WBD267 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin Toxicity with Giacomo Zucco & Neil Woodfine

Interview date: Friday 9th October

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Giacomo Zucco & Neil Woodfine. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I am joined by Bitcoin consultant and educator Giacomo Zucco and Neil Woodfine, Marketing Director for Blockstream. We discuss toxic Bitcoin maximalism, unintended consequences and politics within Bitcoin.

“It may be one shot, it’s important, the consequences on civilisation are huge, so we want to be over-cautious about not compromising the culture or the technical features of Bitcoin.”

— Giacomo Zucco

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: Right, so a potentially tricky topic today that I want to talk with you and I've been talking to you, Giacomo, about this for a little while now, a little bit of planning.  And then in doing my planning, I came across an epic thread of Neil's which made me want to bring Neil into this.  But also just, I obviously speak to both of you offline quite a bit sometimes; I'm not just a lunatic, I do try and run some of my ideas behind you. 

But, I thought discussing the idea or the role of toxicity would be a useful subject because, just to set it up, when I first got seriously into Bitcoin, again in 2017, perhaps I didn't notice it, but I didn't really see this term "toxicity" around, but there definitely was this role of conservatism, especially during S2X.  But more recently, I've seen this term, toxicity, come up more and more, which to me means something more malicious.  I've also experienced some of it myself but then again, that just might be to do with the show growing.

But also, I'm really kind of conscious, or self-conscious, about the role of the show and if perhaps, myself, I'm becoming too soft, or if there are any negative consequences of the things that I do because ultimately, I wouldn't want to damage Bitcoin.  Obviously I can't, but just kind of self-aware.  So, yeah, ready to dive into this.  Are you all right with this, Giacomo?

Giacomo Zucco: Yeah, sure, I'm ready.  I love this topic actually, as you remember.  It was the central topic of my second presentation in Riga, Toxic Maximalism Dissected, and then it was the hidden topic of my presentation after that about Shitcoin Apologies.  So, I'm really passionate about this topic.

The term, "toxic" itself, we've spent a lot of time thinking about the term, "maximalism"; what does it mean; about Shitcoins; about changing the Bitcoin protocol; about being nice or not.  But, toxic is also a very, very interesting story.  It's a case of, I think it's called, "reappropriation", the cultural term, when there is something used as a slur against a group of people and then they reappropriate it, because they see that it's not worth fighting, so they just appropriate it ironically at the beginning, and then it just becomes a de facto label.

It happened with stuff like "queer", racial slurs, sexual slurs, punks; actually, even political parties: "wigs" and "tories" in the UK, they were a slur against them and then they became actually the norm.  I think it's also happened in religions and even impressionists, the Impressionist movement in art.  "Impressionist" was a slur, was a way to insult those guys, and then they just start self-defining as impressionists.  So, it's a very fascinating topic.

We also will have a hard time isolating different, overlapping debates here, because there are a lot of layers in this discussion.  There is a layer which is the general, not ironically speaking, real toxicity of the internet, so when we create a debate over the internet on Twitter, Reddit, there will be real toxicity, which is basically the typical internet haters' culture.  So, if you become famous with a podcast, people will insult you and threaten you and that's kind of normal, even outside Bitcoin.  And I would say, that's an interesting point of view, I think.

Outside Bitcoin is even more common than inside Bitcoin.  I think that Bitcoin, being an internet subculture, Bitcoin is strangely non-toxic in this regard, in regard of general internet aggressiveness, internet fights, internet in-fights.  Then there is the fact that shitcoiners mostly, so people trying to use the amount of noise in this space to take advantage of people, they started to use insistently this label, toxicity, to frame any kind of hard criticism, any kind of strict review, any kind of critical sense, any kind of non-naïve attempt at separating bullshit from truth.  And this is actually something that in Bitcoin, this positive sense of toxicity, is something that in Bitcoin, I think, is more common than in other subcultures, mostly because there is this don't trust, verify ethics, and there is this focus on verifying and adverse side of thinking, and stuff like that.

So, think about marketing; if you think about pasta or food or whatever, if you have a company selling this bag of pasta with the most tasty pasta in the world, nobody really cares.  It's not that some nutritional expert will arrive and they will say, "Oh, this company, they are scammers because this is not actually the most tasty pasta in the world; this is just quite tasty, but not the most tasty, so they are liars and they are scammers and they have to be blacklisted".  In Bitcoin, we basically do that.  In Bitcoin, if you have a commercial company and you use classical marketing, which is basically lying to people but in a way that is considered normal in any other kind of commercial industry right now, in Bitcoin we don't abide; that shall not pass, basically, and we stop it.  So, this is positive; fascinating.

And then there is the thing that you mentioned, which is the toxicity as conservatism.  As Bitcoin is very important and is not fragile, it's resistant, but we may, even if it's not fragile, we may still act as it is, because we want to be over-cautious about Bitcoin; because it may be one shot, it's important, the consequences on civilisation are huge, and so we want to be over-cautious about not compromising the character or the technical features of Bitcoin.  So, a lot of stuff to discuss.

Peter McCormack: A lot of stuff.  I guess the root thing I want to get to is, could there ever be any unintended consequences of becoming too toxic?  I think that's the ultimate point I want to get to.  Could things within Bitcoin end up eating itself?  That's, I guess, where I'm going to.  But, before I do that, that's quite a setup, Giacomo, as ever; fabulous!  Neil, just to pass it over to you, what's at stake here?

Neil Woodfine: I think people underestimate how important the toxicity debate is because often, what we're doing is -- in my mind, the toxicity thing's all about two things: one is deflecting conversation away from actual debates, so all of a sudden we start discussing how we should be talking about things instead of actually talking about the thing; and then, the second thing is control.  So, if you can dictate how people should be discussing certain issues, you can start dictating what issues they can talk about, where they talk about them, that kind of thing.  If we allow those kinds of voices to take control of Bitcoin debates and then deflect away from important conversations, that could distract from really important matters that relate to Bitcoin's operations.

Bitcoin, fundamentally, is implemented at a social level.  Yes, the mechanical aspects of it, the software, the nodes, the miners, create a level of automation that allows us to get some kind of social scalability, some scalable consensus going on.  But, it is still implemented socially and if we allow these kinds of disrupters to disrupt these important conversations, it could have very negative effects on the Bitcoin network and the Bitcoin system in general.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I actually understand that from having the conversation with Andreas, discussing gatekeepers in Bitcoin, which I concluded myself there aren't.  And, Giacomo, you know I had a long conversation with you about that before I published it.  I did think about that show quite a bit and I came to the conclusion there wasn't.  But, I understood the kind of reaction to that, that some people felt like that would skew the conversation.  So, I'm with you there, Neil, I understand that.

But, I guess when I asked you what's at stake here, I'm actually alluding to your Tweetstorm with regards to Bitcoin; what's at stake here with regard to Bitcoin, this one chance, this one opportunity?

Neil Woodfine: Right, so I think that what I just mentioned there is one way of looking at it.  Another way of looking at it is Bitcoin is this invention like gunpowder.  Once it's invented, it's not going back in the bottle.  In Bitcoin's case, what we have is a sound money, which is completely out of the control of governments and central banks, and that is extremely threatening to some very powerful, very dangerous people. 

However you feel about politics, it's undeniable that states have engaged some of the worst kinds of actions against man in human history and then also, we know that central banks and commercial banks are very evil institutions in general.  They're willing to do anything, or at least certain people at the top, are willing to do anything to increase their profits, to increase the amount of debt that's on their books; they're willing to fund two sides of a war; they're willing to start wars to get what they want.

So, this is the kind of people, the kind of organisations that Bitcoin is competing with and so, all of a sudden we're talking about, for example this podcast, we're talking about toxicity.  It is kind of ridiculous, to an extent, to be talking about this topic when there are much bigger matters and much bigger issues at hand, for example Bitcoin versus the banks versus the state.  Right now, Bitcoin is pretty small; it's not on the radar on a lot of influential people.  We're keeping an eye on it, but it's not a big enough issue to matter yet.  But, as Bitcoin's market cap grows and the number of users using it grows, it will start to frustrate a lot of people.

If you feel like you live in a complete free country, for example you live in America and you think, "Don't worry, I've got constitutions that will protect us, nothing totally crazy will happen", you can't guarantee that that's going to be the case for every single country in the world; and there are many countries around the world which may react particularly badly to Bitcoin.  We need to keep that in mind that these state-level threats will be levelled against bitcoiners, against the Bitcoin network itself, in the near- to mid-future.

Peter McCormack: Well, you've given me a good idea for another show, so maybe it is a benefit to doing this.  But, I guess one of the reasons I did want to approach it is this kind of self-awareness of perhaps, I'm doing things that, like, my own actions can have negative consequences; that I can be producing content that has a negative consequence, which is why I wanted to do this as well. 

But also, in speaking to other people, I interviewed Amiti the other day, who is a new core developer.  She was involved in the situation with regards to the renaming of the variable, the blacklist, and that obviously upset a lot of people.  I disagreed with her; I don't think it should have been changed; I did think that change reflected the politicising of something in Bitcoin.  But at the same time, I was sympathetic to the abuse that she received.  When I talk about unintended consequences, I also noted Wlad's response to feeling the pressure when that went through.  What do you think about that, Giacomo?

Giacomo Zucco: So, since you are talking about unintended consequences, I think it's honest to realise there is a trade-off.  It's not like toxicity is just a good thing; toxicity, in a good sense, is used like a self-reappropriate label.  It's not that it's like a silver bullet that will do anything without any kind of consequence.  For example, I can see really pros and cons of having this kind of strong mindset.

For example, with Wlad, I remember reading Wlad reacting negatively about the polemics about blocklist.  And then I was liking every time there was somebody saying, "Wlad did a great job, mostly for free, he's very balanced, we have to be thankful", and I was liking.  And then there was somebody else, "Come on Wlad, man up, you should resist this stuff.  If you will have nation states against you, you should be a little bit more resilient to criticism.  This is the internet so you will always have morons around", and I was liking because that's true.  I mean, come on, you cannot get depressed because somebody disagrees about something that happened.  This will happen, ignore us, do something else, we will do our stuff, you will do yours.

So, there is this kind of -- there are two sides, and I see both sides.  Mostly, the trade-off is mostly like this.  The culture of purity, of being rigorous, of being strict, of going outside a comfort zone of challenging, this is a culture that has some advantages.  The first one is intellectual rigour, because we can lower the noise in the ecosystem if we are very strict, if you evaluate any claim very strictly, so intellectual rigour.  Then we can avoid, as Neil mentioned, unintended compromises or the degradation of the system because, well technically speaking, it's very difficult to change Bitcoin in a bad way.  We have seen that with the New York Agreement attack.

But even culturally speaking, there is some kind of very slow deterioration that we can have.  I mean, the internet, at a certain level, was too big to fail and too resilient to fail, but it did fail in some ways.  Now, we have a very centralised DNS, we have a very centralised ISP structure; so, the internet was more censorship-resistant that it became because we allowed, during the 1990s, the culture to become more weak and more non-adversarial, more naïve.  So, the second advantage of purity is that we keep the culture very, very focussed on what's important, avoiding deterioration, degradation of that.

The third advantage is that we self-regulate.  Since we tried to avoid people from being scammed, or to reduce and mitigate the number of people that will be scammed, we may keep regulators away from us, because scams are actually inviting regulators in; so, we have to prove that we can self-regulate.  This is a very important point, because some people think that being nasty with scammers, being very strict, being a little bit paranoid is against being libertarian.  If you are libertarians, you have a free market, so you should never criticise, you should never analyse, you should never audit. 

I mean, you're a libertarian, but that's not libertarianism.  Libertarians are not using the violence of the state against somebody, but that requires even more scrutiny, not less.  In order to keep regulators out of ICOs, we've been creating a culture in which we are over-cautious and over-critical of ICOs, not less, so it's not like I want the SEC to stop you.  I want to criticise you so that the noise is so low and the signal is so high that the SEC will not have easy excuses to come in.

Then, the fourth advantage is basically pushing people outside their comfort zone.  There is a debate between UX and security, like you always very often mention, but we don't have to think that this is symmetric, because good UX is something that people will spontaneously flow to without any kind of cultural effort; while good security, since there is a very long loop, people need to push themselves and to push each other.

It's like between, for example, there is a trade-off in food between tasty and healthy, not always, but often; but it's not very symmetrical because the point is that you don't need to have some kind of intervention with your friends and family and to teach your children, "Come on, let's all try to eat very, very tasty and juicy stuff".  I mean, that's nature; people will spontaneously go there.  You have to be over-cautious on the other side to say, "I know that you want something tasty, but is this also healthy?"  So, I know that in the short term, your benefit will be in this side of the trade-off, but are you thinking about the benefits on the long term.

So, when you talk about UX and security, pushing people outside their comfort zone is useful, because you need culture for that, you need dogmas, taboos, you need social protocols to force people to be better.  You don't need social protocol to force people to just be lazy; that occurs naturally.  So, these are the advantages.  But, I see the disadvantages.  I note that the disadvantages are -- let's confront this purity culture with some kind of inclusion culture, where we're just prioritising inclusion of everybody, we don't want purity, we don't want focus, we don't want scrutiny, we just want inclusion.

So, the advantage of these is mostly one, good feelings.  I mean, it's better to go along with everybody, it's tiring.  Sometimes, it's personally demanding.  Like, for Wlad, it was very demanding to see negativity.  Negativity is bad; it's better if we are all friends if we can.  The second is that actually, if we have more adoption, we can benefit bitcoiners a bit, because we used to say that Bitcoin doesn't need adoption; that's partially true.  But, adoption is nice to have for some things, for example liquidity.  The more adoption, the more liquidity, the stronger Bitcoin is, the richer bitcoiners are, which can be useful for the battle against the state.  Second, anonymity's set.  The more people are using Bitcoin in more context, the more it's difficult to spy and track, because there is an increased unknown set of people using that.  So, there is a point in having adoption.

Then, the third point, the third advantage about inclusion, which many people may think is not very idealistic, but it's true; it's monetising.  You cannot make money on something which is very, very niche.  Like, your podcast makes money if we have inclusion and adoption.  If we have more people, if we get more capital, more interest, more viewers, and if we stay niche, that's good for our maybe self-righteousness feelings, but it is best for monetising, because it's not easy to make business in something which is very niche.

And last, but I think Andreas mentioned it in your last episode with him, I think that was a very, very good point, this is in trade-off with pushing outside the comfort zone; the point is hypocrisy.  So, if we create a culture in which we insist that we should do better and that we should go the hard way instead of the easy way, the problem is that we create a culture that is partially necessarily hypocritical.  It's like, "Come on guys, let's not eat junk food", and we've talked about that; but it's obvious that somebody will eat junk food and nobody will ever eat perfectly. 

And so, there will be a little bit of a tendency for some people to maximise their rhetoric of, "Guys, let's run a node, let's CoinJoin and then minimise the action, because talking is cheaper than action.  So, there will be some degrees of hypocrisy.  The purity cultures tend to be hypocritical, like Andreas said; when you have the purists appurating the less pure, then the most pure is often somebody who is just better at lying about how much purer it is.  So, these points are true. 

But before I stop this too long answer, I want to point out that even though there is a trade-off, so there is good in purity, it is not that purity is bad.  Purity tests are useful socially and inclusion is useful socially, but the situation is not symmetrical, mostly for two reasons.  The first: failing.  If Bitcoin fails because it becomes too niche, too strong, too hard, it's still working in a way for some people.  If Bitcoin fails because it becomes too normalised, too mainstream, without any privacy, without any hardness, if Bitcoin normalises too much, Bitcoin becomes completely useless.  If Bitcoin remains too pure, Bitcoin is still useful, even if maybe not as powerful as it could be finding the perfect balance.

So my point would be Goldilocks balance would be better.  If we can fine-tune the point exactly in between too much purity and too much inclusion, I'm all for finding the perfect balance.  But, if you have to be mistaken, if you have to err, I think it's always safer to err on the side of more purity, than to err on the side of more inclusion.  Also, because you have this contradiction of people who think that Andreas may be sometimes erring on this side, that become purists of inclusion.

So, you have the nasty guys like the scammer; then you have the purity guardian that will react very harshly to the scammer, he will be toxic to the scammer; then we have the nice guy that will say, "Come on, don't be toxic with the scammer"; then, you will have the purity tester, gatekeeper, of niceness that will actually target not the scammers, but the guys reacting to the scammers and they will basically be super-unwelcomimg and super-gatekeeping against these guys. 

For example, a typical reaction example was the blacklist debate.  So, this anonymous developer, Ben Verret proposed to change blacklist to a terrible idea: blocklist, because people with dark skin could be offended, which is actually crazy.  But nobody actually blocked this guy from GitHub; nobody insulted this guy very much; people reacted.  But then, when somebody came to push a better term in a very constructive way, some developers actually signalled Ben to get him banned from GitHub from trolling.  So, their reaction of the nice guy is actually becoming even more toxic than the toxic reaction against the initial perceived threat, which is paradoxical.

Peter McCormack: Yes, we're like in Toxicity Inception now; I'm a bit lost with it.  But, if I understand it, I tend to be a little bit soft on myself, I'm a bit of a centrist, I'm not full libertarian and I just tend to sit on the middle of the road, and so I get that.  And it's funny that you raised the UX thing, because that's what usually me and Neil fight against each other a little bit privately.  But, look, I am trying to understand it, and I actually had a conversation with Gigi the other day, where I was talking to him about UX, because he wrote a very good article, and I've definitely been one of the people, along with Dan Held, talking about UX. 

I guess the reason I bring the UX up is not a criticism of anyone particularly doing work; I think the devs are doing great work.  But, when I see particular people talk about some of the great things about Bitcoin, "Look, it's a great hedge against inflation; everyone should be buying Bitcoin; fiat is dying", bla bla bla, and then I talk to someone like Gigi who said, "UX is about five years away from being user-friendly; most people are going to make mistakes with privacy", I see that as a contradiction. 

Does that make sense, Neil?  So, in that kind of area, should we really be telling people that, "It's the best money that's ever existed; it's the hardest money; it's a hedge against inflation; fiat's going to die.  Oh, but by the way, you have to meet these UX hurdles, you have to understand xPubs, you have to understand CoinJoin, you have to understand coin control", which the majority of people I just don't think will meet that technical barrier?

Neil Woodfine: So, I mean, like I've said to you before, I don't preach.  I don't hate the conversation that goes on on Twitter, which is Bitcoin UX is bad; we must dumb it down.  And that's basically the summary of the comments that yourself and other people are making, and it's just repeating that over and over again; this is too complicated.

Peter McCormack: I'm not sure that's true.

Neil Woodfine: I think it is and it's not constructive.  It's not improving the state of Bitcoin UX whatsoever.  What will improve Bitcoin UX is profit-driven companies building products to meet market demand, and there are various different types of Bitcoin users within the Bitcoin space, like a trader has completely different needs to a Hodler for instance; it will require different types of UI, different levels of technicality.  Within the trader space, you get beginners, you get experts; they all have different needs.

What will solve this problem is Bitcoin companies producing good Bitcoin UIs and their users gravitating towards them and giving them sats, giving them money.  Any amounts of just repeatedly banging that message, "Bitcoin is too complicated and people shouldn't have to learn this, shouldn't have to learn that", it's totally useless; it's just going into the void; it's not helping it.  But, relating this back to toxicity, I mean we're talking about UX now, right now we're talking about the merits of various different views and stuff like that.  We're not talking about how we should talk about this topic, which is important. 

Let's talk about ideas, and we'll probably never agree on certain things.  Me and Giacomo have lots of disagreements on various different things, I'm sure, so we just have to accept that.  And, just going back to the Amiti and Wlad example, I would like to see some specific examples of what they considered to be abuse.  So, for example, if they're getting some really nasty, abusive DMs, that's abuse.  Nobody condones that.  When we talk about Bitcoin toxicity, nobody's supporting that.  However, I think they're conflating a lot of genuine, thoughtful criticism as being directed their way, and some of it is probably quite angry and pointed; but, they've got to accept that this is part of working on Bitcoin, because the internet and the world is a big place and the amount of Bitcoin users is growing and we're just 100% not going to agree on everything. 

This stuff, some people hold millions of dollars in Bitcoin, and they really care quite strongly about what's going on in the Bitcoin, GitHub repository and what's going on on the inside of their nodes.  So, yeah, I think it's important that we're specific and we just discuss the actual idea, rather than kind of divert the conversation to this totally pointless meta-conversation about how we should be talking about this and where we should be talking about it.

Peter McCormack: Okay, I mean I don't agree with everything you said there, but I think you'd expect that?

Neil Woodfine: Yes.

Peter McCormack: I think there are different podcasts out there and some of them are pro-Bitcoin, and I don't mean that like Bellagio, I mean just very Bitcoin, talk about all the benefits, Austrian economics, and they do great jobs, I think.  But, I try and do mine as a different point.  I don't see it as a cheerleading for Bitcoin; I see it as dealing with a wide range of issues.  Maybe these are the issues that new people coming into Bitcoin are questioning and it helps them answer it, or maybe I'm trying to reflect the opinions of other people and, you know, I've got hundreds of examples of feedback that I've received.

So, when I talk about UX, it's because I'm trying to explain that there are people who do struggle with this.  And, it's not to say that anything has to change and it's not to criticise anyone, but it's just to say, "Look, there's certain things that people find really difficult".  So for example, when Luke Dashjr talks about the number of people operating a node at the moment is dangerously low, then I will raise the issue of, "Well, this is why I think people won't operate a node and these are these reasons, and a lot of it's to do with the UX".  And I actually think that is a valid conversation, because it is a counter to a point that somebody very central and critical to Bitcoin has made as a risk.  So, I don't see it as a non-issue to bring it up.

So, I don't actually know the kind of abuse things that I've seen from Amiti and Wlad directly.  I know the ones I've received and they're brutal and they're offensive and they go as far as telling me, "I hope you die and get cancer like your mother", and, "You're a paedophile", and it's full on.  And, I don't tolerate it and I don't think it's acceptable and if I see other people do it, I do stand up against it.  But at the same time, there are people, certain names, you know, we don't need to go into detail, but there are people that are acting toxic and I don't think sometimes we do always stand up against it.  And I think sometimes people are given a voice when they are particularly offensive.

And I know, Giacomo, you'll say, "Well, I get it".  If the answer to this is, "Look, Pete, we have to accept this; this is what it requires to create the best money", all right, I get it, I understand that; but, I at least want to know that's what people think.

Giacomo Zucco: So, I think that the answer is we should accept that on the internet you will receive toxicity in the real sense, in the bad sense, and the more exposed you are, the more you will receive that kind of shit.  You remember we discussed the Tim Ferriss article about the level of hate he received when he became famous?  It's a very good article and also, not just hate.  Yeah, it's very good.  So, celebrity plus anonymity on the internet creates this kind of very bad stuff, and this is something that I think people will just ignore; but, famous people, or famous people within a niche will have to accept it.

I do have some of that myself; smaller, because you have a wider reach, you just have more generalised.  I'm more niche as a bitcoiner on Twitter.  You have a bigger audience and you have a perceived success.  So, success plus visibility plus internet will always get a bad kind of situation.  I think we have to accept, because I don't have a brilliant idea to fix nasty people over the internet, but we should probably be able, and thanks to you for this distinction, to distinguish the real nastiness of people writing that kind of stuff from the self-appointed reappropration of ironic, sarcastic toxicity, that is the way we label the harsh criticism on merit, which is not personal, which is just on the things, which is just on the topic itself.

So, I don't know if other people reappropriating a term had the same problem.  Maybe you had the punk people in punk music and they want to make people know that they are not real punks in the bad term; or the queer studies, they're not queer in the sense they're just trying to be professional, but they just reappropriated the label.  So, toxicity in a pseudo-sarcastic way as be strict, be conservative, be verifying, auditing, demanding, that's something I think we should overrule, sustain and defend.  Being bad with other people without any reason on the internet is something that is called toxicity, but this overlapping is actually the thing that Neil was talking about, about deflection.

So, people that will receive honest criticism and factual criticism, they will try often, and they did try often, to deflect into just being nasty.  So, "I'm criticising you because of this, but now you are just doing like the guys threatening me on DM".  So, that's why I think that Neil was very on point when he asked about specifics.

Even when Matt Corallo, twice on the distance of two years, launched an appeal about being nice, most of the people -- I think the most appropriate response was not, "You're crazy", but was, "What are you talking about exactly", because some scammers may use your appeal in order to pretend a better treatment for their scams, and we don't want to do that.  Some guys that attack Bitcoin with New York Agreement, they will try to use your appeal in order to pretend and demand a whitewashing of the past history, and we don't want to do that.  We want to be strict, we want to be able to judge fairly, but honestly, at the best of our capabilities.

But, if you are talking about somebody attacking viciously somebody else for no reason, we would like to see this difference, because one thing is the ironic toxicity that is the reappropriation of the label, and one thing is bad people on the internet that we know exist and we don't want to be and we don't want to condone.  I think that in your show in particular, there may be something that creates this kind of collision, especially because I think you're trying to do two things, which are both very, very useful and very, very good in themselves; but, you do them together.

The first, you are trying to talk with non-experts simplifying, because non-experts need simplification; newbies, new-comings, non-expert.  The second, you try to be like a challenging journalist asking difficult questions.  But, these two things are not very easy to do in the same show with the same people, because newbies and non-experts will easily get lost in the nuances and they will just miss a reassuring narrative and if you don't provide that, they will just get to take it from some kind of scammer.

For example, I am a newbie, I listened to your podcast about Lightning with Tadge, and Tadge will actually do something great; he will actually pinpoint all the problems of Lightning, which are many and they are huge.  And the newbie will just now get lost in nuances and they will just now some shitcoin narrative like Bcash or BSB of something like that, because nuances are one thing and simplification for newbies is another thing.  I think that we already discussed --

Peter McCormack: Yeah, we did.

Giacomo Zucco: Yeah.  Maybe you will get less reactions if you separated simplification job from challenging job.  And beware that simplification job will allow you to claim that you are not technical.  But, in order to ask difficult questions, you will have, and you can because you're marked, you will have to actually have to get into more technicality and you cannot avoid it.  It is like a journalist asking a difficult question to, I don't know, to Trump about military politics and then Trump says, "But, these missiles are like this", and they say, "Oh, I'm not technical, but missiles are not …".  You have to, because when you ask difficult questions, unfortunately you have to get deeper into details; you cannot avoid it.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they're really fair points and that did weigh on me after that conversation.

Just one last thing on that toxicity point before I move onto the next thing, because I do want to quote Neil, because Neil's got some great quotes: do you think there's any risk where the toxic badge of honour could ever radicalise someone to the point of doing someone dangerous or stupid? 

So, pick up, a few years ago for example, we saw Lopp got SWATted.  Do you think we could ever get to the point where someone wants to make a name for themselves in Bitcoin, they like this toxic badge of honour, they want to be toxic, they see someone's a threat, and could ever feel radicalised to the point of doing something crazy; would you think that's so far out like, don't fucking worry about it?

Giacomo Zucco: I think that's possible in many subcultures and projects, from Linux to whatever; any kind of project where there is this struggle between inclusion and purity can have that kind of radicalisation.  But, to put everything into context, I think that Bitcoin is one of the contexts where that is less dangerous and less probable and less likely and less concerning for the simple reason that it's over the internet. 

So, even the worst thing that can happen is still speech, and it's a project based on pseudonymity, even if most developers now they are known, there is no reason that a good developer could not be anonymous, which Satoshi was; which is actually something -- the whole point of crypto anarchy was to make physical violence impossible, because people would just converse over the internet using memes.  I know that we are not there yet, because using pseudonyms is difficult; it's super-expensive, it's super-costly, so people don't do that.  We are not doing that, we are using our face, which is not the best, but it's just simpler; we prefer that.

But, in Bitcoin, where most of the interactions are based over the internet and when we can go anonymous or pseudonymous if we must, I think that we still have the risk of violence following debate.  But, it's a less strong risk than in any other context which is, by the way, also connected to the blacklist situation, because for the very same reason that we are over the internet that we are approaching, slowly, crypto-anarchy, stuff like the amount of melanin in my skin, or the genitals that I have down there, are basically less important in Bitcoin than in almost any other subculture that I can even imagine.

What is a possible gatekeeping barrier for me in Bitcoin?  One, technical knowledge; that's a barrier, but that's a reasonable barrier.  Two, language, because before I started to talk with this Oxford English that I'm showing off now, like six years ago I was completely barred from contributing meaningful to Bitcoin debate because I didn't know how to speak English.  That's an important barrier.  Skin colour, genitals, nobody even see that over the mailing list so they are not really important.  They may be important only in social context around Bitcoin, like this conference, and if somebody's as good-looking as me on a stage, of course he will have some advantage over you, Peter, because I mean, look at us!

Peter McCormack: Fuck off!

Giacomo Zucco: But, this is just in very particular …  No, I know, but to be serious now, you're taller than me, so in sight, if we have a physical debate and we are facing each other and we are screaming, you have a lower voice and you are taller; so, you will have, from a physical point of view, an advantage in a conversation, an aggressive conversation.  Over the internet, we don't give a fuck.

Peter McCormack: Well, over the internet, you have an advantage that you know more than me and you're funny.  I'm not particularly funny, so we all have our advantages in different situations!

Giacomo Zucco: Well, don't worry.  Internet is a leveller in a way.  It tears down a lot of differences and also, it can reduce physical aggression risks.  So, I'm not scared about radicalisation.

Neil Woodfine: You can't connect physical violence to criticism; this is exactly what I was talking about in these kinds of attempts to control the conversation.  Basically, anybody that disagrees with you in a forthright manner, you could immediately say that they're radicalising some kind of loonies on the internet, or statistically run some probability of potentially radicalising some loonies, which then go on and do something horrible to somebody else, and attribute some of that blame to the person making the criticism.  All of a sudden, you've conflated verbal criticisms of ideas with this kind of threat of physical violence; it's insane.

Yes, there are total crazies out there online and they may do horrible things, but it has got nothing to do with people making criticisms of people online.  We can look at any of these instances -- I mean, when toxicity is levelled at the Bitcoin sphere, it's generally coming from shitcoiners, nocoiners.  There's been an increasing group of inclusion-focussed bitcoiners doing it these days; Bcashers.  All of these people are generally in the wrong, or at least are potentially in the wrong, and they don't want to discuss the idea and therefore, they're just pushing us into this realm of, "Your behaviour and the way you're talking to me and criticising my ideas is potentially causing a threat to me physically".

Immediately that should end the conversation.  I mean, it just escalates things to this level of, "I've just physically threatened you".  Most of the people that we're talking about, the people that are labelled "toxic" in the Bitcoin sphere, they lead by example.  They may say things in a way that people don't like, but they are always civil.  They are never, or very rarely, abusive.

And then there's another issue, this idea that toxic bitcoiners are tolerating the abusive bitcoiners like, "Somebody else being abusive is not my problem".  If I get this idea that I'm complicit in their abuse, if I don't shut them down and have a campaign to have them blocked by everybody, that's their problem; they're an arsehole and whoever they're abusing should take steps to block them and shut out any kind of channels for them to communicate in. 

But, that's not on me and I think that's a very big problem in this toxic conversation, it's conflating these abusive, horrible people with this larger group of people which are just interested in Bitcoin, they're very passionate about Bitcoin and they have different ideas to the people that are accusing them of being toxic.

Peter McCormack: I think there are different ideas within Bitcoin as well.  Okay, so I wouldn't say there is consistency, certainly on political ideas, for example.  So, this is a great quote, Neil, "Bitcoin industry culture is therefore necessarily one of extreme scepticism, cynicism, rigorous review and forthright language.  Regardless of whether you're discussing Bitcoin development, business or economics, no one is safe".  That's brilliant.  That quote alone made me really think about, well firstly, just wanting you to be part of this show, but just think about my own points of view on this.

But, there isn't consistency with political ideas.  There can be plenty of people who are Bitcoin only, but aren't into the idea of maybe anarchism or libertarianism, who aren't completely into the idea of a no-state solution, and I know that's -- or even, maybe some people, and this will challenge you, Giacomo, who like the thoughts of a police force.  Didn't you have a discussion with Daniel Buchner regarding some footage from a police shooting?  You both had very similar political ideas, but you disagreed maybe on that point, because he thought, with regards to the police, well you'll still have a private police force who would still maybe want identities.

The point being is like, what I'm trying to get to, sometimes some of the conversations can get -- well, I guess the question I'm asking is, when you say, "Bitcoin culture", and then you say, "Extreme scepticism and cynicism", I agree with all of those points; but, do we have a consistent culture around political ideas within Bitcoin, because I would say we don't?  I think there are almost factions.

Neil Woodfine: I think you're 100% correct and I would even say that there's a large portion of developers which are probably quite left-leaning from like a traditional meaning of the sense.  Personally, I think that's contradictory with just the very essence of Bitcoin, and I could provide a lot of arguments for that, but that's not really what we're talking about.  We're talking about differences of opinion and whether that affects the culture.

So, yes, there are those differences of opinion, but I don't think that's part of the culture.  Libertarianism, you could maybe make an argument that it's perhaps a subculture of Bitcoin, but what definitely is part of Bitcoin culture is the scepticism, the cynicism and the debate.  Regardless of which side of that political debate you land on, you're still going to be in those heated, pointed discussions, especially when it comes to how to move the technology forward and how to protect it against certain threats; there's just no avoiding it. 

And it you want to avoid that, you're doing it wrong and you're outside of Bitcoin culture, and there are a lot of people that have kind of tried to fight against it and I think have come out pretty badly; and there are a lot of people currently fighting against it and if they don't adapt to that culture, they probably will find themselves working on different projects.

Peter McCormack: Does that include me?

Neil Woodfine: No!  A lot of these people are implying that they're going to leave Bitcoin if the entire internet doesn't get nice all of a sudden.  One, the internet is not going to get nice; that's just not happening and all your complaints are falling on deaf ears, it's totally useless.  Two, these people are going to come back.  There's no way that, for example, you decide that everybody's too rude to you online, they don't like your ideas, you're going to go off and work on some other project.

I guarantee you, within six months to a year, you're going to see all these exciting things happening on Bitcoin, the prices are going to have gone up, there's going to be all these intelligent people having these exciting debates; you'll be back.  All the threats are just completely empty.

Peter McCormack: I think one things, just so listeners understand, is that me and Neil are both from the UK, but he's from the North East and they raise them a lot tougher.  There's no sunshine and everything's grey and cold and wet and you just grow up tougher; whereas, I'm in the middle where it's a bit more green, everyone's a bit happier, it's a bit sunnier; we get some of the sunshine.  So, that's maybe why we're a little bit different, Neil; that's why maybe you're a bit more toxic than me!

What do you think about the political stuff, Giacomo, because the political stuff does come up a lot and there are a lot of differences; does it matter?

Giacomo Zucco: So, I think Bitcoin, this is a similar trade-off, or part of the trade-off we were discussing before.  I discussed purity versus inclusion and in a way, this trade-off is actually overreaching of other topics trying to extend the idea of Bitcoin consistently, as much consistence as possible, or anything else; so using Bitcoin as a tool to understand better or to challenge better other knowledge, other convictions, other ideas; or a restriction of Bitcoin to try to stay on topic, to stay there so basically, restriction will lead to more inclusion, because if we try to agree on very few things and not even discuss everything else, we will be more inclusive, because we will not clash about everything else.

If we try to be very purist and we try to search rigour and consistency over anything else, then we will probably be tempted to a actually expand illogical consequences, because the universe is just one thing, life is just one thing.  We can use topics and domains as a tool to divide knowledge but actually, if A is equal to A, A is equal to A everywhere; one plus one makes two and there is one logical consistency everywhere, from nutrition to climate to animal rights to borders to police to software engineering to everything.

So, there is this trade-off here and it's very, very important in Bitcoin, because Bitcoin didn't start inside a well-defined domain like computer science.  Bitcoin started at the overlap, at the intersection of very different domains, at least three.  One is basically financial, economical, about hard money, sound money, central banks, value, what is value, and stuff like that.  The other is exclusively technical about peer-to-peer system and cryptography and infosec and very technological kind of feel.  And the other one is basically political, libertarianism, anarchism and crypto-anarchism.

This connection is not just made up; it's explicit.  People in the cypherpunk mailing list were discussing anonymity, pseudonymity, crypto-anarchy.  Not everybody was 100% anarchist; most cypherpunks were not.  But, there was a strong connection with this kind of line of thought.  So, what happens is that right now, you have people that are very, very sold on one of these things.  They are purists in one of these things, but they are just, in my opinion, contradictory, or not that consistent in other fields.

For example, you have a developer that maybe will be super clear in his thinking about peer-to-peer systems, cryptography or cryptographic primitives; but, they will not really understand that one plus one makes two when they discuss police and borders and animal rights and food and whatever, because the fact that they are separating the state for money in one specific sector, they don't accept to be challenged in other sectors.  So, yes, we can throw away central banks, but I mean public health; that's different.  So, yes, I can challenge economists, but challenging doctors; well, that's different.

So, the same kind of approach of using Bitcoin for one thing, you may not be willing to expand it on other things.  And this is also a trade-off because, as we said, if I didn't discuss anything which is not -- for example, politically speaking, within Bitcoin, if you accept that monetary policy should not be controlled by politicians but should be algorithmic, and if you accept that the sound monetary policy is preferable to an inflationary monetary policy; and, if you accept that financial freedom should be unrestricted without any kind of censorship; then, whatever you think about cops is not really relevant.  It's mostly a matter of intellectual rigour and intellectual integrity.

For me, I want to approach people and say, "If you do understand Bitcoin, I'm challenging you to use the same method, the same rigour, the same critical thinking, the same independent verification approach to something else that you just accepted because experts, because my father, because my family, my country, because that's the normal way".  If you are being a nerd in Bitcoin, try to be a nerd also in something else.  And so, I like to challenge people about this.

And this is not really left versus right either, because not for me at least, because when we discuss police, right-wing bitcoiners hate me because I think that monopolising violence in the hand of a single organisation is crazy, it's suicidal, just like central banking.  And it would be as dangerous as central banking and it can be sorted just like central banking can be sorted, maybe not directly by Bitcoin, but indirectly.  And, right-wing people would hate me because of that.

And, when I talk against borders and I talk about, "Guys, you may love Trump's wall, but you should know that Bitcoin is made to go across walls.  Bitcoin will be used also for smuggling goods and people across borders, because that's what censorship-resistance does".  People will use Bitcoin to smuggle goods, services, and people across borders and right-wing bitcoiners hate that.  Left-wing bitcoiners, usually they have other kinds of idiosyncrasies that I fight about, which is mostly the abolition of the centralised welfare state, which is not the abolition of any welfare activity; it's just decentralisation.

The recent licence that the intervention left seems, culturally speaking, seems to go in the direction of censoring speech and the direction of establishing this kind of healthcare-based dictatorship; I would probably clash with left-leaning people about that.  And then, of course, about the so-called social justice, warriorism, so considering speech as violence which, as Neil said, is a very, very important point because if speech is violence, then everything as well is as nothing is; we cannot anymore distinguishing between somebody punching you and somebody disagreeing with you, so we lose everything.

So, the point is that you can find developers that are actually very good in technicality, but they are clueless about investment and they are clueless about libertarianism.  You can find libertarians, a lot of them, completely clueless about technology, like Roger Ver about scalability, or completely clueless about fundamental monetary theory, like shitcoiners which are libertarians, but they think that libertarianism means that barter is better than one kind of money, which is technically false, but they just don't understand.

So, we have three kinds of culture overlapping in a very complex way and I think I will want to challenge, I remember you, Peter, posting the pie chart about people and people interested in Austrian economics and cypherpunk, and they are a very small slice of the pie.  But, I think if you do that pie better, you will find that a lot of people are interested in political theory, just not in technology.  And a lot of people are interested in technology, but not on monetary theory.  And if you try to take all the complex topics that Bitcoin is going to challenge, you will see that probably everybody, even if you ignore me, most of your knowledge will be heavily challenged and affected by taking Bitcoin seriously.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean that pie chart was really designed to trigger a conversation, which it did.  This is a conversation for another day perhaps about libertarianism, in that I support a lot of the ideas directionally; personally, I just don't think it's achievable.  But, we can do that another day. 

A different point, though, being in that these other ideas, these other topics that tend to get discussed around Bitcoin, perhaps one of the things is that there's no real unifying definition of what Bitcoin is or what it's meant to be; like, is it money; is it digital gold; if it's digital gold, can it not just be an asset that is like gold, but better, but exists in the societal structure we have? 

Some people talk about what Bitcoin can become, which can be separation of money and state which, ultimately, if you have separate of money and state, you probably have the end of the state, so you probably move more towards anarchism; but, is that actually fundamentally part of Bitcoin?  Could it be that potentially a lot of people just want this better form of money and they want it, but within a current kind of democratic structure; does that make sense?

Giacomo Zucco: It makes sense but the point is your intention.  Do you want to try to extrapolate from logical consistency, or do you want to limit yourself at the point on topic?  Both approaches have advantages, like focus versus extrapolation; they both have advantages.  So, think about you're a guy promoting the printing press during Gutenberg times.  So, you're analysing the printing press from a technological and social point of view and you think that the printing press will actually destroy the capability of the new nation states and of the church to censor books because now, instead of having a few people writing books by hand, you have a printing press.  So, censorship of forbidden books will basically crash down.

So, what do you do?  So now, you're talking with a guy that says, "The printing press is great and I just want a more efficient way to print my stuff.  I don't care about free speech; that's just a radical view that is too niche for me.  I mean, all the crazy anarchists talk about ending the list of forbidden books.  So, I'm a normie, I just want better press". 

What do you do with this normie?  If you think that you see, and you think that you are right, and you are seeing a connection, social connection, between that kind of technological improvement and the global wider problem of censorship of books, you have two choices: one is you book this guy and you say, "You think that censorship of book is fine, but you know that the technology that you are promoting and developing in your company is going to make censorship of a book basically impossible; and, don't you understand that there is a logical consistency in that, and that censorship of books was also bad? 

Or, the other approach is, don't book him, don't bother him; he's helping you so why do you care for getting him on your side?  So, one side is just a pleasure of intellectual consistency; you are helping the guy -- you think that you use Bitcoin as a tool to make some guy awake from some kind of fallacy or misconception.  The other approach is, don't bother the guy who is helping your revolution without even knowing it.  So, I think they're both valid.  I like the first, as you can imagine.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Giacomo Zucco: Because, I like logical consistency.  Maybe in some topics, I'm wrong, but if I think I'm right, I will not censor myself because I could displease somebody.  Most bitcoiners are atheists.  I think probably both you guys are both atheists, I don't know.  I think atheism is a logical contradiction and I will trigger people with this all the time, because I like it, because I think it's true.  So, I like to be logically consistent and even if this can create conflicts, where before there was friendship, because it's still friendship if you help each other find misconception and strengthening your thought.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but these logical consistencies are debatable points about ideas about societal structures.  It doesn't mean it will work out that way because of human nature, the way that people are.

Neil Woodfine: No, my biggest issue with those kinds of points is it's very unspecific.  It provides no alternative view for how things will turn out.  It just says the real world is complex, people have human nature and the future is unpredictable, therefore we don't know; and that's not interesting.

Peter McCormack: Well, no, actually I had a point.  So, my point being it wasn't just I don't think it's possible to have a cohesive, anarchist society.  I understand, and completely support every one of your arguments for why the state is bad, Giacomo, but what I did do is I went and studied the human hierarchy of needs, the way we operate.  I think the state is inevitable in certain situations and also, I think some people want to lead, some people want to be lead; not every state is bad.  The problem we have is these super-states, which are bad, right?

Giacomo Zucco: But there are two different statements there.  One is, it's inevitable.  I mean, for now, cancer is inevitable; doesn't mean it's good to have some cancer.  So, one thing is I don't believe it's realistic to get rid of this.  And one thing is I think some degree of this is good.  They are completely different claims.  I agree with the scepticism of people that say getting rich of big mafias, which is what I think states are, is unrealistic; I agree.  Crime will always be there, and so organised crime will be there and states are just a subset of organised crimes for me, so they will probably always be there in some form.

But one other thing is, since it is inevitable, then a small degree of it is also right or good.  Well, no; that's the same for diseases.  If you are a doctor, your goal is perfect health.  Is perfect health possible?  No.  That and diseases and old age will always be there, but you strive to get better quality of life for longer time.  So, I always strive for always more freedom from crime and more defence of property right, but it doesn't mean that I think it will be an add-on where crime will disappear.  The proof that this view is naïve is that states exist in the first place.  If states exist, it means that there is no stable situation in which states cannot arise.  It can always arise, otherwise it will not exist in the first place.

So, fully anarchist doesn't mean optimistic about realism of complete abolition of organised crime; absolutely.

Peter McCormack: Yeah.  I guess the point I'm trying to get at is, I'm trying to understand there is this -- like, I know your end goal, well kind of; I suspect I know your end goal.  I just think it's not that it isn't achievable and it's not that it shouldn't be commendable, like maybe you can't get rid of cancer, but you should at least try.  But the point is, what do we do now; what do we do with the structure we're in; how do we cope; how do we survive; how do we deal with situations such as lockdown and such?

So, I'm always trying, and I do question this, I do wrestle with this, should I just extract myself from that?  The ultimate goal is freedom and therefore, everything should directionally move towards that; or, do I play within the field we're in now and accept where we are?  Do you understand what I'm wrestling with?

Giacomo Zucco: Sure, sure, but that's about priorities and personal strategies.  As Neil said, the world is complex and even if we can debate and find the truth using logics, it doesn't mean that priorities will be simple to find.  For example, I have many friends that say prohibition about drugs is bad, because it's logically bad.  But, I don't care because I don't need drugs, I don't like drugs, so this is the less battle I will always fight because I really don't care.  This is not a priority for me.  Many things that are not about this are more important to me.

So, this is completely fine.  I don't think everybody should have the same priorities.  Society is complex, the world is complex, so it's official that we can have different priorities.  But, if you think that some of your reasoning is logically wrong, I don't think it's official to have somebody be logically wrong.  I think it's more official to interact in that case and to find if we can actually pinpoint the fallacy there.

Peter McCormack: Okay.  Sorry, I interrupted you, Neil, when you were responding?

Neil Woodfine: That's fine, I was getting quite animated.  I think it's just a general frustration with conversations that go on on Twitter.  Among a large portion of bitcoiners is this common thread where they start mocking some of the more libertarian-minded bitcoiners about their claims that Bitcoin will help defund the state and reduce the size of the state, but they don't provide any alternative viewpoints on what Bitcoin will do.

So, for instance, if Bitcoin succeeds, there are only three possible outcomes: one, that is causes the state to retreat; two, it empowers the state and the state grows; or three, nothing changes.  And, "nothing changes" seems extremely unlikely and if you think that reducing the state is ridiculous, "Ha ha, of course they'll still tax people", explain how that's going to happen.  How is it going to increase under a Bitcoin standard?  You don't see anybody doing that; why?  I think it's very difficult to argue that case, because by taking away the power of central banking from the state, you take away a massive toolkit from the state for enforcing and broadcasting that power around a geographical area.

So, I just get frustrated with that kind of high-horse point of view.  The world's way more complex than that and these problems are difficult.  You think just buying Bitcoin will solve this?  Well, it's not going to solve everything, but it will create better conditions and that's not completely nonsensical.  And at least if that's a goal of yours, working towards it, Bitcoin is a sensible way of working towards that.

Peter McCormack: So, I actually agree with you.  I agree with point one; I think it does.  But, it does if it receives -- I guess it has to achieve a certain tipping point, right, and we don't know what that tipping point is?

Neil Woodfine: It's already doing it at a very low level.  There are a bunch of people that are able to avoid the state better than they could in the past, just by having Bitcoin available to them.  And as the Bitcoin market cap grows, Bitcoin will become more powerful for that.  As Bitcoin liquidity increases, ie the number of people that will accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, as that increases, that will also empower people more and more to act outside of these state entities.

Peter McCormack: Well, I don't think we've got to the tipping point where it's negatively affecting the government's ability to do exactly as they want right now.  I don't think it's causing a retreat just yet.  I don't think we're there yet.

Neil Woodfine: Yeah, I mean the state is getting insane under the current corona conditions, right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Neil Woodfine: But, disappointing, to a small extent.

Giacomo Zucco: There is a complex evaluation, because there is a trend, so you can think about a trend of a state power without Bitcoin, and it's growing at an increasing pace at the end of the money manipulation and financial censorship parabola.  And then, there is the situation with Bitcoin.  I think, like Neil said, it's objectively and undoubtedly decreasing the respect to the alternative counterfactual when there is no Bitcoin. 

My cousin, because I always pay every tax, of course, but my cousin, for example, doesn't pay any serious tax on their income since a while right now.  Hoorah for him!  But, people are fighting censorship in dictatorial regimes; this is happening.  So, there is less state intervention in a world without Bitcoin, I think it's clear, it's logically clear but still, state intervention is probably growing, because it was already growing for other independent trends that were set in motion way before Bitcoin, and to which Bitcoin is also probably somehow an answer and a response.

Peter McCormack: I guess that's where narrative becomes really important then, because if somebody has a goal with Bitcoin to separate money and state and therefore avoid paying taxes as such, then their use for Bitcoin very much needs to be a lot more around the circular economy and being able to essentially not leave too much of some kind of a financial track record.  But then, even if they're on the government radar, the government say, "Well, you've got a business here.  We haven't had any tax filings from you.  How are you making money?  Oh, you accept Bitcoin", there can perhaps be an investigation.  Yes, it can be hidden, but that is a niche situation right now. 

Whereas, it isn't a niche situation for some people to want to just own and have exposure to Bitcoin.  So, perhaps the big growth area for Bitcoin isn't people doing what you said there; the big growth area is people just want exposure to Bitcoin; it's digital gold, it's a hedge of inflation and that's where the majority of the growth is.  But those people perhaps will still then pay their taxes.  But, they're two very different narratives?

Giacomo Zucco: But, inflation is a tax.  I mean, it's both, they're strictly connected.  If people stop buying inflation by following the legal tender and actually they use an alternative for store of value, they will decrease the spending a bit of the state, which will have less money to pay for agents that will have to individually investigate on people avoiding taxes with Bitcoin.  So, it's a loop which is very complex, it's very intricate.

I think that we can make simplification and say that there are very few senses in which Bitcoin is increasing state power so far, like there are some blockchain analytics.  But still, if the comparison was straight cut, it's still …  So, the differential, it's mostly negative in any case you can think for.  Of course, you may say that mass adoption of people just opting out of fiat inflation is stronger than pure black market, but I think that's illusory because Bitcoin is a hedge against inflation only because so far, the government is not forbidding to use it as a hedge against inflation.  If inflation becomes a serious problem and Bitcoin becomes a serious threat to the effectiveness of inflation tax, the government will just make it illegal to be exposed to Bitcoin in an optimal way, just like they did with gold with Roosevelt. 

So, the point is that it's very circular.  It's impossible to think that we trick the government out of the most powerful taxation mechanism ever, which is inflation, and the government will just say, "Okay, I'll just tax your home, but I will not try to make money out of inflation anymore"; that's just unrealistic.  They will react, they will adapt and everybody will ultimately be in grey market or a black market by definition, because that's the strength of Bitcoin, that it can resist a legal ban.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, look, I'm not disagreeing, but I'm just saying, reducing the power of the state, the amount now is negligible.  I would say it's not even on the radar of impacting the state, right, so there has to be a tipping point.  But, I don't know what that tipping point is.  We've gone through a pandemic and shut down our economies and the state hasn't lost any power.  If anything, they've increased power.  And, if that is the narrative, if that is the important narrative, look, I might be being irresponsible myself; we're just talking about exposure to Bitcoin.  Will a lot of people just be holding it on Coinbase; or, will a lot of people just be buying it to sell in the future and they don't give a fuck about having this black market economy? 

I just think they're two different narratives and is Bitcoin either of them?  Does it matter?  Is it important to push that black market side?  Is it important, because, Neil, you opened up with a very passionate and right speech about the kind of disgusting way governments have treated people over the last whatever centuries and, if Bitcoin is a chance to stop this, then people just holding it on Coinbase or just buying it for exposure isn't really going to do that.  It is people adopting the full black economy and choosing to avoid taxes; that's where it will make a real difference?

Neil Woodfine: I don't think people will have to, like Giacomo said, people don't have to avoid taxes for this to work.

Peter McCormack: Okay.

Neil Woodfine: The key is to make money more expensive again.  So right now, the state inflates and takes out massive loans to support its taxation, but also money is just super-cheap.  Interest rates are artificially low.  It makes it easy for people that are politically-affiliated to get hold of large sums of money.  So, getting rid of that is a key step towards improving the situation.  Also, like Giacomo said, once everybody is on a Bitcoin standard, if they are not holding on a custodian, then it makes it a lot easier for them to avoid tax if they decide that tax has become excessive or tyrannical, and that does happen in certain countries, so it's important that people have that option.

But yes, I think you're right, the number goes up, a thing is more attractive to people.  That's why most people get into Bitcoin in the first place.  Myself, I wasn't into any of this until I got into Bitcoin.  I got into Bitcoin because the chart was going up.

Peter McCormack: Look at you now!

Neil Woodfine: Yeah, I think you will be surprised at how much people will change.  I've got a big tweet thread of people saying, "My Bitcoin changed me".  I think even holding some Bitcoin on Coinbase for a few months, people were already starting to see their ideas change. 

And as well, if states do state leveraging and controlling and stealing from custodians, people's minds will change even faster, because they were there if the number goes up; and then, if their number goes down, they're going to be very upset.  Ad, I think you'll see people taking more care about their keys, running own nodes, and stuff like that.  But potentially, it will take that fightback to cause that immune reaction, where people start taking more responsibility for their assets.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's funny, it does change; I definitely can emphasise with that.  I'll tell you something funny, Giacomo, at the end of 2016 when I got back into Bitcoin, I was a vegan; that's a true story.

Giacomo Zucco: Well, the meat stuff, the carnivorous stuff, is another example of something that started as ironic mostly, like toxic, so we started to overemphasise and use hyperboles about carnivores because it's just funny.  It's also just self-mocking about toxicity.  But actually, if you think about that, it's not true that there is no connection.  We were discussing this stuff, of course, with Saifedean a lot of times, but there is a connection.  It's obvious that it doesn't mean that there is a deterministic link between Bitcoin and a change to your diet.

Peter McCormack: No, I know, I know.

Giacomo Zucco: You can get Bitcoin and it's clear.  But, there is something there; for example, a generalised approach about so-called fiat experts.  So, right now, we live in a world where governments are appointing people to create absurd and scientific narrative about complex sciences where there is literally no experimental verification.  So, this stuff is true in microeconomics, so they are using that to justify interest rate manipulation and social structure and stuff, and they are using that in other fields as well. 

So, there is a reason that when people become sceptical about the narrative in economics, they have higher probability to become sceptical about the prevalent narrative in other fields, which may mean that you become even more vegan because now you know that there is a government conspiracy against vegetables, or it doesn't matter the outcome.  What matters is that there is a connection between an increase of scepticism about easy, mainstream narrative in many, many fields; so there is a connection there.

Peter McCormack: I won't bring up global warming, because we'll go on for another hour!

Giacomo Zucco: But it's similar; let's not get into the details, but it's similar.  I don't find surprising that there is an overlap between sceptical people about prevalent narrative in any topic, including that; it's just nature.

Peter McCormack: No, I agree.

Giacomo Zucco: It doesn't mean -- it's not proof.  It's not that if Bitcoin works, that's a proof that global warming is not anthropic, it's not that.  It's not crazy.  It shouldn't be surprising that people who are getting into Bitcoin are requiring more and more direct evidence to be independently verifiable about a lot of impactful and consequential theories and narratives.

Peter McCormack: No, I agree, and that scepticism is important.  I've found it on myself sometimes but at the same time, some of them are very wrong about global warming.  But, we don't need to go into that now; I'll just say that I'm right!

We've gone down a rabbit hole here that I didn't even suspect we'd go to, but just bringing it back, look, it's really useful for me.  I am a centrist by heart and I am somebody who thinks about -- I'm a bit softer about certain issues, and I am conscious about not producing the wrong type of content, or not leading, if I've got newcomers to Bitcoin discovering my podcast, not leading them down the wrong route. 

That toxicity thing is really interesting and I think I'm falling on the, I don't want it ever to be malicious, but I think ultimately, this is the one shot at Bitcoin; it's important we get this right; we don't want social attacks; and I wouldn't ever want to produce something that helps support any kind of social attack.  So, it's been very useful for me; I don't know if it's useful for you two; Neil, you're a tough debater?

Neil Woodfine: Yeah, I mean if we're going on final words, I think one of the really important things to understand is that anybody in the industry right now, or anybody investing in Bitcoin, is doing so because they're expecting Bitcoin to go up.  Now, you might not expect the market cap to go up very much.  That's illogical because if you've got more users, the market cap is going up, right; it's only a limited set of Bitcoins.  So, we're here because it's going to grow and as it grows, things are going to get tougher because it's going to start coming into competition with some very dangerous powers around the world, both banks and states as well.  The heat is going to be on, not only from within the Bitcoin sphere, where we're never all going to agree with other, but also externally with people upset with what Bitcoin is doing. 

So right now, we live, especially in western countries, we live in this democratic paradigm where everybody expects to have a say in everything that happens within a geographic area, and a lot of people, if Bitcoin starts to succeed and fiat currency starts to fail, are going to start thinking, "Well, I didn't vote for this.  This isn't something that I chose".  And, they're also going to be very upset to see some people getting rich while they're getting poor, like pensions and stuff will start getting wiped out if the fiat system starts to fail.  So, you're going to have a lot of very upset people.

If you're complaining about the low-level criticism that you get on Bitcoin Twitter, or any of the other Bitcoin forums right now, that is nothing compared to what people will be facing down the line.  So, I think it's important that we see resilience as a good quality for people to have and weakness as a bad quality for people to have.  People need to toughen up, in my opinion.

And then another thing that I think's really important to highlight; if toxicity is genuinely so risky to the Bitcoin project, if it can decelerate progress, or if it can actually destroy the project entirely, then it becomes an extremely cheap attack for Bitcoin's enemies to implement.  So, if sending abusive messages to Bitcoin developers, or shitcoiners, is bad for the Bitcoin project, it's very, very easy for well-funded entities to set up forums to do exactly that and harass people and end the project right here. 

So, people need to understand that they need to deal with these kinds of issues because Bitcoin does have enemies and it will get hotter out there.

Peter McCormack: I would struggle to argue against your points there and it's definitely shifted my thinking, considering the wider population.  We've just had a vote in the UK based on the government's response to the coronavirus and only 13% of people think they've gone too far; so, that is a lot of people we have to toughen up.

Giacomo Zucco: The comparison is very, very interesting, because what Neil is talking about is basically demonisation.  That is something that you cannot really shield from, because it's impossible to shield developers from internet criticism.  So, the only answer is not robustness, is not avoiding that, it's just anti-fragility.  It's just getting immunity against that, which doesn't mean that I want to be the one writing you nasty messages in private; that's not the point.  It's not about being personally mean.

It's about challenging each other to become stronger and to accept and resist this kind of very cheap social attack, because there is no way we can shield people from those; so, we may just as well help people to get some kind of immunity to that kind of stuff.  Separating completely unproductive, bad behaviour, like random attacks from criticism that can also be strong criticism, because criticism is not always soft because sometime critics can be deep, and when something is consequential, the debate can get heated.  It's nature and it's healthy.

So, if you see somebody that is breaking down because of criticism, help him personally, be nice, but let's not go into the inception in which we stop discussing the topic and we start, as Neil said, arguing against the people arguing against the topic in the wrong way.  If you want to be nice, be nice, but not be nasty with people who are being nasty with nasty people, because that's a little bit too much.  And a lot of the discussion about toxicity is that; it's people being toxic to people because they think they're being too toxic with toxic people.  This is a little bit too much of layers; let's stay basic.

Peter McCormack: That's the show quote there; you've done it.  I'm going to get that one out.  Yeah, that immunity to it is a good point.  Look, it depends who you are.  Some people, it just floats off them.  It can be brutal sometimes and it can drain you and it can affect your day.  It can be tough to go through a period of bullshit; I've spoken to other people who've been through it.

I was listening to Rogan the other day when he was talking about, "Just fucking ignore people".  That's the answer.

Neil Woodfine: It's a big place and Bitcoin is totally permissionless.  You can continue working on whatever Bitcoin project you want, whether it's core development or some kind of corporate project, you can continue doing that and you can create your own spaces.  Just get off, do it, delete your account.  If it's too much for you and it's horrible, there are very easy ways to create spaces online where you can vet the people that are coming in and make sure that they meet whatever requirements that you need.

But, I guarantee you that people that set up those kinds of spaces are very likely to come back to Twitter, because the spaces that they create, if they're too demanding, they're going to be sanitised, everybody's going to be being fake to each other, it's not going to be a particularly exciting place to be.  So, I think you need to bear in mind that the rough comes with that kind of chaos that Bitcoin Twitter and other kind of public forums have.

Peter McCormack: Just as a closing point, it's a complete side issue; Neil, you mentioned as Bitcoin continues to grow, some people are going to get very rich and other people are going to lose money.  I did a really interesting interview yesterday with Yassine from ARK Invest.  I don't know if either of you have seen the two whitepapers they've put out, have just come out, with regard to Bitcoin; Bitcoin as a novel economic institution.  In some ways, I said to him at the time, it's quite an anarchist paper.

But, one of the most interesting things is looking at Bitcoin in terms of changes of the time.  I mentioned this book, Engines That Move Markets, the industrialisation.  We had the internet; essentially we've had the second phase of the internet, which is much more about information; and now we've got this kind of third phase, which is financialisation, which is Bitcoin.  During an industrial revolution, the people who took the risks, built the factories, are the ones that profited.  The people that created the internet companies profited.  Through the second wave of the internet, people who created the social networks profited.

If this is the natural evolution of humans towards another phase, which is separation of money and state, the people who took the earlier risks will profit; that's just a natural conclusion that we have through every kind of epoch of human history.

Giacomo Zucco: Sure.  Who is better at predicting the future will invest better; that's an inevitable.  Of course, monetisation in Bitcoin is not as trivial as in other fields, but the internet was also very challenging.  Indeed, they came up with this monetisation model, which is not great, which is advertising against free content.  It's not great, but it was the only one because the internet is too open and too permissionless to scale a licence model, or pay-to-see, stuff like that.

So, Bitcoin is similar.  There are many ways to monetise.  The first one is hardware infrastructure, because hardware is not as permissionless as software, so a few companies will do ASICs.  I mean, never say never, but it will be a long time before people can make ASICs in their garden; you will need specialisation to do ASICs, so that's profit, that's margin.  Hardware wallets, maybe they will become a little bit more commodity, but still there would be a lot of risk of reputation and trust involved, so probably you will have margins and you will have companies.

Hardware nodes, maybe you can have people doing that themselves, but maybe some people will manage to put a small margin on some easily verifiable other node.  Then you have financial matching of demand and offer, which is exchanges.  You will make money with exchanges, because if we have money on fiat money and this money is migrating to Bitcoin, somebody will have to bridge it, because Bitcoin doesn't need bridges, but fiat does.  Whoever will provide the fiat escrow, the fiat gate, will make money, will profit from that.

And then you can have people just buying Bitcoin and sitting on that, which is like people buying web domains in the 1990s and buying ABC.com and pizza.com and just wait, because if you have adoption, you have scarcity and you will have increasing of price.  So, that's inevitable, I think, and that's a more general dynamic that if you are better at predicting the future and you can invest and you can save and you can chose, probably you will make money.

Getting back to the culture ring of libertarians and tech guys and investors, the tech guys, especially open source tech guys, they are a little bit anti-profit.  There is this bias that if you are making money, there is something wrong.  But, that's not the case.  The point with closed software with patents is that people were making money in the wrong way that was actually hurtful to the world.  It was bad for security, for audibility; it was bad for incentives; but, making money is not wrong.  If you are serving other people better, you will make more money, because your service is more useful for other people.  Just specialisation is the division of labour.  Making money is great.  There's nothing wrong in people making profit.

Peter McCormack: Good.  Well, look, we went down a few different rabbit holes there, but it was great as ever.  I've come out a tougher, harder bitcoiner because of it, so thank you.  Giacomo, how do people find you?

Giacomo Zucco: Well, actually, finally there is www.giacomozucco.com.  I had the need to set up with WordPress with BTC-paid servers, so finally you can mostly see my articles and videos and you can check incoming workshops and seminars and subscribe.  You can also book my time, because a lot of people are asking.  So next time, Peter, you will have to use a BTC-paid server for a podcast.

Peter McCormack: All right, I will use BTC-paid server.  And, Neil, how do people find you?  And, Neil, we don't do this enough.  This is like nearly two years ago last time we did this.  We should do this at least once a year, but how do people find you?

Neil Woodfine: They can find me at Twitter @nwoodfine, very easy.

Peter McCormack: And don't expect him to be nice to you!  All right, guys, well listen, good luck with everything.  Thanks for coming on, take care.

Giacomo Zucco: Buy.

Neil Woodfine: Thanks.