The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. We'd like to welcome our panelists. Theo Goodman from Hasse online. Good evening, everyone. Gabriel D. Vine from Future Rant. Hello, internet. Hello, Bitcoin. Hello, posterity. Tom Vays from Liberty Life Trail. Hi, everyone. Great to be back in New York, finally. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. This week, we also didn't have time to buy the script, so we'll be winging it. Standby. Issue 1, Ethereum Classic. In a great article by Francis Coppola, she explained that the current schism between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic is much like the original schism of the Roman Catholic Church. Ethereum has been torn into two parts. Unlike Brian Armstrong's streets where he said, this this split will not revolt in multiple coins. Brian Armstrong took to medium to defend himself earlier this week, saying that he did have some bad tweets and he deserved to be made fun of on the internet. Good on Brian Armstrong for accepting that. Very silver joined the fund by buying Ethereum Classic, perhaps giving credence to the market. This credence was further spread when silver's company, Genesis Trading, began facilitating over-the-counter trading of Ethereum Classic at $25,000 of block. Meanwhile, so now, Ethereum has broken into two coins, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. Theo Goodman, your thoughts on the exciting Ethereum Classic situation this week? It's a historical moment, ladies and gentlemen. If you're around now, then you can tell your grandkids about this back then. They tried fork and it didn't work. They said it was fine after one hour on Twitter and it wasn't. I think that after reading the article, I think it's more similar to when there was the split between the Orthodox Christian Church and the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church did not want to have a Pope and maybe Vitalik and Sloket is basically the Pope. That's my view. It was a great article. What she was talking about, the idea that the Pope was infallible and that the Pope could not make a mistake and it was the French group arguing for it while the other group, the old Catholics, wanted the Pope to be just a normal person. What I think was interesting about that article is that the correct stance is just to ignore it and let it happen. The old Catholics didn't destroy the Church, nor will the Ethereum Classic probably. I want to say that that's what you're seeing right now. There's a lot of butt hurt going around and nobody is wanting to ignore Ethereum Classic. Of course, there's all kinds of theory. It's the Bitcoin maximalist. The whole community said that we want the hard fork. Well, first of all, it doesn't really matter who is mining Ethereum Classic or whatever that doesn't matter. I think that as far as who voted for the fork, anyone that bought a theory, anyone running a node could have voted for the fork or not. Anyone can make a bunch of nodes and vote for it. I don't know. I don't know the way that you can really do it right now, but I'm not sure what that really says. Another argument I heard that I don't agree with is that what it was interesting is that if Bitcoin had a big enough community and or when Mt. Gox happened, then it would have had a hard fork too, which I totally disagree with because I think it's ridiculous. Also, another aspect is that technically it's harder to hard fork Bitcoin than Ethereum because they're just dealing with one address as far as I want to get two technicals. I'd probably say some incorrect, but basically it's easier to do in Ethereum, which actually kind of was thinking about it makes me trust it less because you could pressure, now if you're bailing out the Dow, the people that bought in the Dow, then you could bail out anyone. Of course, it has to be worth it or feasible, but it could happen and it's proven that it's quite easy to do in Ethereum. I think that's something definitely to think about. Also everyone should check out Chris' video, Taylor Tuchain, he did on here, Tone was on there too. That's a good overview and everyone should just check out the terms of service of the Dow. It's also worth noting that the price of Ethereum Classic started off around $0.90 a coin, rose to $2.70 a coin, and now it's back to around $1.66 per coin. There is some value here, there's also some interesting things with the exchanges on how they handled it. Some exchanges were ready for this and granted their users Ethereum Classic in addition to their Ethereum, other exchanges were not ready for this and may have lost all the Ethereum Classic. We don't know, BTCE famously came out and said that ETH Classic is a scam, we're not going to accept it. Coinbase pretty much said the same thing, but perhaps both for different reasons are perhaps for the same reason because they didn't really manage the people's Ethereum Classic very well. Gabriel, your thoughts on the Ethereum Classic mess. So Thomas, are we going to be discussing this, is this the only topic on the fork or we... Yeah, this is it for Ethereum, the fork. Okay, cool. So one thing I just want to add then to what you were just saying is that that ties into this so-called replay attack, which is when you spend coin that existed before the fork onto both forks and then so you can kind of sell them. It's very confusing stuff, but I'm pretty sure that because Coinbase didn't support Classic from the start and didn't grant their users the Classic, a lot of the Classic in their user accounts was drained and sent to Poloniacs, which is the exchange that did support it. And also it's very possible that they... Because of the replay attack, you can actually using their GDACs Exchange, you can go to take your Ethereum Classic and that's also in your Ether account at Coinbase, go and sell it at Poloniacs and then come back and deposit it in Coinbase, basically completely stealing from Coinbase. This is something that Andrew DeSantis, who's one of the leading security researchers in the space, was tweeting about and people were like, yeah, I just did that. So people are essentially stealing from Coinbase because they went ahead and bought into wishful thinking that the fork would fail. And remember, there were some reports that Vitalik Bhurin himself sent letters to Poloniacs and the other exchanges and told them that ETH Classic would have no value, that they didn't need to worry about this and that may have been wishful thinking to what we're seeing now. And I'm going to say it definitely was wishful thinking because it goes against at least three years of strong rhetoric and research by academics as well as just a lot of figures in the development space in Bitcoin, the ones that have been clamoring so loudly that a hard fork is far too risky to go through with Bitcoin. All of those voices like Peter Todd and Gregory Maxwell and many others are all being proven right now and the voices that were saying, no, just go for it like the CEO of Coinbase Brian and what's his face Brian Hoffman and Armstrong rather and many other several other voices have been proved absolutely stupid. There was a lot of so much research about the dangers of having two coins about this replay attack is not anything new. It's not like we just found out about it once we had the hard fork and the Ethereum Classic Coin was generated. This was a no risk, well defined risk for any of the developers in this space, not hard to understand, very clear, this is happening before and then you go after and then boom, you create a cycle. So this is a really big issue and that's the type of interesting thing that has a mixed relationship to this article by Francis Coppola who's a British woman who has worked in the banking space creating systems but I have had some run-ins with her on Twitter and it's clear to me that her technical knowledge of blockchains and cryptocurrency is not as deep as she lets on. So I recommend to listeners to take any direct coverage of the cryptocurrency space that is in her name with a grain of salt because her understanding for example the Lightning network is highly flawed and she wouldn't admit it on Twitter. So I highly recommend to be very skeptical but in this case she's making a general analogy and I think it's pretty valid and it's interesting to know like okay well what happens to the different sub offices and what if you're a cardinal, are you now a cardinal of the old Catholics and the new Catholics if you don't take it, there are some parallels there which is pretty interesting but I would say that the technical side having auto-executing code is probably even more dangerous because in the case of the church nothing auto-executes there's always some sort of judge or court within the Catholic system that's going to have human beings deciding it as opposed to machines that are just that only do what they're told and have no judgment of their own. So I think the only really interesting point where the old Catholics are kind of not a very, it's still a small movement. I think that Coppola's third example of growing in popularity eventually becoming a challenge or to Ethereum itself. Personally my very subjective feel on the matter, you know actually overtake the hard forked chain. I think that the human beings that are going to create the smart contracts of the future on this platform will feel more secure in a less centralized chain and that is classic. They're going to care more about arbitrary centralized decision making and judgments than they're going to care about a small or hash rate until the hash rate gets bigger at which point Ethereum fork edition, fail-out edition, will not really have anything to recommend it. Very bold prediction gave. I'm not sure that Ethereum classic will wipe out Ethereum but it is interesting to note that there was essentially nothing wrong with Ethereum. They forked Ethereum because the Dow wrote bad code. I think that was not a great decision. Very much in jimmy, Miss Coppola's article I thought was a great analogy bringing the church in having some old historical examples of a small group separating from a larger group over philosophical differences. That's really what this is and that's why it's interesting to see the Bitcoiners or Bitcoin maximalists if you want to use that goofy expression. Joining in on this because philosophically they do side with Ethereum classic. They do believe that the block change should be immutable and that if we make mistakes like mock, gocks or Bitcoin or any of the other early Bitcoin hacks, people have to deal with that. Bitcoin is a currency for adults. If you lose $20 on the street, it's gone. If you lose $20 and Bitcoin on the internet, it's gone. We're not going to save you. Yeah, on a technical level, you know, the side note there, Ethereum bailout addition fork will need to fork again, hard fork again in order to protect against these replay attacks because they once again, I'm assuming because of wishful thinking because they did have time to implement a check to see, you know, is this coming from classic? You know, there's a check that you can do apparently it's only about five lines of code. Apparently the 30 days was definitely enough to do it and once again wishful thinking, they just wanted to ignore the threat of this coin and not give it a chance instead of covering all their bases. It just goes to show that they don't have the mindset of a high security developer. These central, you know, the Ethereum foundation don't have that viewpoint and that's been shown in, you know, even Syracurist research, he's a big Ethereum supporter, Dr. Syracurist, you know, he was pointing out all sorts of vulnerabilities in the scripting and everything like that. So, you know, the Ethereum foundation, Ethereum core may not be quite as hardcore security oriented of developers as Bitcoin. And I think the Bitcoin community had a real problem with the Ethereum foundation and Boudrein and someone that you can go to, someone that you can sue, someone that is really respected in the space and is visible and findable. Bitcoin fans, you know, you might say are Bitcoin supporters, you know, had a real problem with Ethereum until the fork at which time this Russian fella, you know, decided to take the helm and stay anonymous, not have a foundation, keep things decentralized, that really suddenly, okay, now this is more interesting to Bitcoiners and I'm included. I, you know, just for like Chris Ellis did, but, you know, a very tiny amount of classic just to get involved and see what happens and be, you know, see how the exchange works and, you know, know how the nuts and bolts kind of work on the user side. So, it worked for me too. Let's go on the tone, Vaze. Hey guys, I really liked your comment Thomas when you said there was nothing wrong with Ethereum. I mean, I'm sure there's nothing wrong with my AOL internet connection on my computer. The similarity is both of them are actually useless. So I think I've beaten the death horse of Ethereum long enough over this hard fork. It's interesting that Gabriel mentioned Ethereum's going to have to fork again. I mean, I don't, like the next fork is going to go very smoothly because I don't think anyone is going to fork it again. I mean, someone might try to do it for fun, but this next fork to get rid of this little problem, that one is going to go smoothly. But what happens in the future when they have to go proof of stake? So I can see another split and that's going to be an interesting split because are we then going to have three Ethereum's or four Ethereum's because maybe the Ethereum classic guys, some of them will want to go proof of stake and some of them won't. So that's going to be interesting. But well, both halves of the current fork split into each split into two or will only the, I'm getting confused. I'm confusing myself now or only the ETH branch of the fork split into two because I can definitely see that one coming. I've always said that they're never going to go proof of stake because it's just stupid. But again, they can't stay proof of work either because then they're competing with Bitcoin. So Ethereum has always been in a loose, loose position. Let's talk about exchanges for a second. So clearly, it's like the only responsible exchange in all of this appears to be Polonix. That was like the only one that was ready for both halves of Ethereum if I read everything correctly. And you have said that Polonix was getting back at Ethereum by listing Ethereum classic that there's like some personal exchanges. Right. So by complete accident, they were the most, they were the exchange that was actually prepared for the split of Ethereum. And the other exchange is messed up. It's not as bad for BTC, which totally screwed up. The advantage that BTC has is that they're anonymous so you can't really go after them and they're not in this country, which makes it even better for them. As far as Coinbase goes, or they're totally screwed, because this just adds one more level of litigation and lawsuits that are going to be coming down the line, especially if Ethereum classic becomes more important to these people than the Ethereum sidechain or alternate chain I should probably say. And we did see some rumblings of this last week when we talked about Kraken and how they were ahead of things and they were saying what they were going to do in advance that they were going to go with the hard forked Ethereum. People were wondering even then, what about the ETHC? Will we get the other Ethereum? Right, but... I mean Kraken has actually... Kraken has smart people working there, so Kraken, I'm sure they were prepared as like their backup plan for a backup plan because they seem to actually know what they're doing. So I think Kraken will be fine. And another comment on that, I said it last week, I said it right after the fork, just economic incentives from every level conclude that the two Ethereum forks will equal in hashing power. Now the price between the two may be different because one could be seen as having advantages or disadvantages that the other doesn't. So the price doesn't have to even out, but I think the price will come within maybe 10% and people will be able to arbitrage. But economics dictates that the hash rate of these forks will even out sooner or later and my guess sooner than later. And the price will kind of come close as well. And this was not hard to predict. I explained all of this and why this would happen and why we would have two forks of a chain and why they would have equal hashing power. Even if one splits off with an initial support of like 5 to 15%. I explained all this one year ago during the Bitcoin XT versus Bitcoin debate. So this was not unpredictable and it's really disappointing that people like Brian Armstrong are completely clueless as to how a blockchain works. It's very, very disappointing. One final comment and this is for Barry Silver. I am also very disappointed and very sober. I feel that that is very irresponsible of him to go on Twitter and announce that he is buying Ethereum Classic basically because of his position. He does run the proprietary ETF. So he could be seen as an investor and advisor in the space and I think he had influence on it. He had granted an anarchistic free-for-all world. This shouldn't be a problem but I do try to hold Barry Silver to a slightly higher standard in the financial world. I consider him as one of the adults. And I don't think that was responsible for him to announce this is his first old coin to buy. And I kind of like Ethereum Classic over Ethereum and I was on the show last week when I said I don't own either Ethereum and I do not intend to buy either Ethereum. So I was a little disappointed in Barry coming out and saying that I don't know what anybody else's opinion is on that but I don't know my final comment. Does he still run GBTC? I thought he sold Digital Currency Group and he's got his own thing now. No Digital Currency Group is the new thing I think. Oh, do they still run GBTC? I thought they don't run that OTC market. I think they sold that. They sold their, they had the early market, the thing where you could buy like early shares of Facebook and Twitter. They sold that to NASDAQ. DCG is his main focus. They sold. They sold second market, right? But I believe Barry Silver still controls that, well, it's not really an ETF but it's like ETF. Well, no, ETFs are different. Trust. Trust. I believe he's still in control of the trust. And if he isn't in control of the trust, he is fully involved in the financial side of Bitcoin. And I don't think he should be going to Twitter and announcing that his buy in like a Bitcoin competitor, like Ethereum Classic. I mean, I would not have done it if I was in his position. Well, why exactly? And from a financial background. Why do you think is a conflict? What is a statement like this is intended to move the market. And I don't think that you really, when you're a big CEO, I don't think you should be making statements to move the market. Isn't that basically where you're going to send him? Yeah. Also, also as an additional point, if these were regulated markets, I mean, if he was just like a hedge fund manager and investor, sure, but in a case like this, like it's also not right. He's a big name and he's announcing it that he's buying it in 50 cents and then we went to $2. So I mean, I personally see it well, how do you know he's still in it? How do you know he did it? Like a lot of like Carl Iken does it and some of the other hedge fund managers do. They announce after they buy something and then you know, the world rushes in and it allows them to sell. Now I don't see it as much of a problem when you have a stock like Amazon or Google, because these are incredibly liquid and one guy's opinion doesn't necessarily can move a multi-billion dollar market. But in something like Ethereum Classic, which is like freaking only like less than a week old, it's just so fragile and anyone can move the market. Him making that statement, I personally believe is irresponsible and it just allows them to have an amazing exit if this was only like a three day trade just because he said it. So I mean, I personally, that robs me the wrong way a little bit. All right, I'm sneezing, but I stopped. Exit question, six months from now, how many Ethereum's will there be? Theo good. And the mom too. Gabriel, Z5. Six months from now is only February, right? Something like that. I'm going to say two still. I'm going to say that the, it's going to be 80, 20 in Classic's favor. Tones. Oh, do we know when they're supposed to go to proof of stake? I think it's mid next year, possibly, at the earliest. If it's mid next year, at the earliest and six months, I'm also going to go with two, but I'm going to go with 50, 50 closer to 50, 50 or, you know, 45, 55 in either direction doesn't really matter as far as the strength and price goes. I'm going to, unlike, unlike Gabriel's 80, 20. I'm going to disagree with the group. There can be only one moving on to issue two. Steam Ponzi. A new chart from Stevie F or perhaps someone else on Twitter, we don't know the exact source, says that the steam Ponzi is explained in one easy chart. Bitcoin bag holders deposit BTC to pay back earlier steam users. And this is basically what it looked like last week. Once your money is into steam, it's locked there for 104 weeks before you can get it out, or one week to convert it to SBD. Any kind of controls or capital controls on your money seem to have a scheme type formation. Now, remember a Ponzi scheme is a scheme where you take a bunch of money, then you take new money to pay off the debt of the old money. So as long as you keep taking in new money, the scheme works. But when you stop taking in new money, suddenly you can't pay back the old users. This could be happening to steam very soon. Additionally, the price drop from around $4.00 to around $2.00. Is this it for steam? Has the steam been let out? Gabriel, D.Von. Well, interestingly, the same guy, Andrew DeSantis, who was reporting on the coinbase, replay account draining scheme on Twitter, also last week announced that he would be investigating the steam system. And I believe that he was able to get in touch with the fellows who run it, including the CEO. As far as I know, DeSantis is currently creating a detailed security report about this, which should be very interesting. I hope that comes out soon. And we're seeing the price drop as doubts filter out through the ecosystem. I still haven't heard anyone make any sense as far as how this is a scheme that has any legs. It appears that there is a multi-layered system, including the miners as well as the founders, as far as how they got paid on the pre-mines. There was a pre-mine, an Insta-mine of a large proportion, but of course, that's, once again, it's a lock scheme where they can't cash it out for a certain amount of time. And I can understand why a website that wanted to tokenize, it's an alternate form of funding, this idea of a DAO that has its tokens distributed at autonomous organization. Maybe I'm not in this case autonomous in any way, but with some founders. Instead of getting money upfront from VC, where that has its own complications, I think it's a legitimate enterprise to try to create some sort of token, colored Bitcoin, whatever it is, in order to ensure that if your project succeeds, you are compensated for your hard work. And no doubt they created a site that works. It has online wallets, it's a functioning forum, it has voting systems in it, so they want to get compensated from that with their token scheme. It's just in the details of the token scheme that we're kind of waiting to hear some more details. It's a very opaque system, which is a huge red flag. As we discussed last week, I believe it was. Yeah, the white paper is extremely abstruse, and obviously, obfuscated, the data in it is totally spread out with many, many paragraphs of color pros, as opposed to mathematics, equations, charts. There are no visual aids. This is the first visual aid I've seen in the steam space, which is a really bad sign. So I'm looking forward to this security report. I think it's going to offer us a lot of transparency into exactly what kind of scheme this is. I think it's a very strong feeling that's a scam. Some type doesn't seem like a direct Ponzi, something more like a pyramid scheme, because there are these layers of different people, founders, other people. And how the blockchain enters into this, I have a feeling that it virtually serves no function because it's so centralized. So it should be interesting to see just what kind of scheme this is. So it's interesting from a personal update. I wrote one article on steam. I was paid around $250 in alleged steam currency. It took me about a week, but I have been able to withdraw some of my funds. I was able to realize around $75 of the $250. So it is possible to get your funds out. It is very confusing, not exactly user friendly, and there were some strange controls. I had to wait seven days for my steam power to convert into steam, just a very strange system. Tone vase. All right. So I am once again wearing my shirt for a pay coin, and I will attempt to wear this shirt every time we do the show. And we talk about steam. Now Thomas, you were one of the early participants in steam. So you were able to purchase enough to borrow someone's account while the accounts were locked and write my article during that special period. Okay. So I am not, I mean, again, I'm still I keep I keep promising I'm going to read this white paper. And I was going to read this white paper this week, but I had two conferences to attend and speak at. And one of them came out of nowhere. And the irony was that the reason this conference came out of nowhere for me to go and speak at is because the bit the blockchain speaker that was supposed to speak. I didn't show up that blockchain speaker was actually net the CEO of steam it. And I was the one that replaced him at the conference, which hopefully was very beneficial to the audience of that conference because he is a total scammer. Once again, now people are now yelling at me that no, you don't understand what a Ponzi scheme is because technically. The steam it didn't people didn't then put money in, but but they did steam it is getting money from the hype of the price of their one of the three steam tokens. So the Bitcoin is coming in and it's being locked up. And then the early adopters are now able to cash out. So it's also possible that steam it did come into this scam with some kind of a bankroll and by promising early users a bunch of money that they actually gave them. It's bringing more attention to this total scam. And everyone is like trying to get in because they think that their paragraph of words is worth to $200 to $5,000. Steam is not revolutionizing the way content is being placed. If this is total nonsense, again I haven't figured out how the mechanics work, but I will get through that white paper. And I will compare compare it to pay coin, which I already have. I will compare it to Aurora coin, which I'm planning on doing. And at the moment, I think it's most similar to one coin. So I think that the only difference is that people in the Bitcoin community, some of whom I've actually somewhat respected for being smart are buying into this nonsense, which is terrible. I know Thomas, you did it just to see how it works in order to properly talk about it on the show, but other people. I know you wanted $5,000 in Article 2. I need money. Look, we all need money. I need money as well. But I know you and other content providers. If you're doing it just to better understand it to see how it works and then report on it, I'm okay with that. But the people that are doing it, because they think they're actually going to make money from this, and then they're promoting it to other people in any way, shape of form, I basically consider that as your culprits in pitching a scam. I mean, it's no different than somebody from one coin, you know, schedule and a meeting to tell other people to get their money into this for mining that probably doesn't exist. And Gabriel, there was absolutely nothing blockchain about this thing. There's no blockchain. Who is mining? Is it Daniel Larimer and computers in his mom's basement? Who is mining on this chain? There's a tiny contingent of miners that are highly associated with the founders. It's probably them mining it themselves. It doesn't need to be a blockchain in other words. This is just so obvious. You don't need a research report. You just need to read the first three or four pages of the white paper. And as far as you need to go, this is very fun. Remember, Tony, we need to sympathize with the content creators. If you create content on the internet, you likely aren't paid for it. So when you see this website come along and people are making an article about their vacation with pictures of themselves, they get $10,000, and they can use that money to go on another vacation. I mean, I think everyone's got really big. They were excited. No, they are excited, but that's not true. Look, the reason why you're not getting paid as a content provider is probably because your content isn't very good. If you're making good content, you are going to get paid for it. It's the way the world and economics works. And if you don't like it, look, you go and start your own website and pay people accordingly. You don't make up and hype up a non-existent medium to pay them in. Right? I mean, this is no different than like Reddit putting up there. I think Reddit has some kind of an internal token that isn't really worth anything. But if Reddit decides to throw it on a cryptocurrency exchange, that will probably be scammy as hell as well. Look, if you think you're not getting paid as a content provider, then fine. Then your work isn't that good. If your content is good, you will get paid for it. If you don't like what Facebook pays you for it or where YouTube pays you for it, fine. Then go to another medium. Oh, that's right. They're really aren't any. So why don't you start your own, but don't start it with a fake blockchain and your own currency that has a hype machine that makes it valuable. You're stealing from Bitcoin holders right now. I mean, granted, they're also kind of responsible. If someone's going to sell you crap, if you want to buy crap, if someone's willing to sell you crap, you're partially responsible. But then don't go suing on the other end of that, right? It's the same thing in lots of positive different ideas here. What if I was to create a site that was just like steam it, but instead of using steam dollars, steam power and steam, I just used Bitcoin. But I had the same system. I locked down your Bitcoin. If you held more Bitcoin in my system, you get more votes. That kind of thing. Would that be okay? I'd have to think about it, but I'm not, I don't like it. The way you described it, I'm not very happy with it because now you're in control of somebody else's Bitcoin. And I mean, maybe if it was all really open source and it was a system like that where you put Bitcoin in, it's still yours. But again, why is this smart contract? No, but again, why would you do that? The only reason to look, the only system that is legitimately locks up other people's money is a government insured system. Much as we all hate the government, like CDs are not a scam, right? Your retirement accounts are not a scam, right? Because even though that money is locked up, there is plenty of regulation that explains why. The reason why you can't take your money out of a CD is because you get a higher interest rate for that. But Bitcoin doesn't have an interest rate component unless you loan out the Bitcoin. So why would anyone let you lock up the Bitcoin Thomas if you're not paying them interest for it? And if you offer them interest, where are you getting that interest? Are you loaning it out? That's a good point. I have no idea, I have no idea where I would get the interest to pay. So why would anyone agree to it other than they're just stupid, like people that put their money in the Dow, right? I mean, you offer them something new and they're like, here, take my private key, go ahead, take it, go take it, it's yours, take it, go ahead. I mean, that's the only reason why anyone would give you Bitcoin for you to lock it up and then redistribute it to them whether personally or with an algorithm. But where's the incentive of locking it up? And it looks like steam is like one of the reasons they're locking it up is so that they can build upon this Ponzi. And the other reason they're locking it up is so that they can give you interest in steam. But where is this interest coming from? Again, the miners controlled by the organizers of steam. It's just completely scammy. It's terrible. I think it's one of the worst projects in the space right now. I think it's passed my Ethereum bar of scams in the space because of how quick the hype came. At least one coiners are scamming non Bitcoin people. Bitcoin people will see right through it. It's obvious to them yet steam somehow isn't obvious to them because they're actually getting paid in the beginning. It's imminently, it's imminent to implode, but the more people are buying this nonsense on the altcoin exchanges and the more people are signing up, the more the hype machine gets ramped up until it all comes crashing down. I think I've rambled long enough. Theo, good. Yeah, well, okay, I'm going to have to figure out where to start. So well, first of all, yet is mind actually. So I did check it out. And I think that avoid the white paper. And I don't have the link in my head right now, but it's like steemit.io something, but just search for steemit. Launch. And there is a page that describes the launch and describes the distribution how it started. And I think there's a good place to start because you can find out a lot of crazy stuff. Or I think it's a little crazy, but basically as far as the one coin comparison, it's like one coin is like you have a database and you just go, you can't you magically change a one into a two. And then in steemit or something, it's kind of like this. And then the one becomes a two magically, but you have like a one hundred and four because they because you can only withdraw one out of every hundred and four days. So I think they're multiplying everybody's by a hundred and four, not two. So they're there way beyond one coin. It's even I'm going to have to go back and I'll link it all. So it's even more complex than that. There's like so many layers. So basically the foundation or whatever you want to call it has like 80% of the supply. And but it's locked away. And every week they get one percent of it. And then that one percent that can do whatever they want with. And that's in the terms and conditions on this page you get the terms and condition that says that that they can do whatever they want with. So that's not probably I'll get corrected or something in the comments, but as far as I understand they get one percent of that a week. And if you and if you lock if you it's so in this vested it's called vested. And if you have it vest your steam vested and anyone can do it, then every time there's some mind, you get a whole bunch of the mind coins. I think you get like nine out of 10 or something. It's something I don't even I don't want to get into it and say the wrong stuff. But anyway, let's just say there's levels of complexity there. And basically it boils down. It's very similar to bit shares how it works. So as far as the mining is, there's an election. So you vote on people or miners that are some kind of have at least a pseudonym. You know, you have to have to have some kind of reputation. And they're the ones that we call them steamer. It's not miners. Everything should have a different and confusing term. No, there is one, but it's even more so it's like elected distributed elected whatever person. But anyway. And they are the ones that they're not the ones that are elected or like 90% of the miners, 10% anonymous miners. But you know, supposedly you can kick out miners very easily that of these elected ones that don't you know do dishonest job and so on. It's on. So this just goes along to a lot of these same theories like distributed proof of stake and a lot of other things. Now that being said, what was really interesting is that they're saying that this is not proof of stake. This is actually a form of proof of work because of the opportunity cost of you locking up your coins. So I don't think I totally agree with that, but it's that's just the philosophical point that they're coming with. So just to just what I just want to say I didn't say I agree with all that stuff. I just wanted to say that's, you know, that I have been looking at it somewhat. I will admit I've been more spending time actually posting stuff on steam it just to kind of experiment and see what's up. And you know there is some fun thing to it. You know it's a little bit trolley like Reddit and that's cool actually it needs to be more trolley because that's why everyone's at Reddit actually. But so because actually I think actually I think what happened is they developed like these bots are like these like watchers that kind of try to you know get rid of the trolls or something. I think that's going to destroy steam. So steam people the more trolley you make it there it's going to be better. But anyway, okay. And then the last thing I want to say before I rambulant and make technical mistakes is that basically it boils down to this. If there's no one on the exchanges to buy your steam, then that's when the whole thing starts to collapse. You know, it doesn't you can get into all the technical stuff about what I said about mining and investing and all that stuff. So what what's happening is a lot of people are saying, hey, I don't care. I posted my stuff and I got my steam out and I don't care how it works. And that's totally true. I'm just saying that there's going to be a time where someone bought steam and powered up because they thought the system is going to go on for longer. And it won't go on for longer, but you know, whatever that's your risk. And I encourage everyone to read the terms and services of steam it. And it says that steam it incorporated doesn't have to do anything to give steam value and it says that almost verbatim. So just keep that in mind. So a very good point, Theo. And I've seen some some of the steam bots in action. I went ahead and copied and pasted an article from somewhere else to see what would happen. And a bot showed up and said, hey, you plagiarize this article from here. But the bot was very kind about it. It was like, I'm just a dumb bot. I don't know. Maybe you have the rights to plagiarize this or maybe you are the original author. So I explained that I was and it went fine after that. But it's an interesting system. It continues to grow. Can I tell you more? Yeah, I just realized something. I started. I know there's a video where Dan and Ned explained it. I started watching it. I got through the first five minutes. It was just hard to just keep paying attention to it. I will go back to that. But there was another video where like one of the early writers on steam was I think was on here here on the crypto network. I think Bitcoin news. And he was like trying to explain how steam works. And one of the things that I can swear I heard him say was so you need these steam. I guess one of the three coins is used to like I guess rate or the articles correct. I think you need steam power that allows me to up. Right. But it's from what I understood it's self. I guess encouraging like the more you use your steam the more steam you earn. So it's like so it encourages you to like everybody else's content. And the earlier you like other people's content the more steam you will earn. So it's a perpetual motion machine to like everybody else's posts. And the sooner you like them the better. Which is an insanely perverse incentive that makes somebody think that they are you know article about nothing is being liked by hundreds of thousands of people. When in fact it's a race to click the button fastest it's like those bar games where the earlier you answer the question the more points you earn. Very good moving on to the exit question exit question six months or which will go out of business first steam or one coin gave you divine. I'm going to say one coin is going to implode faster but I believe that steams peg steam dollars peg will fail before the steam ecosystem dies. So I think steam steam peg then one coin then steam it. Toned face. I want to share my screen for a second. I feel good. Hold on I've got to get my graphs. No I'm just joking. Now it's all good. I think that yeah we do need to show that I think when some of the graphs I think that steam it will probably go first. I think one coin is what's very interesting there they are different in a lot of technical ways. But what's interesting is both of them as a one coin is definitely the long a long con and steam it the way the mechanics of the besting the coins and all that that's designed for longevity. I think that's designed for having people on there for a long time so that's the whole idea of it so it's going to be it's it's an interesting race. They're not in for the quick they're in for more of a marathon. Toned face. Can you guys see my screen? Is that clear in the middle? Yeah it looks good. So I have picked my I guess their horse and that race between steam it and one coin once that the spot represented by steemit right before mount stupid was controlled by the Dow for a total of three weeks. And now the Dow has moved over to the side of mount gocks and new and the and I have to make a choice to I want to put steam it there or do I want to put one coin there so I decided to go with steam it so I am expecting steam it to implode first. And I'm hoping that it implodes before one coin because I'm dying to then move steam it to the right side of mount stupid and then put one coin in there in time to see the one coin implosion I'm really hoping to keep this chart going with the proper scam right before implosion for as long as I can. I'm going to disagree with tone I think that one coin is going down first because they're taking ten thousand dollars per the minimum investment I think they'll be SEC complaints as soon as people realize that they've invested in nothing. Steam however continue to see the price decline until the price goes to zero their system still kind of works as long as there's a penny per steam you're getting some kind of reward for an article it's not going to be five thousand dollars in article but I think a lot of people would not just two three bucks in article go ahead and tell. I'm kind of on the opposite side of that because one coin is getting these giant bags of money coming in it allows them to run their Ponzi scheme longer kind of like Bernie made off. That could be very true and they could use the money for lawyers or some kind of planning or something. And also don't forget the first person to get the authorities involved because they lost money will probably end up losing more money right so it's also like okay so everyone's going to like slowly try to get out and they're lacking it in there for like a year so it's and then they'll convince them why they need to double down so so because they're getting so much money I'm thinking that one might last a little longer. All right let's move on and tone should turn off the screen share so I can see myself. Let me do that. Shop with Bitcoin at purse.io and shop the world's largest selection with the lowest prices save 15% off anything at Amazon just for spending Bitcoin at purse.io. Moving on to issue three Florida judge bitcoins aren't currency so state money laws don't apply. A money a man was selling Bitcoin through local Bitcoin and it was accused of money laundering the Florida judge basically said Bitcoin's not money so you can't be laundering it. This is very interesting because just a few days later in Florida a man was robbed at knife point they didn't take his money they took his Bitcoin 28 thousand dollars worth. Bitcoin experts are having trouble now is Bitcoin a currency or commodity tone vase. All right so there's three things there I'll really try to comment quick I know I know the show is already going to be longer than usual so on the Florida thing I mean I love the ruling but it's only a state ruling so it has no hold federally so Charlie Shremm unfortunately can't go to sue and you know get retribution for going to jail for no reason. Same thing for others but I like the ruling the ruling makes total sense it was complete entrapment also he never did the large transaction if you read the details the feds were trying to sell them like 30 25 thousand or 30 thousand for Bitcoin and he looked at the money is like no I don't think this is real money I think it's counterfeit and they arrested it so the deal never went through. Also it was interesting because I mean I the Bitcoin and censored guys are my army and they went to the trial so they gave us a little bit of information of what went on there and here's the funny part they were trying to charge him with money laundering now the way money laundering works is you take illegal cash and then you make it legal and paid and find a way to pay taxes on it so if anyone seen the the show what it go breaking bad he bought a car wash to wander the money. And pretend that all these cars were getting like detail car washes for and if you would just bring the cash in and like pay for it right like he didn't care how many customers went through but he was putting down way more customers that went through so you taking you know bad money money that was used in bad activity and then you turning it into legit money so you can pay taxes on it. In this case what is happening so the feds are now handing someone clean money like legit money I mean from the government but it doesn't matter you're handing someone cash that was earned by legal means that had taxes paid on it and you're getting Bitcoin for that cash and then you want to accuse that person of money laundering so the judge looked at it and said well wait a minute money laundering is taken bad cash and you're going to get a lot of money laundering. Turning it into government approved clean cash this is you're taking clean cash and you're turning it into traceable bitcoins how's that money laundering this sounds like the opposite of money laundering it's like you're turning good money into bad money so if money laundering is illegal what is you know reverse money laundering so I thought that was absolutely hilarious which and the judge kind of thought about it. So I think that was well and the whole thing seems scammy from the beginning so I'm good and I go to jail excellent let me do it to other things there as far as one of them is easy financial experts can't figure out what Bitcoin is that's a very simple answer Bitcoin is a brand new asset class we've never seen before so if you can't stick it anywhere it has properties or for other asset classes and I'll let them think about what those are so I'll leave it at that time. As far as getting robbed off of local bitcoins now this is a serious problem it's like when I first read it I'm like wow so this is like the case of dumb dumb and dumber but I thought his cash got stolen not as bitcoins but it could be the other way around it doesn't matter so here's the thing the guy you don't meet people you meet people in the most public place possible you don't bring $28,000 to this transaction so that's dumb on the flip side he has done business with these people before which is a good sign so he already knows who they are which is why one of them was already arrested because he had his phone number so like the thieves are complete idiots you're gonna rob someone where the guy knows who you are and knows your phone number that he can connect you to so he got arrested I'm sure they'll get the other guy that should be very simple here's the other crazy part in the article so the guys that robbed him had a knife but he had a gun can someone explain this to me? how does someone with a knife rob someone with a gun? so he obviously came prepared for this transaction yet he still I mean I know it's two people but you still have a gun they try to rob you with a knife he shoot them and it's Florida we already know you can get away with shooting people there I think that was already broadcasted to everyone in the world so those are the things now having said all that I'm gonna call myself a complete idiot as well because when I was buying big coins through local Bitcoin I also met someone at a public place for my first transaction which was kind of small and then I met that person again in a public place for a slightly bigger transaction and everything went smooth the third time I met this person I was literally walking into what seemed like an abandoned warehouse on a dead end street in one of the burls of New York and it wasn't Manhattan and it wasn't that mild. so I was also possibly in a similar situation the difference is I made sure that person was walking in front of me and my knife was in my hand and drawn already at this point so everything ended fine but so I also put myself in a very bad situation in one of these and I had the experience went well that person actually is not a good person actually is another person in in the cryptocurrency world I'm not gonna say who that was and everything turned out okay I mean we were both unknown at the time but yes these things can go badly and you do need to come prepared that I'll end it on that. well just a public service announcement out there to anyone that's going to do a trade like this on local bitcoins most of your local banks have a conference room that you as a customer of the bank can reserve and use and I would suggest having your meetup right there at the bank or maybe just in the lobby of the bank banks have security they have ATMs and tellers right there you can take your cash to pause in your account you don't have to walk out with a pile of cash use the banks to trade Bitcoin. Oh no I completely agree I tell people you want to do a local Bitcoin transaction you go to a bank and you do it at a lobby of a bank and then you walk either walk up to a teller or at least pretend you're depositing the cash or you walk in the walk up to an ATM pretend you're depositing and when it's when you're receiving the bitcoins don't bring your phone to take the bitcoins bring a paper wallet and then use your phone to check that the transaction went through through like you know blockchain dot info or something but back to that knife part it's illegal in New York to carry a gun so I was not able to do that but because it's not illegal to carry a knife I did want to protect myself for a transaction because again I was only partially stupid I did come ready in case something bad happens I still put myself in a bad situation I shouldn't have. Well that's a good point Tony you can just have the public address on your piece of paper you don't even have to have the private key you can have no way of getting that Bitcoin you can tear up the public address and I think there's a lot of good ways to do this tone or the o'goodman your thoughts on local Bitcoin whatever else you're talking about. Wow I like that money dirtering dirtering or money. I like that money soiling we could call that reverse money laundering that's a good term I think I just comment on a you know how could that happen that someone has a gun and the other person has a knife and the person with the knife is able to rob the person with the gun well you know I mean you can deploy a knife faster and I'm sure and within there's a lot of studies not just depend on the people but if it's a willing a silent and there within about ten yards or less of you and your gun is undeployed and you're even good at with the gun then the person with the knife will win more of the time because there is a point on this you could have just shot them when they walked away I know it's not very honorable to shoot someone at the back but in this situation you just hold the gun till the situation's over and then boom boom while you walk away I don't know. I totally agree I'm just trying to figure out you know what Bitcoin nerd is carrying a gun with him but I guess if you got 28,000 of those I collect his additions to our war's phaser rifles. Sounds totally shady and yeah totally dumb to do it not in a public place just I totally agree with you guys it's a lot of money use your brain people if you're going to use trade locally you know do it in places that are public and so on and look out for yourself and I mean in you know 28,000 you better bring your homies with you or something I mean that's some crazy shit. Or hire somebody hired guard there's options I don't know I don't really have anything else to add I think that I like I just like a reverse money laundering that's a that's a really good term and you know that's good that the judge had some sense. Gabriel D. Vine. I'd like to talk about something that tone brought up which is entrapment I think the bar for entrapment in this country is ridiculously high we've got feds and police you know on public money out there every day. You mean low you mean low not high low what bar is very low not high did I say hi yeah. The bar is much too low to determine if something is entrapment you know it's ridiculous all these undercover officers and FBI and police people you know going out and just trying to catch citizens in in crimes as opposed to reacting to crimes. I'm in my opinion it's an epidemic in our country that we have this situation where you know basically it's a cycle you know people you know who stand to gain from certain laws being passed like for example western union money transmitters they lobby to get a law passed and then they you know the money gets routed to the law enforcement and law enforcement are incentivized with quotas etc. To catch criminals and so they go out of their way to even especially terrorism I mean the epidemic of false flag terrorism has been going on for decades it's really heating up this summer where you know these these FBI guys are basically trying to encourage you know they're putting citizens lives at risk by trying to encourage mentally ill people to do acts of terrorism. It's absolutely deplorable what is going on in this country in general this is just another example that I think it's horrible and I love what the judge said about the vague wording of the money transmitter laws because these laws are so you know are so many laws are but especially money transmitting and financial laws are just so specious in general they're so you know just made up and they're just so much more than they're going to be a lot more difficult to do. They had their completely protectiveist so she just said this this wording is totally vague I can't I can't make a judgment on this is ridiculous and then of course the entire point of the entrapment was backwards it was a money soiling situation they should have been trying to sell Bitcoin not trying to buy Bitcoin the laundering happens on the other end so it's just totally ridiculous and I think tons of point about Bitcoin being a new asset class that and it's the words and concepts that they're going to be able to do it. So that we have that are flawed not Bitcoin. Gabriel Gabriel so on your point see it's also very very difficult to I mean not difficult in this country because of the very low bar for entrapment but if you're selling Bitcoin right and you're taking cash if that cash was earned legally there's really nothing they can say about money laundering right if you I mean if you're bringing in you know a hundred thousand dollars in cash and you're on welfare are you a lot of money and then you can just get a share yeah you might have to explain where that cash came from right but if you're like me at the time that I was buying some bitcoins and I had a and I had a six figure salary from Wall Street. I'm going in there to buy Bitcoin they can't even if I was buying it from cops what are they going to say because my money was earned legally so it's like I'm buying a collectible or whatever whatever right so the only thing they can do is they can now somehow entrap me and I go entrap me in trying to get me to admit that I'm going to use this Bitcoin on Silk Road and unless I admit that I'm going to use this Bitcoin from Scania and Tori and the four not Tori you know what I'm looking for right some kind of illegal activity is there is nefarious thank you for kind of the various activity there's really they can't get me on anything I'm buying Bitcoin but they don't know what I'm going to use it for so that's also a very very difficult case the other way around. Yeah I mean the entire crime of money laundering laundering was simply made up to protect money transmitter bank companies as well as you know increase state surveillance and financial activities. No I think it was no I think it originally came in to catch like drug dealers because they couldn't catch drug dealers in the act so they did it in order to catch drug dealers after the fact but it has more but over the years like every other law it now has more tend to you know if you were if you high like a thousand dollars from the government in taxes even if you have nothing to do with drugs even if you have a legit job again you're making a hundred thousand dollars working for a bank and they you know catch you cheating on your taxes boom you're now a money laundering a law that came into literally catch drug dealers which is wrong to begin with but at least they there was a really at least they had you know they pushed it through under what was considered legitimate circumstances but it has a more into anything the government doesn't like you doing with money is now money laundering as opposed to a specific use case that pushed the law in. Yeah I would agree with Tom the crime of money laundering was invented in the 70s as part of the war on drugs which remember is not a war on drugs it's war on people. Let's move on to the exit question exit question in the year 2000 the state of Florida famously helped the Supreme Court decide the presidential election and they might do it because they might do it again and they declared the Bitcoin's not money if the state of Florida throws the presidential election to Donald Trump should we kick the state of Florida out of the union tone base. No I think they should have a double the votes if they do that. The good man. No definitely not I mean you know if Florida votes for Trump they vote for Trump that's just how it is Gabriel D. Vine. I wouldn't see the Supreme Court of Florida putting it throwing it for Trump they would they would decide on Clinton of course because she's the mainstream candidate the establishment candidate and that's interesting that you bring up this kicking out it's like a reverse secession. This is an exclusion of some type I'm not sure if that even exists that would definitely need a constitutional amendment for that. I already would have thrown them out after the 2000 election and I would love to throw them out after this election I enjoyed Disney World very much but I could do without the rest of it. It's not necessarily their fault they didn't vote for Bush they voted for Gore. We just encounter as Homer Simpson calls them it's America's wing. All right well before we do the next issue we need to have a disclaimer I like Roger here I think Roger here is a super nice guy I've met him a couple of times I'm on good terms with him he's an investor in purse the company I work at I don't want to piss you off Roger I'm very sorry we have to discuss this but you keep bringing up the bigger blocks issue so I feel we have no choice but to discuss this I hope that you can see that. I hope this will be a level headed and a reasonable discussion and we all like you we all think you're great you bought Bitcoin early you're super guy we disagree with you on big blocks but we're going to discuss this reasonably and hopefully not piss you off so much respect to Roger here. Issue 4 Roger here let's raise the block size limit Roger here has been on a virtual quest lately his goal is to raise the block size limit he doesn't care if it leads to centralization he doesn't care if it screws up decentralization he's published article after article that bigger blocks mean more decentralization that it's time to end the block size blockade and most recently that Bitcoin whales vote in favor of larger blocks so he just keeps coming he keeps coming and now there's some censorship issues some other things going on but really the issue here is big blocks do we need bigger blocks. Is Roger here on a quest is it a crusade is it a fools Aaron is he don kio D or is he Gandalf warning us about the past the old good man your thoughts on Roger here is quest for bigger blocks. Well I think that if you have a problem I have the solution bigger blocks you need some money bigger blocks you ain't got no honey bigger blocks so all you got to do is make it bigger and that will solve all the problems that's the basic message now I just really wonder if there's a kind of like Twitter scheduler you know that I think it's like Wednesdays I think it's the day it's like bigger block day and Roger here on every Wednesday or it's kind of like it's about weekly it's a certain it's not just like you know block size weekend it's kind of like you kind of forget about it and then oh it's Wednesday again oh yeah big blocks every mind everybody so it's kind of like a pattern you know certain amount of days happen and then it comes on there's a tweet about it and an article about it so it just has to be you know in the in the limelight get people's attention maybe we could put Roger on a blockchain and the blockchain reward is a tweet about bigger blocks. Yeah well you know it's it's ongoing discussion of course however you know of course working on a few things and I hope people are going to say I don't like core I don't like block stream or whatever but they are working on stuff segway it is going to come eventually I don't know when it's going to come seems like it's taken a long time but you know that's to reduce risk so that's the thing of course you could have a hard fork and you could change a number from one to two the question is what would be the consequences and is it worth it and would just simply changing a one to two have the consequences that you think and I think that would have a lot of unintended consequences that we don't know just changing one little number doesn't always have the same consequences that you think it's going to have it's kind of like an organ transplant when you you know just oh just change the heart there you go well sometimes the body rejects it so it's kind of the same in code in a way when you change numbers it doesn't always or systems at least it doesn't always work out exactly as you think and well the Ethereum hard fork didn't work out exactly like people thought so I don't think it's necessarily a fair example would probably be much worse if that happened in Bitcoin it would be totally crazy imagine right now if there were two bitcoins and you had the same thing imagine the craziness of what would be going on it would be totally nuts not saying that would happen but it's just an example of something that could happen that would be really crazy people wouldn't know you know if there Bitcoin is on the right chain just be a total shit show basically what you're having right now in a theorem and we don't want that and we want to risk having that and we were saying oh yeah but Bitcoin forked before that was fine Bitcoin forked many times there's a little different and it was not just because someone wanted to change a number and it wasn't because someone was going to get bailed out it was there was some different technical problems and it was pretty clear that that needed to be fixed right away now people are going to argue yeah it needs to be fixed right away right now because I don't know my transaction didn't get through anymore the mempool is really big and those are issues but they are being worked on and they're being worked on a way that is reducing the risk of the implementation to solve those issues and remember that raising the block size to two megabytes doesn't really solve the problem at its core I think we need a adjustment mechanism similar to the difficulty adjustment mechanism where the block size could be continually raised or even shrunk if we have less transactions but this is a more complex solution is going to take more time it's going to have more discussion all of these ideas are complex and I think the real thing here is that while coin base and for unknown reasons Roger Veer seemed to want bigger blocks today only coin base has a reason coin base wants more transactions they want bigger blocks with more transactions they have a reason for that I'm not sure why Roger wants the bigger blocks with the more transactions he seems to think that Bitcoin can't grow without the bigger block several times he's alluded to unknown companies that wish to adopt Bitcoin but can't because they worry that it would overload the transactions I'm kind of a mind that these companies should just join up and if they overload the transactions then it will become a larger issue and then maybe we'll fix it faster faster fixes more problems it's tough to say but it does this seem to be on a crusade Gabriel Devon This is a really really large issue with a lot of angles a lot of different players involved that you know are pitching all sorts of different types of things you got guys like Andrea Santinopoulos who's completely neutral all the way to Gavin and Dresan who is you know totally for you know and her or whoever who left Bitcoin because because he's saying that it was dead and that's you know because we're not raising block size now it's dead and then the price tripled and then you guys you got this veer guy who I don't know personally he does seem like a nice person that's for sure but I haven't heard him say and I haven't seen him right anything of any how do I put it of any conceptual value in other words he's never highlighted an issue in even a funny way I mean look at Samson Mao he's actually said some interesting things as well and and phrase things are come up with an angle on viewing things that are you know not only in new and fresh ways to help people understand issues in the Bitcoin in space but also entertaining and funny ways veer has never done any of that he's I've seen him on many interviews probably 20 or more he's never said anything that under that indicates to me that he has a deep understanding of Bitcoin or software in general which makes sense he is not a software developer he he's a libertarian so that I'm assuming that his philosophical ideas is why he got interested in Bitcoin so early and good on him you know more power to him he deserves his you know his gains his profits from investing in Bitcoin earlier and then he invested it back in the ecosystem like you said with purse for example which is a fantastic company in the space and so you know he I don't think he I mean he's certainly is not an authority on the technical spec it's one thing when Gavin and Jason my current they are actual software developers it least listen to what they have to say and if you think it's full shit that's fine but I don't even think veer is worth listening to to be honest his opinion is irrelevant to me I don't get his arguments that he makes and the metaphor used of starbucks coffee is absolute from last month from his article on which they should never publish it but the f e published it just total beat bullshit it's really all of his writings on this subject in technical subject are riddled with fallacies it's just it's essentially useless so I really don't think he deserves to have a voice in the space because he's not a developer he's not at least Francis Coppola is a system you know she has a background in systems creation I don't think she's a software person but at least she is you know and she was a finance professional she worked in finance company so in that sense I you know I gave her articles a chance and I found lacking but that's fine at least it was worth the chance I don't think there's writing or anything he says is actually worth listening in regards to technical issues now if you were to speak about investing catching things early I would be parking up right away but I'm his opinion on this is irrelevant his whole crusade totally reeks of how I put it ulterior motives now whether that's bribery I doubt coercion very much could be I'm quite certain that nation states are coercing and blackmailing people I'm pretty convinced that's what's going on behind the scenes with Gavin and Jason for example I think her is possibly closely related to my five he worked for intelligent services before he came into bitcoin so these guys you know are very very fishy and I think it's possible that some you know some you know what do you call it men in black you know made a visit to veer back in 2012 or 2014 or whatever and said hey your family's dad unless you push things that will weaken bitcoin so that we can break it this is to total theory complete conjecture but the fact that somebody that technically ignorant would take such would go on such a crusade for this cause that is you know really kind of silly because in any case the core developers want to raise it at just once they've done a bit more work later it's just very silly it's something that is in my opinion which is once again I'm also not a cryptographer or you know not a systems engineer or anything but it's just it's something that the risks so greatly out what out way the rewards to rush something against what you know the remember you talk about miners being the one miners and nodes being the ones that are running the software and choosing this these mining companies are 10 and you know 50 million dollar projects they're going to have really sharp guys deciding what software they're going to run and the judgment of that network you know holders on the markets nodes miners it's not just these developers the guys that are actually committing the lines of code it's the whole ecosystem that is decided to take a wait and see approach and to be very conservative about any hard for but even a soft work if it's possible block size increase has carry so many risks that that that these guys are everybody is very conservative about this and the fact that that beer is just wanting to rush this is very fishy extremely suspicious I don't trust it. I think it's an excellent point gave that there's a lot of other subjects that we would love to hear from Roger here about being an expatriate his libertarian values his travels around the world just his general philosophies and thoughts I think all of these would enrich the space and everyone has a lot to learn and a lot that they could compare their own lives to Roger's lives and I know he's had a lot of run-ins with the government he was arrested for selling fireworks and put in jail I have a lot of experiences there that he could share with us as well I'm just not so sure that he's the technical person to be talking about Bitcoin it's such a technical way. Yeah that's a good point and one last thing I wanted to say the censorship thing this word censorship is totally inappropriate it's a complete misuse of the term in the concept censorship is when you're forcefully you know preventing some sort of news or thing to get out in all media this is not we know red it's subreddit and you are else and things these are property it's like saying oh you know I'm gonna because you put a Clinton and not a Trump sign on your lawn that's censorship I mean it's total bullshit it's not censorship it's moderation if you have a problem with the moderation make a new subreddit they did make a new subreddit their subreddit is totally full of bullshit and nobody goes there because the content sucks that's not you know red it's fault so to go to try to go and then you know force the you know change of the moderation through red it once again this is just a sign of how of the risks of centralization and so you know red it is just proving itself like a theorem that it's ready for disinterme it's right for disintermeiation and the time is right for you know decentralized alternatives to these platforms come on. Don't waste. I owe so sorry so I have to start here so Gabriel I can assure you and I am 100% positive that Roger Vier was not coerced and I'm gonna squash that conspiracy theory right there because I actually do know Roger Vier I find out with him on several occasions the last time I saw him was in Vietnam for block pin conference I got a whole body give a name wrong which was an amazing event in Vietnam hope they do it again that's the last time I saw Roger which was in June so a month ago so there's absolutely no conspiracy theory he was not visited by men in black he's not trying to sabotage the network I'm a hundred a hundred and ten percent certain on that I'm asked for you know I get to read it after so I have to give a similar disclaimer like Thomas I like Roger Vier a lot he is I consider him a friend so nothing else Roger but I do disagree with him on this issue I'll give him the following credit when we were in Vietnam and we had a one on one discussion about the block size he came very very close to convincing me that we do need a larger blocks immediately and I'm surprised that he hasn't like used the same example publicly but I will and Roger because of his popularity he would have like an online store so he has Bitcoin addresses that get a lot of inputs into these addresses and these inputs are fairly small and then once they build up to a reasonable amount you want to move it to another place and what I did not know because at my business that I've owned that I've been a half owner of for three years I have not once had anyone come in and pay with Bitcoin so I have not run into this problem but if you have a business that takes in a bunch of little Bitcoin transactions and then you have to move those transactions your fee is unreasonably high and and this is what happens when you have a you know a hundred inputs and then you need to do one output now again I am not a developer I just work with developers so I did not know this to be a problem and it does seem very very bad so on that notion he did almost have me convinced that we need a bigger block size to alleviate this problem but then after talking to some of the more technical people I was informed that this is a technical issue and if Roger gets himself a couple of good engineers he can resolve this issue on his own not to a not to the 100% like it was a one transaction but he can significantly reduce that fee and I know Roger is an investor in Bitcoin.info and he claims they are very good engineers so if Roger if you are listening talk to your engineers a blockchain.info and from what I've been told by other developers that you can resolve that particular problem of sending one of the other investors on the other side and I'm looking at open the Ethereum debacle would squash all the talk of a possible fork in Bitcoin for at least a year but unfortunately this issue just isn't going away and another thing that people people love to point out how Bitcoin forth in the past but those were technical issues There was zero debate. When you have no debate, there is no possibility of two bitcoins. The moment you have a debate where there is at least, even though I'm not even happy with 1%, if 1% of Bitcoin holders, not by volume, if just 1% of the people that are somehow involved in Bitcoin, are on the other side that is not consensus and you may end up with 2%, as Ethereum has shown us the way. I just love the Ethereum testnet. It's beautiful. A couple of other quick, very quick mentions. I already forgot one of them. As for Reddit, I like timos. I've never met timos. I've never been on Reddit. I've never had a Reddit account. I barely read Reddit, but from the debate over timos, I like timos. One of the reasons why I like them is because he's been in Bitcoin from almost the beginning and he is one of the few people that is not responsible for scamming anyone at any point, which is not something I can say about a lot of people in this space. Like Gabriel said, it's moderation and the rules are fairly clear. I may not always agree with timos on some of his decisions, but I do respect them. I think he's done a pretty good job up to this point. I don't have a problem with that. You want to change Reddit. Find Build a Better One. Just don't make it a Steam scam. What else? Oh. They were discussing that in the second half of the article. It said that Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, talked to the CEO of Reddit about maybe getting rid of themos and replacing the moderator. They also talked about perhaps integrating Coinbase into Reddit, which would be a KYC identity night. I don't think so. These are some of the most ridiculous things I'm hearing, but it's the Bitcoin space. I shouldn't be surprised at all. Here's what I was going to say. One of those articles, it stated that the Bitcoin whales, I just love this term, the Bitcoin whales have spoken. I guess two people with 20,000 bitcoins in an address and 44,000 bitcoins in an address said that they want bigger blocks. To me, this means nothing. Again, I do believe Roger Ver is an honest guy. He just believes that this is badly needed. I disagree. I don't think there's malintent there. We just disagree. As far as those addresses, that's irrelevant to me. I don't believe that it is, but I cannot prove or disprove that those two addresses are not Roger Ver's because I believe he does have the Bitcoin to cover both of those addresses, at least I hope he does. If it's not the Ant-Miner crew, apparently that he has on board, and they may have that many bitcoins in their disposal, so that could be one guy that believes this. It's hard to prove or disprove, and you don't want to tell the world this is your address with 44,000 Bitcoin. That's not smart on any level. The Bitcoin whales do a couple of addresses, a lot of coins, that means nothing. As for Gabriel's point, Gabriel's point on the technical expertise, just like Roger, I don't have a code anymore, but I did spend 10 years working as the CTO's right-hand man. I have dealt with developers my whole life, and I will defer to the smartest developers in the room, which are the developers of Blockstream, another disclosure. I love Timos' disclosure. Just like Timos, I have never been paid by Blockstream. I have never been asked to speak for Blockstream. I really like what they're doing, and I see no reason for Greg Maxwell to get into a pissing contest with anyone unless they're trying to call him out on something that he's programmed. Then, yes, he should go out and defend himself, but I don't think it's the core developers job to get into a debate match with Roger or even me over technical issues. I will trust them on doing it the right way and doing it the safe way, because that's what's important. Excellent. Points, Tony. I think we did really well. I think, hopefully, Roger won't be upset at us. We were all very even-handed in discussing the issue. You don't like you, Roger. We still like you. We just disagree on this one issue. Yeah, exactly. Exit question. This might be a little contentious, but there are plans I've heard that Roger Vare plans to start his own Bitcoin mining pool. According to some tweets I saw today, it sounds like Ant-Miner would be on board, perhaps joining the pool or inviting their customers to join the pool. If he starts the pool and it's successful, will it lead to bigger blocks? Theo Gooden. No. Gabriel, divine. I'm going to say no as well, and I just want to mention on the side here, you've got some players in the space, big holders like Misha Popescu, who has upwards of 250,000 Bitcoin saying that he'll actively destroy any attempts at hard forking or creating bigger blocks too soon. This is a guy who commands a lot of resources and could do a lot of harm with that in a lot of different ways. No. Tom Vaze. I'm also going to go with no, but I'm going to even pre-empt that with. I don't really see the connection, right? I don't see what one has to do with the other. I don't see what starting a mining pool has to do with getting the block size raised. I just don't think there is some idea whether it's a valid connection or not that the miners control the chain. If you can get the miners to vote or to signal or to express themselves in a conference like the Hong Kong conferences, then somehow you could cause the chain. But I think I'm very confused if the miners, the developers, or the users control Bitcoin assets from the combination of all three. I think Ethereum just proved that ideologies control the chain. Ideologies and perhaps investors. Let's move on to the end of the show to predictions or story of the week. Theo Goodman, do you have a prediction or a story of the week? We covered Ethereum Classic. That's probably by far the story of the week as far as the whole forking it, relay attacks. I think prediction is going to be that, well, everyone knows that one of the Ethereum is going to have to fork again, too, because they messed up something with the fork. I don't mean to laugh, but it's just like forking of the fork of the fork. It's just getting a little crazy because there is this replay attack. One of them is going to have to do a fork, Ethereum Classic Community, or I don't know whoever said no way. We're not forking. That was the whole idea. The other Ethereum is going to have to fork at some point. From the chatter I've been hearing is that, first, we got to deal with this Classic thing. That would mean that these relay attacks are just going to create even more of a shit show for some of the exchanges that are not dealing with it properly. The prediction of the week is that the forked Ethereum has got to fork again. Gabriel, divine. Did we lose Gabe? Let's go to tone Vaze. That was about the plug on my computer. It's not batteries right now. I guess I'll go with the longer term prediction. I was one of the events that I... Shares too far away now. One of the events that I spoke at this week was music, digital rights. I got to inform the community of music leaders in the digital space that a blockchain solution is not what you are looking for. A blockchain solution might disrupt your business a little bit, but that's not the solution you are looking for when it comes to organizing your... Making sure that every song has the proper attributes and every song has the proper credits to anyone involved in making the song. You need a shared database. You don't need a blockchain for that. To redistribute your songs, you also don't need a blockchain. You need a better database. My prediction is the music industry will listen to me. Hopefully they will listen to me and they won't waste too much time on blockchain. That doesn't necessarily need a blockchain. That's my prediction. Gabriel, D. Vaughn, prediction or a story of the week? Yes. Once again, I have two stories. The first story is Bitcoin is flat and basically that means the ecosystem is growing by a million bucks a day. Just trundling right along. No bugs, no forks, everything is totally groovy. The 13.1 is now in... It has a release candidate, which is fantastic. It has about half of I think segregated witness. Bitcoin is doing just great. My other story of the week is Made Safe, which is another crypto project. They will be introducing a cryptocurrency. It's a non-blockchain, cash-like, digital cash. It will be called Safecoin, but it doesn't exist yet. There's still no test phase. They launched their seventh test net, which is really cool. I actually finally got to download it and try it out. I went to a test website that had a dot-safe net domain. It was over the encrypted network. What Made Safe is is an encrypted layer on top of the whole internet that erases the difference between clients and servers and has a completely encrypted, basically, drop box-ish thing built in. Eventually when you'll be able to donate your drive space and bandwidth and get paid in the cryptocurrency, it's very exciting. I think it'll be awesome to actions over the SafeNet when it goes live. Very good. Finally, my prediction or story of the week is humor. I just wanted to highlight a couple of tweets that I put out lately. Someone sent me this cartoon. I thought it was really funny. There's an Ethereum guy. He puts the stick into his spokes and his bicycle stops working. He says, effing Bitcoin maximalists. I was really funny. I always know who to blame. I put how to blame, but that's a typo. This one, Stephen Mackey and I worked up here in the office. He has a one coin CEO. She says, I will double your coins by October. If I tell you, Alex says, way ahead of you. I think humor is very important now. I was impressed to see Brian Armstrong's response on Medium and that he was accepting of the idea that he's being made fun of on the internet for predicting things wrongly. I thought that was great of him. It's great to be accepting of humor. I think the ability to make humor, the ability to understand humor is one of the greatest things we have and that we should all be telling more jokes, taking more risks and spreading the laughter about everything. Nothing is sacred. But we're out of time. And just like tone, I'm running out of battery. I have about 18 minutes left on the battery. We're pushing it to the limit today. Thanks to everyone who watched. We had about 100 live viewers. That's really great. I think perhaps because we left the show open while we were talking and trying to get started, maybe that led to more viewers. But everyone should subscribe to the World Crypto Network. Share the show. Put it out on your Twitter, on your SoundCloud and YouTube. And then put a comment below if you want to talk about this. Everybody comes back. We all talk about things. And that's about it. We're out of time. Until next time. Bye-bye. There we go. Bye-bye.