YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephan Livera

lines on the record: 64
first: 2022-01-12
most recent: 2022-01-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So, yes, Stefan Lavera.com is the place to find my podcast. And of course, I work at Swan Bitcoin as well, so that's swan.com. That's where people can learn about Bitcoin and start accumulating Bitcoin as well. And Preston, it's been a pleasure. I'm a big fan of your work also. I think you do a great job at really skillfully asking good questions. So that's why I'm a big fan of your work also. Yeah, once again, thank you for inviting me.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mention of Bitcoin in the book. I think the book came out in 2008, funnily enough. You're just reading that book and you're just thinking, wow, like it's just confirming so many things that we thought about our Bitcoin thesis. And so I remember reading that in 2013 or 14 and it just really, it was such a strongly influential book on my own thought. And so that's why Probably one of my favorites there. And I had the pleasure of interviewing Geardo Holzman, the author as well.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An interesting one that hit me was by Cal Newport, Deep Work. I think that was an interesting one because essentially the message and the moral of that story was that people are getting distracted by the likes of social media when actually we are living in a time where the rewards go to the people who are the best in their field. And so the people who are the best in their field are often the ones who are able to spend that time doing deep work. And so that for me was an interesting one. Yeah, I would say that's probably the non-Bitcoin book. And then the Bitcoin book, probably one of my favorites, well, the ethics of money production by Guido Holzman. So that for me was probably like a really, I just have such a strong recollection of reading that book. I was away on a work trip. I was still in my fiat job at that time. And this is maybe 2013 or 14. And so obviously I was really into Bitcoin at that point. And I was reading this book. And obviously there's not one.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The hyper Bitcoinized world is going to be a growth deflationary world. So the future is bright. I really think that is the white pill for all of us is that, look, there are times now where we might not be as free as we want to be, but I really do believe the future is going to be bright so long as we make it there, that a Bitcoin standard will genuinely improve the way society operates in so many ways. And I think we're going to basically massively remove or reduce global poverty. We're going to massively give people much more of an opportunity to really engage in what they want to do and work on things that are in their passion and things that they really believe in for the long term. So that's my message on growth deflation.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deflation. And so growth deflation just refers to the beneficial rise in purchasing power that we would experience under a hard money world, whether that's a gold standard or a Bitcoin standard. I obviously believe it's going to be a Bitcoin standard. So just by merely holding Bitcoin, we will become richer over time. And so I think it'll be really different to think about because we are used to, and for all of our lives, we've grown up in a world where you lose purchasing power over time if you hold it in dollars. And so I just think it's such a phenomenal and incredible concept to me. And I think it's so poorly understood as well, because I think people just conflate everything together. They're not able to distinguish and decompose those into their component parts and say, oh, hey, this growth deflation. And to understand, living in a Bitcoin, living under a Bitcoin standard, living in the Bitcoinized world.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is one of my hobby horse issues. I love talking about growth deflation because I see it as Bitcoin is this massive positive sum technology for the world, right? Because we are going to be living in a world where your money rises in purchasing power because a lot of people think about deflation the wrong way. And so I've done various episodes on my show talking about this and it's like a hobby horse issue for me. A lot of people think deflation is bad. But actually what we need to do is distinguish between the types of deflation because there is the credit collapse sort of deflator or bank credit deflation, which is like the economy is collapsing because of the prior overinflation or the malinvestments created are now being wiped away because the market is sort of realizing effectively that those investments were not profitable or the entrepreneurs realized they do not have the resources to complete that. That's one aspect of the quote unquote bad deflation. But there's also the good deflation which is growth.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and then actually a lot of the network did move out. Now, in fairness, there's still a reasonable chunk of miners there in China, but still, we're probably talking in something like hundreds of thousands of miners mining equipment of those ASICs were shifted out of China into USA, Kazakhstan, Canada, and other places around the world. And so that was probably the other big surprise for 2021 for me.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think that's probably the biggest surprise. I think probably number two on that would be the China bands Bitcoin, right? Because up until then, it was a meme. It was like, yeah, whatever.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's got to be the El Salvador legal tender law, right? Like just to think that an entire country. Would just go there and just say, yeah, you've got to think about it from this point of view, right? A lot of countries are not thinking very forward. They're not thinking, they might see something as like, hey, this is a cash cow. I'm just going to make money out of it. And look, I can get capital gains. But to actually go the other way and realize and arguably see that there's a long-term vision. Now, of course, I think there are, there are certain aspects of criticism around Bukele and what's going on in El Salvador, but I also think it's fair to say he's giving empowerment to the people and giving and taking away a very important intervention that the government has, which is capital gain stacks. If you take that away, you are massively opening up the market, I think. And I'm really interested to see what happens with the Bitcoin city, right? This whole idea of basically zero income tax, but a 10% sales tax and maybe it'll be more like a user pays model. Who knows?”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that is really, I think, a significant difference in the mindset of the typical Bitcoiner versus what many altcoin enthusiasts are thinking about. So I really just think it comes down to having enough people who have that vision and have that belief that, yeah, we really can make the world a better place. And part of that starts with fixing the money, as Marty Ben says, right? Fix the money, fix the world.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bitcoin ethos is really thinking about and building for the long term whether that is you're having a family and having children to pass on a legacy or whether you're building a protocol and you want this protocol to last many many years after you and I are gone that we want something there that creates a certain level of discipline that was not there and available in the fiat world. I think it's fair to say that there are cultural impacts of fiat money and so this is something I've been talking about for years. I've written about this people like safety and the OG Guider Hulzman, an Austrian economist has written extensively about this. I think there are cultural impacts of fiat money. It causes us to make more high type preference or impatient decisions when really the important decisions we make are those long-term decisions about what am I doing over the next 10 20 30 40 50 years”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right. And I think that's ultimately it's about patience. And so we're living in an age when very few people have patience and very few people are really thinking about the long term. But I think that is the essence of”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I just wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't want to try to time that. I don't know that episode, you and I did about the final cycle, right? We don't want to try to time this. You want to just be... Accumulating regularly because you never know when it is the final cycle, it could happen, right? This is gradually then suddenly.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are you really creating? Are you just recreating a new system but with yourselves at the top? I think most of us here in Bitcoin see this like we're trying to create something different. We're trying to create something that's not corrupted in the same way that the fiat system has become. And so for me, it just seems very, it's counter to the point. I just don't see why there's a long term there. Now I understand that now for some people maybe now I'm not a trader. I'm a stacker and a hodler, but maybe there are some people out there who think I can just play this for the short term and I'm going to try to time it in and out and whatever. I wouldn't recommend it. I think most people will fail trying that.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not aware of the full context of what Vitalik was saying, but I mean, generally, it sounds pretty crazy to me. I believe in the idea that the average person should be able to run a Bitcoin node. Now, my hope is that it's able to be sustained and that people can do this and there might be other tricks and things that are employed to be able to keep it that way, whether that is assume UTXO by James O.B. or maybe Taj Dryger's work on UtreeXO, Taj and some others as well. So those might be interesting ideas, but essentially the point being if you don't make it easy for average people to be able to run a Bitcoin node or to be able to run a node, then the system will tend to centralize. And when the system tends to centralize, then you have to be thinking about the capture and political risks associated because if the system becomes overly centralized, are you”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Few years time, if this idea is there, well, then they might choose to use that. Now, of course, everything has trade-offs, and we don't know there could be some other security trade-off or some other availability, something it could be something there. But I think that's definitely an interesting aspect. Now, we're also seeing other approaches. So for example, John Carvalho with synthetics, I believe it's called. His new startup is kind of having a Bitcoin wallet that does Bitcoin and Lightning. And I believe Tether because it's kind of like there's an ownership relationship there with, I believe, with Bitfinex or Tether, either or. But that's like another way of having everything all in one app, right? You've got Bitcoin and Lightning and Tether all in the one app. So that's another possibility. And so that might be an interesting angle also.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so strike and HRF have put up, I believe it was a one Bitcoin bounty for somebody who's able to create, now I don't know the details of it, but essentially it was an interesting idea came across my feed. Now, I think there are others who, let's say short bits, right? So they're a team working on DLC and Chris Stewart from Short Bit and Nadav Cohen are definitely good ones to speak to on this kind of thing because they could speak to it at a level that I'm kind of able to give a very high level explanation someone like Chris Stewart or Nadfahn could probably go in more depth there. But yeah, that's essentially the idea and it represents an interesting thing because when you think about it like what are regulators going to be able to stop then if they if this gets if this ends up being built into Bitcoin, let's say it comes in two or three years time, well, maybe people use stablecoins for the here and now, right? The tethers and USDCs of the world and others.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in a similar kind of way, I think that's kind of the idea of like a lightning stable coin, although it might not be exactly the same as Lightning today because it might not have multi-hop. For example, in the Lightning Network today, it can route through multiple parties. Whereas in this case, it would be more like a one-to-one aspect. But I think it might be a couple of years before we really get that coming to fruition and actually being available. There are other efforts being done. One, I like when I was in El Salvador for La Bitconf, some of the money on chain guys were talking to me. And that's basically like a stablecoin that they're doing using RSK. Now, being honest, I haven't looked into in depth in how that works, but that's another idea that people are exploring.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Technological approaches and not necessarily like their kind of algorithmic stablecoin in the sense that let's say from 2017 era, what we're talking about here is more like technology that allows people to replicate the value of say one USD or 100 USD in Bitcoin. So this might be something that comes in the future using this DLC technology, although it does require some updates and changes to the Bitcoin protocol. So this is an area where I'm sort of getting to the edge of what I could explain accurately. But essentially the idea is that you might load in a certain number of sats based on what that price is and you might have to load in a bit more than that because obviously there's price movement. And then the other person, the other side of that trade is the one who's one side is being is like offering the offer. The other side is the one who wants the stability. And so then they would have to true up at the end. And just like now in a lightning channel, like”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Came in El Salvador. So I was there for adopting Bitcoin and Low Bitconf and talking to people there, I definitely got the sense a lot of people really like the use of stablecoins there. Now, I'm not a stablecoin guy myself. I'm just Bitcoin only. But I see stablecoins as kind of like a crypto fiat, right? Like they're just kind of looking for a way to get some US dollar exposure. And for better or worse, that seems to be what a lot of people there want. So then it seems like, well, the market now has stable coins, right? There's the likes of Tether and USDC and others that they are able to use, whether that's for loans or to try to, if they're trading around, of course, my preferred answer would just be everyone just go straight to Bitcoin, you know, that's not realistic. I think there will be people who just use it like a bridging step. And so whether that's people trying to use it for payments for services, they're using stablecoins, but then that also brings the question of, well, could there be tech?”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or we need some kind of identification that potentially we don't know what direction they come down there. But I also think we are going to see more technological development around synthetic US dollar. And so there are ideas around this being done like what some people have termed stable channels or also arguably called DLC stablecoins, right? So like this idea of a discrete logarithmic contract stablecoin. which is essentially like the idea that you might have a lightning channel with somebody and it would be actually a contract for difference in the background. And so we might load some sats and then try to true up based on the price, the real USD price. So that might be an interesting technological direction. And of course, I'm sure you're aware, but just for listeners, HRF and Strike recently put up a bounty for, I think it's a one Bitcoin bounty. I can't recall. But essentially they are looking for somebody to create that. Essentially, there are a lot of people, and I recently”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, it's grown a lot. I don't have the number off the top of my head, but yeah, definitely it's absolutely true. They've grown massively over the last year or two. I think the demand for them isn't just in our Bitcoin and crypto world. It's actually people even just in other countries who just want US dollar exposure. And they found it easier for whatever reason to hold USD stablecoins than to try to get physical cash or maybe they just found it more convenient because they could transact. To your point, the regulation aspect of it is that typically with the stablecoins, it's only KYC, know your customer, AML anti-money laundering. A lot of those requirements seem to only come at the beginning, at the end of the process there and where people who are just kind of interacting inside that closed loop, there's not as much control being leveraged there by the government into regulatory controls around who spends what to wear and sells and whatever. So it remains to be seen what happens there. If the US government does try to clamp down further on the stablecoins and say, no, even for each intermediary step, we need care.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not really coming around Bitcoin to seem like, for better or worse, it seems like they sort of see it like, oh, Bitcoin, that's just your little store of value coin. You guys can do whatever you want with that. But stablecoins, okay, we're regulating that. And obviously securities, we're regulating that. That's, again, that's as I, as I, as a relative outsider in that sense, I'm not an American myself, though obviously as a Bitcoin podcaster myself, I try to stay up on the space and what's going on. It seems to me like if there were actions coming from that side, it might be more against altcoins and maybe regulation on stable coins is probably the most likely aspect that I can see. Now in the future, it could well be that Bitcoin becomes a political football, just like lots of other things. And there might be arguments about proof of work, energy usage. There might be arguments about inequality. There might be arguments about all sorts of aspects.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Constance to the SEC, the big question everyone seems to ask is what about the spot ETF, right? And so there's different concerns. I've seen people share concerns about rehypothecation or using Papercoin to suppress the price of Bitcoin in the physical, in the spot markets. I think broadly speaking, it seems like a lot of the regulatory attention and pressure is coming more around stablecoins. It's not really coming around.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has to do that. And I think Taproot was a great example of a decentralized effort because you had people like that and you had people like, I believe Hampus Schoburg, who set up the taproot.watch website and all these other people who are contributing in their own little way, whether that was reviewing or helping explaining what this was or trying to write code and trying to help the miners get on board as well. People trying to pressure the exchanges saying, hey, CZ and Binance, please support Taproot. We want Taproot. And so I think that is probably a good example. I mean, there was arguments internally about how to do it, right? About how to activate”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. And I think that's an important distinction because you see so often hacks happen in the altcoin world and then they just say, oh, look, we're just going to pause the network. We couldn't pause the Bitcoin network. We couldn't say, hey, hey guys, stop trading. Hey guys, stop transacting. We can't stop them. So how do we coordinate these things? Well, it takes work. It takes individuals who put their hand up and try to coordinate things. I mean, even if I'm thinking back to the taproot soft fork, which is now activated in Bitcoin, but it took work. It took work from hundreds of reviewers of taproot code. It took work from the likes of, for example, Alejandro Dilatore. So he used to be at Pull-In and now he's got his own consulting operation going. And he went around trying to find, ask all the miners, hey, are you interested to run Taproot?”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are getting sued by Craig Wright and others, and that can, and it can be a bit, there can be some pressures for the developers and contributors in Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin in general. So it seems like there can be like flame wars and things going on online, and that's always been the way. But it's not necessarily the most attractive thing from that point of view. But at the same time, now the flip side argument would be, no, actually, this is going to be the future of the world's money having a chance to work on that and contribute to that is incredible and would represent working on just like this incredible pinnacle of what an incredible project, what an incredible civilizational infrastructure Bitcoin is for mankind. And so working on that should be seen as like a very prestigious thing. And maybe that's part of where things go in five, ten years time.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So of course they would follow the incentive there, right? But it would still be a pretty tough coordination problem, right? Because again, there's no king, there's no person in charge. Okay, let's say Adam Back comes out and says, look, guys, I think this is the right way. Well, I don't know. Is that even, but look, I do think that for better or worse, people would not let that kind of thing happen. And there, of course, is a lot of effort around Bitcoin development. That said, oftentimes the bottleneck is actually around review time, right? Having skilled contributors. And I think if you would ask this question maybe a couple years ago, or if we had been considering this question a couple of years ago, we might have been thinking, well, okay, we need some more funding for Bitcoin review, like Bitcoin Core review. And I think now it's actually that there is funding. The bottleneck might actually be more like getting enough people who are skilled enough and want to work on Bitcoin because there can be challenges to it too, right? Some Bitcoin”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Million, I think essentially there would be a bunch of developers who come out with a patch or some kind of code and they would then essentially have to be able to convince enough people to be able to roll to that roll their node back to that and you would be relying on let's say the node implementation software people to also help make it easy because not everyone's technical, right? So the likes of Umbral and Ronan Dojo and Rasweble Blitz and MyNode and Start9 and someone would have to make their stuff work for that too. What else? You'd have to make sure you'd have to try to get all the exchanges and the miners on board. That said, I believe the miners would follow where the quote-unquote economic majority went.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's an interesting question. And I think you could argue from one point of view, you could say, well, what if the people couldn't agree on what was the correct chain to go back to and what would the right checkpoint be? Like if let's say it wasn't something that everyone agreed straight away, oh, that was wrong. It was actually something that got discovered later on. And it would then be like, oh, wait a minute, we'd have to like go back and figure out what's the right point to go back to and what if people had transacted in that time are they just well too bad sorry too bad so sad right But yeah, look, broadly, I think the reason you and I and many other people are into Bitcoin is because, well, very chiefly is the 21 million cap. And we would never ever want that to be changed. I mean, the truth of the matter is the actual amount is a bit less than that because there are some cases where obviously coins got lost and some coins were never claimed when they should have been. There were some examples where there were bugs and coins weren't claimed. But assuming just, you know, for simplicity, say 21.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right I could think of maybe, I mean, look, even though I'm extremely bullish on Bitcoin, I think it's going literally $10 to $20 million per coin in today's terms, right? Or something in that range eventually. I don't know when. But it is a risk for people to think it's inevitable. We can't just say, oh, it is important to not get complacent because there have been bugs in Bitcoin's past, right? There was the famous buffer overflow, I think 84 billion Bitcoins were created in 2010. Now, of course, that's an early example. There was another inflation bug that did not get exploded in 2018. And so that's another example where that could really injure the confidence or the perception of Bitcoin.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their sovereignty seriously enough to actually hold their own keys, and that if all the coins end up being held in certain large custodians that then become equivalent to the Fort Knox or to the other well-known gold vault that can be captured and could that impact or impinge on the qualities of the system. I think those are a few examples.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm with you. I don't get that question either. I would say that is a little bit more of a newcoiner question, right? It's the common one. They think, oh, 51% attack. That's probably not the one that most people are thinking of in their mind. Like once people have been sort of further down the rabbit hole, I think they turn their attention more to other questions like, will the system get captured? That might actually be more of a risk, like that if everything was to be captured, let's say potentially if there are certain supply overhang arguments that I spoke about actually recently with BJ Boy Party as well, that potentially if there was to be a Gox supply back from 2013 supply overhang of all these new people who received these coins and if they decide to sell them, could that slow down the growth of the Bitcoin network? Maybe another idea would be, and kind of related to the capture idea, is that if not enough people actually take”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of physical box, but nevertheless, it is a lightning node and it's all part of the journey. So I think certainly the El Salvador story and news around legal tender helped drive more professional interest in Bitcoin and Lightning Node management, whether you are open node or whether you are Chiva Wallet or whether you are EBEX Mercado or some other company looking to sell services and using the Lightning Network in El Salvador. So I think that is also another aspect of a stress test that we are going to see that we have been seeing and we are continuing to see.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These aren't necessarily even what we would, you know, you and I would term hardcore Bitcoin people. These are people who just want to use the service. And as part of that, they're actually without really knowing too much about it. They're running a Bitcoin node in the background. Now, admittedly, these are more like VPS nodes, virtual private server nodes, as opposed to like, you know, the Umbral or the MyNode or the Raspberry Blitz.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In lightning channels, something like that. And that's in public channels, not even counting the private or unannounced channels that we know exist between some of the large exchanges. So that's just an example. And we've seen probably last I saw, I think it's over 15,000 or over 20,000 lightning nodes are out there now. Whereas I recall in October of 2019 at the Lightning Conference around in those days it was maybe 6,000 lightning nodes were in existence at that point. And so we had to say we have seen a big explosion in the growth of lightning nodes. I think part of that is community involvement, enthusiasm. We're seeing a lot of pleb node runners who just want to support the network and they're interested and it's part of their own learning journey that they want to run a Bitcoin node. And then of course we're seeing the professionalized operators as well. And also we are seeing some services like for example Zion this attempt to create a more decentralized social media and as part of becoming joining on that network you're running a lightning node.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're right to say that and to point that out. I think I don't know the exact numbers, but it's probably something like 1,500 coins that were on the network at roughly the start of 2021 towards the end, where probably 4,000 coins were...”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or others, other liquidity providers. And so maybe that's part of what they're doing, and maybe what they're doing is peering or partnering with some merchants and sort of doing a deal where, let's say, maybe they have bit refill vouchers right in the app and they're able to get a percentage there. So maybe that's kind of part of the idea is that it's a convenience layer. And lots of average users will happily pay for convenience. And so maybe that's where the profit comes from for them. But it is yet to be seen, let's say.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think you're right to also point out that as this maturity, as the network matures, we will start to see professionalized routing node operators. And so in the case of the big node operators like Wallet of Satoshi, I mean, they could be charging. I mean, for all we know, the charge to send Bitcoin in a non-custodial permissionless way might actually even charge a premium over what we pay today for credit card payments. And if credit card payments are, I don't know, half percent, one percent if you account for the fraud and so on, then, you know, it might well be that even paying 0.2 to 0.4%, let's say, on the Lightning network is a reasonable trade-off and the users are comfortable with that and they're aggregated across enough users, the likes of all of Satoshi or others can make money even on that. And maybe that's one aspect of what they're doing. Maybe that's one aspect that they are, let's say, a lightning service provider for their customers who are using a lot of Saturday.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in some cases it might be ideological. They want to support this network and they want to make Bitcoin become sound money. So they're kind of ideologically committed to it.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Note to make sure what is the uptime of that, do you know how to back it up? If something went wrong, could you recover it? All of these questions. It's a spectrum, and the idea is we're trying to get people further and further down that funnel such that we can maximally retain the qualities of the system we know and love.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But certainly it might be a caution for people out there to think about how much and think through more carefully. Because what can happen in practice, right? Like I think for people who are really involved and really engaged, they're well aware of what they've got and where it is. But for somebody who, let's say they're more of a casual person or maybe they're somebody who got sent $10 four years ago and they've just sort of left it and forgotten about it. That could be an example. In this case where maybe, and now that $10 four years ago might be worth $100, who knows? And so it's one of those examples where maybe a casual user might lose out and lose some money there. But it is definitely a challenge around the whole trying to improve non-custodial adoption of Bitcoin because there are always trade-offs with these things. So as an example, if you are trying to do everything yourself, well, then that means you might be having to run your own channels. You might have to be doing your own management of that lightning.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So essentially, yeah, that's kind of the main point. But if that node went, like they would need to find a way to ultimately, at the end of the day, you are still using custodial coins, right? So you are reliant, right? If I keep my coins on your node, well, I'm custodial in that case. I'm custodial to you. You're the one actually holding my coins. So generally, though, we would probably say like for most people, lightning should be seen more like their day-to-day spending and not necessarily keeping their savings.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I see, yes, so essentially you are running the risk then that you lose that money, essentially. I mean, it's possible that they try to find people and give them whole, but do you really want to take that chance, right? Although in fairness, I can also understand I'm trying to steal man here. The steelman would be, well, for some people, it's easy to onboard them this way. And then later they can then go and advance up the stack and learn to become non-custodial, right? That would be some of the argument here.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What matters. Yeah, look, I'm with you there on the optionality being point, right? The point is that anyone could, not everybody will, and I think we have to be realistic about that because look, it would be like the equivalent of all of us being email server nerds back in the day and then being annoyed that everyone just uses Gmail instead of running their own email server, right? Maybe in the future that's. But of course we want to make it as easy as possible for people so that that way in some sense the system is more robust. It's less amenable or less prone to capture because the coins and everything is just kind of all distributed so much so that no one person, company, government, whatever could compromise the system and sort of capture it in a way that would hurt the qualities of Bitcoin that we really like, like this idea of permissionlessness, this idea of inflation resistance and these related ideas.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Able to trace it back, well, it's because when you spend Bitcoin, your wallet has to select from those UTXOs in its pool, if you will, or in its wallet. And what people can do if you are a chain surveillance firm, such as chain analysis, elliptic, cipher trace, some of these others, they are applying these kinds of probabilistic techniques to try to say, ah, look, these coins were spent together, therefore they must be controlled by the same person, or we have figured out that this is let's say the cold storage of this exchange A and that's cold storage of exchange B, but look, we saw it come out to there and go to this person and then this person later paid me and I can see, okay, now I can trace back and see that person's financial history. For some people, it's not a concern. They're not really thinking as deeply about it. But in the future, it could present more of a privacy and it could actually represent a security risk as well if they were to know.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stack because let's say, I mean, hypothetically, let's say someone was a whale, you know, let's say you're a Michael sailor or some, you know, you're someone with like, you know, massive number of coins, you don't necessarily want to spend directly out of that coin because they might then know how many coins you've got because they could look on the blockchain and see, oh look, look at the change output, there's 10,000 Bitcoin going back to that guy. He must be rich. Okay, then that could create a personal security issue for you. The way I think of it is you might want to be wary about that and carve off a small amount into your CoinJoin wallet as an example, like Samurai Wallet or Sparrow wallet. And you could then or join market as another example. And you could run CoinJoin and then spend out of that CoinJoined balance to which an outsider reserve, if they try to look at that on the chain, they weren't necessarily able to trace that back. Now maybe I could explain that just a little bit better. One aspect of how they”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Coin join, we can think of it like let's say we got down at a table and everyone was blindfolded. Let's say we each had a $10 note and what we're doing is somehow if you could sort of make it so that you could all shuffle around those $10 notes and then pick out and we knew atomically, you knew for certain that they weren't going to run off with their $10, you would put in $10 and get back a different $10 note. You can sort of think of it a bit like that. And so the way CoinJoin operates is it's there to try to break the deterministic links between how we spend our coins. And so what that does is it makes it more difficult for somebody who's an outside observer trying to surveil what's going on on the chain, as it were. And so that's one way that people can give themselves a little bit more privacy in terms of when they are spending coins so that people don't necessarily know how much you've got in your overall”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 20 other people, and we're all sharing that UTXO. So that's how the idea could scale and allow for more and more people to still have some level of self-sovereignty. Although, of course, it is a spectrum.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were sent to the same address, if that makes sense, and so what's actually going on in the background is your wallet is having to select which UTXO it's using when it's spending and so on. But to the point I was saying, that UTXO set has a scaling limitation. And it's just literally not going to be feasible for everyone on Earth. Let's say there's 8 billion of us. It's just not, it's nowhere near feasible for everyone to actually hold their own coin in that UTXO sense. then that brings the question, well, okay, what can we do about this? What can we do to make it possible? And so some of the ideas, as I was saying, are relating to multiple people holding or holding a piece of a coin, let's say, of a UTXO. And so that's where, let's say, if we have, let's say we're living in the advanced world where maybe we got any provout and we have the L2 lightning network and then let's say instead of having a lightning channel between you and me, Preston, it might be like a lightning channel between you, me.”
2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT