The Bitcoin dev who quote, "Saved Bitcoin" is back at it again trying to rally the troops and the plebs to run his particular client. This Bitcoin developer also believes that the sun revolves around the Earth.
Yes, a geocentrist, Luke Dash Jr., is at the head of the newest filter movement. This is the dossier of Luke Dash Jr.
[upbeat music] So Colin, uh, maybe we get this out of the way. Do you b-- What, uh, what r-revolves around the Earth? Does the sun revolve around the Earth, or does the Earth revolve around the sun?
I mean, I think all of the planets in our solar system revolve around the Earth, if you take a classical view- Ah, yes... of, of the position of our universe. Um- Yeah...
obviously the Earth revolves around the Moon, which is the true center of our solar system. So, um, I didn't- Yes... think this was disputed. I thought this was pretty common, um, knowledge, you know?
This is like, I mean, this is textbook stuff, guys. Yeah. The, uh, you know, as you'll find when we get into this, a lot of these things become a matter of perspective because,
you know, a Bitcoin developer or just anyone could claim that everything revolves around the Earth because maybe they take a purist approach to, you know, r- special relativity and everything being relative to their perspective.
However- It, it's very postmodern, isn't it? Yeah. It's, it's very, it's a -- interestingly, it's a very postmodern argument, and yeah, everything is relative. Earth seems pretty flat to me. I mean- Yeah...
no one's made a good argument for why [laughs] it should be spherical. [laughs] Yeah, but- But this is what you, this is what you encounter in the world of Bitcoin.
You go so far down the rabbit hole that suddenly the Earth has no core, and it's flat, and in fact, if it's not flat, it actually is the, the center of the solar system, so... Yeah.
And so the thing is, is that, uh, I would say most everybody who has been obsessed with Bitcoin for a long time, um, Bitcoin is not just their only contrarian view, and this is especially true in the world of open source development.
You see a lot of like crazy personalities, not just in Bitcoin, but like in Linux or like Tor or other like open source like community projects.
So it is no -- we are no strangers to, um, the contrarians who commit their lives to their particular brand of crazy. Um, however, uh, the latest filtering debate,
um, has a lot of people saying, "Okay, well, there's this primary client for Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, and those guys are bad," so everybody should run this other client, which is, uh,
maintained by one guy named Luke, and Luke has some very, very interesting ideas, and he employs these ideas in, um, very sneaky ways, as Jameson Lopp has documented.
So this is more of an in-informational thing, both, um, just to explain to the listener like the, the guy who is behind Knots and his kind of very, uh,
strange and alarming views on the world, but then also then to, uh, poke fun at some of the goofy things he says because he has some truly ridiculous opinions on stuff.
Um, you know, for the record, I got a couple weird opinions myself, but- Yeah... um, you don't see me saying geocentric things in sincerity. I think everyone does. It's just a few things to
kind of highlight before we start. Um, everyone does, but it's just a matter of do you let those very colorful views influence your work
or a, in this case of Bitcoin, like a global open source decentralized project where, you know, y-y-your very narrowly prescribed worldview cannot fit every single person who uses this, right?
So, um, that's one problem I think that I'm gonna return to here in a second. Yeah. I think to going back to devs having these colorful opinions, we have seen that with a lot of devs.
They hold some very idiosyncratic views, right?
And I think that when these types of people are designing software and protocols for the rest of the world, if you let that worldview seep into how they go about designing these tools and deciding what are the right and wrong design decisions, that becomes a little bit, a little bit murky, right?
And I think these people see the world in such specific ways and in almost kind of like a savant kind of genius-level intellect kind of way, that they can't understand why people don't converge on these, um, systems or these norms that they find to be superior.
We'll get to that.
But like the last, kinda just like the last thing to say and to like, I think just to put a, a little cap on that n-note because all these things relate, the thing about Luke is like he is, and has been one of the most in-in-ingenious Bitcoin developers, and he has been instrumental in a lot of very fundamental and important changes in Bitcoin as we will get to soon.
And for Bitcoiners especially coming out of like twenty seventeen and like that class and on, Luke has been enshrined as like one of the most, if not the principal Bitcoin developer, uh, one of the most important, if not the most, if not the principal Bitcoin developer.
Um, and so it's kind of created this view that he can't do anything wrong, and what Lopp's article shows is that there are kind of some patterns of thinking and decision-making that are like just antithetical to a kind of anarchic open source system like Bitcoin.
And Luke has a pattern of wanting to make kind of unilateral decisions and having a kind of authoritarian perspective over certain things that I think a lot of Bitcoiners would find, you know, challenges a lot of their first principles, right?Yeah.
And because of this, because of Luke's history as an uncompromising person, uh, he's developed a bit of a mythos around him.
And I think this mythos then powers this narrative that when Luke insists on something and everybody else says he's crazy, that he is the only one who's right.
Let's start out by there's a good thread, Twitter thread, which we'll breeze through by Pete Rizzo, the Bitcoin historian, um, from a year or two ago called "Why Luke Dash Jr. is a legend," a Bitcoin legend.
Jack Dorsey calls him Bitcoin's guardian angel. Luke's history goes back to twenty ten, back when Bitcoin was thirty cents.
He discovered it on IRC because Luke, remember this, Luke loves IRC chat, which is an old school like chat platform from the, the internet of before, which now Bitcoin devs and core devs primarily still use kind of out of tradition.
So Luke, um, started one of the first mining pools, which does come into play today. At the time, his, the mining pool was called Eligius, and it was, uh,
you could say it was a Christian mining pool [laughs] because Luke, um, uh, basically used it to, uh, put a lot of, uh, opinionated things on Bitcoin re-regarding his faith.
Uh, Bitcoin, or sorry, Luke has, uh, contested Bitcoin's big, sort of first big software in twenty twelve. He was asked to leave. He had a bit of a battle for pay to, uh, se- uh, SegWit Hash, or I'm sorry, P2SH.
He's been a BIP editor, so like when somebody writes a proposal for Bitcoin, uh, he's the one who like reviews it and gives it a number.
Uh, this is one of the first time he quote, "Saved Bitcoin," is when, uh, he detected a hard fork that could have split, that could have caused a Bitcoin chain split.
So people think of him as like saving Bitcoin back then. And then Luke- I do think let's, let's pause on that for a second, though, 'cause that was a huge thing. Yeah.
Like, the twenty thirteen hard fork bug, um, would have been a pretty big headache.
And then that's when I think that really is like the thing that cemented him as one of Bitcoin's premier developers and, and really did, uh, garner him a lot of adulation even now. Yeah.
Um, and then the other na-major one I would say is when he, uh, during the block size war, Luke was one of the primary guys who figured out how to implement SegWit, which was like kind of the resolution of the block size war and the Bitcoin Cash chain split.
Then he coauthored, coauthored BIP one forty-five- Yeah...um, which updates, uh, updates the Git block template spec to support SegWit. So a-again, another huge feather in his cap. Yeah.
And here we have Adam Back talking favorably about Luke, saying, "Luke Junior has definitely helped Bitcoin, shown im-- general immunity to peer pressure." You can say that again. "Strongly independent-minded.
Uh, I'm glad he does what he does and hope people support him. Bitcoin owes him a debt for work on the user-activated soft fork," which basically, you know.
So w- let's, let's pause on that too because that's worth and then that's worth mentioning. So the user-activated soft fork was something that didn't actually ever end up happening.
Here's a little Bitcoin history lesson. Um, but the threat of it was important. It's kind of like a nuclear deterrent in a way. So, um, SegWit, um,
ends up b- uh, getting pushed through, and, um, some of the miners were vetoing it, saying they weren't gonna activate it, uh, wh-wh-when, when it was released. This was going to threaten a chain split.
At the time, you know, Chinese miners were the dominant miners.
Bitmain had, you know, I don't know how much hash rate they had, but it was encroaching on probably close to a majority, um, and especially within their network of miners within China.
And they were threatening not to upgrade.
So Bitcoin developers and Bitcoin users devised what's called a user-activated soft fork, um, which is where you would basically strong arm the miners into upgrading to something like SegWit by saying, "We're gonna reject any block you mine if you don't update to this software."
And so the user-activated soft fork was gonna be a way for node operators to basically, uh, push forward an upgrade by telling miners that if they're not on board with it, then they're going to reject their blocks.
This never ended up having to come to pass because the miners relented, but I do think the threat of it probably twisted their arm enough to where they said, there's no reason to try to like start a, start a war with this.
Yeah. And you see this actually echoing today, where there was a huge emphasis and victory claimed by node operators saying that, "We, the runners of nodes, are the ones who control the network."
This was very much a narrative which has come out of the block size war, and that is not a sufficiently nuanced statement.
And so I think- No...that s- that similar type of attitude prevails today where people or users think, "Ah, I simply run a different, you know, my node, my rules, and, uh, therefore, I'm like in some capacity voting on what Bitcoin looks like."
I think that, uh, enshrined a, a not enough nuanced understanding in like among the Bitcoin user base, because the pleb, the pleb loves to feel that they are the David versus the Goliath of the miners or the de- or the devs.
Yeah. That, that their node- They love to... Yeah.
They, they like knowing that their node matters as much as the like what, what is it like three hundred million dollars worth of Bitcoin sitting in BlackRock's, um- Yeah...self-custody.
I do think that was the one of the biggest lessons, and we'll end this tangent here in a second, get back to the Luke Dash Jr. stuff.
But I, I, I think this always bears mentioning because Bitcoin's consensus is such a vague term, and it's nebulous for the fact that consensus is kind of amorphous.And, and it's not like there's a set protocol for what defines consensus.
There are a bunch of different ways that you can reach it, right? So consensus for one upgrade looks completely different for another one. It might shift entirely, right? Like, the form might look completely different.
It's like blubber or something, right?
Um, but, but going back to the node operator thing, that was w- something that the plebs took away from SegWit, uh, n- Node two X and from us- the user-activated software, was that node operators run this game, when in fact they're just-- th-that's just one lever of power.
There's like a, there, there's like a tri-balance of power in terms of what is canonically Bitcoin, and it's the miners, it's the node operators, and it's the market.
And usually these things, one of them might push all of the others in a different direction, right?
But ultimately, um, they all have different levers to pull, and unless they're all acting in concert, then you don't get that convergence.
Um, but at the end of the day, the most important factor is what is the market bidding on.
Because you can have ten thousand nodes running Bitcoin Core right now, but if BlackRock decides to dump all their Bitcoin Core during a hard fork for Bitcoin two point o, and the market bids that coin, then that's the coin that ends up becoming the real Bitcoin.
But that's kind of an in-- the for, for u- for p-people who are kind of discovery audience, this is really in the weeds of what defines Bitcoin, so [upbeat music] Hey, Will here with Blockspace Media.
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Let's get into it.
So all throughout this time, while Luke is saving Bitcoin left and right, developing a mythos around him, he, uh, in a, because he's strongly opinionated, and he's a pretty, you know, well, well-seasoned developer, he forks Bitcoin Core, and he calls it Bitcoin Knots, which is a term which comes from the Bible, uh, from when Christ supposedly drove out the seller, the market, uh, the sellers in the, in the, in the Jewish temple in a kind of- I did not know that.
Yeah, in a kind of a violent, in a violent way where Christ, uh, I believe like ties some like rope or something into knots- Mm. -uh, and, uh, uses that to whip and drive out. Oh, oh, yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah.
This is the, um, yeah, when he, when he raids the, the Sadducees and the s-- or when he raids the temples when they're selling goods on the south. Yeah.
So, um, that is actually a pretty good mental model for like what Luke believes he's doing. Yeah. That, that's actually super useful.
And one point of clarity, when Charlie says fork there, he's talking about the Bitcoin code base. So, you know, um, fork c- i-is like a spectrum. It's like the, you know, all the colors of the rainbow.
Um, if you fork Bitcoin, and you make rules that are incompatible with the current code set, then you create a new coin. If the rules are compatible, then you don't.
So you can fork Bitcoin's code base, which is, a-and, and have a different set of r-rules that are still compatible, and people can run a node, which is like the server, the backbone of the Bitcoin network that runs Bitcoin Knots.
Which again, as Charlie noted, and this is gonna be important later for some of Luke's other claims, Luke took the existing Bitcoin Core f- code base, copy-pasted it, made some changes that were still kosher, gonna be compatible, right, with Bitcoin Core, and it's just written in different language, and it has a few different tweaks for your node.
Um- Yeah. It's, it's written in the same language, but it's got- Oh, is it? My bad. I mean, yeah, Luke does just opinionated stuff with it, which is fine. That's allowed, that's allowed.
In fact, dare I say, it's actually encouraged, uh, for power users to like go ahead, fork Core, fork whatever client you want.
That's the nature of open source development, especially Bitcoin, is, you know, use it as you want. But there is a major narrative for everyone to use Luke's strongly opinionated version, and
the meat of this conversation is Jameson Lopp's piece saying that the users are probably not familiar with exactly how opinionated Luke is, and they're probably not familiar with Luke's extremely controversial history, and, um, the nuance- And they're also- Yeah.
And they're also, sorry to interrupt, they're also probably just not aware with how Luke maintains Knots. No. Yeah. This was the most shocking thing from Lopp f-for me, and maybe this is a good place to start, Charlie.
Yeah. So- Um, and y-you can explain this better than I could, but as I understand it, it's basically every single pull request has to go through Luke before it ends up getting merged. Yeah.
Um, this is going to be difficult to explain on a podcast if nobody knows, if the listener doesn't know what GitHub is.
You know, if you're a listener, and you, if you don't know what GitHub is, like this is probably gonna be a dif... I'm, you know, I'm gonna have to be very, very reductive. So- Can I take a crack at it?
Everybody, everybody- Okay. So- Yeah. Okay, you go for it. Okay. So GitHub is a repository for code, and open source projects will use it to manage code bases. So if you wanna push an update, you can post it on GitHub.
People can download that update. For Bitcoin Core specifically, all these different developers can go on GitHub, and some of them can make requested changes to Bitcoin's code, post, uh, their code for that change.
Other developers can review it, and then it's a way for you to basically move code through the Bitcoin Core code, code base in a way where everyone can see changes being made.
And Bitcoin is an open source project, right? So anyone can make requested changes. But it, it, they, they have to be obviously be good changes.
As long as your code is up to snuff, and it's not buggy or dangerous, then it might get merged if other developers and a- and community members decide that they wanna see it put into Bitcoin.
But GitHub is basically a tool that developers can use to manage changes to codePush those codes through, get updates from other developers, and kind of like track the code as it goes through an approval process.
And then you can push that code into the software, update it, and then give the, uh, you know, users the new version. Yeah. And I'll make a point that, um, there are tons of open source projects out there.
Linux is a big notable one, and, um, all of the other open source projects all follow a similar model where people, they re- they req- they, um, request to change the code.
It's easy to identify what they changed and compare the two, and then it's easy for the project to merge that code or not merge it or continue working on it.
Um, especially when you make a fork of that project, you can then do that same thing.
Um, all the open source projects follow a similar type of like, um, easy-to-review strategy 'cause this is-- these are features which are built into GitHub.
Luke does not do this, and he claims it's because, and I quote, "GitHub does not work with knots." That is his rationale. So instead of him having an, a, an open and, uh, transparent,
uh, update process, whenever he forks this, the primary client to his client, he makes changes to it.
Instead of him like, um, making easily verifiable, verifiable compare, you know, changes, um, he just, uh, makes the changes with, uh, little to no disclosure, and it is -- unless you are deep in the weeds of how like Bitcoin core review works, you as a user don't know the difference.
There's no way for you to track the changes made. There's no way to track. This is the important thing. And can we go down to the Gjorz Provost, uh- Yeah... example that he gives here?
'Cause I think this is a good example of that. This gets into these-- a lot of Bitcoin's security. It's- Right here. Yeah.
So basically, um, Jameson Lopp goes through this example here of, of this in action, where Luke takes a pull request from Gjorz Provost, who is a, um, Dutch, a Bitcoin Core developer, and he ports it into knots.
And you -- A-a-and, and there are some differences in the code because it's just knots is different from Core as Lopp ch- uh, uh, you know, denotes here.
But there's no way of verifying without going through b-both, both code bases, like what exactly was changed, right?
You'd basically have to go through both lines of code and go look for the differences, but there's no way to actually track what was changed in the process of porting Gjorz code from Core to knots.
And this is standard for most open source projects. Is that, is that a fair characterization, Charlie? That's a fair characterization.
This has, um, a lot of what Bitcoin Core does, a lot of the, the abundance of people who f- who work on it focus on the transparent, um, like attention to security.
And what Luke does, um, uh, creates massive barriers to even for other people to even just verify that he's doing basic security practices or that the client is secure, that ch-changes he makes are secure.
He-he's not adding additional stuff. And the thing is, um, it is total BS that he needs to do this. Um, he claims that for some reason GitHub doesn't work with knots.
There is no reason why he doesn't have to do this. Um, I will assert my normative statement on this, which is it's because he doesn't like giving up control or scrutiny on what he does. So I'm gonna make that claim.
Fine, you can bash me for it, but this is a claim which you can see all throughout Luke's history.
For example, he's been a controversial maintainer even so back, back so far as twenty twelve, Gavin Andresen called, uh, who's the lead maintainer of Bitcoin Core at the time, called Luke out as being a, quote, "poisonous person."
Dave Harding recently, uh, two years ago, another major notable respective Core contributor, says he considers Luke to be a net negative for development, which goes-- flies in the face of being Luke being this mythical savior of Bitcoin.
And one note on that, this is I think an interesting divide here.
It's like the net negative, net positive debate for Luke, I think kind of boils down to whether or not you view his technical achievements as outshining the cultural impact he's had.
And I think that's where the divide really breaks down. It's like if you think that his technical achievements and his c- and his cultural takes are good, then you're going to think that he's a net positive, obviously.
You think the technical achievements outweigh some of the more vociferous language and divisiveness that we've seen from him, then you're also gonna think that, but otherwise you're gonna think that he's overall been negative for Bitcoin.
It's an assumption, I think, that rests on would we have gotten those breakthroughs without him. Yeah. Like, would the bugs have been discovered and fixed? Would SegWit have been activated without Luke?
And I think that's really the question that you have to answer as to whether or not you think he's been a good force for Bitcoin or not.
Then, uh, I don't wanna be-- don't wanna linger too much on the technical stuff, but Luke has a history of whenever he has a position of power in, um, open source organizations, notably, uh, the, uh, Linux Gentoo Bitcoin or the Gentoo Bitcoin Core package, uh, or in what's like the translation re-repository for, for, for Bitcoin Core called Transifex, Luke will merge strongly opinionated changes without review from anyone, and they are changes which everyone does not want.
Um, notably, um, in the Gentoo release for Bitcoin Core back in twenty thirteen or twelve, he, uh, added a lot of his own personal blacklisting to that client.
So basically, if he didn't like certain users or user behavior, he would blacklist their addresses in his particular version of the client, and he just added that unilaterally.
Then he claimed he didn't know, and when, and when he was called out for it, um, I also think that's pretty BS because it's pretty well documentedThat he was, like, challenged on this prior to merging and called out for it.
He also takes strongly opinionated, uh, um, uh, v-views on, like, how to define certain, uh, nomenclature.
Um, he has a different numbering system, which is called Tonal Bitcoin, which we'll come back to in a second when we get, we get into, like, goofy esoteric stuff Luke believes. Um,
then the last one, which is kind of the one that I kind of butt my head against Luke with over the past three years, was the BIPS repo.
So what happened is, because Luke is such a difficult person to work with, um, and he loves having positions of authority, when he was, uh, one of the, uh, editors of the BIPS, the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repo, which is where people submit new ideas, which are then cataloged and numbered, he became so difficult to work with, um, and coupled with people just naturally kind of leaving the space, that, um, after a few years, Luke found himself o-originally one of several BIP editors, now the only BIP editor from twenty twenty-three till, I think, mid twenty-four.
And, um, during this time, Luke refused to give, uh, BIP numbers to certain proposals, including popular ones like, like OP_CAT.
And there is a well-documented, um, push and pull and argument on people saying, "Luke, please just give a number," and Luke saying that he doesn't think these are serious proposals.
That is all-- That is a very, very false and, uh, ridiculous statement to make. Then when BIP e-editors were added, uh, a lot of the B- uh, BIP numbers were, uh, they started, uh, a lot of the, the process resumed again.
But it basically required, um, taking it, uh, away from just Luke's sole control. And you can see this, Luke loves to be in control of things, to assert his opinion. So let's get into some of the maybe more fun stuff,
um, about opinions Luke actually has, which then are reflected in the code that he, uh, writes.
Not by default, uh, has, uh, takes an opinionated stance, not relaying certain transactions which are important for the lightning network to function and for various coin mixers to function.
The coin mixer, particularly the Samurai Whirlpool controversy, goes back several years, and this is because Luke has a personal opinion on mixing coins. He does not like users doing illegal things.
So the reason Luke filters out in his client some of these, uh, transactions is because he believes that users should not be doing illegal things with Bitcoin.
Now, he has his own kind of self-referential, um, way of defining what is like how the relationship between the state and the laws interact with Bitcoin, which we can get into.
But he generally feels like anything that violates laws is immoral. Yes. There's this interesting, you know, co-mingling of, of the state and which he does believe he says separation of church and state is, is wrong.
But so like the, the, like legality and religion are, are linked, right? And this shouldn't come as no surprise either 'cause he's a monarchist. Um, there's a lot of talks about that in here as well.
Yeah, we'll get into his monarch- Speaking, if it violates the law, he thinks it's immoral.
Um, where that crosses over from privacy to breaking the law is where it gets muddy 'cause he just assumes that mixing it all, uh, violates KYC and AML law, therefore it's immoral.
I think this goes back to, um, you were talking about, um, he, he, he was playing semantic games with paper wallets.
He likes to rewrite definitions, as we've seen with him saying anyone putting spam, you know, JPEGs, inscriptions, ordinals, and NFTs, et cetera, on Bitcoin are raping node operators.
Um, he, he, he's, he's-- he is no stranger to the postmodern semantic rewrite. That is for sure. Yeah. Like, here's a great semantics example.
Um, so as we said, like, when you fork, um, an open source project and, and you have, like, that, you know, and you're using, you know, your v- your altered version of that project,
um, uh, Luke claims that, uh, his project, his fork of Core is more secure because, uh, he has net more work and more workers, uh, contributors or maintainers working on this.
So one of the kind of hilarious Lukeism's that he likes to claim is that Bitcoin Knots has more maintainers and contributors to Bitcoin Core because Knots has all of the work that Bitcoin Core developers have done, plus all the work he's done on Bitcoin Knots.
So, um, this is a ridiculous- I like that he can technic-- for the listener, he can technically claim that everyone who's worked on Bitcoin Core has worked on Bitcoin Knots because he forked the code, uh, the code base from Bitcoin Core.
This is not something anyone ever says. These are claims that are-- that only Luke makes. Everybody, even outside of Bitcoin, would consider this a ridiculous statement.
This is actually also false by most people's logical definitions of how you ascribe, uh, maintainership, because as Jameson Lopp says, you don't automatically inherit the attributes of maintainer contribution in a fork.
As I explained earlier, Luke's engineering practices when he pushes direct without going through the conventional GitHub pr- uh, PR review process, Luke's engineering practices actually break the integrity of the code changes from their original author and original reviewers.
So to be clearThe things that Luke is changing in his, in his own version of the client actually break and cannot be considered having been reviewed and secured by the authors of that code.
So, um, by everyone else's definition of logic and semantics, uh, what Luke claims here as having more maintainers with Nots is false.
Um, the thing is, and I know if Luke watches this he'll be angry, um, Luke just has his own definition of logic. This is a common theme in all, uh, Lukeisms.
So, um, Jameson shows like, you know, here's c- contributions to Core, and then here's contributions to Nots, and you can see that, you can see that, uh, there's a huge difference. So here's another
-- This is one of the funny ones where, um, Luke has been comically consistent saying that people who use Bitcoin in ways he doesn't like or in ways that are illegal should go to jail [laughs]. Um,
this is a, this is like an opinion which he continues to come back to all the time.
Um, in, in exchange a few months ago, uh, Luke basically believes that if you are doing things on Bitcoin that he doesn't like, which, um, go -- which result in transactions he doesn't want, uh, on the Bitcoin blockchain, which his node then has to, uh, contain,
that that is a crime. He says, quote, "Non-consensual use of other comp-- others' computers," he means nodes, "is a crime. Maybe you Lop should be in jail." Um,
now, yes, this is just an exchange on Twitter, but also, um, this, uh, is -- Luke repeatedly makes statements like this and makes it very clear- Where he just- What's that?
Where he just like randomly bends the law to his v- version of reality saying these things should be offenses, therefore you should be behind bars. Yeah.
And he also makes really, really normative ethical statements, um, saying that the actions that people do on Bitcoin are, quote, "worse than rape."
Quote, "Lop is literally rubbing it in our faces that he," quote, "fully intends to rape us. This is not just some disagreement. They are literally committing violence against Bitcoiners."
Again, the violence Luke is referring to here is, uh, making transactions that Luke doesn't like on Bitcoin, the open network. Th-this was the beyond the pale moment for me. I find this to be incredibly, um, obtuse,
um, unempathetic, and incredibly insulting for anyone who actually has experienced real sexual assault. I don't understand. Um, I, I hope no one in Luke's life has.
I hope he hasn't, and I hope he doesn't know anyone who has.
But if, if he has and he's making statements like that, that's pretty despicable to me because I don't see how you could make a statement like that if you actually have known someone who's experienced something like that, 'cause th-these things are not even in the same universe.
It's, it's not even remotely comparable in, in any sane universe at all. And this isn't just like, you know, cherry-picking like a couple quotes from Luke.
Um, for each quote that he makes here, he likely has multitudes of others which like reinforce and clarify his point. So these are not just claims that people are just like pulling out of context.
These are things which he repeatedly doubles and triples down on and makes it very clear he actually believes these things.
One -- another belief is that, uh, Luke is, um, pretty anti-cypherpunk and quite authoritarian in that maybe not necessarily authori-authoritarian to the state, as most Bitcoiners think of as the primary opponent, but he is authoritarian to the church.
Now, I do have a soft spot for the hardcore religious person. I actually kinda like the person who has like uncompromising ethical beliefs. Um, however,
uh, you should be aware that the prime -- that the sole maintainer of Bitcoin Nots believes, uh, if you do things which violate his particular church's teaching, you should go to jail, and you should, and you should not be able to use Bitcoin.
And we should highlight what that church is 'cause this goes back into- [laughs] Luke Dash Junior's or Dash-- Why do we keep changing it?
Is it- Well, okay, so this is probably a little deep in the episode, but Luke's not his real name. His, his real name is a different name, which I won't dox here, but it is in the, um, uh, the Craig Wright trials.
But, uh, yeah, Luke's a pseudonym. Okay. And I believe he actually prefers it to be- Dasher?...pronounced Luke Dashier or something. Luke Dash- Dasher. Okay...Dasher. I don't know.
It-- We just call it- Anyway, going back to Luke Dashmist or whatever, um- [laughs]
Going back to some of his very niche and esoteric beliefs, he follows a branch of Catholicism called, um, and I'm gonna-- someone's gonna skewer me for butchering this, um, um, Sedevacantism. Yeah. Sedevacantism?
Sedevacantism. Sedevacantism. Yeah.
Um, uh, to put it in perspective, there are one point four billion Roman Catholics globally, and this is from Lop's article, I'm quoting directly, and about thirty thousand of that sect.
So, um, it's less than point zero one percent of Catholics. Somehow he found, uh -- I had never even heard of this before.
Somehow he found the single most obscure religious sect in the world and for Christianity and is following it. Yeah.
This, this particular sect of Catholicism believes that the pope, uh, is not the, uh, the, the valid pope, and they have -- Like you, you thought like hardcore Catholics had a particular strong view of the world, this is even more.
This is even more hardcore.
This is the conservative of the conservative Catholics, which I won't like, I won't like disparage too much except to say this is an extremely niche version of Catholicism, and they have very, very strongly heldViews, uh, which Luke believes should be enforced by the state.
So yes, this is actually a thing where, um, uh, Luke is very clear that, um, in his view of the world, the state should enforce legally the religious laws of the church. And,
um, while I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon, at least in the Western United States, the, the West, um, like
this is-- he, he strongly espouses these views, and he's been really prolific about it on other message boards. Even on Twitter.
Like, he'll be arguing with somebody about filters and then immediately switch over to arguing with somebody about calling, um, you know, the, the, the Catholic pope, um, you know, like the false pope.
So you gotta admire his argument. He, he-- We file, we file this under a particular breed of logic called Luke logic.
Luke has, as Jameson Lopp says, Luke has a tendency to not, not be in consensus with people on a variety of topics, even outside of Bitcoin. Um,
one of these opinions, which I'm actually surprised is, is surprisingly popular in, uh, Bitcoin, is he's a monarchist. Mm-hmm. Which means he believes that as opposed to like a democracy or, um,
an, a, you know, some like Republican, republicanism or whatever, uh, he believes that we should have a king, and the king should rule over everybody.
This is actually kind of a hilariously po- you know, uh, prominent view among like other Bitcoiners, like, um, Saifedean, I think, is another one who's a monarchist. That's key. Yeah, a lot of these Bitcoiners- Yeah.
That's key... are, are of the, you know, liberal democracy has failed. We need to go back to traditional [chuckles] values. Yeah. You know-
But, but- Show, show me, show me a monarchist who doesn't at the-- with the same breath say, "And I should be the monarch." Yeah, exactly.
And I'll, you know, and I'll, and I'll probably believe it a little more s- uh, seriously. And if you think this is odd to have in the year of our Lord twenty twenty-five, well,
I, I think maybe unless you have more, we can kinda close with this one. Yeah. If you think all of these are strange views, the strangest of all resides on a Forums three,
um, uh, or a, um, Armageddon forum post in which Luke says, "By the way," and I quote directly, "The Sun really orbits the Earth, not vice versa." That's not a quote. So that's...
You know, i- if you believe that, then you're probably gonna follow everything Luke says, and if you don't, then I think that should kind of explain exactly what we're dealing with in terms of one version of reality versus another and that kind of subjective version of reality,
you know, uh, imposing itself on the work of this developer. I'll speed run through a few other kind of crazy opinions he has.
Now, these don't apply to Bitcoin, but you know, they are relevant given that he makes condemnations of people trying to attack Bitcoin and their moral and ethical failings.
One of his beliefs is slavery is moral if your religious doctrine and state condone it. Oh, God. I forgot about that. Here's the source. Here's another claim.
Men have the right to drag their wife around without interference from the state. Man-made laws are inferior to divine laws.
Weirdly enough, I think that that might make sense, but then he then goes to be very clear that if one of those laws means that you can abuse your wife, then he supports that.
He also believes that if you are trying not to conceive in a marital relationship, uh, that is sinful, so far as to say that even abstinence to not have kids is sinful within marriage, which is kind of a niche, uh, opinion.
He believes, uh, self-pleasure, uh, it, that is, uh, not towards procreation is a grave sin. That's actually a pretty common one among Christians. But then he believes, here's a crazy one, freedom of religion is bad.
He's very clear that he believes that the state should enforce the, uh, the church's, not, not any church, his church's, uh, religious practices.
So he believes that, uh, the future should be his particular brand of Sedevacantism, thirty thousand, uh, kind of Catholic offshoot, uh, believers should be-- have ultimate monarchic, uh, authority and should, uh, uh, not allow people to practice other religions.
So there are more. He's anti-free speech, yada, yada, yada. Um- The funniest one is that he thinks Rosa Parks should have sat in the back of the bus because violating a law is immoral.
[laughs] I mean, seriously, is there anything more antithetical to the cypherpunk, fuck the state, anarcho ethos that is kind of at the nucleus of Bitcoin? Obviously, Bitcoin is for everyone, whatever.
Um, you know, there's no one political ideology that dominates it, but like that kind of is, um, one of the central,
you know, principled stances of a lot of the people who adopted this technology in the early days, right?
I mean, this, this, this was a counter-revolutionary money or a revolutionary money, um, to disintermediate, um, the state's control over money. And- Yeah...
everything that Luke has espoused here is, is advocating for kind of an authoritarian view of things that is completely juxtaposed to some of those principles. Yeah. You don't have to be an anarchist to work on Bitcoin.
In fact, I think it's bad if all the people working on Bitcoin are anarchists. You don't have to be, you don't have to believe in democracy. You don't-- You can be a monarchist and be a fantastic contributor to Bitcoin.
Users should know that if they are endorsing both the person and a niche fork of a, of a, of the dominant clientThey should know the particular motivations of this, of a, of, of the developer that they're endorsing, especially if they're trying to, like, get other people to run this client, um, because that developer has a long and documented history of taking unilateral opinions, uh, uh, about Bitcoin, and this could affect Bitcoin consensus.
I think there's a lot of people who, um, uh, could be very surprised when Luke makes unilateral decisions which they don't like, and that-- and, um, the irony is the reaction which is causing the filter movement, the NOTS movement, is against perceived unilateral decision-making from Core.
So it's the great irony that I think, um, Core, which is not really that unilateral decision-making, and they have their own issues, uh, they are being branded as such, and the actual effect is to funnel users to the real unilateral decision-maker, the real authoritarian-endorsing, uh, developer.
Um, so, um, I would love to see more contributors to NOTS. I would love to see a more transparent development process. I would love to see Luke merge PRs into NOTS from contributors.
I would love to see Luke demonstrate, uh, not unilateral, uh, uh, development practices. I don't think that's going to happen,
but if I see those, I would love-- I would, like, shout 'em out 'cause I think that's actually great. Um, so until then, user beware. Read this article, look at the people you are endorsing, and then
make an informed decision. Don't trust what I say. Verify it yourself. See you all on the internet, everybody. Feel free to chime in with your strongly held opinions and condemnations in the comments. I can take it.
Peace. [outro music]