In this deeply passionate episode, McIntosh and Kenshin tackle the growing controversy around a recent Bitcoin Core pull request proposing the removal of the OP_RETURN size limit, which would allow arbitrary data to be stored on-chain—potentially opening the door to blockchain bloat and spam.
News and Notes
https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-hampshire-bitcoin-reserve-law
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/05/06/new-hampshire-becomes-first-state-to-approve-crypto-reserve-law
https://atlas21.com/the-eu-bans-anonymous-accounts-and-privacy-coins-with-new-aml-regulations/
https://atlas21.com/bitcoin-core-controversy-the-debate-on-removing-op_return-limits/
Stick around to the very end for the v4v track, “2 Billion Heart Beats” by Jawbone
Bitcoin Price at Time of Recording
May 7th, 2025: 96,700 USD | 85,800 EUR
Block Height at Time of Recording
895,690
Episode Page
https://satoshis-plebs.com/episode-208
Music Credits
Jawbone
2 Billion Heart Beats
Website
https://satoshis-plebs.com
Podcasting 2.0 Apps available at http://podcastapps.com and Value4Value information page available here: https://value4value.info
McIntosh can be reached by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. His mastodon handle is @[email protected] and his Nostr. Kenshin can be reached on Twitter at @kenshin_ninja or on Nostr. Kenshin’s email is [email protected]. You can also follow the Satoshi’s Plebs podcast account on Nostr. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
[00:00:00]
McIntosh:
What is up, Plev Nation? Today is May, and this is episode 208. Man, every time I say that, they get bigger, and it's just like, holy cow. We've been doing this a long time. Satoshi's Plev. Sorry. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:15] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin. And today's episode is Here We Go Again, Bitcoin Drama.
[00:00:38] McIntosh:
Alright. Awesome. So first of all, obviously, we've got new music. You heard the little clip there. It's by a group called Jawbone, and these guys I was gonna say rock, but maybe that's not quite the word for it. But, they have done some very interesting stuff, backed up people like Eric Clapton and, others like that that you would know. But they've done their own work, and this is one of their songs called 2,000,000,000 heartbeats. The full song will be at the end of the episode. Hope you enjoy that. And any streaming or boosting that you do during that song at the end will go directly to Jawbone.
Awesome. I don't wanna do this today, Kenshin. I'm gonna be honest. I know. I am not looking forward to this. Me neither. I I know y'all think I'm a cranky old man, but, man, sometimes you just gotta sit on the porch, rock the rocking chair, and yell at those doggone kids on the lawn. And I'm afraid that's what this is gonna come across as. I promise I'm trying to be objective about this. But ladies and gentlemen, I have been involved in Bitcoin. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2013. Alright? I think it's roughly around the same time you did, Kenshin. And I I honestly, I don't have that Bitcoin anymore. I've had a long journey, which we've documented here on the show. You know? I I've made many, many mistakes, but I have been around a long time.
And I have a little perspective on what we're gonna talk about today. So if you'll just bear with us, we both think this is a super important topic. This is not practical. This is not gonna 10 x your Bitcoin supply or something like that. But this is important for the future of Bitcoin.
[00:02:36] Kenshin:
Yes. And I've been dreading that moment too. Well Thinking about it and,
[00:02:42] McIntosh:
it's a bit frustrating, but we have to go through it. It is very frustrating. And I think why it is for us, Kenshin, maybe I'll say this and maybe not for others. A lot of people I think are just like, oh, whatever. This doesn't matter, but it does matter. If you have been involved in this, if you're working in this, if Bitcoin is your future, this is kinda like when somebody's messing around with how dollars are made, for example. And I fuss about that a lot because the government prints dollars, and there's no backing for it. What we store our value and our wealth in is super important and should be treated as such. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think I kind of connected those dots. Yeah. And we have to be careful, and we will go through it, what we mean with all of this. But yeah. It's weird. Before we do that, because we do have a lot to talk about, we we do need to do our normal stuff. So let's before we get too crazy and we are gonna keep this down to, I promise, less than an hour, and I'll probably be over here at fifty minutes going, we gotta stop. We gotta stop. Okay. Good luck.
Good luck. Alright. Bitcoin price at time of recording. What is that, sir?
[00:04:10] Kenshin:
96,700 USD and €85,800. Okay. So we're a bit up from last week. Yeah. A little bit. Comparatively. Not where we said we were gonna be. No. Well, it's not for the year. Yeah. No. So price last this time last year, it was at 62,300 USD. So we're still up 55%
[00:04:36] McIntosh:
similar to Yes, sir. So our our market cap has stayed about the same for Bitcoin, 1 point 9 trillion. Gold, on the other hand, had a little jump this week. It is up to $23,600,000,000,000. So Bitcoin versus gold is 8.1%. It actually shows the same for last week. But Yeah. Gold We went to Big Apple, so yeah. I guess Bitcoin. Yep. You're right. Alright. So they went up the same. There we go. Because they're both great stores of value. One's just a little more portable and got a few other things. That's the Block height as we record eight nine five six nine zero. Actually, six nine one. I saw it tick off when we were doing, but we'll go with 690.
Difficulty adjustment, right now is about four and a half percent if it were to happen right now, but the next adjustment is not until May. The one that just happened on the other hand was minus 3.34%. Last week, I think I said, oh, we'll probably have around 5%. Unfortunately, it kind of, it weakened a little bit, so we didn't get as much of a drop as I would have liked to have seen.
[00:05:52] Kenshin:
Right. And the fees in the mempool are three three and three slots per vbyte. So the mempool is quite empty. It only has 36 megabytes right now in the mempool and around 14,000 unprocessed transactions.
[00:06:09] McIntosh:
I'm sorry. That's actually incorrect. I did not update that part of it. It was 6,000 transactions. I just looked.
[00:06:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. So Okay. My fault.
[00:06:18] McIntosh:
What's going on with you, sir?
[00:06:21] Kenshin:
Oh, it's cold again in Sweden. Or snow. No. No. No. No. No. It's May. So thankfully not. We're not, about to put the winter tires again, so that's good. The days are bigger, noticeably bigger, and that's good. But it's chilly. I still need to put a hat on, even during the day in a thick jacket and freezing my way to work.
[00:06:48] McIntosh:
Let me ask you a question. If you and if you don't wanna answer, that's fine. Are you far enough north, like, during the summer? Like, how many hours of nighttime do you have? Like, in the middle of the summer and the you know, when is the I don't know the hours exactly, but I know that it doesn't get dark until ten, eleven.
[00:07:11] Kenshin:
Wow. And then it gets it starts to get bright again at 04:00.
[00:07:16] McIntosh:
Okay. So that's cool. Gets let let you do lots of stuff outside. In the summer. The case that way in the summer. Now in the winter, it's the reverse of that. So maybe maybe a little more depressing. But yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Like,
[00:07:34] Kenshin:
how do you how is it called? Bears, you know, going into hibernation in the winter.
[00:07:40] McIntosh:
See, I think you're what? A month and a couple weeks from the summer solstice or whatever, so that would be the maximum. Right? Yeah. Yeah. June 21. Very cool. Anything else going on with you? Did you have a good weekend last weekend with your long weekend?
[00:07:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. I had a long weekend. I had a very good weekend, very calm. I learned a lot about coding again. I focused a lot with some Python stuff again. I put in my Versus Code, I put a plug in, implement an AI within, Versus Code. It's called Roo code, r o o, space code. So you can run, AIs within that, and then you ask a question and you say, I want to do that, and then it's understands it and implement it in your code directly, and then you approve it or adjust it. So it was quite cool to go back and forth and try stuff. Stuff that I wouldn't be able to do on my own without, educating myself a lot more on Python.
[00:08:47] McIntosh:
Cool. Cool. Alright. Well, you code up that app, and let's get rich. Just Yes. You code it, and I'll just be there going, good job. 5050. Right? I mean, that seems fair. Right?
[00:09:01] Kenshin:
I mean, the support I get, you get 51.
[00:09:05] McIntosh:
Alright. So for me this week, well, I did wanna mention, we got 34 blocks in ocean in April. So that is a record. I'm quite confident of it. It means we more than one a day was mined. Again, when we mine these blocks, I don't get that whole block. I wish I did, but that's just not the way it works. Right? Yeah. But every day, more than one block was actually being mined. And we're on pace, May, as we record. I think we're eight or nine blocks already. So it's looking good for the ocean pool. So I did wanna mention that. And then I've been working on, the Satoshi back end again, trying to get Prometheus and Grafana to talk to Bitcoin, the node and lightning as well. And that's it's funny. It led me down a AI rabbit hole talking to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is pretty good with Python code. I've used it a lot in my job for some writing some Python.
On the other hand, when it comes to kind of system administration, it can get really confused, and it'll just keep telling you the same thing over. I'm like, I I don't wanna be rude, but I'm like, chat g p t. No. This is not right. Focus over here and stop repeating the same thing that we've already proven that was was wrong. So I don't know how they fix that, but I'm pretty close, I think. So I had to add what's called a, like, a transaction index to my Bitcoin node to our Bitcoin node so that the metrics would work properly.
And about 02:00 this morning, so roughly twelve hours ago, I kicked that off. So you you had to add the configuration, and then you have to restart Bitcoin d, and it starts the process. Let me tell you something. There is, 895,690 ish blocks. That's a lot of blocks that it has to index. It is still running.
[00:11:33] Kenshin:
Alright. Is that the TX index equals one. Right? Correct. That is correct.
[00:11:38] McIntosh:
I will actually give you a real time update of where we're at on that. Oh, I got no. There it goes. 873066. So I am roughly 20,000 blocks from being done after twelve hours.
[00:11:57] Kenshin:
Okay. You'll be done in less than an hour, maybe.
[00:12:01] McIntosh:
I'm hoping before we're done Yeah. That we can, that will finish because I need to start lightning back up so lightning will not work when this is ongoing. So our lightning node is down. Boo. I really hope we don't get a channel, closure while we're I hope not. I don't think it will, but it is a possibility. I mean, I've been down for twelve hours. People are like, where's the node? Where's the node?
[00:12:27] Kenshin:
Should be fine.
[00:12:28] McIntosh:
I hope so. So, yeah, that's it. That's enough for me. I'd you know, it's just the grind. It's just what it is. Oh, I have another big news. Oh. I have not mined the block. You have not mined the block? No. Can we just go with we're pretty sure you didn't if we don't hear otherwise? Because
[00:12:54] Kenshin:
Mhmm. I'm just kidding. It's my daily announcement. I need to Your daily announcement.
[00:13:00] McIntosh:
You you so you this was your first bot that you wrote. Right? You you wrote a bot that Yeah.
[00:13:07] Kenshin:
Yes.
[00:13:07] McIntosh:
Yeah. Very and so it posted on Nostr. You can follow it or right? Yeah. Yeah. You follow me on Nostr, and then you see at 09:21AM
[00:13:18] Kenshin:
Right. Central European Time, It posts, good morning message and if I mind the block or not.
[00:13:27] McIntosh:
And if it's not him getting on there every morning at that time and hitting No. I'm I'm transparent about that.
[00:13:35] Kenshin:
Anything else I post is me, but that post is automatic. And, I also have the Bitcoin price in sats every morning. Do you know what it is? No.
[00:13:47] McIntosh:
1 Bitcoin equals hundred million such. Oh, that equation. Sure. Yes. I thought it was 1 Bitcoin equals 1 Bitcoin, but okay.
[00:13:56] Kenshin:
I'll make it a bit more fancy. Math confuses me, Have I told you about my struggles with math? I need to remind you about the number of zeros.
[00:14:06] McIntosh:
It's a lot. But Bitcoin is too high in price. Sorry. Alright. I think we need to go ahead. We've danced around this. We need to go ahead and jump into this topic. Yeah. But I like how we have now the notes. Should we go through the supporters first
[00:14:24] Kenshin:
so we don't go through a topic?
[00:14:27] McIntosh:
Well, that way, send it Mike won't rage quit.
[00:14:30] Kenshin:
Yeah. Exactly. So you'll be happy. Do that.
[00:14:36] McIntosh:
Just poking at you send it Mike. Yeah. So sure. We can go ahead and do that. Let me you do send it Mike,
[00:14:44] Kenshin:
and I'll do the next one. Okay. So send in Mike boosted us on fountain, 3,069 certs. Thank you very much. Send it. Mhmm. And he says, you guys are awesome. Great episode. Love this topic and greatly appreciate the easy rundown on how to get up and running. So I put now a note here. So that was about our last episode talking about how to run a node. Right? And then he says, I'll probably try and get an old computer running a note soon. Thanks to this. Woo hoo. Good job. Do you think a Pentium four will be up to the job? He's laughing. I'm only giving my Kintos a hard time for the COVID brain he had last week. Keep up the great
[00:15:30] McIntosh:
work. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Glad you enjoyed last week's episode. I'm thinking a four eighty six DX personally, but, you know, we'll see.
[00:15:42] Kenshin:
No. But I I would say no. No?
[00:15:45] McIntosh:
Don't. Yeah.
[00:15:48] Kenshin:
It it would work, but it would be too loud and
[00:15:52] McIntosh:
consume too much energy and slow. It would use a lot of energy, especially compared to servers these days. I would actually be curious to know if it'll work. I I'm almost tempted. It But, yeah, that kind of stuff is fun. I'm sure we could get Linux running on it.
[00:16:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's all it needs. Yeah. We could get Bitcoin
[00:16:11] McIntosh:
node running on it, which means, theoretically well, we'll yeah. Hey. If you've got a Pentium four, you wanna donate to the show, we'll we'll try it.
[00:16:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. Well, the Linux kernel is compatible
[00:16:28] McIntosh:
with anything. Right? So it would run it for sure. I'm pretty sure they still package up three eighty six versions of the, the core. I don't know that for certain. Alright. But user four three six eight seven eight nine three sent us a thousand sets. Appreciate that. Of course. Said, hey, guys. Great episode. And I remember the COVID brain. We run a nerd q x plus, which I've I assume that's the same as, like, a nerd x, which I think I've heard of. That must be a specific model. So he's home mining or she is home mining, and we'll be aiming for a start nine node soon. That's cool. Nice. We'd love to hear if you have any info on Australian BTC activity. We are in Australia trying to promote Bitcoin.
It's a slow movement here. Thanks for the good chats. I do not know of anything offhand. If you're in one of the larger towns like Sydney or I'm drawing complete blanks. I should know better. What's the capital all down in South Australia? Is it Melbourne? Can Canbury. No. Melbourne is a different Sorry. Sorry, guys. I look. I I'll be honest. I've never been to Australia. My wife has. She has relatives who live in Sydney. But if you live in one of the major towns, I'll be honest. Here's what I would do if you're interested. Try and start a meetup if there's not one already, which is what I would recommend you look into. Now I know in my local area, there's a meetup that post on meetup.com.
I do not know if that is popular in Australia, but that might be a place you could start. Actually, why don't you boost back in? Let us know how that goes, if you find something there. So that would certainly be a good place to start. Yeah. I have a suggestion.
[00:18:30] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Orange peel up.
[00:18:33] McIntosh:
Oh, yeah. That's a little more modern, and that's a great idea because right. You just may run into people that are near you you know, are interested in Bitcoin that way and wouldn't be like a formal meetup.
[00:18:48] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:18:50] McIntosh:
I have heard I have heard that people have met people there that you know, for romantic stuff, but I don't know anything about that. I'm just saying.
[00:18:58] Kenshin:
No. I I met some local Bitcoiners here through this app, Orange Peel app. So it it's a great resource for sure. Yes. I have not tried it, and
[00:19:10] McIntosh:
I do go to our local meetup, which I don't talk about for what's the security purposes, whatever. You know, I do go to our local meetup, though. We have it once a month, and it's it's a decent group. I've talked about a little bit. I wished it were a little more technical, frankly,
[00:19:29] Kenshin:
but
[00:19:30] McIntosh:
it is what it is. Right? Mhmm. Very cool. So there's a couple things you could you could run with. Alright. I think it's time. Are we ready? Oof. I don't know. Dear listeners, I hope you are ready. We have to discuss the ongoing controversy in Bitcoin land. I mean, I don't know. I and we talked about this a little bit last week, but I think we're gonna have to go a little more in-depth. And I think we're gonna kinda have to lay our cards out on the table what Kenshin and I feel because we are voting members in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And what I mean is we both run nodes, and we run multiple nodes.
[00:20:13] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:20:15] McIntosh:
And the nodes are what determine what code is run and how the protocol is managed. And so I guess we have a vote. And Yeah. So we're gonna reveal what we're going to do, but I think it's important to kinda understand how we got there. Now I did say earlier, we both have been involved in Bitcoin for a long time, and we have seen some stuff. I distinctly remember the block size war back in 2017. So that was kind of the big block versus small block controversy. Bitcoin stuck with the small blocks for the most part, and I think, that was proven to be a very prudent choice.
Other people forked off and went and did other things, because they believed in big blocks or maybe they had a financial incentive to do so. I'm just saying, you know, and those have not worked out so well because that now has been gracious. Has it been that long? Like, eight years ago? Yeah. 2017. Right? So, you know, time has proven that, and time will prove whatever happens here is whether it's right or wrong. So you were actually mentioning Kenshin even further back than that. There was an episode. There was a heated discussion about the very thing that we're gonna talk about that happened in 2013.
Right?
[00:21:48] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:21:49] McIntosh:
So You wanna go into that for just a second?
[00:21:51] Kenshin:
Yeah. So well, in 2013, they were trying to figure out ways to add data in the blocks. So not only I mean, Bitcoin started as a monetary system Yes. Transaction, transferring Bitcoin, essentially value from one place to another. Mhmm. Then all of a sudden, they wanted to start putting data in it, like messages, like maybe contracts, just any sort of data. And what they came up with was was a way to limit this sort of data getting into the Bitcoin system so it doesn't bloat the system. It doesn't, let's say, spam the system, take away space from it, and and mainly to keep the blockchain for monetary purposes.
So they implemented this OP return, code. Mhmm. So, essentially, what this code does is you are able to add some data without taking so much space and without, taking away the UTXOs, the the actual, coins, let's say, for people who don't know what the UTXO is is is let's say the actual coin that you send around. So to keep it a bit cleaner, if we call it and we can call it a bit like a spam filter also. Right? So it has some limits, this op return. It allows you to do some stuff, but with a limit of 80 bytes. Mhmm.
And I see here that actually those 80 bytes, they went back and forth. They went down to 40 at some point They did. And then back up to 80. Right. So they were experimenting in big bug, but back then in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. But they settled with these 80 bytes since then. And they had all these motivations why they introduced that and what they wanted it going to be. And Satoshi himself was involved in the in the inception of this OP return. Mhmm. And they even suggested, Satoshi and some others, if you want to do other things with a Blockchain, just make another Blockchain.
And you're gonna have it in parallel. Maybe it can be based on Bitcoin somehow.
[00:24:17] McIntosh:
Right. Maybe like a layer two or what they would call a side chain. Yes. Okay. So clearly, I think Satoshi's idea was we need to limit what goes into the blockchain. And that is because we don't want to bloat that blockchain because that's going to create issues down the road. It's gonna create it's going to it's going to make it more expensive to run a a node, for example. For the space reasons that we talked about last week, the node, the total blockchain right now is, like, 750 gigs. We don't want that to be crazy, and go, you know, be much, much bigger.
[00:25:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's a a question I got from a friend. He said, but why would the storage increase if the blocks themselves are limited to four megabytes? And that's a good question because now the blocks are not full. And even if they're full with transactions, they have still space for this, Segwit, how is it called? Oh, I don't know the term the technical terms now, but they still have space for some data left over. Mhmm. So the blocks are rarely over two megabytes, really. But if you start putting arbitrary data on it, you always have four megabyte blocks every ten minutes.
And that will will certify that you have a maximum increase in the blockchain size at an increased pace of four megabytes per ten minutes. Otherwise, we would be at the pace that we are now that is more reasonable, that the blocks are lighter, they fit more transactions if needed. And and I would say another crucial part is going back to the early days, but they wanted to keep the blockchain, and, not with so much spam. And then the next war was the block size war that you mentioned. Mhmm. But they wanted to increase the blocks, and they said no. We keep them as they are small. So we certify that we have a small block that is valuable, that the space in it is valuable and clean in that sense.
Right? So all those suggestions were to to put whatever they wanted and to make them they were arguing to make the blocks bigger and put whatever they wanted in it. So those camps are a bit, I think, connected in that sense. Right.
[00:27:03] McIntosh:
So before we get too deep into this, I'd I would mention that, the idea of changes happening in Bitcoin historically has been what they would call, like, rough consensus. In other words, it's like I I wouldn't call it a democracy, but you kind of take a vote with the code that you run. If every if enough people won't run the code that you're running to do something, then that won't really happen. Does that make sense? Like, if everybody ran code that said op return of 80 bytes and no hire, and that's it, then it doesn't matter what's allowed in the software if it's configured by every NodeRunner to limit it to 80 bytes. In that case, you would have a % consensus.
Is is that fair, Kenshin? Yeah. Okay. So the only way to really kind of handle that is by the nodes. The nodes run this Bitcoin core software or some other version like not, that that manages the protocol, so to speak. And these are the things that are configured for these options, essentially. Configured your op return code to be 80 bytes limited, you know, at the maximum versus just allowing some unlimited amount. So it it always goes back to this idea of consensus. So we're gonna discuss here in just a minute kind of this this argument that's going on right now about this.
Well, in the end, all these people can talk, but what matters is the code that runs on these notes. Mhmm. Okay? Yeah. So that being said, I wanna lay out in general kind of at least our view and maybe our view is slanted, but I'm gonna say up front, my view is like and let me say this. Maybe this is a good time to say this. As somebody who's been around Bitcoin for a long time, Bitcoin is a peer to peer network that's used to move money from one person to another. It is Bitcoin itself can be a monetary unit. I'm gonna pay you some Satoshis for some fruit, for example, and it can be used as a store of value. Oh, rather than investing in mutual funds or real estate or whatever, I'm going to invest in Bitcoin with the idea that because it is continuing to gain traction and so on and so forth, it's going to go up in value. Or at least it's not going to lose in value versus, say, the US dollar, which is losing purchasing power at a rate of about, what is it, like, 5% a year, I wanna say.
Right? So if I just hold dollars in my bank account, they're going down in value. That's not a store of value. That's a waste of money is what that is. Right? Those are the two things that Bitcoin is good for in in my mind. Anything else, we can talk about it, but those are the important things. And if they are impeded in any way by any change that's made, then I don't want that change. Yeah. Is that fair? It's fair.
[00:30:46] Kenshin:
And I would add here that Bitcoin was carefully crafted out of many technologies over decades. And out of many experiences with the fiat system and histories, it was crafted, and I quote the title, Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Yes. Right? It was made to do that very, very good. And that's why it's so successful, and that's why any other, altcoin or cryptocurrency is has not been successful. It's because all the items inside Bitcoin were carefully selected and work together in that way. And now should I give the other side really fast?
[00:31:35] McIntosh:
I think, let's do this. Let's dive into kind of as high level as we can what is actually going on right now. I don't remember what exactly we said last week, but people may not have heard that episode. So let's just real briefly outline what is going on literally right now, and then we'll talk about kind of the other side's view because Bitcoin is an open network. People can use it however they want and all that. So we do need to have that discussion.
[00:32:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, last week, I don't I don't I was not aware of this, actually, the moment of recording. Mhmm. It was happening at the moment of recording, the biggest, Yeah. Everything. But I I was not aware of it. We talked about notes, for example. I said I was running notes. I was happy with them, and I was suggesting notes. But I didn't know how, yeah, how important it was to suggest notes at the time.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
So let's give the overview Yeah. And help me help me out or vice versa because I don't wanna forget things, but we do need to keep this as high level as possible. So there was a new version, that no, that's not true. I want to make sure I try not to say things incorrectly. There was a pull request made for the Bitcoin core. And if you remember, Bitcoin core is kind of the most common version of this node software that is out there, and it is more common by far. It's like 90% plus. 95 or something. 95. Right. So it's a lot. But a pull request was made to change this op return code to remove that limit that we were talking about just a few minutes ago of 80 bytes.
[00:33:32] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Essentially, that would allow any sort of data up to the block size of four megabytes to be sent and uploaded on a block.
[00:33:47] McIntosh:
Now my perception of this is that it was done very unexpectedly. Apparently, I think this is on the record. It was done at the request of Peter Todd, who is an old, he's an OG Bitcoiner. Right? Whatever. Been around for a long time, was actually, you know, he's been accused of being Satoshi. I find that highly doubtful, but it has it's out there. Right? Yeah. You know, he's he's very involved in the ecosystem. Now he's also got projects, one called Citrea, that are going on where he's trying to build things on Bitcoin. Apparently, he asked because I guess he doesn't have pull request permissions. No. He it was his pull request.
It was his pull request. Yeah. Are you sure about that? I don't wanna say anything incorrectly. I thought he asked a developer to open it. What am I missing?
[00:34:52] Kenshin:
I I saw his name on the on the GitHub thread, and I think that thread is on the actual pull request. Okay.
[00:35:06] McIntosh:
Well, the point is they opened up this pull request, and it was unexpected. It was basically without discussion, and it was to close. It was to make this opportune up I wanna make sure I say this right. This op return code, unlimited. You could just put arbitrary data in there, whatever. It doesn't matter how long it is. Not limited to 40 or 80 bytes. Is that am I good so far? Yes. Okay.
[00:35:39] Kenshin:
That ruffled a lot of people's feathers. And I would say for people who don't understand those technical terms, I would say, imagine is a spam filter that has a limit of how big, let's say, emails you can send or attachments in an email you can send. Right. And essentially they're saying we need to remove that spam filter and those this limit, essentially this limit of big site, how big of an attachment you can send with an email.
[00:36:11] McIntosh:
You wanna pick up from there?
[00:36:13] Kenshin:
Yeah. So so, essentially, what their argument is is that the system has been in place now for over ten years. It has not been a % effective because people and companies have found ways around the so called spam filter. Mhmm. They could instead of, declare a transaction like a normal transaction, like everybody else in the in a mempool, in a node, they would declare that through directly contacting a miner. And that miner could add any sort of data in a book. Marathon.
[00:36:53] McIntosh:
Sorry. So so
[00:36:57] Kenshin:
that was one way they could circumvent the spam filter. So the argument here is companies or whoever individuals, they circumvent the spam filter. So the spam filter is not effective. So let's remove the limits. So anybody has equal rights to upload data without going to a specific miner and all miners can process those transactions. So that's, let's say they're more clean arguments, right? To show that, Oh, we want it to be completely decentralized and all miners to be equal to mine those transactions.
[00:37:35] McIntosh:
I do think it's important to note, if I didn't already. But, again, this configuration option, they're just, like, they're they're completely removing it. So if this gets merged, then you as a node runner have no choice. You cannot set it to 40 or 80 or unlimited. It's just unlimited. And that's the only choice. And I want to, again, consensus, again, determined by the NodeRunners, not by any developers, frankly, of any company. It's determined by the node runners, and yet they are removing that choice. Another person who's very much involved in this is Jamieson Lop, again, a person who's been around for a long time. He is very much saying he I I'm quite sure I saw him.
I'm just gonna say this. Say things like, well, you just don't understand. You're not technical enough, and I'm paraphrasing. But, like, literally telling people shut up because you don't have any idea what you're talking about. I mean, that's that not literally what they said, but it's what it sounded like. Because you don't know because you you you don't understand. You're not technical enough. And I've seen that over and over again, actually, as I've been looking at this. Now can I read the c plus plus code that's in Bitcoin Core? No. I cannot.
Not really. I can look at it and kinda understand what's going on, but I'm not a c plus plus programmer. I'm not a person who contributes to this, But that doesn't mean that I can't understand what's going on. And it doesn't mean that I can't have a different opinion than the person who I am discussing this with. Yeah. So when I start feeling like there's censorship going on, which is people have a term for it. Is it gas? I don't know what it is. When you kinda shut people down by saying something like this Yeah. Gaslighting. Is it gaslighting? I've never really understood that term. But okay. Me neither. But and I heard of it a lot these days. But I don't know how to what's going on here. Just shut up. You don't have the technical understanding.
Okay. So what does that mean? Now we're down to, like, a hundred people in the world who can understand what's going on here, and then y'all should just arbitrarily decide what we do with Bitcoin? I don't think so. That's just my opinion, but, and I don't like calling people out. But frankly, at this point, people need to be called out. Also, there were two people I know of specifically who had commented on this PR that were, kicked off. They were I think their comments were removed, but if they were not, they were not allowed to discuss this anymore on GitHub, I guess. Right? Isn't this happening on GitHub?
Yeah. I'm not okay with that. You may not agree with somebody, and you may choose not to do what they're recommending or whatever. But you you don't just kick people off of GitHub because you don't like their opinion. This is not a civil society, so to speak. And their concerns were not really addressed. They were just blocked. Yeah. So this is all of involving the Bitcoin core distribution, by the way. I think we've made that clear. But just in case we haven't. Now, there's a who was it? It was it it was Grass Fed Beef and Luke Dash Jr. I think maybe.
[00:41:49] Kenshin:
Bitcoin mechanic.
[00:41:51] McIntosh:
Or was it Bitcoin mechanic? Sorry. Sorry. Bitcoin mechanic. They were the two that were that were blocked. Now, all right, Let's set that aside for just a second.
[00:42:04] Kenshin:
One other thing about looking. The the whole actual thread I posted in our in our comments on our note, by the way. Okay. It was looked even to receive votes. Okay. And now it's open again. So I I downvoted the pull request. But I couldn't do that yesterday,
[00:42:23] McIntosh:
actually. So they're look. I don't know what's going on. I think they're getting a lot more blowback than than they expected. But I'm done, frankly, with this. I will not be personally running Bitcoin Core very soon. I believe in diversity of code, for one thing, and 95% of the network running Bitcoin Core is not okay. But this type of behavior to me makes this untenable. These people have essentially crowned themselves as controller of Bitcoin.
[00:43:11] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for me, that is scary because what if they decide to to increase the limit of how much Yes. Bitcoin there is gonna be. Right. They could band together and shut everybody else down and push the I think they would do other
[00:43:25] McIntosh:
and look, to be clear let me say this. I'm certainly willing to say this. I don't know that I don't think that these people are necessarily malicious. I think they probably actually think they're doing what is right. But the for Bitcoin in general, I really believe that, Kenshin. Hang on. But it's not up to them. It's it again, and I said this earlier, this is a consensus network. And we all get our little vote in this by running a node. It's not the miners that run this. It's not the developers that run this. It's the node runners. Because if all the node runners shut down, there wouldn't be a Bitcoin.
[00:44:23] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Yeah. That's that's true. But I don't agree with one thing you said. What's that? You think they're malicious? I don't think they're malicious per se to to to damage Bitcoin. I think they're trying to benefit personally
[00:44:40] McIntosh:
from those changes. Benefiting. They're getting paid to do development work. But Yeah. Let's just set that aside because I'm But on the spot about that, actually. But let's just set that aside. How does this benefit? Because I don't think these core developers are actually involved in any of this stuff. I don't. I think maybe they are. Some of them. Yeah. Okay. It's certainly possible.
[00:45:07] Kenshin:
And the arguments I hear from some people, it was, I was very disappointed to hear actually the RHR, a bit hole recap, podcast. Okay. I listened to it yesterday and today. I have a guy there who was who has a website, OP return bought something, whatever. So they they benefit financially from uploading cat photos on the blockchain.
[00:45:36] McIntosh:
I I don't even understand how. I don't But they do. Right? But they do. Right. So they have a financial incentive.
[00:45:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I'm afraid that's because it sounds so disingenuous, all their arguments, that it must be the ins the personal incentive behind it. Somehow they're gaining. Either someone is paying them, and it's millions behind the scenes Yeah. In in those type of of NFTs and whatever they're called nowadays. Runes and Runes. Inscriptions and Yeah. Taproot Wizards. All of those. Whatever they are. Right. And there's millions, and they might be getting paid, or I don't know. There is incentives, and you need to follow the incentives. That's the simplest way. Yes. They can Yes. They're supposedly smart.
Right? They've been around Bitcoin,
[00:46:33] McIntosh:
some of them, more than ten years. So I I would argue they are smart, at least most of them. I mean, honestly, they may be wrong. They may I would I would say 80 degrees opposite of my viewpoint, but Yeah. I I most of them at least are probably actually maybe even smarter than I am. I don't know.
[00:46:52] Kenshin:
No. I would say they're Bitcoin code smart. Right. Okay. And it's fine to be smart in one specific area, but it doesn't mean they are right Well how a system should work.
[00:47:05] McIntosh:
So going back to my fundamental premise, Bitcoin is and and I think you 100% agree with this. Bitcoin is a peer to peer network, and it's a Bitcoin itself is a storage of value. I don't know that they necessarily believe that. Right? I don't I I heard it this morning,
[00:47:24] Kenshin:
whatever his name was. I mentioned earlier to you. He said Ben. It was Ben. Not not this guy. Another guy. She know Oh. And he got the question, what do you think it is? Is it monetary system or is it a database? And he said, it's a database.
[00:47:40] McIntosh:
Oh, crap. Okay. So hey. Kenshin, This is breaking news. I am a technical expert on databases. Okay? I literally am
[00:47:53] Kenshin:
trust me. K? Trust me. Gonna dox myself,
[00:47:58] McIntosh:
but I do know about databases.
[00:48:00] Kenshin:
Wait. I need to verify you. Wait a second. Okay. You can
[00:48:04] McIntosh:
later, I'll point you to the book that I wrote. You can go look it up on Amazon, and it's not under Macintosh. Alright? It's a true story. I wrote a book on database technology. I can't even tell you which one, but years ago. Alright? Yes. You could argue sort of a blockchain is a database, but let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen. It's a really, really crappy database. What is it? Not Yeah. Yeah. It's that's just wow. Okay.
[00:48:37] Kenshin:
I'm sorry. What is in the database on the Internet?
[00:48:40] McIntosh:
Every website is a database. No. A web server is not a database. You cannot store state in a website. You that's kind of the difference. You can store state in a blockchain. You can store state in a database. You cannot store state in a static website. Right. Right? It's just there. Regardless Yeah. Calling Bitcoin the Bitcoin blockchain a database. Wow. And I the person that you're talking about that said that is one of these people who's like, man, if he thinks you're wrong, he just calls you words that start with r and I mean, it's it's just bad.
[00:49:20] Kenshin:
I mean, it's it's bad. And though and those are the arguments behind all of this. Yeah. That's not an argument. No. And what okay. And maybe now I should put everything in perspective, My personal perspective. Okay? Because it gets me very frustrated. Mhmm. And why I'm getting so frustrated, I think it's important to to describe, is because what this allows and I I will give an example. I think Bitcoin mechanics said that example. It's like having email and a spam filter on your email. Some spam gets through. And your solution from all those smart people is instead of fixing the spam filter, yeah, their solution is remove it. Right.
You get the spam anyway. They figure out a way to send you spam anyway. Right. So just remove it. How dumb is that? It's a waste. It's not working. That's what they're saying. It's not working. Remove it. And open up the floodgates for all the card photos to be stored on on the Bitcoin Blockchain because the Bitcoin Blockchain is the most valuable Blockchain, the most premium place to store anything. Mhmm. And the moment that happens every single one person will want to have an app and a store and whatever to store anything on the blockchain, and there will not be a place for you and me to store our value.
To store our value in a timely manner, in in a affordable manner. Right. In affordable manner. Mhmm. Because we compete for space and we compete with the transaction fees. Mhmm. And the more, I don't want to say bad word, the more things need to be stored on there. The more things are on there, the more we compete for transaction fees. And right now, it works good. We go to low fees when it's busy and the the the, how is it called? The formal kicks in and gets busy, transactions go up, blocks get full, but it's still reasonable. When it becomes the global currency, maybe someday, it will be very busy.
Mhmm. We cannot be competing with anything else. Keep it a monetary system, keep it a value saving system as it was meant to be and not release the floodgates. And that's an expression they actually mentioned themselves. OPRETURN came in the first place to prevent the floodgates from opening and spam in the blockchain. And all of a sudden, twelve years later, oh, there is no issue. With bigger adoption and bigger ideas about what to store and and it it's gonna be chaos. It's gonna be one of those blockchains that yeah.
[00:52:21] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:52:22] Kenshin:
No one wants to be part of it eventually. That's that's the fear.
[00:52:27] McIntosh:
You know, it's kind of funny because I believe that we are witnessing the end, the at least near end of the Ethereum network. It'll probably make it through this bull run because FOMO. But, literally, it's kind of funny because all of this is going on over here about this code. And Vitalik is who is the founder of Ethereum blah blah blah, whatever, is over there saying, oh, by the way, we need to simplify Ethereum. It's too complex. That's why we're failing. Well, yes. Actually. They're literally talking about making major changes in Ethereum after all the changes that they've made because it's too complex.
[00:53:22] Kenshin:
It's too bloated.
[00:53:26] McIntosh:
So I don't know.
[00:53:28] Kenshin:
And the other example is Solana. Right? Mhmm. How those so called meme coins that are not real currencies, that are not real digital currencies, they're just whatever they are. Right? You can go make a coin with your name and sell them in for free for you Right. And benefit. Right? Those how many of of those are made per week is over a million, literally. They just create them from thin air like nothing, And they do that on Solana because it's open. It supports all those fancy technologies that they they promote. Mhmm. And it's chaos.
And it's no value. There is no value in there.
[00:54:17] McIntosh:
And that is the exact opposite of what I wish my global currency and store of value and medium of exchange to be. And I think Bitcoin can be all three. Yeah. That's my goal. That's my wish. Anything else is doesn't matter. If we can build vaults in Bitcoin in order to help maintain our our coins safely, I'm all for that. But it needs to be done in in thoughtful ways. If we're talking about something like this, I'm all for closing things down as much as possible because, you know, unlike somebody who would, you know, remove their spam filter, I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to aggressively try and remove the spam from my system.
[00:55:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. You don't want spam. And it's your system. It's your disk, and they want to put whatever they want to put on there. And of course, you want to filter it, and Bitcoin has been filtering from day one. Right? It has mechanism in place, what goes through and how big and and what type. So so you you you could never do whatever you wanted and because they talk about this freedom. Everything needs to be do whatever you want with it. Right. You know? It's an open blockchain.
[00:55:44] McIntosh:
We'll just do what we want. And it is. I mean, I'm not gonna argue that. It is an open blockchain. But, again, the consensus is what rules this network in the end. And if you are opposed to something, then you need to support that. Right? So what we're going to be doing I know you've already done it, but what we'll be I won't be using Bitcoin Core anymore, not unless they completely change the way that they that they act. I you can count you can chalk a lot of this up to, you know, bad, poor communication, all this kind of stuff. But when they write code that says, we're just removing this and we don't even give you the option to set it, I'm out.
That was it for me. That was the tipping point. So
[00:56:45] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And as you said, connected to last week's discussion, that we said, should you run a node? And we mentioned Bitcoin Core. Mhmm. That's how you run a node, basically. And then we mentioned knots. Right. Like a knot, like a rope knot. Right? Mhmm. So Bitcoin Knots is a fork of Bitcoin Core, and it implements some, I would say, improvements in the sense it has some extra filters and extra settings that you can personalize the node to your liking. You still interact with the Bitcoin network and all the other nodes in the same way. You just, personalize the experience for you and what is stored on your node.
And I would say Bitcoin nodes is a must now for many people like us, not only for those filtering choices, but also to bring up the percentage of an alternative Right. In the system. So now we have Bitcoin Core at over 95 let's say 95%. Mhmm. They're at 95%. They have, let's say, the monopoly in what they decide to do with the software and what the nodes are running. So whatever they implement essentially happens in the network. If we have an alternative, a competitor in that sense, first of all, it will it it would give us a choice and a and a voice and a vote, but also it will keep accountable the Bitcoin core dev dev team. Mhmm. But they cannot do whatever they want. They need to do what's best for the network.
Now they do what whatever is best for them and not the network itself. But if the network is stronger and have alternative to vote, then it will keep them accountable. And I think that's important, and competition is important in that sense. And innovation. Right? It will bring up innovation as well as always. So if you have a node, it's trivial to change to not. You don't need to download the whole blockchain again. Right. If you want to run a node, like Mike and our friend from Australia Mhmm. Run not.
[00:59:07] McIntosh:
Start with Notts straight away. Can I jump in real quick? So Notts is basically the only viable alternative to Bitcoin Core. Yep. And I know that the owner it's not whatever. The maintainer of Knotts is maybe, he rubs a lot of people the wrong way. He's very opinionated. Mhmm. I would love personally to see a couple of other groups spin up and tackle the I mean, it's a difficult issue. I'll I'll grant you. But I would love to see, say, a Rust implementation of Bitcoin Core, which is extremely difficult to do, by the way, for various technical reasons that, you know, I'm not qualified enough to talk about. But sorry. I just thought I'd get that in there. Right. But I mean, the reality is it is difficult.
I get that. But we cannot say, well, it's difficult, so we just have to stick with what's there. I'm personally moving to knots. Like I said, it's it's the only choice that we've got at this point. I would love to see and support other options, frankly. And I hope one thing comes out of this that, Luke Dash junior, who's the maintainer of Knots, kind of opens up a little bit and maybe accept some other help. And I don't know. Because for one thing, he probably doesn't just need to be maintaining it by himself. Now it is all out in the open. His code is open source just like Bitcoin Core is, and it's hosted on GitHub or whatever. But I would still like to seize more transparency and more people involved in that process as well. I don't wanna just sound like I'm kinda beating up on core. I am.
They've got me very angry, but I also think there's room for improvement there, frankly. Yeah. So, we kinda need to wrap this up, but let me throw out something a little more lighthearted. My sink got finished. So now I'm trying to get our lightning node going. Yeah. So we we do need to wrap this up though, Kenshin. Can we Yeah. We do. Can we summarize this and kind of what's our call to action as they would say?
[01:01:42] Kenshin:
Our call to action is be mindful on what is a Bitcoin node. Listen to our previous episode maybe. Mhmm. Do your own research. At least know in in general terms what the Bitcoin node is. If you can run it, it's good that you run one. It doesn't cost much on an old computer to just have it running. And you have a vote. And then if you do run a node already, please don't just upgrade it to the next version blindly. Right.
[01:02:20] McIntosh:
That's a great point.
[01:02:22] Kenshin:
Every time there is a new Bitcoin core version, let's talk about it, and let's see what is implemented. And then after a couple of weeks or months, then update to it if if we see it's stable and it follows the ethos and the the the path that we're on and the journey ahead. Right? And I think if you can change to not, please do change to not, so I would say. It's important to have the
[01:02:51] McIntosh:
voices heard. I do believe there are figures showing, you know, you could scan and see who's online. Basically, the, the percentage of knots is imperceptibly moving up versus versus core, especially the latest version. It's actually doing better than the latest version, which is not the version that we're actually talking about. This has not been actually released yet, but the core team has made it very clear that they will release it, and I do actually wanna emphasize that. They have shut down the discussion. They have said, no.
We're doing this.
[01:03:32] Kenshin:
Have you seen the how many votes they have in that blue request? No. It's supposed some up is 93. Thumb down is 352.
[01:03:41] McIntosh:
But Kenshin, those 300 people don't have enough technical understanding to be voting on this. I can't believe that you would say that
[01:03:51] Kenshin:
And they had they had locked down the voting. It was 267 yesterday, and I couldn't vote and a friend of mine couldn't vote. And today, they unlocked it somehow. So, yeah. That's censorship again? Yeah.
[01:04:10] McIntosh:
I don't know. Alright. Well, let's move on to something slightly more fun. News. No. Is there good news? There is some good news. I'm gonna throw this one out real quick. The good old USA. We got our first state that has approved a Bitcoin reserve, New Hampshire. Live free or die, which is their state motto. They have approved a Bitcoin reserve. So I think it's, like, up to 5% of their kind of their state treasury funding or whatever can be put into Bitcoin. Pretty cool.
[01:04:48] Kenshin:
Wow.
[01:04:49] McIntosh:
Yep. It's beginning. They will be they will not be the last. They are the first. Arizona stumbled at the finish line, and the governor vetoed the bill. So they did not do it. There was another state also that kinda did something very similar where where it died. I do believe in the next six months, we will have multiple make this prediction. Maybe three, four more states. We'll see. Right. Now Now I want you to talk about this next item because that's more in your wheelhouse.
[01:05:26] Kenshin:
Well, this I don't know how new is this, but I have an a better one Okay. For the European Central Bank. They announced that they have partnered with the private sector to develop the digital euro. So they're full steam ahead with this digital euro thing. And they have partnered, also with 70 market participants to test the new platform. And, they will share their findings in a report later this year. So they're really trying on this Digital Euro. And I think their efforts have incent how do we say, increased since the, yeah, since US becoming so positive with crypto and and Bitcoin and stuff. So that's and you oh, and another news for euro Europe is that they I think they start blocking USDT.
They they I think they feel threatened by it and they The Tether coin? The Tether. Yeah. I saw it somewhere today and then that they would allow only USDC for some reason.
[01:06:41] McIntosh:
That's that's rules like that. Yeah. I wonder if that has to do with the treasury situation. I doubt it, but that's the only thing I could think of.
[01:06:51] Kenshin:
No. No. No. But I I can bring more news on it next week. I I just saw it very fast today. Yeah. And, I mean, they continue like this article you you have here. They continue their fight against accounts that are anonymous. And, yeah, they want everybody to KYC as good as possible to fight
[01:07:17] McIntosh:
crime at all costs. Money laundering and child exploitation.
[01:07:23] Kenshin:
Those are the two big things. Yeah. I mean, the quote here is the anonymity of crypto assets poses significant risks of misuse for criminal purposes. Oh my goodness.
[01:07:34] McIntosh:
No. Aye aye. I think that's enough news for the week.
[01:07:43] Kenshin:
You you you promised me good news. Where are the good news? I'm depressed. Well, New Hampshire
[01:07:48] McIntosh:
had some good news. Alright. I live nowhere near Hoot New Hampshire, but they had some good news. Alright. Question of the week, sir. Did we have one?
[01:07:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, what does our audience think about this? Are you have you heard of this? Are you worried now that you heard about it? Are you gonna what do you think?
[01:08:14] McIntosh:
Is Macintosh being the old man sitting on the porch yelling at the kids on the lawn?
[01:08:20] Kenshin:
Maybe the That should be the question. Or my question is did did, did we come out to to be too Too strong. Frustrated? I don't know. Yeah.
[01:08:29] McIntosh:
It's been else to do. No. I I I don't. It's I hate I know this episode, frankly, is gonna probably turn some people off, and this is not a normal I would point out if you've gotten this far, this maybe we should've said this upfront. This is not a normal episode, but I also think this is so important that this one little platform that I happen to have, I need to I need to say this.
[01:08:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. It's important. Good. Did we keep your did you keep your promise of one hour or I don't think so? Alright. We're relatively
[01:09:11] McIntosh:
close. Let's wrap it up. Yep. Look, guys. We're gonna rework our wrap up, actually. I we are value for value podcast. We do look for you to support us, but I I gotta redo all that. I do ask if you'd like the content that you'd please let other people know. Just that's a great way to grow this podcast. Just tell people about it. But, thanks for being here, and I truly hope this has been helpful. I hope we've given you some insight into why this is so important, and we would love to hear from you. We have all different ways to reach us listed at the bottom of each of the episode pages on the website at satoshis-plebs.com.
Then you can just go to the episode library, and all the episode pages are listed there. Just go to one of the new ones and click on it, and all our info is there. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. We will talk to you soon.
[01:10:13] Kenshin:
Bye bye.
[01:13:23] McIntosh:
How long till they've all gone.
What is up, Plev Nation? Today is May, and this is episode 208. Man, every time I say that, they get bigger, and it's just like, holy cow. We've been doing this a long time. Satoshi's Plev. Sorry. I'm Macintosh.
[00:00:15] Kenshin:
I am Kenshin. And today's episode is Here We Go Again, Bitcoin Drama.
[00:00:38] McIntosh:
Alright. Awesome. So first of all, obviously, we've got new music. You heard the little clip there. It's by a group called Jawbone, and these guys I was gonna say rock, but maybe that's not quite the word for it. But, they have done some very interesting stuff, backed up people like Eric Clapton and, others like that that you would know. But they've done their own work, and this is one of their songs called 2,000,000,000 heartbeats. The full song will be at the end of the episode. Hope you enjoy that. And any streaming or boosting that you do during that song at the end will go directly to Jawbone.
Awesome. I don't wanna do this today, Kenshin. I'm gonna be honest. I know. I am not looking forward to this. Me neither. I I know y'all think I'm a cranky old man, but, man, sometimes you just gotta sit on the porch, rock the rocking chair, and yell at those doggone kids on the lawn. And I'm afraid that's what this is gonna come across as. I promise I'm trying to be objective about this. But ladies and gentlemen, I have been involved in Bitcoin. I bought my first Bitcoin in 2013. Alright? I think it's roughly around the same time you did, Kenshin. And I I honestly, I don't have that Bitcoin anymore. I've had a long journey, which we've documented here on the show. You know? I I've made many, many mistakes, but I have been around a long time.
And I have a little perspective on what we're gonna talk about today. So if you'll just bear with us, we both think this is a super important topic. This is not practical. This is not gonna 10 x your Bitcoin supply or something like that. But this is important for the future of Bitcoin.
[00:02:36] Kenshin:
Yes. And I've been dreading that moment too. Well Thinking about it and,
[00:02:42] McIntosh:
it's a bit frustrating, but we have to go through it. It is very frustrating. And I think why it is for us, Kenshin, maybe I'll say this and maybe not for others. A lot of people I think are just like, oh, whatever. This doesn't matter, but it does matter. If you have been involved in this, if you're working in this, if Bitcoin is your future, this is kinda like when somebody's messing around with how dollars are made, for example. And I fuss about that a lot because the government prints dollars, and there's no backing for it. What we store our value and our wealth in is super important and should be treated as such. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think I kind of connected those dots. Yeah. And we have to be careful, and we will go through it, what we mean with all of this. But yeah. It's weird. Before we do that, because we do have a lot to talk about, we we do need to do our normal stuff. So let's before we get too crazy and we are gonna keep this down to, I promise, less than an hour, and I'll probably be over here at fifty minutes going, we gotta stop. We gotta stop. Okay. Good luck.
Good luck. Alright. Bitcoin price at time of recording. What is that, sir?
[00:04:10] Kenshin:
96,700 USD and €85,800. Okay. So we're a bit up from last week. Yeah. A little bit. Comparatively. Not where we said we were gonna be. No. Well, it's not for the year. Yeah. No. So price last this time last year, it was at 62,300 USD. So we're still up 55%
[00:04:36] McIntosh:
similar to Yes, sir. So our our market cap has stayed about the same for Bitcoin, 1 point 9 trillion. Gold, on the other hand, had a little jump this week. It is up to $23,600,000,000,000. So Bitcoin versus gold is 8.1%. It actually shows the same for last week. But Yeah. Gold We went to Big Apple, so yeah. I guess Bitcoin. Yep. You're right. Alright. So they went up the same. There we go. Because they're both great stores of value. One's just a little more portable and got a few other things. That's the Block height as we record eight nine five six nine zero. Actually, six nine one. I saw it tick off when we were doing, but we'll go with 690.
Difficulty adjustment, right now is about four and a half percent if it were to happen right now, but the next adjustment is not until May. The one that just happened on the other hand was minus 3.34%. Last week, I think I said, oh, we'll probably have around 5%. Unfortunately, it kind of, it weakened a little bit, so we didn't get as much of a drop as I would have liked to have seen.
[00:05:52] Kenshin:
Right. And the fees in the mempool are three three and three slots per vbyte. So the mempool is quite empty. It only has 36 megabytes right now in the mempool and around 14,000 unprocessed transactions.
[00:06:09] McIntosh:
I'm sorry. That's actually incorrect. I did not update that part of it. It was 6,000 transactions. I just looked.
[00:06:16] Kenshin:
Yeah. So Okay. My fault.
[00:06:18] McIntosh:
What's going on with you, sir?
[00:06:21] Kenshin:
Oh, it's cold again in Sweden. Or snow. No. No. No. No. No. It's May. So thankfully not. We're not, about to put the winter tires again, so that's good. The days are bigger, noticeably bigger, and that's good. But it's chilly. I still need to put a hat on, even during the day in a thick jacket and freezing my way to work.
[00:06:48] McIntosh:
Let me ask you a question. If you and if you don't wanna answer, that's fine. Are you far enough north, like, during the summer? Like, how many hours of nighttime do you have? Like, in the middle of the summer and the you know, when is the I don't know the hours exactly, but I know that it doesn't get dark until ten, eleven.
[00:07:11] Kenshin:
Wow. And then it gets it starts to get bright again at 04:00.
[00:07:16] McIntosh:
Okay. So that's cool. Gets let let you do lots of stuff outside. In the summer. The case that way in the summer. Now in the winter, it's the reverse of that. So maybe maybe a little more depressing. But yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Like,
[00:07:34] Kenshin:
how do you how is it called? Bears, you know, going into hibernation in the winter.
[00:07:40] McIntosh:
See, I think you're what? A month and a couple weeks from the summer solstice or whatever, so that would be the maximum. Right? Yeah. Yeah. June 21. Very cool. Anything else going on with you? Did you have a good weekend last weekend with your long weekend?
[00:07:56] Kenshin:
Yeah. I had a long weekend. I had a very good weekend, very calm. I learned a lot about coding again. I focused a lot with some Python stuff again. I put in my Versus Code, I put a plug in, implement an AI within, Versus Code. It's called Roo code, r o o, space code. So you can run, AIs within that, and then you ask a question and you say, I want to do that, and then it's understands it and implement it in your code directly, and then you approve it or adjust it. So it was quite cool to go back and forth and try stuff. Stuff that I wouldn't be able to do on my own without, educating myself a lot more on Python.
[00:08:47] McIntosh:
Cool. Cool. Alright. Well, you code up that app, and let's get rich. Just Yes. You code it, and I'll just be there going, good job. 5050. Right? I mean, that seems fair. Right?
[00:09:01] Kenshin:
I mean, the support I get, you get 51.
[00:09:05] McIntosh:
Alright. So for me this week, well, I did wanna mention, we got 34 blocks in ocean in April. So that is a record. I'm quite confident of it. It means we more than one a day was mined. Again, when we mine these blocks, I don't get that whole block. I wish I did, but that's just not the way it works. Right? Yeah. But every day, more than one block was actually being mined. And we're on pace, May, as we record. I think we're eight or nine blocks already. So it's looking good for the ocean pool. So I did wanna mention that. And then I've been working on, the Satoshi back end again, trying to get Prometheus and Grafana to talk to Bitcoin, the node and lightning as well. And that's it's funny. It led me down a AI rabbit hole talking to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT is pretty good with Python code. I've used it a lot in my job for some writing some Python.
On the other hand, when it comes to kind of system administration, it can get really confused, and it'll just keep telling you the same thing over. I'm like, I I don't wanna be rude, but I'm like, chat g p t. No. This is not right. Focus over here and stop repeating the same thing that we've already proven that was was wrong. So I don't know how they fix that, but I'm pretty close, I think. So I had to add what's called a, like, a transaction index to my Bitcoin node to our Bitcoin node so that the metrics would work properly.
And about 02:00 this morning, so roughly twelve hours ago, I kicked that off. So you you had to add the configuration, and then you have to restart Bitcoin d, and it starts the process. Let me tell you something. There is, 895,690 ish blocks. That's a lot of blocks that it has to index. It is still running.
[00:11:33] Kenshin:
Alright. Is that the TX index equals one. Right? Correct. That is correct.
[00:11:38] McIntosh:
I will actually give you a real time update of where we're at on that. Oh, I got no. There it goes. 873066. So I am roughly 20,000 blocks from being done after twelve hours.
[00:11:57] Kenshin:
Okay. You'll be done in less than an hour, maybe.
[00:12:01] McIntosh:
I'm hoping before we're done Yeah. That we can, that will finish because I need to start lightning back up so lightning will not work when this is ongoing. So our lightning node is down. Boo. I really hope we don't get a channel, closure while we're I hope not. I don't think it will, but it is a possibility. I mean, I've been down for twelve hours. People are like, where's the node? Where's the node?
[00:12:27] Kenshin:
Should be fine.
[00:12:28] McIntosh:
I hope so. So, yeah, that's it. That's enough for me. I'd you know, it's just the grind. It's just what it is. Oh, I have another big news. Oh. I have not mined the block. You have not mined the block? No. Can we just go with we're pretty sure you didn't if we don't hear otherwise? Because
[00:12:54] Kenshin:
Mhmm. I'm just kidding. It's my daily announcement. I need to Your daily announcement.
[00:13:00] McIntosh:
You you so you this was your first bot that you wrote. Right? You you wrote a bot that Yeah.
[00:13:07] Kenshin:
Yes.
[00:13:07] McIntosh:
Yeah. Very and so it posted on Nostr. You can follow it or right? Yeah. Yeah. You follow me on Nostr, and then you see at 09:21AM
[00:13:18] Kenshin:
Right. Central European Time, It posts, good morning message and if I mind the block or not.
[00:13:27] McIntosh:
And if it's not him getting on there every morning at that time and hitting No. I'm I'm transparent about that.
[00:13:35] Kenshin:
Anything else I post is me, but that post is automatic. And, I also have the Bitcoin price in sats every morning. Do you know what it is? No.
[00:13:47] McIntosh:
1 Bitcoin equals hundred million such. Oh, that equation. Sure. Yes. I thought it was 1 Bitcoin equals 1 Bitcoin, but okay.
[00:13:56] Kenshin:
I'll make it a bit more fancy. Math confuses me, Have I told you about my struggles with math? I need to remind you about the number of zeros.
[00:14:06] McIntosh:
It's a lot. But Bitcoin is too high in price. Sorry. Alright. I think we need to go ahead. We've danced around this. We need to go ahead and jump into this topic. Yeah. But I like how we have now the notes. Should we go through the supporters first
[00:14:24] Kenshin:
so we don't go through a topic?
[00:14:27] McIntosh:
Well, that way, send it Mike won't rage quit.
[00:14:30] Kenshin:
Yeah. Exactly. So you'll be happy. Do that.
[00:14:36] McIntosh:
Just poking at you send it Mike. Yeah. So sure. We can go ahead and do that. Let me you do send it Mike,
[00:14:44] Kenshin:
and I'll do the next one. Okay. So send in Mike boosted us on fountain, 3,069 certs. Thank you very much. Send it. Mhmm. And he says, you guys are awesome. Great episode. Love this topic and greatly appreciate the easy rundown on how to get up and running. So I put now a note here. So that was about our last episode talking about how to run a node. Right? And then he says, I'll probably try and get an old computer running a note soon. Thanks to this. Woo hoo. Good job. Do you think a Pentium four will be up to the job? He's laughing. I'm only giving my Kintos a hard time for the COVID brain he had last week. Keep up the great
[00:15:30] McIntosh:
work. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Glad you enjoyed last week's episode. I'm thinking a four eighty six DX personally, but, you know, we'll see.
[00:15:42] Kenshin:
No. But I I would say no. No?
[00:15:45] McIntosh:
Don't. Yeah.
[00:15:48] Kenshin:
It it would work, but it would be too loud and
[00:15:52] McIntosh:
consume too much energy and slow. It would use a lot of energy, especially compared to servers these days. I would actually be curious to know if it'll work. I I'm almost tempted. It But, yeah, that kind of stuff is fun. I'm sure we could get Linux running on it.
[00:16:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. That's all it needs. Yeah. We could get Bitcoin
[00:16:11] McIntosh:
node running on it, which means, theoretically well, we'll yeah. Hey. If you've got a Pentium four, you wanna donate to the show, we'll we'll try it.
[00:16:24] Kenshin:
Yeah. Well, the Linux kernel is compatible
[00:16:28] McIntosh:
with anything. Right? So it would run it for sure. I'm pretty sure they still package up three eighty six versions of the, the core. I don't know that for certain. Alright. But user four three six eight seven eight nine three sent us a thousand sets. Appreciate that. Of course. Said, hey, guys. Great episode. And I remember the COVID brain. We run a nerd q x plus, which I've I assume that's the same as, like, a nerd x, which I think I've heard of. That must be a specific model. So he's home mining or she is home mining, and we'll be aiming for a start nine node soon. That's cool. Nice. We'd love to hear if you have any info on Australian BTC activity. We are in Australia trying to promote Bitcoin.
It's a slow movement here. Thanks for the good chats. I do not know of anything offhand. If you're in one of the larger towns like Sydney or I'm drawing complete blanks. I should know better. What's the capital all down in South Australia? Is it Melbourne? Can Canbury. No. Melbourne is a different Sorry. Sorry, guys. I look. I I'll be honest. I've never been to Australia. My wife has. She has relatives who live in Sydney. But if you live in one of the major towns, I'll be honest. Here's what I would do if you're interested. Try and start a meetup if there's not one already, which is what I would recommend you look into. Now I know in my local area, there's a meetup that post on meetup.com.
I do not know if that is popular in Australia, but that might be a place you could start. Actually, why don't you boost back in? Let us know how that goes, if you find something there. So that would certainly be a good place to start. Yeah. I have a suggestion.
[00:18:30] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Orange peel up.
[00:18:33] McIntosh:
Oh, yeah. That's a little more modern, and that's a great idea because right. You just may run into people that are near you you know, are interested in Bitcoin that way and wouldn't be like a formal meetup.
[00:18:48] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:18:50] McIntosh:
I have heard I have heard that people have met people there that you know, for romantic stuff, but I don't know anything about that. I'm just saying.
[00:18:58] Kenshin:
No. I I met some local Bitcoiners here through this app, Orange Peel app. So it it's a great resource for sure. Yes. I have not tried it, and
[00:19:10] McIntosh:
I do go to our local meetup, which I don't talk about for what's the security purposes, whatever. You know, I do go to our local meetup, though. We have it once a month, and it's it's a decent group. I've talked about a little bit. I wished it were a little more technical, frankly,
[00:19:29] Kenshin:
but
[00:19:30] McIntosh:
it is what it is. Right? Mhmm. Very cool. So there's a couple things you could you could run with. Alright. I think it's time. Are we ready? Oof. I don't know. Dear listeners, I hope you are ready. We have to discuss the ongoing controversy in Bitcoin land. I mean, I don't know. I and we talked about this a little bit last week, but I think we're gonna have to go a little more in-depth. And I think we're gonna kinda have to lay our cards out on the table what Kenshin and I feel because we are voting members in the Bitcoin ecosystem. And what I mean is we both run nodes, and we run multiple nodes.
[00:20:13] Kenshin:
Mhmm.
[00:20:15] McIntosh:
And the nodes are what determine what code is run and how the protocol is managed. And so I guess we have a vote. And Yeah. So we're gonna reveal what we're going to do, but I think it's important to kinda understand how we got there. Now I did say earlier, we both have been involved in Bitcoin for a long time, and we have seen some stuff. I distinctly remember the block size war back in 2017. So that was kind of the big block versus small block controversy. Bitcoin stuck with the small blocks for the most part, and I think, that was proven to be a very prudent choice.
Other people forked off and went and did other things, because they believed in big blocks or maybe they had a financial incentive to do so. I'm just saying, you know, and those have not worked out so well because that now has been gracious. Has it been that long? Like, eight years ago? Yeah. 2017. Right? So, you know, time has proven that, and time will prove whatever happens here is whether it's right or wrong. So you were actually mentioning Kenshin even further back than that. There was an episode. There was a heated discussion about the very thing that we're gonna talk about that happened in 2013.
Right?
[00:21:48] Kenshin:
Yeah.
[00:21:49] McIntosh:
So You wanna go into that for just a second?
[00:21:51] Kenshin:
Yeah. So well, in 2013, they were trying to figure out ways to add data in the blocks. So not only I mean, Bitcoin started as a monetary system Yes. Transaction, transferring Bitcoin, essentially value from one place to another. Mhmm. Then all of a sudden, they wanted to start putting data in it, like messages, like maybe contracts, just any sort of data. And what they came up with was was a way to limit this sort of data getting into the Bitcoin system so it doesn't bloat the system. It doesn't, let's say, spam the system, take away space from it, and and mainly to keep the blockchain for monetary purposes.
So they implemented this OP return, code. Mhmm. So, essentially, what this code does is you are able to add some data without taking so much space and without, taking away the UTXOs, the the actual, coins, let's say, for people who don't know what the UTXO is is is let's say the actual coin that you send around. So to keep it a bit cleaner, if we call it and we can call it a bit like a spam filter also. Right? So it has some limits, this op return. It allows you to do some stuff, but with a limit of 80 bytes. Mhmm.
And I see here that actually those 80 bytes, they went back and forth. They went down to 40 at some point They did. And then back up to 80. Right. So they were experimenting in big bug, but back then in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. But they settled with these 80 bytes since then. And they had all these motivations why they introduced that and what they wanted it going to be. And Satoshi himself was involved in the in the inception of this OP return. Mhmm. And they even suggested, Satoshi and some others, if you want to do other things with a Blockchain, just make another Blockchain.
And you're gonna have it in parallel. Maybe it can be based on Bitcoin somehow.
[00:24:17] McIntosh:
Right. Maybe like a layer two or what they would call a side chain. Yes. Okay. So clearly, I think Satoshi's idea was we need to limit what goes into the blockchain. And that is because we don't want to bloat that blockchain because that's going to create issues down the road. It's gonna create it's going to it's going to make it more expensive to run a a node, for example. For the space reasons that we talked about last week, the node, the total blockchain right now is, like, 750 gigs. We don't want that to be crazy, and go, you know, be much, much bigger.
[00:25:07] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's a a question I got from a friend. He said, but why would the storage increase if the blocks themselves are limited to four megabytes? And that's a good question because now the blocks are not full. And even if they're full with transactions, they have still space for this, Segwit, how is it called? Oh, I don't know the term the technical terms now, but they still have space for some data left over. Mhmm. So the blocks are rarely over two megabytes, really. But if you start putting arbitrary data on it, you always have four megabyte blocks every ten minutes.
And that will will certify that you have a maximum increase in the blockchain size at an increased pace of four megabytes per ten minutes. Otherwise, we would be at the pace that we are now that is more reasonable, that the blocks are lighter, they fit more transactions if needed. And and I would say another crucial part is going back to the early days, but they wanted to keep the blockchain, and, not with so much spam. And then the next war was the block size war that you mentioned. Mhmm. But they wanted to increase the blocks, and they said no. We keep them as they are small. So we certify that we have a small block that is valuable, that the space in it is valuable and clean in that sense.
Right? So all those suggestions were to to put whatever they wanted and to make them they were arguing to make the blocks bigger and put whatever they wanted in it. So those camps are a bit, I think, connected in that sense. Right.
[00:27:03] McIntosh:
So before we get too deep into this, I'd I would mention that, the idea of changes happening in Bitcoin historically has been what they would call, like, rough consensus. In other words, it's like I I wouldn't call it a democracy, but you kind of take a vote with the code that you run. If every if enough people won't run the code that you're running to do something, then that won't really happen. Does that make sense? Like, if everybody ran code that said op return of 80 bytes and no hire, and that's it, then it doesn't matter what's allowed in the software if it's configured by every NodeRunner to limit it to 80 bytes. In that case, you would have a % consensus.
Is is that fair, Kenshin? Yeah. Okay. So the only way to really kind of handle that is by the nodes. The nodes run this Bitcoin core software or some other version like not, that that manages the protocol, so to speak. And these are the things that are configured for these options, essentially. Configured your op return code to be 80 bytes limited, you know, at the maximum versus just allowing some unlimited amount. So it it always goes back to this idea of consensus. So we're gonna discuss here in just a minute kind of this this argument that's going on right now about this.
Well, in the end, all these people can talk, but what matters is the code that runs on these notes. Mhmm. Okay? Yeah. So that being said, I wanna lay out in general kind of at least our view and maybe our view is slanted, but I'm gonna say up front, my view is like and let me say this. Maybe this is a good time to say this. As somebody who's been around Bitcoin for a long time, Bitcoin is a peer to peer network that's used to move money from one person to another. It is Bitcoin itself can be a monetary unit. I'm gonna pay you some Satoshis for some fruit, for example, and it can be used as a store of value. Oh, rather than investing in mutual funds or real estate or whatever, I'm going to invest in Bitcoin with the idea that because it is continuing to gain traction and so on and so forth, it's going to go up in value. Or at least it's not going to lose in value versus, say, the US dollar, which is losing purchasing power at a rate of about, what is it, like, 5% a year, I wanna say.
Right? So if I just hold dollars in my bank account, they're going down in value. That's not a store of value. That's a waste of money is what that is. Right? Those are the two things that Bitcoin is good for in in my mind. Anything else, we can talk about it, but those are the important things. And if they are impeded in any way by any change that's made, then I don't want that change. Yeah. Is that fair? It's fair.
[00:30:46] Kenshin:
And I would add here that Bitcoin was carefully crafted out of many technologies over decades. And out of many experiences with the fiat system and histories, it was crafted, and I quote the title, Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Yes. Right? It was made to do that very, very good. And that's why it's so successful, and that's why any other, altcoin or cryptocurrency is has not been successful. It's because all the items inside Bitcoin were carefully selected and work together in that way. And now should I give the other side really fast?
[00:31:35] McIntosh:
I think, let's do this. Let's dive into kind of as high level as we can what is actually going on right now. I don't remember what exactly we said last week, but people may not have heard that episode. So let's just real briefly outline what is going on literally right now, and then we'll talk about kind of the other side's view because Bitcoin is an open network. People can use it however they want and all that. So we do need to have that discussion.
[00:32:09] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, last week, I don't I don't I was not aware of this, actually, the moment of recording. Mhmm. It was happening at the moment of recording, the biggest, Yeah. Everything. But I I was not aware of it. We talked about notes, for example. I said I was running notes. I was happy with them, and I was suggesting notes. But I didn't know how, yeah, how important it was to suggest notes at the time.
[00:32:36] McIntosh:
So let's give the overview Yeah. And help me help me out or vice versa because I don't wanna forget things, but we do need to keep this as high level as possible. So there was a new version, that no, that's not true. I want to make sure I try not to say things incorrectly. There was a pull request made for the Bitcoin core. And if you remember, Bitcoin core is kind of the most common version of this node software that is out there, and it is more common by far. It's like 90% plus. 95 or something. 95. Right. So it's a lot. But a pull request was made to change this op return code to remove that limit that we were talking about just a few minutes ago of 80 bytes.
[00:33:32] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Essentially, that would allow any sort of data up to the block size of four megabytes to be sent and uploaded on a block.
[00:33:47] McIntosh:
Now my perception of this is that it was done very unexpectedly. Apparently, I think this is on the record. It was done at the request of Peter Todd, who is an old, he's an OG Bitcoiner. Right? Whatever. Been around for a long time, was actually, you know, he's been accused of being Satoshi. I find that highly doubtful, but it has it's out there. Right? Yeah. You know, he's he's very involved in the ecosystem. Now he's also got projects, one called Citrea, that are going on where he's trying to build things on Bitcoin. Apparently, he asked because I guess he doesn't have pull request permissions. No. He it was his pull request.
It was his pull request. Yeah. Are you sure about that? I don't wanna say anything incorrectly. I thought he asked a developer to open it. What am I missing?
[00:34:52] Kenshin:
I I saw his name on the on the GitHub thread, and I think that thread is on the actual pull request. Okay.
[00:35:06] McIntosh:
Well, the point is they opened up this pull request, and it was unexpected. It was basically without discussion, and it was to close. It was to make this opportune up I wanna make sure I say this right. This op return code, unlimited. You could just put arbitrary data in there, whatever. It doesn't matter how long it is. Not limited to 40 or 80 bytes. Is that am I good so far? Yes. Okay.
[00:35:39] Kenshin:
That ruffled a lot of people's feathers. And I would say for people who don't understand those technical terms, I would say, imagine is a spam filter that has a limit of how big, let's say, emails you can send or attachments in an email you can send. Right. And essentially they're saying we need to remove that spam filter and those this limit, essentially this limit of big site, how big of an attachment you can send with an email.
[00:36:11] McIntosh:
You wanna pick up from there?
[00:36:13] Kenshin:
Yeah. So so, essentially, what their argument is is that the system has been in place now for over ten years. It has not been a % effective because people and companies have found ways around the so called spam filter. Mhmm. They could instead of, declare a transaction like a normal transaction, like everybody else in the in a mempool, in a node, they would declare that through directly contacting a miner. And that miner could add any sort of data in a book. Marathon.
[00:36:53] McIntosh:
Sorry. So so
[00:36:57] Kenshin:
that was one way they could circumvent the spam filter. So the argument here is companies or whoever individuals, they circumvent the spam filter. So the spam filter is not effective. So let's remove the limits. So anybody has equal rights to upload data without going to a specific miner and all miners can process those transactions. So that's, let's say they're more clean arguments, right? To show that, Oh, we want it to be completely decentralized and all miners to be equal to mine those transactions.
[00:37:35] McIntosh:
I do think it's important to note, if I didn't already. But, again, this configuration option, they're just, like, they're they're completely removing it. So if this gets merged, then you as a node runner have no choice. You cannot set it to 40 or 80 or unlimited. It's just unlimited. And that's the only choice. And I want to, again, consensus, again, determined by the NodeRunners, not by any developers, frankly, of any company. It's determined by the node runners, and yet they are removing that choice. Another person who's very much involved in this is Jamieson Lop, again, a person who's been around for a long time. He is very much saying he I I'm quite sure I saw him.
I'm just gonna say this. Say things like, well, you just don't understand. You're not technical enough, and I'm paraphrasing. But, like, literally telling people shut up because you don't have any idea what you're talking about. I mean, that's that not literally what they said, but it's what it sounded like. Because you don't know because you you you don't understand. You're not technical enough. And I've seen that over and over again, actually, as I've been looking at this. Now can I read the c plus plus code that's in Bitcoin Core? No. I cannot.
Not really. I can look at it and kinda understand what's going on, but I'm not a c plus plus programmer. I'm not a person who contributes to this, But that doesn't mean that I can't understand what's going on. And it doesn't mean that I can't have a different opinion than the person who I am discussing this with. Yeah. So when I start feeling like there's censorship going on, which is people have a term for it. Is it gas? I don't know what it is. When you kinda shut people down by saying something like this Yeah. Gaslighting. Is it gaslighting? I've never really understood that term. But okay. Me neither. But and I heard of it a lot these days. But I don't know how to what's going on here. Just shut up. You don't have the technical understanding.
Okay. So what does that mean? Now we're down to, like, a hundred people in the world who can understand what's going on here, and then y'all should just arbitrarily decide what we do with Bitcoin? I don't think so. That's just my opinion, but, and I don't like calling people out. But frankly, at this point, people need to be called out. Also, there were two people I know of specifically who had commented on this PR that were, kicked off. They were I think their comments were removed, but if they were not, they were not allowed to discuss this anymore on GitHub, I guess. Right? Isn't this happening on GitHub?
Yeah. I'm not okay with that. You may not agree with somebody, and you may choose not to do what they're recommending or whatever. But you you don't just kick people off of GitHub because you don't like their opinion. This is not a civil society, so to speak. And their concerns were not really addressed. They were just blocked. Yeah. So this is all of involving the Bitcoin core distribution, by the way. I think we've made that clear. But just in case we haven't. Now, there's a who was it? It was it it was Grass Fed Beef and Luke Dash Jr. I think maybe.
[00:41:49] Kenshin:
Bitcoin mechanic.
[00:41:51] McIntosh:
Or was it Bitcoin mechanic? Sorry. Sorry. Bitcoin mechanic. They were the two that were that were blocked. Now, all right, Let's set that aside for just a second.
[00:42:04] Kenshin:
One other thing about looking. The the whole actual thread I posted in our in our comments on our note, by the way. Okay. It was looked even to receive votes. Okay. And now it's open again. So I I downvoted the pull request. But I couldn't do that yesterday,
[00:42:23] McIntosh:
actually. So they're look. I don't know what's going on. I think they're getting a lot more blowback than than they expected. But I'm done, frankly, with this. I will not be personally running Bitcoin Core very soon. I believe in diversity of code, for one thing, and 95% of the network running Bitcoin Core is not okay. But this type of behavior to me makes this untenable. These people have essentially crowned themselves as controller of Bitcoin.
[00:43:11] Kenshin:
Yeah. And for me, that is scary because what if they decide to to increase the limit of how much Yes. Bitcoin there is gonna be. Right. They could band together and shut everybody else down and push the I think they would do other
[00:43:25] McIntosh:
and look, to be clear let me say this. I'm certainly willing to say this. I don't know that I don't think that these people are necessarily malicious. I think they probably actually think they're doing what is right. But the for Bitcoin in general, I really believe that, Kenshin. Hang on. But it's not up to them. It's it again, and I said this earlier, this is a consensus network. And we all get our little vote in this by running a node. It's not the miners that run this. It's not the developers that run this. It's the node runners. Because if all the node runners shut down, there wouldn't be a Bitcoin.
[00:44:23] Kenshin:
Mhmm. Yeah. That's that's true. But I don't agree with one thing you said. What's that? You think they're malicious? I don't think they're malicious per se to to to damage Bitcoin. I think they're trying to benefit personally
[00:44:40] McIntosh:
from those changes. Benefiting. They're getting paid to do development work. But Yeah. Let's just set that aside because I'm But on the spot about that, actually. But let's just set that aside. How does this benefit? Because I don't think these core developers are actually involved in any of this stuff. I don't. I think maybe they are. Some of them. Yeah. Okay. It's certainly possible.
[00:45:07] Kenshin:
And the arguments I hear from some people, it was, I was very disappointed to hear actually the RHR, a bit hole recap, podcast. Okay. I listened to it yesterday and today. I have a guy there who was who has a website, OP return bought something, whatever. So they they benefit financially from uploading cat photos on the blockchain.
[00:45:36] McIntosh:
I I don't even understand how. I don't But they do. Right? But they do. Right. So they have a financial incentive.
[00:45:46] Kenshin:
Yeah. And I'm afraid that's because it sounds so disingenuous, all their arguments, that it must be the ins the personal incentive behind it. Somehow they're gaining. Either someone is paying them, and it's millions behind the scenes Yeah. In in those type of of NFTs and whatever they're called nowadays. Runes and Runes. Inscriptions and Yeah. Taproot Wizards. All of those. Whatever they are. Right. And there's millions, and they might be getting paid, or I don't know. There is incentives, and you need to follow the incentives. That's the simplest way. Yes. They can Yes. They're supposedly smart.
Right? They've been around Bitcoin,
[00:46:33] McIntosh:
some of them, more than ten years. So I I would argue they are smart, at least most of them. I mean, honestly, they may be wrong. They may I would I would say 80 degrees opposite of my viewpoint, but Yeah. I I most of them at least are probably actually maybe even smarter than I am. I don't know.
[00:46:52] Kenshin:
No. I would say they're Bitcoin code smart. Right. Okay. And it's fine to be smart in one specific area, but it doesn't mean they are right Well how a system should work.
[00:47:05] McIntosh:
So going back to my fundamental premise, Bitcoin is and and I think you 100% agree with this. Bitcoin is a peer to peer network, and it's a Bitcoin itself is a storage of value. I don't know that they necessarily believe that. Right? I don't I I heard it this morning,
[00:47:24] Kenshin:
whatever his name was. I mentioned earlier to you. He said Ben. It was Ben. Not not this guy. Another guy. She know Oh. And he got the question, what do you think it is? Is it monetary system or is it a database? And he said, it's a database.
[00:47:40] McIntosh:
Oh, crap. Okay. So hey. Kenshin, This is breaking news. I am a technical expert on databases. Okay? I literally am
[00:47:53] Kenshin:
trust me. K? Trust me. Gonna dox myself,
[00:47:58] McIntosh:
but I do know about databases.
[00:48:00] Kenshin:
Wait. I need to verify you. Wait a second. Okay. You can
[00:48:04] McIntosh:
later, I'll point you to the book that I wrote. You can go look it up on Amazon, and it's not under Macintosh. Alright? It's a true story. I wrote a book on database technology. I can't even tell you which one, but years ago. Alright? Yes. You could argue sort of a blockchain is a database, but let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen. It's a really, really crappy database. What is it? Not Yeah. Yeah. It's that's just wow. Okay.
[00:48:37] Kenshin:
I'm sorry. What is in the database on the Internet?
[00:48:40] McIntosh:
Every website is a database. No. A web server is not a database. You cannot store state in a website. You that's kind of the difference. You can store state in a blockchain. You can store state in a database. You cannot store state in a static website. Right. Right? It's just there. Regardless Yeah. Calling Bitcoin the Bitcoin blockchain a database. Wow. And I the person that you're talking about that said that is one of these people who's like, man, if he thinks you're wrong, he just calls you words that start with r and I mean, it's it's just bad.
[00:49:20] Kenshin:
I mean, it's it's bad. And though and those are the arguments behind all of this. Yeah. That's not an argument. No. And what okay. And maybe now I should put everything in perspective, My personal perspective. Okay? Because it gets me very frustrated. Mhmm. And why I'm getting so frustrated, I think it's important to to describe, is because what this allows and I I will give an example. I think Bitcoin mechanics said that example. It's like having email and a spam filter on your email. Some spam gets through. And your solution from all those smart people is instead of fixing the spam filter, yeah, their solution is remove it. Right.
You get the spam anyway. They figure out a way to send you spam anyway. Right. So just remove it. How dumb is that? It's a waste. It's not working. That's what they're saying. It's not working. Remove it. And open up the floodgates for all the card photos to be stored on on the Bitcoin Blockchain because the Bitcoin Blockchain is the most valuable Blockchain, the most premium place to store anything. Mhmm. And the moment that happens every single one person will want to have an app and a store and whatever to store anything on the blockchain, and there will not be a place for you and me to store our value.
To store our value in a timely manner, in in a affordable manner. Right. In affordable manner. Mhmm. Because we compete for space and we compete with the transaction fees. Mhmm. And the more, I don't want to say bad word, the more things need to be stored on there. The more things are on there, the more we compete for transaction fees. And right now, it works good. We go to low fees when it's busy and the the the, how is it called? The formal kicks in and gets busy, transactions go up, blocks get full, but it's still reasonable. When it becomes the global currency, maybe someday, it will be very busy.
Mhmm. We cannot be competing with anything else. Keep it a monetary system, keep it a value saving system as it was meant to be and not release the floodgates. And that's an expression they actually mentioned themselves. OPRETURN came in the first place to prevent the floodgates from opening and spam in the blockchain. And all of a sudden, twelve years later, oh, there is no issue. With bigger adoption and bigger ideas about what to store and and it it's gonna be chaos. It's gonna be one of those blockchains that yeah.
[00:52:21] McIntosh:
Right.
[00:52:22] Kenshin:
No one wants to be part of it eventually. That's that's the fear.
[00:52:27] McIntosh:
You know, it's kind of funny because I believe that we are witnessing the end, the at least near end of the Ethereum network. It'll probably make it through this bull run because FOMO. But, literally, it's kind of funny because all of this is going on over here about this code. And Vitalik is who is the founder of Ethereum blah blah blah, whatever, is over there saying, oh, by the way, we need to simplify Ethereum. It's too complex. That's why we're failing. Well, yes. Actually. They're literally talking about making major changes in Ethereum after all the changes that they've made because it's too complex.
[00:53:22] Kenshin:
It's too bloated.
[00:53:26] McIntosh:
So I don't know.
[00:53:28] Kenshin:
And the other example is Solana. Right? Mhmm. How those so called meme coins that are not real currencies, that are not real digital currencies, they're just whatever they are. Right? You can go make a coin with your name and sell them in for free for you Right. And benefit. Right? Those how many of of those are made per week is over a million, literally. They just create them from thin air like nothing, And they do that on Solana because it's open. It supports all those fancy technologies that they they promote. Mhmm. And it's chaos.
And it's no value. There is no value in there.
[00:54:17] McIntosh:
And that is the exact opposite of what I wish my global currency and store of value and medium of exchange to be. And I think Bitcoin can be all three. Yeah. That's my goal. That's my wish. Anything else is doesn't matter. If we can build vaults in Bitcoin in order to help maintain our our coins safely, I'm all for that. But it needs to be done in in thoughtful ways. If we're talking about something like this, I'm all for closing things down as much as possible because, you know, unlike somebody who would, you know, remove their spam filter, I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to aggressively try and remove the spam from my system.
[00:55:10] Kenshin:
Yeah. You don't want spam. And it's your system. It's your disk, and they want to put whatever they want to put on there. And of course, you want to filter it, and Bitcoin has been filtering from day one. Right? It has mechanism in place, what goes through and how big and and what type. So so you you you could never do whatever you wanted and because they talk about this freedom. Everything needs to be do whatever you want with it. Right. You know? It's an open blockchain.
[00:55:44] McIntosh:
We'll just do what we want. And it is. I mean, I'm not gonna argue that. It is an open blockchain. But, again, the consensus is what rules this network in the end. And if you are opposed to something, then you need to support that. Right? So what we're going to be doing I know you've already done it, but what we'll be I won't be using Bitcoin Core anymore, not unless they completely change the way that they that they act. I you can count you can chalk a lot of this up to, you know, bad, poor communication, all this kind of stuff. But when they write code that says, we're just removing this and we don't even give you the option to set it, I'm out.
That was it for me. That was the tipping point. So
[00:56:45] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. And as you said, connected to last week's discussion, that we said, should you run a node? And we mentioned Bitcoin Core. Mhmm. That's how you run a node, basically. And then we mentioned knots. Right. Like a knot, like a rope knot. Right? Mhmm. So Bitcoin Knots is a fork of Bitcoin Core, and it implements some, I would say, improvements in the sense it has some extra filters and extra settings that you can personalize the node to your liking. You still interact with the Bitcoin network and all the other nodes in the same way. You just, personalize the experience for you and what is stored on your node.
And I would say Bitcoin nodes is a must now for many people like us, not only for those filtering choices, but also to bring up the percentage of an alternative Right. In the system. So now we have Bitcoin Core at over 95 let's say 95%. Mhmm. They're at 95%. They have, let's say, the monopoly in what they decide to do with the software and what the nodes are running. So whatever they implement essentially happens in the network. If we have an alternative, a competitor in that sense, first of all, it will it it would give us a choice and a and a voice and a vote, but also it will keep accountable the Bitcoin core dev dev team. Mhmm. But they cannot do whatever they want. They need to do what's best for the network.
Now they do what whatever is best for them and not the network itself. But if the network is stronger and have alternative to vote, then it will keep them accountable. And I think that's important, and competition is important in that sense. And innovation. Right? It will bring up innovation as well as always. So if you have a node, it's trivial to change to not. You don't need to download the whole blockchain again. Right. If you want to run a node, like Mike and our friend from Australia Mhmm. Run not.
[00:59:07] McIntosh:
Start with Notts straight away. Can I jump in real quick? So Notts is basically the only viable alternative to Bitcoin Core. Yep. And I know that the owner it's not whatever. The maintainer of Knotts is maybe, he rubs a lot of people the wrong way. He's very opinionated. Mhmm. I would love personally to see a couple of other groups spin up and tackle the I mean, it's a difficult issue. I'll I'll grant you. But I would love to see, say, a Rust implementation of Bitcoin Core, which is extremely difficult to do, by the way, for various technical reasons that, you know, I'm not qualified enough to talk about. But sorry. I just thought I'd get that in there. Right. But I mean, the reality is it is difficult.
I get that. But we cannot say, well, it's difficult, so we just have to stick with what's there. I'm personally moving to knots. Like I said, it's it's the only choice that we've got at this point. I would love to see and support other options, frankly. And I hope one thing comes out of this that, Luke Dash junior, who's the maintainer of Knots, kind of opens up a little bit and maybe accept some other help. And I don't know. Because for one thing, he probably doesn't just need to be maintaining it by himself. Now it is all out in the open. His code is open source just like Bitcoin Core is, and it's hosted on GitHub or whatever. But I would still like to seize more transparency and more people involved in that process as well. I don't wanna just sound like I'm kinda beating up on core. I am.
They've got me very angry, but I also think there's room for improvement there, frankly. Yeah. So, we kinda need to wrap this up, but let me throw out something a little more lighthearted. My sink got finished. So now I'm trying to get our lightning node going. Yeah. So we we do need to wrap this up though, Kenshin. Can we Yeah. We do. Can we summarize this and kind of what's our call to action as they would say?
[01:01:42] Kenshin:
Our call to action is be mindful on what is a Bitcoin node. Listen to our previous episode maybe. Mhmm. Do your own research. At least know in in general terms what the Bitcoin node is. If you can run it, it's good that you run one. It doesn't cost much on an old computer to just have it running. And you have a vote. And then if you do run a node already, please don't just upgrade it to the next version blindly. Right.
[01:02:20] McIntosh:
That's a great point.
[01:02:22] Kenshin:
Every time there is a new Bitcoin core version, let's talk about it, and let's see what is implemented. And then after a couple of weeks or months, then update to it if if we see it's stable and it follows the ethos and the the the path that we're on and the journey ahead. Right? And I think if you can change to not, please do change to not, so I would say. It's important to have the
[01:02:51] McIntosh:
voices heard. I do believe there are figures showing, you know, you could scan and see who's online. Basically, the, the percentage of knots is imperceptibly moving up versus versus core, especially the latest version. It's actually doing better than the latest version, which is not the version that we're actually talking about. This has not been actually released yet, but the core team has made it very clear that they will release it, and I do actually wanna emphasize that. They have shut down the discussion. They have said, no.
We're doing this.
[01:03:32] Kenshin:
Have you seen the how many votes they have in that blue request? No. It's supposed some up is 93. Thumb down is 352.
[01:03:41] McIntosh:
But Kenshin, those 300 people don't have enough technical understanding to be voting on this. I can't believe that you would say that
[01:03:51] Kenshin:
And they had they had locked down the voting. It was 267 yesterday, and I couldn't vote and a friend of mine couldn't vote. And today, they unlocked it somehow. So, yeah. That's censorship again? Yeah.
[01:04:10] McIntosh:
I don't know. Alright. Well, let's move on to something slightly more fun. News. No. Is there good news? There is some good news. I'm gonna throw this one out real quick. The good old USA. We got our first state that has approved a Bitcoin reserve, New Hampshire. Live free or die, which is their state motto. They have approved a Bitcoin reserve. So I think it's, like, up to 5% of their kind of their state treasury funding or whatever can be put into Bitcoin. Pretty cool.
[01:04:48] Kenshin:
Wow.
[01:04:49] McIntosh:
Yep. It's beginning. They will be they will not be the last. They are the first. Arizona stumbled at the finish line, and the governor vetoed the bill. So they did not do it. There was another state also that kinda did something very similar where where it died. I do believe in the next six months, we will have multiple make this prediction. Maybe three, four more states. We'll see. Right. Now Now I want you to talk about this next item because that's more in your wheelhouse.
[01:05:26] Kenshin:
Well, this I don't know how new is this, but I have an a better one Okay. For the European Central Bank. They announced that they have partnered with the private sector to develop the digital euro. So they're full steam ahead with this digital euro thing. And they have partnered, also with 70 market participants to test the new platform. And, they will share their findings in a report later this year. So they're really trying on this Digital Euro. And I think their efforts have incent how do we say, increased since the, yeah, since US becoming so positive with crypto and and Bitcoin and stuff. So that's and you oh, and another news for euro Europe is that they I think they start blocking USDT.
They they I think they feel threatened by it and they The Tether coin? The Tether. Yeah. I saw it somewhere today and then that they would allow only USDC for some reason.
[01:06:41] McIntosh:
That's that's rules like that. Yeah. I wonder if that has to do with the treasury situation. I doubt it, but that's the only thing I could think of.
[01:06:51] Kenshin:
No. No. No. But I I can bring more news on it next week. I I just saw it very fast today. Yeah. And, I mean, they continue like this article you you have here. They continue their fight against accounts that are anonymous. And, yeah, they want everybody to KYC as good as possible to fight
[01:07:17] McIntosh:
crime at all costs. Money laundering and child exploitation.
[01:07:23] Kenshin:
Those are the two big things. Yeah. I mean, the quote here is the anonymity of crypto assets poses significant risks of misuse for criminal purposes. Oh my goodness.
[01:07:34] McIntosh:
No. Aye aye. I think that's enough news for the week.
[01:07:43] Kenshin:
You you you promised me good news. Where are the good news? I'm depressed. Well, New Hampshire
[01:07:48] McIntosh:
had some good news. Alright. I live nowhere near Hoot New Hampshire, but they had some good news. Alright. Question of the week, sir. Did we have one?
[01:07:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. I mean, what does our audience think about this? Are you have you heard of this? Are you worried now that you heard about it? Are you gonna what do you think?
[01:08:14] McIntosh:
Is Macintosh being the old man sitting on the porch yelling at the kids on the lawn?
[01:08:20] Kenshin:
Maybe the That should be the question. Or my question is did did, did we come out to to be too Too strong. Frustrated? I don't know. Yeah.
[01:08:29] McIntosh:
It's been else to do. No. I I I don't. It's I hate I know this episode, frankly, is gonna probably turn some people off, and this is not a normal I would point out if you've gotten this far, this maybe we should've said this upfront. This is not a normal episode, but I also think this is so important that this one little platform that I happen to have, I need to I need to say this.
[01:08:59] Kenshin:
Yeah. Yeah. It's important. Good. Did we keep your did you keep your promise of one hour or I don't think so? Alright. We're relatively
[01:09:11] McIntosh:
close. Let's wrap it up. Yep. Look, guys. We're gonna rework our wrap up, actually. I we are value for value podcast. We do look for you to support us, but I I gotta redo all that. I do ask if you'd like the content that you'd please let other people know. Just that's a great way to grow this podcast. Just tell people about it. But, thanks for being here, and I truly hope this has been helpful. I hope we've given you some insight into why this is so important, and we would love to hear from you. We have all different ways to reach us listed at the bottom of each of the episode pages on the website at satoshis-plebs.com.
Then you can just go to the episode library, and all the episode pages are listed there. Just go to one of the new ones and click on it, and all our info is there. Stay humble, friends. Go out. Make it a great week. We will talk to you soon.
[01:10:13] Kenshin:
Bye bye.
[01:13:23] McIntosh:
How long till they've all gone.
Introduction
Bitcoin Price and Market Update
Personal Updates
Main Topic: Bitcoin Drama and Node Consensus
Bitcoin's History and Block Size Wars
Current Controversy: Op Return Code
Community Reactions and Developer Influence
Implications for Bitcoin's Future
Call to Action: Running a Node
News and Notes
