What are Bitcoin nodes and how do they run the Bitcoin network? This week's episode cover's the various nodes of the Bitcoin network, their roles and how they work symbiotically to keep the money sound, the network secure and transactions flowing.
BTC Daily Close: $26,563
Block height at time of recording 808,219
News and Notes
African Bitcoin Mining Conference
Zero Knowledge Proofs and Bitcoin Nodes
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I can be reached by email at [email protected] and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @[email protected]. I'm also on matrix at @mcintosh1775:matrix.org. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Website
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
Hey, Sats Stackers. Today is September 18th, and this is episode 130 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host McIntosh. And today's episode is another Bitcoin basics nodes on the network. Alright. Let's get into it. Got a lot to cover, and I wanna make it as short as possible for your listening pleasure. We'll cover the market. We had a Bitcoin weekly close. Well, let's see. What do we got? 2 and a half hours ago at time of recording. That was at 26,500 and 63. We had a block type at time of recording, as in right now, of 808,219.
Alright. We have an estimated difficulty adjustment of plus 5.17% happening on September 20th. So that's just a couple days from now. Unfortunately, it looks like things have been progressing along a little too fast, like, 9 and a half minutes on average since the last difficulty adjustment, hence the pretty steep increase. But interestingly, recently, it actually seems to have slowed down. I saw earlier man, there was one that took almost an, like, an hour. It's really weird. Right now, we got an average transaction fee of, 20 sats per a v byte, which is a little high, a little high. Of course, mempool is up to 1.25 gigabytes. Man, it's getting getting big with 565,000 unconfirmed transactions.
So things are stacked and racked and ready to be packed up into those blocks. We're actually gonna be discussing that a little bit tonight, kind of the flow of that as part of our discussion. So maybe you'll have a little better understanding of that if you don't know what I mean when I'm talking about that. Alright. I'm not really gonna go over market update. Hey. It's the same. Like I said, well, we're actually up a little bit, 26.7 right now, even since our close. So we did close the week, of course, over that 26,300 to 300 level.
So I don't know. We'll see. Again, I'm not convinced until we break well above 30,000, on consistent basis, you know, for multiple days slash really weeks. We're in a we're in a crab market. We're we're going sideways. I wouldn't say we're in a bear market because we're not continuing to go down. We keep going down and pulling right back up. And since, what, early early this year, we've not been down below, just a few $1,000 below where we're at right now. So I would call it a crab market. That's what we got. So, of course, what's our strategy? Every week we talk about this. I don't care what the price is. You should be DCA ing. Right? I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who is frankly showing some interest in Bitcoin, and I don't think he realized how involved I was. So
[00:03:50] Unknown:
we were we were driving somewhere. We were actually having a discussion about
[00:03:55] McIntosh:
just kind of the world in general. And he does know I'm involved in Bitcoin, but he turns to me and he's like, well, you should run some miners. And I'm like, well, I already do. But, anyways, we had a great discussion
[00:04:10] Unknown:
a great discussion, but, you know, you don't have to guess at this. You don't have to worry about if it's up, if it's down.
[00:04:16] McIntosh:
Just like I told him, just DCA. Get the strike app. I think cash app does the same thing. Whatever. Buy Bitcoin on a daily basis. When you get any kind of amount, you know, a couple $100, move it off to cold storage. That should be your next step. What do I do? Why buy Bitcoin? What do I do next? I set up cold storage seed signer or ledger, I guess, or something like that. A hardware wallet and then, start saving. That's what you do. Right? We don't trade. We don't do any of that. Just just save. Save and come back to me in 8 years, 10 years. That'd be 2 complete cycles.
You will be happy you did. Let's jump on into our topic. We're gonna cover a good bit of ground today, but it all ties in together and I think it's all very important. It's actually in the end, I was actually just going to talk about Bitcoin nodes, the kind that are not miners that just run the Bitcoin software. And I actually ended up tying in the whole thing together because it really makes sense. So we are going to talk about Bitcoin nodes in general, and there are multiple different kinds. We'll talk about that. It will give you a good understanding, I think, of how the Bitcoin network itself actually works.
So that you, have some understanding of how transactions work, how, you know, your Bitcoin gets to someone else or how transactions are verified, all of this kind of stuff. So we'll we'll jump right in there and we'll cover all that. So Bitcoin nodes in general are the underlying infrastructure of the Bitcoin network. They secure it. They maintain it. It is because of Bitcoin nodes that the network is even possible. Without them, there would be no Bitcoin network. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't really understand what they are and how they work.
So we're going to talk about that. Before we do, I want to cover some topics. There's 3 different ways of looking at bitcoin. There's 3 different things that Bitcoin can refer to. Bitcoin is a network. It's a collection of these nodes. We're gonna talk about the nodes more specifically very shortly. But it's a collection of computers that are tied together essentially communicating with each other, sharing information back and forth. That is the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is a protocol. Bitcoin is a set of rules. That's what the protocol means. That's what it defines. A set of rules for how that information can be shared back and forth.
[00:07:07] Unknown:
Those rules
[00:07:09] McIntosh:
keep things from like double spending occurring for example. Bitcoin is also, some software. It's a program. You'll often hear Bitcoin Core, which is one of the most common versions of this Bitcoin software. It's a program that understands these protocol rules. It's been programmed to understand these protocol rules. It's run by computers on the network, and it drives that network really. The Bitcoin nodes, they're computers that they run that software, that Bitcoin software and there are different versions of that. I don't wanna get hung up on that but it's not just the core Bitcoin software. Although that is certainly the most common, and they're connected by this Bitcoin network. They validate. They broadcast.
They process and they store Bitcoin transactions. Alice wants to send Bob 1 bitcoin. I don't know. For whatever reason, that's a transaction. They're batched up. They're stored in a group. This is for an efficiency thing, right? That group, that's actually a block. So when somebody says, here's a block of Bitcoin. What they mean is, this is a block of transactions, of Bitcoin transactions. And actually, this is actually where blockchain comes from. When when this term was created, it was referring to Bitcoin and it was talking about these blocks of transactions.
And part of those blocks is basically information that points back to the block. Previous block, if I'm not mistaken. It gives a historical context into it. It creates that chain. It gives the Bitcoin
[00:09:03] Unknown:
core pro and I'm gonna again, I don't wanna get bogged down on this. It's not just a Bitcoin core software, but it's just habit. So it gives us Bitcoin core, the ability to traverse that chain of transactions. So before a new block gets added to that blockchain, those
[00:09:24] McIntosh:
transactions have to be verified as valid. So that is the function of some of these Bitcoin nodes. These nodes on the network. Not all of them, and we're gonna break that down in a few minutes. But when somebody says, I run a Bitcoin node, this is what they mean. This is a node that runs the Bitcoin core software or some other version of that software, of the Bitcoin protocol software. And that's what it does. It sits there and it verifies transactions. So these are a very important part of the network. What are they verifying? They're doing things like checking to see that the double spending issue that I was talking about, whether you have spent that Bitcoin twice or whether a sender actually has the Bitcoin that's being sent. All of these different rules that have been created over the last, what, 14 years in order to ensure the correctness of the blockchain.
They're programmed into Bitcoin core And therefore, they're running on those Bitcoin nodes and they're verifying the transactions
[00:10:36] Unknown:
that are flowing through it. When you have a bunch of servers, a bunch of bitcoin nodes that agree on a transaction, they are reaching what's called consensus. Consensus meaning they agree on it. They they say, yes. This is good. Nobody's saying it's a bad block. Okay? So that's what they do. 247. Every minute of the day. Nodes do not
[00:11:06] McIntosh:
assume that a block is valid. Nodes do the work. We love in Bitcoin to say proof of work. This is proof of work. We
[00:11:17] Unknown:
do the work to verify that those transactions are valid. To to do this, the Bitcoin nodes, they have to be able to run,
[00:11:31] McIntosh:
they have to be able to have access to a full copy of the Bitcoin blockchain. So when you bring up a new node, and I've done this, I have 2 nodes running right now. And when you do this, the first thing it does, you set up the Bitcoin software, you connect it to the network. So if you establish connectivity to other nodes peers, then it downloads literally like the original data, the Genesis block, and it starts building the blockchain from there. And it runs through the whole thing. And you can watch it in the log file. It's amazing. It starts from gracious alive. Whenever it was that it came online.
January of 2,009, if I'm not mistaken, all the way up to the present time. It literally does the work to verify that entire thing. When it's done, it has a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain. That takes up a fair amount of space. I believe it's around 600 gigs right now. So that has become a little bit problematic. We're gonna set that aside for now, but we're actually gonna come back to that because 600 gigs is a is a pretty good amount, and that can be, there's ways around that. So we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But right now, I just wanna kinda set that aside. Each node though has a full blockchain or they've run through all that work. Let's just say it that way,
[00:13:06] Unknown:
To crit to authenticate that blockchain.
[00:13:10] McIntosh:
Alright. Now, when a new block gets sent out, each node has to decide whether they're going to add a copy of that block to their blockchain. They are not trusting this is why we say trustless. They are not trusting anyone. They are verifying everything. And this is very important. It is part of the foundational principles of Bitcoin. So do not gloss over that. We do not trust. We verify. Right? Let's break this down a little bit. So what I have been describing is what is called a full node. Now I glossed over some details in there and we're gonna come back to that in a minute. But before we do, we're going to talk about miners because miners are nodes. The miners that I have sit there, they are nodes on the Bitcoin network. They are essentially separate from a core, Bitcoin node. They don't run the same software, in fact, that they used to, actually.
From my understanding in the very early days, that's what they did. But as mining has gotten more sophisticated, they have evolved. They run different software that it implements the same protocol. Remember, we got Bitcoin protocol, but they do not use the same software because they do different things. Going back to your full node, transaction is valid. Once it authenticates that a transaction is valid, that actually gets sent out to the the peers and those that are connected to it. Those nodes also verify it once a, sufficient number of nodes have verified, and I don't know what that number is, but once a sufficient number of nodes have agreed that this transaction is valid, it's then added to a pool of other valid transactions. And that's kind of where the miners pick up, just to wrap that up. Now, mining nodes, they pick up those transactions.
They package them actually into blocks. Miners run a
[00:15:23] Unknown:
set of rules protocol, if you wanna call it that, for creating and proposing blocks to the Bitcoin network. So miners can create and propose blocks.
[00:15:36] McIntosh:
These core Bitcoin nodes on the other hand, they verify blocks. There's they they balance each other. See, a miner can create a block, they can inject things in it and it may break the rules of Bitcoin. See, they can compromise the system if you wanna think of it that way, which is kind of what is that's actually a valid way of looking at it.
[00:15:59] Unknown:
But
[00:16:01] McIntosh:
core nodes, these Bitcoin nodes, people call them Bitcoin nodes. There's probably a better way of saying it. These bitcoin nodes on the other hand, they validate the transaction. So if they catch a miner
[00:16:13] Unknown:
creating an illegal transaction,
[00:16:16] McIntosh:
they throw out the transaction. They won't verify it. So they balance each other and I think that's very important. No one in Bitcoin should trust anyone else. Again, trustless. I may know you, you may know me, but we don't really know each other, do we? You're listening to me on a podcast ramble on for a 130 episodes now. You may think you know a lot about me, but you really don't. And it's always best to verify what you can, especially when it comes to something that's this important. So miners, like I said, they have a set of rules for creating and proposing blocks. The type thing we're talking about is how big those blocks can be.
Alright. I'll have the block, block size wars that happened, what, in 2017. How you can format a transaction and how to sign a block. How to put your stamp on it and say, yep, this block is good. Miners are also competing against each other in a race to create the next block. Once a miner thinks it created a valid block, it's going to broadcast that valid proposed block, I should say, out to other nodes on the network for them to put their stamp on it and say, yes, this is a good block. So that block is broadcast out to those Bitcoin nodes, those full nodes, and they're gonna validate the block. So they validate transactions and they validate the block itself.
If a full node considers that block to be valid, it then adds the block to its copy of the blockchain. It broadcasts it to other full nodes and they go through that same verification process. Once you have a sufficient number of those, and again, I don't know what that number is, but it's just like the transactions. Consensus is considered to be reached and the transactions are processed. There, the nodes verify and store the updated versions
[00:18:28] Unknown:
and, of the blockchain.
[00:18:31] McIntosh:
And the miners, you know, of course have moved on to creating that next block. Again, I wanna draw attention, which I already did, but I wanna draw attention to the fact that essentially miners and full nodes, they're not competing with each other. I wouldn't call it that, but they do have different jobs. Miners are trying to create valid blocks as fast as possible. That's how they get their money. This block reward is the Bitcoin that is pre programmed, so right now 6.25 Bitcoin per block, plus the transaction fees on top of that. So they are incentivized to work as fast as they can.
That is why you see things like miners who tune their software to over, overclock their ASICs for example. So the miners are proposing blocks to the Bitcoin network. Full nodes are not proposing blocks. They cannot do that, obviously. If they did, then they could earn those rewards. Miners can receive block rewards, of course for doing that, full notes cannot. There is a difference. Essentially, maybe this sounds bad but there's well, it's the truth. There's no direct financial incentive for running a full node. However, full nodes are required to run the Bitcoin network. So why would people run those? Why do I run 2 of those? That's probably costing me 10, $20 a month to do that in terms of computing resources.
Well, because it helps power the Bitcoin network. Because I think that the Bitcoin network is important enough to throw my hat in the ring, and it's reasonable what these things take, but it's still a computing cost. And so I do that as to help support that network. That's why people do it. There's other reasons on top of that. You can use that to verify the chain data. I don't know. There's probably more reasons than that, but that's certainly a good place to start. I I wanna break down a full node because there's actually 2 kinds of full nodes. And it's a semi important distinction to make before we go on because there's some other stuff too that will other types of notes. But I this is probably a good place to, to talk about. There's 2 types of full nodes. There's called archive nodes.
Archive nodes, they have a full and complete copy of the Blockchain. Every transaction, they can verify everything. So aside from the archive nodes, there's another type of full node. They're called, ironically I think, pruned nodes. So full is like the opposite of pruned to me. So pruned nodes don't actually store the full blockchain. They store a subset of it. So let's say you let's say that the current transaction space takes up like 600 gigs. It's something like that. Maybe I only have a 100 gigs that I can spare for that. Maybe I only have 50 gigs. Maybe I only have 5 gigs. I think one of my nodes is actually running on 5. I think the other one, I think I do like probably 50 or something. But both of mine are actually pruned. It does start from the start. It does verify everything all the way up to current day. But essentially, going out the tail, so to speak, it's dropping off blocks.
So it doesn't keep that data after it verifies it within that window. So if I've got a 100 gigs, that's probably more than a year's worth of data at this point still. So maybe that goes back to July or June of 2022. If I've only got 5 gig, that may only be a month or so. But I've got all the current data for that month plus I've verified everything up to that point. So it still goes through that proof of work to verify everything and that but it just kinda discards what it it it doesn't keep because of space issues. Okay. So why they're called full nodes, I I don't know. They are considered the equivalent in terms of running the Bitcoin network, however.
The Earl Grey, it was extremely hot when I started. It's already cooling off. Of course, I'm 20 minutes into this, so I would ex I'm 27. Good gracious, alive, Macintosh.
[00:23:09] Unknown:
But I am approaching the end, so we're gonna wrap this up.
[00:23:12] McIntosh:
Again, 2 types of full nodes. I'm not gonna get super in detail on that. They are considered equivalent in terms of running nodes on the network. Now, other times types of nodes. Actually, when you run a miner nodes and you participate in a mining pool, which I've talked about. Most people do participate in mining pools simply because they don't have enough power. They would be like solo mining is what they call it, and the chances of them actually mining a block would be very, very little simply because the network has essentially gotten so big at this point. I would say the vast majority of people out there are using mining pools. Mining pools, actually use a a mining pool. They call it a mining pool node or I think I've called it I heard a couple of different things. That orchestrates the group of miners in that pool and they probably can have multiple because pools can have thousands of servers. People used to say, well, all mining nodes were full nodes. That's not really true anymore.
The miner nodes have become so specialized. But the pool node, I believe, either has a full set or it has access to a full node that has that blockchain for verification. But they're used to kind of coordinate that mining pool. So they're a semi specialized type of node in the network, but they're a node. They're a Bitcoin node and it's important to know about them. So anyways, there are a couple more here. We'll go back. There's a light node which isn't a full node. So it's it's a very lightweight version of the blockchain. Essentially, you would see something on it like this for maybe a mobile wallet, this kind of thing, where they only keep the headers of the blocks, and they don't keep the full blocks.
But it means that you can do it on a very very small kind of lightweight machine. And then you you can send or receive bitcoin like, from your phone. And you're technically running a node on the network and you are. But you cannot use that node, it's important to note this, to validate transactions. So it depends on those full nodes to do that. So again, we go back to those full nodes which are either archival or the pruned nodes, in order to, to validate those transactions. Alright. Lightning nodes. Lightning nodes are part of the lightning network, but they do interact with the Bitcoin main net. The this this layer, these all these other nodes that we're talking about. So, they speak the same protocol, they, you know, they can interface and they provide that way that the lightning nodes, you know, can provide this basically instantaneous transactions across the internet.
So those are actually a type of bitcoin node. And I think that's it. That is actually it. Okay. So there we go. I'm not sure that liquid has nodes. I do not know if they do or not. They may have something similar to lightning. So I'll go ahead and add them to the list, not even knowing that, which is a huge mistake. But liquid is not something we've really talked about a whole lot, but it's somewhat similar to lightning. So I hope that helps you understand how transactions flow through the system. I'll try and come up with a diagram and maybe post it on Twitter, that would might be helpful. Because
[00:26:45] Unknown:
this whole transaction thing, I mean, it is a little complicated but I do think it's worth understanding. Alright. So for our supporters this week
[00:26:56] McIntosh:
actually, before I jump into that, let me do this. I did have a clip made. I was hoping for more. I'll be perfectly honest. So Kyron over at Mare Mortals did make a clip of me actually talking about this clip program. And I replied to that or boosted that. It's not really a boost, but I replied to that. Gave him 500 sats. I tried to send a message, but frankly, fountain did not allow me to do that. I'm not sure why. But the message simply was, thanks. I appreciate that. And he should have gotten that 500 sets. Kyron, if you did not, please let me know. I'm quite sure that you did, but since this is the first time we've really done this, I would like to not trust but verify.
Little joke there. And, and we'll, you know, I'll make sure that that's taken care of. So again, I would encourage you. For those of you who didn't hear last week, if you go out and make a clip of any part of the current episode,
[00:28:00] Unknown:
500 sats,
[00:28:01] McIntosh:
I reply to your thing or well, yeah. I reply to it, and I boost you essentially 500 If you do that for an older show so this would be for episode 130. If you went back to 129 or 128 or 127 or that great 126 seed signer episode, there's lots of stuff I think in there that could be clipped up and make a clip. I'll give you 300 and you can do multiple. I'm trying to spend money here to spread the word about generation bitcoin, because we've got lots of good things going on here. I'm fixing to tell you about a couple of more interviews we got coming up that I'm super pumped about. We'll go ahead and do that news and notes section after our supporters. We did have support this week. Of course, this is kind of the short half of the week, so to speak.
Typically, not as much, and our total support this week was a 1,000, for this section of the week was a 1,081 sats. So probably right at 1100 sats. There was some streaming going on, which I certainly appreciate. We had Berno who sent in a boost. Our friend, Berno, we hear from him a a good bit. Thank you, Berno, your faithful supporter of this show. And he or she, I do not know, but I don't wanna presume. Always a pleasure to be in your company. Thank you very much. That's awesome. So I appreciate that, and I appreciate the sats. So from there, let's dive on into our news and wrap this puppy up because I do not wanna keep this long.
We will have longer shows, it looks like, with our interviews. I've got 2 more of those lined up at this point. I think it's confident I'm safe to say this. I do have someone who lives in El Salvador. They're a I believe they're a software engineer down there, a professional, probably lives in Buenos Aires from what I'm I think I'm seeing, and I'm hoping we're gonna have a good discussion. Their hyperinflation is off the chain. I saw a figure 125% today. Of course, they've got the election coming up in October, which I've discussed off and on a good bit. I wanna talk to them about that. I wanna talk to them about how they are coping with these hyperinflation well, I consider it hyperinflation.
Extreme inflation, hyperinflation is what? It's 50 no. It's I guess it's really not hyperinflation. I don't wanna be spreading rumors so careful what you're saying, Macintosh. This extreme inflation, you know, how are they dealing with that? And, of course, they're involved with Bitcoin as well, so we'll talk about that. Earlier today, I got some news. I got a message back. I have asked, Eric at Gridless over in Africa to come on the show, And he has graciously agreed to that. Now I'm gonna hold him to that. So, Eric, if don't back out on me.
But I this is one of the people I've been wanting to talk to.
[00:31:05] Unknown:
And I'm very appreciative that he is
[00:31:08] McIntosh:
going to make the time to do that. Next week, he is actually going to be at the African Bitcoin Mining Conference. So there'll be a link to that in the show notes. It's basically a get together of of African Bitcoin miners and their circumstances, which are different frankly than the circumstances here in the United States. Probably, we'll do the Argentinian episode, next Sunday, So one week or next Monday. And then Eric's the following Monday. And that's kind of the schedule I wanna keep. I may not do an interview. Obviously, we're not doing an this week, but we'll do those interviews on Monday. We'll do my kind of weekly wrap up on Thursdays. Late Thursdays really is what it's turning into, to be honest, but Thursdays anyways.
And and, yeah, that's kind of I think that's gonna work out real well. So, let's jump into the news. There was not, again, a whole lot. You can follow me on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I always post stuff on there. And I by the way, I I don't know that I've made this clear. I post a lot more than just what we talk about on here. So, you know, some of it's not really news. Some of it may be not noteworthy enough, but yeah. So I already mentioned Africa Bitcoin, mining summit that's being put on by the Green African Mining Alliance. So I wished I could go. I mean, honestly, maybe next year I can. I doubt it, to be honest, but maybe.
That is a part of the world I would like to look at. I would like to see. I've never been there. And I believe that what these people are doing is very important, and I I don't know, maybe I can support them somehow. So I did wanna point that out. Congo, also in Africa, of course, is having a coup, it appears. I tried to look this up. They have a border with the Central African Republic, but I'm almost certain at this point that they are not part of the French, currency, scam, I would call it, the CFA. And, I think it's the Democratic Republic of Congo that was. So I'm gonna step out on a limb. I probably shouldn't say this. I do not think Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, like, split apart.
So I don't think Congo has ever been part of that. I may be mistaken, But again, we see this FOMET, this,
[00:33:42] Unknown:
Africa is, you know, for
[00:33:44] McIntosh:
I don't know. There's stuff going on there. They've got a lot of issues. A lot of the countries have severe inflation. Things are just not good. And so we're seeing this kind of stuff happen. It was the military again. Actually, apparently, it was the presidential guard, interestingly enough. So that's all the details I know. I did think it was worth mentioning though. I hope in the long run that's a good thing. I'll try and bring you some more information about that maybe next week or maybe we can talk to Eric about that. I would think he might know something about that. Maybe he doesn't. I don't know. It's the entire other side of the continent. So he works, over in East Africa from what I from what I understand.
Looks like some Bitcoin things are going on in Cuba, which I think is very interesting. So it's some good stuff there. Not a whole lot, but there was just a tweet about it. And, actually, as an add on to this note stuff, there's a very good article that I posted too. We may actually have some stuff so that we can essentially instantaneously have what amounts to a full note. So they're using what are called zero knowledge proofs. This is something I know about from my dirty altcoin past. So this was one of the some of the stuff that has been done on different altcoins. So I am a little familiar with this. I'm maybe even more than a little familiar with it. I'm not going to go into depth on this show about 0, knowledge proofs. I I just don't know that it's really appropriate.
However, basically it's a way to do all the verification upfront and then you can prove that that verification was done and then you can kinda get rid of all that data and then just say, hey, we verified everything up through, you know, 2020 and then start your bitcoin node there. So this article is a pretty good there's some people who are working on that and eventually, it may become kind of the standard way of doing this. So rather than a pruned node, you could run a 0 sync node, and
[00:35:58] Unknown:
effectively have an instant on node that would come up immediately.
[00:36:03] McIntosh:
I don't have any information about this, but I did see, Justin Trudeau up in Canada, our neighbors to the north. And let me tell you something. The Canadian people I don't know if I've said this before, but we spent some time up there this summer. Years ago, I spent some time in Ottawa in the capital. 6 weeks actually there with some work stuff. So my reflection on Canada in general is that the people are extremely polite. Now, your politicians who run your country, ladies and gentlemen, they're a hot mess. They're maybe worse than the United States which is saying a lot. And, of course, I live in the United States, so I can denigrate my own politicians all I want. And in fact, I did so this week on Twitter, if you wanna follow me there.
Justin Trudeau basically got up and said and this I mean, I'm not making this up. It sounds like a joke. In this speech, he says, basically, we've got issues with high inflation for groceries, for food. So you, whatever the big grocery chains are up there, and I do not know that, but he was specifically talking about these large grocery chains. You are either gonna have to figure this out or we're going to tax you. The way that this works is the grocery I mean, this this is like 5th grade stuff, I would think.
[00:37:39] Unknown:
Grocery stores buy the food stuff from their vendors who source it wherever they source it from. And
[00:37:47] McIntosh:
then they mark it up a little bit and then they sell it to the public. That's what they do. And, traditionally, the margin in grocery business has been pretty thin. So what Justin Trudeau is saying, hey, you can figure out how to cut your cost, which they can't do because they're fixed cost, and what are you gonna do? Or we're gonna tax you. Because, you know, capital controls. Yeah. That always works out well. I don't you know, as these systems grind down to a halt, Keynesian economics fails, this stuff will become more and more prevalent. And the idiocy,
[00:38:37] Unknown:
frankly, that it represents will become more and more obvious. So don't buy into this crap. That is someone who is either doesn't understand economics at all and how grocery stores work, or they're just being
[00:38:58] McIntosh:
a power mad politician who thinks that that's gonna get them more votes. I will leave it up to the Canadian people to decide which one of those 2 are. As far as I can tell, they I think they're thinking he's a power mad politician, but
[00:39:13] Unknown:
okay. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the news and notes for this week. I'll have a couple of links there in the, show notes,
[00:39:25] McIntosh:
But that's gonna wrap it up for this week. Now, generation bitcoin, we support podcasting 2.0. We are a value for value podcast. What does that mean? I have not said a single thing about that tonight.
[00:39:38] Unknown:
We have no sponsors. We have no advertising. I will never take advertising,
[00:39:43] McIntosh:
Not ever. And maybe it's time I actually do an episode about that, so you understand why I don't ever take advertisers or sponsors. There's good reasons. It's not because I don't want to become rich.
[00:39:55] Unknown:
Sorry.
[00:39:57] McIntosh:
It's because I believe what is that is what is right. At least for me. And I can only speak for that.
[00:40:03] Unknown:
But, you can support this podcast in 3 ways. Time, talent, treasure.
[00:40:09] McIntosh:
If you wanna support the podcast and have some time or talent, there's stuff you can do. Just reach out to me.
[00:40:15] Unknown:
Transcripts, other things,
[00:40:18] McIntosh:
website work. There's look. I have a 1,000,000 ideas in my head. I just don't have time to do them all. That's the truth. Treasure? Well, maybe not a million, but a lot.
[00:40:28] Unknown:
Treasure is just what it sounds like. If you find the content valuable, you can support this podcast by streaming sat or boosting like Bruno did earlier or going out and clipping shows,
[00:40:43] McIntosh:
and I will see that and I will reply to it. And if I ever don't see it, just please reach out to me. There's a number of ways I'll I'll go through that list in just a second.
[00:40:53] Unknown:
But, if you find the content valuable,
[00:40:56] McIntosh:
you can stream the stats, you can boost from podcast 2.0 app. There's a bunch of them at podcastapps.com. If you like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the Generation Bitcoin podcast. As I say quite frequently, That is the single most important way that this podcast can spread. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I hope you've learned something from it. I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I'm on mastodon@[email protected], and you can reach me by email at [email protected].
[00:41:33] Unknown:
Matrix, Macintosh 1775 colon matrix.org. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I will talk to y'all Thursday.
Hey, Sats Stackers. Today is September 18th, and this is episode 130 of generation Bitcoin. I'm your host McIntosh. And today's episode is another Bitcoin basics nodes on the network. Alright. Let's get into it. Got a lot to cover, and I wanna make it as short as possible for your listening pleasure. We'll cover the market. We had a Bitcoin weekly close. Well, let's see. What do we got? 2 and a half hours ago at time of recording. That was at 26,500 and 63. We had a block type at time of recording, as in right now, of 808,219.
Alright. We have an estimated difficulty adjustment of plus 5.17% happening on September 20th. So that's just a couple days from now. Unfortunately, it looks like things have been progressing along a little too fast, like, 9 and a half minutes on average since the last difficulty adjustment, hence the pretty steep increase. But interestingly, recently, it actually seems to have slowed down. I saw earlier man, there was one that took almost an, like, an hour. It's really weird. Right now, we got an average transaction fee of, 20 sats per a v byte, which is a little high, a little high. Of course, mempool is up to 1.25 gigabytes. Man, it's getting getting big with 565,000 unconfirmed transactions.
So things are stacked and racked and ready to be packed up into those blocks. We're actually gonna be discussing that a little bit tonight, kind of the flow of that as part of our discussion. So maybe you'll have a little better understanding of that if you don't know what I mean when I'm talking about that. Alright. I'm not really gonna go over market update. Hey. It's the same. Like I said, well, we're actually up a little bit, 26.7 right now, even since our close. So we did close the week, of course, over that 26,300 to 300 level.
So I don't know. We'll see. Again, I'm not convinced until we break well above 30,000, on consistent basis, you know, for multiple days slash really weeks. We're in a we're in a crab market. We're we're going sideways. I wouldn't say we're in a bear market because we're not continuing to go down. We keep going down and pulling right back up. And since, what, early early this year, we've not been down below, just a few $1,000 below where we're at right now. So I would call it a crab market. That's what we got. So, of course, what's our strategy? Every week we talk about this. I don't care what the price is. You should be DCA ing. Right? I was having a discussion with a friend of mine who is frankly showing some interest in Bitcoin, and I don't think he realized how involved I was. So
[00:03:50] Unknown:
we were we were driving somewhere. We were actually having a discussion about
[00:03:55] McIntosh:
just kind of the world in general. And he does know I'm involved in Bitcoin, but he turns to me and he's like, well, you should run some miners. And I'm like, well, I already do. But, anyways, we had a great discussion
[00:04:10] Unknown:
a great discussion, but, you know, you don't have to guess at this. You don't have to worry about if it's up, if it's down.
[00:04:16] McIntosh:
Just like I told him, just DCA. Get the strike app. I think cash app does the same thing. Whatever. Buy Bitcoin on a daily basis. When you get any kind of amount, you know, a couple $100, move it off to cold storage. That should be your next step. What do I do? Why buy Bitcoin? What do I do next? I set up cold storage seed signer or ledger, I guess, or something like that. A hardware wallet and then, start saving. That's what you do. Right? We don't trade. We don't do any of that. Just just save. Save and come back to me in 8 years, 10 years. That'd be 2 complete cycles.
You will be happy you did. Let's jump on into our topic. We're gonna cover a good bit of ground today, but it all ties in together and I think it's all very important. It's actually in the end, I was actually just going to talk about Bitcoin nodes, the kind that are not miners that just run the Bitcoin software. And I actually ended up tying in the whole thing together because it really makes sense. So we are going to talk about Bitcoin nodes in general, and there are multiple different kinds. We'll talk about that. It will give you a good understanding, I think, of how the Bitcoin network itself actually works.
So that you, have some understanding of how transactions work, how, you know, your Bitcoin gets to someone else or how transactions are verified, all of this kind of stuff. So we'll we'll jump right in there and we'll cover all that. So Bitcoin nodes in general are the underlying infrastructure of the Bitcoin network. They secure it. They maintain it. It is because of Bitcoin nodes that the network is even possible. Without them, there would be no Bitcoin network. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't really understand what they are and how they work.
So we're going to talk about that. Before we do, I want to cover some topics. There's 3 different ways of looking at bitcoin. There's 3 different things that Bitcoin can refer to. Bitcoin is a network. It's a collection of these nodes. We're gonna talk about the nodes more specifically very shortly. But it's a collection of computers that are tied together essentially communicating with each other, sharing information back and forth. That is the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin is a protocol. Bitcoin is a set of rules. That's what the protocol means. That's what it defines. A set of rules for how that information can be shared back and forth.
[00:07:07] Unknown:
Those rules
[00:07:09] McIntosh:
keep things from like double spending occurring for example. Bitcoin is also, some software. It's a program. You'll often hear Bitcoin Core, which is one of the most common versions of this Bitcoin software. It's a program that understands these protocol rules. It's been programmed to understand these protocol rules. It's run by computers on the network, and it drives that network really. The Bitcoin nodes, they're computers that they run that software, that Bitcoin software and there are different versions of that. I don't wanna get hung up on that but it's not just the core Bitcoin software. Although that is certainly the most common, and they're connected by this Bitcoin network. They validate. They broadcast.
They process and they store Bitcoin transactions. Alice wants to send Bob 1 bitcoin. I don't know. For whatever reason, that's a transaction. They're batched up. They're stored in a group. This is for an efficiency thing, right? That group, that's actually a block. So when somebody says, here's a block of Bitcoin. What they mean is, this is a block of transactions, of Bitcoin transactions. And actually, this is actually where blockchain comes from. When when this term was created, it was referring to Bitcoin and it was talking about these blocks of transactions.
And part of those blocks is basically information that points back to the block. Previous block, if I'm not mistaken. It gives a historical context into it. It creates that chain. It gives the Bitcoin
[00:09:03] Unknown:
core pro and I'm gonna again, I don't wanna get bogged down on this. It's not just a Bitcoin core software, but it's just habit. So it gives us Bitcoin core, the ability to traverse that chain of transactions. So before a new block gets added to that blockchain, those
[00:09:24] McIntosh:
transactions have to be verified as valid. So that is the function of some of these Bitcoin nodes. These nodes on the network. Not all of them, and we're gonna break that down in a few minutes. But when somebody says, I run a Bitcoin node, this is what they mean. This is a node that runs the Bitcoin core software or some other version of that software, of the Bitcoin protocol software. And that's what it does. It sits there and it verifies transactions. So these are a very important part of the network. What are they verifying? They're doing things like checking to see that the double spending issue that I was talking about, whether you have spent that Bitcoin twice or whether a sender actually has the Bitcoin that's being sent. All of these different rules that have been created over the last, what, 14 years in order to ensure the correctness of the blockchain.
They're programmed into Bitcoin core And therefore, they're running on those Bitcoin nodes and they're verifying the transactions
[00:10:36] Unknown:
that are flowing through it. When you have a bunch of servers, a bunch of bitcoin nodes that agree on a transaction, they are reaching what's called consensus. Consensus meaning they agree on it. They they say, yes. This is good. Nobody's saying it's a bad block. Okay? So that's what they do. 247. Every minute of the day. Nodes do not
[00:11:06] McIntosh:
assume that a block is valid. Nodes do the work. We love in Bitcoin to say proof of work. This is proof of work. We
[00:11:17] Unknown:
do the work to verify that those transactions are valid. To to do this, the Bitcoin nodes, they have to be able to run,
[00:11:31] McIntosh:
they have to be able to have access to a full copy of the Bitcoin blockchain. So when you bring up a new node, and I've done this, I have 2 nodes running right now. And when you do this, the first thing it does, you set up the Bitcoin software, you connect it to the network. So if you establish connectivity to other nodes peers, then it downloads literally like the original data, the Genesis block, and it starts building the blockchain from there. And it runs through the whole thing. And you can watch it in the log file. It's amazing. It starts from gracious alive. Whenever it was that it came online.
January of 2,009, if I'm not mistaken, all the way up to the present time. It literally does the work to verify that entire thing. When it's done, it has a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain. That takes up a fair amount of space. I believe it's around 600 gigs right now. So that has become a little bit problematic. We're gonna set that aside for now, but we're actually gonna come back to that because 600 gigs is a is a pretty good amount, and that can be, there's ways around that. So we'll talk about that in a few minutes. But right now, I just wanna kinda set that aside. Each node though has a full blockchain or they've run through all that work. Let's just say it that way,
[00:13:06] Unknown:
To crit to authenticate that blockchain.
[00:13:10] McIntosh:
Alright. Now, when a new block gets sent out, each node has to decide whether they're going to add a copy of that block to their blockchain. They are not trusting this is why we say trustless. They are not trusting anyone. They are verifying everything. And this is very important. It is part of the foundational principles of Bitcoin. So do not gloss over that. We do not trust. We verify. Right? Let's break this down a little bit. So what I have been describing is what is called a full node. Now I glossed over some details in there and we're gonna come back to that in a minute. But before we do, we're going to talk about miners because miners are nodes. The miners that I have sit there, they are nodes on the Bitcoin network. They are essentially separate from a core, Bitcoin node. They don't run the same software, in fact, that they used to, actually.
From my understanding in the very early days, that's what they did. But as mining has gotten more sophisticated, they have evolved. They run different software that it implements the same protocol. Remember, we got Bitcoin protocol, but they do not use the same software because they do different things. Going back to your full node, transaction is valid. Once it authenticates that a transaction is valid, that actually gets sent out to the the peers and those that are connected to it. Those nodes also verify it once a, sufficient number of nodes have verified, and I don't know what that number is, but once a sufficient number of nodes have agreed that this transaction is valid, it's then added to a pool of other valid transactions. And that's kind of where the miners pick up, just to wrap that up. Now, mining nodes, they pick up those transactions.
They package them actually into blocks. Miners run a
[00:15:23] Unknown:
set of rules protocol, if you wanna call it that, for creating and proposing blocks to the Bitcoin network. So miners can create and propose blocks.
[00:15:36] McIntosh:
These core Bitcoin nodes on the other hand, they verify blocks. There's they they balance each other. See, a miner can create a block, they can inject things in it and it may break the rules of Bitcoin. See, they can compromise the system if you wanna think of it that way, which is kind of what is that's actually a valid way of looking at it.
[00:15:59] Unknown:
But
[00:16:01] McIntosh:
core nodes, these Bitcoin nodes, people call them Bitcoin nodes. There's probably a better way of saying it. These bitcoin nodes on the other hand, they validate the transaction. So if they catch a miner
[00:16:13] Unknown:
creating an illegal transaction,
[00:16:16] McIntosh:
they throw out the transaction. They won't verify it. So they balance each other and I think that's very important. No one in Bitcoin should trust anyone else. Again, trustless. I may know you, you may know me, but we don't really know each other, do we? You're listening to me on a podcast ramble on for a 130 episodes now. You may think you know a lot about me, but you really don't. And it's always best to verify what you can, especially when it comes to something that's this important. So miners, like I said, they have a set of rules for creating and proposing blocks. The type thing we're talking about is how big those blocks can be.
Alright. I'll have the block, block size wars that happened, what, in 2017. How you can format a transaction and how to sign a block. How to put your stamp on it and say, yep, this block is good. Miners are also competing against each other in a race to create the next block. Once a miner thinks it created a valid block, it's going to broadcast that valid proposed block, I should say, out to other nodes on the network for them to put their stamp on it and say, yes, this is a good block. So that block is broadcast out to those Bitcoin nodes, those full nodes, and they're gonna validate the block. So they validate transactions and they validate the block itself.
If a full node considers that block to be valid, it then adds the block to its copy of the blockchain. It broadcasts it to other full nodes and they go through that same verification process. Once you have a sufficient number of those, and again, I don't know what that number is, but it's just like the transactions. Consensus is considered to be reached and the transactions are processed. There, the nodes verify and store the updated versions
[00:18:28] Unknown:
and, of the blockchain.
[00:18:31] McIntosh:
And the miners, you know, of course have moved on to creating that next block. Again, I wanna draw attention, which I already did, but I wanna draw attention to the fact that essentially miners and full nodes, they're not competing with each other. I wouldn't call it that, but they do have different jobs. Miners are trying to create valid blocks as fast as possible. That's how they get their money. This block reward is the Bitcoin that is pre programmed, so right now 6.25 Bitcoin per block, plus the transaction fees on top of that. So they are incentivized to work as fast as they can.
That is why you see things like miners who tune their software to over, overclock their ASICs for example. So the miners are proposing blocks to the Bitcoin network. Full nodes are not proposing blocks. They cannot do that, obviously. If they did, then they could earn those rewards. Miners can receive block rewards, of course for doing that, full notes cannot. There is a difference. Essentially, maybe this sounds bad but there's well, it's the truth. There's no direct financial incentive for running a full node. However, full nodes are required to run the Bitcoin network. So why would people run those? Why do I run 2 of those? That's probably costing me 10, $20 a month to do that in terms of computing resources.
Well, because it helps power the Bitcoin network. Because I think that the Bitcoin network is important enough to throw my hat in the ring, and it's reasonable what these things take, but it's still a computing cost. And so I do that as to help support that network. That's why people do it. There's other reasons on top of that. You can use that to verify the chain data. I don't know. There's probably more reasons than that, but that's certainly a good place to start. I I wanna break down a full node because there's actually 2 kinds of full nodes. And it's a semi important distinction to make before we go on because there's some other stuff too that will other types of notes. But I this is probably a good place to, to talk about. There's 2 types of full nodes. There's called archive nodes.
Archive nodes, they have a full and complete copy of the Blockchain. Every transaction, they can verify everything. So aside from the archive nodes, there's another type of full node. They're called, ironically I think, pruned nodes. So full is like the opposite of pruned to me. So pruned nodes don't actually store the full blockchain. They store a subset of it. So let's say you let's say that the current transaction space takes up like 600 gigs. It's something like that. Maybe I only have a 100 gigs that I can spare for that. Maybe I only have 50 gigs. Maybe I only have 5 gigs. I think one of my nodes is actually running on 5. I think the other one, I think I do like probably 50 or something. But both of mine are actually pruned. It does start from the start. It does verify everything all the way up to current day. But essentially, going out the tail, so to speak, it's dropping off blocks.
So it doesn't keep that data after it verifies it within that window. So if I've got a 100 gigs, that's probably more than a year's worth of data at this point still. So maybe that goes back to July or June of 2022. If I've only got 5 gig, that may only be a month or so. But I've got all the current data for that month plus I've verified everything up to that point. So it still goes through that proof of work to verify everything and that but it just kinda discards what it it it doesn't keep because of space issues. Okay. So why they're called full nodes, I I don't know. They are considered the equivalent in terms of running the Bitcoin network, however.
The Earl Grey, it was extremely hot when I started. It's already cooling off. Of course, I'm 20 minutes into this, so I would ex I'm 27. Good gracious, alive, Macintosh.
[00:23:09] Unknown:
But I am approaching the end, so we're gonna wrap this up.
[00:23:12] McIntosh:
Again, 2 types of full nodes. I'm not gonna get super in detail on that. They are considered equivalent in terms of running nodes on the network. Now, other times types of nodes. Actually, when you run a miner nodes and you participate in a mining pool, which I've talked about. Most people do participate in mining pools simply because they don't have enough power. They would be like solo mining is what they call it, and the chances of them actually mining a block would be very, very little simply because the network has essentially gotten so big at this point. I would say the vast majority of people out there are using mining pools. Mining pools, actually use a a mining pool. They call it a mining pool node or I think I've called it I heard a couple of different things. That orchestrates the group of miners in that pool and they probably can have multiple because pools can have thousands of servers. People used to say, well, all mining nodes were full nodes. That's not really true anymore.
The miner nodes have become so specialized. But the pool node, I believe, either has a full set or it has access to a full node that has that blockchain for verification. But they're used to kind of coordinate that mining pool. So they're a semi specialized type of node in the network, but they're a node. They're a Bitcoin node and it's important to know about them. So anyways, there are a couple more here. We'll go back. There's a light node which isn't a full node. So it's it's a very lightweight version of the blockchain. Essentially, you would see something on it like this for maybe a mobile wallet, this kind of thing, where they only keep the headers of the blocks, and they don't keep the full blocks.
But it means that you can do it on a very very small kind of lightweight machine. And then you you can send or receive bitcoin like, from your phone. And you're technically running a node on the network and you are. But you cannot use that node, it's important to note this, to validate transactions. So it depends on those full nodes to do that. So again, we go back to those full nodes which are either archival or the pruned nodes, in order to, to validate those transactions. Alright. Lightning nodes. Lightning nodes are part of the lightning network, but they do interact with the Bitcoin main net. The this this layer, these all these other nodes that we're talking about. So, they speak the same protocol, they, you know, they can interface and they provide that way that the lightning nodes, you know, can provide this basically instantaneous transactions across the internet.
So those are actually a type of bitcoin node. And I think that's it. That is actually it. Okay. So there we go. I'm not sure that liquid has nodes. I do not know if they do or not. They may have something similar to lightning. So I'll go ahead and add them to the list, not even knowing that, which is a huge mistake. But liquid is not something we've really talked about a whole lot, but it's somewhat similar to lightning. So I hope that helps you understand how transactions flow through the system. I'll try and come up with a diagram and maybe post it on Twitter, that would might be helpful. Because
[00:26:45] Unknown:
this whole transaction thing, I mean, it is a little complicated but I do think it's worth understanding. Alright. So for our supporters this week
[00:26:56] McIntosh:
actually, before I jump into that, let me do this. I did have a clip made. I was hoping for more. I'll be perfectly honest. So Kyron over at Mare Mortals did make a clip of me actually talking about this clip program. And I replied to that or boosted that. It's not really a boost, but I replied to that. Gave him 500 sats. I tried to send a message, but frankly, fountain did not allow me to do that. I'm not sure why. But the message simply was, thanks. I appreciate that. And he should have gotten that 500 sets. Kyron, if you did not, please let me know. I'm quite sure that you did, but since this is the first time we've really done this, I would like to not trust but verify.
Little joke there. And, and we'll, you know, I'll make sure that that's taken care of. So again, I would encourage you. For those of you who didn't hear last week, if you go out and make a clip of any part of the current episode,
[00:28:00] Unknown:
500 sats,
[00:28:01] McIntosh:
I reply to your thing or well, yeah. I reply to it, and I boost you essentially 500 If you do that for an older show so this would be for episode 130. If you went back to 129 or 128 or 127 or that great 126 seed signer episode, there's lots of stuff I think in there that could be clipped up and make a clip. I'll give you 300 and you can do multiple. I'm trying to spend money here to spread the word about generation bitcoin, because we've got lots of good things going on here. I'm fixing to tell you about a couple of more interviews we got coming up that I'm super pumped about. We'll go ahead and do that news and notes section after our supporters. We did have support this week. Of course, this is kind of the short half of the week, so to speak.
Typically, not as much, and our total support this week was a 1,000, for this section of the week was a 1,081 sats. So probably right at 1100 sats. There was some streaming going on, which I certainly appreciate. We had Berno who sent in a boost. Our friend, Berno, we hear from him a a good bit. Thank you, Berno, your faithful supporter of this show. And he or she, I do not know, but I don't wanna presume. Always a pleasure to be in your company. Thank you very much. That's awesome. So I appreciate that, and I appreciate the sats. So from there, let's dive on into our news and wrap this puppy up because I do not wanna keep this long.
We will have longer shows, it looks like, with our interviews. I've got 2 more of those lined up at this point. I think it's confident I'm safe to say this. I do have someone who lives in El Salvador. They're a I believe they're a software engineer down there, a professional, probably lives in Buenos Aires from what I'm I think I'm seeing, and I'm hoping we're gonna have a good discussion. Their hyperinflation is off the chain. I saw a figure 125% today. Of course, they've got the election coming up in October, which I've discussed off and on a good bit. I wanna talk to them about that. I wanna talk to them about how they are coping with these hyperinflation well, I consider it hyperinflation.
Extreme inflation, hyperinflation is what? It's 50 no. It's I guess it's really not hyperinflation. I don't wanna be spreading rumors so careful what you're saying, Macintosh. This extreme inflation, you know, how are they dealing with that? And, of course, they're involved with Bitcoin as well, so we'll talk about that. Earlier today, I got some news. I got a message back. I have asked, Eric at Gridless over in Africa to come on the show, And he has graciously agreed to that. Now I'm gonna hold him to that. So, Eric, if don't back out on me.
But I this is one of the people I've been wanting to talk to.
[00:31:05] Unknown:
And I'm very appreciative that he is
[00:31:08] McIntosh:
going to make the time to do that. Next week, he is actually going to be at the African Bitcoin Mining Conference. So there'll be a link to that in the show notes. It's basically a get together of of African Bitcoin miners and their circumstances, which are different frankly than the circumstances here in the United States. Probably, we'll do the Argentinian episode, next Sunday, So one week or next Monday. And then Eric's the following Monday. And that's kind of the schedule I wanna keep. I may not do an interview. Obviously, we're not doing an this week, but we'll do those interviews on Monday. We'll do my kind of weekly wrap up on Thursdays. Late Thursdays really is what it's turning into, to be honest, but Thursdays anyways.
And and, yeah, that's kind of I think that's gonna work out real well. So, let's jump into the news. There was not, again, a whole lot. You can follow me on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I always post stuff on there. And I by the way, I I don't know that I've made this clear. I post a lot more than just what we talk about on here. So, you know, some of it's not really news. Some of it may be not noteworthy enough, but yeah. So I already mentioned Africa Bitcoin, mining summit that's being put on by the Green African Mining Alliance. So I wished I could go. I mean, honestly, maybe next year I can. I doubt it, to be honest, but maybe.
That is a part of the world I would like to look at. I would like to see. I've never been there. And I believe that what these people are doing is very important, and I I don't know, maybe I can support them somehow. So I did wanna point that out. Congo, also in Africa, of course, is having a coup, it appears. I tried to look this up. They have a border with the Central African Republic, but I'm almost certain at this point that they are not part of the French, currency, scam, I would call it, the CFA. And, I think it's the Democratic Republic of Congo that was. So I'm gonna step out on a limb. I probably shouldn't say this. I do not think Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, like, split apart.
So I don't think Congo has ever been part of that. I may be mistaken, But again, we see this FOMET, this,
[00:33:42] Unknown:
Africa is, you know, for
[00:33:44] McIntosh:
I don't know. There's stuff going on there. They've got a lot of issues. A lot of the countries have severe inflation. Things are just not good. And so we're seeing this kind of stuff happen. It was the military again. Actually, apparently, it was the presidential guard, interestingly enough. So that's all the details I know. I did think it was worth mentioning though. I hope in the long run that's a good thing. I'll try and bring you some more information about that maybe next week or maybe we can talk to Eric about that. I would think he might know something about that. Maybe he doesn't. I don't know. It's the entire other side of the continent. So he works, over in East Africa from what I from what I understand.
Looks like some Bitcoin things are going on in Cuba, which I think is very interesting. So it's some good stuff there. Not a whole lot, but there was just a tweet about it. And, actually, as an add on to this note stuff, there's a very good article that I posted too. We may actually have some stuff so that we can essentially instantaneously have what amounts to a full note. So they're using what are called zero knowledge proofs. This is something I know about from my dirty altcoin past. So this was one of the some of the stuff that has been done on different altcoins. So I am a little familiar with this. I'm maybe even more than a little familiar with it. I'm not going to go into depth on this show about 0, knowledge proofs. I I just don't know that it's really appropriate.
However, basically it's a way to do all the verification upfront and then you can prove that that verification was done and then you can kinda get rid of all that data and then just say, hey, we verified everything up through, you know, 2020 and then start your bitcoin node there. So this article is a pretty good there's some people who are working on that and eventually, it may become kind of the standard way of doing this. So rather than a pruned node, you could run a 0 sync node, and
[00:35:58] Unknown:
effectively have an instant on node that would come up immediately.
[00:36:03] McIntosh:
I don't have any information about this, but I did see, Justin Trudeau up in Canada, our neighbors to the north. And let me tell you something. The Canadian people I don't know if I've said this before, but we spent some time up there this summer. Years ago, I spent some time in Ottawa in the capital. 6 weeks actually there with some work stuff. So my reflection on Canada in general is that the people are extremely polite. Now, your politicians who run your country, ladies and gentlemen, they're a hot mess. They're maybe worse than the United States which is saying a lot. And, of course, I live in the United States, so I can denigrate my own politicians all I want. And in fact, I did so this week on Twitter, if you wanna follow me there.
Justin Trudeau basically got up and said and this I mean, I'm not making this up. It sounds like a joke. In this speech, he says, basically, we've got issues with high inflation for groceries, for food. So you, whatever the big grocery chains are up there, and I do not know that, but he was specifically talking about these large grocery chains. You are either gonna have to figure this out or we're going to tax you. The way that this works is the grocery I mean, this this is like 5th grade stuff, I would think.
[00:37:39] Unknown:
Grocery stores buy the food stuff from their vendors who source it wherever they source it from. And
[00:37:47] McIntosh:
then they mark it up a little bit and then they sell it to the public. That's what they do. And, traditionally, the margin in grocery business has been pretty thin. So what Justin Trudeau is saying, hey, you can figure out how to cut your cost, which they can't do because they're fixed cost, and what are you gonna do? Or we're gonna tax you. Because, you know, capital controls. Yeah. That always works out well. I don't you know, as these systems grind down to a halt, Keynesian economics fails, this stuff will become more and more prevalent. And the idiocy,
[00:38:37] Unknown:
frankly, that it represents will become more and more obvious. So don't buy into this crap. That is someone who is either doesn't understand economics at all and how grocery stores work, or they're just being
[00:38:58] McIntosh:
a power mad politician who thinks that that's gonna get them more votes. I will leave it up to the Canadian people to decide which one of those 2 are. As far as I can tell, they I think they're thinking he's a power mad politician, but
[00:39:13] Unknown:
okay. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the news and notes for this week. I'll have a couple of links there in the, show notes,
[00:39:25] McIntosh:
But that's gonna wrap it up for this week. Now, generation bitcoin, we support podcasting 2.0. We are a value for value podcast. What does that mean? I have not said a single thing about that tonight.
[00:39:38] Unknown:
We have no sponsors. We have no advertising. I will never take advertising,
[00:39:43] McIntosh:
Not ever. And maybe it's time I actually do an episode about that, so you understand why I don't ever take advertisers or sponsors. There's good reasons. It's not because I don't want to become rich.
[00:39:55] Unknown:
Sorry.
[00:39:57] McIntosh:
It's because I believe what is that is what is right. At least for me. And I can only speak for that.
[00:40:03] Unknown:
But, you can support this podcast in 3 ways. Time, talent, treasure.
[00:40:09] McIntosh:
If you wanna support the podcast and have some time or talent, there's stuff you can do. Just reach out to me.
[00:40:15] Unknown:
Transcripts, other things,
[00:40:18] McIntosh:
website work. There's look. I have a 1,000,000 ideas in my head. I just don't have time to do them all. That's the truth. Treasure? Well, maybe not a million, but a lot.
[00:40:28] Unknown:
Treasure is just what it sounds like. If you find the content valuable, you can support this podcast by streaming sat or boosting like Bruno did earlier or going out and clipping shows,
[00:40:43] McIntosh:
and I will see that and I will reply to it. And if I ever don't see it, just please reach out to me. There's a number of ways I'll I'll go through that list in just a second.
[00:40:53] Unknown:
But, if you find the content valuable,
[00:40:56] McIntosh:
you can stream the stats, you can boost from podcast 2.0 app. There's a bunch of them at podcastapps.com. If you like the content, I would love it if you would tell your friends about the Generation Bitcoin podcast. As I say quite frequently, That is the single most important way that this podcast can spread. Thanks for being here. I hope this has been helpful. I hope you've learned something from it. I would love to hear from you. I'm on Twitter at Macintosh Fintech. I'm on mastodon@[email protected], and you can reach me by email at [email protected].
[00:41:33] Unknown:
Matrix, Macintosh 1775 colon matrix.org. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. I will talk to y'all Thursday.
