LETS TALK BITCOINEpisode 106 Exploring Bitcoin with Amir Taaki

Participants:

Adam B. Levine (AL) HostAndreas M. Antonopoulos (AA) Co-HostStephanie Murphy (SM Co-hostAmir 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]

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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]

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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]

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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]