My value system is greater than Monero maximalism. My value system is, I'm trying, like I admire the cypherpunks. I admire the crypto -anarchist sort of, let's use technology to defend our civil rights because the government, if we need the government to defend our rights, then it's too late because they're not going to give them to us, right? Let's build unstoppable tools, right?

 
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Douglas Newman interviews one gold, a seasoned crypto journalist and early adopter known for his work with Bitcoin magazine and his extensive knowledge of privacy technologies. Conversation explores the evolution of Monero and Bitcoin privacy versus transparency in blockchain and the challenges each project faces in scaling, adoption and maintaining decentralization. With lively debates on Monero's unique role as digital cash, bitcoins path as digital gold, and the ideological values driving both communities.

This episode provides deep insights into the philosophies shaping today's cryptocurrency landscape. Juan and Doug bring a thoughtful analysis of Bitcoin maximalism and Monero's cypherpunk ethos reflecting on the different yet overlapping missions these two cryptocurrencies serve. Monero talk starts now.

 
What's up, man? How are you? Good. How are you? Good, man.

Good.

Yeah. Excited to have you. This is cool.

Yeah.

And I finally thought that we'd seen you around for a long time. And, you know, Monero Talk is a very, very popular show among Monero people. I've been hearing about it forever, so it's good to be here, man.

Have you ever caught an episode? Did you ever see, like, we've had like Peter Todd on here. I was checking out some of your stuff. I've seen like Peter. You've done a couple of things with Peter Todd. Some old ones, too. Yeah, actually, Peter Todd was the first person I ever interviewed on video. Yeah, I went to your oldest video first. I was like, wait, let me see, let me see what this guy was doing back in the day.

I was like, oh, shit, Peter Todd. The lowest quality video was like the video was super wobbly because I couldn't. I was just like holding my hand and microphone and the others.

I was honest. I was just listening to it.

 
I was just listening to it on 2X because I was driving home. I was like, all right. And it was proof of work versus proof of stake from, you know, from 10 years ago. You guys were having that discussion. When he like 2016 debate. Yeah, proof of work. Yeah. Satoshi Nakamoto, who would have thought, you know? I don't know, right? Your first interview. I know, I was thinking that too, but... It might be fantastic, you know? Like, I wish he... It would be amazing if he's Satoshi Nakamoto, the stories I could tell. I was part of that story, you know? We had... Not to go too far off -kilter, but I was just thinking of this. We had a Monero, like, after -party here in New York in, like, 2018. It was after a Bitcoin conference. And we made, like, a super -secret party where we didn't reveal the location. It was in New York City. 

 
And you had to pay for the event with Monero, and then you had to attach your email address to the Monero transaction using what's now the deprecated... What did it used to be called? It was just, like, the... Recurrent field? Yeah, I forget the name of what the field was, but it used to be there. It's been since deprecated, and we had people putting their email addresses, attaching it, right? Encrypting it and putting their email in. So if you look back on the Monero blockchain, Satoshi Nakamoto's email address can be found on the Monero... On the Monero blockchain, if Peter Todd is in fact Satoshi Nakamoto. I just... So what's going on, man? Give me some background. I don't really know all that much about you. I just know you're an OG that's interviewed Peter Todd. Sounds like you've been on it from the early days. So, yeah, give us your background. 

 
Yeah, I mean, well, I started in 2014 professionally working for Bitcoin Magazine. I started writing about all kinds of different technologies. I've always been interested in the privacy dimension. I kind of miss the Monero home, but I was hearing about it while it was happening. But I got early to like... So, I mean, I got in 2014, the word maximalism didn't exist. Vitalik invented it not long after, right? And I got to see sort of the birth of Ethereum out of Toronto, and I got in through Bitcoin through sort of the libertarian analysis of Bitcoin. So I was Bitcoiner from the beginning, but then like Ethereum happened, and then Dash came along. And that was interesting from like the privacy perspective, but it was a little weird. And then, you know, Monero started kind of like getting the attention that it deserved. 

 
And I saw it, Monero sort of rise as like the top privacy coin. I think eventually it settled as a top privacy coin. But yeah, I've been doing a lot of reporting since 2014. So, Bitcoin Magazine, Cointelegraph, I did a bunch of YouTube interviews.

I've had podcasts for a long time.

I've done a lot of trading and kind of like private consultancy with people about just civilians, teaching them how to set up self custody and like navigate this space and stuff. And in the fork wars, the fork wars, a lot of people sort of kind of saw me.

I took like the, I interviewed Roger Bear before the fork war. And then I took the small block size sort of position afterwards. And, you know, like that was kind of like the biggest sort of point out there's a maximalist sort of flash coin. And there I got into a lot of fights with, but there are people who Bitcoin Cash people who have sort of merged.

 
Seems like there's a lot of yeah, they're united. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's some people in your audience right now cursing at me. That's okay.

And so and so then, you know, obviously it's been a few years since then. I've kind of like, you know, there's a time where I consider myself a maximalist. I haven't considered myself a maximalist for a long time. I consider myself a shit coin minimalist. You know, the last shit quiz, the best.

You do have the laser eyes.

You do have the laser eyes.

I have the laser eyes. So do you lose the laser eyes once you hit 100000? Is that like the deal? Like everybody's going to drop the laser eyes. Or do they just get more intense at that point? Yeah, they just get it's just big flashy balls. You know, it's just like there's no face anymore.

Oh my God. So were you one of the early laser eyes guys?

 
I mean, you know, I got on that trend. You know, I wrote it. So wait. It's funny. So we basically both got in around the same time. We have like a similar trajectory. Like 2014, we both discovered crypto. Yeah. I feel like you're the Colombian version of me, man. Except that you have BTC Maxi, I want Monero. What do you... So what is your viewpoint of Monero now these days? Where do you... So I mean, I've seen this position for a while now. I think for like maybe three years. And it's that, you know, on its own, like if you analyze it on its own, it's pretty good technology. Like it's definitely got privacy technology that we wish we had in Bitcoin. I think the trade -offs are very uncomfortable for some people. At least the perceived trade -offs, right? Like the limitations that it puts on being able to verify the supply at the same, let's say accuracy that you can with Bitcoin. 

 
I know that there's some arguments as to how you can verify Monero, even with its current sort of encrypted amounts and such. But that makes people uncomfortable. The hard fork in that needs make people comfortable. But I think the technology is obviously quite good. In fact, you know, somebody like somebody was taking a hit at me for, let's say, supporting blocks, right? And this person doesn't... This guy doesn't know the story. I think a lot of people don't know the story. And I'm going to be giving a speech in part about some of these sort of historical details. But Adam back creates blockstream because he realizes that he can't get encrypted amounts into Bitcoin because Bitcoin is really hard to change. So Adam back invents a kind of sort of creates an automization scheme. Yeah, he created confidential transactions, right? And Monero adopted it. Exactly. So Adam back creates... So Adam back, you know, invents this scheme more or less, right? 

 
Bill built it. I'm not sure if he invented the cryptography or anything, but he puts it together in order to break better priced Bitcoin, goes to Core. Core is like, well, you know, it's good, but it has these trade -offs and it's difficult.

The change in Bitcoin is hard. And so he's like, well, given that it's not easy to change it, I'm just going to create blockstream. So you can go and like use the technology and then like, you know, have a bridge or such. So literally blockstream is created with the ideals of Monero, just a different implementation, right? I think that's important for people to recognize.

Second thing is like, nobody uses block, right? Like liquid anyway, nobody uses the liquid network. Like it's very, very low liquidity.

It's gaining liquidity now, I think, because of various reasons. But for the most part, like people that think that that blockstream was a takeover of Bitcoin, sorry, they didn't take over much.

 
Like nobody really has used it much.

But anyway, so that's kind of where I'm at. It's like, you know, Monero has very good technology and it would be great if it could, you know, like I like it as a sort of, like I like what it represents. I don't see it as, I don't think it has the same fundamentals.

Like it doesn't have the same investment argument that Bitcoin has. And I think that's, I don't think that's going to change for a long time. Like Bitcoin would have to kind of like break down in a very catastrophic way that doesn't also apply to Monero, for Monero to really take that sort of investment grade asset sort of quality. And so, you know, in my opinion, it's a great privacy tool if you can use it properly, which is not easy, no matter how good the technology is, right?

Like there's a lot of ways to lose your privacy. But, you know, I think I'd be lying if I said that there's a lot of Bitcoiners, including myself, that wish we had maybe higher privacy on chain in Bitcoin.

 
And it's a real shame that we haven't been able to get that.

Yeah. What do you think of the fact that basically those that do need, those that are actually trying to transact in a digital cash -like manner are choosing Monero and they're not choosing Bitcoin. Do you think that's an indicator that Bitcoin might be flawed in some way and perhaps Monero's value proposition is just in being a better form of digital cash for actual transactional purposes? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that that's, I don't know what the statistics are.

I would like to see data, you know, like I would like to see this from a data dream perspective. I bet you if we actually look at the numbers, the reality is probably Tether has more adoption than both Bitcoin and Monero.

 
Yeah. You know, that's the reality as far as crypto. Yeah, but is that digital cash usage?

I mean, are those people, you know, caring whether their transactions are being surveilled or not? I mean, so the fiat cash is a bearer asset with a centralized issuer that can manipulate the price. It's kind of like a bearer asset security that's consistent currency, right? So is Tether, you know, the physical dollars have an ID, the crypto dollars have an ID, the physical dollars, they get analyzed after all when they enter banks and leave banks so that they do sort of KYC. Or if you go and deposit, there's some KYC process or if you withdraw, there's a KYC process.

But in the wild, the KYC, the analytics that is done on them is sort of loose. I'm just saying like nobody's using Tether on the dark markets, right?

 
For people that are actually trying to make digital cash. Are you thinking about buying like illegal stuff on the Internet, right? I'm talking about whether it's illegal. Like people go on XMR Bazaar, which we run, which is completely legal. It's clear net, right? But they're looking to transact in a digital cash like manner, not to sell illegal things, but to sell legal things because there is a benefit to that, right? There is a market for that. People that want to transact privately. Right. I don't see Tether. Tether is not being used for those purposes. Nobody's going on a dark market to buy, to pay for things with Tether. I don't think, unless I could be at a... Yeah, I mean, I think the scope of that conversation is very narrow within the Monero world, right? So I'll give you an example. It's in Colombia, according to peer -to -peer like OTC people that have been doing it for years in Colombia. 

 
Something like maybe 30% of the money that goes from Colombia to China to buy goods that get sold back in retail here, moves to the Tether. Wow. And what do they do? These sort of resellers, these sort of retail sellers, they grab like bags of cash that they get from selling stuff and they go to like this street in Bogota and they're like... And the street is like a bunch of exchange houses with like the Tether logo on it. And they're like, hey, here's a bunch of cash. Please turn it to crypto dollars and send it to this address. This address is a wallet from a Taiwanese bank, I think, or Taiwanese bank. Thailand bank gets the money, flips it for Yuan, ships it to Yuan bank, the bank approves the transfer and within a day cycle, the goods are in a boat coming back to Colombia. And that's caught like... 

 
Really? Yeah. Where are these Tether terminals? They're all over the product? They're currency exchange houses. So they're like 4x fiat exchange houses that support Tether. And according to chain analysis, to chain analysis, of the maybe 5, 10% of people that use crypto in Colombia, 70% use Tether. What are the fees like? So if you're bringing cash to one of these things, how much... What's like the conversion rate? So the conversion rate in Colombia is like the official Forex rate set daily by the trade rate that's sort of set by the federal bank, like the central bank as like the intraday rate for Forex is like, let's say right now, 4 ,400 pesos per dollar. The street price is usually 300 pesos under, so it'd be like 4 ,100 right now. So the spread is in there, somewhere in there is the spread that they make. So, you know, Colombia is a very unique sort of market because of that. 

 
Like you can get a very cheap Bitcoin here for many reasons. But yeah, so I think that's sort of... They just take a piece of the spread, you know? Yeah. We got 100 live viewers, guys, like and share. Like and share. We got Juan on here hanging out. I'm meeting him for the first time. I feel like we're, you know, we're twins in the crypto realm from 2014. We'll be meeting at Monero Topia, which is really awesome. Juan's a little bit more of a Bitcoin maximalist and perhaps I'm a little bit more of a Monero maximalist if you really had to simplify us. So I think this is a great conversation, man. I mean, you've obviously, you've thought about all these things very deeply. You've been talking to the most sophisticated minds in the space. So I... Juan, I'm a body anarchist who I believe was part of your show for a while. He's an old friend. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. 

 
That's fantastic. I've been a body anarchist many times. Many, many times. Wow. There's no greater Monero person to be engaging and debating with than bodies. I mean, you've heard it all for years. You have heard it. There's nothing for me to even say, man. Like, Jesus. So I guess... So your ultimate criticism of Monero is the Peter Todd criticism of you can't perfectly... You can't as easily audit the chain in a trustless way where everybody has access to easily audit. Yeah. I don't know the... Let's say the depth of that argument. I know that it's like there's ways. Right. But I would say that that's like an issue. The other issue is that for some reason, the powers that be don't like... I mean, for obvious reasons, that they don't like Monero, right? They're pushing the exchanges to back. Yeah. Yeah. That's the other question I wanted to get at to you next was like, what do you think about that fact? 

 
Right? Like, why is Monero enemy number one? Yeah. That make you more interested in it. But go ahead. It definitely does. It gives me... To me, it makes it... It's proof that it works, you know? Like, you wouldn't fuck with it at that level if it didn't work, you know? And so I think that's... I like that. I think that's proof. I think that if Bitcoin lost its crown, I would rather see Monero take the crown. You know what I'm saying? Like, to me, Monero is the heir to the throne. But I don't know if the throne will ever go away. I don't know if Bitcoin will ever lose the crap. So I think that the mission auditing question is tricky, right? There's other questions like scalability, right? Like how much can you scale it, right? Because you... Like, Bitcoin is sort of managing to scale off chain and while it's not perfect, like you can argue there's like a 50S scaling through the lighting network with trade -offs, right? 

 
And then if you get into e -cash, you basically get like perfect scalability with no self -cost which is like not a great trade -off, but at least you get the privacy and the scalability. So but Monero is like... It's kind of contained within like an on chain and I would like to see like off chain scaling with Monero. Like if you guys get in the right scripts, maybe we could... You could do some lighting stuff as well. But so, you know, I have questions there on the scalability. I have questions on the auditability. But you know... You're gonna love Monero topia, man. We're gonna get you on a stage. We'll get you up there with... We'll have body up there. We'll get Arctic Mine up there. Have you spoken to Arctic? You'll have good conversations with him. I'm not sure. He's part of the like the Monero core team. He's always focused on scalability. 

 
He talks about it in a very intelligent way. But yeah, I mean, obviously Monero arguably is more scalable on chain than Bitcoin with its dynamic block size, right? And so far, so good. I mean, in terms of what the actual demand is for the currency, it keeps keeping up with it, right? And as more people demand it, the price to transact actually goes down. So it encourages even more transactions. So it's... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've heard you guys have the dynamic block size and then have like an interesting fee sort of structure. Yeah, the fees essentially go down as more people use it, as more transactions go into a block, the blocks get larger, the fees go down per transaction. Yeah. There's a lot of things you could hear, like sit down and we could like bike shit about. But I think at the end of the day, right? I think what my speech is going to be about is like basically my value system is greater than Bitcoin maximalism. My value system is greater than Monero maximalism. 

 
My value system is... I'm trying... I admire their cypherpones. I admire the crypto anarchist sort of, let's use technology to defend our civil rights because the government, if we need the government to defend our rights, then it's too late because they're not going to give them to us, right? Well, let's build unstoppable tools, right? Let's build the code that defends us in spite of whatever the government does. And then, yes, we can call... I think it's okay to try to push the government and politics in the direction of aligning with our values, but we need to definitely use technology to defend them because otherwise we're going to be just left waiting, right? And that's just not going to work. So yeah, I think we have to kind of like take a step back and kind of look honestly at some of these sort of narratives, right? That have kind of like created this sort of this tribalism and be like, you know what? 

 
I think we're all kind of on the same boat and we're sort of arguing about... We're bike -shading about details, and at the end of the day, to the status that want to enslave us, we're the same people, you know? Yeah, no. I mean, then we get stronger. The larger that crowd gets, the stronger we get, right? Yeah, we need to grow the camp. Yeah. Well, I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, do you feel like that camp is smaller than ever, is growing? You know, the digital cash camp, including like Monero people, people that care about it in Bitcoin, because I mean, the Michael Saylor camp is quite large these days, I'd say in Bitcoin. But what would you say? How is the crypto -anarchy doing in Bitcoin world? Is it alive and well, or has it moved to Monero? A lot of people say like those that really care about those values in Bitcoin end up just using Monero. 

 
But what's your... Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that is, I think there's a lot of like ideological sort of utopian thinking all over crypto and all over the world in general, definitely within the anarchist world. And I think the question that I'm going to ask at the conference, and I'll ask it now so people start mulling it over, is what do you think success looks like? What does success for us look like? And I've asked this question about anarchists before, and I've never really gotten a good answer. Like, do you want Monero to be a sort of fringe currency with a minority piece of the pie forever? Or do you want it to be the global reserve currency? If you want it to be the global reserve currency, guess what? 

 
The value that would turn it into global reserve currency, it's in the banks, behind the walled gardens, in the control of the status dragons, and that's where the gold is. And so to me, there's a bunch of people that are basically have a gun pointed to their head, including all the private banks, and including all the family offices and all the funds, and they have a gun to their head, and the gun is like, you're using our system. And Saylor is, there's two perspectives of Saylor. Perspective one is that he's Troyenhorsing us by getting the Bitcoin into the walled The other perspective is, we're Troyenhorsing Fiat by getting Bitcoin into the walled garden. I think our job is to make sure there's a big fucking hole in that wall.

There's tunnels, and there's bridges, and there's drive -by extraction, fucking planes, whatever. We got to make sure people can exit the walled garden.

 
That's our job as anarchists, as purists. But the walled garden will continue, and the gold will probably stay in there to some degree or another. And if we want success, to me success is like making sure the gold gets traded for Bitcoin or crypto. At least like not crypto, because fuck the word crypto, but like cyberpunk money, right?

And we end up being able to access that liquidity by using it on our own terms, right?

And it's a difficult game, right? But I think at the end of the day, what Bitcoin was born to do is to sort of dethrone the central banks. And I don't think we're going to do that by staying outside of the game.

I think the game is in there. So yeah, I think that's definitely where maybe one of the differences in thinking between Monero people and Bitcoiners that are more big. Both cypherpunks, crypto -anarchists, whatever, but different strategy, because I do think in Monero land, as you're asking me the question, what is the goal, right?

 
For me, the goal is like XMR Bazaar. It's me living off of Monero, peer -to -peer with other individuals in our own circular economy. How big that economy gets, ideally it gets as large as all digital cash users in the world, right? But the goal for me is to be able to live off of it among other Monero using people, because that's how we completely opt out of their system, right? So rather than trying to integrate and change, step back, ignore, it takes much less energy and just collaborate within.

I mean, all you need is enough people that have enough different skills. And you've built a global circular economy where people can live off of each other, right?

Through their current system.

That for me, I say, would be like what I envision as the goal for a digital cash crypto. Yeah, and I want that too, you know, and I live that and as much as I can, right?

And you know, it works with Bitcoin and it works with Tether. I don't really use Monero that often. I have some Monero, I use it sometimes, right?

 
But like, I think so far, it's like, you know, there's deep enough cash markets, but I think that's part of it, right? Like if you want to use Monero, use Monero, that's fine. I don't have a problem with it. In fact, like in my personal strategies, like, you know, I have Bitcoin and then I have like some shitcoins that I think have good fundamentals and I don't talk about them publicly and then I have a little bag of Monero, then I have Tether to stabilize, to survive a dip, you know? That's my strategy.

And then I go and sell cash like YOLO, you know? Because that's actually, and to me, that's a non -ideological sort of approach, right? You know, I think mixing up ideology with investment strategies is not necessarily a great way to approach the problem, right?

But I think it's good. Like, do you know if Monero is like keeping up with inflation, you know, with US dollar inflation? I mean, it's been pretty stable at $150, so interpret that as you will.

Right.

 
So, you know, do you hold like the majority of savings in Monero? Yeah, I do.

Aside from like real estate, I guess, right? Because that's like- Yeah, no, I don't hold real estate. Right. I don't hold any real estate.

Okay. So you're mostly Monero. Okay, good. So you use it as a story. I mean, granted, granted, I lost a, you know, a large chunk of it in a boating accident, but if I hold anything other than dollars, it's a little bit of Monero. Yes.

Right. Right. Exactly.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't know.

I think there's two approaches. I can't remember who said this, but there's like, there's two ways to conquer the world. Like, you sort of go over the system, right? And like you play the game better than the rest of them, or you go under the system, and then like sort of, you know, become the culture, right? I guess it's sort of the way to do it.

And I think there's different ways to do it.

 
But I don't have a problem with people doing it, but I think, I just think there's like questions around investment strategy. To me, like, I want us to become wealthy as fuck, you know?

Like I want us to be like an economic powerhouse. And I think that, I think that that's part of the game with Bitcoin, right?

Like Bitcoin is sort of playing that game as well as other games, you know? There's a bunch of like, there's a bunch of like crypto anarchists inside of Bitcoin that I don't think that my opinion hasn't moved to Monero.

Like they are. There's a bunch of them in Monero, but there's a bunch of them inside of Bitcoin that are ready to like go to war with Saylor over self -custody, right? Like one of my tweets, like there's a recent sort of controversy around Saylor because he said something like, oh, there's a bunch of crypto, paranoid crypto, I don't know.

 
Yes, yes, we used that to add, you know, that was the best advertisement we had thus far for Monero topia conference was like, yeah, I'm saying he just said, he just said something to go ahead if you want to recap that, but no, no, I mean, you must have been, I assume you were slapping your slapping. Yeah, it definitely pissed me off and like, I'm in a group with some of these people that are like actual, you know, they're builders and they're crypto anarchists, in my opinion.

I don't know if they would identify as that, but they're practically that, you know, they're building with cryptography tools that are like for, you know, individual liberty and all this stuff. Anyway, so and and they started like meeting about it and and yeah, I'm gonna tweet it out like, you know, crypto, like every crypto anarchists are going to push a software that's going to improve self custody and scale it further.

 
And if sailor gets in our way, he's going to get stung by 100 ,000 of us, right? Like it's the 100 ,000 pictures like this, there's gonna be a fucking war if if he got in the way it will happen. He folded within a week. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I like some great work because he's not gonna he can't well as an enemy's right. And I think there's enough big corners that are sort of hard about this stuff.

Right.

Yeah, but the fact is most people aren't self because I think there's I mean, yes, completely anecdotal. But I would say there's a larger percentage of Monero's self custody than Bitcoin. Well, I mean, it's harder to not self custody, Monero, because it's not on any right. It's like, yeah, yes.

But if it was, you know, no, but that's a feature.

That's a feature, not a bug, right? So it's forcing people to obtain Monero and KYC free anonymous ways and to custody their own crypto and to use it peer to peer, you know, so there's that I guess my question is what do you think?

 
What would your spots be to people who are like, well, but Bitcoin is co -opted, right? I think if not is will be and that because of that, it's kind of yeah, you can look at the number go up.

But are you are you really obtaining the freedom that it that it promises or has it been co -opted in such a way where it's defanged?

I think we have I think there I think there are poorly informed and ideologically radicalized. I think I think that Bitcoin has enough tools to survive. I think there's like I know this personally, and I know a lot of people that just, you know, like we have about as much self custody and sovereignty as you can squeeze out of this industry.

Right. I think that there's going to be people like, yeah, like most people that that have Bitcoin are probably not self custody, but that's because there's sort of, you know, big exchanges and such.

 
If that was the case, if that technology was available to Monero in general, you'd probably see the same. In fact, when Binance was around with Monero, you probably had a large amount of cool, larger amount of cool Monero in Binance than out of it. Right.

I don't know.

Right. So I mean, I think I think that people that think that it got co -opted, they have they're a little bit. Yeah, I think I think that they're not new ones that they don't they're not seeing the picture as a whole. And, you know, I think there's been a lot of narratives that have sort of pushed people out. But that's fine.

You know what I mean? Like, go do the Monero thing, whatever. Right. And I think my concern is my concern is investment.

Right. It's like a lot of my anarchist friends, you know, I started talking about Bitcoin very early on. And when I turned around years later, look, there's nobody had fucking Bitcoin. It's like, you fuckers are broke.

 
You could be rich. And if you're rich, you're way more effective than if you're broke. Right.

And so yeah, I mean, that's that's it. I think we got to play the game. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, but, you know, if you if you want to just look at as poorly as like an investment, right, like which one is a better investment right now? I mean, Monero is highly undervalued.

Right.

And we're seeing it getting delisted from basically every exchange. So there, you know, there is this theory that the price will inevitably rise once it can no longer be manipulated because there's clear utility and usage there. And just through, you know, Metcalfe's law, right, like the value of the network is increasing and you're just not really seeing, you know, the true true virus reflected there.

 
And then, you know, just in terms of, you know, growth potential, right. Monero is much smaller, right. It's much easier to 2x Monero's market cap than Bitcoin's.

Right.

So if you want it, if you're thinking purely as investment, which one could I potentially make more money on both? I think I think there's a lot of arguments to be made for Monero to at this at this point in time. I think you're probably right that it is undervalued. But I think I think there's a question of sort of liquidity.

Right. So so if you if you look at Bitcoin's history, right, first, it started in a peer to peer market, right, like literally people just trading it in trust within a forum. Right.

And and then it's sort of the first exchange happened, then, you know, a bunch of them blew up and then the exchanges to like crawl out of the woodwork.

 
Right. And then eventually you got the first sort of regulated one, which I guess was Coinbase. Right.

And that was like it's all retail investment like institutions can't get in at all. But the price that they never had, they never listed Monero ever, not even dealers. They sell out since the beginning.

Right. You know, like, OK, you guys had Kraken and such.

Right. But but basically, like, again, like the money is behind the wall in a wall garden and like there's there's peasants outside of the wall that have some gold and silver coins and copper. Right.

And they started buying Bitcoin. Right.

And, you know, Monero. Right. But, you know, if you want if you want the price to go up, they have to get bit. It has to get bought.

And we're going to buy it. Well, the money eventually has to either exit the wall garden or big Monero has to enter the wall garden. Right.

And so if the doors like, you know what I mean? Like the door is getting smaller for Monero.

 
It's going P2P. You guys are going to have to build really hard P2P. And I think that's the way anyway. I think we need to build a really strong P2P stuff. Right.

But like if you don't have like an ETF. Right.

You don't get a big door. Right. So you can't get the sort of horses of gold, you know, going through.

Right. But the ETF isn't new digital cash users. Right.

Each person that's buying into an ETF.

Yeah. You have it going up in fiat value, but you're not getting new users on your network that are actually using your network. You're getting speculators, investors that are speculating on the network. You're not getting new actual users.

Right. So like the growth in users with Monero is slower. Yes.

And you're seeing it as more difficult because it's peer to peer. But you're growing what is ultimately the value proposition of crypto, which is a peer to peer digital cash network.

 
And it may in fact be the only way you can grow something like that for it to actually maintain itself as a peer to peer digital cash network. You know, it is a way of thinking about it.

No, I hear you. And I think this is sort of one of the let's say deeper debates within the industry is like digital cash versus digital gold. Right. And this digital gold narrative is like, you know, it makes me cringe as much as probably the audience. Right.

But but I think that I think that if you if you zoom out and if you look at the stats and if you look at the reality currency and currency adoption, right. When you say digital cash, you're talking about like using it as a currency day to day stuff. Right.

Yeah. People that don't want their transactions to be using it like cash, but in digital form. Yeah.

Right. So so digital cash means using it as currency.

Right. And the reality is it's very difficult to become a new currency.

 
Like incredibly difficult. Like Bitcoin has been trying for 15 years and the adoption is negligible. Right.

Like the actual currency adoption. Right.

There's a bunch of ways that I can spend it. You know, I can go to like a refill and such and buy grift cards and this and that. There's like a big bit of pure market where I can go get cash and trade. But like to actually go spend, we actually need to get the corporations in basically because the corporations manage most the most of the trade.

I like OK. So from an adoption perspective, Bitcoin has failed for 15 years to gain like a majority throughout the world. I think in the United States is probably worse.

In Latin America is probably deeper in some sense, at least if you if you're used to talk about crypto assets. Right.

Again, Tether adoption has dominated. Right. If you look at the facts, Tether is actually winning. Right.

And and so it's very difficult to get currency adoption. I also think store value is a use case.

 
Like I believe that I'm using my Bitcoin by not touching it because it's growing in fiat terms, which is growing my purchasing power, which is making me more more effective in the world. So I don't I don't buy that store value is not a use case.

In fact, the paper, you know, to allude to the great constitution of Bitcoin, which, you know, has a bunch of issues in it. But but the white paper, one of the things that it says is like, you know, central banks can't be trusted with the money supply. They there's a long history of devaluing the currency.

And so we need to take that power away from them, more or less what it says.

Right. So so escaping the like centralized evaluation of money is one of the use cases by some thought she's sort of wiping.

 
Yeah, I mean, you know, that get my when I think of that, though, like my thought is like Monero is built to spend and built Bitcoin is built to store, right and save. And fundamentally, I just don't see how how it continues to self perpetuate and maintain itself as a censorship resistant decentralized network when the incentive is to store and not use the network. Right.

And transaction fees go up sky high. Like the network loses its I mean, even Peter Todd talks about the potential of having to add a tail emission to Bitcoin. Right.

So like, like Bitcoin is built to store. Right.

Like you're like saying that's the telling me that's your primary use case. And I think a lot of other people think in those terms, too.

And so what are people effectively doing? They're not moving their Bitcoin.

 
They're giving it up to custodians who are then who could fiatize their Bitcoin, not you. You're holding your own coins.

But these are potential issues.

Right. And then they're not transacting because the fees just go up high higher as people actually go to transact because they're just storing and the value is going up. So you can't even use it as a daily currency. And it's just I just don't see how it continues to self perpetuate if that's the incentive of the network.

So that's an interesting question. So I think that self custody as a value of Bitcoin is actually the cornerstone of the whole thing. For example, right.

Like there's sort of this there's been this kind of lines of thought lately that like, well, maybe it's OK to like financialize it. And well, if we can't find a way to scale self custody because how Fini said you couldn't scale it on day two, you know, and so if we end up with private banks like a private banking system like how Fini said, then that'll be OK.

 
And it's like, well, if we end up with a private banking system because the Bitcoin on chain fees are so high and the scaling layer tools don't work on a self custody basis. Right.

So if we can't scale lightning to the edges such it is trust minimize and self custody. Right. Like like if we can't build something like Phoenix Wallet except that the liquidity back end is any other liquidity provider. Right.

For example, right. Because Phoenix Wallet is not cost is self custodial like it. You have twelve words. If they disappear, you can go take the words to Electrum and settle the transaction on chain and you get your money back. So like lightning on Phoenix is self -custed, self -custodial.

It's not centralized.

Right.

But the back end is attached to Phoenix and it's sort of constrained. If we can build something where you can point that to any back end. Right.

Then OK. Lightning fails as a self custody scaling mechanism.

 
So we got to build other stuff. ARK is a new technology that's sort of being kind of tested on chain now and mainnet that that lets you take it to the next level. So if we fail to scale self -custody, bottom line, then there's no reason to run a node.

Right.

Like if Bitcoin is so expensive to use on a kind of barer asset basis such that I have to basically have a Bitcoin bank, then why the fuck am I going to run a node? Like maybe like some academics will run the nodes to like do auditing on the system and then like maybe something will come from it. But the reality is if I don't self -custody, I'm not running a node because why would I do that? Why would I run a node to provide infrastructure for coins that are being held by a bank? Why am I paying a bank to like let them write? You know what I mean?

So I think that rakes down one of the main motivations for hosting a node in Bitcoin. And if you're not running a node and you're not violating the supply, then you're basically not using it peer to peer.

 
And so that erodes the whole narrative.

Right. So I'm a self custody maximalist at this point. I think that's actually where the cornerstone is. And I think there are technologies that there's a great effort, intellectual effort in technology, like from technologists in Bitcoin that are like, okay, how do we grow this? How do we, what kind of tools can we pull out of it so that we can construct self -custody schemes that let us bypass on chain limits? Because fundamentally, it doesn't matter how unchained you are, you're not going to be able to scale on chain. I think that's sort of like, at least a belief that I have, like an understanding that I have. Like we just can't have 8 billion people doing daily transactions on chain.

And so it doesn't matter.

Like if you do, you end up with the nodes in like WS servers and, you know, you have to like start pruning like crazy, right.

 
And you know, you end up with Ethereum, basically. And nobody wants to be like, they're not even Ethereum people. Not if you had 8 billion people using it, then you could be like Ethereum. But with 8 billion people using it. Give you worth it at that point.

I mean, right?

I don't get it. Sorry. What did you mean by that?

I don't understand. I'm saying you don't want to be a thing But you're saying in some scenario where you had eight eight billion people trying to use a blockchain it right become aetherium I'm saying but yeah, if you have eight billion people using it then it might be worth being aetherium at that point I mean, yeah, fair enough. Maybe you might just centralized enough, right?

Yeah, you might just right. Yeah, exactly You might fail but yeah, exactly so you wouldn't have but but I feel like that would erode the cypherpunk values You know like that.

 
Yeah, you don't have to tell me bro. You don't tell me Let me let me let me just let interject here.

So I'm here. I'm here with Juan Galt He's gonna be a speaker of Monero topia super excited to meet him in person We have a hundred and seventy live viewers guys. Keep liking sharing.

Let's get a let's get some new people in here if you're from Wands clan, hello, welcome to Monero talk Come down to Monero topia. Join us guys used I haven't seen any Monero super chats yet today.

Hold on. I'm gonna put the link XMR chat Monero talk you guys can send a Monero super chat to that address and I can bring it up Yeah, while we built this little tool, it's actually it's actually pretty cool XMR chat calm Do you live stream?

 
I did not if you if you if you if you ever do live stream consider using XMR chat calm You get super chats with Monero bring them up on screen Works well with StreamYard. It's pretty cool.

So let's let's get into Oh, actually Give me give me more of your take on the perhaps the potential need to add a tail emission to Bitcoin I'm curious what your full take is on that. So like Peter Todd I think is basically arguing for it or saying that there needs to be some other solution Essentially like a demure like attacks on out everybody like including like holders, right?

What is your feeling there? My feeling is if if Bitcoin cannot produce enough on -chain fees by 2140 when the last subsidy is Produced more or less if if if Bitcoin doesn't have enough on -chain fees to sustain its own Mining industry by that point that it's failed, you know and let it fucking die like it's failed Right.

 
And so I think that's fine.

Probably if that's the case, right? Like if we get to 2040 and there's five to ten years of like no fees and the mining industry is just collapsing right, absolutely, we make it that far, right then Probably they would add a telemission to try to save it and they'd be like an airdrop, you know, but My opinion is like, you know Like right now people are like again We're talking about about like how to how does Bitcoin work in a high fee environment? But the seeds are like nothing right, you know to me think so Like what are we even talking about? Right? Yeah, like there's another side of the argument That's like actually how do we get the fees up because it's terrible. It's like two sides for me, right?

 
Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous .org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. 

 
So you think you think Bitcoin will be fine, will be fine scaling. You won't need a television.

If it I think that if if oh, sorry, I'm hearing an advocate. So, yeah, I think I think if if Bitcoin doesn't manage to get a high enough and reliable enough amount of fee rewards on the other side of that, that it's failed. And so I guess we'll have to.

So do you do you do you see there being an issue, though? Like, you know, what we're talking about with the fact that it does have a fixed block size, so you're competing for block space. So, you know, the transaction fees will have to go up on the base layer. Right.

Yes. More like the economic design is that, yeah, we want the fees to go up on the base layer. I think that's the security assumptions require that.

 
Like we need them to go out over time. We have 100 years, 120 years, but they have to go up.

They'll probably will probably need them to go up before that. We'll probably need to go up probably like a couple of holdings or something like that, because the unless the price continues to go up in such a way that the diminishing BTC, the dominated fees sort of get kind of like valued higher because the price is higher. Right.

You know what I mean? Like, like if the price continues to go up, then you can get less fees and net and that can subsidize the mining industry. But if if if the price stabilizes or something like that, right?

 
Like we get, let's say, 35 percent of global monetary adoption. Right. Bitcoin is, I don't know, five million dollars point. Right.

And and at that point, like in 20 years, 30 years.

Right. At that point, the the mining rewards, you know, like they have to sort of like the fees have to end up subsidizing eventually the mining in order to maintain and they have to subsidize probably more than like half or maybe more than 40 percent of the current hash and power in order to keep the same security assumptions out. I think there's there's probably both sides of the argument there, but like you don't need 100 percent of the hash and power right now. You need like 50 percent or 60 percent.

Right.

Something like that. Right.

I don't know. I think I think we need fees to go up. That's the reality. And like if if if we do like maybe maybe you do end up at a point where people are like, you know what, like do an emission, do an emission hard for it.

 
There's going to be a civil war over that guaranteed. Right.

And then and then you're going to put two coins. Right.

And the question is, which one survives?

Right. And maybe emission coins survives because maybe Peter thought is right. You know, but I just think that if we if we can't get it, if we can't get a reliable enough amount of high fees into the network on chain in 100 years, then what are we doing? I think we failed. I think we've ended up building around it and we're back in centralized systems that can they don't need proof of work and therefore nobody's paying on chain. You know what I mean?

So yeah, I don't know about it. I don't lose sleep or read, basically. Interesting.

Interesting. Yeah.

So what would you say? What would you say the likelihood is that Bitcoin adds adds a tail emission?

 
Zero. Zero. Not in my lifetime.

I don't think I don't see it happening.

I think we would have to have like a catastrophic like. So do you think do you think Peter Todd like thinks there's an actual you think he's just kind of being exaggerating because it seems like she's pretty adamant about it being an issue. Yeah, I think he is Satoshi Nakamoto.

So I, you know, I agree with Satoshi's he will do it lightly. But no, I think I think I think he's doing his job as a contrarian, like his job is to make the arguments that nobody else dares to make, you know, and we sort of self adopted that job. And and so I think it's like, yeah, of course, Peter Todd would make that argument.

And I think it's I think it's an argument that that that merits a conversation. I think his argument about like introducing a state chain, a state change, 150 years into a protocol is a bad idea.

 
I get that.

That makes sense. But I don't think you get that kind of change without like a catastrophic, like existential crisis, you know, and I don't see that crisis if we just get enough on chain adoption. Right. Like we just need we've had a moment in recent history where the fee rake is higher than the emission during like, you know, JPEG Francis. Right. And so if we can if we can get the world to adopt Bitcoin on chain as like a settlement layer, like if like basically if we can replace with or something like that, right, like if the BRICS nations actually like started using Bitcoin, which apparently allegedly they're saying like, hey, maybe we should use Bitcoin to settle trade. If they actually did, maybe we start getting higher fees in reliably higher.

If we but I think, you know, I think that's sort of I think that's the game plan.

 
You know, I think we have bigger problems, too. I think I think that. Yeah, I think I think we have bigger bigger problems in a way. But but yeah, we just need to we just need to get higher fees and we get that through adoption. You know, we get that through adoption of like bigger players and such. I don't know.

That's I think that's that's definitely a reasonable take. Right. It seems like the more the more likely there for Bitcoin itself. Like you said, I think Monero is the tail emission option. Right.

So we'll see how we'll see how that does.

Yeah. And a reasonable argument for Monero to do that. And I think I think, you know, I get that argument, especially since it's like a fractional emission.

Right. Or no, you guys are when you just have like a steady mission forever. Right.

Yeah. So basically the inflation rate trends towards zero approach continuously approaches zero. Big bet.

It's a fixed amount.

 
Right. So it's a fixed amount. So but the actual inflation percentage goes down over time. Right.

Because it's all small, a fixed number over a larger, a larger number. Right.

Right.

Makes sense. So is it like a specific number of Monero's that get my remark? Like, yeah, I forget what the amount is.

Right.

Yeah. I forget what the settled final notice. Yeah.

I think it's a very elegant solution. I think it's very elegant. Is it six minute? I don't even remember.

Doesn't matter, right? This is the number is the number. But yeah, it's steady. It's a steady, steady. Right. Because the supply goes becomes an increasingly smaller percentage of the. Exactly.

Exactly. It's very cool.

I think it's very smart. I do think that like, you know, I think it's very obvious to recognize a Satoshi Nakamoto was not a Bitcoin maximalist. Satoshi Nakamoto injected name coin into the the default proof of work software so that Bitcoin miners would merge mine name coin.

 
And he said, well, DNS on top of Bitcoin might just be much stuff. So let it have its own chain and let it have its own fate. This is the words of Satoshi Nakamoto. Peter Todd, man. Peter Todd loves that name.

That is true. I mean, you know, Satoshi Nakamoto also, he talked about ring signatures. He talked about stealth addresses. And he liked that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know that's cool.

But like the technology just wasn't available, right? If Satoshi knew what we know now, he might have built Bitcoin in a different way. Yeah.

So we don't know. But I think let me get this Snoopy tip to dollar. Does Yann share the goal of separation of money and state? How does heavy focus on an easily taxed or a value help that? So, I mean, you're not going to get like this is yes, I share the value, first of all.

Definitely. In fact, I'm on HBO talking about how Bitcoin is sort of an answer.

 
This goes back to the co -op question. How can you separate money, state and situation where everybody's perfectly, potentially surveilled, right?

Right. Those that are using Bitcoin the way most do on Coinbase, whatnot, and they can effectively be perfectly taxed. Yeah.

How have you separated money from state of that? Well, I think the taxation question is an interesting question because most people are going to be compliant because most people don't have this sort of radical, like radical not in a bad way, but they don't have this sort of stamina and let's say disagreeable personality to like take the risks involved to go against their government, you know? And so most people are just going to be like- Are you referring to me right now?

Pretty much. You and Monero Chat guy, you know? So like- You're not that guy? You're not a Monero Chat? Come on, man.

I'm a very compliant person, sir.

 
No, but like I just, you know, I think it's a sort of utopian idea that you're going to get, you know, everybody using like hardcore cypherpunk money to like avoid taxes, right? Like you're good.

What you could adapt with is a population that is politically aware enough of the brutal theft that is taxation that they will change their government one way or another such that those taxes go down. But like- Well, you don't think- You don't think- Yeah, I mean, that's a- I mean, you want- for it to be like perfectly kind of custodial needs to be built in a way where when the government comes to extract their pound of flesh, they can't easily take it away. And obviously the fear is some totalitarian situation, right? Where everybody's really being tracked and traced, you know, they're taxing unrealized capital gains, you know, in that situation. This is a potential scenario in the future.

 
Yeah, I mean, I think so there's the learning curve required to sort of trade crypto, not just Bitcoin, like Monero as well. It's probably harder with Monero to trade, to trade any of this stuff in a peer -to -peer basis without dodging the surveillance state, right? And getting cash out without using the banking system, it's pretty high.

Like that's like ninja level shit, you know, you kind of have to like be pretty good at it. You have to like be paranoid enough, you have to make sure you know how to, you know, will control your risk and identify the scammers and like, and play with it a network of trust. And then, you know what I mean?

Like there's an obstacle sort of learning curve to be able to move, you know, crypto for cash, right? And if you're using a banking system at all, then to like to get your- to trade, then like you're screwed.

 
So now if you're moving Monero to Monero, if you're paying your bills in Monero, if you're doing everything Monero, great. But I think again, like the question there, how have we been trying to get that kind of circular economy going for 15 years and not managed to get that far, right? And I think- I mean, that gets back to the dark market argument, right? Like so like Monero seems to be beating Bitcoin for those purposes. And then the question is, well, how large does that market go into the clear market, right?

I think is kind of the question.

Right. I mean, I think that the use case of Monero with the dark markets, and I'll take you at your word because I don't really- I don't really not- I don't go on the dark market very often like- Yeah, who does? Nobody.

Right?

Who does, right? I pay my taxes. Dude, stop accusing me of things, right? I pay my taxes and I don't go on the dark market. Jesus, this guy.

Exactly, right? We're all, you know, so like I'll take your word for it.

 
But obviously there's a use case in the dark market, which is like, you know, very hostile environment. It was the first use case of Bitcoin. The Silk Road was the first app. It was the first company.

It was the first actual use case, right? So are you stating as a matter of fact that the majority of dollar denominated volume in the dark markets is traded in Monero? We're going to have a speaker speaking at it, Adam Monero. He's spoken on the past, like for the past two years.

He gives a analysis on what he sees as being the current level of adoption of Monero in the dark markets. But my understanding is it's a significant, you know, it's, I don't know, I'm just throwing numbers out there, like 70%, perhaps, of the transactions taking place.

It's a large chunk. And I think that is a testament to a, Bitcoiner developers are like, not that, but the Bitcoin world's failure to sort of bring better privacy to Bitcoin. I think that's definitely, that's definitely the case.

 
I think, I think this sort of, there's kind of like, like, there's people don't want to break the thing, you know? And so whatever, or maybe Core has been co -opted, you know? I think certainly we could do better analysis, like data analysis on how Bitcoin Core works and what they're prioritizing, right? I think that there's sort of questions there, but, but, you know, I think it's a testament to Monero's strength that it is the case, that a lot of the dark net activity happens there. I think it's a test case, testament to whenever that the IRS is putting bounties on people that can break Monero and nobody seems to be able to do it, you know? Or that it's getting, like, run out of exchanges, right?

Clearly, they wouldn't care, right?

Otherwise, they'd do it with Seacash, but they don't do it with Seacash because, Seacash, right? Like, like it's, it's pretend privacy, right?

 
Like the privacy is, like, they don't seem to be threatened by it, right? For whatever reason, they're not threatened by it.

So there's, there's obviously something there. I mean, we know that the Seacash integrates with these exchanges, right? It created, it created addresses just for the purposes of integrating with exchanges so they can be compliant. I mean, that's right.

They didn't have to do it. And it's like a really racist name.

I can't remember what it was called. Well, there's Pirate Chain. Pirate Chain is basically a default private Seacash. Right, right.

There's that one too.

So, they didn't have to do transparent transactions, right? And so, yeah, Seacash is, is a, is a, is a grift, you know, it's a grift for academics, you know, so they can build better cryptography.

 
Maybe it's paid off, you know, like, it might. It's a, it's a strange beast, right? Peter Todd was involved in that one too, man.

I don't know.

It's everywhere, bro. Trust lost when he started, you know, participating in the, the Seacash ceremony. Yeah.

Right. I mean, that it's, uh, yeah, the way they, the way they started it and it had the trusted set up, but it was experiment, you know, experimental math at the time. Obviously they've invented some really interesting tech.

Yeah.

Now, Manero is now essentially adopting a version of that. It is its own, developed its own unique thing by Luke Parker, but this, the same concept of, you know, uh, zero knowledge, right? I mean, there's already other zero knowledge aspects of Manero too. There's always that confusion. They're like, well, Seacash is zero knowledge and Manero, Manero has zero knowledge elements built into it. Right.

Parts of its tech, but now I don't know if you've been keeping up with it, but it's, we're implementing full chain membership proofs.

 
That's fucking cool. Did that happen already?

Like, has it been merged or? No, as it emerged yet, Luke Parker will be there. He'll be giving an update on it. Uh, it's, it's like, do you know Luke Parker? Have you been?

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

It's phenom phenom. So there, you know, there's always been this talk of upgrading the amount of decoys in Manero ring signatures, right? The need to constantly kind of upgrade so that we can make that anatomy set larger. More than 10.

Right now it's at 16. Um, and so, I mean, it is like statistically it's, it's pretty fricking good, right? Like there are attacks that theoretically can be done and arguably haven't done by chain analysis companies.

 
It's those like pinpointed attacks where they can, uh, you know, essentially get data from exchanges that you're, that you're interfacing with plus making you like mini transactions that could essentially potentially probabilistically, not deterministic, uh, trace a transact, determine who a sender might have been of a transaction. And so there is that flaw and Manero now with the implementation of full chain membership proofs will eliminate that flaw. That's kind of been the one argument of Manero versus CCASH is that technical flaw that Manero has. So that, that goes away.

Yeah.

Which is going to be really exciting. I mean, a less like the tech, something Luke forgot to carry a one or something. We're all screwed, but supposedly the freaking genius.

Yeah.

He bettered me. We'll see what, we'll see what Satoshi Nakamoto, Peter Todd has to say. Yeah. We'll have Peter review it and give its blessing. I mean Satoshi, I mean Peter. Um, dude, I think it's super cool.

 
Yeah. I'm very excited that you're coming down to Manero topia and you'll be bringing your, your, your very, uh, you know, educated Bitcoin maximalism, right? And your, you know, your, your cypher punk values, right?

I see, I see it as a Venn diagram, right?

And there's, uh, there's, there's definitely, like you said, we're all working to build the same tools here. Um, yeah, just we're, we see different, see the design decisions as being different and see the game theory as playing out differently. And obviously, uh, Bitcoins is, is the most to date, the most valid, most valid theory we have given, uh, what, what we're seeing it do. So super excited that you've chosen to hang out with us.

I'm an aerotopia though, man. That's very cool.

Yeah.

It's going to be fun. A bunch of my friends are going to be there and your lineup is very impressive. I mean, I like that. I like that Amir is going, is that, is that super cool from that?

 
Yeah, super cool. Well, he was supposed to come last year and then he, he got sick like last, like on the last day. Right. Um, uh, Rachel Rose came the first year in Miami. Uh, he's coming this year.

Yeah.

It's cool.

Yeah. They will definitely be there because they felt bad about what happened last year. So it's right.

I'd be very surprised if they didn't make it and super excited to have them. Uh, I've been seeing them throughout the years and like they're, you know, they're, they're like, they, they create, they like create the philosophical ballast of the crypto anarchy ship for the two right. Like when you listen to, to the way they speak and like the, the philosophical ideals, um, it kind of, it's, it kind of realigns people as to why we're doing the whole crypto thing in the first place.

 
So super excited that they'll be there. I think they do an amazing job at that. Yeah.

It's, it's a very, very cool lineup. I see a lot of, a lot of friendly faces, um, a lot of, yeah, I mean, I can't wait to, to meet up with you guys and hang out. And, uh, I like that it's, it's got the real grassroots as you know, it's going to be at a, at a market, an actual market. And you know, it's definitely not a Bitcoin guy. It's definitely the Michael Saylor will not be in attendance. It's not a thousand dollars a ticket, guys.

Don't worry.

Don't worry.

Um, I'm going to quickly, I'm going to quickly play the ad right now. And actually, if you can stick around a little bit, let's see if you get anybody else to send a super chat question or just any, any form of question for, for what it will ask super Monero or chat.

 
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I don't get sick of that Untraced or it's like mesmerizing untraceable made that for us. That's very it was a throwback to the 90s there We've since get added good I gotta say that the Monero Chan is also one of the most the best marketing moves you guys have made in in a while Yeah, it added a girl.

She is a good one Foodie tip 50 cents.

Will there be any food and drink vendors at Monero topia? I will be hungry Yeah, of course the world there will be food and drink vendors and they'll be accepting Monero. They'll be accepting Monero I recommend if it's you do holiday shopping bring down Monero for holiday shopping this like the vendors are really awesome There's there's some good ones All sorts of things all sorts of all sorts of products.

 
Yeah, I'm like psychedelics that you grow in the ground I think they all all old medical psychedelics. Yeah, of course all legal things.

Yeah, cool Can I show something?

Of course, man? Yeah, you could show a big boy this entire time That's what we do, you know, but grab a bag and you shut So right after the conference right after Monero topia I'm gonna go to Guadalajara and there's like there's like a really hard Bitcoin maximalist community there But they're they're like builders. They're like developers.

So there's Chris Guida super test that is hanging out there which I know has made some flashes around the bow to our world and There's we're gonna have a hackathon. This is like the end of November beginning of the end of this November beginning December We're gonna do a hackathon. There's like seven thousand dollars on the line and there's people coming from the United States it's in collaboration with pleb labs HRF through money in and Yeah, we're gonna hack it on if you it's it's it's on the upset.

 
It's hacking Allah Hara dot XYZ so it's like well, I like it with hack, you know, they hack Allah Hara and Yeah, we're gonna do a hackathon. We're gonna fucking try to build some stuff. So If you are a builder and you like money, you might enjoy your hack Allah Hara that exploit choice.

I love it.

Very cool Yeah, we are I might as well shill our hackathon actually we're doing We're doing one based on BTC pay server, which you might you might find interesting, right? So to improve Monero integration it currently Monero is integrated But I guess my understanding is they just updated BTC pay server. So to make sure Monero can stay up -to -date And so it's cool because they're just focused on that the hope is by the end of it We actually have some some new useful improvement rather than just making it some general hackathon of everybody try to you know Build something Monera, right?

 
So that that should be cool. Yeah, if anybody was Listing hearing is interested in participating email us Monero topia at protonmail .com We have a hacker house for we have a prize to not it not as generous. We have a fifteen hundred dollar prize I think is what we have but uh, you know, we're it's Monero topia after all a little more humble at the But we do have the hacker house guys I think we have like one spot left for people that want to stay there But even if you're just local to Mexico and you want to participate Please reach out Monero is happening during the conference. This is happening during the conference We only have like I think four people that are actively or or I know I think we have more cuz some people are virtually Participating so there's like maybe a group of eight right now that are that are gonna be participating on this project It's more of a build with a build -a -thon, right? 

 
Like they're gonna be working together to build one like project BTC pay server. So that's awesome.

Yeah Yeah, yeah, you know, it's the kind of thing merchants need, you know All those act place. Yeah, we got But your your conference or your hackathon sounds awesome, man, and I'm loving the name kind of give me You know like a narco poco, right? All right, like you're doing it. It's good branding good branding Yeah, I super test late. I think came up with that.

He's crazy.

Good on some names and stuff. That's awesome Yeah, what was the controversy was super test that honestly, I think I just like you just started making arguments against Monero And like I don't I didn't follow it cuz to me it's just funny, right? Like every time my friends start arguing about Monero, I'm just like just gonna grab some popcorn and like not, you know I'd love that you hang out with body and talk, you know Like I said, you've you've gone down as deep of the rabbit hole as you possibly can on Monero I'm talking the body.

 
So yeah, you know, we've been sparring about it for like, yeah Stacey tip to dollar what is there to build on Bitcoin? They always reject changes Thank you for the tips they see and thank you for the the hard but true way We're getting stealth addresses integrated in fact cake while it has it and uh, yeah We also got encrypted p2p networking stuff in recently. This is what we're making just we're doing it the slow way, bro It's just like one inch at a time, but that is true.

That is true.

Yeah. Thank you to cake while by the way They're they're the one of our main stage sponsors. It's third year in a row They're being a main stage sponsor super awesome cake is fantastic. Yeah, I think I think they really like now They've really earned the respect of Bitcoiners right with being the first to implement stealth addresses for Bitcoin That's like like damn Vic.

 
Why do you get you don't help the Bitcoiners out that much.

Come on, man Love it. I love it though No, like we're saying like bringing everybody into the same tent cake wallet is literally like me tent right now They're bringing everybody that's kind of privacy minded to the to the same same app, which is very cool Yeah, it's true. Oh Oh, yeah, guess guess who our second main stage sponsors you're gonna find this to be if you haven't already seen I'll be a speaker, but yeah, I guess who our second main stage sponsor is. Uh, like you would never think they would sponsor bid main. We got bit. Oh yeah.

Sponsor, right. Bid main.

Yeah, that's how did that happen. One final topic I want to talk to you about is ASIC resistance and whatnot. But yeah, well, what do you, what do you think?

 
What do you think about that? That's kind of interesting.

How did that happen? Um, they reached out. They were, they tried sponsoring last year too. And we were in talks, we were in conversation. They, I felt like we were always talking to the marketing side of the company. And then we were like, I never should super tech side.

We were like, you're sure.

Like we'd love to have you guys. And we're like, you know, just so you know, Monero is like supposed to be ASIC resistant is literally trying to build technology that doesn't allow you guys to build ASICs like, no, no, we're well aware of it. I was like, all right.

Like you guys have to come to the conference sponsor. I mean, it's awesome to hear your talk and can't wait to see the hands go up. Like when Arctic mine is asking about, wait a minute.

 
Um, so yeah, right. Here is maybe that their marketing department just needs to like get their brand out there. You know?

Yeah.

I mean, they like, well, they're saying they like that. It's a proof, you know, or a troop for work coin, crypto, and it always will be. And so I guess they are looking to build.

I mean, they, they have built things in the past for Monero, right? They made that, they attempted to build an ASIC. It's really just like, uh, an efficient, you know, pairing of CPUs, but that might be a business enough for them. Or maybe there's something they know that we, that we don't, right?

Which could even be more, uh, more exciting.

Yeah.

No, that I think, yeah, I mean, that's cool. I think, um, I like ASIC resistance. I think ASIC resistance is good. I don't think that ASIC proof of work is, um, inherently flawed or anything. I think that, I think that, um, so far so good. You could argue, but there's definitely issues in Bitcoin mining.

 
Like there's, I arguably it's like, like, there's like a bunch of proxy mining pools that turns out are actually mostly ant miners.

It's like, it's yes. So what do you think of like this idea that, you know, once again, getting back to the co -opting can as, or can the Bitcoin network be co -opted because it's being mined primarily by, uh, you know, a small handful of companies that are, you know, that, that are listed on the stock exchange that have to follow regulations that are a door knock or a letter away from any government office that may want to mandate something and the incentive to work with said agency because they essentially have a monopoly in the business of mining Bitcoin.

 
Do you see that as, as a problem in Bitcoin's mining? Yeah.

So let's, let's, let's deal with this. So first of all, if sure. I'm sure body has asked you about this one.

Oh, this is a good one. So first of all, if the US government and the Chinese government come together to try to destroy anything in the world, they'll probably win. Um, it doesn't matter how decentralized you are. They can probably rake through the population and like, you know, fucking delete us, right? So like, if both China, the United States decide we're going to come together to censor Bitcoin transactions at our, at our leisure, there's probably not much we can do. Russia might be able to like play ball, but if, if China and the US join forces to destroy Russia, Russia fails, right?

And I think that's the case for everything.

In fact, if you, if you ever watched the Firefly TV show, remember that one from like ABC, like the nineties, late nineties, Firefly.

 
Oh, great show. It's like, it's like cowboy anarchists in space. It's fantastic.

Oh shit. Cold classic one season and they got canceled because they were too good. You know, their story plays out in a universe where China and Russia joined forces and took over the world.

Sorry, China and the United States joined forces and took over the world. And so people like speak English by the curse in Chinese, which is, which is great. Um, and so anyway, I think that's the first piece.

Like there's a threat model here that nobody can defeat. Then it's like, you know, the two biggest governments. Okay, great.

Aside from that, right? If, if China and the U S are not seeing Ida Y, which I think we're seeing with bricks, if we're going towards a bipolar world, then you're in enough hashing power is outside of the U S then who is the U S going to try to censor where they're going to try to censor Russian transactions and Chinese transactions.

 
They're going to try to censor through, um, through, through terrorism and sanctions, because that's actually what they care about. All this money laundering stuff is bullshit. Like they, they care about sanctions.

Right.

And they want their piece of the pie. They want their surveillance created. They want sanctions because the, the, the it's a, it's a weapon of like surveillance. Finance is a weapon of war in a geopolitical game and they can exert pressure on foreign nations by, by enforcing sanctions. Right.

And so if you have anonymous money, you get, you get sanction resistant. Money.

And so they don't like that. And so the U S might try to use Bitcoin mining corporations that are public in the stock exchange to censor Bitcoin transactions.

 
But if there's enough hash rate in China and Russia, then you wait an extra block or two and the transaction gets it. And if the big, if the American Bitcoin sort of corporate, you know, whatever, they decide to fork Bitcoin in and break it, they're going to just give us free air drop and now we'll take it. You will dump it in the markets.

And if they try to, you know what I mean?

Like this is a war that they probably lose.

Yeah. Doesn't it just break then as a censorship resistant tool? Like, so, so like, let's say it's for, uh, you know, there, there's political, political activity happening. People are assembling online. They believe in some cause they're minority in some way in a totalitarian government, maybe even the United States and they're trying to assemble and they want to use Bitcoin for purposes of fundraising and now they can effectively get censored potentially with Bitcoin.

 
Like, does that then become, you know, that, that for me, that's the dire scenario, right? Like now it's no longer working as intended is to be this like tool of liberty and free speech, like censorship resistant money. So if the United States has 51% of the hash and power within the United States, like even, even with the Canada thing, right?

So like it could be a combination of attacks, right? Like, but so if, if the Alliance has 51% those hash and power, right? And they can keep consistently 51% of hash and power, then they would probably be able to cause problems, right? And I think that if, if the world goes into like two poles, right, like just two poles, it's, it's like, you know, but we, we, we saw, we saw, right?

 
Then we, we, we've seen like mining companies, um, censoring, right?

Like refusing to, to put credit and actions in. So like there was an attempt at an offer compliant pool and we, and then there was like, people started sending them like us because the mining pools begin because Bitcoin is transparent enough, right? You can see their Bitcoin addresses of the mining pools floating around.

People started sending them like money from a Satoshi's from Iran, you know, and then they, they, and blasting them on Twitter and like just making fun of them and they rolled it back, right? Um, so how about like the Canada, the Canada trucker rally, right? So slightly different, like that wasn't really about mining, but it was, you know, same concept, Bitcoin potentially failing as a tool for censorship So, I mean, the Bitcoin that was raised for the mine, for the truckers, something like 70% or maybe 50% of the Bitcoin, as far as understand it, did make it to miners before the feds showed up at the,

 
at the house of one of the custodians and they, they confiscated or like froze it or whatever, right? I don't know exactly how the story goes down, but there's two versions of the story, the story where Bitcoin failed and the story where actually it was proved that it was great and powerful. Just funny.

Two different worlds, right?

Obviously, right? Like with anything, but like the way that it was transmitted, like UK, one of the ways, one of the guys that ended up in court over this, I think they literally grabbed a hundred, uh, envelopes they put in, this was through, I think full Bitcoin. I'm not sure, but they grabbed a hundred envelopes, put paper wallets in them with very specific guides and then just handed them out to truckers that money got through, I mean, if they grabbed it and sweep it and sent it to an exchange with their KYC data, they're idiots, but some definitely did that, but others probably did it, right?

 
So I think, I think that the Bitcoin got in, you know, um, I personally like bought gift cards for gas or truckers. Like we see don't like this.

There's 50 different ways to use it.

You know what I mean?

Like even January, January six was another one. There were Bitcoin transactions involved. Um, I forget the, the streamers named quite, quite, quite a popular political figure here in the U S fringe on the right. Um, and, uh, his transactions, his transactions were traced or donations made to like large Bitcoin donations that were made to him. Um, and it was like, listen, if people don't use the technology, I don't know what to tell you, right? Like, and I think, you know what I mean?

Like if you, I was saying, but the, you know, these are, these are the things that like Monero people, right? Look at in terms of like where Bitcoin is failing.

 
Yeah. Stealing because it's become too easy to use, you know, but if you, if you have a hardware wallet, right. If you even fucking just have a burner phone, you download, I don't know, anywhere from electron to green wallet to fucking, I can give you 50 different wallets that you can use on a self custody or basis offline. That'll give you a Bitcoin address that you can post on the internet and nobody's going to censor it.

And then like, I can give you 10 ways that you can mix it. You know, you can a swap it for Monero and bring it back to Bitcoin later in different pieces or move it through the lighting network and back or go swap it atomically with liquid network, Bitcoin, and then swap it back. And that's going to get sort of moved through through zero knowledge, right?

Go, turn it into Monero and then just use it. Like, is it, is that, I mean, if you want to just stay at $150 forever, that's.

 
Come on now, man. The network is growing, brother. It's growing.

You're in our tent. Wait, so earn your tent. Who said Dorian is an art set.

So I don't know. I just think there's, there's different tools, but yeah, like if people are just using quite massive Europe, don't use quite this. So I don't know.

I mean, we, uh, we're at almost an hour and a half. We got 250 live viewers.

This has been amazing, man. Um, anything, anything else you want to get out there, obviously you'll have the stage of Monero topia. Um, but any other info you want to get out right now to the. Yeah, it's fun.

Looking forward to it. Uh, I hope to see a lot of my Bitcoin cash fredemies there among many other Monero. Anarco, Polco, anarco, Polco crowd will be there, right? I think you have some friends in that sphere, right?

Yeah, yeah, no. And, and definitely some anarchists that are, that I, that I know from, from the scene, so I'm looking forward to meeting them, looking forward to a speech.

 
It's going to be interesting. I'm going to craft something special for you guys. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, like can't wait.

So, uh, catch you guys there. And then, uh, yeah, see you guys there. Okay.

Let me, let me ask you though. Actually, you got me thinking, what, what do you think the panel should be? Obviously I have some thoughts. I'm going to do a panel. Yeah.

I'm thinking one or two panels. I was thinking maybe it'd be like scaling Bitcoin versus scaling Monero or just kind of like the concept of scaling. And I could get you up on that, on that panel.

I think, I think, I think a better question.

I think, I think all that stuff has sort of been played out already. You know, like, I don't know if we need to be debating which one's better. I think we've all just talking about the concepts, but go ahead. Go ahead and yeah, tell me.

Yeah.

Like maybe something a little bit more cooperative. So like, how do we build better peer to peer atomic swap tools or something?

 
How do we make big Monero dependent of fiat exchanges, right? Like if Bitcoin is the Troy and of course, that's sort of like selling out a little bit, so we get the gold, right? Let's say that that's the case. How do we make, how do we bootstrap like a decentralized sort of market between Monero and Bitcoin so that you guys don't need exchanges, right? Like if you guys are the hard anonymous money, you're going to need access to the, to the fucking wall garden money.

Right.

And so like, how do we build that or, or how do we, what are the adoption barriers that we're failing to solve 15 years deep into this experiment, right? So like an adoption panel would be fun.

How do we adopt? How do we, how, what, what are we not seeing?

Right. And then, and then a peer to peer technology stuff would be great because I would love to see like an atomic swap, like not just like a, like a centralized sort of server client, atomic swap system.

 
I would like to see like a bit torrent, like well, there is, um, well, for one, there, there's, there's basic swap, they'll be there. They are, they are that, they are that actually.

They are as you got to run both notes and it's fucking.

Yeah. But just, you know, so, so we could have them, we could have them on the panel and, uh, Luke Parker, he, I'm sure you're, are you familiar with Sarai? Sarai decks?

No. So well, hasn't launched yet as a launch yet. Um, but in addition to working on full chain membership proofs, he's also the, the lead dev of Sarai decks, which is, uh, almost ready to launch. And it's basically, it's basically like a Thor chain, but Monero based.

Gotcha. Um, so it's going to allow for seamless, um, exchange between Monero and a handful of other cryptos like Bitcoin through these liquidity pools and built it away where wallets like cake wallet can interface with it.

 
So it will feel like a, like an instant exchange that's centralized, but you know, we'll be like similar to Thor chain. It's in its level of decentralization. So that's an exciting one.

Yeah.

I think those are the topics, right? Like we got to build into a top. Yeah. We got to build into. Awesome.

All right. So I'm writing those two down. We'll see that those are definitely, uh, I will consider those. Uh, probably we'll do at least one of those and like proof of work versus proof of stake, we did that last year. Um, I guess there's the, you know, not much more to say on the topic, right?

Yeah.

Pretty well. I mean, Ethereum and do about the proof of stake at the top of the market and they've been crashing out. Only reason I like that one is because we have Zano.

Are you familiar with Zano?

Zano will be there. Um, they're, they're doing some really interesting things. They're sort of launching. It's its own crypto.

 
It's basically the guy who built it is, uh, also the guy who built the first implementation of Monero. It's he is, he's like the original. Oh, really narrow coder.

Yeah.

Proof of stake. You know, it's, it's a hybrid proof of work and proof of stake. And they invented a way to do, uh, basically anonymous private proof of stake. And they did that in collaboration with some other Monero devs or Monero, uh, yeah, devs. That's interesting.

I think, yeah, there's something to be said for that. All right, brother.

I will let you go. I really greatly appreciate your time, uh, and allowing me to ask you probably some of the questions you're, you're tired of being asked or discussing, right? Kind of like the, if you're talking to body, I can only imagine.

So I, I feel bad for you, brother, but thank you for doing it publicly. Uh, body, a body debate would be way more exhausting. He would, he would definitely, uh, he has the, like, I've never met anybody with so much stamina to the bait.

 
Yeah. He's, he's, he's a genius man. He, he's a sharp, very, uh, very sharp dude. Um, that's to challenge him at chess. Somebody needs to beat him. Oh, I can imagine.

She's yeah. I don't, I, I gotta, I gotta start playing some chess. All right, brother.

We'll leave it at that. Super excited to see you down at Monero topia. If you can spread, spread the word to your people, get the word out.

Now I'm trying to get the word out next week. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Do it in Spanish, man. Try to get the word out locally in Mexico city. If you have any thoughts on how to get the word out locally in Mexico city, cause we're basically, it's basically free for locals to attend. Um, and then we asked them to pay like only 500 pesos if they want to come into the dome, but they're just to come out 10, they could see the talks outside. They can engage with the, you know, the different tables like the Monero one on one table.

 
Right. Um, so they can, they basically come in for free. So just trying to get the word out. And the idea being right to help grow adoption, right? I want to make it as accessible as possible.

Right.

Like locals that are interested in learning these topics. So I'll do a Spanish video and I'll do an English video and I'll reach out to some of my friends, see what, send me like press release stuff, whatever you got. Awesome, man.

Greatly appreciate it. And, uh, I'll see you soon. See you guys soon. Later on. Thanks man. Take care.

Ciao.

 
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