing for things like cross input signature aggregation?  

[00:37:50] Unknown:

I mean, the the people who proposed Schnorr said that cross input is one of the goals here, and Right. They're working on it.   Of course, I think we need it   because it makes, you know, it makes coin joints more economically   advantageous than single spends.   Fungibility,   you know, there's a lot of voodoo   chain analysis stuff, and   3rd parties can make your life,   you know, a lot more tough than,   self custody of coins. Right.   So   I think I think a lot of people need to get burned a little harder on that   before they take it seriously. But as long as you're doing self custody,   it's it gets it gets way harder to have the the   the KYC encroachment  

[00:38:37] Unknown:

matter as much. The KYC Encroachments insane, though. I mean It's absolutely insane. Yeah. I mean, like, if you if,   like, I've been around the block for a decent amount of time. Yeah.   Like like I said, I think you've been around long I mean, we what like, 20 6 pre 2016,   none of these services had k y pretty much none of them had KYC. Right.   Maybe Coinbase had, like, some light KYC,   but pretty much none of the services that were operating in and around Bitcoin had.   Definitely not by far this this stringent of KYC, but pretty much most of them had no KYC. And then, like, in a matter of 2 years,   it was, like, the frog boiling.  

Right? Yep. And now it's just the standard. Like, if you're a newcomer coming into the space, you just assume that's how it's always been. Right.   Like, KYC is   I I still think the majority of state attacks have not happened yet. But KYC is a massive attack on Bitcoin that just Yep. Has been very successful. Like, it there has been   is there there hasn't really been much pushback or It's because we haven't seen the crackdown.   Do you think the   so, I mean, you mentioned we well, so Trinity mentioned cross input signature aggregation, but   you mentioned the value of cross input signature aggregation, which is that CoinJoin   are more,   affordable. They're cheaper than a regular transaction. Right.  

They're not cheaper than if you're just holding in a custodial wallet.   No. And I think there's a there's there's something to be said there because,   like, I love our open source contributors. I love our developers. I love everyone who works on Bitcoin. But there's a tendency in Bitcoin to focus on   the code, focus on the actual,   internal things of Bitcoin rather than external pressures.   And one of the things I noticed over the last 2 years and, I mean, hopefully, there'll be this will be a massive learning lesson if BlockFi does completely blow up.   But we already know Celsius has blown up. We know Voyager's   basically   insolvent,   probably Nexo, all of these different lending   centralized lending platforms. But when you're talking about incentives, it's like, okay. Well,   even in cross input signature aggregation,   like, it'll be west way less affordable than to just give it to a custodian and get your 6% yield or whatever.  

Yeah. That 6% sure worth it at this point, ain't it? But I'm saying, like, that's what Right. Right. You're competing with that. Right? Right. They're the all these Bitcoin privacy sovereign stuff are competing with the incentives of the custodial regulated system. No?  

[00:41:13] Unknown:

Well, I'll tell you what, if they get lightning enabled for point of sale stuff,   I mean,  

[00:41:19] Unknown:

that's a game changer because you can spend I get a lot of shit for saying that. You can spend sats. I think Mahler's announcement   this year at the Bitcoin conference was way bigger than the last year 1 because   I I I think it's really cool that a   Latin American country is is making Bitcoin legal tender, but there's 6,000,000 people there. They have a tiny GDP.   If every if if if half of retail merchants in America are accepting lightning payments,  

[00:41:47] Unknown:

If I That's a complete game changer. If I could buy my briefcase of LaCroix at Walmart, the SATS And the other thing is knows that I got it, you know. There's a lot of nuance about Lightning privacy, but all else equal, you know,  

[00:42:00] Unknown:

they probably will not know what UTXO funded that transaction. So there's no history there. It's actually like a cash transaction. Exactly. But the issue people say to me, like, what is the difference between this and BitPay? I mean, you remember, like, 2013 2014, whereas like, BitPay, we just got another   retailer after another retailer over and over again. Well, the difference is that was all on chain. So, there was this   whole history that was attached with every transaction. Right. And I mean, I know you're a very privacy focused guy.   Me personally, when I spend Bitcoin on chain, there's a massive mental burden. Who am I paying? What is the history on that UTXO? What am I exposing? Am I gonna regret this transaction in 6 years?  

You don't have that with lightning.   Right. Yeah. The As a sender. And the privacy the privacy  

[00:42:43] Unknown:

verdict is still out on lightning, and there's a lot of big FUD.   But there are a lot of foot guns, especially if you're receiving on lightning. There's a lot of ways you can fuck up. Yeah. It's still it's still unknown, and we're still waiting to see if somebody gets burned with lightning.   But then this is where the chow me and mints come in.   Right.   So you make the you have this spectrum of trade offs. Right? And before we talk about that, you know, I'll say that the the node developers, the core developers,   for them, privacy means,   like, nobody can untangle which node   broadcast a transaction, and nobody can untangle the actual   IP location of your node because it's on Tor and, like,   mempool behavior and rebroadcast behavior and all these other things to make the nodes themselves   more private on the Internet   against Eclipse level, perhaps. Network level against Eclipse attackers and things like that, which, like,   that's that's looking forward to ultra,   sophisticated attackers.  

Like, someone's saying, hey. We we're gonna eclipse attack all the Bitcoin nodes in another country   or something.   Like, that's the level of stuff they're thinking about.   And   so there so the Bitcoin node itself   improves its own privacy with, you know, every release. They they have little things that tweak privacy   for the node itself. But it's a different type of privacy. Right? Right. So, there's all these different levels.   But we're we're we're talking about, yes, you know, balance and history privacy.  

[00:44:16] Unknown:

And And particularly in a post KYC world, particularly in a world where 99% of people are coming in, providing full ID information, and having their addresses tracked. Right. And I I think that I think that it, you know,  

[00:44:28] Unknown:

when you have when you have layer 1, layer 2, and I think,   you know, a Fetti Mint or something is layer 2a half, maybe layer 3,   you have a   a menu of trade offs.   Right?   And so   you you trade off you know, lightning, you trade off locking up your funds   for the instant settlement and having to be online.   Right?   With the Chaomian Mint, you trade off custody and maybe inflation assurances,   but you get pretty much perfect privacy.   Right? Among your an onset.  

[00:45:02] Unknown:

Among the an onset. Like, if you got 10 people in the sediment or whatever.  

[00:45:06] Unknown:

And interrupt with lightning.   So, like,   it's like, oh, it's one of those 10 people that paid the lightning invoice. But but how do you   how can you connect those dots all the way through?   Because   the the you interface with the Chaumian,   with the Mint   nodes on tor and all this sort of stuff. So,   I I think that   I think that some a couple minutes will get very large, and the announcement will be pretty big, and it'll be And see, this is where I impossible. Obi disagrees. So, like,  

[00:45:38] Unknown:

Fedimans is currently being led by Obi, Eric Sirion, and Justin Moon.   And Obi disagrees with me on this. He thinks there's gonna be a   primarily small community impediments. Right. I agree with you that I think there'll be a couple really big ones, and then there'll be ideally 100, thousands of small ones that are all interoperable with each other. Right.   But there's definitely a strong argument. If they're competing on uptime and fees   and potentially privacy, but a lot of people don't care about privacy, so maybe they're not really competing on the the onset as much.   There's an there's a,   kind of an economies of scale thing going on.  

Right. Ethan Waldman: Right? Where you want to go for the bigger, more reputable ones that have maybe lower fees. Plus think about like,  

[00:46:28] Unknown:

someone in a city where they don't really know any   Bitcoiners. Right? Right.   Well, here comes here comes some big mint   run by a few nims.   The nims are all, you know,   mint members.   And   the random pleb says, hey. I'll just hook up to that one. It's not They've been running for 8 years.  

[00:46:50] Unknown:

They have a great reputation,  

[00:46:52] Unknown:

really good uptime. Right. So so maybe maybe there's a maybe there's a a transition. Maybe it starts   big, and maybe there's 2 or 3 big mints. Maybe it's just one huge one, and then, like,   somehow it gets taken down. I don't know. And then   that causes it. And and then this is also, like, as the adoption of Bitcoin grows and grows and grows,   maybe at some point, you get to these community mints.   Because you could you could imagine,   like, a small village, a small little ecosystem with a 2 of 3 a 2 of 3 men with 3 I mean, that's what what Galloy is basically doing, but without privacy.  

[00:47:25] Unknown:

Yeah. Right now with the Bitcoin Beach Wallet or whatever, it's 2 of 3 well respected members, but there's no privacy from the custodians. That's true. Right. So they should switch to to a Chaumie Mint. This is what's so interesting is like I've been getting   so   my favorite thing in Bitcoin is just to get as many people to hate me as possible.   So   I've been getting a lot of shit from the privacy crowd on   talking about Federated Charmaine Mint so often. Mhmm. And, primarily, it's because of the custodial risk,   which is reduced because it's federated, but still exists. There's still custodial risk. Right? And   this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about   dev culture in Bitcoin,   is that there's a lack of pragmatic   tools.  

Like, okay. Let's look at our sit situation right now. Let's see. And, like, you brought up liquid earlier.   I would say Federated Charmaine Mints to me is more   to most Bitcoin is the better comparison rather than liquid that nobody uses   is is while the satoshi,   which is,   you know, we can talk all day about how everyone should hold self custody,   but I've seen some hardcore Bitcoiners go down to El Salvador. And when they send their picture of them buying beer or whatever with Bitcoin, buying pupusas with Bitcoin, they're using Wallet of Satoshi.   So the question is, okay. So how can we make a wallet that's as easy as Wallet as Satoshi as cheap as Wallet as Satoshi,   but gives you better privacy and has reduced custodial risk? So that's   right. When I'm framing   Federman's, I kind of think   it's more,   effective   to talk about it from an improved custodial lightning wallet point of view rather than an improved federation model.  

And, again, it's the trade off. It's a trade off. Like, big corners will have a bunch of options. They can go to KYC. They can go here. They can go there. They can hold self custody. They can do self custody with, like, a hosted multi sig provider and have zero privacy. And this is this is the Twitter effect. Right? You make a tweet about something,  

[00:49:22] Unknown:

and someone says, you didn't provide all of your disclaimers, assumptions, and alternatives 240 characters. In this one tweet. Like, yes, of course, there are trade offs, but I didn't mention them. You   know? Because I'm talking about this one thing, and it you know? And a lot of people have this sort of absolutist, like, we have to have the one solution to rule them all. Right. You know? Oh, I don't like lightning because   of some either FUD or just certain thing about lightning. I don't like that. So I'll just use main chain. Okay. Fine. You use main chain, but lightning is providing a lot of value for a lot of people.   You know?  

Xiaomi and Mints are still in dev, so we can't go out there and see what see what they're like in reality, but I think they're coming soon, and   that'll be another set of trade offs that,   hey, those people are using it and   it works. Great.  

[00:50:09] Unknown:

Right? Yeah. Classic disclosure. Like, this is not a actual working product yet. So,   we're just it's like our space discussion. We're just theorizing and,   Yeah. Yeah. But I'm very hopeful. I think it'll be out soon, and then we can actually have better discussions about it once we can actually play around with it.   Clark, I mean, I appreciate your time. I know you have to hit the road.   We're about 50 minutes in, but, before we get to final thoughts here,   I just wanted to say a little story about Clark. So Clark has been a very good Internet friend for a long time.  

[00:50:42] Unknown:

I would say a ride or die friend.  

[00:50:45] Unknown:

Me and my lady during COVID,   we left Brooklyn when they shut us down from   everything. And we were doing Airbnb's all over the place, and we were,   I would never disclose what our location was. We were doing rabbit hole recap every week. I would but we were doing Airbnb's all over the place. People knew we were doing Airbnb's all over the place. And we stayed at this really nice place in Maine,   in Portland for a week,   and I had this roof deck that I would work on every day.   And I took a picture   of my laptop and my coffee on the roof deck,   and   it was just a really great view, really great place to work. And I held it I held it in my phone's gallery.  

I held it in my phone's gallery, and I 3 weeks later, I posted it on Twitter, and I said, good morning, fam, or something like that with picture.   And   there was some clues there, but not many.   And Clark was the only freak who messaged me   that he decoded all of the clues.   Like he he looked at the skyline.   He told he sent me a Google map,   like,   direct coordinates of the roof I was sitting on when I took the picture. And he was like, dude, you need to take down this tweet. And I was like, Ah, that was 3 weeks ago. But but that's fucking awesome. You want to talk about that a little bit? Like, that was fucking ridiculous. Right. So,  

[00:52:10] Unknown:

Yeah. So you said good morning. And I I I thought that you wouldn't have been there at the exact location. I thought you weren't, you know, giving away your location. But   but,   yeah.   So so, you know, in the picture, there's a river,   and there's some, you know, petrochemical   tanks and some other roofline features. So I basically just got on Google and started looking you said morning. So You literally sent me a picture with the exact house.   And then just the comment was bro. Bro. That was the Why you what are you doing?   What you doing?  

Yeah. So I just looked for I just looked for   rivers that were kind of heading in the right direction.   And in the morning in the morning time, given the shadows, and, you know, I kept going up the kept going up the eastern seaboard until I found this one that seemed to match, and I kinda honed in on it. It took me about half an hour.  

[00:53:00] Unknown:

That's impressive. I I so I asked him,   immediately.   My first response was all caps, lmao, well played. But   I said, how'd you figure that out? He goes, I hunted around on Google Maps for a river that ran northeast.   Your pick had oil tanks in the background and a marina in the river, so that was the secondary clue. That was your explanation at the time. Also, our previous conversation there was about Scrip Cash. Hey. Scrip Cash. That's a Yeah. Yeah. Shout out Scrip.   But, yeah, you were the only you're the only freak that figured it out. I was wondering if someone was gonna I didn't think someone was gonna pinpoint it that hard, but I was wondering if someone was gonna at least figure out Portland.  

[00:53:38] Unknown:

If someone lives there, they could've said, oh, hey. You know, I recognize that because that's where I live, but I guess   need more freaks in Portland. Portland, Maine, we know you're out there. It's a good  

[00:53:48] Unknown:

city. Yeah. It's a I've never been to Maine. Really beautiful. Maine is gorgeous. The politics worry me a little bit, but, the   the Maine Seacoast is absolutely gorgeous.   And Portland's a really cool city, and also the politics kinda worry me a little bit, but   we really enjoyed it in Portland. At least not, you know, like owning or renting there, just, like, staying there for a couple weeks. Right.   Anyway, Clark, it was a pleasure to have you on dispatch.   It's been a long time coming. It's a pleasure to have you in the new studio. I think your guest number   6 or 7 in the new studio, we're gonna have you put a sticker down, sign in with your name and your block height.  

Before we wrap up here,   hit us with some final thoughts.  

[00:54:35] Unknown:

To all the citadels out there, stay strong.   Keep the walls fortified. Keep the zombie hordes out.   We're all gonna make it.  

[00:54:46] Unknown:

We're not all gonna make it. Except the people who aren't.  

[00:54:50] Unknown:

The Bitcoiners are gonna make it. When we when we   write the history books,   we're gonna be savage to all the clown world that's going on right now.   There'll be a chapter called clown world, and we'll get to write it, and it'll be amazing.  

[00:55:03] Unknown:

True true that. Winners do write the history books. Everyone should always remember that when they're reading history.   Thank you, Clark. Thank you for joining. I hope your travels going forward from here are easy and pleasurable.   Shout out to all the freaks who joined us in the live chat on this lazy Sunday afternoon.   As I said in the previous reps,   dispatch schedule will be more fluid going forward. They will be prioritizing in person reps with people that are here at the studio   because they're just fucking awesome.   If you wanna get notified of those, subscribe on Twitch, twitch.tv/dispatch.  

I am bending the knee, and there will be a YouTube channel up as well.   Put Citadel dispatch dedicated YouTube channel, so you can subscribe there as well.   And, obviously, the Twitter account and the matrix chat. I always tell the ride or die freaks in the matrix chat always know ahead of time   if there's gonna be a dispatch and what time it will be and who will be on it.   So with all that said, thank you all for your support,   especially those people that are sending via podcasting 2.0 apps, but also to anyone who's subscribing, leaving reviews, and sharing with their friends and family. I love you all. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Stay on with Stack Sats.