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Bitcoin Core veteran James O’Beirne warns that without urgent protocol upgrades like CTV, Bitcoin risks stagnation, centralization, and losing its mission entirely.
In this episode, Bitcoin Core veteran James O’Beirne delivers a sharp critique of Bitcoin’s developmental stagnation, attributing it to political dysfunction, post-fork trauma, and resistance within Bitcoin Core to critical upgrades like CheckTemplateVerify (CTV). He argues that while institutional adoption accelerates, internal innovation is being stifled by misplaced controversies—such as the OP_RETURN policy debate—and a bottlenecked governance model. O’Beirne warns that without urgent progress on scaling solutions like CTV, congestion control, and vaulting systems, Bitcoin risks ossifying and becoming vulnerable to institutional capture. Advocating a more adversarial posture, he suggests forking or building alternative clients to pressure progress but remains hopeful, seeing rising momentum for protocol upgrades from developers outside the Core elite.
“Everybody has mempool derangement syndrome… it’s such a small issue in the grand scheme of challenges Bitcoin is facing.”
“Bitcoin is as much an experiment in technical human organization as it is a pure technology.”
“If we don’t figure out how to scale trustless Bitcoin self-custody, we’re toast. Right now, only about 2.5% of Americans could actually use Bitcoin monthly in a meaningful way.”
“CTV isn’t sexy—it just works. It keeps getting reinvented because it's so useful. At this point, it’s essential.”
“If Core isn’t going to evaluate these proposals, someone has to. Otherwise, we need to build the social justification for forking.”
“Lightning didn’t scale Bitcoin the way we expected. Let’s stop assuming a silver bullet is coming and start building the bridges ourselves.”
“You could onboard someone with just a phone and a vault… and give them more security than most hardware wallets.”
While Bitcoin gains traction with institutions and governments, its internal development is stalling under political inertia and misplaced focus. James O’Beirne urges the community to prioritize impactful upgrades like CTV and CCV, challenge the bottleneck of Bitcoin Core if needed, and recommit to Bitcoin’s foundational principles. This episode underscores the urgent need to bridge technical and social divides to ensure Bitcoin remains a decentralized, censorship-resistant tool for global value transfer.
0:00 - Intro
0:41 - Multi axis issue
5:12 - Core governance
9:41 - Derailing productive discussions
17:05 - Fold & Bitkey
18:32 - CTV
29:24 - Unchained
29:53 - Magnitude of change
41:45 - Covenant proposals
50:16 - CTV benefits
57:56 - Institutional ownership
1:05:26 - Moving forward
(00:00) I think I have a somewhat different take than 99% of the people in the discussion. What freaks me out is if you've got Sailor owning half million coins or whatever and Black Rockck owning however many, people forget that Bitcoin is as much an experiment in technical human organization as it is, you know, as a sort of pure technology.
(00:17) The undernowledged reality is I'm actually interested to see if we have like a black swan adoption event from the machines. the risk given the increased scrutiny that things like the strategic Bitcoin reserve introduce there's a shot clock on getting to trustless decentralized value storage technology and I think we really have to be thinking about that combination of physically tired and mentally tired it's also tiresome James it's it's I was looking at that picture today and I was actually going to tweet it absent any caption just because it's
(00:52) a really good Uh yeah, it's a really good epitome of uh of a lot of stuff. But I'm with you, man. I'm tired. It's Friday. Who is it? Is that a just some random Japanese guy? I think it's it's I actually think it's from a documentary about I don't know if it's Africa, but Oh, yes. Yes.
(01:13) It's there's a little bit of a kind of like racy connotation there. Um yeah, the uh it's been long. It was interesting for me. We had Texas Energy Mining Summit here in Austin the beginning of the week. It sort of blended with Bitcoin plus I was over at Bitcoin++ Wednesday and yesterday doing the live desk and obviously topic of conversation is OP return this policy decision and this policy change that that core wants to make and many people are uh angry about and it's just again it's also tiresome.
(01:52) spoke with people on both sides over the two days and I I think I came away more confused than than I entered entered the week like what is the optimal path and somebody who's worked on Bitcoin core worked on Bitcoin core for for many years I've seen you tweeting about it seems like I won't put words in your mouth I'll let you say like what is your perspective on this whole policy debate around op return yeah so in general I think I have a somewhat different take than um 99% of the people in in the discussion which is basically that this
(02:25) is a really stupid discussion um everybody has mempool derangement syndrome like at every layer um and uh what what frustrates me a little bit about the conversation not not to not to uh get like um grumpy right off the bat but it's just it's it's such a small issue in the in the grand scheme of challenges that are being presented to Bitcoin that like spending all this drama on it um is is really a silly use of time and uh kind of emotion, but I can break it down for you.
(03:02) I mean, I think I think like largely the argument is happening on a few layers. Um the change itself technically I'm totally in favor of it. It makes sense. you know, basically the rationale is like, well, you know, um, people want to include exogenous data into the chain. Um, you can't really stop them from doing that.
(03:23) Um and so let's basically minimize the damage by saying hey you know we're going to make it easier for people to actually make use of op return as a data carrier which uh lets us avoid bloat in the UTXO set which is like one of the precious resources we have to take care of for the node.
(03:44) Um, so that's all good and the and the other thing too is that as we've seen with the ordinal stuff is um, you know, data is going to wait make its way into the chain and actually it hurts the whole network when um, there are transactions that most nodes haven't seen yet but they come through a block. Basically that slows down block propagation time.
(04:06) And so the whole idea is if you bring policy closer to the actual consensus rules, closer to the actual transactions that are going to come through and be mined, then you're going to have better network performance. You're going to have lower latency when it comes to actually broadcasting a new block around. So that's like the the sort of technical layer of the discussion.
(04:25) It's it's really a minute non-controversial change if you kind of have fluency with the the technical end of the mempool. Um, but I think there's this this higher layer to the conversation which is sort of a readjudication of spam in Bitcoin. And it's, you know, I think a lot of the the old animal spirits and sentiments are emerging about like, well, we don't like spam.
(04:49) And I think for a lot of people who kind of get lost in the technical details, it's very easy to latch on to the sentiment of I don't like spam. Um and so uh so that makes the sort of ocean knots camp maybe more appealing. Uh so that's yeah that's I guess a summary if you want to jump in anything in particular we can that's what I was saying I came out more confused than I went in.
(05:20) So last week on RHR, hey, I agree. You want policy to be aligned with consensus. Like whether we like it or not, these transactions are getting into blocks. They're non-standard, but they are valid within consensus rules and policy just isn't aligning with that. And like you said, this is disrupting the P2P layer and potentially the fee uh estimation process that that many nodes use, many applications use.
(05:49) And it makes sense to me to align policy with consensus. These things are happening. And if you can make it so Bitcoin full nodes are operating as efficiently and optimally as possible by changing this, it makes sense to me. I think my one like push back was like makes sense to me. However, I think how it was communicated to people and the whole mess with the PR.
(06:12) I think it's I think it's it was it's it's just a tactical error. Like even if this change gets in the the the real benefit of is is not material. You know, nobody was really clamoring for it. um this stuff always, you know, gets the hackles up of everybody who cares at all about, you know, spamming Bitcoin. So, it was a real tactical error.
(06:36) And I think that's that's one place where I mean it's kind of I had a little bit of shot in Freud seeing it because I'm fairly critical of core as a project along you know a variety of axes at this point and it was just kind of a demonstration of the the disconnection and kind of ineptitude of um publicity management kind of on on their end.
(06:58) Um, and so like there's part of me that enjoys seeing that because I I'm kind of convinced that that group has a lot less efficacy than they have credibility. And so to to see that kind of catch up was was interesting. The uh let's dive into that like what you said multiple axes you have a problem. I think we've throughout the years like we've been discussing the issues that Bitcoin like yourself particularly as a Bitcoin core developer for many years trying to get things through not only in the context of the way core works from a governance
(07:35) structure but just the way Bitcoin works as a distributed open source protocol like trying to get changes in and I will say like having heard the perspective of core developers like Gloria Antoine on um Instag Gibbs uh throughout the week. Like I I I do have some empathy in the sense that it seems like there's many balls in the air and it's just like they want to focus on code and getting the stuff out and the repository has become very political because of the people outside of it who are affected by the changes
(08:10) and have opinions. And I can see the argument that they may have opinions, but they may also not really understand the technical details of how the stuff is interoper interoperating with each other. And then I had conversations with like Bitcoin Mechanic and Luke Dasher as well.
(08:30) And I think they do make good arguments in the sense of like we have spam filters in email and we know it's not 100% effective, but it is effective to a degree. And if we sort of cater to um these non-monetary use cases of Bitcoin to put arbitrary data in the blockchain by making it easier via increasing the OP return limit, you're sort of going down the slippery path of um signaling that we're okay with this.
(09:02) And frankly, like as a user and as somebody's been in Bitcoin for a while, like the whole inscriptions ordinals thing, uh I don't think it's found product market fit. I would rather it be and then then you get to the subjective nature is like what is a a monetary use case of Bitcoin? And I've long been in the beginning of the inscriptions ordinal discussion like I was vehemently like public and publicly um voicing my disdain for that usage of Bitcoin.
(09:34) But over time it became clear if you just ignore them, it doesn't really a product market fit and it goes away. And so you have like all these factors playing into how do you actually solve this problem. Yeah. The irony is like I don't think anybody in this conversation likes likes JPEGs on Bitcoin. You know, certainly none of the core developers that I know do.
(09:53) Um I'm I I don't like that use, but I'm also sympathetic in terms of it being a provider of mining revenue when that's kind of sorely needed. Um but uh but all that said, you know, the the whole mechanic ocean bit about well, email has spam filters. You got to be really really careful when you're drawing technical analogies to Bitcoin.
(10:12) People do this all the time. Um, you know, like even going back to the VHS Betamax analogy of Bitcoin and um, Ethereum, it's like, you know, you just can't um, you can't draw an analogy. And the reason that that email analogy doesn't work is that like you know your email inbox doesn't have to be reconciled with the global set of emails in order for you to get better email performance in the same way that you know if your nodes or a minor's nodes uh uh mempool is out of sync with the incoming blocks like that's going to
(10:49) meaningfully hurt performance. So there are some caveats to that uh to that analogy and most analogies that get drawn with Bitcoin. Um but do you want to go ahead and and return to the the the core stuff and have me give my spiel there? Yeah. Yeah. So I it's worth doing some throw clearing, you know, Antoine, Gloria, and and all the sort of core um contributors that are public at this point.
(11:17) Um you know, they're all smart people. I think they're all ostensibly like sort of well intended. Um, and obviously the development organizational problem in Bitcoin is a really hard one. It's one I wrote about um a few months ago in that in that post, the consensus conundrum. And you know, I think people forget that Bitcoin is as much like an experiment in technical human organization um as it is like a you know, as a sort of pure technology.
(11:47) Um, and I think the underagged reality is that we had a much more hierarchical organization up until maybe 2018, 2019, well maybe 2020, 2021 when all this the CSW stuff started kicking off. Um but really, you know, we had essentially a small council of people who could make things happen within Bitcoin Core and and therefore Bitcoin and then that trans transitioned into this like sort of uh more free form, you know, supposedly meritocratic, you know, leaderless structure and and since then nothing really material has happened. Um that's
(12:24) not my beef. you know, my beef with the project after having been a participant for maybe 10 years um coming up this year is that the things that are being focused on are kind of um tangential or ancillary concerns. Um you know, pretty honestly anything concerning the mempool is somewhat of a secondary concern.
(12:49) Uh it's very easy to make an argument about mining decentralization and you know the importance of having a relay network that isn't censored. Um I think there are a number of problems with the argument that that's like the biggest challenge facing Bitcoin right now. Um, you know, anybody who's seen the inside of a mining operation knows or should know that um the the forces that are encouraging centralization in that function are not like mempool things.
(13:19) They're like logistical things like running a good mining operation is very very hard. You know, keeping good luck which you know luck is the score miners look at um which is essentially how efficient is my mining operation. you know, how well am I turning dollars into Bitcoin or energy into Bitcoin? And that's a really, really, really hard job.
(13:39) And so when you've got a model like full paper share uh that lets you know, hashers offload luck onto um other operations and they just get to put in some hash rate and get out some Bitcoin fairly reliably, you know, that's like a that's a centralizing factor. And so this emphasis that the memp pool is somehow this like central factor controlling minor centralization is totally um not the case as far as I can see.
(14:10) Um and there are much bigger fish to fry when it comes to making bitcoin into you know the best substrate for peer-to-peer value transfer uh that we can. And you know, I mean, as you know, I've been working on the Covenant stuff for a while. Jeremy's been working on the Covenant stuff for a while. And on the part of the the the core project as a whole, there's just very little interest or uptake in some of these major protocol issues that um you know will actually help us remain decentralized.
(14:43) Yeah. And that's been a a common remark to this oper drama over the last couple of weeks is like it seemed like we were getting to a better spot in terms of the conversation around covenant proposals and then out of nowhere this comes up and causes a kurfuffle and it has a lot of people worried that like just this small policy change creating all this controversy.
(15:09) What does that do for the conversation around covenants? Whether it's CTV, I believe you're interested in um uh check contract verify as well. I like them all. Everything on the table, man, is is a pretty well thought out proposal. You know, CTV, even CAT. I I I'm I'm kind of holding off on on pushing CAT because I know there are some higher level concerns there about um you know, MEV, which I I don't think are well founded, but that's kind of another battle to fight.
(15:38) So coming out of op next there was a huge amount of uh momentum around CTV and check from stack because if if you you I know you weren't there but um almost every presentation whether it was about layer 2s vaults arc bitvm you know every one of them was like yeah having CTV would be sort of a gamecher for us um we'd love to have it and so I it seemed pretty clear there was there was good consensus coming out of that um you know even among the some of the active core developers that were there I I think it made an impression on
(16:14) them like oh wow okay you know we didn't really realize like to what extent um there was demand for this thing um so so there is good momentum for that but um that's that's kind of the irony of all this is that many of the proposals that have been on the table you know are are simple safe well fleshed out people are just so accustomed to these giant changes like taproot and segwit which you know like I I think the scale of those kinds of changes to consensus is probably over just because there were such major complicated multiaceted you
(16:48) know engine lifts that like I don't I don't think that's appropriate for Bitcoin in many ways anymore those kinds of changes and and and I don't think you know anybody really wants those. It's these more narrowly scoped you know op code additions that I think would really move the needle uh and are and are much more easy to reason about.
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(18:00) You have one key on the hardware wallet, one key on your mobile device, and Block stores a key in the cloud for you. This is an incredible hardware device for your friends and family or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time but haven't taken the step to self- custody cuz they're worried about the complications of setting up a private public key pair, securing that seed phrase, setting up a PIN, setting up a passphrase.
(18:24) Again, Bit Key makes it easy to use, hard to lose. It's the easiest 0ero to one step. your first step to self-custody. If you have friends and family on the exchanges who haven't moved it off, tell them to pick up a big key. Go to bitkkey.world, use the key TFTC20 at checkout for 20% off your order. That's bit.world, code TFTC20. Yeah, I think in the case of CTV, it I think it's been in the conversation for 7 years now, maybe longer, cuz I remember TFTC, we sponsored the lunch at the first CTV like developer meetup.
(18:57) I believe is in 2018, maybe 2019, but Jeremy's been beating this drum and it's it's had its ups and downs in terms of the the um the sort of engagement on the conversation around CTV and like to your point does seem like this year particularly with the advent of ARC um with miniscript applications getting out there uh and just basically the the maturation of the second layer protocols is getting to a point where it's like hey we have product market fit here obviously arc maybe not but like lightning in other aspects definitely
(19:38) have product market fit and let's start looking ahead to how we can actually make it so this is as efficient and scalable as possible yeah 100% that that uh image of uh Jeremy naked in a cardboard box is seared into my brain from those early uh plugfi meetings. Um but no, I you know I it's um it's it's a tremendously wellstudied op code.
(20:05) I I tried to avoid it when I was developing OPV vault um because of the drama at the time, the controversy. I said, "Okay, this thing is like so the the the the uh the branding of this thing is so hot right now. I I I have to try and, you know, work around that." And I wound up just poorly reinventing it.
(20:23) And so the my collaborators at the time AJ and Instagibs were like you should just adopt you know make CTV a prerequisite for the protocol. Um and that's something that I think everybody who who goes through this process kind of comes to is that CTV is just this like elemental tool that just keeps being rediscovered. And so you know it's it's definitely time for it.
(20:44) I think well for show's grown since we last talking. There's a lot of new Bitcoiners here. Let's uh let's put for like what is CTV? What would it enable? And you brought up the magnitude of the changes that SegWit and Tap Routt were. Compare it. What is the magnitude comparison of CTV to those two? Yeah.
(21:07) So, um you know, when you spend a bitcoin, uh right now, basically what you're doing is providing a signature that proves that you can unlock essentially that bitcoin for spending. and then it can go really anywhere. Um, CTV is an example of something that, you know, is often referred to as a covenant. And basically all that means is that you're opening up the aspects of the transaction that are looked at to determine whether a spend can happen beyond just, you know, say the providing of a signature.
(21:42) Um, so what this allows you to do, specifically in the case of CTV, is you can make a statement when you own a coin, you can basically say, you know, this coin can only be spent um so long as the transaction that it's being spent into uh looks like such and such. Um, and so this allows you to encode basically these like um big graphs of transactions that you can commit a coin to that are finite because CTV isn't um what's called like a recursive or a general covenant.
(22:20) But it basically allows you to, you know, sort of pre-sign, you know, a transaction to be spent through some um uh flow without actually having to do pre-signed transactions which have all kinds of problems. And so it turns out that this is really useful for a bunch of different things including, you know, the thing that I know the most about is probably vaults.
(22:44) Um but uh this is you know almost every layer 2 application has to structure um these conditions where people in the layer 2 have to be able to get their coins out of the layer 2. And so that winds up um being a use for CTV where you're basically locking up the coin um to be trustlessly you know redeemed in a certain way.
(23:03) It's useful for miners because they can compress um payouts in the Coinbase um using something called congestion control which is nice. We actually have a hackathon team right out here from the Bitcoin plus plus hackathon that's going on today. They came over here to work on it. They're implementing CTV on test net and doing this exact thing like mining mining pool payouts from the Coinbase using CTV.
(23:26) Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, that's great. It's it's a it's a great application. And then there's um the more general congestion control case which I actually think is going to be really really big um in the future. It's going to be a really important use of CTV because what it allows you to do is come up with a very concise onchain commitment that allows um redemption across you know hundreds thousands of people later on at some point when the fee market is lower.
(23:53) And the reason that I think this is very important um and this is like a a broader discussion is that I think bank runs in Bitcoin are going to be a thing whether it's some kind of a correlated layer 2 failure or whether it's uh institutional failure and people want to move coin around they want to take possession of coin in short order we're going to see these very spiky events in the same way that you know bank runs happen in traditional finance in the same way that you know uh FDX goes down and all of a sudden everybody body wants
(24:23) to take custody. Um and so I think congestion control is kind of an underhyped um aspect of CTV that could be really important. Yeah. And so with this in mind, let's just focus on CTV. What are your hopes that actually gets merged? And let's put let's put let's put uh let's put the Bitcoin dictator hat on.
(24:49) like how would you go about actually uh garnering consensus and then actually setting up a a um soft fork mechanism to get it pushed through. Yeah. Um so right now there are pull requests open against core for both CTV and checks from stack um which activated it on regge test only and so that means that we can get test coverage of it as we're running these automated tests that we have.
(25:25) Um and so those could be merged with really no risk. Um the thing is that CTV has been reviewed like you said for seven years now and the code really hasn't materially changed. I've, you know, changed a little bit of the window dressing on on Jeremy's original patch, but the reality is that, um, I think, um, Lincoln Labs, no, not Lincoln Labs, um, uh, I'm forgetting their name now, but somebody has had a 5 BTC um, bounty on finding a a a material bug in CTV, and that hasn't been claimed yet.
(25:54) That's a lot of money at this point. It's half a million dollars. So, um, so CTV really is in a good place. I think it's it's it's seen the level of technical review. Um the situation that we now find ourselves in reveals, you know, some of my other criticism of core, which is that they occupy a place in the power structure of Bitcoin.
(26:20) um in that core is the de facto implementation that every business every minor runs because you know no business or minor really wants to take the operational risk of running something else. It's just, you know, um it it it may actually come to that at some point, but but for the time being, you know, if you're a serious commercial enterprise, you're running Bitcoin Core.
(26:46) Um because, you know, if there was some kind of a consensus failure and you were running some other piece of software, you'd look like an idiot. So, um de facto right now, Bitcoin Core has a kind of monopoly over like this protocol discussion. And because these are so deeply such deeply technical issues, most of the ecosystem knowingly or not seeds um their assessment to the core developers.
(27:13) Basically, it's very easy to say, well, if so and so doesn't, you know, if so and so hasn't acted, then it's obviously not ready for Bitcoin yet. And I think that sets us up for a very precarious I mean it's the situation that we found ourselves in for the last four or five years uh which is that because um covenants and protocol changes of this nature are a bit harder to think about.
(27:37) They require actual experience building applications. They require actual usage of script which frankly the the sort of like um Bitcoin core class of developer hasn't often times hasn't experimented with. I know from personal experience this this used to be me before I started writing scripts before I started working for custodians.
(27:59) Um you know they just want to sort of focus on these pure software problems and these you know like closed form you know oh let's figure out a new optimal way to restructure the mem poolool so that we can you know sort of hit some metric. um that's a much easier space to occupy mentally than like oh what's what's actually going to like let's think about these big scaling problems what's actually going to kind of move the protocol forward so the the uncomfortable position that we find ourselves in now in terms of activation for CTV is like the code's basically
(28:32) ready uh the change has been picked over for years um there's ton of demand for it but because you haven't had many court developers in a position where they can say, "Yeah, this is, you know, I understand this. I've looked at the code." Um, it kind of jams the works up. Now, luckily, like I said, there were some core developers at OP Next, and I do think that I I should say besides me, I'm still technically a core developer, even though I'm kind of on the outs socially.
(29:05) Um, but uh there there were some core developers at Up Next and I think it's just becoming harder and harder to deny that it's it's time for for this change. It's time to see um a meaningful movement towards um towards the software which again is just a tightening of the rules. It's not anything crazy. Sup freaks.
(29:26) Stop asking how to value Bitcoin. Start asking how to value everything else in Bitcoin. Unchain and strive be the vecramwami's asset management firm just released a new report called repericing the economy in Bitcoin. It introduces a Bitcoin denominated DCF model and shows what happens when you revalue equities like Apple using Bitcoin instead of dollars.
(29:44) This isn't just a thought experiment. It's a framework for capital allocation. Read it now at unchained.com/tc. That's unchained.com/tc. The magnitude comparison to segment tapper. How how big of a change is this from a like how many lines of code and how how massive of a consensus change different is at all just code lines of code is um it is mostly uh it's it's kind of the first metric that anybody looks at and it's a you have to look at it um you know the actual interpreter change um I I think right now the the
(30:21) CTV PR has 3,000 lines the 90% of Those are test changes. Uh it's all these test vectors that have been added. I think the actual interpreter changes are maybe 200 or 300 lines. They're they're fairly minimal. Whereas Tapper SegWit, you know, you're talking about thousands of lines of consensus critical uh code changed excluding tests.
(30:47) Um, and the other the other I mean the the better way to size this up um is SegWit and Taproot both changed these very core aspects. It they changed the model for how script execution works in Bitcoin. You know, it's it's like a completely different um system in some ways for how how script gets executed. Um and with that, you know, there were resource changes.
(31:14) is obviously SegWit added the discount. Um you know Tap Routt introduced some some resource uh constraint changes as well. Um you know these are these are like system level changes uh with all of the proposals that are on the table now whether it's CAT CTV you know check check contract verify they're adding individual op codes within the existing framework.
(31:41) Um, and you know, I don't want to downplay the importance of vetting those and making sure that they're actually, you know, safe changes to make because there can theoretically be uh, you know, you could think of it as contagion if, let's say, you introduce an op code that introduces some denial of service vector that can be exploited.
(32:01) like obviously they need to be gauged for security but they aren't these kind of like reimagining of the physics of how script in Bitcoin works and um and so so consequently they're much easier to to uh look at I think and assess. Yeah. And I think that putting the perspective of the non-technical bitcoin users sort of paying attention to what's happening uh to the protocol I I think many believe that segwit and tap routt sort of enabled the combination of this to enable this inscriptions ordinal craze and there's I think there's
(32:40) arguments for and against that um but I think they there's a bit of PTSD in the sense of all right if we do another softwork are there some negative externalities in terms of stuff like that being enabled by these op codes and I think many are sort of just ering on the side of let's not do anything because I don't want something like that to happen after something like opctv gets merged in yeah 100% and I understand that concern um it's it's it's one of those things.
(33:16) It's just difficult to alleviate unless you kind of have a technical grounding in this or you trust somebody who has a technical grounding in this and can tell you. The nice thing about CTV in particular is that um and this is really getting into the weeds here, but all of the verification that CTV does is based on SHA 256 hashing.
(33:37) And Shaw 2 hashing is a thousand times faster than ECDSHX. I've got benchmarks that show this. Um so you you still have to be careful obviously but um you know the uh dossability of something that's just hashing is a lot you know kind of less open-ended than something that's doing uh signature checks and then for for checkig from stack it's literally the same operation as like a signature check um you know that that that you would do.
(34:07) It's just allowing an arbitrary message in there. And so, um, uh, yeah, all this stuff has to be looked at. Um, and it's a it's a perfectly worthwhile concern, but you know, the argument that I that I don't hear enough, um, you know, I watched the oification debate, uh, some of it last night with, uh, Lisa and Lop, I don't know if you caught that. I missed it. I had to jump.
(34:29) Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But I I I think um that you know the recent beat that I've been on a little bit is trying to emphasize the risk of not doing anything um to help scale Bitcoin because you know right now if you run the numbers um just o over I think 2 and a half% of Americans would be able to on a monthly basis buy Bitcoin on exchange, withdraw it to self custody, and then maybe make a spend, you know, to pay their mortgage or whatever.
(35:10) Um, that's a really, really low number if you're talking about actual usage of Bitcoin, um, actual ownership of UTXOs. And so if we don't figure out a and by the way lightning doesn't help with this because you have to own a UTXO to you know participate in lightning and you have to have the threat of actually hitting the main chain to close your channel if your counterparty tries to cheat you.
(35:34) So, you know, I think a lot of people, myself included, for a long time, kind of have this feeling in the back of their mind that like either we've got the scaling solutions that are going to kind of let Bitcoin remain this decentralized trustless value layer or, you know, some genius is going to come along and figure out a way to to preserve that given the the existing system.
(36:00) Um, and after years of thinking about this, I just don't think that that's true right now. And I I think the risk of us stopping, um, especially given the increased, you know, scrutiny that things like the strategic Bitcoin reserve introduce. Um, you know, I think there's a there's a shot clock basically on getting to um a truly um trustless decentralized value storage technology.
(36:28) And I think we really have to be thinking about that. I agree. And the panel yesterday, the core developers, Peter, uh, Gloria, Antoine, and Greg, I think it became clear to me there there is like PTSD within core, too. I mean, Peter specifically was like, I don't want anything to do with software activation, staying out of it.
(36:54) And I think that we need to somehow get over the PTSD there. I don't know if it was Craig Wright driven or just the backlash of Inscriptions ordinals emerging after Tap Routt and SegWit, but I think I think enough time has passed. So, it's like, all right, if we believe that we want CTV covenants to scale Bitcoin for individual self-custody purposes, if you think that's worthwhile, which I certainly do, we sort of have to just like shake off the PTSD and start having genuine conversations about this. Maybe I this
(37:29) this show's drifted more towards the macroeconomic and sort of uh sociological aspects of Bitcoin. We we try to keep it technical as often as possible, but I'll admit we've we've gotten away from it. Maybe it's um on the part of the greater Bitcoin community to make some noise about this, too.
(37:52) That gets in the question, all right, once you shake off the PTSD, like what is the activation route if you think it's worthwhile? It's Well, it's understanding. It's understandable, man, because like the the technical weeds just get deeper and deeper and the stuff just gets harder and harder to reason about.
(38:09) And and I think with all the exciting geopolitical stuff that's going on, you know, number go up big time. Um that that's a lot more fun and interesting in some cases to talk about than these hard questions of like, okay, well, how do we actually make this thing deliver on value storage? Um, so I don't I don't fault you at all for for not really like focusing on because God, I mean, if if I wasn't a software engineer, like my eyes would glaze over if somebody was describing CTV to me because it's such a an indirect like bizarre, you know, you're like, well,
(38:44) but how the hell does that Yeah, that's not useful at all. You know, it just it it doesn't viscerally make any sense. Um, and it doesn't really have the blockstream marketing, you know, machine behind it, which, you know, for SegWid and Tap, I think, did a very good job of getting people riled up and saying, "Oh, privacy, privacy, privacy, and efficiency of Schnore signatures and, you know, things like that.
(39:09) " Um, since then, there hasn't really been that kind of like, um, you know, you could call it marketing, you could call it consent manufacturing, which I think is inevitable when when things are this technical. Um but yeah man we we we have to shake off the stasis and we have to figure out what a workable um arrangement is going forward.
(39:28) I mean I think at some point Bitcoin has to stop changing. Um I I am for oification at a certain point and I think it'll be inevitable. Um, I just think that the external forces of ocification are coming more quickly than I would have thought and the downsides of oification are greater than I would have thought in the current state. the down. Yeah. Yeah.
(39:53) Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So hopefully I mean I I was really blackpilled for two years maybe coming out of this. Um but the last few months I think we have seen momentum around some of these proposals and we've seen a lot of um noncore developers in the ecosystem who are frankly just as smart you know and capable as the core developers.
(40:20) I I really don't think the core devs deserve this um this kind of high high status, this glazing. Like it's really kind of distasteful to me because like they're all well paid. We're all well paid, you know, um for the most part and there's plenty of money out there for core devs. Um but these, you know, people in the ecosystem working on actual applications are like, "What the hell's going on, man?" like we've been hearing about CTV for years and it, you know, we can see firsthand it'd be it'd be really useful
(40:50) for for these like, you know, very Bitcoin values aligned projects were working on. You know, I mean, like one of one of my favorite um uh advocates who's been vocal for some of this stuff is Rob Hamilton. you know, Rob Rob is doing one of the most interesting things, you know, for the sort of traditional Bitcoin use case that you can think of, which is, you know, in essence, he's trying to derisk custody.
(41:13) Uh, you know, he's offering an insurance product that insulates people from loss. And, you know, I think he's really activated in the last year because he's like, I mean, you I'd love to make use of this stuff and it all seems safe. Um, so I do think there's kind of a growing awareness that um, we do need to keep moving forward.
(41:34) Um, how it happens remains to be seen. Yeah, Rob's right outside here. I actually asked him a couple questions like what should we ask right before uh, before I hopped in here. The um, No, I I completely and I'm optimistic too. It did seem like for the longest time the covenant discussion I I think it got I think the way the taproot wizards guys with the opcat specifically sort of marketed it and came very uh aggressive with the that particular covenant proposal really just people step back like there was the social aspect of you
(42:10) guys are degenerate scammers and we don't want to associate any update with you but I think cooler heads have prevailed and again Going back to CTV, I think CTV is has been discussed for the longest, has been tested the longest, and it would make sense to me that that maybe the one we should focus on for focusing on covenants.
(42:31) But then you have the discussion of like if you do one, how many do you do more at the same time if you're going to do a soft fork? So, check sig from stack. Uh any prep out, it's been talked about. Um, so it's like you have to like there's many layers to this discussion. Like if we're going to do one, should we do more? If we're going to do more, how many do we do? Yeah.
(42:55) I actually think, you know, you have to look back in time um at the softworks that preceded Lightning, which were check lock, time, verify, check, sequence, verify, uh obviously wet. um you know those first two just rolled out without much fanfare and they were much closer to the kinds of changes that we're talking about now in that they were just basically adding op codes.
(43:17) There was a little bit of you know transaction logic in there but um I would really like to see us kind of get back to that. I don't think it's really a good thing to be doing in terms of this giant bundling, you know, cuz that kind of risks like this omnibus type situ, which are fair criticisms of SegWit and Taproot.
(43:39) And that's partially why the, you know, I I actually I think the changes in both of those were completely reasonable, aside from some minor nits on Taproot. you know, I I I don't want to see us get into this position where we're, you know, lumping a bunch of changes together. Um, I think the actual deployment of Softworks nowadays, um, would be a lot, you know, smoother than they were back then because things just generally seem to be less contentious.
(44:09) But but also I'm you know I think again a lot is made of like the severity of chain splits and I I I I just think there's a ton of FUD when it comes to the actual deployment of these things that um I I think the the negative consequences of like whatever you know honestly seeing a five block reorg would probably be good for the ecosystem that would probably be a good thing uh long term to stress test some of these these systems.
(44:36) So I I think you know we can we can roll out soft forks. That seems like a pretty easy problem. Um we should be cautious about like bundling them all together. And just I just want to make one note on the the Tapoo Wizards guys. You know I think they deserve um let me just say this. You know I I know um those guys very well.
(44:56) I have for a long time. Um, I think in the fullness of time, um, it will be clear that they really do care about Bitcoin and everything that they do is is to the end of trying to make Bitcoin succeed. Um, you know, mostly on the terms that I think are widely shared, the values that are widely shared.
(45:18) I think that, you know, those guys are just kind of avantguard type artist guys and they like being, you know, controversial and confrontational. Um, and so they have their own style and I think, you know, there's there's something to appreciate about that, even if aesthetically, like, look, we all hate spam and garbage.
(45:35) Um, for the most part, I mean, I I don't know, maybe Yeah, maybe they do like JPEGs, but I think they're they're kind of in it for the the right reasons, more or less. They're not just trying to spam the chain with JPEGs. Yeah. I mean, like like Well, that's why I'm curious like Ben Carman now he's at Spiral.
(45:53) I was saying, "Why'd you leave?" We asked him last week, he said they stopped working on Obcat. Like uh why they stopped working on Obcat. Um which is interesting, but we don't have to belabor that point. The it's I I think there's a lot going on there and I think they haven't lost interest. You know, the So So look, while we're here, let me just give my big selling point for Opcat because I hate I still hate Opcat. I hated it when it came out.
(46:18) I was very critical. I interviewed Pure on Wednesday. He's like, Opcat's my baby. like he's really like he loves it and and and I and I get his rationale and I agree with it. I totally agree with it because here's the thing. So Opcat, you know, my old bit from years ago was that basically Opcat is like building a computer out of black and white pebbles.
(46:38) Like yeah, you can do it. It's horrible. Um but it lets you do pretty much, you know, anything you need to do. And I think as we look at how the um technical h how uncertain the technical waters are for Bitcoin in terms of our ability to actually make changes um having Offcat is really important as this hyper inefficient escape hatch to do things like you know zero knowledge proofs.
(47:09) Um I I think people forget that in the early days uh Satoshi, Greg, Greg Maxwell, a lot of the early guys were like, you know, look, ultimately we want to move a lot of the stuff towards zero knowledge proofs because it's a really cool tech. It's just not mature enough to put on the base layer, but like this might be our best shot at privacy, freedom, all this stuff.
(47:27) So, um, so the thing that's appealing to me about opcat is that it it it gives us this little escape hatch to experiment with things like zero knowledge proof roll-ups that are completely values aligned with Bitcoin and and may actually wind up being, you know, some of the techniques that like bail us out from a freedom standpoint.
(47:46) Um, but it's inefficient enough that it's not a major change to Bitcoin. um and to do anything on there requires like a lot of money spent as revenue towards miners. So the other big problem you know as you know as as almost everybody knows is that the subsidy is dwindling right now it's a little over three bitcoin you know soon it's going to be one and a half you know after that fractional um and that you know if the if the net security spend behind Bitcoin is uh very low in 10 years like that's that's not a
(48:23) good outcome for the system because it's all predicated on you know uh there being a ton of security spend you know a ton thermodynamic uh security behind the system um protecting it and and so I I I like Opcat because it's basically a way of doing you know almost anything um but having that inefficiency subsidizing miners.
(48:47) Um I know there's a whole MEV discussion there. I have been convinced I was very skeptical about that for a long time. I've been convinced that's not actually a concern because if you look at the way the MEB works, the 10-minute block time basically makes like layer one um DeFi [ __ ] kind of intractable and and unappealing.
(49:09) And so what winds up happening, I guess, is that a lot of the MEV gets moved up into these like layer 2 sequencers and then that's where a lot of the messing around happens. Uh, and and so I actually think because of things like, you know, script limits, because of the 10-minute block time, all these, you know, kind of vague pieces of doubt about CAT and its its, you know, risks, I think, are not as wellounded as as I had thought.
(49:39) But, you know, to the broader discussion, I I think setting that aside, you know, to evaluate on a longer, you know, time scale makes sense. Whereas changes like CTV checks sig from stack like these are just like open and shut you know very basic very well understood scrutinized. Um you know I spent a bunch of time trying to break CTV at at a certain point Jeremy had made some caching change that was a um a result of some benchmarking that I had done and it turned out my benchmarking was wrong and CTV was fine you know to begin with. So a lot of people have been
(50:10) trying to break those and can cats cats a little bit of a different discussion. The let's paint the picture. I mean you've described what it would enable but like how more confident in Bitcoin would you be if let's just focus on CTV check sig from stack if they got soft forked into into Bitcoin? I think it would do really nice things for some layer twos.
(50:37) um you know ARC specifically it reduces the need for interactivity. I think in ARC you can then non-interactively receive uh value which is big. Uh obviously for vaults you know vaults are kind of a separate question from scaling. In fact vaults are are kind of like opposite of scaling because they require more chain use. But if the chain is a ghost town and we're not getting any fees, then vaults are actually great because they're going to they're going to juice Myers with some fees.
(51:09) So CTV does get you uh a fairly primitive form of vaulting um that I can say would probably be used at the industrial level. Um still maybe not ready for like home user, personal user type vaults. We're still not at that level of um ergonomics with just CTV. But the important thing to note is that CTV is basically required for any kind of good vaulting.
(51:34) Um you know, again, when I was coming up with OP Vault, it just wound up being kind of a a prerequisite unintentionally. So, you know, those things are really good. Um I think congestion control is is big. My big big worry about Bitcoin is that we're going to have some kind of phase change event where either it's a regulatory discontinuity where the government comes in and says, "Hey, if you're a a regulated minor uh exchange, you know, you've got a software and monetary policy tools um where this is going to go into effect at such and such date and
(52:08) you know, with with the knowledge that Bitcoin given its current capacity can't possibly facilitate all the withdrawals." Um, so I think having something like CTV and having um, you know, exchange level support for congestion control where it's like, hey, you're an exchange. If I'm going to put my Bitcoin in you, I want to I want to be able to see that you can actually compress, you know, an arbitrary number of withdrawals into this one 32 byt hash and put it on a chain.
(52:36) I think that's really important. Um, and that would make me feel a lot better about that kind of exit case. um you know and then then even I haven't really looked into applying that same sort of um congestion control exit into uh well actually no I should say ARC arc already uses that pattern that's basically how a unilateral exit works in ARC is that you know you you you spend this one um output and then the users of the arc have to unroll that output.
(53:07) Um, I think I think what's interesting about that is that and and and with all these layer 2s and that's why I was sort of thinking about the block size, which is a whole another discussion we can get into if you want, but uh, you know, Greg Sanders did a really good talk at OP next about the economics of some of these layer 2 systems because to really have a trustless layer 2 system, you've always got to be able to unilaterally withdraw your coins to to the base chain, right? Otherwise, you're just stuck in somebody else's system. In the arc case, you
(53:35) know, unrolling this tree, there are a few layers in the tree. That means that, you know, you as a user of the ark potentially have to see a number of transactions broadcast and committed on chain to actually get your value out. And so, you know, how much does that cost? What's the weight of those transactions? You know, what's the fee regime look like? Those are really interesting questions um that you know are not well spelled out.
(54:03) They're not they're not well modeled by these VC backed companies that are making this ARC system. Like what I worry about here is and I'm not I I really don't mean to pick on Lightning too much. Lightning's a great technology, smart people working on it, so on so forth. the amount of venture capital and hype relative to our expectations for lightning, you know, 7 years ago.
(54:27) I I think it's non-controversial to say that hasn't been met. You know, like we all kind of I think thought in the back of our minds back in, you know, 2018, 2019, lightning is going to be the thing that scales Bitcoin and we're all going to be using Lightning wallets. um some of us are, but it really hasn't delivered on that for a lot of these kind of thorny, well, you've got to manage directional liquidity, you know, you've got to og when the fee market spikes, all the channels close.
(54:55) Um, you know, which exacerbates the situation. There are all these like second order things you got to think about with the layer twos. And until we've got a working layer 2 that is meaningfully scaling Bitcoin, I I I think we kind of have to be cautious about assuming that's that's coming down the pike. Yeah, I think I mean I use Lightning every day.
(55:19) I think it I would say it probably has not reached the expectations that we thought like everybody's going to be using it. I was talking to Carlo yesterday. He's confident that the back half of the year we'll see self-custodial lightning will will take a a step will make a step function improvement. Oh, for what reason? I don't know.
(55:35) He made an announcement of announcement on on the live desk basically. I'm tired of these things, man. We need we need social norms against announcement of announcements. I I believe I pushed back. I was like, you're making an announcement of announcement on on the show. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it, man. Yeah. But I think what I don't know if this was ever the intent out of the gate, but I think Lightning is finding this really nice product market fit as this connective tissue between the second layer solutions, whether it's ecash,
(56:00) mints, arc, and 100%. I think 100% I think there's a lot of value there institutions, exchanges, you know, I I completely agree. I think it's invaluable for that. I just think we all kind of thought it would be this it would be the thing that onboarded more normal people to Bitcoin um and facilitated mean more kind of payment activity but well you know part of the problem is there isn't demand for payments in Bitcoin. Yeah.
(56:27) And like that's I guess that gets to which is below that which is like how many people are actually adopting Bitcoin. I know. And that's that's that's sort of the problem at the root of all this, you know. Um the best objection that you can give to a lot of the stuff that I've been talking about recently is like people just don't care.
(56:48) People just don't care about self-custodial Bitcoin um at this point, actually using Bitcoin at this point. So my argument is as an engineer, you know, think about think about building a bridge, right? Say, say you live between um two cities. You know, one city's on the mainland, the other city's on the island, right? And right now, like there's only a little bit of traffic in between these cities.
(57:13) So, you're an engineer, you want to build a bridge, right? Um you know, one option is to build the bridge for the amount of capacity that's, you know, going across right now. as an engineer, it's very appealing and and and maybe even your duty to project forward and say, "Hey, in 10 years, 20 years, like what how many cars are we expecting to go over this bridge, you know, if there's a disaster on one side of the bridge, in fact, like if there's a disaster that we all kind of see coming and and and there's a credible argument that there's
(57:40) going to be a huge spike in traffic, well, you know, we should be designing we should be designing the bridge to kind of withstand that um that load." So, anyway, just as an engineer, I can't help but forward project it. No, and I think it's important to do that. And uh I I think it's become clear that individual adoption of Bitcoin even as a savings vehicle before payments vehicle is not happening as quick.
(58:06) I mean Daniel Kraith wrote hyper bitcoinization in what 2013. Like I think we all like when I first got in I was like FOMO it's happening. We need to get in. Everybody's going to get this. I just I think throughout time we're all learning that this asymmetric information that's held by Bitcoiners understanding how it works compared to the incumbent monetary system is not moving throughout u throughout the world as quickly as we expected.
(58:36) But I think that also affords us an incredible opportunity to build these bridges before the hordes are are forced to use Bitcoin um in the future. Yeah. Hey, question for you just as an aside. Um, how worried are you about the process of Bitcoin becoming like sort of a stock ticker? Like the ETF ownership, you know, the concentration in custodians, like how much does that kind of keep you up at night or do you think there's going to be a sort of, you know, uh, business application level solve for that? It doesn't keep me up at night because I
(59:12) hold my Bitcoin in cold storage and I I fall back to the Bitcoins for enemies. If people want to put it in an ETF wrapper or Micro Strategy wants to hold it at Coinbase, I can do that. Doesn't affect me. As long as I have the ability to self-s sovereignly use Bitcoin in a P2P matter and custody myself. Yeah, it's good.
(59:35) And I mean I do think number go up by any means is good for like better liquidity profile is good for anybody using Bitcoin. Um, but and I just do I do like I this is like conversations I have with normies in my I shouldn't call them normies. People in my life that are not into Bitcoin like they they just view it as a toxic and a stock ticker and right I know I think we're just at this very early stage of Bitcoin where people haven't even questioned money to begin with. They're starting to postco.
(1:00:11) Um, but yeah, I'm I'm actually interested to see if something if we have like a black swan adoption event from the machines that really highlights that Bitcoin is a medium exchange actually works and is viable. Well, here's what freaks me out a little bit. Just kind of thinking through the high high degree of institutional ownership now is like if we did see a contentious say the G7 countries, you know, say say Bitcoin whatever 5xs, 10xes from here, the G7 countries get together and they're like, "Okay, great. Wow. We're
(1:00:43) going to rebase our monetary system on on this this thing maybe partially or whatever." Um, but we just need our monetary policy tools back a little bit. a little. We just need a little bit of a tail emission or whatever. What freaks me out is if you've got, you know, Sailor owning half million coins or whatever and, you know, Black Rockck owning however many, um, it's the situation where like that concentrated ownership can act very decisively in a situation where um, a fork happens, they dump the other side of it, and then
(1:01:17) profit- seeeking miners just have to flip. You know what I mean? Yeah. I kind of worry about that. Well, in the case of Sailor, I mean, his whole shtick is there's only ever going to be 21 million, right? Like, and so do you have the government? Yeah, but did you see the Black Rockck promo video where they asterisk that? Well, I think they have to for legal reasons, right? It is highly unlikely, but possible technically.
(1:01:46) Um, but I wouldn't be surprised. And yeah, it is. And it's certain like adversarial cap on now. Yes, something we should worry about. And I think we just need and I I do think I like what the guys at Zapright are doing in the sense of just like enabling people to easily accept Bitcoin as payment as a business and right inject their self-custodial Yes.
(1:02:09) options. Yes. Yes. And I think it's a it's a it's a learning process. I mean, this has been said many times throughout the years. Um, on this show, which is like before we had plumbing, people had to learn how to wipe their ass and take showers. Like, I think people are just learning how to wipe their ass and take showers when it comes to private public key management.
(1:02:34) Something like if something like CTV or vault down the road and what Rob's wearing when he's doing miniscripts, I mean, it's already that's already on the market. But if we can enhance use cases like that, I mean your whole pitch for OPV vault, let's make exchanges unhackable. And if you can apply that to self-custody as well, I think the degree to which people will be more comfortable self-custodying Bitcoin will increase significantly and really defeats that that risk in the long term.
(1:03:03) I think one of the most exciting things about vaults, and I don't think this is widely understood, so I'm glad I'm on here um able to talk about it, is one of the reasons I'm so excited about vaults. It's not, you know, that I've seen custodians and we can, you know, um make their operations more efficient. It's that I believe vaults are a tool that would allow you to actually onboard someone with nothing more than a cell phone and maybe um an account and an exchange and be able to get a degree of self-custodial security that's on par or
(1:03:40) greater than like you know setting up a hardware wallet and burying a a sephrase in your backyard because you can do something where if you set up sort of the the the time delay for a spend on a vault, you know, and obviously your wallet can have different delays and so forth, but you could have a configuration on your phone where someone can can have a key on their phone, they can be receiving Bitcoin, you know, spending it um in different thresholds, and then if that key ever gets compromised and, you know, the
(1:04:10) phone's watchtower can't check in or, you know, the exchanges watchtower can't check in or whatever, the funds get swept to their exchange account. or you know perhaps if it's your mom you know maybe you configure it in such a way that uh there's a watch tower on your cell phone and if you see the fun funds move you know your mom's life savings or whatever you call her up no I didn't move those you click a big red button and then it gets swept to your exchange account so even if the attacker whatever got all of your your parents'
(1:04:38) credentials say um you know so there's all kinds of things you can do I mean there's just an infinite number of ways you can nest the scripts um with something like a vault to make a really really ironclad uh self-custodial setup that you don't need special hardware for. You may not even need a a seed phrase setup process.
(1:04:58) You know, in some cases, you might want one, of course. I I'm a big fan of seed phrases, but if you're literally just trying to onboard your cousin with a,000 bucks of Bitcoin or something, you know, and he's got an exchange account, you can say, "Hey, you can hold this yourself, you know, without the custodian having access to it.
(1:05:15) " But still, you know, if uh if you see some funky behavior, get hacked or whatever, you know, use leverage the security of the custodian. Um so to me, that's really exciting. Yeah, it is. And I'm just thinking about a use case and got beers with um one of the dads at the boy schools a couple weeks ago. We were talking about Bitcoin.
(1:05:35) I showed him how to download Blue Wallet. He went through that process and then he texted me this week. He's like, "How do I buy more Bitcoin on this blue wallet?" And I was like, "You don't buy it there. set up an exchange and like even that like even I sent him some exchanges, reputable exchanges he could buy Bitcoin through and um even in the back of my mind I was like do I really want him sending this to blue wallets? Do I need to have like another conversation about like how to secure the seed phrase and what like the
(1:06:03) opsec around securing the private keys and if we can make it so you don't even have to have that conversation would be incredible. Absolutely. You could even set up like training wheels. You could say, "Hey man, okay, right now your vault has a condition where, you know, if I detect some weirdness, I can sweep it to your to your exchange or my exchange or whatever, but we can rotate you out of that trivially.
(1:06:27) Like we can remove we can remove that policy." You know, you could do all kinds of things like that. And I think um you know exchanges who are Bitcoin aligned you know like like River and and Naidig and others um you know they of course have an incentive to offer this kind of wallet because like you're saying it's like they you know if they can integrate the actual um purchase of Bitcoin with some kind of self-custodial option.
(1:06:52) It's a win-win for them because they don't have to custody the Bitcoin. they get to make their spread and then that would, you know, they'd be a natural counterparty to run a watchtowwer um and to be a backup. So, it's it's a really really cool design. I'm I'm really excited about the prospect of it coming to Bitcoin.
(1:07:10) You know, CTV will get us a lot of the way there. It'll get us, you know, uh some of the functionality, but to really get the full vision on this check contract verify op code, which thank god is is very simple. Um and I and I think um you know once more people start looking at it will be an appealing target for a future software.
(1:07:30) Let's talk about that a little bit before we wrap up here. So Salvatore from Ledgers on top of this, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he he and I have been going back and forth for a little while. It's kind of a confusing progression because he started off doing this Matt thing and it it eventually morphed into check contract verify and he kept we we went back and forth for maybe 3 years because I had done vault and he was like no I think this I think this check contract verify code is really cool.
(1:07:58) I think you can do vault stuff and I'm like I don't see it like well how do you do this thing? How do you you know how do you combine these vault inputs? How do you do this amount balancing? And he's like okay well I'll make this change. I'll make that change. And pretty soon the proposals in a way kind of morphed you like kind of melded together.
(1:08:15) um and he did a really really good job of making CCV into um a very general kind of embodiment of um AJ Towns's tap leaf update verify idea which never really got a a formal implementation or proposal but anyway like so so what what Salvatore has done with CCV is it's basically just a way of saying hey I'm going to make an assertion about how the tap tree is changing through spends um and again if if I'm a normal person.
(1:08:45) My eyes are glazing over at that point. What the hell does that mean? It's pretty hard to explain, but the the point is uh that it's a very fairly simple Bitcoin cryptographic operation to enforce. Um and it's a very general tool that you know allows you to to make these really ergonomic vaults and and to do other things.
(1:09:07) Um you know, so I think that's that's a super exciting proposal. It's a little bit tough to get your arms around, but luckily the implementation's very simple. You know, the line of code added um pretty minimal. Um so I'm I'm very bullish on on the prospect of that making some progress. All right, I'm going to beat the drum. How do we dictator hat on? How do we do this? How do we build consensus? How do we activate? How do we get the conversation out of the stasis phase? Does there need does Yeah.
(1:09:37) Does there need to be olive branches extended between core developers who don't agree what they're doing? Does there need to be a big I don't want to say Brett and Woods of Bitcoin, but like something like Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Bitcoin is money for enemies and um you know, in keeping with that, I've tried to be a little bit of a heel lately because I think this like kumbaya Bitcoin core situation is really not a good configuration for Bitcoin for the reason that if if Bitcoin's technical success is contingent on this one organization
(1:10:10) and this one codebase, you know, like working harmoniously together, like they're already a choke point, man. I mean they like if if they are not already captured like that that is a great target for sabotage because de facto changes go through there. So to your question, you know, my goal here, I think, is to put pressure on that organization either to catalyze the review of this stuff and take it seriously or set up the kind of social rationale for saying, "Hey, we're going to like we're forking. We're going
(1:10:48) to do an alternate activation client." Um because we're getting to the point here where I think you could get together a very compelling group of people who have public credibility, who are building interesting things, and basically get them to say, "Hey, if this doesn't get real attention within 6 months, if there isn't substantive review discussion about how we get this stuff in, you know, we're going to start looking at an alternate client.
(1:11:12) " Because at a certain point, the lack of attention becomes kind of indistinguishable from an attack. Um, and so that's I think that's my current path. Um, I think long-term the reason I'm leaning into that kind of adversarial mindset is because again it's just not a good situation for Bitcoin to be in where everything has to sort of come together at this central point. Does that make sense? It does.
(1:11:37) It does. And again, I would go back to what I was saying earlier when I have empathy because I feel like everybody's so shell shocked that they don't I think they have soft soft fork fatigue almost where they don't want to the gravity of even approaching the subject of soft forks is such where nobody wants to really stick their head out and do it and so they're focusing on policy and menpool and stuff like that. Yeah.
(1:12:00) And to be clear, I don't I don't think they're attacking Bitcoin. I mean like there's one part of me in the abstract that says well this is such an important system that it would be naive to think that state actors weren't somehow participating in the process but on the other hand I know all these people personally pretty well and they all seem well intended to me it's just that we find ourselves in this very uncomfortable unbitcoin-like situation and we got to get out of it like there's got to be a way to get out of it because um
(1:12:31) otherwise We're we're there's literally centralization going on. And you know, one of the things that frustrates me about core a little bit is that out of one side of their mouths, they say, "Oh, it's so irresponsible to run a consensus engine that isn't core." But then the other side of their mouth is saying, "Oh, well, you know, hey, it's not our job to evaluate these controversial things.
(1:12:53) " And it's like, well, look, man, the substance is in the controversy. Like, to make substantial progress here, there's going to be controversy. If if a if a trivial issue like you know this mepool filters thing which doesn't actually really mean anything in any sense it's sort of a virtue proxy for people to express their values like the consensus stuff is going to be controversial and so you know simultaneously occupying that part of the power structure and all the attendant funding and you know like but not owning it and not saying okay we do
(1:13:23) have to reckon with this you know or you know saying hey some of us are going to split off and like do another implementation, you know, it's just this this position can't kind of continue um uh to the benefit of Bitcoin. Yeah, I think but it's a tough one. It is a tough one. It's like Yeah, it is weird.
(1:13:46) Like you think of like [ __ ] code, brink, open sats like funding all these days like did but it's always like no strings attached, work on what you want to. Um, so I was going to say like, do you have to go to Alex and Su and be like, "Guys, come on. What are we doing here? Do you have to go to like, you know, and I've worked for I mean, they they don't they would not um they they would never there's there's never a conversation like that.
(1:14:10) No, that's the point I'm trying to make. It's like, right, yeah, right, right. But but at the same time, you you you simply can't ignore that there is a social reality to being in that world. There are people who decide does this person get funding or not and on what basis you know and that set of people's pretty limited you know there are really three organizations that do maybe four that do a bunch of core development funding um and you know I'm involved with opensats I think opens may or may not have an it's been an informal policy in the past but like they haven't
(1:14:40) liked to fund people working on consensus stuff uh because it's controversial which to me like we're going to need to revise because you know the important stuff in Bitcoin, the stuff that's going to guarantee Bitcoin success is at the consensus layer at this point. So, it's got to be grappled with.
(1:14:58) Um, so it's it's a messy situation. I think everybody involved, to my knowledge, is has good intent. Um, but we just have to think about how to reframe the system to to continue under more kind of, you know, under bigger stakes, more adversarial environment. Yeah, good problem to have. Yeah, Bitcoin is catching on. Number certainly going up, man. Yeah.
(1:15:19) Um, yeah, numbers certainly going up. I I hope onchain ownership is going up, too, but it's hard to say. You can't measure that, right? Yeah. So, too, it's great to catch up. We got to do it more often. Definitely, man. Yeah. I always love coming on and um Yeah, it's uh it's always good talking about this stuff.
(1:15:42) I hope I'm not well I I I guess I should be scaring people a little bit. I It's not my intent to like muckreake, but No, I think it's very important like again going back to it does seem clear to me now at this point. It was great being at Bitcoin++. It made me feel like I said I go to Bit Devs I probably catch Bit Devs here like every other month in Austin.
(1:16:02) Not going as often as I did in New York just family stuff and busy. Yeah. But being at Bitcoin plus around that group of people. It made me feel like I was back in New York like 2015 to 2018 era like bit devs like conversations and really immersing myself in the technical details in a way that I haven't um in some time.
(1:16:24) And I think uh I think that's another thing is weird like this position and I'm not on the media side of things. It's like I think I have PTSD from SegWit and Tapper 2 due to the unforeseen sort of consequences of those two merges and being a big champion of both of them. And I've been apprehensive to like get into the conversation about any of these upgrades because like what do I know? I can't audit the code. I can't verify it.
(1:16:52) I think and that position is almost more admirable than just jumping in and kind of blindly saying, you know, yeah, let's do X, let's do Y. So, I think there's there's a nobility in that. Um, it's just it's yeah, it's it's tough. There's we we've got to start having discussions about this stuff.
(1:17:11) Um, but I think you're doing you're doing a great job. You know, TFTC was the first Bitcoin podcast I ever appeared on. So, every time I come back, it feels like coming home. Beefy Bitcoin boys, you know. That's right. That's right. That's right. You're going to have to do a Willow Burn episode at some point. How is Will? I haven't talked to him in a while.
(1:17:28) I I You got to Yeah, you got to dig him up, check in. I know. We'll do it hopefully we do it in person. We get all three of us back together. Get the beefy Bitcoin boys back together. Uh that'd be fun. But we have to do it at the Oh, maybe maybe not at the bar stool office. But uh maybe we can do it at PUB DC.
(1:17:45) Um Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be very fun. Let's plan on it. I'll be in that neck of the woods. uh relatively soon. So excited for that. Yeah, I am as well. Um I think I like the part I like that you're playing heel, too. It may I I don't think it's uh I don't think you want to be playing heel, but I think forcing people to think about these problems from uh different perspectives is important.
(1:18:13) I I I have to admit I am a contrarian by nature, so indulging in that is is always a little bit fun. But yeah, look, man, there's got to be somebody to kind of bridge the worlds and be a a credible um counterweight cuz it's very echo chambery. Um it's more echo chambery than it should be, I think. Yeah.
(1:18:32) So, so I I'll I'll keep doing my heal job as long as it needs doing. Hopefully, it doesn't we don't need it for too long. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. But we didn't even get to talk about block space, so we'll have to do that. Or block size, so we'll do that uh on a future episode. Yeah, we'll do that another time.
(1:18:46) That's that's a big one. I got to I got to pray for that one. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. All right. Keep crushing it, brother. Thanks, my man. Thanks for having me. Peace and love, Freaks. Freaks. Thank you for listening to the show. I hope you liked it. If you did like it, please make sure you subscribe, rate, review the show.
(1:19:04) It helps us out a lot. And also, if you like these conversations, I've come to realize that many people listen to the podcast, they don't know we have another sort of layer of this media company. We have the newsletter, the Bitcoin Brief. Go to TFTC.io. Make sure you subscribe there. A lot of the topics that are discussed on this podcast.
(1:19:24) I write about 5 days a week in the newsletter. We also have the TFTC elite tier. If you sign up for that, become a member. We have a private Discord server for the elite freaks out there where we're dropping adree versions of this show and having discussions about everything we talk about a day early. Logan wanted me to make sure if you want to get the show a day early, become a TFTC elite member. You will get that.
(1:19:53) We have our Discord server right now. conversation between myself and TFTC elite tier members, but we're going to expand that. We'll probably do closed Q&As's with people in the industry. Uh I may be doing macro Mondays. So, join us. Go to tftc.io, subscribe, find the button in the top right corner of the website, become a TFTC Elite member.
(1:20:17) Thank you for joining us. Okay.
