[funky music] Welcome back to Bitcoin Season Two.
I'm Charlie Spears with Blockspace Media. Bitcoin Season Two showcases new ideas and new conversations, uh, from new voices on Bitcoin.
It's the technical and the cultural mixed together for an exciting era of discussion and ideation on the oldest and only blockchain worth paying attention to. Bitcoin Season Two is produced by Blockspace Media.
Check out our other shows, The Gwort Show and the Mining Pod. Um, hit us on our website blockspace.media.
Subscribe to our newsletter, and make sure to find and follow all the places you go find podcasts and media and content. Today, I'm joined by Casey and Raff, who don't need an introduction.
We're gonna talk about Bitcoin, light pools, Bitcoin development, Hal Money Pod, and if you're lucky and you stick around, maybe we'll talk about ordinals and runes. So I'm gonna bring them up here.
Welcome, Casey and Raff. Yo, what's up? Good to be here. [laughs] Oh, damn, I have those stupid fucking effects- How does- -I think, that will appear automatically. Just leave it. Yeah, there we go.
We'll, we'll, uh, I wanna say we wanna take those out in post, but I don't think we're gonna do that. Adds color. Yeah, it'd be hard. Yeah. Yeah.
So, um, guys, when this comes out, it's gonna be the halving, but right now it's Halvings Day Eve. How are y'all feeling? [laughs] Halvings Day Eve. All right. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna start a new, uh, start a new holiday.
I need more presents. There needs to be some, um, some sort of thing that you have to do for the halving that's unpleasant, like fast or some sort of like self-flagellation or, you know, something like that.
Like, we, Bitcoin, you know, there needs to be penitence involved with Bitcoin, you know? Mm-hmm. Or like every time you- Penitence...
every time you make a fiat payment on the halving week, you have to burn like a million sats, you know? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. We need to observe. It's a, it's a, it's a holy week really.
Um- Yeah. Yep. Okay. And this holy day, like, it might not fall on 4/20 exactly like in the US- Mm... but it'll be 4/20 somewhere on the planet, I think. Yeah.
It's the evening here in the US, so it should be morning in Japan or Asia, so it will be on 4/20 somewhere, which is like- It is... a very holy coincidence.
It is, it is pretty unique, uh, a- as an event that happens at some time, but that time is uncertain. Um, like it's known that it's going to happen, but the time is uncertain.
The only other thing that's like that is that pitch clock. What is this? What's the pitch clock?
Where like it's, it's this, it's this, it's this big container filled with very, very viscous pitch, like tree sap- Mm-hmm...
and it drips, and the rate of the dripping is so incredibly slow, it, like a drop will fall once every like several years, and it's unknown. But isn't it deterministic? Isn't it ruled by the laws of, like, gravity?
Isn't, shouldn't it be like some sort of like- Bitcoin isn't deterministic either. B- the, the, the time the halving happens is- But, like, falling down, even if it's a liquid- Uh-huh...
shouldn't it be like ruled, like shouldn't there be like a constant drip, even if it's a very long drip? Oh, no. I think it's just, I think, I think it's so viscous that the- Yeah...
you know, the, the state of the pitch head- Mm-hmm... you know, is a different, you know, whatever. So I mean, it's deterministic in the same way that Bitcoin is deterministic. Yeah. You know?
Like hypothetically, if you knew the state of the world, you would know when the halving was gonna happen. Atoms in the universe, yeah. That's right, yeah.
So, yeah, so imagine you're fasting, and then we get like the hour-long block times. That's right. You can't eat, you can't eat your fish or your, or your raw steak until- That's right, yeah... like 8:40,001.
No, you can, you can only eat fish. Okay. That's, isn't that how lent works or whatever? Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Well, we know the Catholics do, uh, have a stranglehold over Bitcoin right now, so but enough- That's right...
about that. Yep. Yeah. It's true. Um, generic question, guys. I mean, it's my, it's the best question. How did you, how did you get into Bitcoin? Uh- What's your Bitcoin story? Raff, you wanna, you wanna go first?
I'll go first. It's very normal, boring, I don't know, hanging out on the internet. I think I stumbled upon the white paper.
I used to read like a bunch of like PDFs, like papers, random PDFs here and there, eBooks, and then I stumbled upon the white paper just hanging out on the internet. I read it, was like, "Oh, this is cool."
I was studying computer science, so I was like, "Okay, so this is a thing I can run on my computer. Uh, I better fucking run this thing."
Um, so I, yeah, looked at the, I think I met Ma- I also read like Mastering Bitcoin by Antonopoulos and like, yeah, went down the whole rabbit hole, but very like also wanted to understand the technical side very deeply.
Uh, and then, yeah, just started running my own node, buying some Bitcoin, hardware wallets, uh, and yeah, and then at some point discovering this Bitcoin dev called, uh, Casey Rodarmor.
So, um, yeah, that's, that's my journey. It's a very conventional Bitcoin story. Yeah, I, um- Yeah, very boring. I didn't buy drugs on Silk Road or- [laughs]
Like, people have such cool stories, and I'm always just like, "I don't know, it's just like read stuff on the internet." Um, so yeah. My, my story's pretty boring, too. I mean, same thing.
Long ago, I heard about Bitcoin, and I was like started reading about it, and I read everything I could about it.
And I hate the government, so I like that Bitcoin sort of possibly forces the government to be more efficient by taking money away from the government, um, and read everything that I could about Bitcoin, and I was like, "All right.
I think this is gonna work," you know?
I think, I think this has a shot, and then, uh-Since then, basically did nothing but think about Bitcoin, like all day, every day for the next, like, you know, eight years, or whatever.
Would you say you got into it for more ideological reasons? And then you've really... Like you're a contributor to Core now, Casey, and you, you got some quite r- you know, some, a, a modest contributor to Core.
[laughs] Very modest, right? [laughs] Like, "Hey guys, like I fixed this typo in the documentation." The syntax error. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Yeah, but like, you know, you've, you, you, uh, you guys write a client now in Rust, which is like powering a massive amount of economic activity.
You know, would you, how would you like describe the arc of your own developer story?
You know, have you guys always been the most sought after Rust developers in the world, or has that kinda mirrored your own Bitcoin journey? I literally learned Rust through Casey.
So, um, I, I saw like the Ordinals repo, like when Casey started noodling on it. So in the beginning of 2022, I think was pretty early on I saw it- Mm... and was like, "Ah, damn, this is written in Rust."
Don't really know any Rust. I was like a Golang person. Um, so I was writ- writing stuff in, in Go. Um, and then I discovered it again. I had some time, I was like, "Fuck it. Let's learn Rust."
Uh, and then, uh, I, I sat down for two weeks, like learned the basics, and then started contributing. And then Casey's just like supercharged my, my learning. Um, and yeah, it's, he's a great teacher.
So, um, I could have paid to- [laughs]... to, to, uh, to work with Casey. That's kind of the way I see it. Like, the value I extracted from that was, was crazy.
I, I, I definitely have always been ideological about it, but at the same time, I think having a stake in it, i.e. having like a financial stake in it by buying Bitcoin, that is what I think drives the, the, the real...
That's why there are passionate Bitcoiners. I think that it is a combination of ideology and personal stake.
If I- if it had been something that I had just been like, "Oh, I hope this takes off," and I had not been able to get a personal stake in it, and it'd just been some sort of technology that I thought was good for the world, I would never have been nearly so involved, right?
A- and I, I've never... I haven't had need to use Bitcoin a great deal. I did buy drugs off the Silk Road and other dark net markets. Other, the other dark net markets were more recent, and so I actually used Monero.
A lot of, a lot of dark net markets switched entirely to using Monero. Um, so Bitcoin is not a technology that I need, right? Like I, I think there are a lot of other people out there who do wind up using it, uh,
out of like a real need, but, you know, like definitely the financial stake is, is what's kept me interested in it for so long.
And I think that that's important to recognize that, and I think that that, that, that Bitcoiners often look down on shitcoiners and altcoiners.
They're like, "Oh, they're these greedy fucking scammers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And the scammer part is like, you know, some of them are scammers, some of them aren't.
But the greedy part is like, bro, you are sitting on a bag, and you are hoping that a number goes up due to no, like, influence of you. You're not making the number go up.
You're just sitting there hoping the number goes up, right? We all are, and I think it's important to recognize that. Yeah, I like often say like, you know, Bitcoin is a savings technology. That's true.
It's a strong meme, and I, and I do endorse it, but like that's just speculating with a low time preference. I actually don't even think Bitcoin is a good savings technology. Ooh. Yeah. Tell me about this.
Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so the best way, this is not, I didn't describe it this way, but I heard somebody else describe it this way. Bitcoin is like an option on an excellent savings technology.
So it is not a good savings technology yet because it's too volatile. I mean, when I say savings, I mean something that you would in a straight face recommend somebody put...
who, who, who had need to sell their money and, and, or sell, sell whatever their investment is, and for it not to lose a ton of value overnight.
A good savings technology is somebody that you'd recommend somebody with a straight face put like 95% of their savings into, right? Um, so Bitcoin is not a good savings technology now.
It is not a good inflation hedge now, right?
A, a good inflation hedge is something that, you know, predictably resists inflation, not something that's so volatile that it goes, you know, up and down, and you can lose against inflation at any given time that the volatility is not good.
That doesn't mean that it won't be that in the future. And because it's still monetizing, because it still has that, uh, volatility, it is an option on those things, right?
It's like buying a very, very early stage, you know, technology company before it's a blue chip in the belief that it will become a blue chip, right? So I think it is going to be a good savings technology.
It is going to be a good inflation hedge.
But it's gonna take potentially years of price discovery, and number go up, like number go way up, uh, before it, before that volatility goes away, and we can realistically say, "Oh yeah, if you wanna escape inflation, you should, you should buy Bitcoin," right?
So, so what is Bitcoin, Casey? How, like how do you, how do you describe it? Has your view on Bitcoin evolved over the years, even in the past year?
I'm just kinda curious, like how do you, what do you, what do you call... Like how do you think about Bitcoin? I just think of Bitcoin as...
I, so I, I f- the, I think the most persuasive way that you could explain Bitcoin to me is, is explaining that money is fundamentally a technology. People have all sorts of really weird ideas about mon- what money is.
They use weird definitions like, "Oh, it's some sort of like demand deposit," or, um, it's, it comes from governments or whatever. M1- But the reality... What's that? M1, M2, M3, like different definitions. Right. Yeah.
Right. But I think the real definition, the real answers are much, much, much simpler. Money is a technology that existed for a long, long, long, long time.
People think about-Commerce and human activity as having gone through a barter phase, but there's very limited evidence that that barter phase existed for any period of time.
Like, it's so inconvenient to have any sort of barter, right? You... I'm gonna show up with some cheese, and you're gonna give me, like, some unshorn wool, and I'm gonna take the unshorn...
Like, I guess an unshorn, unshorn wool is actually just a sheep. A sheep, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're gonna give me some sheep, and I'm gonna go do God knows what with the sheep.
[laughs] Um, so that is so inefficient that we see over and over and o- over again in very, very early h- human history different monies emerging all the time, right?
Um, in Native Americans, Native Americans used carved beads called wampum, um, that were on strings.
Really interestingly, a lot of Native American people had these tattoos which were a fixed length so that they can measure wampum string against so- some fixed length on their, on their body, so they were always ready to, like, appraise a length of wampum to figure out how much it was worth.
Um, I think there were, uh, there was a site where there's a huge number of stone ax heads being produced in Australia, and these were not produced in a number...
They, they were produced disproportionately for how much you would use them. Like, they were used as a, a trade good, these ax heads. So money is a...
There's a, there's a need for some technology to ful- fulfill the money role in human society in all, all time, and there's a great, great need because it makes everything so efficient.
And what are the properties one desires from a money? It needs to, uh, be durable. It needs not to rot or go away over time. It needs to be easy to verify that it is, um,
what, what it is supposed to be, right? So for example, you got, like, a gold coin. How do you know that it's actually gold? It needs to be divisible.
You wanna be able to divide up your money into arbitrarily small pieces. Like, make change so you can do different interactions. Um, needs to be fungible, right?
One problem with, like, wampum and ax heads and stuff like that is that there is no... It's hard to make a standard, and it's hard to tell how much, like, a given ax head, like, deviates from the standard.
Like, how shitty does an ax head need to be before you stop accepting it at par value for, like, whatever the value of an ax head is? Um,
so it needs to be, um, uh, compact and transportable, um, and it needs to be scarce.
If, if, if you have a money good and anybody can just produce more of that good, there's inflation, and it makes it difficult to store value in that money, which is one of the, uh, reasons that you use money is to store value and to use it as a, as a trade good.
And so we've been fitting different technologies into that money slot for a long, long time, and you can simply evaluate different technologies, uh, by how well they fulfill that, you know, money role, right?
So, uh, ax heads are, like, not great. They're, like, big. They're, like, different. They're, they're, they're not incredibly scarce. Anybody can just go chip out an ax head. Wampum is maybe a little bit better.
Uh, one of the things that made wampum, these, uh, these, like, polished, carved shell beads, very good is that they were incredibly labor intensive. So they, they were to some extent inflation resistant.
There would be inflation, but it was hard to make these things.
Um, and that's why the Europeans when they arrived in America, like, wrecked absolute havoc with their, like, glass beads that, like, absolutely obliterated the wampum economy. Um, it needs to be transportable, whatever.
Gold is pretty good. Gold is, gold is durable. Gold is compact. Gold is very scarce. Um, gold is fairly divisible. It's, it's soft. It's malleable. Um, there's a reasonable... It, th- it is, it is hard...
It, it can be hard to assess the purity of gold, but there is a quote unquote gold standard, which is just pure gold, and you can benchmark any given piece of gold against how much actual pure gold is in it, right?
So Bitcoin is simply... And then also, you know, in, in today's day and age, you want something that is digital, right? Uh, the vast majority of money used today is digital in some form or another, right?
It's, uh, it's credit card payments. It's Venmo. It's Zelle. It's, it's PayPal. It's, it's whatever. So Bitcoin is simply a new technology that fits this money role extremely well.
It is, it is digital, um, which is basically a necessity these days. It is peer-to-peer, which old physical monies were, but new digital monies are not, right? New digital monies are intermediated.
There are people who can, um, who, who you have to go through to do your transactions. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is, is, is uncensorable.
When the Bitcoin network is, is working properly, um, nobody is an intermediary to your transaction. You wanna make your transaction, you pay your fee, it goes through.
Um, it's very easy to verify the quality, like, the purity of Bitcoin, right? You have some software on your computer, and it instantly tells you if you've received a payment and how much you've received.
Um, it's more or less fungible. Um, Bitcoin coins do have a history, but they, um, they, they... You can mostly ignore that most of the time. Um, very finely divisible.
You can divide it down to 100 millionth of a Bitcoin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And so it's a great money, and so once this technology was developed, even if we don't think about, you know, any of the whatever, like, uh, you would expect that when a new technology is developed that is...
fills a role that is superior to the old technology that fills that role, people will start adopting it in that role.
Like, if you made a better shoe, if you went out and you made a better shoe, people would start wearing those shoes because they were better, and in fact, we do have better shoe technologies like, uh, like slip-ons with nice, uh, uh, sort of, uh, stretchy, uh, sort of, uh, like top, top things that you don't need to lace.
They're great. I wear them all the time. So that people would start adopting that technology. So there's no, there's no need for any sort of complicated philosophical whatever.
Bitcoin is a new technologyThat is better than other widely used technologies for the money role, and you would expect to s- see it get adopted because of those, because of those qualities. Yeah.
I feel like you just did a whole, like, treatise podcast. You basically reprised that one- [laughs]... Hell Money episode, you know, from back in the day on one of them, I forget.
But, uh- The, all this stuff is, like, not original to me, obviously. Yeah. Like, one- one- one thing I highly recommend is, um, Nick Szabo wrote a great, um, essay called Shelling Out. Yeah.
Which is- On his Unenumerated blog. I love that blog. Yep.
And it's a great, just great, uh, great, um, uh, essay about his ideas about the origin of money, and the idea that they go through these phases of initially they're these things that are sort of useful or just ambient, and they become these sort of collectibles that you don't, that- that don't really...
They're not fungible, they're not used in trade, but they're things that people, like, desire and collect. And then eventually they start to take over a- a use as a, as a trade good. Yeah. So I- I like it.
I, you know, I personally, my own Bitcoin journey has... My- my understanding of it has evolved- How did you get into Bitcoin? Or do the podcast listeners already know how you got into Bitcoin?
[laughs] Podcast listeners don't know. I got into it a long time ago, um, for, to have fun, we'll say. Uh-huh. Um, so that was a, that was a fun time in my life.
[laughs] Casey on- on the internet. [laughs] Yeah. This, this, uh... Yeah. Well, hi, Mom. Um, so, [laughs] uh, I guess, like, coming back, like,
what would you say, like, how do you des- like, how do you describe what you guys do? Like, everyone in the, all the degens in the world are like, "Oh, Casey and Raft, they're brilliant."
And, I mean, yeah, you guys are smarter than your average bear, but, like, how would you describe what you, like, what your job is? Or even if you have a job.
What do you give y- like, what, how do you describe yourself and, like, what you do on Bitcoin? I think, like, Casey is possessed by demons- [laughs]... and has these ideas.
He puts them out there, and then I try to, like, help and li- l- like, lay some brick- You're the demon slayer or you're- [laughs]... demon wrangler? Demon wrangler. Um, yeah, I don't know.
Like, everything's basically driven by- by Casey and his kind of ideas. Um, he came up with Ordinals. Uh, we sort of came up together with inscriptions. Like, you already, you...
I think when I joined, you were like, "Oh, maybe we do off-chain content," like, sort of- Yeah... thing. Yeah.
I knew that, I knew that I wanted to do NFTs, but yeah, I remember us having, like, brainstorm sessions about, like- Yeah, yeah... naming them and how they're gonna work and- and all this stuff. Yeah.
We were reading, like, the SegWit BIP, the Taproot BIP. Mm-hmm. Like, all of that. We were trying to figure out how they work, like, where can we push data into. Yep. So yeah, that was a, that was a cool time.
Um, but yeah, my job basically is just, uh, kind of, yeah, keeping a lid on things, you know, like, answering issues, kind of monitoring the repo. Um, I often also am a little bit of, like, a gatekeeper for Casey.
Like, I'm in a lot of Telegram chats with a lot of different exchanges and, uh, companies, and then they write me and I filter kind of up what is important and kind of give it, give it to Casey if it's, if it's important.
Um, so yeah, I- I screen a little bit so that Casey can create. Um, that's on a high level how I would describe my job. Uh, I don't know how Casey, how Casey- Yeah... describes his.
How do you describe your- your job right now, or your role, Casey? Yeah. I mean, one problem is that it's gotten basically impossible to describe what I do to normies, right?
You talk to a normie and they don't know what Bitcoin is, and so how do you explain to anybody? They don't know what Bitcoin is. They also don't know what a protocol is.
So I can't even, like, describe, "Oh, yeah, I work on a protocol that enables people to do X." They have no idea what a protocol is. Like, if they- they, like...
I guess I should tell people that I make an app for, like, digital collectibles, right? That would be the- Where do I download it? The- Yeah... where's the app store? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, I make an app for digital collectibles, and then that app... Just kidding, it's not an app. I write a protocol that allows other people to write apps, and then that protocol is on Bitcoin. Like, um,
yeah, I mean, ma- so mainly, you know, what I, what I do is I work on the repo with Raf, um, and the Ord repo, and try to write new features for Ord and for Runes. Um,
and- and- and I think the most important thing that me and Raf do is, um, the protocol development. Um, I think it would be kind of okay, it wouldn't be good if Ord the software just stagnated.
Um, but if it did, as long as the protocol didn't go through any, like, bad changes, um, that would kind of be fine.
That's the thing that most worries me about this whole enterprise, is just stupid changes being made to the protocol. Like, my doomsday scenario for Runes is that some exchange or some group or whatever,
like, proposes a bad idea. Like, you should be able to have Runes execute, you should be able to put, uh, Ethereum smart contracts in an inscription, and then have Runes execute those EVM smart contracts.
And then they convince, like, enough people that it's a good idea that somebody, like, hacks Ord or whatever and then does this, and then we have this just, like, shitty, stupid protocol.
Or- or I- I think it could be a lot simpler.
Like, I think you could probably come up with examples that aren't so dramatic that would be just kind of, like, dumb extensions to the protocol, and that is the thing that I really don't wanna happen.
Like, as long as the core protocol is okay, and as long as everybody-Sort of agrees on the core protocol and it doesn't do anything stupid, that's good. I've kind of like done my job.
But me and Raff maintaining Ord is a big part of kind of maintaining control over the protocol and preventing bad things from happening.
If, for example, if Ord were to really stagnate and people were to really look to another, um, piece of software to do everything with Ord, including, like, indices and exchanges and everything, um,
that team, realistically that team would have a lot of control over the protocol. Um, and so me and Raff have to work to stay relevant, right? It's open source. Anybody can, can fork it and start changing it.
So me and Raff have to... If we, if we have a proposed protocol upgrade, we also need to implement it. It also needs to be available in the client.
I think people look at what is displayed on ordinals.com as kind of a baseline of, like, is this the real thing? Even if I, I don't even know if it's the most popular, um, explorer. I- it's not, no, sadly. Like- Yeah.
[laughs] It's just a very city kind of front end. Um, but that's what Casey said, you know.
We have this core of things, like the core protocol and the libraries that we want to, like, push into, like, every back end and every infrastructure, so that's kind of what we really focus on.
And then like nice features, like a nice pretty front end or a wallet with crazy amounts of features is good to have, but that's not our core competency.
Like, the core competency is kind of this long-term game of- Mm-hmm... having your kind of ideas and your kind of code somewhere in the background that runs basically everything. Yeah.
And that people build on top of that. That's kind of what you, what you want and that kind of how we kind of think about this. Got it. Um, yeah. Yeah.
And I guess reflecting back, 'cause, you know, I, I share your, your concern with that. I do, I, yeah, I do see a lot of this can be very path dependent.
And I think people who, you know, from the outside looking in, they go, "Oh, well, Raff and Casey must just be rolling in all this money," but you guys have chosen a pretty selfless, humble approach. Wow, okay.
[laughs] I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. Like, you guys have, you guys have shown a very, like, um, a very noble approach here to, like, really focus on protocol development.
You know, you've worked your ass off too this past year. Um, so I guess reflecting on Ordinals, like, you know, you have this- Well, one, one thing to, one thing to say- Yeah...
about that is that, um, like, it is to some extent, like, a choice, but at the same time, if we did any of the things that people do to, like, make a ton of money, what we do would not, not be nearly as impactful, right?
If, if there had been, like, an Ordinals token or if there was, like, a Rune Protocol token that you needed to, like, make a rune, um, it would... The product would be harder to use. It'd be much worse.
You'd need to not only get a Bitcoin wallet, but also get some, like, shitcoin in your wallet to use it. Um, and it would, uh, it would be, like, impure.
People would look at it and go, "Oh, this is, like, just a money grab," right? And so, yeah, maybe we could make more money, but the software would have way, way less reach.
Um, it's not like me and Raff have, like, these, like, genius mastermind ideas to make a lot of money, and we don't do it. I think all of those ideas, like everything...
Most, most of the things I can think of to, to monetize would, would come at, at, like, a cost, either a reputational cost or a, or a technical cost. It would, it would make people less likely to adopt the protocol.
I think that, you know, like, even the maxis who absolutely hate everything, they can't...
They never say, like, "Oh, Raff and Casey are, like, extractive, like, making to- " They just don't say that because it's not true. They have absolutely no argument to say that. In fact, I don't know...
Like, I don't think maxis or the real anti-Ordinals haters, like, I don't think they have, like, an articulated idea about why we're doing what we're doing.
Like, I guess they call, like, um, quantum cats, like, NFT scammers, and at least that's, like, a rational kind of thing. Like, okay, they're doing this to make money.
I do not know what they would say why they think that we're doing what we're doing. I don't think they would have a good, good answer to that. It, it gives us basically long-term street cred- Yeah... what we do.
It's a reputational thing. It makes us also not as attackable, as Casey said. Um, and I think that's the main reason this got so popular as, as well. There was no extraction at the beginning.
There was just pure code and people running it. Yeah. Um, and that's why it could flourish so fast and so, like, in such a awesome way. Um, so I think that- that's what made it successful.
And now kind of going in and trying to extract something would feel wrong. I mean, we need to get paid, like we need to pay our bills, but, like, we have to do that through other means.
The, the protocol should stay pure. Same as Bitcoin, you know. Um, Bitcoin has a similar kind of path, and we want to emulate that and keep that ethos alive. And we do that with everything.
Like, also the way we designed Ord was, like, with the kind of principles of Bitcoin in mind. You know, you run your own node. You index everything yourself. Like, the, the core protocol is the most decent...
Like, the core kind of Ord thing is the most decentralized way to run it, and then people build, like, less decentralized, more custodial things on top. But the core should be as decentralized as possible.
And I think we, we hit it quite well. Um, we hit that, that goal quite well. Yep. Yeah. I guess double-clicking on that, like, reflecting it's been 18 months now since shit took off.
Like, what are some highs, like things you're really happy to see, maybe beyond what you imagined when, during the early days of Ordinals?
And what are some things, like, you're, uh, that are, you know, that are not that happy or that are kinda that, that you, that you wish didn't happen?
I'm kinda like some highs and lows of the past year or two.So when you make an inscription the sat that the inscription is made on is
the, is the first sat of the input containing the witness that reveals the inscription. I hate this. I hate this. This happened due to... It should just be the first sat of the inputs.
I, I think that this is an overly complicated way of- No, first sat of outputs. That's what you want. No, first sat of all inputs. Like, I mean, like, the first, first sat of the whole set of inputs.
Like, not of the input that it is in. I see. I mean, yeah, same, same thing. Same, same ratio. Same thing. Either output or... Yeah, it doesn't matter, but I see what you mean now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And but there was a miscommunication between, uh, myself and [laughs] Raph when I was less actively working on the code that led to it being, uh, implemented in this way. Um- Yeah...
that's my big regret, and that's kinda it. Uh, I'm very... I, I think that the, I think that, um, the protocol has a very actually, like, a high degree of decentralization as far as it goes. Um, the...
And that's the thing that I'm most happy about. So I think ordinals, the ordinals algorithm, the numbering algorithm, the rarity, it's basically impossible to change at this point.
There's no way that anybody could make a change to it. Um, it's so simple. It's... There are no sort of, like, improvements or whatever. Um, inscriptions I think also have a pretty high degree of, like, decentralization.
I think it would be pretty hard for people to make a bad change, including us.
I think that it's starting to get to the point that it's, it, people can kinda meaningfully resist us and, and kinda understand the technology. Um, I think those are my highs and, highs and lows. Raph, what about you?
I'm, I'm, I'm especially curious about your lows. The lows. Um, I, I don't know. Not necessarily lows, I just know that I, it was a very stressful time. Like, I, uh, kind of took over the protocol.
I was pretty much alone. Casey was a little bit out of it. Um, and, like, I had maybe less than a year of Rust experience, and I was kind of thrust into this role.
I was at the time also still half in, in university, so I was kind of juggling many things at once. And I had to, like, yeah, uh, lean on people but also just make my own decisions, you know?
Uh, that was during the time that the ordinals is dead time, which was good I think because, uh, everyone was like, "Ah, ordinals are dead, whatever," and I was just like, "I just wanna finish this."
You know, like Casey, uh, we made this unfinished protocol, I just wanna get this done. You know, finish it. Get, like, with the curved inscriptions thing and kind of get out all the features we had imagined before.
That was kind of my goal. It was more like a, yeah, uh, just get this done. But that, then we kind of bounced back. So I think the, the low was, like, that time from, like, June to, like, maybe October or something.
That was just a very, like, stressful time for me. Um, that was maybe the low. And then after that, the highs is just... I don't know. I really like, um, I really like my life right now.
Um, it is very stressful still, but, like, I get to... I work with very cool people. Like, I, with Aaron and with Casey most closely. I get to meet a lot of cool people.
I get to, like, travel around the world, which at this point is also a bit, like, annoying to be traveling all the time. But, like, one of the greatest trips or the high point for me was going to Taiwan.
Um, uh, I'd never been there before and it was, like, me, Aaron, and Casey traveling. Like, went in, going to conferences and then afterwards we went to, like, hot springs and hotels and, like, had a nice time.
Um, that was probably one of the, the, the best times. Um, yeah. Yeah. And, and you're also, you're, uh, you guys have also pursued, uh, independent projects or interests. I...
And Raph, you're CTO of Inscribing Atlantis. [laughs] Yeah. The hottest new... What even is Inscribing Atlantis? How do we describe this, this endeavor? Yeah, yeah.
Inscribing Atlantis was, like, kind of born out of the need for a good ordinals conference. So the first ordinals conference I went to was in Miami. Uh, like, it was a side conference to Bitcoin Miami.
That was also my first Bitcoin conference, uh, I think last year in May or something. Jumping in the deep end. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was called Ord Miami, and, like, we were sitting there, like, at this conference.
It was cool to meet people, but it was not a very good conference and we were like, "Damn," like, "this is a new space.
It's kind of important to, like, set a good baseline for the culture and for in-person events," and we didn't like the baseline that was set. So we were sitting there like, "Damn, we can do this better."
Um, so, like, Aaron, Ordinarily, and me kind of sat down. We're like, "Okay, uh, shall we just, like, do something, uh, and make a better conference?"
Uh, and then we decided to do, like, something in Amsterdam in the following October.
And then out of that need to kind of have a, you know, a company and an LLC, limited liability, have a bank account, the company was formed.
Like, it was formed out of a necessity to, like, like, collect money for tickets and, like, have some sort of entity around that. And the original idea was just to do this conference.
There was no, like, big plan around it other than, like, let's make a cool conference and set, like, a good baseline for, for, for the space. Um, and it was also a kind of...
And then this conference was a, like, I think it was a resounding success. So it was at the bottom of the market. I think Bitcoin was 15K, ordinals was dead, whatever. Um- Was Bitcoin really 15K? N- no. Bic- the...
Ah, shit, it was like, it was, like, 30 or something. Okay. But ordinals were dead. When, when was the low? When was the low? Didn't it go- Last-... 15K? Last spring was the low. Oh. And then it, it, it pumped up a bit.
But ordinals were dead in October. Yeah, ordinals were dead. That's- And that... No, I mean that conference, Inscribing Amsterdam, is, uh- How dead were ordinals? Like, I've never, like, trading.
I'm never, like, in the market, so I really have no idea. Like, charts of, like, activity on chain- Uh-huh... viewing them on marketplaces.
And you, you know, you had the spike in the beginning of the year, like, around March- Mm-hmm... April, and then it was just like-... completely flat. Mm.
And, and right at the, at the, like, really, like, peak or bottom of the Ordinals market, we did the conference. Yeah. And it was a huge success. Like, we had like- Yeah... 300 people there, like, completely sold out.
Like, everything was packed. The venue was great. Everyone enjoyed it. Um, and then, like, from there, like, we rocketed back up. Um, so, uh, we- Yeah, we resurrected Ordinals. They were dead.
[laughs] But they- They were dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was just slumbering. It was just like a deep slumber. Um- It's nice that we've already had a... We've already gone through our first bear market, you know? Yeah.
Exactly. And then Inscribing Atlantis, from there we were like, "Okay, we can work together. This works. Let's do something with this." Mm-hmm.
And, like, there was a lot of need for, like, you know, artists who wanted to come from other chains or even artists that have never done, like, any sort of NFT or digital artifact thing. Right.
Uh, and there was, like, this constant stream of people who wanted to inscribe but needed help with it, so we were like, "Okay, like, we'll consult, you know. We'll, uh, we'll do the- we'll do the inscribing.
We'll kind of explain the protocol." And our idea was always to use the, kind of the newest features, you know, parent/child method, like just showcase the newest things that the protocol has to offer.
So, um, so yeah, we had events, then we had, like, the s- the second kind of arm we had was, uh, doing, like, this- this consulting work. Um,
and yeah, those- those are basically, that's what Inscribing Atlantis is, you know? Um, kind of helping artists into the space and also showcasing artists then at events.
So we had, uh, we- we collaborate a lot with, uh, with Gamma and also with Notcha. Uh, we had, like, this, a, a big party in New York.
Um, and yeah, we- we did that together with them and, like, showcasing artists, kind of bringing the community together. It's always nice. It was also a huge success. Um, everybody loves that.
So that's- that's basically what In- Inscribing Atlantis does. It's, it's very kind of limited in that sense. It's not a billion dollar company. We do not want to take VC funding because that usually warps incentives.
VCs always want, like, a 10X or 100X, so they... And they, the term sheets are always kind of crazy. They will, like, fuck with you if they- if you don't- if they don't get their- get their return.
Um, so at the moment we're bootstrapping, um, because it's, yeah, basically it's just, uh, it's- it's easy to bootstrap because there's a lot of liquidity in the market to kind of have enough money to pay people and do your thing.
Yeah. And it's interesting because I, we talked about this before the, before we hit record, but like, you know, you're CTO, you're doing work consulting, executing inscription projects for folks.
So it's like you're on the other side of Ordinals. So, like, during the day you are designing and maintaining the protocol and the repo, and nights and weekends you are also using it, implementing it.
I feel like, you know, both of you guys have, have, have s- have been da- dipping your toes into this [laughs] recently. Yeah. What's it like being on the other side? Um... Bro, our code sucks. Ord sucks. Ord sucks.
It's so bad. It's so bad. So bad. [laughs] It's so hard to use. Yeah, like, it's rough. Like, I- I'm inscribing something right now and it uses parent child, and the file sizes are pretty large.
And so that means that, like, I can really only get a small number of inscriptions in per block, and I just need to wait from block to block, which is in- incredibly annoying. Um- [laughs]
I mean, you could be smarter about this by going to a miner or using a l- relay. It would cost a lot of money. It would cost a lot of money. Miners, I looked at Mara's, um, transaction accelerator.
They charge, like, a 300% premium on top of the base transaction rate to accept an accelerated transaction, which is, which is pretty insane. Yeah.
It's, y- you've, you've also, yeah, you've kinda introduced a, a new business line into a whole, [laughs] uh, publicly traded company's, you know, business model, which is kind of surreal. Yeah.
Um- Do you think, like, the, the, like, the- the- the miners that are, like, publicly traded, do you think, like, these extra transaction fees are priced into the, like, price of the stock? Not at all, no.
Well, I think, I think- I mean, most- I think they're probably just such a, I think- Like, on the, on the block reward and not on the extra fees?
Like- Well, I think, I think that, I think that the, I think that those just probably aren't material at all.
I think they're just probably, like, a small sideline part of their business and so it just isn't enough, isn't- isn't a material enough amount of revenue to actually positively impact the stock price.
It is, it is a bit worrying. Like, private transac- transaction submission is pretty bad. Um, that is exactly what we don't want to have happen on Bitcoin.
If, if private transaction submission were a significant portion of miner revenue, then, you know, the problem is is that you have all these, like, bespoke ways of submitting transactions to these different miners.
You wanna make a non-standard transaction, so you show up and you submit it to a small number of prominent miners through their, like, dedicated channels for doing so, and then those miners make more money.
And if there's a new miner, they don't make, uh, they don't make this extra revenue.
So I think that if this continues, I actually think Bitcoin Core will take a hard look at which standardless rules are causing people to submit these, these private transactions and, and will remove them.
I, I predict that within, for sure within two years, probably within one years, we'll see the end of the OP_RETURN size limit, almost 100% guaranteed. Yeah.
I, I think that, um, runes will y- like, rune- rune, the runes protocol stores the protocol messages in OP_RETURNs. And, um, you can do a fair amount of things in the OP_RETURNs, but
you cannot make big fan-out transactions where y- where you're sending a small amount of, um, run- Different amounts... different amounts of runes to many, many different outputs.
So you, you run into the 80 byte OP_RETURN limit.
So if people wanna do this, they're going to be submitting these transactions to, uh, private-Private mem-- sort of these private transaction submission services, and there's already librelay, lib-lib-librelay Librelay.
Shout out librelay. Go find it. Go use it. Peter Todd. Yep. So this both, um, uh, reduces the...
Uh, or sorry, increase-- removes the op_return size limit, and preferentially peers with other librelay relay nodes to make sure that there's a connected subset of the Bitcoin network that will relay these transactions, and it's pretty successful in getting it into miner.
So it's already... That, that, that one thing, the op_return standardness rule is, is pretty easy to, um, bypass. Um, and, uh, so I think that if it gets popular enough,
Bitcoin Core, they want people who download Bitcoin Core and run it without making any modifications to have an accurate view of what's going to get into the next block so they can estimate fees.
So they are going to probably, uh, lift that limit by default, the op_return, the op_return limit. I would, I would guess. It depends on kind of how it goes and how popular Runes is.
Um, and I will love that because those fucking moronic filter idiots will...
Who are, who are like, "Filters work, bro," will see an existing longstanding filter be removed from Bitcoin Core, and the sinful, sinful greater than 80 byte op_return transactions get into blocks and be relayed by native Bitcoin Core nodes, and they will look like fucking dummies.
They will look like fucking dummies.
I mean, they already look like fucking dummies for anybody who's, like, half of a quarter, an eighth of a fucking brain cell, but this will be more material evidence of their, of their dummyhood. Damn. I mean,
you know what's funny? Like, you... It's, you know, you come up with these ideas, Casey, and then you, you kinda build it, you know, deliver it to the market. But it's...
You know, when you, when you have this idea for Runes or even ordinals and inscriptions, did you imagine that these things would kick off an era of, like, getting down into things specific like mempool relay policy?
Did you like-- Did you plan on this, or did this k- this just kinda happen? No. And I wish, Raph, I, I wish I could remember, like... Do you remember before we launched inscriptions, like, before it went live, what...
Did we think it was gonna be popular? I don't really think so. Like, I think we really had no idea. I, I thought it was gonna be a really niche market. Mm.
I thought, like, a couple thousand people would use this, uh, inscribe their cat pictures, their, you know, their children or whatever- Mm-hmm... their loved ones, maybe some memes.
Um, but I didn't imagine, like, the whole attention that we got. Yeah. Like, I never would've predicted that. Yeah. Um,
yeah, I mean, I remember one of the first things I said to you guys is something along the lines of, "Wow, ordering Satoshis. This is the coolest thing ever. Um, inscriptions, nobody wants that."
[laughs] I was like, "JPEGs are fucking stupid." Yeah. "Nobody's gonna do that. I'm gonna... You know, maybe I'll put a three megapixel picture of my dog up there, and, and, and that's it." Yeah. But-
Yeah, also, like, every person I told this before we launched, I was like, "Yeah, we're numbering Satoshis." They're like, "Bro, are you crazy? That doesn't work." Like, "That's [laughs] fucking stupid."
[laughs] And they're like... And then when we had inscriptions, I was like, "Yeah, we can now, like, also do, like, NFTs on, on Bitcoin." Everyone's like... Like, I have friends who work, like, in the crypto space.
It's like, "Bro, are you stup- Why are you doing stuff on Bitcoin? That's, like, the stupidest chain."
Um, so, like, the, the whole market, at least, like, my s- like, my view on the market was like, "Okay, nobody's interested in this." Like, and we had the same experience, like, on Twitter.
Like, Casey and me would do, like, Twitter spaces, um, in, like, December and January, and there was, like, five people in there. Um, and we were just like, "Yeah, ordinals, inscriptions. Check it out."
[laughs] Like, "Run this weird kind of software on your computer that builds an index that's hundreds of gigabytes large, you know, and then you can number your Satoshis. It's so cool." Um, [something falls] oh, shit.
Um, yeah. So it was a big surprise basically, um, what happened. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess switching to Runes, 'cause when this comes out, it'll be the halving.
The, the halving will be mere blocks away when, when this pod drops, and which means Runes are about to infest the Bitcoin blockchain. Um- Boy, will they. Boy, [laughs] they will. [laughs] Um,
I remember when you put the blog out, Casey, and you said you wrote it kind of on the way back from Singapore on the plane. Yeah, on a plane. Yep. Which explains the spelling errors, 'cause I was...
I got out my red pen, I was like- [laughs] "All this spelling." [laughs] Casey doesn't care. Yeah. Well, like, you know, I assume you didn't plan on implementing it at the time. Or did you? Yeah. No, not really.
I thought maybe. Like, I didn't really know. Um, uh, I was on, on the plane, I think, coming back from Singapore, and, like, BRC-20 just offends my technical sensibilities. Um, it is not a efficient protocol.
It takes three transactions to transfer a BRC-20 token. It takes two transactions to mint a BRC-20, to create a BRC-20 token. It takes maybe two transactions to mint as well. Um, it's...
They could be front run, like, all these, all these things. It's not efficient. Um, you wanna do multiple transfers in a single transaction, you have to do, like, these multiple inscriptions. Like, it's, it's just crazy.
So really, the, the, the real impetus was I wanted to make something. I wanted to write... I come up with an idea for something that I thought was better, um, and I did, I think.
Um, I-I'm really surprised that Runes was not done earlier. Um, it is really simple. It's not that complicated and it kind of strikes me as a somewhat obvious design.
Um, if you look at previous coin schemes on Bitcoin, like Counterparty and, uh, Mastercoin and whatever, they're so, like, complicated, and they have real trouble fitting in the op_return size limit.
They essentially try to rebuild Bitcoin on top of Bitcoin with their own public keys and their own signatures and their own, like, verification, um, in a way that, to me, just doesn't make any sense.
And there's been real demand for fungible tokens for a long time. Like, there were altcoins on Bitcoin very early. I don't remember when Litecoin was first made, but it was, like, you know, 2012 or something maybe. And
there's sort of the old school altcoin boom in 2013, 2014, and then the ICO boom on Ethereum in 2017. So there's been real demand for a long, long time, but nobody wrote, like, a halfway decent fungible token standard.
And then sort of from the other side, you had sort of hardcore Bitcoiners, um, more serious devs working on things like Taproot assets or, um, uh, RGB that are just fantastically complicated.
They're so complicated, and because they use off-chain data to get their sort of like proofs or like state, um, they are incredibly complicated because you not only have a Bitcoin node that you get the transactions from, but you also have this other network that you get other data from.
So I- I'm very confused by why it didn't exist. But yeah, I didn't initially intend to implement it, and then sort of like why not?
Like, I was, I think, kind of bored and, um, it was an interesting technical challenge, a lot of, like, ideas to work out. So just kind of did it. And it's something that wasn't ordinals.
Like, it was just a new, a new idea. 'Cause sometimes if you spend a year or two working on something, like, you kinda need a break. For sure, yeah, and I need a break from Runes now. It's, uh- Yeah.
[laughs] Well, I guess that's my next question. You put out the Lightpool blog. Oh yeah, I'm definitely not gonna implement that. I mean, that is, uh... Definitely not gonna implement that.
Th- that does not sound fun at all. Spanning a whole new network, like that's, that's difficult bootstrap net. Yeah. Yeah. It's also not as interesting as Runes or Inscriptions.
Like Runes, Inscriptions, and Ordinals is really bringing something new into existence, whereas this is just, you know, facilitating trades. Like yeah, I wish the market was more efficient, but like do I care?
Like eh, you know, kinda whatever. Yeah, it's a matching engine. Like, there's a bunch of these. Yeah. Take an existing one and wrangle it into the right, uh, format. Yep, exactly. Yep.
But it seems to me like, you know, you're, you have an i- you're an idea guy. You're a creative, and you have an abundance of new rabbit holes you wanna go chase down.
Like, do you think that you will be throwing out concepts like this in the future, implementing something, delivering it to market? Maybe it's open source, maybe it's a private thing. I mean, what do you think...
Like, what do you think you'll be building in the next two to three years? The, the next thing that I wanna build is, is not Bitcoin-related at all.
Um, I've, I've been a avid user of BitTorrent for a long time, a sort of peer-to-peer file sharing thing, and, um, it does not have a very good UI for a bunch of different reasons. And so I would like to make, um,
something that is like BitTorrent, where everything's free. You just download it from other people, but it has a user interface that, that nor- that even a normie could love. Like, uh, you can just
see movies that you, that you want, click one, and then it just starts playing, and you don't have to think about, like, putting it into your player or setting up your node or downloading the files or whatever.
So I have an idea for that. Um, it's very, very, very hard to explain because it, it is...
I know the final instantiation of it, which is just this magical, like you have this media player that has everything, and you, you search, you click a button, and things just start playing or downloading, or games start playing or whatever.
Um, the initial version of it, I think, is gonna look like a media player, like a media player server with no support for actually fetching content from the internet. Mm.
Um, it's essentially like this packaging format where you can package media, like a movie or a game or whatever, with all of the metadata included, like what the game is, the title, the, um, year, um, a, a trailer if it's a movie, et cetera.
So once somebody packages something in this packaging format, you load it into your media player and add it to your library, and then you get this beautiful Spotify-like experience for things in your library.
Um, sort of like an open source competitor to Plex, which is also extensible, which you can, um, like not only... Plex, Plex has, uh...
Plex plays the kinds of content that the Plex people add support for. They add explicit support for it.
This is sort of a more extensible s- uh, system where anybody can write a new kinda player for that system that provides a different UI. So it's very, like... It's very hard to, hard to explain.
And, and the eventual goal is, okay, this media player, this packaging format, then people start trading these packages on BitTorrent or whatever, um, and loading them into their player, and then eventually the player itself, the media server, gets the ability to go, go to these networks or a BitTorrent-like network that's new and download these, these packages.
So that's the thing that I kind of am most interested in doing right now, and it'll definitely be open source. I'm not really interested in working on anything closed source.
I have the vague idea that maybe it could be monetized by-Having all this open source software and then having an app store app, like an Android and iOS, like official app, and other people are free to make their own official apps and then charging like a dollar to download it or whatever.
Um, uh, but yeah, that's, that's the idea right now. That's the thing I'm most excited about. That's pretty dope. Raph, what about you? Two to three years from now, what is the...
What is Raph's dev career in Bitcoin adjacent to B- what does that look like? I mean, I'll continue, like, maintaining Ord. That's kind of my... I'm kinda stuck with this [laughing].
[laughing] Um, but a, a goal I have is I, I do wanna have a commit to Bitcoin Core. Um, that's kind of a project when, like, Runes quiets down a bit, probably end of year or next year.
Already have like one PR that's half-finished from somebody else that they just abandoned, which I think I'd just, like, continue and, and bring it to fruition. Um, I still have a lot to learn, like, I, uh, I'm,
I'm not... Like, I'm a very mediocre developer, so I need to just, like, learn a lot more about Rust and how to, like, design things. So I'm, I'm more on a learning path right now. Um,
also, like, I do wanna make some money so I can be in the position that Casey's in, where I can just spend my time how I want to spend it. Um, so let's see how Runes goes.
Um, either I get wrecked and then I have to go back to a 9:00 to 5:00- [laughing]... or I kind of make this sustainable. Um, but yeah, it's gonna be difficult going to, like, a normal job.
I don't think I can ever do that again. Um, so yeah, two to three down, two to three years down the line, I'll definitely try to contribute to Casey's, uh, wacky ideas, um, open source Rust. It's great.
We work very well together. So I think there will always be some sort of connection. Um, but yeah, I don't, I don't think too far ahead into the future. Like, I just have too many things I have to do at the moment.
Um, I'm still kind of catching up on, you know, many things. Um, but at some point, I do wanna have like a longer term view of what I want to do, but at the moment, it's just grinding.
I mean, if the Ordinals BIP goes through sometime, maybe you'll get a... You'll file... Uh, you'll finally see that in Core or o- or other times. [laughing] Adam, what are your thought, what are your thoughts?
The, the BIP situation is kinda interesting. Um, I wrote a BIP, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, for Ordinals, which is really just technical documentation.
Um, it has not been accepted and assigned a BIP number, uh, because Luke, the editor of the BIP's repo, does not like it. Um, it looks like we're going to have three, at least three new BIP editors soon.
Um, that sort of discussion is happening on the Bitcoin Core mailing list.
Um, I think those editors who are proposed are really just gonna be, like, take a different approach than Luke, and think that, okay, if something is cohesive and well-written and it is sort of relevant to Bitcoin,
it should be merged and given a BIP number regardless of, um, what people think of it.
Um, I think maybe that means that after that, maybe we write an inscriptions BIP to try to document how, uh, inscriptions, uh- Right... work. What's that?
I mean, tap assets and RGB also don't have BIPs, so it's like- They do. Uh, they don't have a BIP yet, but tap assets has a open PR- Ooh... to do a BIP. Yeah. If that gets merged, Runes BIP has to be merged.
Runes BIP has to be merged, yeah. I think I would wanna write a Runes BIP before an inscriptions BIP just because, uh, inscriptions are so, so, so much more complicated than- Yeah...
uh, Runes, just these, like edge cases and processing and, and yeah- Yeah... the, the- All the mistakes we made along the way that we have to document. We made many es- m- mistakes. Like- Yeah...
there's one thing that's, like, very weird where if you have a inscription- Oh, yeah... that immediately gets paid to fees, it gets numbered after all of the, um,
numbered after the inscriptions in that block, so it isn't numbered in sequence. So maybe the inscriptions BIP just doesn't say anything about inscription numbers.
I, I, I think maybe we write, like, the most limited BIP possible to maybe just cover how inscriptions are, like, serialized and de-serialized from the witness.
Maybe that's the, the first thing, and we don't even talk about how they attach to- Sats... um, sats. Um, yeah. But specs are, specs are weird. Like, they... The real spec for inscriptions is what Ord does.
That's just kind of the reality of it, and people don't like that.
People, they're spec people who think that, oh, it needs to have a spec and it needs to have a bunch of different implementations and, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that's just kinda not how things work in, in, in, in, in Bitcoin. The real spec is the code. That is the complete spec. That is the deterministic explanation of the behavior of the protocol. And, uh, and a
handwritten spec at best, a, a prose spec at best describes what that does, but it's not the canonical, you know, implementation. We have no spec for Bitcoin. There's no spec for Bitcoin.
And in fact, many of the specs of the BIPs for Bitcoin are probably, like, out of date or wrong in subtle ways, where actually, you know, the, the behavior of how taproot asset actually works, you know, diverges in, in some way from the spec as written.
I don't know that that's the case, but I kind of suspect that it is. And in the case of those divergences, it's like the Bitcoin Core client, which is, quote-unquote, "right" in that, in that scenario.
It's funny, I literally had a question which was like... It was, it was about the spec of Ordinals, and, uh, I was gonna...
I was, I was thinking, like, you know, I've, I've been the person who's kinda had to come to terms with, like, well, there's not a spec for Ordinal. I feel like there should be.
But then-As I, as I listen to you, Casey, and as I kind of study Bitcoin Core, I understand when you have these decentralized consensus it's, like, hard to write a spec because the spec is how people use it. Yep. So
that's been a personal kind of growing pain of my own this past year. Um, I guess a kind of final question on just the landscape of Bitcoin itself. So we, we finally got rid of Craig Wright.
He's finally out of the picture. That fucking bozo, man. He's finally out. V- Uh, I don't know how you say his name, but Vladimir Vonn Launen or whatever. That guy- Oh, Vla- Vladimir Vanderlay? Vanderlay. Vanderlay?
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Nate, leading contributor to Bitcoin Core, final- threw another commit back on there. He's back. Yeah, he's back. It seems to me...
Yeah, it seems to me like we've got a renewed interest in just hacking away and working on Bitcoin right now. Um, it's coincided with ordinals and degens and Script Kitties alike all also joining Bitcoin, but it's like,
you know, this is Bitcoin season two. It feels like we're back, baby. Um, what like, what are your thoughts on the landscape? What are both of your thoughts on the landscape of just
Bitcoin development and Bitcoin going forwards? Do you think Bitcoin's gonna look a little bit different in a few years?
I'll, I'll be like, one thing that I'm, like, worried about, I am actually very worried about MEV on, on Bitcoin. Um, MEV is...
Just sort of an exposition for the, for the listener, um, MEV is mi- miner-extracted value. Um, and it is... I'll describe the, the thing that is a problem. You want there not to be economies in scale in Bitcoin mining.
Um, economies of scale are when you can produce more units of, of a good for a lower per unit cost than fewer units of that good. So, um,
the reason this is a problem in Bitcoin is that if you have this characteristic, right? If a, if a miner that's twice as big makes more than twice as much money as a miner that's half as big, um,
there will be pressure to centralize, right? There'll be, there'll be, miners will make more money by, by joining their operations. So for the most, for the, for the, for the most case, Bitcoin doesn't have this,
this property, right? If you, if you plug in 2,000 mining machines, you make as much money as if you have 1,000 mining machines or 2,000 versus 1,000 or whatever.
Um, there are some, like, operational costs that you sort of save. Um, but again, also an, a nice thing is that occur- uh, uh, firms have diseconomies of scale. The larger a firm is, the harder it gets to organize. Um,
you know, this is why, uh, we have some, some types of industries, like the classic one is, like, concrete mixing, that don't have economies of scale and don't tend to get, you know, these incredibly large, crazy firms.
Um, an example of MEV, uh, MEV is an issue on, for example, Ethereum. Um, the form of MEV on Ethereum is that, um, miners, Ethereum validators, or there, there are these DEXs on Ethereum, right?
Where people submit transactions to these DEXs and miners, because they order transactions within Ethereum blocks, they have the ability to exploit users of DEXs by inserting transactions before their transactions or after their transactions, which buy and sell the assets that, that, that users are trying to trade on those DEXs for a guaranteed profit.
And the reason that this introduces MEV is that it takes a lot of quite sophisticated, uh, R&D work and execution work and software development to take advantage of those opportunities. Um,
so, and those, those, that R&D work only has to be paid once for a given mining operation.
If you pay a million dollars to a bunch of eggheads who, uh, write the software to take advantage of, of, of, of this MEV, um, and you have two miners, and they, they're both paying a million dollars a year to these eggheads.
If they, if they join forces, they can fire one half of the eggheads and increase their, increase their profit margins.
So, um, this has led to an almost complete centralization of the production of Ethereum block templates.
Um, almost all, um, Ethereum block pr- templates are produced by, I think it's called MEV-Boost or Flashbots or, or whatever. Yeah. It's Flashbots, yeah. Flashbots.
Um, so this kind of really damages the credibility of Ethereum censorship resistance if you have all the block templates being produced by this one producer. So this is a very real threat to Bitcoin.
Um, to s- uh, to some extent, ordinals introduces this with rare sats, that the first sat of every block, the miner has to do this additional work of they're not just getting and selling Bitcoin, they're also getting this sat that they need to extract out and, and trade on an appropriate market to get the full value of that sat.
It's pretty minor, though. That there's not a lot of work involved in that. Um, so I think the worry is when we have these more expressive, um, L2s, do those L2s wind up leading to centralization pressure on Bitcoin?
Because miners are now able to do the same sort of reordering and sandwiching attacks, um, given those L2s.
And, and that's something that worries me quite a lot because it's something that I think the Bitcoin core developers would have a very hard time reacting to, right?
Somebody builds some sort of DEX which is vulnerable to MEV, and, uh, you then, uh... Like, what are the Bitcoin developers gonna do? Like, if, if these, if these DEXs use-Just basic Bitcoin technology.
Are, are, are Bitcoin-- is Bitcoin core gonna start removing some of these features that allow people to build these dexes? Like, what would the, what would the response be? So I think we should be very worried about it.
Um, as far as I know, runes and inscriptions and ordinals I don't think are any significant-- don't provide any real significant, uh, MEV opportunities, but it is something that I am worried about going forward.
How about you, Raf? The state of, uh, yeah, state of Bitcoin and Bitcoin development. I mean, yeah, I s- I see the problem with, with MEV, but what, what I'm excited about is that, that Bitcoin now has more texture.
There's more things to do with your Bitcoin. And then the whole MEV debate, it's like if you, like, lock down Bitcoin to only be this one thing that's, you know, only transferring Bitcoin,
maybe that's kind of the, the solution to MEV is maybe worse than allowing a little bit of MEV. Um,
all financial systems, you know, there will be some way that because the value that is being transacted is outside of the system, the outside system will kind of exert-- will try to exert control over, over Bitcoin.
Um, and I think it's very hard to avoid, and then just, like, locking everything down, um, would just make Bitcoin irrelevant.
Um, I think it's good to think about MEV and try to, like, find ways to get around it, but I think it's more important, and what I'm most excited about is, like, all the new things you can do with your Bitcoin.
I mean, there's this... I think there's also this, this ancient whale theory so that all of these, you know,
big Bitcoin holders that just, like, held their Bitcoin and did nothing for it for years are now kind of waking up and like, "Oh, maybe I buy this inscription."
They've been waiting for 10 years hoping they could finally buy a JPEG. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do something, and so now there's all of this, like, new liquidity is, like, sloshing around, you know?
And, like, liquidity means, like, more tension and means that people are building new things on top of Bitcoin. So, like, I've, I've said this many times, I'm just very excited about, like, what's,
what's new improvements there will be to Bitcoin instead of what things will get locked down. Like, I wanna see OP_Cats.
Like, that seems like a really good, um, simple, um, opcode that will have a high leverage, like high... It's, it's a high leverage thing to kind of, um, to merge.
Um, and then see what constructions people come up with with other L2s. Like, Lightning is great. I use it almost every day. I pay for my VPN, like multiple other things with, with Lightning.
[laughs] With Lightning, like when we go to a restaurant or something, like he pays, I pay him with Lightning. Like, Lightning is great, but I think there should be more options- Yeah...
uh, around, around Bitcoin, what you can do with your Bitcoin. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm most excited about that. So to see, see what, what will happen. Um... I'm, yeah, I'm just so glad.
I've worked so, so long to encourage circular Bitcoin economies in my local meetup and in friends, and for the first time in years I finally get to-- There are days when- Right.
There are weeks when the majority of my economic activity is done in Bitcoin, so doesn't... It's, it's, it's incidental that it happens to be JPEGs, but- [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
Um, not- I'd rather like the, the call option that is Bitcoin than, like, sell the option of holding fiat, you know? Like if- Yes...
you sell an option, you have a stable income with fiat, but, like, if you get wrecked, you know, if that option gets executed and you, like, lose all your money, that's what fiat is, you know? It's gone like that.
It could also be, like, you just lose money and- And like, yeah, yeah, I might lose all my money in JPEGs, but you know what? I'm, I'm more concerned with tr- figuring out how to burn my fiat. That's like my main goal.
Yeah. So, um, yeah. Uh, anyway, I'm gonna wrap this up- Burn fiats, like a good happening ritual instead of like- Yeah. [laughs] There you... Yeah. Do something bad with your fiat.
Maybe light a hundred dollar bill on fire or like, I don't know, like light a hundred dollar bill on fire that like... Or burn money that powers the little engine, that powers an ASIC. So you burn- Mm. Yeah...
that powers an ASIC and then you get Bitcoin in return. Like- Yeah... it's a good happen- There's a product idea. The CryptoCloak skies will 3D print a little furnace you can use to, like, power an, a rig.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put your money in it. It's like a reverse, uh, reverse dollar counter. Mm. Just counts it into the, into the burner. Product idea. Yeah. So... That'd actually make a great, um, uh, art project.
I think you could come up with a very low power, uh, like microprocessor where you-- I mean, not even a microprocessor, like a microcontroller, like an absolute mini, mini, mini miner that could stay alive on a battery that was charged by burning dollar bills in some sort of like steam engine or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you could even just like run a Bitcoin node and like, "I'm verifying blocks by burning fiat," which is also- Uh-huh... you know- Yeah... it's also good, good things to do. [laughs] You know?
Um, so yeah. Somebody do that, please. [laughs] Well guys, thank you so much for, for giving your, giving your time and, um, shout out Hell Money Pod. Shout out Inscribing Atlantis.
Shout out Ordinals Coding Club and the various endeavors. Um, anything I missed to, for you guys to call to action anybody listening to this? Not for, nothing for me. Run a Bitcoin node, buy Bitcoin.
These JPEGs and tokens are just ridiculous. Like, uh, stack sats, you know? Stack sats, yeah. Hell yeah. All right. Thanks guys. Cool. Thanks for having us.