The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last 10 seconds, the sharpest sitoshis, the best Bitcoin, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Theo Goodman from Transmission Rocks. Hello, Internet. Blake Anderson from Facebook.com slash God Blake. Hello, Internet. I'm very excited to be online. Will Pangman from Satoshi's social. Welcome. Derek J. Freeman from Free Talk Live. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue number one as my computer totally freezes. Oh, wow. Issue one, Bitcoin's war could threaten its survival. The Bitcoin block size debate hit the mainstream media this week with CNBC weighing in on the conflict that could tear Bitcoin to shreds. The block size debate on one side is Jeff Garzaic, Bitcoin core developer who says that we must raise the block size to allow for more transactions and a faster Bitcoin network. On the other side of the miners who say they don't want the block size raised, as they'd have to do more work for the same reward. Blake Anderson, bigger blocks. Oh, this is a good question. I mean, as an eventuality, we're going to have to have block sizes that enable more than seven transactions per second. I think that that's pretty much incontrovertible if Bitcoin's going to continue to grow in the way that people expect for it to. I think a good example to use is right now Bitcoin's kind of like in first year with that block size and it works really well that way. The car is not moving at full speed and we shift the car irreversibly into fifth gear while it's at low speed. That could have some negative impact. I know this is not a good technical description of what's going on here, but that's kind of the nature of this debate. A lot of people are saying, if we keep the block sizes smaller, that's more robustness, that's more security per transaction. There's some things infrastructureally that are desirable in keeping the block size small. But if the block size is too small, there's too many transactions and it creates a backlog. We don't have a way of dealing with that. That's not good either. I think that the worst thing that we could do is make a snap judgment and then change to a different block size without everybody being on board and creating a fractured environment. But at the same time, people are acting like this is a really, really huge problem. It's not a really small problem, but the technology that Bitcoin exists on already is here. I think that we should be able to take some comfort in the fact that even if something goes really wrong, it'll either be repairable or we can start a new blockchain or it could be a fork, this isn't something that is going to completely kill Bitcoin in a way that nobody ever thought was going to happen before. I just want to try to avoid people away from that opinion. You totally lost me with this stuff about the car. Blockchain, engine block, I'm not sure. Theo Goodman. I like Jeff Garzick's proposal and I agree with Blake that we should not go with a snap decision. Let's think about this. I think the media and the members of public are going to have a little bit of a difficult time grasping what's going on. This is not like a top-down company and other things they're used to where how the decisions are made. It's kind of like a weird family, I guess. I can't really, there's not really a way to describe it. It's kind of like a family, but we don't all know each other. We're connected through the blockchain. That's how I would kind of describe it. We're going to have some nice headlines like this and I do not think the so-called war will break Bitcoin. In fact, this whole discussion is going to make everything stronger in the whole discussion. Just think about all the stuff you learned about block size since this became a hot topic. There's a lot of discussion, a lot of people, more people getting involved, non-technical people trying to figure out what this is, what's on the table, etc. I think the discussion is really important, but let's not make a snap decision. Under right, the obit coins of family, much like the gathering of the jugalos is a family. Don't know what a jugalos is, look it up. Will Pangman. Obviously, most people agree the block size does need to be increased. I do like Jeff Garza's proposal. The other guys are right. There are economic consequences to what's being proposed and all the levels of the proposals that are out there. I like to think that the core developer community, which includes Gavin and Mike Kern, I would argue, also, who are being more radical in their approach to these changes. Jeff Garza is trying to play the middle. Then you have who a lot of people suspect are Satoshi Nakamoto, which is Dr. Adam Back, Dr. Peter Willie, and Dr. Vladimir as well. These three guys who all work for blockstream, by the way, are very much more conservative in their approach. I guess I should take that back. I'm not sure Dr. William, Dr. Vladimir, work for blockstream, I believe they do, but I'm not sure. Certainly, Dr. Vactis. Anyway, they're asking for more debate on how these changes should be implemented in the future and less debate on how extreme the block size increase should be, should there be in all the parameters of the block size debate itself. I think that is the actual debate. How do protocol level changes in Bitcoin that impact the entire network get implemented going forward? It's not a matter of how much should we increase the block size? That's the real debate. I think Gavin and Mike Hurn, I'm not sure if they mean to do this, but they certainly are with their radical approach and their heavy hand in this. I'm sorry, Mike Hurn has been very ham-fisted in the past with a commit to the Bitcoin core that temporarily broke Bitcoin, forked Bitcoin, and caused people to lose money. That was fixed pretty quickly. This is how antifragile Bitcoin works. That's the point. It's not so much about the block size. It's more about how these changes get implemented. That's really where the debate should be and there should be a lot more computer science in that debate and less economic theory and all these other things in that debate, in my opinion, because that's where you get the sensationalism, the alarmism. Anytime I see alarmism on a contentious issue, that is a dead giveaway of really, I don't know, just not the right answer, I guess, just to be nice. And bring some motion into it, a lot of motion-bring. So look out for the alarmism, stick close to the computer science, and I think we can come to a good answer, and I think Jeff's on the right track, Jeff Garzik's on the right track. Well, eventually, haven't increased in the block size, no matter what happens. There will be no catastrophes. There will be no total wholesale breaking of Bitcoin, unless you see something like Bitcoin and then the next T gets shoved down everyone's throats and then the miners have a war over which fork of the chain to follow. That will be a big problem and that's where the alarmism is taking us. So let's back off from that. I did see a good article this morning on Reddit, where they said, let's remember that the court of developers are all computer scientists, not one of them is an economist. So we might- Well, not all of them are- I advise here, this is a really complex situation. That's a good point, but I should point out not all of them are computer scientists. Gavin and Mike are not computer scientists, although they've been very close with Bitcoin since practically day one. They both were very forthcoming with Satoshi. They both were among the first people to contact Satoshi and work on Bitcoin, volunteer. So their commitments, their contributions are not in question. They're not around this computer science part of the debate as much as they should be. They're pushing too hard in my opinion. I would almost even argue that just a regular economist like your everyday Paul Krugman would actually be like, no, don't put them in. I would actually say that he would want to be an economist and a computer science and have your economic views be fed as tenable through other logically motivated people. Because a lot of modern economists are like, yeah, everything's real estate and stuff. But I made a huge mistake about that, but it was New York Times. So I'm going to go ahead and give a talk over here about some more stuff that's incorrect. So I just hope that we have almost a polymanathic ability of the people that we're going to talk to about this different stuff instead of trying to compartmentalize all the information and then nobody can work as closely together as before. I think that Bitcoin's going to require a lot of people that know a lot of things working together. So hopefully we don't compartmentalize those knowledge sets too much and then have problems. Blake maybe right, only a unicorn could solve our problems. Derek J. Yeah, so the story by CNBC really has me scratching my head about why didn't Satoshi foresee this and put it right into the code as he did with the difficulty. I mean, if the difficulty can be variable and sort of market based, if you will, why shouldn't block size also be? I'd like to see a variable block size. And if that's something that someone could fork the blockchain, make a second Bitcoin and improve on. I'm ready to jump ship. Why not? That sounds like it would have fewer problems down the road. That said, I'm looking for a market based solution for this problem. And oh, okay, thank you. Looks like Bill's adding some commentary. Hopefully he'll be able to fill us in on what he knows there. But I don't see a need for this yet. I haven't, I use Bitcoin every day and I don't have transactions being too slow. I don't have the blockchain that I keep on my home computer taking up too much space. So I don't see the need for this yet. We're all looking sort of down the road and saying, eventually this is going to be a problem. But why not let the market sort it out? If we customers are people who are upset with the block size, then we will demand us, which is a larger block size. And so the miners, they can throw it dizzy if they want if they're upset about having to do more work for equal pay. But isn't that what we see with Uber and Lyft, these taxi companies complain about having to do more work for equal pay? Well, sorry, that's innovation. That's the market at work. And it's going to make more customers happy. And it's going to drive the people who are doing the most efficient job at mining. It's going to keep them in business and push the rest of us out. Moving on, exit question on a scale of one to ten with one being squat, nothing, but kiss, and ten being absolute metaphysical disaster and destruction on a global scale. How important is the Bitcoin block size debate? Blake Anderson. Well, I mean, it's definitely a material factor as far as what's going on. So I, let's just say five. I'll give a non-answer of five. Leo, good-man. I'm going to go with seven. Will Pangman. Four or five is where I was leaning for the reasons I mentioned in my answer. Derek J. Yeah, I say ten. This is absolutely catastrophic, just not right now. So it's important that we're having this discussion because this, as I said, could lead to me jumping ship from Bitcoin to something more sustainable. The correct answer is seven. Moving on to issue two. Will's screen share load before my computer crashes completely. It's stalling, stalling. Issue two. West Palm Beach men arrested in $1.8 million Bitcoin scheme. Two men in Florida accused of running an unlicensed money transmitting business. The men allegedly exchanged cash for people they knew to be engaging in criminal activity. Could this be where all the hacked and stolen Bitcoin are sold for cash? Story developing. Feel good, man. Your thoughts? Straight up money laundering? Or another Bitcoin entrepreneur bites the dust? Well, I haven't seen any proof of money laundering, so I can't say. I'm also not a lawyer, so just as a disclaimer. But definitely a Bitcoin entrepreneur hitting biting the dust because as I understand, they didn't even try to get the right licenses. So a lot of the ones you'll ask, can they say, do you have money transmitter license or do you have this or that? Well, we applied. We're getting it. They didn't even try, I think. I think they weren't even in the process. It's what I understood. You could debate on if they should have to get one and all that. To me, that's another whole discussion that we're not going to get into because that's a whole other show basically. But I don't know. Nobody. I haven't seen any evidence to say this is where the locker money went or this is where this criminal activity where the money went. There also are definitely legitimate reasons to just do an over-the-counter trade for cash. If it's criminal or not, I haven't seen enough evidence if they were linked to whatever hacks or whatever of Bitcoin. But let's not demonize over-the-counter trading at Bitcoin is pure to peer. So that is going to be including over-the-counter trading as the nature of Bitcoin. Will, payment. So yeah, this is a very deep question here, deep issue because it gets to the heart of a lot of things. What is money laundering in the first place? Money laundering laws or restrictions are basically people who have authority telling other people who don't have the same authority and when they can't use their own money. This is supposed to stop the flow of proceeds from criminal activity. That's the premise or the rationale in the first place for these laws. It does look like from the evidence that I've seen that these guys were aiding and abetting by the letter of the law, the ransomware criminals and so on and so on and so on. I just want to take this apart really quickly because the most damning evidence has to do with this ransomware dealings that they were doing. It's encouraging this ransomware. I don't like when I hear that anyone I know or encountering at all has to deal with ransomware. We used to have people come to the Milwaukee Bitcoin meetup and ask how to get the Bitcoin because they had to deal with ransomware and for a company or a person, you know, home computer. This is hard and I hated seeing this but the point of this is really like ransomware exploits weak systems, weak system in information security, operational security and what happens after ransomware is you overhaul your whole thing and you get it tight and you set up automated ways of highly securing your systems and you actually then pay for the IT that you do need and you don't skimp on it where maybe you did before. So again, there is a positive market consequence to ransomware companies and these guys encouraging this ransomware company is only, you know, I'm not advocating for ransomware whatsoever but this is what we need to look at objectively about how markets work, right? There's a void or a flaw in the system, the market and ransomware exploits it. Some guys thought of this software that exploits it to make a profit and then after that it's patched, you know, so pretty much most of the time. You rarely hear people getting hit twice by ransomware and if they did, I mean, you know, who will you once, right? So the thing is, you know, money laundering aside, these guys were also setting up shell companies and everything I read in this made me think like, yeah, this sucks and this looks pretty shady and all this stuff, of course, but they were compelled into this by the rules as they are in place. These rules don't stop crying, right? They just, they maybe allow for more criminals to be caught in some cases, but they also create new crimes, tons of new crimes that weren't in existence prior to the regulation, the law, or whatever. And that's important to point out when you read through all this stuff, if you're that interested in this case, you'll see how they set up, the way they set up the shell companies, the way they name them, the way they use them is all to navigate this, like, they just wanted to do business clearly, right? And they didn't want to deal with too much of the hassle. And, you know, yeah, they committed crimes by the letter of the law in the process. So yeah, laws and regulations create crime, that's what they do. Derek, do business, these people are criminals will, I mean, I have no sympathy for them whatsoever, screw them, they they rotten hell, they really, they had full knowledge of what was going on, even though this is written from the mainstream perspective, I can tell that these guys were exploiting a system where they knew that people were victimizing others. And then they were saying, well, we'll wipe our hands of this, we'll create a little legal shield for ourselves. And they were sloppy doing it. I might even have some, some, some kudos to throw them if they actually did a good job shielding themselves from legal liability, but they didn't even do that. So the fact that they, another thing is I could actually have their back if they were standing on moral principle, on moral grounds saying, look, yes, we don't get a license and we're proud of that, you know, we don't think that people should have to ask permission to do business with others. But I've been in a position where I've been a clerk selling weapons and I've had to make the difficult choice to say, look, I'm choosing not to do business with you customer because you seem like you're going to do harm with this. And that's in a difficult position for me to be in, but I think that's the business owner's responsibility. License or not. If you are, if you think that something wrong is going on, I mean, how do you not share responsibility in that? Yeah, screw these guys. Yeah, my only, my response is not, you know, I don't, I don't sympathize with them. I don't agree with what they did. You know, I was trying to just kind of share my experience of reading through the material that I've gotten so far and it just makes me feel like, well, the only reason they're doing these things is because of the way these rules are and because ransomware exists and they're see like, oh, we can do a lot of businesses way. We set up trade, a trade channel with, with this customer, right? And like, why, you know, like, I just think more deeply about it. I was trying to get that in a sound bite, but like, why does ransomware exist? Why do money laundering laws, regulations exist? This kind of, this kind of thing. I want people to be thinking about these things and why these holes in the marketplace and these demands for terrible services exist, right? Government creates these demands. Well, humans just aren't very good at computer security yet. We haven't had very long to work on it and there are a lot of holes like this where a script kiddy could come in and expose your security and then like Will said, you have to pay to fix it and hopefully things get better. As InfoSec, Taylor Swift often reminds us, our computers are not ready for what we're about to do. She just had a field day going off on the Jeep that was recently hacked. They remotely stopped a Jeep with a computer. And yeah, even Christophe was like, I don't know if cars should have IP addresses yet. But it's another thing like the MP3 where we don't get to decide that whether we shouldn't have it. The technology decides and the technology keeps moving forward. We will have computer controlled cars even though we aren't ready for it yet. Blake Anderson. Well, I mean, this is actually kind of having to do with a wife, a description I was having with my wife the other night, wherein we have all these positive consequences of the new stuff that's coming, but then we have some negative consequences. One of the negative consequences of having this unregulated market is that people that are prone to scamming like to do so in the medium of Bitcoin because they can get away with longer, etc. So we have all this technology coming through Bitcoin and then we have automatically admissible contracts and stuff that can do what it needs to do in blah, blah, blah. And that's great. That's the positive aspect of this. The negative aspect of all of this is that security and technology are both going really fast, stumbling or one another. People aren't as secure as maybe they should be. We're all using new technology. So now take the brilliance and imagination that would take to create these automatically admissible contracts and make a sophisticated trap out of that. That is going to be a massively, massively giant problem that I'm not sure how we're going to deal with in the future. Well, I have to continually go through and try to fix this stuff. But the type of people that say that the end justify the means and I stole all these old people's Bitcoin's because they're better off and they would have been worse later. But I'm going to make this darbida stuff. That's a Machiavellian untenable argument. You can't go around saying that the end justify the means and build libraries and gunpoint and stuff like that. It's nice to have a library, but you can't do that. So, yeah, this business is obviously making ransomware. Ransomware really makes me mad. I've had to remove ransomware from friends, computers, families, computers, rescue their Bitcoin. I actually sent them have fallen to the same ransomware twice. We can make judgments about how wise they are or not, but it has happened. So honestly, I try to like PIDOS ransomware. As I try to destroy their systems, they make me really, really mad. The risk there is that they're going to transfer through an intermediate and destroy that. So I try to be very careful, but I don't have any sympathy for these people. I think that they are kind of scum of the earth, ransomware, is that don't care who they have to hurt. They just want to, you know, and justify the means. We'll keep rationalizing this how we want. And I have no sympathy for them. That being said, the regulatory stuff that will set is also tenable. When you make more and more and more laws, then you have a system of selective enforcement. Because you can do nothing else. You can't enforce all these laws. Like, let's put every single person's ever smoke weed in jail. That's the dumbest thing ever. You wouldn't be able to do it. It would sink the country overnight. So when you have all these laws, that naval selective enforcement of law, which is the corner from the tyranny, this is very, very quickly getting off and into a bad way. So I can see it from most perspective. I can see it definitely from Derek's perspective, but on a personal and emotional visceral level, I hate these people and hope that they suffer the maximum consequences of what they did. Blake brings up a good point about Machivelli. Remember that Machivelli was most likely kidding. It was satire. He was not saying that it's a good thing to go out and have the ends justify the means. Much like Shakespeare said, if you want to ensure tyranny, the first thing you do is kill all the lawyers. People only listen to the second half of that quote, but the first half is the real key. Tyranny will be insured if we can't be represented. Theo Goodman. I think that I already commented about the four in four. Yeah, four in four. Okay, what's the question? I'm sorry. I think I didn't write an exit, I didn't write an exit questions. We're just going to move on. Let's move on. We're moving on. We're moving on. Here we go. Screen share, activating. Will it work? Get 20% off. Anything on Amazon at purse.io. Thanks to purse for letting me do the show. Please support our sponsors. This is like a legitimate support our sponsor type situation here. Issue three, open bizarre to launch this November. Fresh off their $1 million investment from Andreson Horowitz in Union Square Ventures, open bizarre plans to target unhappy eBay users, giving them the option to use the distributed eBay platform without fees. Theo Goodman, are we happy with this new investor-friendly open version of open bizarre, or could it be so much more? I'm happy with it. I hope they launch soon. If they get money, they have more ability to program because they have more resources. So that's good. Let them get paid. Let them code this stuff. As far as I understand, it's going to be open source. So if I don't like it, I'll just fork it, make my Theo bizarre, or your really bizarre, or whatever other site I can make. I think that we're going to see a lot of these springing up. As soon as people figure out, this is the way to go. eBay is horrible. eBay is so ripe for disruption. I hate using that catchy word disruption, but it's crazy. Just look at that site. Just look at it. It's unbelievable. So I'm just looking at it. Or you just look at it. Just look at it. Yeah. I'm happy with open bizarre, and I think it's good that they got investment. Whatever they have to do, I don't know what the, I don't know the investment contract, or what the deal is, but they're working on open source software. So that's great. Now Theo bizarre, that would truly be bizarre. Will Penguin. Yeah, I've been very excited about this project since I first saw it come into being in April of 2014 in Toronto. That was fantastic. It was under a different name back then. But yeah, the hackathon winner of the 2014 Toronto Bitcoin conference was a mere talkie who created Dark Market, which is what kind of birthed the idea of open bizarre and other folks have taken it and run with it. They got a million bucks from probably the biggest and baddest, maybe not the biggest, but probably the baddest VC firm in Silicon Valley, in recent Horowitz, doing some very cool things. And also on the East Coast, Union Square Ventures, very much a baddest VC firm as well, doing lots of cool disruptive marketplaces all the time on their investors in Etsy for sure. And they're obviously very happy about that one. So yeah, I'm super excited for OpenBizarre to be launched. I have tons of ideas for people. I can't wait to start evangelizing OpenBizarre and giving ideas away for free for how people in their current life style and daily routine can launch stores on OpenBizarre with just none of the headaches that are usually experienced in starting OpenCommerce business, right? And giving people more access to micro-entropreneurship and working from home and that working from home is great. Everyone wants to do it, who can't do it, or thinks they can't do it. They'll be with their families longer, more time, more quality time. It's all just good. So I've got tons of ideas to help people with OpenBizarre ideas no matter where you are in the world or the country. That's just, I've got a list actually running. But yeah, this is great. This is a great project. And it's just going to be really cool to see it catch on. Let's try to get this adoption quickly, how the gates... I was stoked to hear what you were going to say, because actually I heard about OpenBizarre from you. You were the person that told me about it and that it was cool. I was hoping that you'd go a little bit more nuts than you did, but I guess you did a pretty good job of celebrating the awesome technology it represents. Derek, Jay, I am really excited about OpenBizarre. I've been following this for a long time, and the alternative markets that can serve people. I remember the days of BitMit. And we've been trying to do this online marketplace through Bitcoin thing for a while. And what I think is strange about this coin telegraph article is that it refers to the donation as an investment. And I would call it a donation, because I don't see how they're really going to make any money without charging fees. But if I were someone who was really rich and I saw the potential for Thomas to invent the wheel, but I had to spend some time to do that, I would say here's some money, Thomas, because I think the innovations that are going to come from you inventing the wheel are going to serve humanity so greatly that I'm going to make my money back in a million. A million other ways. So, Kudos to the people who have supported OpenBizarre. I think it's also really cool, just as a side note, that they named their company OB-1. So, and it should be mentioned while we're having this discussion, sort of how it works. The innovation behind OpenBizarre is that markets or business people will serve their companies for lack of a better term on nodes, and so it'll be decentralized much like Bitcoin itself. And so, I just see this as an obvious next step for trade on the internet. Now that we have this technology, it's going to be used, and the people who are programming it need to be funded. So, I'm just so excited. Can't wait to see it be unveiled. And if you're impressed with the wheel, wait until you see wheel 2.0, we're going to make it square. Blake Anderson. I love square wheels, man. I put them on all my stuff, and then, you know, eventually they get round again, and then you've got to take them off and put the square wheel back on. But it's always worth it when they're, when they're sharply square at the beginning, I love that. Well, no, I mean, the good points all around. I'm trying to get really macro on this. Everybody talked about the micro and the semantic. Let's get really macro. Echanologists study human action. It sounds to me a lot like, open bizarre is going to facilitate a shitload of human action. Really, really easily, a little bit faster than robustly. And that's good. Like, if we're going to try to take the subjectivity out of good and be like, what is good, can we quantify good? That's some pretty good stuff. Like, I think it would be hard press for somebody to come and bring controversy to the fact that's good. It's incontrovertibly a good thing. Open bizarre is going to be great. And just like Derek said, if you're going to, you know, donate and invest into something, and it's going to reduce friction in all of human action, we please do that. You owe that to yourself and everybody else to be like, maybe a couple of cents here and there to affect some positive change. Moving on to issue number four. Loading, loading. Issue four, NASDAQ reveals plan to upgrade existing financial system with the help of the blockchain, the love affair between NASDAQ and Bitcoin. Sorry, excuse me, the blockchain has it continued unabated since the powerful stock market firm made a deal with a Bitcoin infrastructure company chain. The new NASDAQ stock market of the future powered by blockchain will be new, revolutionary, amazing, or just the same with a different back end. I ask you, Derek J. I have no idea how this is actually going to work. Have they explained it to anyone? It's going to use chain. Well, what is chain? I have never heard of it. Chain is a company that provides blockchain infrastructure services. For a little while, they're doing a little plugin on IFTTT that you tweet out how much money you received on a Bitcoin address. It was pretty cool, but this whole stock market thing sends a lot more serious than the little IFTTT plugin. Okay, so my initial reaction is it's really cool that a company called Chain Exists and they serve the product that they've got. It sounds like if NASDAQ can actually use this and it's confident enough to use it to have a major article written about them implementing this, then it's going to be helpful for many other companies as well. And I'm not crazy about NASDAQ, but I am crazy about markets. And so I'd like to see how I could possibly use this, or how maybe people on OpenBizarb might be able to implement this, even necessary. Although I have to admit, I'm a little confused about what it is and how it works. Blake Anderson, tell us what it is and how it works. Well, my first reaction is like, well, yeah, why won't you plan on doing this a long time? I'm going to go like, where have you been? You worked for the NASDAQ, you work in technology, you work in payments, like just now, you're like, oh, maybe this blockchain thing that everybody's talking about for so long is something that I can just go through the clip, no diversion of what they said and implement myself, go to, you know, a billion dollar better system here. It just, I don't know, that part frustrates me. But aside from that, let's focus on the positive that I think that what's going to happen is eventually if they use the fundamental blockchain technology and not just the side chain, and I think that there will be reasons that will eventually drive them into interactivity coin. People that are investing in technology and the NASDAQ and things like that are going to be like, oh, we have this inflationary stock market, this based upon future gains, the companies can be badly managed overnight. And stuff like that, let's go into the new, mathematically provable digital scarcity that's available through this different thing. And I think it's going to be a Chinese finger, a finger trap where they put their fingers in both ends and like, oh, we didn't really like that. And, you know, hopefully he had a reason for, you know, avoiding it for so long. Hopefully now that he thinks that it's safe to jump in, he's wrong. And the Leviathan eats the NASDAQ. So it's what I'm hoping happens here. So Theo, good. I think it's really cool that they're experimenting with this stuff. I do believe they're so using the word experimenting. And you have to realize that these are exchanges. They're compete, it's a competition, it's a market of markets competing against each other. And that is a big motivation. Because now everybody, when you think of what, what stock exchange is using blockchain things, NASDAQ, that's they want to be associated with that technology. Now, whether they're really able to do it, and if it works, and what they're doing, and all that, well, that's secondary. First of all, what's important is they get media attention that they're doing cool stuff that's high tech related to Bitcoin. And they get attention because, you know, it's NASDAQ against New York stock exchange, against Deutsche Bozer, against, you know, all these exchanges, they compete for relevance. And there are also our mergers within these exchanges. Sometimes it's okay, should we buy them out and buy them out and all this kind of stuff, just like there are also companies. So I think it has a lot to do with that. That's my opinion. And I think it's really cool what they're doing, what we know so far about what they're doing. And let's see how this develops. Thea is right. In the near future, I hope to buy all of my drugs on the silk NASDAQ. Will Pangman. Well, I'm surprised, nobody mentioned this, but the, I think the most important thing about this whole story is even though the mainstream publications are financial threats, whoever's covering this, including CoinDesk, they keep referring to, oh, NASDAQ's using blockchain technology, blockchain, blockchain, they're actually using chain.com, which is, as Thomas mentioned, it's a Bitcoin core API developer. And also open assets, which is another Bitcoin-based smart contracts sort of metal layer to Bitcoin's blockchain. And so all of this is not on Bitcoin technology, but actually on Bitcoin itself. And I think this would be a lot cooler. I know you wrote here, is it revolutionary, amazing, or mostly just the same? Well, if they keep calling it blockchain, it won't be revolutionary or amazing. But when they call it, when they start actually being honest with everyone and saying, oh, this is Bitcoin itself. And here are the other extended technologies that we're using on Bitcoin. That will be revolutionary. That will be exciting. That will get people's heads turning. Exit question, which will be more successful, NASDAQ's blockchain, overstocks Medici, or Counterparty, Derek J. I would have to guess Counterparty. Oh, Blake Anderson. I would go with Medici just because they got their stuff together before the NASDAQ did. And I think the Counterparty is going to more for a little bit, but I think Medici will stay around. Theo Goodman. I'm going to have a different answer and that they're all going to be successful, but different successful. Will Pangman. I'm inclined to agree with Theo. And I definitely think Medici, along with Blake, will show us the way forward. They're going to learn from these experiments and tests being done by NASDAQ. And they've also already learned from Counterparty. They started with two Counterparty founders as part of the project. So it's clear that Patrick Bern, he's very smart and he's got the right people on the project. It sounds like if he doesn't yet, he certainly got the right researchers and organizers on the project, I think. So yeah, I think Medici long-term and it will learn from the others and they'll all have some measures of success. The correct answer is NASDAQ. NASDAQ. Moving on to questions and answers. Our first question from Infinite Radio. Why can't we test the two blockchains in a closed system? And I do think this is happening to some degree with a Bitcoin XT, which Mike Herndt developed, which is, I believe, a bigger block size, which is being tested. So I think they can test it, but they can't test it to the extent they need to test it, right Blake? Do they need like tons of hashing power to really see if this works? Or is it a matter of they have to accept it? The miners have to vote for it by mining it. Yeah, I mean, there's several different issues. When Derek was talking earlier, why didn't Satoshi just make this variable before? Well, if he was going to make it variable, then what you're making is just like I was talking about a car with gear ratios. You don't know what the gear ratios with the car should be. The car from the use force is going to toe-heavy shit. Is it going to do a high speed race around a track? You need to know what the gear ratios should be for the system before you program it. So it's been programmed with a static, you know, one megabyte block did Satoshi think about this or not. I mean, there's reasons that you would want to start the car in first gear and then move along and then, you know, possibly use that data to inform your path better. So it's, you know, can we split and do two different blocks? You're a side-going to test it. The thing that we're testing is the amount of users that Bitcoin has, so that would be difficult. So I mean, yeah, it's a really, really good question. We can figure out a way to do that. That'd be righteous, but it's not immediately clear as far as how right now. So, so we, there can be testing done and a lot more testing in this fashion when side chains, you know, comes out. When, when side chains come out, that does anybody have a tenable argument for side chains yet though? I mean, it seems like the most tenable technology. I'm with you guys on the wait and see approach for sure, but certainly that provides the laboratory. That my wait and see approach has been downgraded to like show me something that's not stupid. I'm a little less critical. I'm a little less critical than you, but I'm certainly, you can train a peg to asset and stuff. Like I need like somebody like somebody sending some stuff about, you know, side chains that's tenable and this isn't about side chains. This is about those laboratories of experimentation for testing two forks and things like that. Side chains theoretically will provide this and yeah, it's a theoretical long-term solution, but I don't see enough progress there to put our eggs in that path. The main point I want to make, the main point I want to make is you can test this till your eyes turn blue. You're going to have, and you can't ever test it to, you can't ever fully test it for two reasons. One, you're never going to be able to replicate the network size of Bitcoin to do any reasonable testing. And two, there's that crucial point where is it live or is it a test and how the network nodes or miners or participants in the network choose to behave in a test, in a known test, versus live. And with, in the case of a fork, right, you have to make a choice and then you don't look back, really. So that choice in a test environment is, the factors going into that judgment are much different than in a live environment. So we're not going to know anything until the live, you know, until it runs live. Very good and infinite radio follows up here. Let me try to get his follow up question in, loading. Oh, it's in the way. He says, it seems if we can set up a simulation of the global weather system to predict the future weather, we can set up a paper blockchain simulation to test the two blockchain variables that we're arguing about. Sounds very reasonable, but again, I think it is we have to have the entire network testing. The big point touches only thing that touches technology, it touches economics, it touches sociology and human opinion. When you have all three of those things working together, it should start to spiral out of control fast as far as consideration. And that's just that's just the facts, I think. Yeah, you can't back test a dysfunctional family. Very good. Moving on to the next question from SilverMiner. Any thoughts on the coin sillium IPO on the London Stock Exchange? I haven't really heard of this. So do you guys have any opinions on it? Yeah, I mean, I think that public money raising and stuff so that people can get their value out of companies that they've helped to get into by being paid with shares. Okay, I go to work for a company, I want a lot of money, I'm like a smart guy or whatever in this company who wants to pay me a lot, but they don't have a lot, but we're going to build something valuable. If the company's never IPO or go public and people have shares of that company, generally problems are created, I want to get too deep into that. But if we have public offerings of Bitcoin companies starting to say that that's a good thing is a hypermassive understatement. I think that Simon Dixon and the platform bank, the future, is involved in this whole thing. And I think we're going to see more IPOs based out of London and their whole project. And I think it's very interesting. So let's keep an eye out and see what happens. I'd like to see the coin sillium IPO happen on BTC instead of London Stock Exchange. Wouldn't that be something? Moving on to the next question. Wouldn't BTC use the counter party platform? And this was originally believed when they were announced. Then it was said that they were hiring some counterparty developers, but then it turned out they might have hired them away from counterparty rather than hired them to work on counterparty. So it's been a little unclear how BTC is going to be, I keep saying it wrong, going to be related to counterparty. So let's see. Back to another question. Eric says, what do you guys think of the tone of Bitcoin articles that seem to downplay Bitcoin? I'm not sure if you mean Bitcoin articles from Bitcoin publications or the mainstream media, but the mainstream media seems to have a steady tone of Bitcoin is dying, Bitcoin is having a crisis, Bitcoin is falling apart type articles. And sometimes that's true. Sometimes it is falling apart. The only thing that I had a tweet about this just the other day that more and more and more Bitcoin articles in the Bitcoin space are feeling like payola scandals. If you remember the payola scandals of here, we'll pay you to play this on the radio and then I'll hold it and get it pocketed and our record company makes a lot of money and they're like, you can't do that. That's payola. That's what it feels like a lot of the Bitcoin publications are doing. Like, whatever Bitcoin startup or company gave me a ton of money, so I'm going to write this giant article and stuff. We're not going to disclose any of that. Like that, that bothers me. But that's a separate issue than the mainstream media, which is like, well, Bitcoin is not an organization that can hold us accountable for slander and libel and all that kind of stuff. So we just say whatever we want, whatever is going to sell the most magazines, we'll just say whatever the hell we want about Bitcoin sell lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff. And then who's going to come hold to accountable? Pretty much nobody except for maybe Blake Anderson will complain about our bullshit, but like that's nobody cares about that. So I love the mainstream media downplaying Bitcoin. I love it. Every time they do it, so that fud, the fear uncertainty and doubt, I want it. Because the people who are reading these articles and really digesting them, who care and have a mind to learn about Bitcoin, they're going to see through that stuff. I'm not interested in more players on the field who just are following the whims of the mainstream media. Rather, they be, you know, following a wholesome where. But the people who actually have head on their shoulders are going to see through the mainstream media saying, oh, well, there's no central authority and it's not backed by governments. We're going to see that as a good thing. And I do think Blake has a good point on the various Bitcoin publications selling articles. They might be thinking they're just giving an interview. They might be thinking we're just giving a positive piece, but if you don't put sponsored article on the article and you're paid for the article, that's not right. And it's also very questionable how and if these publications are paying their writers. I do believe the writers are experts should be treated as experts and should be paid as experts. I've heard stories of Bitcoin, in Bitcoin, sorry, I don't want to name anyone, but Bitcoin groups that don't pay people for articles. They don't pay people in Bitcoin. And even now, there's things going around where the only value that your article has is how many times it's shared on social media. They have a very strange formula they use. And usually at the end, the company gets to keep all the money and the writers get nothing. So I'm not in favor of that at all. One more thing to add. I think this to your point about journalism is about following the golden rule. If you were someone who was reading an article, wouldn't you want to know what sort of incentive this person had writing it? I think it's just fair to be upfront about I was paid to do this. This is the perspective I'm coming from. That's what I would expect others to do for me and that's what I would do for them. And just because you're writing on the internet doesn't mean that it's not journalism anymore. It's still journalism even on the internet. It's argued more and more journalism because you're not paid to go make some sensationalist bullshit for some company that's like, well, you know, you didn't really get as many clicks at the thing before. It's like, well, this is important news that maybe isn't so fantastic that people are going to want to look at it over like Jello wrestling that is new to compromise the quality of the news for that. No, I disagree, Blake. If it is that important, make it interesting. Put Jello and mud wrestling in there. Do whatever you get. It takes to get eyeballs on. You can do that if you're a sponsor to wherever you're going to mean like the combination, I think. Yeah. I think also you're seeing the Bitcoin publications kind of piggyback on the trends that they see getting viral in mainstream publications. So when you see a lot of blockchain but not Bitcoin headlines, you're going to be testing those same headlines for your own, you know, your own, the stuff that you author to try and capture some of that. I mean, again, like the subtle art of headline copywriting is basically the whole of internet virality for text content these days, which is so unfortunate. And again, there's lots of projects out there looking to improve this situation. But, you know, one being pro tip, right? Or other tipping platforms. So like, yeah, I mean, this is also you're just seeing a piggyback effect, I think, sometimes too. Yep. Just remotely related. Marco from Genesis Mining has been on World Crypto Network a few times talking about the block size and guests who quoted him. The article that we talked about quoted him only about two months after you heard it first on World Crypto Network. That's right. Check out World Crypto Network at worldcryptonetwork.com. We've got time for maybe one more question from Gabe. Gabe says, what's your guys predictions and thoughts on Ethereum launching soon? It's been a while since we've talked about good old Ethereum. What do you guys think, Blake? Say something nice. The buzz is in the air. The buzz is in the air. There's I think there's like some third party coin called Ethercoin or something that's had a nice little spike in value. I saw something come across the radar about that. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of products that they're building, lots of implementations. It seems somewhat disorganized. One of these days will have five implementations all dumped on us. Who knows? We'll get to test it. I think it's coming. I think I would guess if I had to predict it, I'm just going to throw this out there. But before the end of the year, I have a background in project management. Just like Will said, the scope blow tear as far as all the simpletations and stuff going out laterally instead of going towards the finish line. I hope you guys can release. I'm trying to be as positive as I can. I just think we don't like focus it in. Well, I just wanted to say, oh, I'm muted. Damn it. Can you hear me? Yes. How you were muted. Sorry, excuse me. Sorry about that. I just wanted to say I heard a rumor that whenever it is launched, and let's hope it is launched at some point when they're ready, that when that happens, then this whole thing about using the serpent code, which is the code that is the scripting language of Ethereum, will then the counterparty guys remember when they came out and said, hey, we can do Ethereum on the Bitcoin blockchain. Yeah. Well, what's happening is they're kind of waiting for Ethereum to launch so they know what the standards are for that script and all this other stuff so that the worlds can kind of interlink somehow. Exactly. I don't know how that's going to work. Yeah, that's a lot of people waiting. There's a lot of people waiting for this thing to finally come out. And all I've got to say is this is proving to be the most epic IPO in crypto history so far. And remember that we need Ethereum to come out so that we can have auger. Yeah, exactly. I was going to say auger and all these different areas. Like, eras industries, entire business model, as far as I understand it, is being like, stop waiting for Ethereum. Use this shit because this is ridiculous. We need to start making progress on these projects before the stuff hits the fan. So I mean, come on Ethereum. Come on. Let's get something out and have a be good. We're all excited. Come on Ethereum. Come on. Thomas, you are muted. All right, so maybe I'm just the most patient. I hope you are muted again. Okay, as God. Well, I'm definitely the most patient one on the panel now. And I can wait for Ethereum. I'm excited about it. There's a project that I've been waiting to work on like about selling tickets that I think could do a lot better than movie phone or ticket master. If we could just use a really simple application using Ethereum to sell people tickets, you could make sure that someone could transfer the tickets digitally. And you can verify that they all came from the same source. And it's something I'd have been waiting to do with Bitcoin, but Ethereum would make it a lot easier. And, you know, I don't have a business at stake that's draining capital. So I'm happy to wait and see what comes out of Ethereum. I'm excited about it still. So all right, we're running out of time. So we're moving on to predictions or story of the week. Blake Anderson, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? I guess my prediction is just, you know, I try to make generalistic predictions so that I'm never, you know, proven wrong because I just think I'm so much clever than all of our audience. No, I just, you know, my general prediction is that we're going to have a lot more talk about block size and that we're going to need to continually remind people not to become fanatical and lose their minds. So I predict that there's going to be a little bit more tenseness over that and that we should all keep our cool. Theo Goodman. Well, since I am totally prepared as always for story of the week, I'm going to make a prediction. And my crystal ball says that we will see a, the beginning of the week, a further drop in commodity prices, gold, silver, oil. And then suddenly out of nowhere, the crash will begin. Now, I don't know if the, if the real worldwide crash will begin, but I think my story of the week is the gold price. Have a look. See what's going on. This is going to get crazy either direction that it goes from this point. So I say, check it out. Will Pangman. Yeah, it'll take the easier out. I already gave a prediction to Ethereum project. Some of their software, not just testnet, will be deployed before the end of the year. I hope. Derek, Jay, I predict a bombshell announcement from right share companies, Uber and Lyft or just one saying, we now accept Bitcoin. SilverMiner writes, and he says Bitcoin 350 by next Friday. Mark that one down. And finally, a prediction. A copy of a copy is just a copy. Some seek success by borrowing others' ideas, hiring local likes and making unwatchable low quality videos. Others know that it just doesn't work that way. Quality comes from hard work, focusing on the details and a little magic that only the truly creative know about. There may be a million of us just like me who walk talk and act like me. They just might be the next best thing, but not quite me. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye, bye. Bye, bye.