support dispatch: https://citadeldispatch.com/donate
EPISODE: 80
BLOCK: 764304
PRICE: 6196 sats per dollar
TOPICS: bitcoin payments, bitcoin the tool vs bitcoin movement, the separation of bitcoin and crypto, user experience for the silent majority
GUESTS: @ziggamon
nostr live chat: https://citadeldispatch.com/stream
nostr account: https://primal.net/odell
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@citadeldispatch
podcast: https://www.podpage.com/citadeldispatch
stream sats to the show: https://www.fountain.fm/
(00:05:28) Introduction
(00:08:45) Supporting the show through donations and boostagrams
(00:14:56) Discussion on Bitrefill and its services
(00:41:53) The importance of knowing the argument for having things be bitcoin only
(00:42:25) The challenge of research and decision-making for the average person
(00:43:13) The large number of users and the unknown Bitcoin community
(01:24:57) The inconvenience of streaming platforms and the return to BitTorrent
(01:25:33) The uncertainty of the future of streaming platforms
(01:26:03) Speculation on the potential control of Bitcoin by governments
(02:06:20) Trust model of zero confirmation transactions
(02:07:32) Miners changing transactions in a high fee environment
(02:09:21) Account-based model vs QR code payments
Happy Bitcoin Tuesday, freaks. It's your boy Odell here for another Surajale Dispatch, the interactive show focused on actionable Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion. It's always a pleasure to rip these dispatches with all you freaks, and, looking forward to this one as well. As always, dispatch is a 100% audience funded without ads or sponsors. We rely on donations from our audience in order to support the show. The easiest way to support the show is via podcasting 2 point o apps, such as Fountain, Breeze, Echo LN, and others. Podverse. Fm is another big one.
You simply download the app, or if it's a web browser based client, go to the web, search Silla dispatch, press that subscribe button, choose how many sats per minute you think the show is worth, and those sats will get streamed directly to my node. Also, in podcasting 2.0, there is a feature called boostograms. Boostograms are the ability to send a lump sum payment of sats along with a message. Every week on dispatch, I read the top boostergrams from the previous week, but also everyone can read them as well. We have Eric 99 with 50,000 sats saying stay humble and stack sats. Really great advice, Eric. Appreciate you. We have atlawbitcoin with 45,000 sats saying appreciate the signal among all the noise. Have a happy Thanksgiving with family and friends.
Very timely. Happy Thanksgiving to all the freaks from America here. We have at chadpharaoh with 25,000 sats, no message. We have at vague, 25,000 sats, no message. And we have at Pablo f seven z with 25,000 sats saying make hashtag reckless great again. So thank you, Freaks, who continue to support the show with sats. You guys are amazing, and I love seeing the Sats flow into the node. I also set up something new, over the last week, called geyser.fund. I'm gonna pull this up on the screen to the freaks who are watching. That's geyser.fund /project/citadel.
It's an interface similar to a Kickstarter or a Patreon that not only lists all the podcasting 2.0 sats that come in and the messages attached to the boostagram so you go and can see that, but it also allows you to contribute via On Chain or Lightning directly on the website. So if you're not using a Podcasting 2.0 app and you would like to support the show, doing doing it through this interface still goes to my own note. You can think of it similar to how I had BTCPay set up previously. Custody wise, it's exactly the same thing. It's going to my own full node. But this way, you guys are able to track how much you are supporting the show. Right now, we're at 2,200,000 sats.
Would love to see that number continue to go up. I do appreciate all the freaks and support, and your messages will show up there when you do it. I am known to be a bit of a domain huddler myself, so I've redirected citadel.lol to this website. So if you go to citadel.lol in your web browser, you can see a live update on how much funds, how many sats, the Freaks have supported the show. And as you can see right now on the screen, it even shows as you're streaming in the sats per minute, directly to my note. It's pretty pretty fucking cool, and huge shout out to the team at geyser.fund, for making this a possibility and offering this service to anyone who's trying to raise ads from people for free, and, while maintaining self custody of all their funds. Really, really cool.
On top of all that, freaks, I know it's a bear market. If you can't support the show with stats, I understand. If you can still support the show by sharing it with your friends and family, subscribing on your favorite platforms, as always, it's available on Twitch, it's available on YouTube, it's It's available on Rumble. It's available on Bitcoin TV, and it's available in any podcasting app. Pressing subscribe, leaving a review, sharing with friends and family, these all help. And last but not least, joining us for these live chats. Joining us in the live chat, actually participating in the discussion, giving your questions, giving your comments, putting them in boostergrams. This is what makes this show unique. This you know, I like to think that I'm not the only host of Citadel Dispatch.
You're all hosts of Citadel dispatch, and I I couldn't do it without you. So thank you all. Thank you all for your support. There's a lot of haters out there for the value for value model, and, I think we can prove them wrong. So, here's to you, and and let's keep pushing forward. With all that said, thank you for sticking with me during this preamble. We have a great guest in the house. We have Sergei from Bitrefill. How's it going, Sergei?
[00:05:34] Unknown:
Hey, Matt. Thanks so much for having me on.
[00:05:38] ODELL:
Yeah. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So bit brief. So let's I I think a good place to start here is, yes, Carlos. You are a host. We have ride or die free, Carlos, in the in the live chat asking if he's a host. He is a host as well, and he says he'll take one of these weeks so I can, have a week off. So we'll keep that in mind, Carlos. Thank you. Let let's start with Bitrefill. What is Bitrefill for, you know, the dozen of people that don't know what Bitrefill is?
[00:06:12] Unknown:
Bitrefill is, the largest thing single service for people to buy stuff with their Sats. And we specifically, we, we offer things like gift cards for for ecommerce and physical commerce and, phone refills, bill payments, things like that. So, if you wanna buy something in the real world with the stats, that you earn, for example, by podcasting and getting generous donations from from your audience. And Bitrefill is a very simple click, click, click, solution, to to achieve ecommerce, with this ads.
[00:06:52] ODELL:
Yeah. So, I mean, the topic of today's discussion well, overall, I I made the topic of today's discussion the main topic, building a Bitcoin circular economy. I think all these different smaller topics we'll be covering kind of fall into it. That's my main topic,
[00:07:07] Unknown:
everything I do.
[00:07:08] ODELL:
Yeah. I've been the past years. So And we we appreciate you for that. I mean, I've used Bitrefill many times. So the the main I guess, the majority of the volume is for gift cards through Bitrefill. Right? And Yes. And then you have phone top ups. What would you say, like, the breakdown is between, like, phone top ups and gift cards?
[00:07:30] Unknown:
Depends if you count, dollars or humans. If you count humans, there's a a meaningful chunk that does phone top ups with their low volume. If you count dollars, then, obviously, gift cards are, much bigger.
[00:07:44] ODELL:
Yeah. I've used it for both. So just real quick, BTC pins in a YouTube comment saying his comment got censored on the live feed. I just wanna be clear here. I do no active moderation of the chat. If you're commenting through YouTube or Twitch, their algo might censor you, you can always comment on the matrix chat, which the link is at siladispatch.com. All of the relevant links are all at siladispatch.com. One thing I wanna note is, there's a slight change to the matrix chat. We now have 2 matrix chats. We have the original matrix chat that has over a 1000 people. That is end to end encrypted. Matrix's encryption in rooms that size starts to get really bogged down, unreliable, so we also have a no encrypted Citadel chat, and that's the one that's being broadcast on the screen. So if you're in the existing Matrix chat listening right now wondering why you don't see it, I put a link in that chat as well, but it's in silodispatch.com.
So, Sergei, when when we're talking about when when we're talking about payments, one of the cool things about Bitrefill is whenever you give presentations, I feel like you always provide us with all these awesome stats. You always provide us with all these awesome stats about what how people paid, what are the different payment breakdowns. You you know, you support Lightning. You support on chain Bitcoin. I think in in our little bubble, a lot of people think that, you know, Lightning payments are dominating right now. And in your experience, what do you see, about that breakdown between, Lightning versus on chain?
[00:09:32] Unknown:
Good question. Well, I mean, I think, on chain is, again, it depends a little bit if you count unique users or or dollars. But, in euros, on chain is like 7, 6, 7 times bigger than lightning. Yeah. If you count, individual transactions or humans, then, Lightning's doing a little bit better. Let me see if I have that actually.
[00:10:02] ODELL:
So in sheer numbers, that's payments.
[00:10:06] Unknown:
It's lightning. But in volume, it's on chain. But No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I mean, it's still on chain. It's just, I think that's a little bit better. So if you count unique users, then lightning is maybe a 5th of, of on chain. Oh, shit. So, I mean, the difference is not that big. You know, people are always like, oh, you should count the small transaction, this and that. Like, it doesn't make that big of a difference. It's just easier for little random things to, yeah, to skew the stats. So it's somewhere there. Like most Bitcoin users, use on chain to pay to buy stuff from the trade flow. Yes.
[00:10:50] ODELL:
And then, I mean, you also support Shitcoins and Stablecoins. Is We do. Bitcoin on chain is the most?
[00:10:58] Unknown:
Bitcoin on chain is the biggest single payment method, but it's it's, just under it's around 30% of volume. Yeah. So it's the biggest one. Yeah. But, but it's not It's about 30%.
[00:11:17] ODELL:
Yeah. What's number 2?
[00:11:24] Unknown:
Ethereum on chain. Ethereum. But then but then it's kind of close with, Tether on Tron and Binance Pay.
[00:11:35] ODELL:
Tether on Tron is number 3. Is it a close 3rd?
[00:11:38] Unknown:
Yeah. They're all kind of 3rd close for 2nd. Let's see. Ethereum, Tether Tron, and, Binance Pay, and then we have, other stuff.
[00:11:48] ODELL:
Binance Pay? What is Binance Pay?
[00:11:52] Unknown:
It's a decentralized, off chain solution for people to pay within their, straight within their Binance account.
[00:12:02] ODELL:
So it's like PayPal?
[00:12:05] Unknown:
It's, PayPal for Binance users. Yeah.
[00:12:08] ODELL:
Yeah. So, like, what? You, like, integrate with an API or something? There's no, like, actual token involved there? Or Yeah. Yeah. There's no there's no crypto fanciness, in
[00:12:17] Unknown:
in that, but it is, people that, that use, Binance have money there. We we actually never don't see what kind of coins it is if they're paying with, which balance. It just gets converted to us. But,
[00:12:34] ODELL:
there are no receive on your end for that?
[00:12:37] Unknown:
We receive Binance USD, which we then convert as soon as possible into fiat.
[00:12:43] ODELL:
So Binance USD is a stable coin that trades on,
[00:12:48] Unknown:
what, BSC or something on one of their on their chain? I guess. Yeah. I mean, we've never actually, we have made, but, yeah, we we don't we don't support BSC currently. But, yeah, we we get that money on finance. We convert I mean, we, the vast majority of the money we need to send back to, to to buy more gift cards.
[00:13:08] ODELL:
So big Bitcoin on chain Bitcoin on chain is 30%, then Ethereum is second at what percentage around?
[00:13:18] Unknown:
Yeah. It's around, it's around 17.
[00:13:22] ODELL:
17. And and so you said, Tether on Tron and then this Binance Pay thing are close behind that. So they're around 17 as well. Yeah. They're around 16. And then where does lightning fall on that?
[00:13:37] Unknown:
This is the euros chart. So lightning lands, at around 4%.
[00:13:42] ODELL:
4%. Yes.
[00:13:45] Unknown:
So lightning is But if you count unique users, then it's closer to 7. So it's somewhere, you know, in the in the 5 area. You know, it depends on how you So would you say lightning support on bitrefill is more of a forward looking goal?
[00:13:59] ODELL:
Like, just being ready for Currently, absolutely. Yeah.
[00:14:03] Unknown:
Absolutely. I mean, it's been forward looking since always. I think, I mean, we started on Lightning when there was 0 users on Lightning. We I think the first purchase on Lightning was on Bitrefill, when, Alex, from Lightning Labs bought something on the beta private beta that we sent him and posted it on Twitter, and that was that.
[00:14:29] ODELL:
And now he's just the only person who uses Lightning on your service?
[00:14:33] Unknown:
Absolutely not. Quite a few people use Lightning. Just that quite a few people use other things as well.
[00:14:39] ODELL:
I'm just fucking with you. I've used Lightning on your service, so there's at least 2 of us. Yeah. So how do we get that number up? Why do you think that number is so low?
[00:14:49] Unknown:
It's a good question. I don't know. Did did you have the chance to to watch, I sent you a talk that I did on the Bitcoin pizza day in Prague.
[00:14:57] ODELL:
Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn't. I think, I mean,
[00:15:02] Unknown:
The question is sort of from, from the point, that that I'm approaching this, is, I mean, it's fundamentally, it's a marketing issue. Right? And or at least product market fit issue. And I think that, I mean, from from Bitrefa's perspective, like, our marketing is, like, finding people who have coins to spend. Right? So people that either bought the coins when they were worth less or people who are earning them in different ways in their paycheck, in their, in their SaaS donations, on, on their content, trading, and whatever. Great. And so the question is sort of how do we get, Lightning Sats into the hands of people that are are looking to, to engage? I think I mean, maybe I can, like, give a short summary, I guess, of of that talk. I think it's an interesting observation that, you know, Bitcoin is both a tool and a movement. Right?
And it's a movement that sort of circulates around a tool, a thing, like Bitcoin itself. It's not a person, it's a thing. Right? And all of us here, like the fact that we're recording a podcast about Bitcoin and that there are people listening to this indicates that all of us, both you and I and and everybody who who listens, does this because they're part of a movement. Right? We want Bitcoin to succeed and that we spend a significant chunk of our lives, talking, thinking, working to make make that happen. Right? But there's also a lot of people that use Bitcoin as a tool. Right?
So, I mean, you know, like, I use cars sometimes. You probably do as well. Right? But we wouldn't dream of, like, going to a car conference even though such things exist. Right? And there are, you know, disputes, what's the real car, and this isn't the real car, and the classic car maximalist, and the sports car maximalist, and blah blah blah blah blah. Like, those things exist, but we don't care. Right? Because we mostly like, we order an Uber, we go from a to b, and we're happy, and we achieved the benefit of car. Right? And and it's in a similar way with, with Bitcoin that, even though there is a very vibrant community, of people who are passionate about, about Bitcoin and wish it to succeed, there's a much, much, much bigger group of people that that use Bitcoin and don't particularly, you know, care about it, right, in the same way that you and I don't care about the cars that we, you know, drive around in. Right.
And and those people are hard to reach. Like, they're not going to listen to this podcast. Right? Because why would they? Right? I mean, if it's just a tool like you and I again, we don't listen to we use a lot of stuff every day, a lot of tools, but we don't necessarily listen to podcasts about all of them. And so yeah. And and so there is this like, there is obviously this overlap. Right? I mean, you and I are a good example of an overlap, and this this podcast collects donations and sats. And so you actually have an income in sats, and you're, like, a a typical excellent customer of somebody that we would try to, try to find.
[00:18:41] ODELL:
Right. We use we use Bitcoin the tool, but we're also active in Bitcoin the movement.
[00:18:46] Unknown:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But but so there is an overlap, of course, but there is also, like, we talked about the people that use Bitcoin as a tool, that don't particularly care so much about us as a movement. And there's also quite a large number of people. This was surprising to me, that are part of the movement that don't actually use Bitcoin as a tool. Yeah. Right? And lightning is a little bit in in that category. Right? Because, like, there's a lot of Bitcoiners that, you know, they like Bitcoin. They want it succeed. They want lightning to succeed. They will do what they can to help, but they just, you know, don't really have a need for it. They bought some Bitcoin. They put it in a nice secure cold storage, locked it away. They don't even have an access to it. They don't have a wallet on their phone. And Right. They don't spend. They don't they don't spend. They don't earn. They don't engage in the circular economy. They, you know, they cheerlead. They're investors. Right? Same way as customers, companies have investors
[00:19:40] ODELL:
that might not be customers of the company. I wouldn't even be surprised if until the last few weeks, like, the majority of the Twitter influencers didn't even self custody, let alone spend Bitcoin.
[00:19:53] Unknown:
Right. For example. But but the self custody thing is a little bit orthogonal, I'd I'd say, because, like, you can have a mobile, wallet that is custodial, right, but still engaged. Like, strike is a good example of that. Right? So, I mean, the custom I mean, it's there. It's similar somewhere, but but it's not like, it's important to be, I think, specific, right, to to pinpoint these things because these are difficult issues, and I think that this question is important. You know? Why? Because I think that, you know, the free the freedom money, the Internet money narrative, is, at, at the core of all of this. And, so there was somebody call commented that Bitcoin is a store of value. I was like, yeah. It is. But it's only a store of value because you can transfer it over the Internet.
If you couldn't transfer it over the Internet, meaning transact, then it kind of wouldn't have been a store of value either. Right? And so there's been this, I think it's like leftovers from from 2017 in the Bitcoin community where people are like, oh, it's a sort of value. Oh, it's a medium of change. Like, no. It's both. You know? You can't have the one without the other, and, like, Satoshi covered all of this. Yeah. Right? I'm still sort of always amazed in, like, how much of the space, Satarshe, actually managed to successfully analyze, including actually the 0 count debate, which I guess maybe we'll get to. Yeah. But, you know, that, you you know this 100% know this quote. Like, imagine, imagine a metal, that has no particular, qualities.
It's not useful in any way except for the property that you can transfer it over the Internet. Right? If somehow it were to acquire value, it will be very valuable because then you could send it over the Internet, and you could buy it here, sell it there. Yeah. And then and then that would be great. But how will it would it acquire value in the in the first place? Well, because, of speculation. Right? Because it might make sense to get some in case it catches on. Right. People expect us to improve value. So Like, this is day 1 of Satoshi. He literally explains, the entire industry, and 10 years later, we're still sort of in in that. Like, it might make sense sense to get some case that catches on, like, people do, and then, suddenly they're like, oh, it's going to be the world money and everything. It's just gonna go to the moon and all of that.
Right? But so, yes, we're zoom zooming out, a little bit because I get carried away. Yeah. So, basically, you know, we we have the people that use Bitcoin, and then you can imagine, and by use, I mean, to transact. Right? Obviously, howling is using as well, but that's, like, a different story than than what we're discussing. And so there's a there's a set of people that transact with Bitcoin, and there's a set of people that love Bitcoin. Right? And they overlap, to some extent, but there's a big group that loves Bitcoin doesn't transact, and there's a very big group that transaction Bitcoin that doesn't particularly love Bitcoin anymore than you and I love cars.
Does that make sense? Yes. So so it's also like a bit of a question, I think, for us in the movement, that maybe I can even ask to you. Like, do you think I mean, we all want Bitcoin to achieve world dominance and be the money of, of the world. But is it is it required and desirable for that for every person in the world to sort of identify as a Bitcoiner, to listen to podcasts, go to conferences, to care so deeply about it? Like, do we think that that's a desirable realistic goal?
[00:23:38] ODELL:
No. I mean, we don't have Everyone uses email, but, like, no one goes to email conferences. Right.
[00:23:43] Unknown:
Which is funny by the way because I used to go to Internet conferences. And so, I have gone to Internet conferences. They were great. And then I went to social media conferences. And today that's hilarious as well. And I mean, Bitcoin conferences have forked as well. Right? I mean Right. Crypto conferences forked off, and the Bitcoin conference is splitting up as well into more and more subcategories. And now we're, like, in a situation where, there's a lot of very similar conferences and probably they're going to fork deeper because as the group, the the small growth the smaller subcultures emerge. Right? Right. But probably so you and I agree that, like, realistically, if everybody in the world is using Bitcoin, they're not going to be caring about it,
[00:24:26] ODELL:
enough to go to conferences. It's just their money and it works. Exactly.
[00:24:31] Unknown:
Right. And and and so that's, sort of, why I think, we we do a lot of, of working with, I mean, we work with the group that transaction Bitcoin. Right? And so we're trying to, to find, them in in all of their shapes and, and forms. Right? Some of them are, people that you and I would meet on on conferences or on Twitter. Some of them are different. Right, and they have different flows, different needs functions, that that Bitcoin, shapes, for them. And I'm of the view that Bitcoin is a thing. And so, you know, if it scratches an issue for you, that's great. I'm very happy that it does.
[00:25:18] ODELL:
Right. All this makes sense to me. So then
[00:25:24] Unknown:
Right. So back to, I guess, the lightning question. Yeah. And Right.
[00:25:28] ODELL:
Because I think as, like, Bitcoiners, like, partake like, I think most Bitcoiners would agree or maybe not. But I think I believe that light if if Lightning if if if a centralized Binance Pay is being used more than Lightning, then we have significantly more work to be done.
[00:25:49] Unknown:
Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. And and and that's, I think, where, that's all I mean, maybe this is sidetracked, but, like, there is definitely a dilemma in which when a centralized entity on an open network becomes too dominant, they actually, start creating disincentives, for integrating with the open network. Yeah. There's many examples in history when that happens. Yeah. But in any case, yes, we we definitely have, have work to do in terms of, getting lightning into, into the hands of, of, the people that, that use Bitcoin. We can do another thing that I did in that talk as well. Let me just set maybe you wanna play this game.
So we have a wallet selector on Bitrefill. It's actually being reworked right now, so the the stats might be slightly slightly off,
[00:26:53] ODELL:
but directionally These stats are crazy. Yeah. Let's talk about this. You've seen them.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
So, I guess maybe you've heard, but, like, can you guess,
[00:27:02] ODELL:
for Bitcoin and lightning, both on chain and I have the spoilers. Let's see if I remember Yeah. Spoilers. It trust wallet, blockchain dot info, and another garbage wallet. Did I get 2 of the 3?
[00:27:19] Unknown:
Yeah. Ish. Yeah. Your direction is right. Yeah. Exodus also. Exodus. After that, actually, comes Electrum Moon and Strike and Blue Oat as well. So, I mean, they're all Wow. Electrum's number 4? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yeah. But, yeah, Electrum is like it's been surprising me how strong it's going all these years. Yeah. So I always shout out to to to the Electrum devs. Like, they built a thing that stood the test of time and still does, and it's a great wallet. And, yeah.
[00:27:57] ODELL:
Which is But anyway So wait. Let's say I'm in order. What what's the order? The top 6 in order?
[00:28:04] Unknown:
Currently, it's, but, like, right now, I think we disable it on Android, so it might be a little bit off. But, generally, it's Exodus Blockchain, Chivo, Trust Wallet, Electro Moon.
[00:28:15] ODELL:
Oh, Chivo's up there now?
[00:28:18] Unknown:
Well, Chivo's up there for account unique users. And there's a lot of people in El Salvador that use Chivo and This is ranked by unique users? Yes.
[00:28:28] ODELL:
And it's voluntary. It's when they're doing the payment flow, it asks,
[00:28:32] Unknown:
what wallet? There is a slight, there's a slight skew here, in that, if you use a wallet that's always reliable and never an issue, you might actually not care to use this feature. Whereas if you have a wallet that sometimes has a little bit of bugs, then maybe use it a little bit more. But I I don't think that SKU is too significant. Probably, it was inflated a little bit.
[00:28:52] ODELL:
This is why I always love talking to you and watching presentations, because you you kinda break through, like, our little our little echo chamber bubble.
[00:29:01] Unknown:
And, I mean, this is a very good example. And it's important to be nuanced here as well, right, when presenting stats because you can always mislead, with stats and, like, you know, we can, you know, I can present stats about, like, oh, lightning is doubling every year. It's great. And then I can find, like, smallest number, that is not a lie but misleading about, oh, lightning is tiny. Right? And they could post them out, and, one will be super viral in the in the Bitcoin community. The other one will be very vital. The bullish world is always viral. Yeah. The bearish one as well. It's just in the in the in those who don't like it. Right? The the ethereans or, or the no corners and so on. But let's just unpack those for real quick. Nuance, like, gets stuck, but I kind of insist on, on Nuance because, again, like, this is an important thing that we're working on, not just the bit we feel we, but bigger we.
And so I think it's important because, I mean, this like, personally, like, some people perceive me as, like, always being critical of Bitcoin. And maybe that's true, that I don't, you know, cheerlead to the moon so much these days. But I mean, mainly it's because like I don't feel like we're done. Yeah. I don't think we're anywhere near done. And if we're not anywhere near done, then it's important, that we talk straight about the things as they are so that other people can act upon good information and so that we can get to a better place. Yeah. Right. Like, my question is, like, how do we 10 exit? You know, how do a 100 exit? I know that, like, these days, there were I mean, I guess, past years, like, there was a lot of, like, the sound money maximalist. They were like, oh, you know, in in the end, all of the money divided by 21,000,000, and that's going to be we're gonna be on the moon. Right. And then they and you kind of ask, like, how are we gonna get there? And they they never know. It's like it's predetermined. Right? So we don't actually This is inevitable.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, in in my book, I mean, maybe this is cursing a church, but, like, I think that this on money narrative is the same as talk to flow. Right? It's this idea that, just because, the supply is limited, then that means that everything else is preordained and we're gonna be on on the moon. And I don't know. I don't think that's limited supply alone is is what's gonna get us there. I mean, there's a lot of things that have limited supply. Fucking Litecoin has limited supply. And so Well, not really. I don't know. I mean, I mean, The the the key, I mean, the key is how hard is the protocol to change. Right? Yeah. We we don't know that for Bitcoin or for the Litecoin. So I mean, it's definitely significantly easier on Litecoin. Yeah. I don't know. How I mean, I I think I agree with you. But, like, how would you prove that to me?
[00:31:59] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I I place your bets. I don't know how to prove it to you. Yeah. I would
[00:32:05] Unknown:
fair enough. I would also bet bet that, of course. I mean Yeah. You if you believe it, you can buy Litecoin, and then we can, you know, reconvene in 10 years.
[00:32:15] ODELL:
I, no. I think we're we're, like, we're pretty much aligned. Like, this is why I started dispatch. Like, I am probably one of the most bullish people on Bitcoin on the planet, but I got sick of the fact that, you know, people were just saying blind, bullish engagement things on podcasts and Twitter and whatnot, and that we actually need a critical lens and open discussion, and we need to actually make improvements you know, to how people use Bitcoin and how people interact with Bitcoin. And a perfect example is your list of top wallets. I mean, on those on the list of top wallets, you know, one of the top ones is Trust Wallet, which is which is owned and operated by Binance.
I believe it's a closed source wallet. It not only does it not support Lightning, but it uses a fixed reused address for Bitcoin transactions, which is universally universally not encouraged. Like, that's horrible for privacy to use a reused address, just to show where their priorities are. But but here, with bitrefill stats, you can see it's one of the most used wallets in the world, even though no one on Bitcoin and Twitter would ever recommend it.
[00:33:29] Unknown:
So Yep. There's a discrepancy between the echo chamber that's on Bitcoin Twitter, like, on all these different philosophical podcasts and whatnot versus Because Bitcoin Twitter only markets to Bitcoin Twitter. Right? And there's a limited set of people. I don't know how many they are. Like, someone asked me to guess. I would guess, like, 50,000 people, I guess, maybe more. What do you think? Like, how big is, the Bitcoiner community?
[00:33:55] ODELL:
On Twitter?
[00:33:57] Unknown:
Well, Twitter conferences. I don't know. I don't know. Like, 250,000
[00:34:01] ODELL:
or something. 300,000.
[00:34:03] Unknown:
Okay. Alright. So, Bitcoin do you think self custody Bitcoin? That's a good question. I think quite a few actually. I mean, you know, Ledger sold a million in the previous previous
[00:34:20] ODELL:
We only know because of the leak.
[00:34:23] Unknown:
Well, the leak confirms their information. Yeah. Sure. So, I mean, I think quite a few, self custody. I mean, it's definitely over under 30,000,000? Under. Of course, under.
[00:34:40] ODELL:
Obviously, why would it be over? So when Michael Sailor goes out and says, like, a 120,000,000 people people hold Bitcoin, he's he's including IOUs. Right?
[00:34:50] Unknown:
I have no idea where Michael Sellers gets this information. But, I mean, probably it's like a Coinbase's number of accounts, that's north of a 100,000,000. Yeah.
[00:35:02] ODELL:
So see what BTC PIN said? Bitcoin Twitter is just him and a few 1,000 feds.
[00:35:08] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, I guess, we don't know that either, but that doesn't matter really. There's I mean, if it is worthwhile, then we should expect there to be feds and folks.
[00:35:18] ODELL:
Also, before I forget it is. BTC Pins is neck deep in the Bitcoin circular economy, and he offers dispatch pins for sale. If you buy a dispatch pin from him, a portion goes to supporting the show as well. So check that out.
[00:35:32] Unknown:
Very nice.
[00:35:34] ODELL:
Yeah. So, I mean,
[00:35:36] Unknown:
well, like So so let let me give you an example. So you brought up Trust Wallet, and and Exodus is up there as well. Exodus is also a closed source. Doesn't support lightning. Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar, in in in in the specs, let's say. And so and these are remember, these are people that pay with Bitcoin. Right? And this isn't people that pay us with Ethereum or something else. This is people who pay with Bitcoin. And, and and so then, you you know, you kind of, like, ask yourselves, like, how does Bitcoin end up in in such a wallet? And, I guess one simple exercise that anybody listening to this can do is to just open their phone, open the App Store or the Google Play Store or, whatever, Cypherpunk app store that you guys use, and and type in the phrase Bitcoin wallets.
Right? I think that's the fairest search phrase, and you can see what shows up. Right? And again, remember that somebody who uses Bitcoin as a tool, like, for example, like, if you and I want to download the BitTorrent client. Okay. I I I'm not gonna speak for you. For me, I would type in BitTorrent into into Google, and I would get one of the clients, that looks, legit enough. And I wouldn't care much if it's the best one, if the BitTorrent enthusiasts think it's good, or if there's technical trade offs or or whatever. Right? Right. So there's that. Now there's also, like, if you look at some of the other payment methods that we have. So let's take one example. So Tether on Tron.
Right. Tether on Tron has a very vibrant, circular economy, especially in Latin America. Yeah. There's a lot of people, in countries like Argentina, some other places that, work online, deal with dollars. It achieves, dollars for them in a country where, the currency is not trustworthy. It also achieves, that, the value of, their money is not moving up and down as much as it does with, with regular BTC. And and the and these people are kind of willing to take the trade off of trusting, the Teledy company, with, with them not running away with, with their money.
Yeah. Right? And so there there's a very vibrant community of people who use Teledyntron. Now which wallets do they use? Okay. Right? I mean, they're not gonna use blue wallet because it doesn't have Televin Tron. Right. They're not using the Or Electrum. Using blue. Yeah. So all of those wallets, kind of, like, and and this is a a little bit of of the problem with, with the the Bitcoin only thinking is that it it builds like a separate universe from, yeah, from the other universe that is the crypto casino. But it's not just a casino. There is a very vibrant circular economy transaction usage as well. Are they using?
No. They would use something like, like Trust Wallet, for example.
[00:38:48] ODELL:
So Trust Wallet is dominating all the payment categories probably because it has such wide support. It probably also just well, it also support Binance Pay?
[00:38:57] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. And many of them also use Binance, but we we're getting off track a little bit. Okay. My point is that, like, if your first contact with cryptocurrency is, with Tether and Tron because, you know, some guy paid you, for a for a gig on a website, that you did, and you got paid $500, and they were like, I'll pay you in Tether and Tron. Like, okay. Whatever. I'll install the wallet for that. And then there's Bitcoin in there. And so somebody else the next day pay offers to pay them in Bitcoin. And they're like, yeah. Yeah. Sure. I have Bitcoin. No problem. You can pay me a Bitcoin. And then they have Bitcoin and Telenron in their trust wallet. Right. Right?
Right. Now to convince that person that, yeah, okay, so you have that wallet, but there's this other wallet, yeah, to which you can transfer your Bitcoin, so that you can use lightning. Right? I mean, I know they're like Right. Why should I, do that? What is lightning? I don't know what that is. I already have a wallet that works. Exactly. Yeah. It works. You know? I can, I can convert it at my local, I forget what they call, exchange shops, and, and Like, those cash transfer points? Right? Mhmm.
[00:40:17] ODELL:
Where they can go between cash and and, quote, unquote, crypto.
[00:40:21] Unknown:
Yep. So and then it's, it it's good enough. And and, and so these people never get exposed. I mean, they're again, they they why would they go on Twitter to read about Bitcoin or about Tether or about Tron? Like, right? I mean, it's just a thing.
[00:40:37] ODELL:
And Right. They're not gonna watch a 2 hour video on best practices.
[00:40:41] Unknown:
They're just fucking Yeah. They would that's not cool. A 100% not, and they would definitely also not, you know, watch, watch, yeah, like, any of this. They wanna watch this show. Right. So we don't and we and I think the most important thing is that, you know, we go to conferences, we meet a lot of people. Right? But we never meet those who only use it as a tool. And and so it becomes this big blind spot. Right? Because, like, I go to Bitcoin Amsterdam and, like, everyone's like me. That's great. So that means that the whole world is like that. Meh. Incorrect.
Yeah. Right? I mean, it's a little bit again, you go to a classic cars, conference, and everybody's into classic cars. And so you should conclude that everybody in the world uses classic cars.
[00:41:31] ODELL:
But you're not learning why the guy's driving a Toyota Camry instead.
[00:41:36] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you probably wouldn't even find out, that they exist.
[00:41:43] ODELL:
Right. If you went to the classic car conferences, then you would think Toyota Camry drivers weren't even a thing. That's what we're currently living in in the Bitcoin. Well, a little bit. I go, Jim. Because, like,
[00:41:55] Unknown:
we're we're building our own thing to some extent. But I think it's important, like, there's a very good argument for, for having things be bitcoin only, for having them, you know, have a small fraction of the volume of, of what they could have been if they supported other coins and so on. And one can make that argument, but but at least you need to know. Right? And, I mean, and it's not just about crypto. Like, I mean, like, your average, El Salvadoran, who got a remittance in their Chivo wallet. Like, are they gonna go necessarily do research on, you know, which Bitcoin wallet should I use, or are they gonna go to the ATM and cash it out for, for dollar bills?
Right. Right. And and and so, I mean, this is one issue, that I think, like, it's just important to be, I think, mindful of. Right? I mean, again, like Coinbase has a 100 +1000000, KYC verified users. Like, who are they? Yeah. Even if we take your estimate that there's 250,000, of us in the in the Bitcoin community. Okay. And then we're still short, you know, 109,750,000. Who are they? Where are they? We never see them. Right. Right? And and there's also people that that that huddle, as a tool. Right? There's a lot of people that just huddle some Bitcoin, and they don't, you know, follow Twitter.
They maybe at most know somebody who does, but, or they just bought it on their, you know, Charles Schwab account or or whatever, and they have a number in their stock portfolio that says b to c. And, you know
[00:43:49] ODELL:
So I did I did what you said, and I and I've already I've I've talked about this exercise multiple times, both on on the show and on on Twitter. But I searched Bitcoin wallet in in the Play Store, the Google Play Store, and the top one is how gonna be different. Doug.
[00:44:07] Unknown:
Is gonna be different for different people.
[00:44:10] ODELL:
Right. The top one is, yeah. This is like but I will also say that this Google account that's attached to this Play Store thing is is pretty much devoid of information as far as as Google goes. Yeah. But then they should have a blank newbie
[00:44:26] Unknown:
perspective in the US. They know that you're in the US probably.
[00:44:31] ODELL:
They think I'm in Canada.
[00:44:33] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:44:34] ODELL:
Okay. So crypto.com is the top one. Bitcoin wallet, I don't even know who makes this by Bitcoin Wallet. It's probably the Shieldbox Wallet. Yeah. It looks like the Shieldback Wallet. That's still pretty high up there. Then then bitcoin.com's wallet, then Coinsquare, then Coinbase, 2 times Coinbase, then Trust Wallet, then Wallace Crypto Wallet, never heard of it, Exodus, Blockchain dotcom, Innovin Solutions, Bitcoin Wallet, then Metamask, which doesn't even support Bitcoin, then Binance, then Crypto dotcom again, BitPay, Luno, Revolut, Robinhood, Owner, and then BlueWallet.
It's like the first wallet I would recommend out of all of those. Well, the Shellback Wallet is also good. But Also doesn't support lightning, though, but yeah. I guess BlueRock kinda doesn't either.
[00:45:23] Unknown:
But my my my point here is that, you know, users are going to, you know, pick 1 of the top 10 that that appeals to them. And, you know, we we can have a conspiracy perspective that, like, Google is corrupted by the shit corners blah blah. But, like, realistically, there's an AI. It it checks, you know, for each search phrase, what people click on, and then it just shows people that based on that and what they installed and so on. And so I don't think that it's, I mean, once Not a conspiracy. I don't think so. I think it just shows people what what they think that people, what people want.
[00:46:00] ODELL:
So do you think part of the issue is that, I mean, like, Trust Wallet obviously supports, like, every shitcoin under the sun, but they don't support lightning. Part of the issue is that it's just it's hard to develop a mobile Lightning wallet. It's, like, hard to integrate
[00:46:15] Unknown:
Lightning into Yeah. Well, but, also, Trust Wallet gets paid, they earn money for people converting from 1 shit coin to another, and Lightning doesn't have a shit coin. So, it doesn't add another trading pair for them. I actually have to think that if Lightning did, have a shitcoin, this is another cursing in church, but, I think if lightning did have a shitcoin, it it would have been bigger than this today.
[00:46:40] ODELL:
I mean, then it would just be a shitcoin, and we have those already.
[00:46:44] Unknown:
Yep. So I'm not saying that we should do that, but,
[00:46:49] ODELL:
I think, like, and so So what do you think about stable coins on lightning?
[00:46:54] Unknown:
It's a good question. It's a very good question. I mean, from the perspective of lightning, I'm very bullish, obviously.
[00:47:06] ODELL:
Yeah. From the I don't know if that's obvious. Continue.
[00:47:10] Unknown:
Yeah. Fair enough. No. I I mean, I I think it's, it's good. I mean, we already see that many things in the lightning space, that have stable USD value, like Strike, like Bitcoin Beach, and some other, are popular. Right? I mean, there is a demand for people to to have their money not fluctuate up and down. And that demand, again, for many people, not for everybody, but for many, is is greater than, the demand for, you know, self custody. I am a cypherpunk. Nobody can control me. I do what I want. Right? That's a trade off, and and some people choose the former trade off. And, so, yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it depends what it looks like, you know, how it works. You know, there's a lot of different, schemes and ideas for how to implement tokens on lightning.
But but also, I mean and and that's kind of, like, a big question as well, which is, like, okay, but imagine somebody we're still gonna have a similar problem. Right? Because some dude receives, $500 in Tether on lightning, let's say. And he wants to pay another dude, $500 in Tether, but that dude only has a Tron wallet. Right? So we still kind of have this somewhat strange gap here. Personally and that's the thing is that, again, like, it's a big question. Like, there's people now talking about how Bitcoin isn't crypto. Yeah. Right? Bitcoin is something separate. Like, I mean, that's very obviously not true.
But the question is maybe is it desirable for Bitcoin to be something other something entirely separate from crypto. Right? I mean, there's a lot of things in the crypto space that, you know, we don't have to go into that, that are not great, let's say. And so having a Bitcoin economy that's separate from that is great in in in a lot of ways. I mean, we can all feel feel good about ourselves. Yeah. But that means that a lot of people will still be in the in the crypto circular economy. Right? And and we have to observe another thing is that all stable coins, all major ones, at least to my knowledge, are issued by some kind of crypto exchange. Right?
[00:49:57] ODELL:
So stablecoins are Right. Very like They have some kind of trusted custodian that is, Yeah. Holding Donald Trump
[00:50:05] Unknown:
or whatever. It it it comes from that side of the pond. It's for them, by them. Right? So stable like we're not going to, you know, if there is a divorce between Bitcoin and crypto, like, I mean, we're not gonna have sole custody over of stable coins. That's for sure. And so then the question becomes, still, like, okay, there will be probably a circular economy among Stablecoins. There already is a very vibrant one. What do we do? Also, Stablecoins have, have speculation and gambling and DeFi and all of these things that even though you and I agree, they're not not,
[00:50:56] ODELL:
something we would Well, I think everyone's always gonna gamble.
[00:50:59] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. People Yeah. Humans like gambling. Exactly. And so then we have, like, a gambling free ecosystem. Like, I think, like, I've been thinking quite a bit about this because, like, in a lot of ways, like so things change in in our industry. Right? And, you know, a lot of things have changed since 2017 or or whatever, like, pivotal moments. And sometimes, like, stable coins, for example, came after that, at least in a big way. And it's important to, you know, update your understanding of the world as as the facts change.
Back in the day, it was the case that Bitcoin was the base currency for the shitcoin economy. Right? Bitcoin was the onramp. You had to acquire Bitcoin on a coin based type thing, and then you would transfer that Bitcoin to what were the Bitcoin exchanges back then? I forget. Whatever. Right? To to, buy now. E or crypsy. Yeah. I was thinking of crypsy. I was thinking of yeah. Crypsy. Yeah. Right. So you would buy They all got rogue. Based Poloniex. Yeah. I I okay. Yeah. I didn't. But, well, anyway, so the the case then was you buy Bitcoin, you transfer to cryptocurrency, you you you trade in shitcoins, you withdraw to Bitcoin, and then you have Bitcoin. Right? And then if you're you're looking to buy something with your Bitcoin, you buy something with your Bitcoin.
Like, also, like, when shitcoins are dumping, you would see, flight to safety and people are like, shit shit. These coins, they're they're they're not good anymore. I'm gonna go out and fly to safety. I'm gonna go to Bitcoin. Today, to to a very large like, to a bigger and bigger extent, that is shifting from, from Bitcoin to stable coins. Right? And so people buy so today that equivalent flow is that you buy, you know, you get Stablecoins, You you put them in your MetaMask, either your DeFi stuff. And if you want to fly to safety, you you go into a stable coin and and and that's that. Yeah. Right? So, and I think in part, this is why, you know, like, try like, if you look at payments per day on Bitcoin, they're going up, but they're not going back going up that steeply. Right? And so I think what we're seeing is that, like, okay, that kind of speculative usage is actually shifting to things like stable coins, but there is also, of course, growth in in everything Bitcoin. And so, in the end, the chart is, like, you know, pointing upwards slightly.
[00:53:50] ODELL:
It used to be that Bitcoin was unequivocally the so called, like, reserve currency of the space. Like, all the Bitcoin trading pair every every trading pair was in Bitcoin. Exactly. And then, like, basically, Tether changed the game. Mhmm. Yeah. And now it's, like, the biggest volume on Binance and whatnot. It's usually in Tether or BUSD or whatever. Yep. Exactly. So,
[00:54:13] Unknown:
it used to be the medium exchange, the units of account, and the store value of the shit economy.
[00:54:18] ODELL:
And today Like, people talk about, like, Sats being the standard. Like, the shitcoin traders made Sats the standard first. It was like you would I remember, like, even in, like, 20 16, 2015, you would go on, like, a shitcoin exchange, and they all the prices were listed in Sats.
[00:54:33] Unknown:
Right. So and so that's kind of the question. Right? I mean, people are always going to gamble, you said, and and then okay. And so Bitcoin doesn't allow that because we think it's bad, and for good reasons. But, you know, here we are. Like, it's it's just a Do you think part of do you think part of that is just because, like,
[00:55:00] ODELL:
regulators move slow and we're kind of just, like, in this weird period in between where where these centralized stable coins are widespread, but regulators haven't cracked down on them. I mean, the reason Bitcoin exists is because of the assumption that the state will stop this type of activity from happening. We saw it happen with Liberty Reserve. We saw it happen with so many other entities that were not, you know, necessarily compliant with US law. Bitcoin was designed to be robust against that. These these stable coins are not by any means. I mean, the the people behind Tether deserve props. They've been essentially, you know, evading the US for such a long time, but, you gotta imagine that eventually, like, time is ticking there. No?
[00:55:42] Unknown:
Maybe. I don't know. You know, I don't have any any
[00:55:49] ODELL:
special opinions. There's definitely a scenario for that. But I would say strong believer that I'm a strong believer that, like, Bitcoin is a tool that is available to us all and provides value to us all as a tool of last resort. It's a tool that is always there for you when you need it. But if there's a more convenient option for people, they're gonna always take the more convenient option.
[00:56:08] Unknown:
Yeah. But what if I'm a 100% agree. What if I mean, I I think it's safe to say, as you described, the stablecoins were not allowed, in a world where there was no Bitcoin. And I would say that Bitcoin shields the stablecoins Yeah. By its by the mere fact that Bitcoin exists. And and so the the question is, you know, if regulators want to shut down stable coins, and drive those users to Bitcoin, which is less controlled and and chaotic. Or if they're like, you know what? Stablecoins are the slightly less evil that live and be. I don't know. But that's been the attitude for the past, I don't know, 3, 4 years. Right? So maybe it's gonna change.
And if it does, I mean, then then I think everything we discuss here is going to, change in a in a in a very big and dramatic way. But we don't know. Well, so, like Right?
[00:57:08] ODELL:
So, like, I was talking,
[00:57:11] Unknown:
I mean, I remember when Tether launched, and it was called the Real Coin. And I was like, oh, man. Those guys are gonna gonna get in jail so fast. Like, that was my first, first thought. Right. And, like, yeah, I thought joke
[00:57:26] ODELL:
It's the joke you see on Twitter now where it's, like, about Tether truthers. Right? That Tether is gonna blow up, and it's just like every other thing is blowing up behind them, but they're just, like, stared in at Tether.
[00:57:38] Unknown:
Sure. But that's something else. I mean, that's the speculation of whether or not it's unbacked. Right? But there's still regardless of that, the scenario where the government say says, like, this is now illegal
[00:57:48] ODELL:
and you have to stop. And this So the the reason I bring this up is because, I was talking to Dario of, Moon Wallet, and he's Argentinian. And so, like, they like, people in Argentina love stablecoins. He knows a lot of just average people that got absolutely wrecked on the Luna collapse. On the on the Terra, they had that stablecoin that was backed by Luna, which is a shitcoin, and the whole thing just collapsed earlier this year. And a lot of people got wrecked on that, and a lot of those people did not move to a new stable coin. They learned their lesson on that, that it was centralized and now use Bitcoin. And I wonder if just a lot of this just kind of like, people will just get burned and then realize the unique value prop of Bitcoin.
[00:58:42] Unknown:
Maybe. But, I mean, you you just, a minute ago talked about Tether Trooders, being in the wrong for many years about Tether.
[00:58:51] ODELL:
Oh, yeah. I've been wrong about many things. I also said that No. I mean might never clear again, and they just keep clearing. So Yeah.
[00:58:58] Unknown:
We can talk about that as well if you want. But, I mean, my point is that there there are stable coins that are obviously scams, and there are stable coins that are not obviously scams. They might still go away for whatever reason. Right. But we don't know. And but it, like I mean, it's kind of I think it's it's it's important when, like, you know, thinking about the divorce of Bitcoin and crypto. It's like, yeah, who's gonna get the kids? Like, who's gonna get the stable coins? And how? And, like, how do we do we want to have stable coins, and if so, to what extent? And then, so, then we're gonna be forced to figure out how do we interoperate with the other stablecoins.
[00:59:36] ODELL:
Well then, so I wanna go back to where this originally started, which was this idea of stablecoins on Lightning. I think the reason Lightning adoption is as low as it is is because of, we take cert everything has trade offs, and we take certain trade offs with Lightning to make sure that it maintains relatively the censorship resistant properties of Bitcoin that you can settle on chain on Bitcoin. And as a result, you have all these complex concepts that are hard to design around you x wise with liquidity and channel management and having your note always on.
And as a result, it's really hard to develop for. It's it's more it's it's less convenient for the end user to use. The UX is is always a step behind, you know, these these centralized shitcoins. So to me, like, stablecoins on lightning are this massive distraction because even if we technically, you know, even if RGB or Taro or whatever it is, like, is technically able to implement stable coins on lightning, I have a feeling I'm gonna bring you back on dispatch or I'm gonna go see you present in Riga or something, and you're gonna be like, well, remember how I said that lightning's 4% of transactions? Well, stable coins on lightning is is a half a percent of transactions,
[01:01:03] Unknown:
you make a clear and argument for that. But then, that leaves us sort of back to square 1, which is that how do, how does the Bitcoin space relate to stable coins being popular in other chains.
[01:01:22] ODELL:
Well, I think we just we just like, the goal should be to make interacting with Bitcoin as as, you know, easy and interacting with Bitcoin in a sovereign way as easy, as convenient as possible, and just understand that centralized tokens will always have additional convenience because of the way trade off balances work. And
[01:01:47] Unknown:
Yeah. If centralized, it's always going to be more convenient.
[01:01:49] ODELL:
Right. And if Bitcoin is actually necessary, which I believe it is, which is, this robust censorship resistant money that's independent of corporations and governments, then ultimately over time, it will prove itself out.
[01:02:02] Unknown:
Yeah. I agree with that. And, I would sort of like to continue on that. Like, this is why, it's it's crucial, that Bitcoin does not become this thing that is entirely dependent on, on centralized regulated exchanges. Right. And the only the only way to achieve that is, again, the circular economy. Like, people getting paid, people paying, peer to peer trading, something as simple as use of wallets. Right? We need people to use wallets. Yeah. We we need people to to to have a wallet on their phone and that they have some coins in in case they wanna buy something. And we and I I don't believe in, in in, you know, like, guilting or moralizing or you should. Otherwise, you're not a good Bitcoiner and, like, that stuff. Like, no. Like, we we we we should make things that people want to use because they want to use them.
Because we're not going to successfully moralize millions of, or even billions of people in the world into using this stuff. So we we need to make all of these things, bigger and more popular, you know, like, your basks and things like that. Because that's I mean, again, like, different people come to Bitcoin for different visions, but, like, I I came for freedom money and Internet money. And that's what I'm Right. Passionate about. And I don't think that you can even have some money without freedom money. Like, I don't think that, a Bitcoin that is, I think Saylor made this argument sometime back that, like, let them regulate it into oblivion, and then the the institution else will come and the price will go to the moon, and then there will be hyperbitcoinization.
And then every other problem will magically fix themselves.
[01:03:56] ODELL:
I got into this area, and it was safe as well. Yeah. I mean, so the way I look at it, and I wonder if you agree, is is is I came out of firm an argument of why people should care about financial privacy. And I said, without privacy, which is not anonymity. Privacy is is the ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Without privacy, you cannot have freedom, because if you don't have privacy, then someone can use your information against you to to take away your freedom. And then without freedom, you can't ever be wealthy. Because if if you don't have freedom, then it's not really your wealth. They can just take away your wealth. So you need privacy to have freedom, and you need freedom to be wealthy. So the whole thing is all interconnected.
[01:04:40] Unknown:
Yep. Which is which is why you in particular are such an important, voice, in in the Bitcoin space, because you always talk about this stuff. And, you can't have, again, like, you can't have, like, I mean, privacy, if we talk about that, like, people who care about privacy are people who make transactions. Right? And people who don't make transactions, do not particularly care about privacy. And there's 2 kinds of privacy. Right? There is the coin join type privacy of on chain. And then there is the privacy aspect that, you know, there are ways, for me to, to do things with my Bitcoin that don't require full, full account verification and all of that. Right. KYC. Which is not That's one of the things I love about Bitrefill is that I can just buy these gift cards without Yeah. Well, we without KYC. We we try. You know? We we we we try to to enable as much as we can, with as much privacy as, we can. But that's a, you know, constant battle.
But, yeah, I mean, that's the stuff that's important. And, I mean, it it can't just be the refill. Right? I mean, if it is, then we're just gonna get shut down. Like, there needs to be a very big and vibrant economy. And so the question is, how do we, how do we get it to grow? I mean, this is in part, like, why I'm sharing all of our data and so on that, you know, someone would say, oh, that's trade secrets. You know? But, like, yeah. But I I wish there were, more competitors, but I also wish that there were a lot more and bigger and better complimentary services out there. Right? I I want But otherwise, you get crushed. Otherwise, you're just a centralized actor that can get crushed. Yeah. And otherwise, this is completely uninteresting, like, frankly. Like like I said in the beginning, like, I'm not done. Yeah. I don't think we're done, the Bitcoiners. And and so I don't, you know, I don't like the thought leaders that say that it's all preordained, and we don't need to do anything. We can just sit and Huddl, and
[01:06:52] ODELL:
one day, everything's gonna be great. And there's One of the reasons I love this space one of the reasons I always loved Bitcoin is that the the strongest Bitcoin critics are always Bitcoiners, and I think that's still the case, but it used to be a higher percentage. Now it's now the the percentage is skewed. The absolute number is is still higher of Bitcoiners that are internally critical and want want to seek improvement and are talking about the hard things. But percentage wise, particularly if you start to talk about platforms, like, the people that have the largest audiences. Yep. Are and I I talk about this a lot. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a movement of personal responsibility.
And people are groomed not to practice personal responsibility in their day to day lives. Like, people have everything taken care of for them by society all the time. Sure. So as a result, like, the influence influencers who who who tell people that they don't have to take personal responsibility naturally get better engagement. They perform better because that's what people wanna hear. People wanna hear something easy. They don't wanna hear a hard path. They don't wanna hear any kind of nuance or anything like that.
[01:08:04] Unknown:
Yep. And the the easiest thing is you're you're all gonna be rich. Yeah. And, and it's gonna go up forever. Yeah. And, there is no number 2, and, all of these things. It's just, just punch Well, I do think on Sailor. But gonna go up I think so. I think so as well. But as you said, I mean, it clearly you know, like, let's say when he gets liquidated. But, I mean Well, he broke rule number 1, which is don't fuck around with leverage, but that's a whole different thing. Exactly. Exactly. And and I used to that's the thing. It it is that, again, like, when people say that, you know, Bitcoin is separate from crypto. Yeah. Well, okay. Well, our biggest, influencer is, like, massively leveraged, on Bitcoin and encourages people to leverage their house and and so on. Like, you know, I mean, there are a lot of values that overlap. Let me let me tell you, Anik, that, actually, I was Let me.
So the 1st Bitcoin conference that I attended, in my life, was a Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam in 2014. And recently, I I I don't know. I was feeling nostalgic, and so I I looked I found, the event page somewhere. I don't know if it's still I couldn't find it later, but I'm sure it's in the Internet archive. I think it's up because someone showed it to me when I was in Amsterdam. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you look at it, and you look at the people, and, like, some of them we don't know anymore, but, like, a lot of them, I would say a vast majority of them are people who today we would call the crypto industry.
Right. Right? So a lot of them are people that then became the shitcoiners. Yeah. And it kind of evolved. Right? I mean, the crypto came out of, of Bitcoin. Like, we we birthed it. And not just we, like our, at the time, top influencers, built it. Right? And then again, like, as we already said, like, as subcult as subcultures grow, then they form sub subcultures, and it keeps going like that. And Yeah. I mean, like, you talked about, like, Bitcoin not Bitcoin's not crypto. Like, maybe it just shows my age,
[01:10:17] ODELL:
but, like, I actually think that, like, crypto doesn't exist. Like, they're it's all part of the Bitcoin industry. Like, I think Bitcoin is is is, you know, in a in a weird roundabout way, like, Ethereum is like a Bitcoin app.
[01:10:34] Unknown:
Yeah. But but you know what? I think I used to underbelly of the Bitcoin industry, basically. Yes. I I so I used to have that perspective as well. Yeah. Exactly what you say. And, the way that I I would verify it is to do a Google Trends and just see how much are people searching for Bitcoin and how much they're searching for crypto. And it's still the case that, you know, Bitcoin is bigger than crypto. At the same time, again, like, like, the world changes. And so now we're seeing that, you know, the crypto industry again is, like, sort of replacing Bitcoin as store value minimum exchange, as the money, basically, of the industry and replacing it with with stable coins and to to a lesser extent, it's and, and and we see results of that. Like, I mean, the biggest biggest wallet in the world is MetaMask, and MetaMask does not support Bitcoin.
Right? So, and and that's, like, a very clear sign of the divorce coming from the other side. Right? That's like, you know, we built this thing and, like, we didn't even bother to add Bitcoin because it's, you know, it's not Trust wallet doesn't support lightning and MetaMask. Yeah. You know. Doesn't support big conspiracy. It's just it's just not a priority. Yeah. Right? Again, like, it's not like the these people are like, oh, we hate Bitcoin. We want it to disappear or anything like that. Like, the shit corners love Bitcoin. It's just, you know, it's not been a priority for them. They have the product road map and the things that give them their their business goals that they're trying to achieve, and so they haven't gotten to that yet.
But it but it shows that, that industry is now rebasing gradually, but more and more, off from, from Bitcoin and onto, stable coins on, on EVM based chains, basically. Yeah. And and so at some point, maybe it's no longer the case that crypto is, the underbelly of the Bitcoin industry and that it becomes somewhat I mean, it's it's messy. Right? Is is crypto part of it? I don't know. Maybe.
[01:12:46] ODELL:
It's tricky. Well, I think I think the reason people say it is because it there's an important message there, right, which is Bitcoin is distinctly different than everything else in the quote, unquote industry. Yeah. And maybe that's enough. The question is how do you convey that message?
[01:13:04] Unknown:
Just like that. I think, I mean, I think, I mean, all of us do. Right? If a friend asks, like, hey. Which crypto should I buy? And I get by Bitcoin, and and that's enough. But, again, like, you know, like, you know, like, they they are, to some extent, moving on. Yeah. They they they move to another town. Yeah. Right? I mean, they they don't, they use Bitcoin less. They use other things instead. Yeah. They still use Bitcoin to some extent, but less. But so Yeah. Like, I'm gonna pull up a chart on the screen for, like, the people that are watching.
[01:13:46] ODELL:
This chart, right, where when you when you say the word crypto over and over again, like, the left side is what you believe, which is that there's this massive crypto industry where, like, Bitcoin is a small part of that industry, when the reality is that that, you know, there's Bitcoin and then there's everything else that's doing trying to accomplish completely different goals that is ripe with Ponzi schemes, that's ripe with scams, that's ripe with, you know, poor trade offs that aren't disclosed to users. Like, what do you think when you see this chart? Do would you be Well, it contradicts what you just said, and, I would say that, you know, the reality Well, I would just put the little crypto circle. I'll put the little crypto circle, like, inside of the Bitcoin circle, if I was gonna
[01:14:34] Unknown:
change. I would maybe make it, like, on the edge so it overlaps to a significant extent with the Bitcoin circle. Like, I would also make the and I would make the crypto circle significantly bigger, still smaller than Bitcoin, but significantly bigger than in this chart. I think another data point, I guess that made me think about these things. So if we zoom out, like, I mean, I think as late as 3 years ago, if you ask me, like, you know, which coins do people use to pay on the trade flow, Then I would be like, ah, it's 90% Bitcoin and 10% everything else. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, this isn't 2017. This is, like, 2019, or so. So up until very recently, it was the case, that, you you know, this was correlated well with Google Trends. And so, yeah, Bitcoin is much bigger than crypto. Whereas today today, you know, crypto is, like, 60, 65% of it, which also, like, I think it's coincidental, but, like, it overlaps somewhat with the Bitcoin dominance, charts, which we know are inflated and and and bullshit and so on. But even though bullshit, Bitcoin's still, like, 50% on that or 60% on that. No? No. No. No. It's 40 something. Yeah. Okay.
So, and what's interesting, I think, in in this day and age, with the fall of, FDX and, and Terra and all these things is that it's not going up. It used to be, the case that in a bear market, Bitcoin dominance goes up. We might be calling that early.
[01:16:13] ODELL:
I mean Like, what about 6 months from now? Like, have we seen the full fallout yet?
[01:16:19] Unknown:
No. But, I mean, we've seen quite a bit of fallout,
[01:16:22] ODELL:
and the Like, is this not the great shitcoinapocalypse, Sergei?
[01:16:27] Unknown:
Good question. I think it might be, but but still, you know, now there here's an here's another, I guess, mental model and I'm actually interested in in your thoughts. So when when arguing values, right, values in themselves are are usually not interesting. They're only interesting when you put them against each other. Right? So do you want freedom and prosperity? Yes. Yeah. But if you can only have 1, right, if you have to choose, like, 1 unit of freedom or 1 unit of prosperity, then it becomes a values question. Right? And, in the in the Bitcoin space, we we have the value that we want Bitcoin up. Right? Whatever up means. More users, higher price, whatever. Right? We also want shitcoins we want shitcoins down. Right? And let's say you get this. Right? We want both these things. But but an interesting question is, okay, but what if we put them against each other? Because there are situations in which we have to choose.
Do we want Bitcoin up but also should go on up? Or do we want should go down but also Bitcoin down?
[01:17:33] ODELL:
Right. And there's some that would say Which which which would you choose? I would choose up up.
[01:17:39] Unknown:
I would also choose up up. Yeah. But I think that,
[01:17:44] ODELL:
yeah, many people on Bitcoin Twitter would probably choose down down.
[01:17:48] Unknown:
Well, it seems to so, at least The lab ones. Given how people are sort of cheering, the the shit coin apocalypse, And, I mean, it is fun. Yeah. But at the same time, it's clearly causing Bitcoin down. Right? At least in the short term. And, and so and and that's sort of, also, like, in a I think, sort of important to to ask, you know, in in your heart of hearts. Like, I don't even know to be honest, like, I mean, I I have this, an artistic pyromaniac thing where, like, stuff's burning. It's interesting even if it's my house. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, watching FDX and all of that stuff. No. We we all like chaos. We all if you've been in Bitcoin for a long enough time, you're a little bit of a massive I think so. I think we're I think we're chaotic good, as, as characters.
So, I don't even know. It's just like a I guess something to, to reflect on on on where Well, the way I look at it land and
[01:18:55] ODELL:
The way I look at it is in a post in in a in a world where Bitcoin is is succeeding, where adoption is increasing, Bitcoin brings in global permissionless finance. It's the base of this global permissionless finance world. And as a result, people love gambling. People love printing their own money. So if Bitcoin succeeds, shitcoins will always exist. I think so too. In my mind because you can't stop someone from doing it.
[01:19:26] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, and, yeah. Like, I mean, if you look at, for example, other examples when people suddenly got financial freedom, in in the history of the world, like, for example, the collapse of the Soviet Union. What's the first thing that they do with their financial freedom? MLM Screens. Scam and be scammed. Right? And and we've seen this over we've seen this in the Bitcoin space as well. Like, there was a massive boom in Bolivia, like, 5 years ago, where suddenly, like, all metric, like, Bolivia, Bolivia, what the hell is going on in Bolivia? They're like, oh, okay. There's a massive Ponzi scheme that's Yeah. Like, plus the word Bitcoin. Big one lately. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean so, I mean, people do that and the I don't know. I mean, I think that for me, I have sort of come to terms with that the good that Bitcoin brings outweighs the bad that it also brings.
And that maybe the world just needs to develop, like, a intuitive understanding that, you know, if it's too good to be true type reasoning or, you know, where I guess recently we've learned where there's a reward, there is risk. Right. It's it's a it's a big, recent, learning for a lot of people, and that maybe eventually, we we get to, we we get to a point where these things stabilize. But, yeah, I mean, we we are going to have shit coins. At the very least, you know, the the shit coins that are just stocks. Right? Yeah. Those that, that really only scam, the the American SSE or similar regulators, with their, unregistered securities.
But other than that, conduct business in a in in a in an ethical, way without lying misleading. Like, you can imagine that. And, I think that that's part of Bitcoin vision to some extent. So, that too, by the way. That means that we're going to have tokens. Yeah. Right? And so that may how are they going be transferred? Are they going to be transferred over Lightning, or are they going to be transferred, over, 600 different EVM chains or something else that we don't know yet. How is Bitcoin going to interact with that?
[01:21:56] ODELL:
Right. I mean, I think, like I mean, so there's another popular I think every good meme is based in reality, and that's why they're viral in the first place. And, you know, a big a big meme or culture point in Bitcoin is this idea of low time preference, long term thinking. And, you know, a lot of the trade offs that Bitcoin has made through its short history has been with a long term lens on. You know, you never really know how much censorship resistance is enough censorship resistance until your chain is completely captured and done. So so Bitcoin has kind of gone to the extreme on that, which I appreciate, and I think it makes it, you know, very robust. And the government is trolling us by not going after the less centralized ones.
Wait. So that's the question. Right? So the question is, like, there there's a scenario where where we're wrong and or maybe just the fact that Bitcoin exists means that centralized, less censorship resistant things are able to survive. But, I mean, the big elephant in the room is is pretty much Ethereum. And I do wonder, you know, the the thesis I've been running on for however many years and I continue to run on is that eventually, I I mean, I think Ethereum is being captured currently. I mean, I think there's attempts to try and capture Bitcoin as well that are less successful, but that Ethereum is being captured currently, and it will become it will become apparent to people at some point in the future.
I'm not gonna pick any dates, but if if if, you know, what does Safe say? Safe is like Ethereum is the is the mother asshole of all shitcoins birthed from. Right? Yeah. And I wonder if established it was actually Bitcoin.
[01:23:47] Unknown:
Yeah. That birthed Ethereum. Exactly.
[01:23:49] ODELL:
I think big yeah. I mean, look. What what was the Ethereum ICO sold from? Right? You had to use Bitcoin to buy into Ethereum in the first place. Like, Ethereum was originally priced in sads. But
[01:24:03] Unknown:
I mean, the biggest thing is, like, crypto is things that are like Bitcoin.
[01:24:07] ODELL:
My my doomer optimism on everything, whether it's financial privacy, whether it's regular digital privacy, whether it's people having, you know, Internet connected cameras on their front door, is that people will get burned over time and seek out better alternatives. In the financial scene, I think that's Bitcoin.
[01:24:28] Unknown:
Yeah. But but but it's not a given. I mean, I I, you know, I don't know. I agree with you, I think. Yeah. But but we can't be so certain. Like, look at BitTorrent, for example. BitTorrent is the reason why we have Spotify and Netflix. Right? Right. So if there was no BitTorrent, then no way that the rights holders would agree to having a streaming app, whatever. Right? Except that now by scaring them.
[01:24:58] ODELL:
But now it's gotten so bad. Like, I like, I was I may or may not have been a frequent BitTorrent user before Netflix existed, and then Netflix gave me a convenient way to not be a BitTorrent user. And now there's so many streaming platforms that are all broken up and bifurcated and stuff, and there's so much less convenience there. And I don't know what login is what login and yada yada yada. And now I'm back to being a theoretical BitTorrent user again.
[01:25:27] Unknown:
Right. Well, that's interesting. But I think you're still in the in the minority here. But yeah. I mean, maybe. Who knows? But, it's also again, okay, sure about how how low time preference do you want to have. Right? I mean, at some point, at a on a long enough, time scale, we're all gonna be dead. Yeah. Right. So, I don't know. I mean, it it it might be like that. It might be the the other way. I mean, it might be, that, you know, the government, maybe the US one just captures, captures a thing. I mean, they they kind of control the USDC already and via that Ethereum, and then maybe that's the c CWC.
And then, we're done. And then that is like, I always thought that Bitcoin would have, like, one final nemesis. You know? Like, the the one, like, in games, like, the last boss, that that it has to fight against The final boss. Against Augustine Karstens.
[01:26:29] ODELL:
Yeah. Well, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Well, he just looks like a final boss. You know? He's like a Bowser type of individual.
[01:26:36] Unknown:
You know what I'm talking about? That Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I I would argue that he's not the final boss. He's like a boss on, like, on, like, a section, of the game, whereas the final boss is, like, some small insignificant that has some magical powers and just anyway. Well, let's pivot for a second,
[01:26:57] ODELL:
Sergei. So when I talked to you when I first got to meet you in person, we were Internet friends for a bit, but when I first got to meet you in person was, I believe, 2019 Riga. And we were walking to, the Bull Bitcoin dinner that was in, you know, like, a little dungeon. I remember that. And we had a we had a conversation for, like, 12 minutes that has stuck with me since then, and and that was on multisig.
[01:27:22] Unknown:
I don't remember.
[01:27:24] ODELL:
You were you were bearish on multisig. Do you remain bearish on multisig?
[01:27:31] Unknown:
Do you remember why?
[01:27:33] ODELL:
Yeah. You said it was too complex. People should just use a passphrase. Like, it's not really Mhmm. Like, there there'll be a niche where people like, I I assume you believe that it's very useful for organizations and whatnot. Right. And But, like, you were kinda coming at it from the at that point, like, it was one of the things that we were, like, kind of hyping really hard within the hardcore Bitcoin community, which was that everyone was gonna be moving to multisig for self sovereign storage.
[01:28:00] Unknown:
Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a good question. I mean, I think multisig is a good tool. Is it for everyone? I'm not sure. Yeah. I think in, like, sometimes, we in the Bitcoin community score on goals. Right? And one of the ways is that we, we scare people. So, so I I guess, like, that, you know, hey. Phone wallet is not secure, so you should, you should use multisig. But,
[01:28:34] ODELL:
like, most people they stay on FTX and they get rugged instead. Exactly. Exactly. Because they're like, oh, this is too complex for me. I'll just put them on an exchange. While the Ethereum community is like, we'll just use MetaMask in our browser and boom, done. Right. And,
[01:28:48] Unknown:
and if you think about how, how many people, lost, I mean, first of all, I think we can agree that, like, the simplest, mobile wallet on the crappiest, device, is still going to be more secure than keeping your coins, on an exchange with usernames and passwords, even disregarding the element of the exchange, rugging you, and just looking at that. You know, your email will get compromised, and somebody will log in to your exchange to withdraw your coins. Right? So even the the the the dumbest wallets, in in the dumbest setup, you know, take a screenshot of your seed phrase and and store it in your photos. Like, that's more secure than keeping a coin on an exchange. But by by by, you know, like, good is the enemy of the great, Great is the enemy of the good. And so by by always, arguing for the great, we sometimes lose people and never never get them to, to good.
And, I mean, I think it's changing a little bit. Like, I've recently seen, people talk on Twitter about, wallets that, back up your keys to, like, Google Drive or similar, and they didn't get flamed into oblivion. And that wasn't just a new
[01:30:07] ODELL:
one. Like, Moon by default is an encrypted backup to, like, Google Drive or Icloud, whichever, you know, whichever phone you have.
[01:30:15] Unknown:
And so, exactly. I mean, Moon does a lot of creative things that involve trade offs, that one can disagree with for for technical and good reasons and so on. Right. Yeah. But, but, yeah, again, like, you know, any wallet is, is probably going to be better than keeping your coins on an exchange, for a lot of reasons, not least the right risk. And and, and so, also, multisig is dangerous. Like,
[01:30:52] ODELL:
it's Right. Most people most people that lose their coins are either getting they're either getting, like, rugged on an exchange. They're either doing a they're a phishing scam where they just, like, get an email and they put in their seed phrase, or they they have time to get lost. It's like they lose the seed or with multisig, I mean, you have to you have to also keep the master x pub as well. Exactly. Well, exactly.
[01:31:19] Unknown:
Exactly. And and people don't realize that. Right? They think that, hey. I have a a 3 out of 5. I wrote down 5 seed phrase. I distributed to them to, to 4 of my friends. And then, you know, one of them disappears, and then we can gather the the 3 of the the remaining ones, and we can claim the coins. Nah. Incorrect. You need to have the, the the config file. Yeah. Right? You need to have the master XPub for the 5th key, which is not
[01:31:48] ODELL:
not always clearly communicated in Right. That's more of a UX server, and it's early.
[01:31:54] Unknown:
Okay. It's early. Is it early?
[01:31:59] ODELL:
I yeah. I think as long as people are buying Bitcoin and they're not earning Bitcoin, it's still early.
[01:32:04] Unknown:
Yeah. I guess in that sense, I agree. Like, in that sense, it is early, but also, like, you know, Bitcoin is 1 year younger than the iPhone.
[01:32:14] ODELL:
But also Multisig is very early. Like, Multisig is, like, yeah, we had armory and shit, but, like, user friendly Multisig is only, like, 2 years old. Right? Like, it's a spiral in this. You can go. On the wallet and have has had the multisig for a long time. Yeah. But Electrum is Yeah. Sure. User front. I mean, Electrum's great. I love Electrum, but it's just
[01:32:35] Unknown:
I I would Well, I yeah. No. I'm not call it a user front. I'm not, I'm not I think it's important to be, clear here that I'm not against I'm not to say. Yeah. Well, that conversation has lived in my head, by the way, for 3 years now. I'm just, you know, one of these people. Like, I'm a contrarian. Right? And and the Bitcoin community Yeah. That's why I love you. People who who think that they're contrarians, but they're often not contrarian towards their in group. Right? So whatever people are hyped up about, I'm going to be contrarian against.
Right? So if everyone's hyped about something, I'm gonna be having this thing. But,
[01:33:17] ODELL:
yeah. Yeah. So we have a comment from Rem Bax in the matrix chat saying multisig is good for organizations and maybe public figures. I would go beyond that and say multisig is absolutely game changing for organizations. If you run any kind of organization that interacts with Bitcoin, the fact that you can have, like, spending controls that actually people need to, you have to have multiple people within an organization sign on any transaction and have the responsibility of signing for those transactions is one of the coolest that like, I still have I have not. I'm there's multiple organizations I'm a part of. The freaks know that I'm just, like, have stretched myself massively thin and do a ton of things in the Bitcoin space. There's a lot of organizational multisigs I'm a part of, and every time I sign a transaction that's a multisig with other parties in in one of these organizations, it is the coolest thing ever. Like, I have not gotten over yet how cool that is.
[01:34:16] Unknown:
Yep. And, I mean, I still think that, you know, like, yeah, no matter multisig or single signal, whatever, but, like, just the fact that you, you know, click for a couple of times on a computer and tap on the keyboard and whatever, and then, like, 1,000 of dollars appear somewhere else in the world. Like, how magic is this? It's really like, they we actually built, built, that. We have to sometimes also.
[01:34:46] ODELL:
It hasn't worn it it hasn't worn off yet. It's still Yeah. I don't I don't think it will ever, wear off.
[01:34:53] Unknown:
Yeah. I don't know. Maybe the kids that are born today are going to take that for granted. Yeah. But, that's also, I guess, an interesting topic. Like, kids, and the, the fact that, you know, again, Bitcoin's been around for, what, 12, 13 13 years. So there's people that are growing up in their teenagers that, where Bitcoin has always been there, for their entire, you know, cognizant Right. Life. And, that's also the an area that I kind of feel like, we should explore more. Like, we've seen, on Bitrefill, we frequently see, kids.
Yeah. Right? And by kids So they don't have bank accounts? They don't have bank accounts. It's different kids. Right? They can be 12 year olds, with their weekly allowance, and it can be, 17 year olds, that, figured out, that, this is a way to get, get cold skins, for their, for their in game
[01:36:01] ODELL:
Counter strike or whatever. Yeah. Right.
[01:36:04] Unknown:
Yeah. And, I mean, that is a big audience. We don't really see them, so much, in the, in the Bitcoin community, I think. Like, I don't even know of any I mean, the the last famous teenager we had was Vitalik Buterin, I think. Yeah. But, like, who who are these teenage, teenage Bitcoin celebrities? We have
[01:36:26] ODELL:
Barack, who's attacking lightning and saying he loves chaos. He was on the show last week. We used to have Ben Kaufman, but then he went down the shitcoin rabbit hole. He realized he could make more money working in the Bitcoin industry.
[01:36:41] Unknown:
Uh-huh. I didn't know that. Who else do we have to see on in the future? Are, you know, kind of, you know, like I mean, to me, like, I remember when blogs crossed the chasm and went into the mainstream from being a thing for nerds. And the thing that took blogs, to the mainstream was teenage girls. Right? And, they started blogging about, what they did today and The online diaries. Makeup. Right. And, and the and society thought it was completely unreasonable, and they did it anyway. And and people laughed at them, and then it became a massive thing. Yeah. So I'm like, yeah. What do we have? What do we have for teenage girls?
Yeah. How can we, how can we get them on on the Bitcoin?
[01:37:35] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of the reason why there's so much hate towards shitcoiners is because they just have so much money behind them that's, like, printed from scams. So, like, whenever and maybe this is just an excuse that pulls away from personal responsibility on Bitcoin's side, but it's like whenever, like, our grassroots adoption kind of starts to gain any kind of wind, you have the shit corners just come in and dominate the conversation. I mean, we saw it in El Salvador. Like, as soon as El Salvador announced legal tender, there was a shitcoin delegation there, like, a week later.
[01:38:14] Unknown:
Of course. Yeah. Such a such a is our industry, and, yes, it's always been the case that, that Bitcoin is the one coin that doesn't have a marketing department. Yeah. And, and still, it has achieved everything that it has achieved, yeah, and so on.
[01:38:35] ODELL:
But that's why I'm just thinking about, like, the kids. Right? Like, it's like, you try, like Yeah. But, like, we don't have a kid. So, like, for instance, at Bitcoin like, I do consulting for Bitcoin Magazine. I've been their strategic adviser, for 2 years now. And, like, half the team are kids that dropped out of college. Right. So, like, we do have young big corners, but, like, the problem is that a lot of Then you're not kids. I mean,
[01:38:59] Unknown:
they're 20 years old.
[01:39:01] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, they get denied at the bar in America at least. In America. Yeah.
[01:39:07] Unknown:
Yeah. But fair. But, I mean, Bitcoin doesn't have marketing department in some ways. In other ways, it does. Right? I mean, you are part of it. Maybe I'm part of it as well. We're all part of, the decentralized marketing departments. Right? And I I think, like, part of, like, the the critiques that I've been raising is because I want our marketing department to do better. Yeah. Right? I think what's really cool is, like, Andre Neves and, like, the Bitcoin gaming side, I think there's there's there's a lot of potential there with kids. We just did a integration with Zebedee that was announced today. So shout out to the people at Zebedee.
[01:39:49] ODELL:
It's funny because he's not like, his company you know, I one of my projects is 1031, which is a Bitcoin only venture fund. Like, his his his company is not valued as a Bitcoin only company. Like, he's a gaming company. So he has access to all this capital from, like, gaming gaming funds. So he kind of, like, escaped that hole where where Bitcoin only projects tend to have trouble getting funding, because of that gaming overlap. Primarily, it's a gaming company, and they're just integrating SaaS into gaming.
[01:40:24] Unknown:
Yep. And, I mean, in the end, you know, Bitcoin company will mean the same that Internet company means today. Right. Yeah. Right? They'll be like, what's an Internet company? I don't even know. Like, is a shoemaker an Internet company if she has a website? And, you know, we can discuss that or we cannot discuss that. Yeah. Right? So, of course, I think most Bitcoin companies are intersection of Bitcoin and something else. And, but, but yeah. Then there's Bitcoin on the main, which means that, you can interact intersect with anything else except for for, other cryptocurrencies.
[01:41:03] ODELL:
My dream is that within the next few years, I'm playing a video game, and some 13 year old kid in, like, Thailand or the Philippines or some shit is just absolutely destroying me because he has quicker reactions than I do, and I'm just losing sats to him. Like, that is that is one of my dreams. Like, that's when I know we'll have we'll have made it to a degree. But I think you can, you already have that with, with Sibir and Counter Strike and so on. Yeah. Yeah. Because Counter Strike was a big one. Yeah. The Counter Strike was a big one because, like, they took an existing game, and they kind of just dropped it in there. But I wanna see, like, one of the large and I know it's it's not gonna happen overnight because it's really the challengers that want to innovate on models before the big dogs do it. Right? But, like, a like, a Fortnite or something, something with 100 of millions of players.
Counter Strike has a lot, but it's not, like, integrated into the direct Counter Strike game.
[01:42:00] Unknown:
Yeah. But, like, in order for these things, I think, to be really, really, really successful I mean, currently, the model, as I understand it at least, relies on, like, advertising and so on to get money in, which then, is converted to SaaS and paid out to users. Yeah. Yeah. And Yeah. Which is great, but it's ad based.
[01:42:18] ODELL:
The KYC friction issue too.
[01:42:20] Unknown:
Right. Which is Yeah. But so, but the interesting thing is when people start, paying for games, right, when there is a big enough addressable market of people with SaaS, ready to to play games, buy items, whatever it is people do. Right? So that, again, we we actually get a circulating economy even, within the games. Right. And for that, we need more people with wallets, basically. Well, no. We I think that's my main, more wallets,
[01:42:56] ODELL:
to spend a little bit of money there. Fortnite is a free game, but Epic makes 1,000,000,000 of dollars selling these skins that don't change anything. I mean, people are just people are paying for them. They're just paying with credit cards, instead of sats. Like, that could easily be just a QR code. NFTs. Yeah.
[01:43:19] Unknown:
Well, I mean, it's the same. Right? I mean, again, in game currencies are are the same as shit coins. Right? And in game items are the same as They're the original shit coin. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing. Games, want to have their own currency so that because they can print infinite amounts of it, and also because they control it. So on. So, we'll see. I think, like, it it'll have to be that, you know, the Bitcoin games win over the non Bitcoin games. Like, I think that that's the path.
[01:43:59] ODELL:
Yeah. Like I said, I think it's gonna have to be challengers. Like, the big games are obviously gonna wanna continue to print their own currency, but but there's an advantage for challengers to come in and be like, Well, look, we use real money that you can actually withdraw and use to buy things, including on Bitrefill. So use our game instead, and then eventually, one of those will ideally win. And at that point, then it becomes the model and then everyone follows it. I mean, before Fortnite exists, no one thought you'd be out.
[01:44:32] Unknown:
Isn't this the same as the NFT game?
[01:44:35] ODELL:
What do you mean?
[01:44:37] Unknown:
Well, I mean, if you you can see, crypto as a game. Right? You you trade tokens to go up and down the value number. Some kind of number goes up, and, you get some kind of satisfaction from that. And, NFTs are in game items in that world. Right? Right. Like I mean, is is, an NFT with a picture of a monkey, more, less, or equal a shitcoinery, than a skin,
[01:45:09] ODELL:
for, for a Kalashnikov and counter strike. Well, I mean, like so I like your phrase, what, cursing in the church? It's a cool phrase. You're, like, kinda making me curse in the church. I think the n t industry is, rife with scams and bullshit and not disclosing trade offs and pump and dumps and and wash trading and all this bullshit. But at the same time, like games and games go? If I don't know. No. That's what that's what I was about to say. Like, if if there was an interoperable standard for in game skins, where you can transfer them between games, is strictly a net benefit over the existing status quo, which is you you buy this skin and it's just locked into this completely centralized walled garden.
[01:45:53] Unknown:
Like, there is What if you can't even transfer it? Like, I mean, transferring it to I don't know if that's the important part here.
[01:46:00] ODELL:
Well, I think the cool part about Sats and games is interoperability and, like, the actual ability to to pull those funds off. Right? Sure. But the Sats are money. An argument. Right,
[01:46:11] Unknown:
Whereas crypto's in game currency and NFTs are, in game items. So it's a different So, like,
[01:46:18] ODELL:
once again, like, I I I think a big game would not do this, because they like their walled garden, but a challenger might. And it would be cool if, you know, if if you if you spent 2,000 hours playing a game and you won all these skins, and then a competitor comes out with a new game and is able to cryptographically verify that you have those skins from that game and gives you rewards based on that, is a massive, it's just a massive improvement over the status quo. Like, if I spend 2,000 hours playing this one game and then a competitor comes out and is able to actually reward me for playing a different game that they didn't make, to kinda bring me in. But you know what's going to happen is gamers.
[01:47:04] Unknown:
But the second iteration of that is that the game one game is going to figure out that if we can present these in game items as speculative items, they're gonna go up in value. I know. Yeah. This is gonna be all scambles for all. It's going to be popular, and we would have reinvented NFTs.
[01:47:21] ODELL:
Yeah. And so Jevi is saying that game producers don't wanna make their content interoperable. I agree. But that's just why I keep coming back to it has to be it has to be challengers. Like, it's not gonna be the big publishing houses. It's always the challengers. Like, Venmo did a great as well, by the way. Yeah. Venmo didn't great integrate Bitcoin first. Cash App did. Cash App was number 2 in the payment space in the US, and they needed an edge, so they integrated Bitcoin. And then guess what happened? Venmo had no choice but to integrate Bitcoin, and they had no choice but to integrate Bitcoin withdrawals, which I've been on the record saying they never were gonna do. And now we end up in a a situation where you can transfer between Venmo and Cash App easily using Bitcoin. And it was because the challenger adopted it first.
[01:48:02] Unknown:
Interesting.
[01:48:03] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Withdraw from Venmo in Bitcoin, and you can deposit it to Cash App with Bitcoin. So you can transfer between the 2 for the first time in your initial idea. And it's This is massive. Yeah. It's just because of of game theory incentives. Right? The challenger adopts it first, the challenger becomes starts to win, and then the incumbent has to kind of
[01:48:24] Unknown:
kowtow to it and come in. Yeah. And I think that that's, in terms of the the Bitcoin marketing team is that, like, that's what Bitcoin, should focus at, like, the challengers, but also, like, everyone else's because the dominant player is never going to. And they're disincentivized, from interoperability. And this goes even inside, you know, in the in the Bitcoin space as well. That, like, the large wallets are less incentivized to to make transactions. The large exchanges are not incentivized to make withdrawals easy and so on. And so it always has to be the small ones, the everyone else, and, and then the way that we win is that if we if the combined efforts of the everyone else reaches a tipping point, I don't know, 50% or something, then, yeah, suddenly, we will have standards. We will have interoperability and all of these things.
[01:49:25] ODELL:
So, I mean, this has been a great conversation. I've absolutely enjoyed it. We do have Cypher Odeum in the matrix chat saying when's it a little coin, and then you realize that it already exists by someone else because every shitcoin under the sun, like, there's names for everything already. There we already have a token at ciel dispatch, and that's sats, and that will never change. You will never hear me shill a shitcoin. You will never hear me try and sell you NFTs even if that would make fundraising this type of show, demonstrably easier. I've seen tons of Shitcoin shows, spin up their own bullshit DAOs and whatever. I'm not gonna do any of that garbage with you guys. If you find value from the show, please contribute stats. It is appreciated.
You just, you know, go to sill dispatch.com and click that big support the show button, and it'll take you to the Geyser page. But but, Sergei, before before we wrap up the show, like, we have to talk we have to talk about our our our niche drama that is the RBF stuff. We we have to just we have to at least touch on it. It looks like right now that Bitcoin core core has already merged and, like, in the next release, people will have the option to toggle on, RBF by default, replace by feed by default, which means that if someone sends a transaction, that is in your mempool and then they if you have this toggle set on, which is off by default, but you can turn it on, then it gets replaced by a higher fee transaction if you send another transaction with a higher fee.
You've been on the opposite side of this conversation. How do you feel about it right now?
[01:51:05] Unknown:
I think it's a big mistake. I think I've spoken up about it. I mean, John Carlo, is a better Internet fighter than me. I'm like I don't think so. Late nights, I'm You're too humble. You're too humble, Sergei.
[01:51:26] ODELL:
I, I think the way he argues it is is is not an effective argument. I I think the way he argues it is a Streisand effect and just makes me wanna turn the toggle on as soon as I have it. I don't know.
[01:51:37] Unknown:
I actually think that, like, he I mean, I don't always agree with his style of doing things, but in this case, I think he's been, relatively to the point. But, I mean, fundamentally, you know, there is a current I mean, there is a way that the Bitcoin network works today, and which is that nodes do not replace the first in transaction unless it has the RBF flag. Right? Yeah. Which was the compromise that you said there. Your wallet sets that this is an RBF transaction
[01:52:17] ODELL:
when at the time of sending?
[01:52:21] Unknown:
Yeah. Exactly. And and so the fact that this behavior, exists leads to to a property, that can be used, to somewhat reliably. Let's be very clear here. But to somewhat reliably accept transactions without waiting for a confirmation, which is immensely useful for the simple, I think, reason that Bitcoin blocks are unpredictable, like, by a lot. Sometimes you have to wait for an hour for the next block. Sometimes Binance shows up and dumps a 150 megabytes of blocks above the As soon as you send a transaction. They always do it right after I send them. Yeah. You blocks are predictable, and I I think that the most important, thing, when building technology is for things to be predictable because if it's predictable, then people can work, with it around it and so on.
There's also, like, a lot of other, and so, like, we we've been I mean, first of all, this is not something new. Like, Satoshi described RBF, in sorry. Satoshi described, that the vending machine would use 0Conf, and that it would, have much lower fraud rates than a credit card, in 2010. And then, Jeff Garzik argued with him, and Satoshi replied with the classic, if you don't understand, I don't have time to explain. Yeah. Wait. I forget the quote now. It's a bit late here. It wasn't it wasn't with Varsik. It was with
[01:54:00] ODELL:
the EOS guy. Right? Okay. Okay. Maybe.
[01:54:03] Unknown:
But but the point is that that that that quote from Satoshi is specifically because somebody, criticized
[01:54:10] ODELL:
the If you don't understand it, I don't have time to explain it. Exactly. Yeah. So,
[01:54:18] Unknown:
we've been doing, using, this property to accept transactions instantly on the. It's not instantly. There's some seconds and so on and some other stuff. We don't get, abused. Like, it's less than 1 in a 1000000 transactions.
[01:54:41] ODELL:
Yeah. Do, like, a fraud calculation on the fly, basically. Right?
[01:54:45] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, like, it's it's relatively simplistic. You know? Like, you you need to spend a, you know, a couple of days working on it, but, like, we it's not that fancy. Like, people are imagining all kinds of things. There were civil attacking the network and blah blah blah blah. Like, no. So what happens if someone has
[01:55:00] ODELL:
an RBF if someone has the RBF flag enabled on their transaction, so they signal that it's like blue bond for instance.
[01:55:09] Unknown:
Yes. Like So they actually implemented the the RBF is false flag in BIP 21, because we asked them to, and then we we meant to to make it standard.
[01:55:18] ODELL:
And, but now, the core devs are are kinda working. But but I'm just well, let's just go down this path for a second. So I have I have RBF by default enabled in Spire Wallet. I pay you on Bitrefill.
[01:55:31] Unknown:
Yep.
[01:55:32] ODELL:
In the current environment, let you know, this this new version of core hasn't been released yet. Does does the fact that I have RBF enabled just automatically preclude me from like, or do you automatically exclude me from the 0 comp?
[01:55:46] Unknown:
Yes. Yeah. But very generously, we we will accept your transaction when it confirms, which we do at very at very significant risk.
[01:55:56] ODELL:
Oh, at the price at the price when I sent it? Yes. Yes.
[01:56:00] Unknown:
Which is a big risk. And and and so the the court devs are arguing that it's better to replace, you know, that, one time in a million, you're gonna lose all of the money in a payment, to sort of everybody has, has, an easy, flag to scam me for a couple of percent. And, I mean, it's it's a little bit, you know, like, the arguments are very strange. And, I mean, I think it's like, many okay. Cursing a church. Many core devs don't actually talk to users of Bitcoin. Right? Most of them couldn't name any of the more popular Bitcoin wallets. Right? They they have a very theoretical understanding of many of them. I mean, I'm I'm generalizing here, of how Bitcoin works and how it should work, but not necessarily how it works in practice.
Right? Right. The users are using
[01:57:00] ODELL:
Tron, USDT, and Trust Wallet with some Bitcoin and other
[01:57:04] Unknown:
Bitcoin. Right? Right. Let's just talk about Bitcoin here. And even with Bitcoin. Right? And so, for example, there was, so the the the the Binance dump of a 150, whatever, megs of, of transactions. Right? Right. At, like, 12¢ per byte. Yeah. I think that that's, like, the theoretical best, case for somebody to use RBF. Right?
[01:57:32] ODELL:
Right. Send a transaction. Binance dumps right after me, and I'm like, fuck. I need this thing to confirm. So I wanna raise it to you. So, more importantly,
[01:57:41] Unknown:
at the time, I tweeted about this. There's this developer goes by the handle 0xb10c, who who did, he runs transaction fee dot info and then Pullum Server and some other websites. He's a great guy. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I kindly asked him to, to to run the the the numbers, and he did, and published the tweet thread looking at, for example, the transactions that got stuck under. Right? So there was around 13,000 of them. 3,000 of those were, like, ones that provides, so maybe they were not urgent, but 10,000 transactions were, they used the fee estimation that was sensible at the time, and then they got fucked. Right? Right. And presumably, 20, 30 percent of them. Yes. Presumably, 20, 30 percent of them, have the RBF flag on.
Right? Because Like, we can see that. The average. Yes. Yeah. Now how many of them actually did use, the the bumping functionality successfully to bump the transaction from just below Binance to just above Binance.
[01:58:50] ODELL:
And we we talked about your threat at Bittdevs the other day, so I know it's under a percent. It was like what was it? Like, half a percent or something? Yeah. It was,
[01:58:58] Unknown:
just under 1%. Yeah. Right? And we I think a sensible number is, like, a good chunk of the 20, 30 percent that have the RBF flag would use that because if you don't use it then, then when are you going to use it? And why are you even flagging it?
[01:59:15] ODELL:
Yeah. But this because your wallet defaults to it, presumably. Exactly.
[01:59:19] Unknown:
The this is people that use Electromallet and that, for I mean, who Exactly. Exactly. And they because, they're good wallets, and they they just stick to the defaults. A lot of people just stick to the defaults. Again, people who use Everyone sticks to defaults. Exactly. So, like, we haven't successfully even explained to the people that use wallets that support this feature, that you can, do this and how to do it and how it works and and and so on. We successfully, you know, their transaction. And so for the benefit of this being the standard for other people who have no way as in hell to do it. Right? I mean, somebody who sends a transaction from Coinbase or somebody who sends a transaction from Trust Wallet or or Exodus Wallet or, you know, all of these things. Like, they're not going to have any access to this functionality. So they they don't get the benefits of this new policy.
Yeah. But they do, suddenly, end up in a situation where, yeah, suddenly their purchase, didn't happen. They didn't get their phone balance, and they're stuck without data. And, the kind support reps at their merchant of choice informs them that I'm sorry, but we have to wait until this transaction confirms, which might be a week. It might be longer. We don't know. Right? And so and and this is kind of like or or maybe they will inform them that, hey. If you have your seed phrase, maybe you can restore your wallet in in Electrum, and then you go through the following procedure. Like, I mean, it's not realistic. Right?
Yeah.
[02:01:15] ODELL:
So we we kind of under under under Well, like wallets like BlueWallet have, like, a big bump fee button or
[02:01:21] Unknown:
And yes. Or they have, like, even
[02:01:25] ODELL:
I mean, even worse for you. I mean, now they have, like, the cancel transaction button, which is really, like not worse for me. Well, I joke around that it's the button, like, if it was gonna be actively described, it should really say, like, commit fraud button.
[02:01:39] Unknown:
It's not well, I mean, no. I don't think that's fair. But,
[02:01:44] ODELL:
yeah, but It's provocative, which is important.
[02:01:47] Unknown:
Yeah. So, I mean, in the end, we we end up, if, I mean, if a meaningful part of the network uses this flag, which is not at all a given, I I think it's more likely that they don't. But if a meaningful part of the network does, then suddenly we have a Bitcoin that, like, transactions are related by some nodes, not by others. It's confusing. Different map hosts have very different understandings of the world. We still have all of the pinning attacks on on on lightning possible. People who are shopping will have a suckier experience.
The support reps of the companies that provide this, will will have the, very unpleasant experience of explaining to them that this because of how Bitcoin works. And so as a result, a lot of people will perceive Bitcoin to be working badly. And and the and the reasoning for this is that it was always theoretically possible. Right? And theoretically possible
[02:02:48] ODELL:
is I can argue the other side because, I mean, I I'm still not convinced that this is a bad idea. I mean, the argument to me is in in a in a low fee environment, in an environment that we've been in for, like, the last 8 months where one sapper bike gets into the next block, this policy doesn't really matter one way or the other for the most part. And then in a sustained high fee environment, why not? You don't know what the next block is gonna be?
[02:03:16] Unknown:
Right. First of all, when you said it's not true, I mean, fees are not always one centabyte. It's only a But there's been a lot for a long trend of for for months. Yeah. And it's gonna be like that's one centabyte.
[02:03:29] ODELL:
Yeah. Yeah. But, but But then my argument my argument is my argument is is this is a mempool policy. Advanced users can already change it themselves. This just makes it easier for the average node runner to choose what their own mempool does.
[02:03:46] Unknown:
Yeah. So there's also a bit confusion because some people use the word users, in different ways. Right? So, in the core dev community, a user is a user of Bitcoin Core. Right? Whereas I would argue that a user is a user of Bitcoin transactions, which are very different. Right? I mean, there's 40,000 nodes out there, which create a network, which has all of these effects, whereas there's millions of people that use Bitcoin transactions as a thing. So, I mean, it creates a policy, again, where where Bitcoin becomes on chain, Bitcoin becomes unpredictable. It exposes merchants to bigger risks, not the, not the double spend risk, but the currency risk.
It doesn't achieve any of the benefits, you know, in a lot of ways, it's like I mean, like, the probability I actually looked up the probability of a plane crashing, and that's like 1 in 10,000,000. Right? Versus a double spend by our our at least from our data is like 1 in 1,000,000,
[02:04:51] ODELL:
1 in 1,000,000 something. Right? So it's like So you're more likely to get double spent than die in a plane crash?
[02:04:58] Unknown:
Yes. For one transaction or one one flight, but it's one order of magnitude away. Right? So 10 flights, you you into one transaction. Sorry. Later. Yeah. Yeah. Ten flights. If I take 10 flights, I'll probably get double spent on one of the flights. Right. And so the reasoning was that it was always possible so it's not secure. Right? Which is basically like saying that aviation is not safe. Right? Because it's always possible to blow up a plane. So let's give every passenger a hand grenade, so that people don't fly planes anymore. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's the same type of reasoning.
[02:05:33] ODELL:
No. No. But it's simple policy, though. So, like, so, like, right now on the screen, like, fortunately in Bitcoin, the way we have it designed, because we want it to be as robust as possible, is that everyone who runs a node has their own mempool. But in practice, some some mempools do matter more than others, and the the mempool we have on screen right now is Wiz's mempool, arguably the most used mempool in the world. If Wizz, regardless of this chord change, can change his own policy on mempool.space to consider every transaction RBF, would that not be the same result at the end of the day, just what he does? Like, wouldn't that end end result be that my mempool at home? Well, well, the merchant is the same transactions?
I mean,
[02:06:22] Unknown:
the the thing is that a a zero com transaction is secured by miners. Right? Unlike a regular transaction, which is secured by by the network and blocks and all these things. Right? It means, you you have to trust miners to not screw you over. Like, that's the trust model, which which which is, again, like, there's a reason why we have blocks and confirmations and so on. Like, we're we're not talking about that. Not an ideal trust model, but Exactly. But the question is whether or not this non ideal, but still pretty good, trust model should be allowed.
Yeah. Right? And there is this, again, emergent property of the network which arises simply because most, nodes and all of the miners run, Bitcoin Core and generally don't, yeah, don't tamper with it. Definitely, usually not even changing defaults, but sometimes, but definitely not, you know, changing code of it. Like, no no miner would, like, recompile a bit concord to change something. So, yes, you're right. It's just a flag, that somebody could have done anyway. But you don't think miners emergent property.
[02:07:33] ODELL:
You don't think miners would change it in a sustained high fee environment?
[02:07:37] Unknown:
Why would they? That makes no sense. Because they'd make more in fees.
[02:07:41] ODELL:
No. They don't. You're kidding me. Yeah. If I so if I said to 1 sapper by transaction and then I sent an RBF Yeah. But, again, we already established it. Nobody does this. Like,
[02:07:53] Unknown:
we established this. Sure. But you're the 1%. Yeah. But the other 99% are not going to do this. There's gonna be fewer people that make on chain transactions at all, which means that the low fee environment will go on much longer even though it's still going to go on quite long. So, you know, yeah, you you know, penny wise, dollar poor. Right? You you save a penny here, on that one RBF transaction, and then you screw over the other 99% of the users. Some of whom will not be using Bitcoin for this sort of transaction. They would be either using lightning, in which case the miners get nothing, or they will use,
[02:08:34] ODELL:
an old coin or centralized solution. The bit refill stats the bit refill stats would would dictate that they're not gonna use lightning or the minority will use lightning.
[02:08:43] Unknown:
I mean, I don't think I mean, I want nothing more than people to use lightning, but I don't think that breaking things that they currently use, is, the right way. Yeah. Like, we'll see, how this happens. I mean, like, there is a a lot of thing like, things that we can do, but it may be as simple as I mean, the whole model of, you know, scan a QR code, to pay this many sats for something that costs $100, is relatively unique. Right? The default model in in Bitcoin is that you deposit to an exchange or to an account of some sort. Right? Right. And then in that world, everybody knows that you need to wait for confirmations and this and that. Not even that.
[02:09:34] ODELL:
If I send a 100,000 stats, like, my exchange after confirmation shows a 100,000 stats, and then I can Exactly. Exactly. And and and, like, that's probably the most user friendly solution,
[02:09:46] Unknown:
to do. And, as a result, that means that people that provide, you know, buy stuff with Bitcoin functionality would probably, at least somewhat likely, move to an account based model.
[02:10:03] ODELL:
Accounts They gotta load up it refill with Sats.
[02:10:06] Unknown:
Yeah. You can already do that. Some and people use that. I mean, that we have that functionality in place today. Yeah. But a lot of people also like that you don't need to have an account. You just scan a QR code and so on. Right? And so I think that that model, is, is good. I think it does a lot for privacy and for freedoms, because, having accounts, you know, is, trusted third parties or security host and so on. Right. You will never send the exact amount, right, because you have to send, the there's gonna be volatility during the time that your transaction is going to be made. Basically. And the lower the amount to your Bitrefill account. You're gonna have some stats left on Bitrefill that we could theoretically argue with,
[02:10:51] ODELL:
and so on and such forth. Right? So it's a broken incentive. It encourages custodianship,
[02:10:56] Unknown:
basically, is Yes. What you're saying. Yeah. A 100%. And it discourages the circular economy, like, the, again, the the scan, the QR code to buy a thing. So and it was done, you know, like, hey. Everybody in the meeting list agreed. I don't think anybody consulted any of the top wallets or merchant services or anything, and not none of them were on the mailing list at the time. So, the thing passed, and Dario from Moon started raising hell, a little bit too late, it turns out, and, we chime in. I'm very disappointed that the other merchants, that I've talked to, all agreed, that this was really bad, but none of them actually spoke up, at least not on the mailing list, which may be They're too scared to speak publicly. They don't want back office. I think so. I think so.
[02:11:49] ODELL:
Yeah. And and so then it becomes that day. It's just Vitrifil. Yeah. But it's not just Vitrifil. It's everybody that provides you the possibility to buy things by by scanning a QR code. We've seen with Moon that there was a bit of a Streisand effect. So as soon as they started making noise about it, like, people are actively attacking Moon now because it is possible.
[02:12:10] Unknown:
Are they? So, like, the world I don't know about that. I'll, we can we can we we can ask Dario, like, how many successfully
[02:12:20] ODELL:
There are people actively attacking Moon right now is my understanding. I would say to all those people
[02:12:26] Unknown:
Are they in collaboration with minors? Or
[02:12:29] ODELL:
I would say Moon is well aware of the attacks, and they're trying to solve it and, try and give them a break.
[02:12:36] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, Moon's security model is a little bit different because, Moon is Bitcoin and Bitcoin out, which means that you can try and, try and attack as many times as you want.
[02:12:49] ODELL:
Right? Well, they like, Moon's not a real lightning wallet. Like, it can pay lightning invoices, but it relies on 0 comp to pay the lightning invoice. So In some cases. If you use a modified if you use a modified yeah. If you use a modified Moon client, you can attack it. Sure. My my point is that
[02:13:05] Unknown:
with something like Moon, you know, even if you have a fraction of a percent probability of succeeding, you can just keep trying, and eventually you will succeed. Right. Right? Whereas, with most, merchant services such as Bitrefa, but also, like, you know, hey. Yeah. I bought something on, on whatever, CoinKite. You know, after you bought, then there's an order, and then you're gonna get a thing. Right? You don't get your Bitcoins out easily. And so if you try to double spend, failed, ended up still buying the thing, you you you can't, you know, profitably keep trying. Right? And I think that that's part of why we're seeing, you know, 1 in a 1000000, numbers, whereas, probably theoretical probabilities, it will be higher.
[02:13:49] ODELL:
Okay. So, I mean, it looks like well, first off, I'm kind of of the mindset that anything's not that's not consensus, I think, should just have a toggle in Bitcoin Core. Because if if we're encouraging end users to use their own node, they should be able to determine the policy of their own node. Is I I think that's my perspective.
[02:14:17] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, I mean, to some extent, but, I don't know. I mean, in the end, there there is tragedy of the commons. Right? If a certain percentage of people choose to do it for unclear gain,
[02:14:32] ODELL:
then it makes Bitcoin experience worse for for everybody else. I I definitely see how it makes the experience worse for, like, your average, Trust Wallet user or something like that.
[02:14:42] Unknown:
Yeah. Even for your average Electrum user.
[02:14:45] ODELL:
Yeah. I'm definitely sympathetic to it. But so then the next question obviously is okay. So this thing is is it's it's looks like it's definitely gonna happen. What is your path forward on Bitrefill? Is it simply that you're gonna credit Sats and that's gonna be the standard? Or do you have another plan in place? Like, what what is your plan as much as you're willing to disclose?
[02:15:09] Unknown:
We'll see. First of all, there is a question of how many people will run with that flag, and,
[02:15:17] ODELL:
what that But it really comes down to the miners who run it. Right? The miners who are operators that run the nodes.
[02:15:22] Unknown:
Exactly. So, it's possible that, we'll be able to, to continue, operating the way that we currently do. It's also possible that we, we find, other ways. I mean, it's possible that we, you know, turn off 0.5. And, also, when your transaction confirms, recalculate the price. And, oh, it turns out that actually with we said that it was a 100,000 sets, but, actually, by the time we confirm, now it's actually a 100,500. So please send us another transaction for 500 sets, and wait for an indeterminate amount of time until that bot confirms. Right? So, we'll see. Or we just go to the accounts model.
Yeah. But there's a lot of, like, in betweens as well. Like, there's pretty complex decision tree, so I wouldn't sort of worry about, bit refill disappearing anytime soon.
[02:16:26] ODELL:
Yeah. It might not be ideal, but you'll figure it out.
[02:16:29] Unknown:
Yeah. But it but it definitely will you know, it creates a center like, all of this stuff, like, requires dedicated developer resources, which becomes a centralizing pressure because your average, B2C pay server operator is not going to have that, and they're also not gonna have custodial accounts and so on. So, in the end, I I think that we achieved I mean, again, it's not over until people run this. And it's very possible that people will decide that, you know what? It's a the Bitcoin world is actually better if people don't, especially the miners. And I definitely think that miners would earn more money if, well, I mean, it's a treasury of the commons there as well, I guess. If one miner defects, then maybe they will earn a little bit more.
[02:17:21] ODELL:
But But, like, Foundry's Foundry's like 30% of the hash. If if we had a sustained high fee market and they just enabled the flag, then it's Then they they would increase
[02:17:32] Unknown:
their revenue by, you know, I don't know how many zeros there is after the comma. But Right. But, again, they would probably still lose more on the fact that there are less less fees, and less transactions on on the Bitcoin network. So, and and even their share of that, even with the increased percent, is going to be still lower, I think if they run the numbers. But,
[02:18:03] ODELL:
yeah. It's like it's almost not even tragic of the commons. It's like short term versus long term thinking. Right? Like long term, you think they would make more money if if no one enabled it, but short term, they would obviously see Yeah.
[02:18:15] Unknown:
It depends. But, like, very short, very small game. Right? And the damage is pretty pretty quick after. So I don't know. You know, like, I'm of this cool And so what do you think users you think users
[02:18:30] ODELL:
like, a lot of people will say users will switch to lightning. You think users will switch to shake coins and stable coins?
[02:18:36] Unknown:
Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. We've already seen these things. So we we know that that's, what happens. Litecoin is still alive and kicking.
[02:18:47] ODELL:
You know, like, it Depends on the definition of alive.
[02:18:51] Unknown:
Oh, it's bigger than lightning.
[02:18:54] ODELL:
Yeah. I mean, it's a little bar, but okay.
[02:18:57] Unknown:
Is it okay? But, like, that's the thing is that, like, in a lot of ways, like, light Litecoin is becoming the big block, version of Bitcoin, and doesn't have any of the, the history and the badness of BCH. And Right. But, anyway, I think, you know, I think we'll see, you know, what happens from this. It's not the end of the world. None of this is. I think it was a poor decision. I think it was poorly under built decision. Like, if there was a more thorough process, then it could have been avoided. There are other things that, Bitcoin Core has have done in the past 5 years that have gotten adoption. For example, fee estimation is a thing now.
It wasn't the thing 5 years ago. Right? Almost all transactions today use fee estimation. And they didn't 5 years ago. So there are things that come out of the Bitcoin core project that are successful, and there are things that are not successful. And, I think it's unfortunate to double down on those which are not successful.
[02:20:15] ODELL:
Fair enough. Fair enough. Look. I wanna thank you again for joining us. I I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope the Freaks did as well. Yeah. Likewise. Do you have any final thoughts for us before we wrap up?
[02:20:29] Unknown:
No, man. I'm, quite tired here. So Fair enough. I think I rambled on. Thank you so much for bearing with, with me and all of my, church cursing.
[02:20:41] ODELL:
I I I, I appreciate you joining us for 2 and a half hours. I know I know time is money and your time is scarce, so, it it does mean a lot. I will definitely be using the phrase, cursing in a church probably too much. I think it's just translation from a Swedish expression. It's great. It's a great it's a great expression, so I'm definitely gonna be using it more. I wanna thank all the freaks for joining us and supporting the show. Reminder that we are now on geyser.fund. You can get there by going to citadel.lolorsatsfundme.com, or go into sillodespatch.com.
Once again, all the podcasting 2.0 support also gets channeled through there, or at least it's visible through there. It's all going to my notes. So you can see in real time how much support is happening for dispatch and and be more active in that in that conversation. I want I want you guys I wanna be as transparent as possible here about how much funding is coming into dispatch and and really proving out that the value for value model is a real model that we don't need to have, you know, 9 minutes of corporate ads before shows. I do think it aligns incentives better. I'm here to provide you guys the best conversations. I want you guys to participate in this process. This is this is a group thing. This is something we're all doing together.
If you're not subscribed on your favorite platform, consider subscribing. I have a great conversation set up for the same time on Monday. It's gonna it's it's gonna be a really fantastic conversation. I have Dylan LeClaire and Checkmate joining for it, so it'll be a fun one. We'll talk about the current state of Bitcoin and all the chaos and whatnot that's going on. I love you all. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing with friends and family. Have a great Thanksgiving if you are in America. If you're outside of America, appreciate your friends and family. That's what we we do for Thanksgiving, if you're not aware.
That's always a good thing to do week in and week out. That's what's important. And stay humble, Stack Sash. Cheers all. Thanks for your day.
[02:22:51] Unknown:
Thanks, man. It's been fun.
Introduction
Supporting the show through donations and boostagrams
Discussion on Bitrefill and its services
The importance of knowing the argument for having things be bitcoin only
The challenge of research and decision-making for the average person
The large number of users and the unknown Bitcoin community
The inconvenience of streaming platforms and the return to BitTorrent
The uncertainty of the future of streaming platforms
Speculation on the potential control of Bitcoin by governments
Trust model of zero confirmation transactions
Miners changing transactions in a high fee environment
Account-based model vs QR code payments