LETS TALK BITCOIN

Episode 106 Exploring Bitcoin with Amir Taaki

Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) Host
Andreas M. Antonopoulos (AA) Co-Host
Stephanie Murphy (SM Co-host
Amir Taaki (AT) Core Bitcoin developer, core collaborator at Dark Wallet & CoinJoin


AL: Today is May 3rd 2014 and this is Episode 106. This program is intended for
informational and educational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a new field of study.
Consult your local futurist, lawyer and investment advisor before making any decisions
whatsoever for yourself. [0:18]


___________________________________________



Hi and welcome to this special episode of Lets Talk Bitcoin and we are here the day after
the end of the Toronto conference. Today, as always, Im joined by the other hosts of Lets
Talk Bitcoin, Andreas Antonopoulos and Stephanie Murphy. [0:37[

SM: Hello. [0:37]

AA: Hey there. [0:38]

SM: Its the after school special of Lets Talk Bitcoin. (Laughter) The day after conference
special. [0:42]

AL: Yes. We also have a special guest this time. Im very, very happy to say that Mr Amir
Taaki is joining us for this important... [0:49]

AT: Mista. [0:49]

AL: Mr. [0:50]

AT: Mista. Pleased to make your acquaintance. (Laughter) [0:54]

AL: How are you doing today Amir? [0:56]

AT: Wow! What an intense weekend. [0:59]

AL: Seriously, seriously. What about it for you was particularly intense? [1:04]

AT: Just the real sense of community and other people so very nice and warm and theres
real heart in everything that everybodys doing. Its very different from all the other
conferences. This is the one conference Ive chosen to come to in the last year, or two
years. Im happy to have come. *1:28+

AL: I was going to say, were very glad you did. [1:30]

SM: I think you picked a good one. Earlier this week, I was just in New York City for the
Inside Bitcoins conference a totally different vibe, totally different flavor. It was a lot of
investors, a lot of VCs and people with projects trying to raise money, a lot of talk about
how to comply with regulations (actually that was all that people talked about at the New
York one). [1:49]

AL: Its a MediaBistro event. *1:50+

AT: Well, you know what Bitcoin is about - freedom. [1:51]

SM: You wouldnt have known from that conference. (Laughter) Toronto was way more
community focused so I enjoyed that nice... its like the yin and the yang, you know. *2:03+

AT: And a huge turnout as well. [2:04]

AL: Yeah. [2:04]

SM: Yeah. I was really impressed by... they must have a big community here in Toronto to
begin with because theyve got Bitcoin Decentral and there are a lot of people working on
Ethereum here, and other various projects. It just seems like the whole community
volunteered to do this conference and theyre going invest whatever they take away from it
back into the conference. Its really a community building thing. *2:28+

AL: It was really interesting also noting that Ethereum was... this is a Bitcoin conference, put
on by the Bitcoin Foundation... sorry, not the Bitcoin Foundation... [2:37]

SM: Bitcoin Alliance. (Laughter) [2:37]

AL: The Bitcoin Alliance of Canada. Thank you for correcting my second mistake. [2:41]

AT: Anti-foundation. [2:42]

AL: I dont know if theyre the anti-foundation but theyre a different organization certainly.
Ethereum was the single largest sponsor of it. They were the platinum sponsor, so it was
interesting. I saw, at the end, they had five or six big boxes of T-shirts. They were just
basically giving out giant handfuls to people. I see a pile of Ethereum T-shirts in the corner
here too. (Laughter) [2:59]

AA: I have a pile. [3:01]

AL: Yes, exactly. [3:02]

AT: I have massive fun (??) [3:03]

AL: (Laughter) That looks like its an exciting project but what do we think about having
such a heavy presence for a project like that at a Bitcoin conference? Is this good, bad,
trend? [3:16]

AT: (??) [3:17]

AA: I thought it was great. This all feeds into the same concept that this is the year where
were beginning to see Bitcoin being treated as a platform, not a currency, or a platform as
well as a currency. Ethereum takes that concept and pushes it further. Ive never seen
Ethereum as competing against Bitcoin and Im working with a proof of concept code and
the very first contract I want to write in Ethereum is one that allows you to pay for
Ethereum contracts with Bitcoin. Its the obvious combination. It was great. It was great to
have this community and it also brings us a different perspective. A perspective thats less
about how do we make money and how do we do shopping and more about how do we use
this as a platform to build hundreds and hundreds of applications that can do different
things. Just one example.... [4:06]

SM: I think there are the people who want to make money off of Ethereum. [4:07]

AA: Without a doubt but the people who were talking about the Ethereum code and
Ethereum platform were doing some really interesting projects at the Hackathon at Bitcoin
Decentral, for example. One of the projects they had was using an electronic door lock that
could be unlocked based on ownership of an Ethereum contract and the obvious application
for that is to do an Airbnb rental where once youve paid for the contract for your stay, it
automatically gives you the credentials to unlock the door so you can go into this Airbnb.
You can imagine doing that with cars, such as Zipcar style services based on the blockchain,
or Lyft, or things like that. [4:44]

AL: Youre telling me that in the future, when Im doing Airbnb, Im not going to have to get
a special key at the lobby and then go up to floor 10M, and then go to a locker room, and
then go through two doors in order to get in, and then do a padlock, and unlock the thing in
order to get my key, in order to go to my room? Im not going to have to do that? Ill just
be able to use my phone? [5:03]

AA: Yes, yes. Pretty much. [5:04]

AL: Youre ruining my day, Andreas. I love all of that.... I think its great. *5:08+

SM: Yeah, I think theres some room for improvement there. *5:11+

AA: This was like a Hackerspace project. They just went and bought one of these
demonstration Visa like doors that are only five inches tall with a lock on them. It was like
I cant fit through that... but no, its for demonstrating the locks. They had it connected up
to Raspberry Pi and they were writing Ethereum contracts to control doors. [5:30]

SM: A five inch door, you could use that for a safe, or for something that keeps a different
key in it, or something like that. [5:36]

AA: Or for very small people. (Laughter) Its like that scene in Zoolander where it goes
This thing cant even fit a school for ants. (Laughter) *5:44+

AT: Tell me about some of the other uses of Ethereum that you were talking about before.
You mentioned some interesting ideas. [5:53]

AA: I think what people misunderstand is the possibility of using Ethereum to do projects
without having to create a full community of interest thats going to mine your blockchain
just to support your project. Lets say you have a niche project, for example... and to use
the theme of social justice and things like that, which are not immediately obvious in the
Ethereum space. Lets say you want to do something like the Swiss guaranteed basic
income project, where you want to create a coin where every round of confirmations
donates money to the people who are poorest in the network, essentially guaranteeing
them a basic income and thats how the coin is issued. If you build that as your own
blockchain, you have to find a lot of people to agree with those politics, to agree with that
idea to mine your coins, so that its secure and it cant be taken over with a 51% attack. If
you build it on Ethereum, all you have to know is that theres enough people building other
useful things on Ethereum to mine Ethereum, so you get all of that security for free without
having to persuade people to buy into your projects. [6:56]

AL: Thats an interesting argument that youre making because I... is that not possible using
other metacoins because there are lots of things that Ethereum can do that simply cannot
be done with some of these other metalayers that are out there. What you just described
there, I think (??) can do. [7:09]

SM: Yeah, why not use Bitcoin? [7:10]

AL: Why not use a protocol built on top of Bitcoin to do it? [7:12]

AA: Well because youre talking about using the reward of the issuance to do something
specific but without having that attached to the mining function. [7:21]

AL: This is what Im saying is that with protocols like Mastercoin and Counterparty, thats all
they do. I agree that this is possible, Im just saying that it doesnt seem like thats a
particular advantage of Ethereum. The particular advantage of Ethereum is that you can do
anything...

AA: Well yes, of course. [7:36]

AL: ...you can do all these incredible arbitrarily complex things, whereas with the
metacoins, and stuff like that you really cant. They are more about just creating a value
token and then however you distribute it is what gives it value. [7:44]

AT: Im a bit sceptical about arbitrarily complex things because if we imagine the concept of
having a robot which is operating an organization and that robot may be... when you choose
to join that organization, you can send to the code which operates it. Maybe you want to
change something and you can say modify this code and so its all open source, especially
with provable computation, you get even more of that. With Ethereum, theres a
blockchain and everybody is running those computations. For me, it seems like there is...
its putting a limit or a roof on the complexity of the software that can operate your
organizations. I know you said about Moores Law but even with Bitcoin, now its like... I
work a lot with the blockchain and thats my area of speciality in Bitcoin development and
there are a lot of very different things you have to consider in terms of properties, or these
massive databases. It becomes very tricky to manage at some point. [8:53]

AA: I think that would be a good problem to have. If we get to the point where the demand
for code complexity in contracts has increased so much that we have to solve optimization
problems then that in essence, proves the need for (??) complete scripting language and the
fact that there is demand for highly complex transactional code, then we do have to solve
the optimization problem but thats a great problem to solve because youve just opened a
whole new area of blockchain-based technology. Right now, we dont even know if theres
a demand for it. [9:25]

AT: The only thing Im wondering about is why they chose to go with this model where they
have a deep inter-linkage between all the contracts, rather than like you only run the
computations for the set of contracts and transactions that you are interested in, rather
than running all of everything on the whole network. That, for me, would maybe make
more sense. [9:49]

AA: Thats a great question and I think what were going to see as soon as Ethereum is
launched and proves that it can operate, is were going to see alt contracts, essentially
alternative clones of Ethereum. Why not? I would very much like to see alternative
implementations. Just like when Bitcoin proved that this was something that could work
and it was interesting and people could do useful things with it, it launched hundreds of
altcoins. If Ethereum works, its going to launch hundreds of alt contract platforms. [10:20]

AT: Its truly interesting. I also like all the different projects people are doing exploring the
space and were all friends together and with open source projects, we can share the code
and share techniques. Its all very positive. *10:35+

AA: This is the normal, I think, curve of a technology as it matures. You start out with an
experimentation phase where the code fragments massively into all kinds of variations. You
get into this very fragmented phase a fragmentation phase, then you start going into a
standardization phase where things start getting normalized again. You develop some
common standards so you dont have to replicate everything and reinvent the wheel with
every different version. Finally, you get to an optimization phase where you start trying to
solve issues of scale and issues of performance. You cant really get directly to the
optimization phase until youve gone through the previous two phases. You have to do the
experimentation and you have to start standardizing but you wont know what youre going
to standardize until youve seen all the variations that the people want to do with it. *11:28+

AT: This is also my concern with Bitcoin as well. Right now, there is this very strong
tendency for developers to overload Bitcoin with a ton of features... [11:37]

AA: Yes. [11:38]

AT: ...like every programers pet project and for me, the thing with Bitcoin is I believe that it
should be kept very pure and very focused as a currency. [11:48]

AA: A simple protocol... [11:49]

AT: Yeah, exactly. [11:50]

AA: ...stack and then move the rest of the development up into the layers. I dont think
thats going to be a problem really, Amir. I think the way that consensus mechanism is
distributed between developers, miners, web wallet companies, merchant companies,
payment processors, all of them have to agree under the process of consensus, otherwise
you cant do a hard fork. *12:08+

AT: It already happened with the big sixteen addresses. [12:12]

AA: Yes. [12:12]

AT: In the beginning it was like the proposal was Op Eval... [12:15]

AA: Yes. [12:16]

AT: ...but then it was discovered that there was actually some exploits in this and then it
was like OK, we just made this hack to the scripting language and then there was a loss of
properties of static analysis. Then, the developers were like Oh, lets make it so its push
only. A lot of that was actually rushed through very quickly. Then, we had the multi-sig
addresses and multi-sig hasnt even been used. We still dont have it in any of the Bitcoin
clients. My concern is maybe we should take a step back and really, if we want to make
these kinds of fundamental changes to Bitcoin, really, really think them through. [12:52]

AL: You actually think that Bitcoin development is going too fast? [12:54]

AT: In terms of changing the standard of the protocol, yeah. Theres a very strong pull to
do that. [13:00]

AA: Yeah. I think its going to slow down. I think because consensus is now diffuse among
so many different parties, its going to get harder and harder and harder to pull through a
hard fork type change because you wont be able to get enough people to agree to it until,
probably, two to three years from now, the core protocol grinds to a halt and it becomes
completely static because just like IPV4 came to a halt because, at some point, it gets
embedded in so much hardware, and so much specialized software, and so many embedded
devices that you cant change all of them to do a completely new version of the code, so
then whatever weve done by that time, thats it. Thats going to be Bitcoin forever. [13:39]

AT: The converse to that is looking at web standards which every year they add more and
more stuff in there and, in the end, its something so complex that its like massively long
with different pages... [13:52]

AA: Yeah. [13:52]

AT: ...that only large corporations can actually implement that. That actually stops the
diversity of the ecosystem. [13:58]

AA: They had to do that in the layers above IP because IP became, essentially, ossified it
got built into silicone so many times that you couldnt really change it. I think Bitcoin is
being built into silicone. Heres one example for the BIP32 standard for hierarchical
deterministic wallets and how you do the path discovery, and seeding, and key generation
for those paths, that standard is now being driven primarily by the implementation of it and
the Trezor hardware wallet because once that hits hardware, they couldnt make any more
changes. Now, everything has to be considered well. Can we do this or will it break
backwards compatibility with Trezor? This is going to happen increasingly as things hit
hardware. Essentially, Bitcoin is going to turn into firmware, hardware implemented
protocol on many devices and then you cant change it, then whatever we have, were stuck
with. [14:50]

AL: Well, you can change it. [14:51]

AA: Just with enormous cost and enormous difficulty. [14:54]

AL: Right, exactly. You just essentially invalidate everyone who came before. [14:56]

AA: Yes and IPV6 has been trying to do that for sixteen years and failing. [15:00]

AT: Yeah, it hasnt got very far has it? (Laughter) [15:02]

AL: It hasnt gotten very far. *15:03+

AA: Despite enormous need to do it because addresses have run out. [15:07]

AL: Is that a centralized organization or a decentralized organization? [15:10]

AA: Its a completely decentralized organization and IPV6 cant replace IPV4 because the
IPV4 protocol is bended in so many places and you cant obsolete all of them. That is a
classic example of what happens with a protocol. It cant even support its own upgrade any
more. [15:27]

SM: OK, so if Bitcoin is vulnerable to that, then Ethereum might be even more vulnerable to
that because people are already talking a lot about a lot of applications for it that really do
interface with hardware, like the locks that you were talking about. [15:39]

AA: Yeah, but the point is I think Ethereum is less vulnerable to that because Ethereum,
instead of like Bitcoin where if you want to implement new things, you have to do protocol
changes, Ethereum flips that on its head and says Here are a basic set of primitives. These
will not change. The code you execute on top of these primitives can be as varied as you
want. Now, when you want to do a new application, you dont need new features in the
protocol stack, you just reuse the existing primitives. That means you can standardize the
underlying protocol stack much sooner. [16:10]

AL: For people who dont understand what primitives are, were talking about... these are
essentially building blocks. [16:15]

AA: Building blocks, yeah. [16:16]

SM: Thats the thing that they cant change then, right? *16:19+

AL: They cant change the building blocks. *16:20+

SM: They have to get that right from the beginning. [16:22]

AA: The building blocks have to be right from the beginning but they are much more basic,
whereas with Bitcoin, what were doing is with every new application were adding new
building blocks, so multi-sig for example, involves changing the fundamental building blocks
of the protocol to implement in a very ugly hack, whereas in Ethereum, you wouldnt need
to do that at all. You would just use the signature primitive and the key primitives and then
youd implement the actual multi-sig as a contract, which could be in an abstract language.
[16:49]

AL: Amir, how does this relate to the work that youve done with Libbitcoin? [16:52]

AT: You mean Ethereum? [16:53]

AL: Not Ethereum, no I mean this hack together everything in one approach. [16:58]

AT: I think its very important to have a diverse ecosystem. [17:03]

AL: Can you just summarize Libbitcoin real quick? [17:04]

AT: Yeah, its a Bitcoin implementation like... there are different implementations of the
standard as set down by Satoshi when he first wrote Bitcoin. [17:15]

AA: This is, for our listeners, this would be like the implementation of the worldwide web
standards in Firefox versus Chrome and we have one standard which is the Bitcoin core
implementation, the Satoshi reference client (lets say thats Chrome) and then youve built
a different one which is say, Firefox. [17:34]

AT: Yeah. Its very important in software to have a diverse ecosystem. If you look at Linux
which runs a lot of our infrastructure, our technological infrastructure, its very secure
because its so diverse. There is no really one attack that you can use against all the Linuxes.
In nature, if the population drops below a certain size, there isnt enough genetic variation
that one pathogen can go and quickly wipe out the entire population. We have to build our
software, especially if were thinking about big distributed systems, with the same principles
in mind. [18:15]

AL: Not like bananas. [18:17]

AT: Like bananas? (Laughter) [18:19]

AA: Oh that. Thats not just a funny comment. Bananas are all cloned from the exact same
plant. [18:26]

AT: I want yellow ones. [18:26]

AA: The banana that we know, the Chiquita banana, is a relatively new invention and its all
cloned. The reason it was cloned is because the previous type of banana was completely
wiped out worldwide by a single pathogen and not a single example of it exists. They are
trying to recreate the previous type of banana because apparently, it was tastier. [18:47]

AT: (Laughter) OK. [18:48]

AA: All of the bananas in the world are essentially clones of the same organism and theyre
very susceptible to a single pathogen wiping them all out, which is exactly your argument
about Bitcoin implementation. [18:59]

AT: I think that that happened recently. [18:59]

AA: Yes, theres actually a pathogen right now that is wreaking havoc across banana
plantations. [19:03]

AT: Starvation problems and so on, yeah. [19:06]

AA: A banana is a perfect example of a strict monoculture that is very susceptible because it
has no genetic variation. Even in things like over engineered crops like wheat or corn, thats
a problem, whereas other things like rice, that have a lot more variety in regional areas are
less susceptible to single pathogens. Youre right. We need to do that in Bitcoin too.
Libbitcoin is awesome because it gives us another perspective. BitcoinJ, by Mike Hearn, is
another example of a completely independent implementation of Bitcoin and I believe there
is BTCT, which is an implementation in the (??) language. [19:47]

AT: They have some good ideas as well. [19:43]

AA: Yeah. [19:43]

AT: Also, its important as well that if you want to build a real community around Bitcoin
software that we actually build the software such that it allows developers to participate.
The problem with the BitcoinD software is its very poorly engineered. Its a massive blob.
[20:02]

AA: Its a hairball. *20:03+

AT: Yeah. A lot of the code as well, in many places, is even doing really dodgy things like
the C script inheriting from STD Vector which has a non-virtual destructor could, potentially,
cause a memory leak, or even in the serialization code, theres many times where its just
like copy/paste, or if the arguments change, or one argument added instead of using
templates. Also, the dodginess with all the locks there is many different things,
sometimes just looking and just see them move around. [20:37]

AA: Thats the massively improved version of the code after five years. I think one thing we
do know about Satoshi Nakamoto is he wasnt a very good programer. *20:46+

AT: I know. People say he was a genius programer but... (Laughter) [20:48]

AA: He was a genius cryptographer without a doubt and a genius in terms of digital
currencies and the economic implications and how you build a monetary system on digital
currencies. Genius, but if you look at his code, anyone who really is a good coder looks at it
and thinks Oh my god, what a mess. (Laughter) [21:05]

AT: (Laughter) Horrendous. Actually, the guy as well, when I read his paper, I get a strong
sense hes a physicist, not a mathematician, not a computer but a physicist because he
really writes in that kind of sense. [21:16]

AA: Right. [21:17]

AT: And an academic. [21:18]

AA: Yeah, so shes definitely not a really good C++ programer. *21:21+

AT: You always say she. (Laughter) [21:22]

AA: I dont know why you always say he. (Laughter) [21:24]

AT: Wicked. [21:27]


____________________________________________


ADVERT:

KryptoKit is the worlds first Chrome browser Bitcoin wallet. Its the easiest, fastest Bitcoin
wallet payment system with a simple one click install, it takes just seconds to get your wallet
set up and because KryptoKit finds the address and payment for you, theres no more
fussing around or tab switching. KryptoKit is more than just a wallet. It comes with a pre-
loaded PGP encrypted social network, newsfeeds from Reddit and Google and up to date
charts from exchanges. Finally, KryptoKit directory allows you to make two click payments
with any of the BitPay merchants. Once you install KryptoKit, you wont need anything else.
For more information, or to download KryptoKit, visit www.KryptoKit.com. [22:27]

ADVERT:

Lets Talk Bitcoin is heard each week by thousands of people who are participating in the
new digital economy. Our listener base of Bitcoin owners, miners, investors, technologists
and merchants is growing fast. We offer a limited number of short advertising slots in each
show to keep our listeners engaged and to provide maximum impact for our sponsors. If
youd like to talk to us about Lets Talk Bitcoin, send us an email at
sponsors@letstalkbitcoin.com. [22:58]



____________________________________________



AT: With the software, its important that if you want to have people to be able to
participate, that you need to break it down into small bricks which is the Unix principle
build a brick that does one thing and one thing well and then slot them together. I always
aim for simplicity of implementation which is part of the worse is better school of thought
in development, especially for system software which has a different set of constraints to
application software. With system software, youre really worried about how the thing
operates unseen... the threading model, how it all works internally on the kernel level.
[23:47]

AA: Its never used on its own. Its always used as a built-in component in something else
so you have to account for what this something else will do with its behavior and you have
to give it a very robust foundation. [23:58]

AT: Exactly. [23:58]

AA: One of the things about Bitcoin core which is natural for reference clients, it always
happens across all of the standards, is that it tries to do everything in one place. Theyve
been trying to pull apart into different modules recently, for example, the CLI was extracted
completely from the rest of it, the JSON-RPC client was extracted completely from Bitcoin
core and now the wallet is being extracted from Bitcoin core because when you try to do
too many things in a complex system, then you have unwanted interactions, essentially side
effects that occur when one thing gets called and it has a side effect somewhere else. Let
me give you an example, if you want to use Bitcoin core, the node software as a peer to
peer node to watch an address, you cant watch an address unless that address exists in
your wallet. Now, the dependency of the network node depends on the code in the wallet
software. Libbitcoin is fundamentally different than that. Each module does only one thing
very simply, very directly with no side effects. [25:01]

AT: I dont want to talk too much about Libbitcoin and dominate the thing but yeah, I think
its very important in terms of development, that we start to think how can we get more
people involved so that theres more oversight by community and developers because
people need to understand the actual decisions that are going down underneath. If you
have a big monolithic blob, its very difficult for people to get involved in that. *25:28+

AA: Right. [25:29]

AT: If you split up into pieces, people can take that piece; make it their own, work on that
without needing to understand about all this complexity thats going on around. *25:39+

AA: Right. You cant just change one thing and have it affect something else you didnt
expect to. [25:43]

AT: Yeah. The reason why I started to rewrite a library as a technical decision because, in
the beginning, we took the Satoshi code and we started to optimize here, we started to
make changes, put Python bindings but, in the end, I really thought that Bitcoin as a piece of
software thats fundamental with long term, we need a solid foundation. I started to write
that code and... [26:09]

AL: When was this? [26:10]

AT: In April 2011 and the thing is its like to have the people who are using Bitcoin to
actually have the voice behind Bitcoin. Its not enough that we have one core group of
professional developers who say We are going to make the decisions on behalf of the
community, which by the way, with BIP 16, when that was happening, I was writing articles
about it and getting a lot of criticism from developers because I was actively encouraging
the community to decide whether to switch to that version and support by mining that new
version of the Bitcoin software or keep continuing to use the old one. The developers were
saying to me that this is a development decision; this is an engineering decision, not a
decision by the users. [27:03]

AL: To a certain extent... its interesting... Amir, both you and Andreas are very technical
and Im technical not very much and Stephanies technical not very much... *27:15+

SM: No, Im lost. *27:15+

AL: ...so weve both been exchanging looks because I think you lost us about ten minutes
ago. [27:19]

SM: What the **** are they talking about. (Laughter) [27:21]

AL: This is the problem, I think, is that how do you have an informed community make a
good decision when there is no informed community because these issues are very
technical... [27:32]

SM: Thats a good question. *27:32+

AL: ...I feel like Stephanie and I are in the land of cars and you and Andreas are talking
about the land of sewers that exist several layers underneath that. I dont know anything
about those. How do we make informed decisions? [27:43]

AT: Its about participation, you know. Theres the open source onion skin model which
usually we can represent... youve got your outside layers where maybe some guys come to
the website, they check it out and then they leave, then maybe 10% of those actually
download the software and run it. Then, they drop to the next level of that onion and
maybe 10% of those actually become hardcore users and they start to do testing, and they
start to submit bug reports and a few of those actually become maintainers doing
packaging, actually participating...

AL: Its about being inclusive. *28:19+

AT: Its about being inclusive. *28:20+

AA: Its also about the adoption curve which is that if you make it easy for people to adopt
Bitcoin as users, you want to make sure that a certain percentage, a tenth of a percent of
those people, actually download and compile the code. Theyll do that if its easy to compile
the code and the experts among them will then go a bit further and do a bug report. If its
easy to do a bug report; if you can read the code; if its modular. What Amir is talking about
and what hes doing with Libbitcoin is really fundamental because if you make the system
more approachable, that means a larger percent of all of the people were bringing in to this
ecosystem and this community will end up writing a bit of code. That means that, in the
future, we wont have a core developer group of just twelve or so people, well have a core
developer group of two hundred people like we have in Linux, for example. There, you have
a couple of hundred core developers but then you also have thousands of other developers
who are doing very deep testing on individual components of the code. Just like Jeff Garzik,
for example, whos one of the core developers in Bitcoin, spent his entire career before this
dedicated to one part of the Linux kernel in the network stack and he worked just that one
part and he was part of a community of thousands of developers. [29:38]

AT: Jeff Garzik is actually a very good Linux kernel developer. Hes one of the best. [29:43]

AA: Absolutely and hes brought that experience to... and hes one of people really pushing
to include more and more people in the development community. The problem is when
you start with a hairball, its hard. Despite the dedication, the twelve people who are in
this, theyre overworked; theyre overwhelmed. They have to not only deal with future
requests but also all of the bugs and all of the optimizations that need to be done and make
some very difficult decisions. Decisions that seem like engineering decisions in one context;
if you look at them from a different perspective, they influence what applications you can
build, so that road map decisions. If you look at them from a third perspective, they
influence some of the economic implications and social implications of what Bitcoin can do,
so then theyre actually political decisions. You have to make decisions that are
engineering, architectural, road map and political decisions and no one should have to have
that burden of making that decision across an entire ecosystem. [30:41]

AT: Also if you want to actually focus on the work that matters and really develop a good
piece of technology, its a creative endeavor; something that you cant be dealing with the
day to day grind of bug reports and small fixes, and so on. Its something that you really
need to sit down, chill out, clear your mind and think and really, really get into that head
space where youre able to discover. Its kind of difficult to describe but its the same as if
youre a writer or an artist. Theres a difference between programing nine to five, just fixing
bugs, or doing small future requests without any long term perspective about where your
code wants to go. That is actually thinking on a deeper level about the real ramifications
of... and also, a lot of this comes from experience, as well. [31:42]

AA: Its very easy, certainly for me, to have an opinion. I just want to make it clear that I
know very well, my opinion is worth absolutely nothing here. The only thing that matters, in
terms of Bitcoin implementation, is the code submitted, right? Opinions are great but
unless you take that opinion and write some actual software and do a pull request, I dont
want people to think, or even say, as Ive heard many people say, go to the core developers
and say Hey, Andreas said so and so, why arent you doing it? (Laughter) They give them
the correct answer. We accept pull requests. [32:16]

AT: DIY. [32:18]

AA: If you think what Im saying is a good idea, write some code. If you cant write it to
Bitcoin core, write it to Libbitcoin, write it to BitcoinJ, and write it to BTCD but my opinion is
worth nothing without code. [32:32]

AT: Thats also the thing as well. We cant just be always talking about what would be
better. The only way that we can change the situation is by actually putting out good
software that people want to use. The way that were going to do that is by playing on our
strengths like, what are the properties or principles of our software that people would want
to use it. For instance, stuff with the internet; its an open platform, thats why its better
than TV. You consume your own culture among your peers, or software like BitTorrent, or
Linux. There are always tradeoffs between different types of software. [33:15]

SM: Youre saying opinions mean nothing. You have to put in requests for code if you want
anything to actually change and that makes sense. [33:23]

AT: Or write your own. [33:23]

AA: Or write your own, yeah. [33:24]

SM: Write your own but Im not going to do that. I dont even know how to go about
suggesting some different code for Bitcoin, or what to suggest. Im way more likely to
switch to an altcoin or something if I see some feature that I like more. [33:39]

AA: Thats an important contribution too. Youre signalling, essentially, decisions and
market decisions with your choices of what things attract you politically, or in terms of your
opinion and so, if people start switching to an altcoin, that sends a very strong message. Im
not saying people should switch to an altcoin, Im just saying that the choices people make
and which wallet they use, even which version of Bitcoin client they download. That in itself
is a consensus action. That is you deciding I want to be on the latest fork with the latest
code which means I like the changes that the development team added. If you dont make
that upgrade, youre saying I would like to stay where we were before because thats how
the consensus mechanism is spread between users, wallets, web wallets, merchants,
developers and miners. [34:25]

SM: Especially as we get more people on board though, theyre not going to know that.
[34:28]

AA: Its a matter of percentages. What you do is you assume... *34:31+

SM: The new user percentage... like once we get mass adoption, the percentage of new
users who have no clue about this stuff is going to be massive and overwhelm the people
who actually are informed about whats going on. *34:41+

AA: Thats OK because youre also going to bring in a lot of new developers and were
already seeing that. The number of developers in this space is exploding. People who are
interested... [34:53]

SM: Not as much as the number of people who have no clue... [34:55]

AA: Thats true. *34:56+

SM: Its like voting. Most people have no clue. They see a name at the top of the list and
are like Oh, that sounds like a stately name, Im going to vote for that person. *35:03+

AT: (Laughter) Yeah. [35:04]

SM: You know what I mean? It sounds like democracy and it sounds like its fair but most
people really have no clue what theyre doing. *35:13+

AL: Even for people who do have coding experience, Amir, youre not a core dev, right?
What does it take to become a core dev? [35:20]

AA: A core dev is someone who writes code for the Bitcoin core. Its not like Gavin
Andresen pulls out the sword and puts it on your shoulder and says I hereby anoint you
core dev. You can call yourself a core developer if the code you wrote has had an influence
on Bitcoin core. Thats all it means someone who develops for the core client. Its not a
title. [35:40]

SM: Yeah, see most people dont know that either. *35:42+

AL: This is what I guess Im asking is, who decides whats included in the core? *35:47+

AA: Its a consensus mechanism. You write a useful patch, you submit it on GitHub and if
the developers like the patch and its tested and works out and solves a problem... *35:56+

AL: A new developer coming in trying to solve a problem that the existing development
team might not know, has to have the idea vetted by the rest of the development team
before it can be included? [36:04]

AA: No, all the developers have to have the ideas vetted by the rest of the development
team. If Gavin Andresen wants to make a change to the code, he does a pull request just
like everybody else. [36:13]

AL: Just a little more reputational. [36:14]

SM: Yeah, its a popularity contest. *36:16+

AA: Its not entirely... no, its not a popularity contest. It is in some ways but at the same
time, you are submitting code and if your code works and it solves a real problem that
people are trying to solve or it fixes a bug, it will be included and you are then a core
developer. The ones who do this repeatedly build credibility among the community and
they get their code accepted more often. Keep in mind, the core developer group is not a
monolithic group at all. Theres a lot of diversity in it, theres a lot of disagreement in that
group. If you follow the debates and discussions, sometimes it gets pretty damn heated,
even among the core developers. You can find a very broad range of opinions in there as to
how things should be done and these opinions eventually get translated into code and
sometimes theres competing code for the same thing. [37:02]

AT: There is a lot of power there, you know. [37:04]

AA: For sure. [37:05]

AT: Gavin Andresen took me off the security mailing list as a political slight against me and
they were all ganging up on me at one point. Thats why I didnt go and cooperate with that
group. I was like OK, Ill go and do my own thing because Ive been involved in a lot of open
source projects and I can see a lot of repeating patterns, often early on. Im always a bit
apprehensive to invest tons of my energy and time where I think that Im going to be held
back a lot. [37:36]

AA: Right. [37:36]

SM: Then it wouldnt matter how good your code was. *37:39+

AT: Exactly. Its part of the political process having that energy to go and actually do... also
as a coder who wants to maintain my independence because I want to represent a certain
voice within the community, its important that Im unconstrained that I have the
freedom. [37:57]

SM: Right. I would probably agree with a lot of your political views but I didnt know that
you were kicked off of the mailing list. [38:04]

AT: Yeah. [38:05]

AA: More importantly, you have an alternative implementation. [38:09]

SM: So then, Im not being represented because I dont know how to code and so... *38:11+

AL: Lets talk about alternative implementations in practice. What does this mean? [38:15]

AA: It means that if you tell the wrong person to go fork themselves on an open source
project, sometimes they build something thats better than the original fork. *38:24+

AL: Lets talk about that in practice. Libbitcoin has been underway since, you said, early
2011? OK, so what is it being used for at this point? What type of application can I find
where its actually using that as opposed to the more mainstream implementation that is
not modular. [38:44]

AT: Do you know this company Airbitz? [38:46]

AL: Yeah, I was talking about this today. [38:48]

AT: They are using Libbitcoin for their wallet. [38:50]

SM: Oh wow! [38:51]

AT: Theres a guy as well, hes developing a hardware project. He has a set of different...
its got two million... [38:59]

AL: Are these all new projects? [39:00]

AT: Yeah. Airbitz is a relatively new project. [39:02]

SM: Airbitz is something theyre trying to really make Bitcoin mainstream and ease of use,
like theyre doing apps that will automatically fill in restaurants near you that accept Bitcoin
and things like that. [39:13]

AT: Its very nicely designed software as well. Theres also a guy whos developing a range
of hardware projects. He has two million investment and hes using Libbitcoin for that, as
well. In Dark Wallet, were using Libbitcoin so, we have... *39:30+

AL: Its getting there. *39:30+

AT: Yeah. [39:31]

AL: Right now, there isnt anything right now but theres stuff in the works thats going to
use it. [39:36]

AT: Actually, a lot of the decisions that Ive arrived at actually came from my experience
when I was developing Electrum. The reason I originally became the Electrum developer
was to switch Electrum to Libbitcoin backend because there are all these different wallet
projects now, like Hive wallet and Electrum, Libbitcoin and we have different focuses on the
full part of the stack. Hive is really thinking a lot about the interface, how to get that
experience with the market and thinking about how people interact at the front level.
Electrum is really thinking about, on the desktop wallet part, about the features
underneath, like the two factor, about making it modular so people can plug in different
interfaces, port to different platforms like mobile phones, and so on, whereas Libbitcoin is
thinking more about the blockchain part, the server part. Thats what so different with the
other Bitcoin implementations, except maybe BTCD, which also is a very interesting project
because I see a lot of the concepts they develop also in parallel. Theyre also thinking about
things nicely too. We want to optimize Bitcoin for the server because thats where I
fundamentally believe the blockchain is heading is to the server. Its something we can
continue to deny and see how can we optimize it further for the desktop, and so on, but we
have to face the reality which is that not all people are going to run the blockchain on their
server. Even if it takes ten minutes to validate, thats ten minutes too long. [41:08]

AA: Yeah. There are other implementations also that have broad commercial use. For
example, I know a lot of companies that are using server-based implementations and they
have large multi-node resilient connections into the blockchain network, are using BitcoinJ,
instead of Bitcoin core. BitcoinJ is a project developed by Mike Hearn who used to be at
Google but I think hes now working full time on BitcoinJ as that project and as a core
developer. [41:35]

AT: My problem with BitcoinJ as well is... Mike Hearn - he works for Circle and when he
talks a lot... [41:44]

AL: Thats Jeremy Allaires new mainstream financial Bitcoin company. *41:49+

AT: Yeah, yeah. Jeremy Allaire takes the stance... [41:50]

SM: ...who said at the New York Bitcoin conference that Bitcoin is going to be part of the
world banking system and a bunch of other... [41:58]

AT: Jeremy Allaire said that we need to leave these libertarians behind; crazy guys, we need
to reject them; Bitcoin needs to become mainstream and... [42:07]

AA: Welcome to the PayPalization of Bitcoin. [42:09]

AT: Exactly and Mike Hearn is part of that group. [42:12]

AA: How much part of that group? [42:14]

AT: He holds those ideals and values very much so and as software developers, we are
encoding our values and ethics in the software because softwares art. [42:24]

AA: Without a doubt. [42:25]

AT: Its not something thats functional. Really if, as developers, you are representing some
voice, so its like... this is also a problem that its going to happen in the future if we put too
much of our infrastructure into centralized development groups surrounded by proprietary
ecosystems. The corporations who are funding the development of this Bitcoin software
will come and put pressure on the developers saying We need to have features, we need
to protect our liability. [43:00]

AA: Its more about the opposite which is, for example, (and this will happen very soon)
somebody decides whether they want to implement a CoinJoin interface into the software
and then the corporation thats funding this says Oh no, that sounds way too risky,
anarchist. [43:19]

SM: Terrorism, money laundering, porn, drugs... ahhhh! (Laughter) [43:22]

AA: Wont somebody please think of the children. [43:25]

SM: Children, yes! (Laughter) [43:26]

AT: Whos going to protect us from the bad guys? *43:29+

AA: Yeah. Somebody is thinking of the children. Theyre thinking that the children should
probably have some freedom when they grow up and not be slaves to the machine. [43:37]


__________________________________________


ADVERT:

Hey everybody, Adam B. Levine here. As the launch of LTBcoin approaches, there are some
basic steps we ask everyone to take in preparation for our network token. Members of the
audience, if youd like to receive some coins set aside for the initial community, please get
involved at www.forum.ltbcoin.com. People who have more than five posts before launch
will receive some of the first audience coins. To use the combined Bitcoin LTBcoin wallet,
visit www.counterwallet.co. If youve written an article, or posted an episode for LTB in the
last year, just keep it up weve got you covered. If you plan to create content for LTB but
havent so far, nows an excellent time to jump in and be ready when the weekly
distribution starts. The new www.LetsTalkBitcoin.com is basically done and were getting
ready to spin up the first ten, or so, LTB blogs to feed the new front page. If youre running
a show for LTB now, or would like to run one of the first curated blogs, please contact
adam@letstalkbitcoin.com for further instructions. Would be LTB speculators thank you
for your interest. If youd like to purchase LTBcoins as soon as theyre available, you can
place your orders on www.counterwallet.co distributed exchange, selling XCP or BTC and
buying LTBcoin. LTB wont be selling any of these coins, theyre just our internal token
system distributed to our community based on how much they contribute but youre
welcome to buy them from someone who will sell them to you. Back to the show! [45:13]


_________________________________________


AA: Those are the kinds of decisions that you dont even notice. Theyre not really
affirmative choices to do something specific. Theyre more choices to not pursue a specific
activity because its too controversial. Those are areas where youd see that problem.
[45:27]

AT: I have a problem with the fact that Mike Hearn was collaborating with the Dutch police
on how to shut down Silk Road. That, for me, is like... [45:37]

AL: Lets get into this. Lets talk about Silk Road for a second because you bring up Silk Road
a lot when I hear you talk. [45:43]

AT: Its amazing. *45:45+

AL: Again, I think that people have this idea in their head that Silk Road equals illegal stuff
and I think that when you talk about it, its more Silk Road equals non-restricted markets,
free markets, as opposed to markets that have arbitrary limitations. [46:02]

AT: What is the internet all about? Why is the internet so great? Its because it busted the
lid off of the restrictions that empower people to freely associate. [46:14]

SM: Yeah, the gatekeepers that takes them away. [46:14]

AT: Yeah. Why do we have this cognitive dissonance about markets that somehow if
everybody had the ability to trade that wed all start raping each other and murdering each
other and selling poison? No, wed sell food and... *46:29+

SM: No, in fact, even the drugs that were... [46:31]

AA: No, the poison is under FDA approval and its sold by giant pharmaceuticals.
(Laughter) [46:34]

AT: Monsanto and we eat it every day, yeah. [46:37]

SM: I think theres a great argument to say that the Silk Road actually made recreational
drug use a lot safer for many people because theyre not... *46:44+

AT: Ive lived with drug dealers, violent drug gangsters that were beating people with metal
bars and breaking their bones. Vicious people, really shitty people... [46:53]

AA: Im pretty sure you cant stop someone over IP. [46:55]

SM: Yeah. [46:56]

AT: The thing is, how come these guys exist for a plant that anybody can grow, like a weed
but we dont have the same problem for potato farmers and for potatoes. *47:09+

SM: Yeah, its because its criminalized, of course. [47:11]

AT: Exactly. [47:11]

SM: So if you can go on the internet and you can buy something on an unrestricted
marketplace, its probably going to be way better because suddenly its taken out of that
realm of the black market where anything like that can happen. [47:22]

AA: You cant be stabbed over TCP/IP. (Laughter) *47:25+

AL: The flip side of all of this is... its hilarious I get to play this guy Its illegal. Theyll put
you in jail. Thats why you have all this stuff. [47:33]

AT: Yeah but so was being gay and so was womens rights, you know, all throughout
history. [47:38]

SM: Yeah. In some places, it is still. [47:38]

AA: So was coffee. For a hundred and fifty years, coffee was considered a gateway drug
that would lead to the destruction of morality and society, that destroyed your children,
turned them into... [47:48]

AT: Or that saying that Earth was not the center of the universe. [47:50]

AA: Turn them into shaking, crazed people who would stab people because they drank too
much coffee. This is true; you can look it up. [47:57]

SM: That happens to me sometimes. (Laughter) [47:59]

AA: It was banned in Holland for a hundred and fifty years. (Laughter). Yeah, if I have too
much coffee, I do sometimes get a bit crazed. [48:04]

SM: Grains of truth. [48:05]

AA: I still havent stabbed anyone because of it though, although that would make a good
defence. Im sorry your honor, I just had too much espresso. (Laughter) [48:13]

AT: Why in America, as well. Americas need for cocaine is funding huge amounts of death
in Ecuador. One of the highest murder rates in the world between these massive drug
gangs satisfying a need of wealthy Americans to take a crappy generic drug that really
doesnt bring anything to your consciousness or your well-being. Its ludicrous. The war on
drugs is just helping politicians to get more and more political capital, helping fund more
and more militaries and police, and empowering drug gangsters. [48:55]

AA: Thats the thing. The Silk Road and markets like that the most important target, or
the ones who are most threatened by those markets are the drug cartels. [49:07]

AT: Yeah, definitely. [49:09]

AA: They are threatened more than anyone else. If you have those free markets, there is
no longer a need to have the drug cartels. Thats the cognitive dissonance there. Heres
something that actually could be effective in stopping the drug cartels and violence all
around the world, rather than the drug war which is fuelling those things. [49:28]

SM: Thats a great point about the hypocrisy. I was just going to make another point about
that which is that the people who enforce these laws, they dont follow them. Tell me the
cop that arrests the 20 yr old kid for getting drunk in the US never took a sip of alcohol
before he was 21, or that he never smoked pot? Really, come on. Its crap. (Laughter)
What were you saying, Adam, about the Silk Road and how Amir talks about the Silk Road?
[49:53]

AL: Just that again, were talking about unrestricted markets versus arbitrarily restricted
markets. Again, its that whole borders thing. If borders mattered, then restrictions matter.
If borders dont matter, then why do restrictions matter because you can be anywhere you
want? The idea that morality is local is probably not a terrible one but the idea that
morality dictating laws for entire populations based on locality is probably not a great idea
and I think, in practice, its been pretty bad. *50:22+

SM: You think the idea that morality is local is not a bad idea? [50:26]

AL: It depends how local you mean. My values are different than your values, Stephanie
and I dont think that we need to have the same values, so then its how you define local.
[50:35]

SM: No, not values. Not values but like... murder is not OK in some places in the world,
right? [50:41]

AL: OK, again were talking about a natural law versus laws of men. I agree with you.
[50:45]

SM: I just wanted to get clear on that because it sounded like... [50:47]

AL: Sorry, yeah. Its been a long couple of days. *50:49+

SM: Yeah, of course. (Laughter) [50:51]

AL: There is definitive good and bad and I think that there are certainly shades of grey but
there are some things that are kind of basic. You dont steal; you dont kill people
basically initiations of force. [51:02]

SM: Yeah. [51:02]

AL: Doing something that impacts someone else in a way that they dont want and without
their permission. If we have relationships that are essentially based on two-way voluntary
interactions then theres no such thing as a bad deal because a bad deal is just a deal that
doesnt happen. *51:16+

AT: Isnt the US meant to be the land of the free? *51:19+

AL: Well, it was at one point but again... [51:21]

AT: But with export restrictions and all that. (Laughter) [51:23]

AA: Thats just a story for children. (Laughter) [51:26]

AL: Ive been thinking about this a lot so I watch a movie on the way up here to Canada. I
actually watched two movies. One was Anchor Man 2 but the better one... [51:37]

AA: How can you top that? (Laughter) [51:39]

AL: ...was the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire not a tremendously good movie either
but the thing that it sort of made me realize was that the problem isnt that people can have
success, or people can have victory but once youve done that, during the interim where
you have that I am the success, you have this urge to try and leverage victory or success
into entitlement. Entitlement is just victory that lasts forever. Youve done it once or you
might have to re-establish it periodically but the point is, is that its work you did way
before... youre not doing it any more but yet you still want the reward for having done that
work and you want it to continue to go to you because you did it way back then. Militarys
exactly the same thing. You look at the history of world currencies and there are periods of
120-220 years where the world reserve currency is one particular nations currency. Its not
because theyre the most economically viable nation, its because they have the biggest
military. In the beginning, it might have been because they were the best option but at the
end, its not because theyre the best option, its because they have the biggest military.
Eventually, the mismatch of those two things causes a collapse and a realignment but it
takes hundreds of years to get from here to there. With cryptocurrency, I really think what
weve done... is all of these decentralized things. When you cant stop technology, you cant
have monopolies. Thats really the thing that has happened here, is the ability to
perpetuate a monopoly is gone. I dont think it comes back once... *53:10+

SM: Its going away. *53:10+

AA: Its going away. *53:11+

AT: Its individual empowerment. *53:11+

AL: It is individual empowerment but thats the thing is that you cant stop it, so if you cant
stop something... if you cant enforce the monopoly, then there is no monopoly. People
havent recognized this yet. We dont realize it yet. We dont act like it yet but, in practice,
this is already done. [53:26]

AA: Yeah, it takes several decades for that kind of change to... [53:29]

AL: Maybe, maybe it takes several decades. [53:31]

SM: The reason it takes several decades is though is because its in peoples minds. People
are not used to thinking that Oh, were free from monopolies? Really? Its like someones
in a cage and you unlock the door but they dont know its unlocked and they just stay in
there. [53:45]

AL: Thats the thing though is that, this would be true if we didnt live in the world that we
live in today. That cage is getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and its forcing
people to try that door that they hadnt tried before. If youre no longer vested... *53:59+

AT: The situation is polarized. [54:00]

AL: Exactly. It forces people... again, the pie is shrinking, so since the pie is shrinking, it
means more and more people arent getting any pie. If you dont have any pie in the
current system, why not go to a system where theres more opportunity. Lacking this sort
of pressure, coming from the real world out there, these opportunities... you know, Im not
sure if I would be here. Actually, I know I wouldnt be here. I never would have learned
about money. I never would have cared about any of this stuff because I was happy doing
what I was doing, until I wasnt. Suddenly, youre disenfranchised and youre like What
happened? You learn about it and youre like Oh, well thats how it works. *54:32+

SM: Yeah. [54:33]

AL: Oh, OK. [54:33]

AA: They get to steal everything and get away with it. [54:36]

AL: If theres nothing here for me, then why do I care about it? What investment do I have?
It costs me and gives me nothing. [54:45]

AA: Are you trying to imply that youre not fully vested in your IRA and 401K to build your
stable future? (Laughter) [54:52]

AL: I had the opportunity to add to an IRA and 401K for two years. My grandparents very
much recommended that I did and I did not. [55:00]

AA: Thats fantastic! *55:04+

AT: Thats why, with the Silk Road, its like those are your users, so why are you acting
against your own users? Us developers who are you representing? Are you representing
peer to peer transfers, businesses, the black market, or are you representing corporate
interests, and efforts to legitimize Bitcoin, to regulate and put controls and limits, put
Bitcoin in a framework. [55:33]

AA: I think its OK to have a broad range of opinions and Bitcoin, as a platform, supports
that broad range of opinions. If you want to create... [55:44]

SM: But some opinions are backed by a gun. [55:45]

AA: If you want to build something at the end point that looks very much like a bank and
operates like a bank, youre going to attract a certain number of people who are going to
want that but lets be thankful for having people like Amir who expand that range of
opinions and give us alternatives. You have to make conscious choices when youre
choosing software, youre choosing politics. *56:07+

AT: Im not developing blacklists and technologies to surveil people... [56:10]

SM: Thats what I was talking about. Theres some that you cant opt out of. *56:15+

AT: Bitcoin is subject to the sum of the moving parts inside. [56:15]

AA: You can opt out of it though because if Bitcoin does develop blacklists, we can opt out
of Bitcoin and move to another coin. [56:25]

AT: Not necessarily though. Not necessarily if enough of the infrastructure that the
network depends upon becomes co-opted in some way. Its not that theres going to be a
back door put into Bitcoin or something; its more about the day to day decisions A or B. A
lot of these decisions are very difficult to decide between. There are different trade-offs
and if your motive is slightly corrupted, you might choose choice A, which slightly more
favors corporations than the black market. Next time, another A or B and lots and lots of
small steps and Bitcoin ends up becoming Govcoin or Corpcoin, very different from Bitcoin,
the principles of Satoshi thats encoded in the source code. [57:14]

AA: Heres the thing. Youve now opened the door to hundreds and hundreds of currencies
and created a world where currency is a choice and not a monopoly and that means that if
Bitcoin becomes Govcoin, unlike leaving the dollar to enter Bitcoin, for example, which is a
very, very hard move, leaving Bitcoin to go to... [57:34]

AT: I dont really buy that argument, to be honest. *57:35+

AA: ...Blackcoin, or something else, is a lot easier. [57:37]

AL: Why dont you buy that argument? *57:38+

AT: Because the internet is the one internet we use. Were not using alternate darknets.
[57:44]

AA: Well, we are using alternate darknets on top of the internet. There are people who
want to go... [57:49]

AT: Yeah, on top of the internet. Like with Bitcoin, this is a system that is here, its got the
first mover, the network effects and its going to establish itself a lot more. The fight really
is for the consensus of that system. How do we want that consensus to move? Do we want
it a consensus that favors the people, or do we want a consensus that favors trusted
operators? I prefer a Bitcoin which is open and inclusive to everybody and sure, people can
use alternate currencies and people will use them. Theyre very good but Bitcoin is the one
system that is going to be very dominant for a long time to come. [58:33]

AA: I think were going to disrupt Bitcoin again in twenty years with something else but I
dont necessarily buy the once you open the door and people have understood that
currency itself is a choice and youve got transnational currencies and now youre appealing
to a population that is global. Youve got the other six billion who have vested interests in
keeping this out of the hands of the people who stole their land and stole their future in the
past. Why would they make a choice to tie themselves to something and not be able to
leave? [59:07]

AT: Because its got established infrastructure, because its got liquidity of the markets.
[59:11]

AA: The infrastructure is pretty light weight and its easy to move in and out of. Its not
infrastructure thats bricks and mortars. Its virtual infrastructure. We can very easily build
alternative infrastructures. [59:22]

AT: People can easily switch to Google Plus or other social networks. [59:27]

SM: Exactly. I was thinking that. Try to leave Facebook. [59:29]

AA: I left Facebook in 2010. It was quite easy actually. [59:32]

AT: Ive never had a Facebook. *59:33]

SM: Yeah, but youre still on Facebook because someone has a fan page for you. (Laughter)
[59:37]

AA: Im not on Facebook. *59:38+

SM: I know. I know. [59:40]

AA: I post nothing about myself and I dont have any friends on Facebook. I dont have any
connections. [59:44]

AT: Im not on Facebook but, undeniably, a lot of people are and theyre (?? hell bent) by
their friends. [59:49]

SM: Theres a lot of pressure, yeah. *59:50+

AA: Yeah, sure. Yes, I understand. [59:50]

AT: If youre using Bitcoin and getting paid in Bitcoin, all your favorite sites use Bitcoin,
theres going to be some friction there. *59:57+

AA: Im really optimistic. I used to think that wed never get rid of Windows and Microsoft.
(Laughter) [1:00:03]

AT: (Inaudible) [1:00:06]

AA: Yes, but we were locked into that for twenty years. I think if you say its worse, you
dont remember very well what it was like to be locked into an ecosystem. *1:00:13+

AT: Windows is different really because its like a piece of software that you use. Its like
video editing software. I can download it, I can use it. It doesnt matter what other people
are doing. [1:00:22]

AA: Oh, before Linux, it did matter very much though and I remember that time. I
remember the time when there were no other operating systems and you were either
locked in to Microsoft Windows or the alternative was IBM, AIX, UNIX or other forms of
very, very expensive, hundreds of thousands of dollars UNIX. That broke open. I never
thought we would leave that monopoly. I dont think Facebook is that stable, or long lasting
as people think. [1:00:50]

AT: We also switched from Internet Explorer when all the sites were developed for it.
[1:00:55]

AA: Yeah, exactly. [1:00:55]

AT: So there is some hope but Bitcoin is very important. [1:01:00]

AA: Yeah, because disruption keeps happening. That is the central theme disrupt
everything. [1:01:03]

AL: The friction here, I think, is the primary issue that you guys are having. Doesnt this
seem like its a lack of tools to make this happen because Ive been thinking about this
future that we have coming, where there are going to be at least many, many user created
assets built on top of Bitcoin, if not many, many cryptocurrencies broadly speaking. It
seems like its inevitable... and Ripple already has done this to a certain extent, to have
something like an automatic interchange wallet where, basically, you say I only ever want
to accept Bitcoin and then regardless of what anybody pays you, on the back-end your
wallet is trading it for whatever you want but on the front-end you get whatever you want.
When you pay somebody, there wallet is doing the same thing. They only want Doge, or
they only want this one particular user created asset. Thats fine. It can be converted at
market rate into that. It just seems like theres a little lock-in with Bitcoin. People are in
other cryptocurrencies already, so its not like everyone feels like they have to just stay in
Bitcoin already, but adding a tool layer like that, seems like it kind of removes all of the user
irritation and it just becomes about preference, right? [1:02:04]

AA: Thats the third step in the maturity curve. You start with experimentation. We had
that with Bitcoin. You move to fragmentation. Weve seen that now happening with the
emergence of all the altcoins. Then you have standardization. You create unifying
interfaces that hide the differences that allow you to do multi-modal communication. At
first, you had email, then you had email, Twitter, IM and Facebook. Then you had a single
interface on your phone that allowed you to communicate over all four so you can
seamlessly move among them. Then you start optimizing. Thats a natural progress curve.
Were at the fragmentation point. At the moment, we need lots of different opinions and,
at some point, we can then move between them more fluidly by standardizing the
interfaces on top of that. A lot of that, Amir, is going to happen in the user interface. Thats
really where the eyeballs and the users are going to land. The ones who dont have the
technical experience, so building those capabilities, like Airbitz is doing, or other companies
are doing is going to be critical because if all of the front-end user interfaces make it easy for
you to fluidly move among coins, then there is no lock-in. Thats where the lock-in happens.
The lock-in happens in the mind of the user and the user gets used to a single user interface.
[1:03:21]

AT: My concern is not only about changes to fundamental Bitcoin but about where efforts
of developers become invested, like half the scientists around the world work for the
military and the same with the internet. You see, theres a lot of investment of, or
harvesting of human resources that is working on technologies that surveil people, that
track people, that limit peoples freedom and the same thing with Bitcoin as well. There
also needs to be an investment of development energy into equipping people with the tools
that empower them that allow them to use Bitcoin for the reasons that we like Bitcoin and
appreciate Bitcoin, rather than Bitcoin as the latest frictionless payment thing, or latest
fashion trend. For me, Bitcoin is more than just about buying a drink at a bar, or any of
these things. Its something bigger about Bitcoin some bigger potential, deep down. It is a
new tool of trade and business that enables new financial models that werent before
possible. We can use it to create new types of associations and organizations between the
people that werent before possible, like when you have a community with a hundred
people inside and they all trust one another, the things can work but once you start to scale
beyond that to a thousand people, the trust starts to break down, so you start to need
reputation, collateral, insurance. Thats why this system we live in has been able to scale so
much because it provides us with the legal system. The legal system gives people
contractual law that they can use where maybe there isnt so much trust or personal
relation involved but they can create association between each other. With the new crypto
tools, we can actually use these features to create these things very interesting. Thats
what we try and also do at the Dark Wallet is looking at Bitcoin as a new tool of trade and
business and thinking OK, how can we equip people with these tools? How can we bring
out these features that are inside the core of Bitcoin to the wider world? Its a long process
because also a lot of these concepts are very abstract and you have to try and think about
the use-cases involved, what are the mental models that you can tie to? When calculus was
first invented by Newton, if you read the stuff hes done, its like.... its really difficult to
understand. Its very dense. Now kids are learning calculus in high school because we have
developed the models and the abstractions to more easily be able to deal with that field.
[1:06:13]

AA: Heres the thing, the idea that we have an existing, convenient set of laws and
institutions that provide a stable society in which we live and now were trying to find
alternatives ways to organize. That, in itself, is a very Western-focused convenience that we
have grown up to live in. Then there are six billion people who live around the world who
dont even have that convenience to start with and the beauty is that that means they dont
need to subvert it. They dont need to break the habit. They dont need to come out of
their comfort zone because they dont even know what fucking comfort means. They know
what survival means. You can introduce Bitcoin as a modality of organizing and trade and
commerce in places where there is no modality of organizing, there is no modality of law,
there is no trade and commerce amongst people, there is no international trade, there is no
rule of law and you can take them directly from that to something based on Bitcoin. If we
have a developer community that has twelve developers from the core developer group
who are all English speaking males, for the most part, and then you have ten thousand
developers who are all Chinese, Mandarin speaking, Russian speaking, who speak the
languages of Indonesia, or who speak whatever. Suddenly, how important is the influence
of these core developers. They get completely washed out in a huge global community of
developers. [1:07:50]

AT: It depends where the mining pools are or the software that people use. [1:07:53]

AA: The need of the users is much bigger in countries like India and the Philippines and
Indonesia and China, where you have literally four billion people live in that tiny circle,
centered around South East Asia four billion people. How many developers there?
Hundreds of thousands of developers. India has a hundred thousand developers graduating
every single year from college. They get on to being interested in building new financial
systems, systems that wont be in English, systems that wont care about existing structures
of law, all of the things that youre worried about go away. These are first world problems
based on a first world convenience that we have. They dont have any of that. They can just
go directly to something like Bitcoin and do you think theyre going to care about regulating
this for AML KYC to get VC investors from the fucking valley. Screw that! Theyre going
build some things around their communities and theyre going to create momentum around
that and then, youre going to be asking for your Bitcoin client to be translated from
Mandarin to English so you can use it because you dont understand what the fuck is on the
screen. [1:08:58]

AT: Theres still lot of technology that we use thats coming from the West, or the
developers in India are actually working for companies as outsourced developers. [1:09:07]

AA: For now because they have to build financial systems that play with the existing
banking infrastructure but now they can write applications of their own and they can write
them... [1:09:20]

AT: Participate in the market. [1:09:22]

AA: ...directly to an open financial market of Bitcoin and that changes the game completely.
Were just at the early stages. This is going to break out in a global community and then
these problems no longer exist. [1:09:33]

AL: I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a conversation that isnt quite over yet but were
out of time guys. Andreas, Stephanie thank you very much for joining me. Amir, would you
like to have the last word? [1:09:42]

AT: Thank you. (Laughter) [1:09:45]

AL: All right guys. (Laughter) [1:09:47]

AT: I wont drag it on too much. (Laughter) *1:09:48+


____________________________________________


CREDITS:


AL: Thanks for listening to Episode 106 of Lets Talk Bitcoin.

Content for this episode was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Andreas Antonopoulos,
Amir Taaki and Adam B. Levine
This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine
Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz

Any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com

Have a good one! [1:10:10]