WBD428 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin Rehab: Running Plebnet with American HODL, P & D++

Interview date: Thursday 25th November

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with American HODL, P & D++. 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 talk to American HODL, P, and D++. We discuss the importance of the Lightning Network, the challenges of onboarding people and the growth of Plebnet.

“We have Lightning, and Lightning is Bitcoin. And Lightning does millions of transactions per second, instantaneously, with finality of settlement. They’re irreversible; there’s no mining, there’s no blockchain. And if this sounds like magic, it absolutely is… so it obliterates the use case of every shitcoin in the world, and it kind of obliterates the legacy financial rails as well.”

— D++

Interview Transcription

American HODL: P, am I not supposed to mention that rash thing you were telling me about?

Peter McCormack: I get to edit!

P: You can mention the rash on my left nut --

Peter McCormack: For fuck's sake, my son's at the door.  Hold on.

P: -- but not the rash on my right.  We talked about this beforehand, HODL. 

American HODL: Peter does this all the time.  He'll just get up in the middle of a podcast and be, "I'm going to go do some things right now, I'll be right back".  

P: It was a great accent, by the way.

American HODL: He's such a terrible podcast host.

Peter McCormack: Fuck off!

American HODL: He'll get up in the middle of his own show all the time.

Peter McCormack: I had to let my son in the door.

P: You tell him, Peter.  I felt so bad, by the way, that on our text thread, I may have been slightly inebriated and somebody said, I think it was HODL, you were like, "Hey, can P join this random event?" and I was like, "Get fucked!" and that was my first actual interaction with you, Peter, over text.

Peter McCormack: Was it?  I apologise, don't worry about it.

P: Sorry, wait a minute, I just want to be clear; you're apologising to me for me telling you to get fucked?

Peter McCormack: No, I'm basically apologising for half paying attention to that and then planning my notes for this and assuming I'd done something wrong?

P: No, you did everything right.

Peter McCormack: Well, good to have you here, P.

P: You too, man.

Peter McCormack: Good to have you hear, D.

D++: Yeah, totally.

Peter McCormack: And, good to have you hear, H.  We're all going by one letter today.  Oh, shit, I can't be P either.

American HODL: There's two Ps.

Peter McCormack: P, you missed it.  We were talking about the bet HODL and I have, bet 2.  We had a bet a year ago on the US election.  I went for Biden, he went for Trump, I won half a Bitcoin.  Then, we had another bet where we're over $300,000.

P: Didn't you lose your private keys on that bet?

Peter McCormack: Not exactly!  Yeah okay, look, let's not talk about that again.

American HODL: He only got the money out of the goodness of my heart, because I kept my key set, and then I was able to sign with Phil Geiger.

P: You need a little metal…

Peter McCormack: Well, this second bet, I'm only going to get out of the goodness of your heart, because we haven't even set it up.  You just owe me.

American HODL: Wait, for what?  This one?

Peter McCormack: The second bet.

American HODL: Oh, yeah, we were going to do like a DLC or something, then we didn't end up -- everyone was too lazy.  I think the Suredbits guys were too lazy to, I think everyone was just too lazy to do it.  So, this one's on faith.

Peter McCormack: So, what I'm going to do with all this money I've won off you over the last two years, I'm using it to buy Bedford Football Club.  It's true.

American HODL: And then you'll slowly go bankrupt trying to make it an actual, profitable football club.  That will be nice to watch!  What did you tell me before the show?

Peter McCormack: I'm nine promotions --

American HODL: Nine promotions to the Premier League.

Peter McCormack: We're nine promotions to the Premier League, yeah.

American HODL: You can do that.  What do you need, what, $300 million, $400 million to make a run at that; maybe $1 billion, even $1 billion, call it $1 billion?

Peter McCormack: No, $50 million.

American HODL: $50 million?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, $50 million, two 5Xs in the next few seasons.  That gives me a --

American HODL: Don't the premier clubs spend $50 million on one player for one season?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I'm in the Spartans South Midlands Division One.

P: I felt extreme jealousy.  I had to get myself some sunglasses.

Peter McCormack: D++, it's leather jackets versus sunglasses.

American HODL: That's right.

Peter McCormack: So listen, we should welcome our guest, D++, lovely to see you.  We've hung out a few times in the last year, got to hang out and meet you, and we've talked about getting you on the show, so welcome, glad to finally get you on.  How are you?

D++: I'm doing good.  I got up early for this show, Peter.  I'm happy to be here.

Peter McCormack: You look amazing.  You're the most glamourous guest we've ever had, so thank you for coming on.  P, nice to see you, man, how are you?

P: I'm doing fantastic.  I'm in the process of moving, so my walls may look spartan, because they are, but I'm super excited to be here.

Peter McCormack: Amazing to have you.  HODL, good to see you again, man, it's been ages, thought we'd lost you.

American HODL: Good to see you, fuck you, I don't want to pay you, I'm not going to, eat my dick, you English fuck!

Peter McCormack: You're going to pay me.  I can shoot a gun now, remember!

American HODL: Not very well!  We gave Peter an AR15 and I had to yell at him while he was shooting it, because he was so nervous.  I was like, "Breathe, breathe!" and I remembered that we didn't give him basically any instruction before we put this firearm in his hands, and then I was like, "Okay, just --"  I should have given him the lesson on, "Breathe out while you're pulling the trigger".  I didn't do any of that, I was just like, "Here's a gun, go use it!"

P: That's sounds irresponsible!

Peter McCormack: "Blow up that Tannerite", and yeah, 16th shot, I fucking did it!

American HODL: The guy at the gun shot was, "Don't you blow up more than four pounds of this stuff", and I think we blew up 50 pounds of it at once.

P: You were like, "Okay, I understand, disagree".

American HODL: Disagree, yeah, "Agree to disagree, we're going to do 10X what you just said"!

Peter McCormack: We had some fun.

American HODL: You don't want to go shooting with Peter, because after he hit the Tannerite on his 15th or 16th shot --

Peter McCormack: No, you're not allowed to tell this!

American HODL: -- he fired the gun straight up in the air like he was in a fucking Western movie or something, and we were like, "Pete, what are you doing?  Bullets come back down, Pete, they come…"

Peter McCormack: You weren't meant to tell that!

American HODL: I was scared for my life.

Peter McCormack: That was meant to be our secret.

American HODL: Luckily the Earth, it's got a curve, it rotates, so I didn't think we were going to get hit, but we could have.

P: Somebody else would, but I'm sure they deserved it.

American HODL: Yeah, exactly!

Peter McCormack: Anyway, good to see you all.  I don't know whose suggestion, was this Ben's suggestion, or was this your suggestion, HODL?

American HODL: Ben's.

Peter McCormack: This is Ben's suggestion.  Well, listen, P, D, great to have you both on the show, want to hear all about Plebnet, but before we get into that, I've got some very important business to cover first.  So, I've been debating here as well, is a hotdog a sandwich?

American HODL: Oh, man, no, no.

P: This is a deep question. 

Peter McCormack: It is.

P: I would argue that a hotdog is neither a sandwich, nor a taco, which is of course the only other option.  I would argue that a hotdog is a stroke of genius created by a madman to give us all something we never knew we always wanted.

Peter McCormack: I think it's its own category.

D++: Sounds like some fiat food.

P: Yeah, it's a hotdog, you know.  One of my favourite stories about hotdogs is, was it the CEO of Costco, or one of the founders in a meeting, because Costco has a $1.50 hotdog and they've had one for years, and somebody suggested that they increase the price.  And the person in question responded that they would kill the person if they tried to increase the price.

Peter McCormack: That's brutal.

American HODL: Peter once told me that he was on a phallocentric diet, and I said, "What the fuck is that?"  He goes, "It's easy, I only eat foods that are shaped like penises, so sausage, hotdog, popsicles, cucumbers, carrot, stuff like that".  I was like, "That's interesting.  Has it been working for you?" and he goes, "Yeah, I've lost 40 stone", or whatever English measurement he gave me.  So, I'm happy for you, man, and we're all rooting for you, so good job.

Peter McCormack: You know he's full of shit, I've always been a fat fuck.

American HODL: Being fit is very important.

Peter McCormack: Your hotdogs suck, by the way, compared to ours.  UK hotdogs are a lot better.

American HODL: What?  Are you claiming English hotdog supremacy right now?  That's a weird claim.

P: No, he's right.

Peter McCormack: We use the right part of the pig.

American HODL: Which part?

Peter McCormack: You just use the offcuts, like the brain and the bollocks, etc.

American HODL: The trimmings, yeah.

Peter McCormack: The fucking gross shit.  We use the stuff that you actually feed humans.

American HODL: Yeah, the scrotum!

Peter McCormack: Fuck off!  Oh my God, what a waste of time, we're here to talk about stuff.  We want to learn about Bitcoin.  D++, you can bring this back for us.  Tell me about Plebnet.

D++: Yeah, totally.  So, Peter, you were there, I don't know if you remember the day that I got Lightning pilled.

Peter McCormack: I do.

D++: I got Lightning pilled by the God of Lightning himself, JC Crown.  You were in the room and I showed you how to use the lntxbot, which is a custodial wallet for Lightning in Telegram.  And, me and Jimmy Song and a bunch of folks sent you sats that day.  So, I don't know if you remember, but it was a magical day.

Peter McCormack: I remember the day.

D++: Yeah, it was so fun.  After that, I built a Lightning Node and I started a group on Telegram for some folks who were doing the same, in early May.  So, Aaron, who runs DARTHNODE, had this brilliant idea to graph all of our Lightning node connections, and that's really what made Plebnet take off. 

So, the early graph was just me and Rajwinder, who has been instrumental also in Plebnet; he's the one who gave us our name.  Since then, we've grown to over 5,000 users and well over 1,100 nodes.  And those nodes and their connections now represent a third of all of the liquidity in the entire Lightning Network.  So, we are the fasting-growing community in Lightning and we are taking over the world with love and friendship.

Peter McCormack: That's amazing.  I didn't realise that was the day you got Lightning pilled.

D++: You saw it happen.  I've been in Bitcoin since 2013, but like so many folks, I'd never used Lightning until this year.

Peter McCormack: Because I first met you in Clubhouse.  I kept seeing you in there talking shit to people, in the most polite way possible, and talking a lot about the technical items.  So, I just assumed Lightning was something you'd been using and part of for a long time.  I didn't realise that was the day you got Lightning pilled.  But I remember the Telegram app.

D++: Yeah, totally.  Fiat Jeff is a Lightning wizard.  He created the lntxbot; that was the day that you and I met.  And, yeah, I've been in Bitcoin for a long time, but like so many people, I've been on the sidelines of Lightning, for whatever reason, and it's really important that people actually use it.  So, as you know, I have a running offer that if anyone wants to receive their first Lightning payment, just download BlueWallet and send me an invoice, and I pay all of them, and it is magical.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, it really is.  It's pretty cool how it works actually, but that's pretty cool you've got up to 5,000 people already.  Are you adminning the group, is somebody helping you admin the group; how does it work?

D++: Oh, yeah, totally.  There's a bunch of us.  Obviously, P has been instrumental, he created our Wiki, which has onboarded so many folks to this group, and there's a bunch of us that run the group.

Peter McCormack: Which is prettier now!

D++: I was going to say, no thanks to American HODL, who has not been contributing.

American HODL: This is true.  Plebnet started in a Clubhouse room that I was in, and they were like, "HODL, we have this amazing idea, man.  We're going to fucking connect all the nodes and have a community for Lightning.  It's going to be called Plebnet; you want in on this?"  I was like, "Yeah, no, not really.  I'm going to go back to playing Xbox, or whatever I was doing before this.  Thanks".

D++: You know, HODL, it's not too late?

American HODL: Yeah, I'm going to admit right now to being a really bad Lightning bitcoiner.  I'm a bad Lightning bitcoiner.

P: There's no such thing.

American HODL: Every time I spin up a Lightning node; I did Pierre Rochard's node launcher, I did the Casa node, what else did I do?  I did Zap, Jack Mallers' project before it was Strike, and I just spin up the node and then I go, "Now what do I do?"  So, that's been my thing every time.

P: I think that's such a great point though, right.  I would say there's about 15 to 20 people who really were foundational in the creation of Plebnet.  My experience was similar to yours originally, where basically I was like, obviously Bitcoin, it's great, and I didn't really have a reason to dive in and start playing around with running my own node until Rajwinder and D++ and JC were like, "Hey, this is so much fun".

I basically was FOMOd into this community around Lightning, and then I got involved, more and more people got involved, I started on Clubhouse and on Twitter blasting out, "Everybody should be in this Plebnet thing!"  It was the community that really pulled me in.  So one, HODL, you're not a member of the community yet and you should be; and two, I think that it brings up an interesting point, which is that having that group of people that you can communicate with, laugh with, send inappropriate memes to constantly, until they tell you to stop, they beg you to stop, you won't stop because you can't and you're just doing your own thing, that's really important and that's one of the things that drove and continues to drive the success of Plebnet, is that we're all these slightly insane individuals who are deeply passionate about this thing and making it fun and interesting and compelling.

Peter McCormack: P, how do we get people on Plebnet?  If they're listening now, where do they go?

P: There's two different URLs.  One is plebnet.org, which is the more acceptable one; and then the other one is kycjelly.com.

Peter McCormack: Why have you got two?

P: That's a great question.  So, there's this interesting experience that I had, which are many of us are very privacy focused.  We try to have good OpSec.  Whenever people would come into Clubhouse rooms and say, "I only have this many Bitcoin", everybody on stage would scream at them and say, "Don't say a number, never say a number!"  Then, when we got involved with Lightning, when you run a Lightning node, if it is a public node, so many people run Lightning nodes, but they never associate their identity with that node directly; whereas, in Plebnet, as D++ mentioned, we use an app called CheeseRobot, which basically lets you link your node to your identity in Telegram, and then you can see this magical graph that has hundreds and hundreds of nodes, and you can see how everybody is connected.

In doing that, you're basically doxing yourself, or at least you're associating your Telegram identity with your node.  And, in a Lightning Network, you can see the total liquidity that is available on your Bitcoin on your Lightning node.  So, we called it kycjelly, because we were like, "You've got to grease yourself up and give this --" it's not actually KYC, but it's your identity, and you're associating it with how much Bitcoin you have on your Lightning node, or how much liquidity you have available.  So, we thought it was funny to call it kycjelly, because you've got to use the lube and then take it in order to join Plebnet!

American HODL: I think it's interesting, P, because there is that privacy trade-off there, and that is a little bit anathema, I guess, to early Bitcoin culture, whatever.  But then, there's also always been this problem of, how do you get people to run nodes?  So, the community focused node effort is, I don't know, I think it's something you guys cracked and it's really interesting to me, because the growth in the Plebnet nodes is crazy.  5,000 doesn't seem a lot, but this just started eight months ago or something, so it's been nuts.

Peter McCormack: I think the nodes thing is a good point and I want to talk about that, because I've never used a Lightning node.  I have one in my Umbrel.  I've got four nodes now.

American HODL: You don't use a regular node either, do you?

Peter McCormack: Not really, no.  I mean, I have and I had, but my problem is I use Casa for my storage, and everything's just in there.  So, I just send straight to that.  And I know I should send to a node first and then to Casa, etc, but I don't.

P: Not necessarily.  I mean, Casa's a great option for securing your entire stack.  I view running a Lightning node as being something that you kind of play around with, but I wouldn't advise people to have a massive amount of liquidity on their having-fun Lightning node.

Peter McCormack: But if people aren't running Lightning nodes, then we don't have liquidity, so there's even more of a requirement to have this than maybe running a basechain node?

P: What I would say is, no one should have their deep hodl stack on their Lightning node, in my opinion, because the Lightning Network is very robust, but it's definitely something that requires your node to be online at all times, and you can't have a multisig -- well, each Lightning channel is a multisig setup.  But you can't basically secure your Bitcoin the same way that you would want to for your long-term deep storage.  So, I think of them as totally separate things, and ones Lighting node, ones Umbrel should have a much smaller amount of Bitcoin liquidity, or Bitcoin on it, in order to play around and learn this stuff and support the network.

Peter McCormack: D, you mentioned BlueWallet.  I've used BlueWallet now for a couple of years, about three years.  I think it's a great wallet, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't need to connect that to a Lightning node, or can I?  Is it too complicated?  Because, everything I've ever wanted out of BlueWallet in terms of Lightning payments works, it just works for me.  I don't have failed transactions, I've used it hundreds of times when I've been in El Salvador, and I've never had a single issue.  But if I want to be a good bitcoiner, what should I be doing differently?

D++: Yeah, you just read my mind, because I did want to make that distinction, that you absolutely don't have to be a Lightning node operator to enjoy Lightning.  And, custodial wallets, such as Wallet of Satoshi and BlueWallet are going to meet the needs of most people just fine.  In fact, I love BlueWallet myself.  I use BlueWallet as a custodial user, meaning I'm trusting my satoshis with a custodian, and I also use it as a self-sovereign node operator, whereby I have connected my BlueWallet to my node, so I do both.

American HODL: You see, I'm like Pete.  When I'm going to use a hot wallet, I have no problem using Cash App as my hot wallet, and the same thing with Wallet of Satoshi.  When I'm going to use Lightning payments, I have no problem doing Lightning payments in a custodial fashion, because it's just easy.  I guess this makes me a bad bitcoiner or something, but I will admit to using Wallet of Satoshi frequently when I do Lightning stuff.

P: I don't think that makes you a bad bitcoiner.

American HODL: Yeah, I also don't spend Bitcoin; I rarely spend it.

Peter McCormack: That's not true.  You spend it with me at least once a year!

American HODL: You piece of shit!  On-chain is good enough for that use case.

D++: Yeah, we're using smaller amounts in our custodial wallets and those work just fine.  Those are just money in our pocket.  Obviously, it's not our savings account or our life savings, and I'm a big fan of that.

Peter McCormack: Well, you say that.  I put $400 in my Lightning wallet, my BlueWallet, about, I don't know when it was; two years ago, whenever.  And then at some point, it went up to $4,000.  If I'm not spending that, if say I spend another $1,000 of that over the next four years, that could suddenly become $40,000.  Up to that point on the BlueWallet, I was like, "Fuck, I need to withdraw this", and I don't know how to withdraw it.

D++: I can help you with that, Peter.  And there's some folks who feel comfortable keeping $4,000 in their pocket, and there's some folks who feel comfortable keeping $40 in their pocket; everyone's different.

P: But probably not $40,000.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't want to keep $40,000.

P: No one should have $40,000 in their pocket.

Peter McCormack: But one of the cool things, it was a real highlighted cool thing about Bitcoin, is that my Lightning wallet is appreciating in value quicker than I can spend it.

D++: Totally.  So, the way that you swap off-chain, which is Lightning onto on-chain, which is the Bitcoin blockchain, it's called a submarine swap.  It gets a little complicated, but if you want a little hack, Peter, for something that's really fun, it's what I call a ghetto submarine swap -- 

Peter McCormack: That's good for me.

D++: -- you can use Jack Mallers' app, Strike.

P: I do want to make something clear, which is to what D++ was saying; when people hear about the Lightning Network, and just to give a brief overview, and I know you talk about this a lot on What Bitcoin Did, but we have Layer 1 Bitcoin, we have on-chain transactions.  The Lightning Network is built on top of the Bitcoin on-chain Network, and it basically allows us to send payments essentially instantly for essentially zero fees, and that's huge.

People used to love to say, "You can't buy a coffee with Bitcoin", which is bullshit, but there will be a time in the future where on-chain fees, which are currently very, very low, will increase, because it's just very likely.  The Lightning Network allows us to use and leverage the incredible security of Bitcoin Layer 1, which is just straight on-chain Bitcoin transactions, but to be able to do it in a way that, as I said, essentially instantaneous, and also very, very low fee.

There are multiple types of Lightning users.  You can be a person who is sending Twitter tips via Strike, or paying for your coffee instantaneously, or making small bets with your friends, or paying a merchant; and all you have to do in order to participate in that is literally go download a wallet, like BlueWallet, or my preference is Muun Wallet, which just has a beautiful UX.  But you can basically download one of those wallets then immediately be interacting with the Lightning Network as a user, and you don't have to understand any of the rest of the stuff we're talking about.

Then there are merchants, who are basically interested in selling goods and services using the Lightning Network.  Previously, you had to be running a service like BTCPay Server, which is an incredible piece of software, and that's one use case.  Then, you can be like the totally insane, bleeding-edge people, like D++ and the rest of Plebnet and I, who are basically not only do we want to interact with Lightning, we want to be down there in the trenches.  We want to lose some money sometimes because we open and close channels too often, or whatever it is.  That's super fun for us.

I manage my node pretty actively, which is to say I'm going in, I'm balancing liquidity across my Lightning channels and stuff, and that's fun for me; it's like a real-time strategy game, you set fees and all of that stuff.  But as a user of the Lightning Network, you do not have to know any of that stuff or even care about it.

D++: Yeah, totally.  I'm happy that we're explaining what Lightning is; that's important.  Lightning is a Layer 2 payment protocol network that runs on top of Bitcoin.  You may have heard of people say that, "Bitcoin is old [or] outdated [or] slow [or] expensive", which of course is ridiculous.  It's ridiculous because we have Lightning and Lightning is Bitcoin and Lightning does millions of transactions per second, instantaneously with finality of settlement. 

They're irreversible, there's no mining, there's no blockchain, and if this sounds like magic, it absolutely is, and it works and it's rock solid.  So, it obliterates the use case of every shitcoin in the world, and it actually kind of obliterates the legacy financial rails as well at the speed of, dare I say, lightning.  And P is absolutely right; it's super fun to run your own node and to develop these strategies for routing, but you absolutely do not have to to be a Lightning user.

We talked about Wallet of Satoshi, we talked about BlueWallet.  Another great Lightning wallet is Breez, which has a really great point of sale for any merchants who want to get started with Lightning very easily.

Peter McCormack: You see, this is cool.  HODL, let me throw this over to you, because I've been ragging on the Ethereum crowd a little bit this week for a couple of reasons.  My brother dug out an old tweet of Vitalik, he sent me it from four years ago.  He was saying, "We're $0.5 trillion market cap.  That's all good, but how many of the unbanked have we banked now?"  And it was like, "Well, you're going to struggle to bank people with the gas fees as they are".

Then, I saw an article on VICE today about that DAO they tried to raise, you know that DAO that they wanted to buy.  Was it the Constitution they wanted to buy?

American HODL: Yeah.

Peter McCormack: And basically, they lost half of the money they raised in fees, because they had to buy this and send it to here to transfer it to this and some bullshit.  But somebody started with $200 and they ended up putting $75 into the DAO because of the fees.  All these people were claiming Bitcoin a couple of years ago was too expensive at $50 on-chain fees, which was a very small window where that actually happened.

But they're actually full of shit, because you can now bank the unbanked with Bitcoin.  You can bank them with the Lightning Network.  You can have people not only on the basechain, but also doing these transactions at close to zero cost, and as D++ said, with instant finality.  So, I think that's a really good point you've made, D++; you've completely destroyed the use case of all these shitcoins who've been ragging on Bitcoin for being slow or being boomercoin.

D++: Totally, and they have nothing really to grasp at, so they're trying to come up with new ideas.  So, if you run out of ideas, Peter, do a DAO!

Peter McCormack: Do a DAO!  Well, there are arguments, like the other people jumping in are like, "Yeah, because Ethereum's slow and bullshit.  Now you should be on Solana", which is basically something that's even more centralised than Ethereum and even more bullshit.  So it's like, what is it, four years' time; are we going to get, in four years' time, something that's going to be even more centralised than Solana?  There's just going to be a single Oracle database.

American HODL: Yes.

D++: Yeah, that's how they fix it.

American HODL: Listen, if the regulators are going to allow DeFi to continue, and it seems like they might, there's even talk about the a16z crowd is out there lobbying for their own regulatory agency, right; so, if they get that and they allow this DeFi thing to continue, there's no reason to pretend to be decentralised.  The only reason that they were pretending to be decentralised in the beginning was regulatory arbitrage, so that they could get around the laws.

If you don't have to get around the laws, most things are better centralised; most things.  It just turns out money is not one of those things that's better centralised.  In fact, it's much worse centralised, right.  By the way, there's another quote from Vitalik where he says, "The internet of money shouldn't cost 5 cents a transaction, it's ridiculous that Bitcoin costs 5 cents a transaction".  What's your average gas fee, Vitalik?  $500, or something like that?  I mean, come on, are you kidding me?

Somebody told me this expression about Vitalik, that they think Vitalik is slow rugging, right, that he knew it was bullshit from the beginning and he's been slowly rugging the entire time ever since, and I think that's 100% accurate.

Peter McCormack: Well, do you remember that thing, that interview, I don't know, it was like a panel he did with Jo Lubin where they said, "Yeah, we always knew this wouldn't work.  That's why ETH2 matters".

American HODL: Yeah, they knew, they knew from the beginning; it never made sense.  And, ETH2 is vapourware, you know what I mean? 

Something I want to ask, getting back to the Lightning thing though, so I'm hearing a lot of people talk about earning yield on their Lightning nodes, right, but the thing that's confusing to me, because that's a really cool, sexy idea, that I can stake my Bitcoin, I can have some degree of technical skill, I can route payments and then I can earn yield on those payments, right.  It's an even cooler idea when I think I can just outsource it to somebody like D++ or P, who knows what the fuck they're doing, and I'll just give them my Bitcoin and they can take an operational fee and then we can all make money on our Bitcoin in a safe way, a way that's safer than BlockFi, where we're not rehypothecating, etc.

But when I talk to Lightning operators who are doing this type of thing, it runs the gamut, from somebody like an Alex Bosworth, who's making a good deal of money, to somebody who's losing money on their Lightning node.  What I'm curious is why that delta exists; and then, how people can be more proficient operators and get the technical skillset to do things correctly?  Will that professionalise over time, you know what I mean?

P: I think the expectation that people should have, if they are running a Lightning node, is that they are not going to make any money in the short term.  Transactions fees, basically the way it works is, if the four of us each have Lightning nodes and I have a channel, which is basically a 2 of 2 multisig contract with D++, and D++ has a channel with you, HODL, and then, HODL, you have a channel with Peter's node.  Just to be clear, this doesn't have to be a Raspberry Pi 4, you can run what are called Neutrino nodes, which are a type of pruned node, on your phone today using something like Breez Wallet, which you can download for iOS or Android.

But what happens is, the way the Lightning Network works is like a spider web.  You do not have to have a direct connection to anyone that you're sending payments to.  Instead, I can say I want to send a payment to Peter, because I made a bet about which hotdog was better and he won the bet, and so I basically can bounce a payment through D++'s node, through your node, HODL, and then directly to Peter.

What happens is, for that service, each of the nodes in that chain charge a fee, essentially.  Right now, those fees are very low.  The beauty of the Lightning Network, honestly, one of the most compelling things about Bitcoin in general to me, is the incentives.  I love that incentives, or success as an individual, are aligned with the incentives for the success of Bitcoin as a whole and the entire network.  The Lightning Network is kind of a microcosm of that.  Those same incentives, those very similar incentives, are there.

So, right now, fees are low and so, there's a constant competitive fee market that exists on the Lightning Network, and everybody's trying to undercut each other, develop unique strategies and figure out ways to create value for the network and then get paid for it.  But right now, that's very difficult.  So, Alex Bosworth, an incredible engineer, he was one of the earliest Lightning adopters, and he has a whole ton of liquidity, a lot of expertise in running a successful Lightning node.

I consider myself lucky if I make $2 in a month on my Lightning node.  There are other people who manage it constantly and they're making dozens of dollars each month, but no one is making massive amounts of liquidity.  I believe what will happen in the future is probably, as on-chain fees go up, the Lightning node will become more competitive.  Then, each node will be able to charge, I believe, higher routing fees, and that's when there's the potential to make more in routing fees.  But certainly, right now nobody should be expecting to make thousands of dollars.

Peter McCormack: Can I go back a step; can I ask you something about Muun Wallet, because you mentioned that earlier?  So, I haven't used Muun Wallet, but somebody told me, with Muun Wallet, the wallet doesn't identify whether you're using Lightning or the basechain; it obfuscates that for you as a user.  I can't get my head around that; what the fuck's going on there?

D++: Yeah, it kind of combines your on- and off-chain balance together into one balance, which I think is nice to abstract away some of those technical details for folks who may not know the difference between Lightning and Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain.  For someone like me, who's more technically advanced, this confused the hell out of me, because I didn't understand what was happening under the hood, until I delved into some of their old Twitter threads, and found that the way that they're facilitating Lightning transfers is using under-the-hood submarine swaps. 

So, I talked to you actually earlier today, Peter, about what submarine swaps are.  They're a mechanism for switching from on- and off-chain.  So, they're doing some sort of interesting chicanery under the hood, but again you have one balance and that is simply your Bitcoin balance; it does not separate Bitcoin and Lightning.

Peter McCormack: So, if you want to send with Muun Wallet, can you put in a Lightning or a basechain address and it will know what to do?

D++: Totally.

Peter McCormack: Because, the thing I'm thinking about there is long term, it's like an ideal scenario that every wallet would do that, and you would just have one single address type and nobody would know the difference, and it would just make the decisions for you.

P: 100%.

D++: Oh, yeah, a lot of these technical things are going to be abstracted away for users.  Keep in mind, we're so early.  We're in the dial-up modem stage of Bitcoin in terms of the user experience.  Now, the technology, the protocols are rock solid and very secure, but the user experience has some catching up to do.  And I think things like what Muun Wallet is doing, which is abstracting away some of those technical details, is definitely the future that we're going to see of Bitcoin to bring about mass adoption.

Peter McCormack: So, if I was using, say, Muun Wallet and I sent a bunch of Bitcoin there, and say I sent a bunch of sats from my Lightning wallet, say from my BlueWallet.  If I then tried to withdraw that to a basechain wallet, is that a different type of ghetto submarine swap, it just does it for me?

D++: Exactly, and I like that you're using my language of ghetto submarine swap.  So, you can definitely ghetto submarine swap your Lightning sats in BlueWallet via Muun.

Peter McCormack: Good.  Well, I live in Bedford, which is pretty ghetto!

P: Yeah, I think that is a really important point, which D++ made, which is Bitcoin is focused, just laser focused on being sound money.  That is the purpose of Bitcoin.  Security, sound money, decentralisation, censorship resistance.

Peter McCormack: Fixed monetary policy.

P: Yeah.  And these other protocols that people love to throw around, that are basically affinity-scamming Bitcoin, they are designed to do very, very different things.  They can do those things to varying degrees, but they are not Bitcoin.  When we talk about something like Solana, which is in the news these days, I'm sure it will be gone in six months or a year, just like everything else that falls by the wayside, but they basically are like, "What if we didn't have that?  What if instead, we made everything worse?" in the sense of the things that we care about. 

To be fair, it means that you can make these transactions at lower cost, and you can do all this crazy shit which means that you can get hacked more easily.  And all it costs is a $250,000 data centre to run a single node.  If you're willing to centralise your shit that much, then Godspeed.  But Bitcoin is designed to be this thing that anyone can run a node with $100 or less of hardware and the Lightning Network builds on top of that, so it's a totally different thing.

American HODL: Let me ask you, P, real quick, there was a lot of talk early on, and I think this was to combat a lot of the FUD in 2017 with the fee market, and I think if you look at the fee market in 2017 and the fee market now, it seems clear to me that we were under attack in 2017, and a lot of those transactions were spam basically by the Bcash crowd.  Roger will stop at -- he speculatively attacked Bitcoin, etc.  So, I'm going to take that as an assumption that's true.

I think when you look at it now, where we're at now, I'm starting to feel the FUD coming around fees and there's going to be essentially this crowd that's like, "The fee market's not going to develop and we need to do an inflationary hard fork to Bitcoin", etc, and I think Lightning is part of that narrative.  But also, there was this thing about Lightning in the beginning that Lightning was supposed to be like a consumer thing.  To me, it seems more like it's going to be more like an enterprise level layer, I don't know.

Where do you think things are headed, and how could that FUD war play out with the fee market and, "Lightning's going to eat all the fees", and all that kind of bullshit that you're now starting to hear from people, do you know what I'm saying?

P: Yeah.  I am personally not worried about it at all.  I think that right now, a lot of major exchanges use Lightning because it's incredibly effective for transmitting this value securely and with finality, very rapidly.  So, exchanges that use Lightning have these massive, 5-Bitcoin channels; they have multiple channels that they're just blasting channels back and forth with, and that works great for them.  But on-chain transactions are useful when one doesn't want to have to be online in order to receive payments, and when one wants the maximum security that is available.

So, I think there will always be a place for both types of transactions.  And I think that there are many systems and services that require being able to interact with, or write to, or read from the Bitcoin blockchain specifically, so I don't see it being an issue.  I think that there are going to be more and more systems that build on top of the Lightning Network, in the same way that the internet was built on top of TCP/IP.  I'm a software engineer and I barely know what the fuck TCP/IP is; I don't need to. 

Everything that I interact with when I'm building software is at a much higher level and I think as we go forward, and we're already starting to see this, these services like Sphinx Chat and Zion and all these other systems, and Breez with podcasting 2.0, that empower people to use these novel and really interesting ways of interacting with the Lightning Network, but you don't even necessarily have to know that you are.  So, I think there will always be a place for that and there will always be a place for on-chain Bitcoin transactions.

D++: Yeah, and HODL, you bring up a really good point when it comes to fee FUD.  It's like, which one is, HODL?  The fee FUD is sometimes the fees are too high, and the fee FUD sometimes is they're too low.  So it's like, pick one!  But in terms of the FUD that the fees are going to be too low, there's actually a paradox in economics called Jevons paradox.  This describes the technological progress by which something becomes more efficient, and this efficiency actually drives the consumption of that resource.

In other words, just because we are making fees more efficient by taking them off chain, it means that there's more incentive to do the on-chain transactions to open and close those Lightning channels.  So, what this means is that we're not going to see fees just go away, we're going to see them continue to increase as people use Lightning.

Peter McCormack: You could do that meme, HODL, you could do that guy with the two buttons.

D++: That's what I was thinking!

American HODL: Well, yeah, I think D's point is correct.  The fee market is dynamic and it's meant to be dynamic, and so it depends on where you sit and how you look at it.  And, yeah, the ETH guys are going to be, "You guys were just talking shit about the gas fees.  What the fuck, man?  That just proves that Ethereum is working, look how many people want to use Ethereum".  It's like, "Yeah, but bro, all that volume is fucking fake!"

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I've just had it.  The problem I've got is the fucking confusion around it, because like I say, I've been ragging on these people on Twitter about what happened with the DAO, and then some dude said to me, "But Bitcoin still takes ten minutes", and I said, "Not if you use the Lightning Network".  Let's see what this fucker says.

Okay, so I put, "Bitcoin doesn't take ten minutes on Lightning.  It's faster and cheaper than ETH", and then I get all these replies, "Try comparing Lightning to ETH L2.  Both Lightning and Arbitrum optimism are L2s.  You should fairly make your comparison".  The problem I have with these L2s, and somebody's talking about Polygon as well, it just seems like there's so many different L2 options in Ethereum, I'm just confused beyond belief.

I think for a lot of people, Bitcoin to Lightning is actually a massive leap.  Just alone, that's a massive leap.  We all take it for granted, because we've been in Bitcoin a while, but that's still a big leap.  When you're explaining Bitcoin to somebody for the first time and then you explain Lightning, it is a big leap.  And then if you look at these Ethereum sidechains and L2s and bullshit, I'm just lost, I'm lost even knowing where to start.

P: It's super confusing.  And one thing I would say is that, you talk about a lot on your show that Bitcoin moves slowly, or more slowly than some people feel is reasonable, because we are all incredibly laser focused on making sure that we're doing it right.  Things like Ethereum and all the other bullshit, they are not focused on doing it right; they're focused on getting VC money and creating systems that allow the founders of those tokens to extract Bitcoin from people and put it into their own wallets, and that's really what their goal is.  I'm painting with a broad brush.

Peter McCormack: No, it is a fair shout.  It's a little bit like, I was listening to The Bitcoin Standard for the fifth today, driving back from London, and one of the chapters where he's talking about the governments wanted to hold gold and they stole the gold and they made it illegal to hold gold; they wanted you to have the fiat currency, but they wanted your gold, and they kept the gold in the central banks.

It's a little bit like these shitcoins.  They want you to use their shitcoins, but they want to extract the Bitcoin for it, like Block.one with EOS where they raised $4 billion and they've got over 100,000 Bitcoin now.  It's the exact same play as the banks.  They want you to use their shit fiat and they want to hold the gold.

American HODL: Yeah, I mean this year it's been, everyone in shitcoin is trading shitcoins, fucking everyone.  So, some of the more vitriolic, maximalist rhetoric that works for me in the bear market has not been working this year.  So, I've defaulted to being, "Listen, you're already trading shitcoins, you need to understand the game; here's the game.  This is what smart traders know that you don't know, because you're confused.  The game is essentially to get your Bitcoin and move it into their pocket".

They don't believe the marketing narratives that they're selling you, but if you believe that Solana is the future, or whatever, you're going to be the one who ends up holding the bag to zero, you become their exit liquidity.  So, it's a game of hot potato, and you need to understand that information asymmetry that's going on.  And people go like this, they go, "Uh huh.  So, Solana's the future?" and you're like, "Oh, Jesus Christ".

Peter McCormack: But that's the problem this year, HODL, because in 2017, one of the things was that Bitcoin was kind of people's gateway drug to all of this, and even if they were trading shitcoins, they were usually trading it with Bitcoin.  The majority of the exchanges, the unit of account was Bitcoin, but we've leapfrogged that now.  We've got a lot of exchanges out there that are ETH unit of account, you don't even need Bitcoin.  So, I think this year, people have just skipped Bitcoin and gone straight to shitcoins.

D++: Yeah, I was going to say, HODL, that's a really great point that the shitcoins have a very clever consensus algorithm, if you will, and their consensus mechanism is proof of transfer; transfer your Bitcoin to them.

American HODL: Yeah, and it's also like P was alluding to.  Bitcoin's engineering culture is equivalent to something like NASA where it's like, "If we fuck up one piece of this thing, the whole fucking shuttle's going to explode and we're going to kill everybody on board".  Whereas, shitcoin culture is move that and break that --

Peter McCormack: Did you say Bitcoin is like NASA or Ethereum is like NASA?

American HODL: Bitcoin's engineering culture is like NASA, but at a higher level.

Peter McCormack: I think you said Ethereum.

American HODL: I don't think I did, did I?

Peter McCormack: Did I mishear that?

P: I think you misheard.

Peter McCormack: Sorry, I apologise.

American HODL: But that's the point.  Bitcoin's engineering culture, it's about security, it's about thinking adversarially, it's about planning for things that could go wrong.  Whereas, Ethereum's culture is, "Oh, no, why don't we just do all the shit that Bitcoin didn't do that they decided wouldn't work and we're take their garbage pile of discarded ideas, and we'll combine it to be Eretreums and we'll sell them to peoples and then the peoples will give us their Bitcoins?"  That's how shitcoins work!

P: That's a direct quote, by the way, from Vitalik!

American HODL: Yeah, I think Vitalik said that once on stage, yeah!

P: I think one thing for me is that people should be able to do whatever they want with their money.  If people want to fuck around and take risks, honestly, a lot of people, myself included, invest in equities and it's like, I'm free to do that and I think everybody should be.

Peter McCormack: P's got a Solana bag!

American HODL: Shit's weak!

P: Fuck that noise.  No, but what I'm saying is that people should do whatever they want.  But they have to understand what they're actually doing.  They have to understand that if they're buying some dumbass shitcoin, the other people involved, they got it at a fucking premine, or they got it at an insanely discounted price and it is not a fair market, and you are going to get fucked.  That's just the reality and if people want to play that game, people love going to the casino; when you go to the casino and you lose money, people are like, "Oh, that's too bad".  That's what we're dealing with.

American HODL: The VCs who were in on Solana were in on Solana when it was 4 cents before it was available to the public, so that's the game you're planning; it's totally rigged.

Peter McCormack: I want your view on this though, HODL, because this is the thing that's been pissing me off with the whole Chris Dixon, a16z, Web 3.0 thing they're talking about now --

American HODL: Fuck Chris Dixon, fuck that guy.

Peter McCormack: So, they've essentially co-opted Web 3.0 narrative to say it's all about tokens.  Everything's been decentralised and everything will be based on a token.  I had an agency during transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, and really with Web 2.0, you realised what it was after it happened.  It was like, "Oh, shit, the internet's changed".  I can't remember what it was; it was more like the interactive pages you had.  So, if you did a search, it would come down with a bar with suggested items; things like that started to change.

But they're trying to define Web 3.0 about what they want to invest money in, and this kind of internet of tokens as a Web 3.0 narrative is fucking bullshit, and they're trying to actually direct the internet in a way that they want to invest in, but it's fucking bullshit.

American HODL: Well, yeah.  I think there's some things there that are true, like decentralisation.

Peter McCormack: Decentralisation.  That's it.

American HODL: Yeah, decentralisation is probably the point of Web 3.0, because we've all seen when we have these centralised oligarchies that, for instance, our free speech gets taken away, and that's not a good thing and people would like to see that revert.  But the idea that everything's going to have a token is fucking stupid, it's always been fucking stupid, why the fuck would you invest in utility tokens; they're not investible?  Listen, I'm definitely going to take my daughter to Chuck E. Cheese in a few weeks and we're going to have a lot of fun and buy 60 dollars' worth of tokens, but I'm not going to put my fucking net worth in Chuck E. Cheese tokens, because they have "utility" at Chuck E. Cheese.

Why would anyone do that?  People don't store their net worth in airline miles, people don't store their net worth in any kind of reward points.  It's a stupid fucking idea; they will not maintain liquidity.  Chris Dixon and Balaji and all the guys from a16z have just fully lost the plot, because they have fucking insider access.  They are the guys who were getting Solana at 4 cents, and it's corrupted their brains.  Now they want to tell you that this is a real thing when they know it's fucking not, and it's like the phrase they used to use, "Short time to liquidity".

They are looking to dump this on retail investors as fast as fucking possible and then scoop the money back in for themselves and likely put it into Bitcoin, right, or maybe Ethereum if they still believe in Ethereum.  But it's just insider bullshit, it's Cantillon bullshit; that's what it is.  It's fucking annoying, because people still give these people authority and credibility and credentials, and they don't deserve any of that.  They're wrong, they've been wrong, fuck them.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well they think they're right.  D, can we talk a little bit more about nodes; I want to get back to that.  So, one of the things we always say to new bitcoiners is, "Hold your private keys and then run a node", we try and take them on that journey, "Learn about Bitcoin, buy some Bitcoin, maybe get a hardware wallet, backup your private keys, understand what they are", and then usually after that it's, "Run a node". 

People drop off at different points.  Some people will just go on Coinbase or Gemini and they'll buy their Bitcoin and leave it there; some people will get themselves maybe a Ledger or a Coldcard and move to that; and then some people will go as far as a node.  But we lose people all the way, but that node thing is a super important thing.  Is it as important to run a Lightning node as it is to run a basechain node, or is it not?

D++: Totally.  So, it's different use cases.  The reason why folks would run a Bitcoin node is to have self-sovereignty over their transactions and be able to fully validate their transactions and verify that what they are sending is in fact Bitcoin, and they're not having to trust anyone else to tell them that what they are doing is in fact Bitcoin.  Now, if Bitcoin were under attack, it would be important for us to run our own nodes to help enforce the rules for Bitcoin.  It becomes even more important in an adversarial situation.

There's other reasons to run a node as well.  If you can run a node over Tor, you can have greater privacy, you can prevent folks from knowing things about the transactions you're interested in, you can prevent people from knowing things such as your xPubs, which are important for maintaining your privacy. 

Peter McCormack: What's an xPub?

D++: An xPub is an extended public key, and by the way, Peter, I did an entire workshop on xPubs at TABConf and it was extraordinarily deep.

Peter McCormack: I still don't get it.

D++: An xPub is a public key from which you can derive child keys.  So, you know how we have different receive addresses whenever we receive Bitcoin to help maintain privacy?  The xPub is the key that unlocks all of those baby receive addresses; it's like the dad.

Anyway, the reason why we would run a Lightning node is to be able to route transactions on this Lightning Mesh Network.  Now, if you're running a Lightning node, by default you are also running a Bitcoin node; you have to have a Bitcoin node as well.  With Lightning, you keep this thing on 24/7, because you are supporting the Lightning Network, again by routing people's payments on their behalf.

The first time you wake up and you see that your node routed someone else's Lightning payment on their behalf, the feeling is indescribable; it's like a kid waking up and seeing that Santa Claus left presents under the Christmas Tree.  It's just the most magical feeling in the world!  So, that's it.  If you have a Lightning node, you're going to keep it on all the time.  It's important to have at least 99.9% uptime, you never want to take it offline, this is a hot wallet that you are using, again to support the routing of Lightning payments.

Now, if you're simply running a Bitcoin node to validate your own transactions, you don't have to keep it turned on all the time, you can turn it off at night, and whenever you want to use Bitcoin, you can simply just resync the blocks that came in while you were asleep.

Peter McCormack: All right, listen, can we talk a little bit about scaling Bitcoin in a different way?  I did an interview the other day with Anita Posch, and she was talking about MiniMint and the opportunity to use that out in different communities out in Africa.  She spends a lot of time out there supporting different communities.  At the time, I didn't have any time to dig into it to find out what it is.  Can you explain what this is to me, because it sounded cool?

P: I think you're talking about Federated Chaumian Mints, which are a super interesting direction that I think, they don't have to be on Lightning; they're actually an existing concept.  But on Lightning, it gets really, really interesting.  So, it basically allows you to split trust over multiple parties, and you use what's called "blind signatures", which is well-established and understood in cryptography, so it creates a lot more privacy within the Lightning Network.

There was an analogy that was given to me recently which I really like which is, and I'm going to butcher it, but it's something along the lines of, "A blind signature is where you can --"  I'm not going to try to do it, but basically it allows us to massively increase privacy by having a federation of entities that you trust, which can be individuals in your community, and then they basically allow you to, without understanding how much you're transmitting or who you are as an individual, you're able to transmit value through the network.  It unlocks some really interesting opportunities specifically on Lightning.

Peter McCormack: So, what about the future of Lightning, what else is coming, what else should we be aware of?

P: One thing that I think is interesting is the question of, where do we go with Lightning adoption?  Within the spectrum, you can have community-based Lightning Networks.  So, one of the things at Plebnet is, we all got together, we created this giant, crazy spider web of connections, and then we plugged into the larger network and added all this liquidity, which then benefits everybody because again, you're bouncing payments all the way through the network to get your payments to wherever they need to go.  

I think that that is a really compelling aspect of the Lightning Network.  I can imagine small communities that are digital, like Plebnet, or communities that are physical, towns, districts, areas, that are building up these communities; but we also have entire countries like El Salvador adopting Lightning and using the Lightning Network as a way to transmit value.  So, I think that there will be both things happening, that is to say I think there will be additional communities that get together, they already trust each other, they spin up their nodes, they're using the Lightning Network to basically send value back and forth rapidly; and then, you also have businesses that are aping into the Lightning Network, because it does provide this profound value.  And even nation states, as we're seeing in El Salvador.

So, I think that honestly, I think there'll continue to be both, and I think as more and more --

Peter McCormack: If you build a Bitcoin city as part of that, you can be planning the nodes that exist within each property, and once that city comes online, that whole city can plug into Lightning Network and create this whole additional amount of liquidity?

P: Yeah, and people can join that network running their own node.

D++: I was just going to say, I don't think everyone fully realises how solid the Lightning Network is, because if it weren't for Lightning, we wouldn't have Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador.  Lightning is what makes that possible, so Lightning is rock solid; it's not some kind of vapourware, some kind of promise of some technology that may or may not come to fruition.  It works today.

So, what I'm excited about mostly is simply onboarding new people and showing them this technology that already exists as it exists today.  Now, will it continue to evolve and grow?  Yes, of course.  The next soft fork that I'm expecting to see after Taproot is likely going to be, in my opinion, probably SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT.  This will allow the ability to make additional improvements to the Lightning Network, such as L2, which will improve some Lightning channel capabilities.  But again, even if Bitcoin were to ossify today, this technology is rock solid.

So, aside from any upgrades, what I am most excited about is simply just onboarding folks, showing them this magical technology that exists, onboarding them to Plebnet and getting them to use Lightning for the first time and quite frankly, just blowing their minds.

Peter McCormack: D, what do you think of the progress that's been made in El Salvador?

D++: Well, I have extraordinary FOMO, because I have not been and I am really sad.  Do you guys want to plan a trip?  Can we go back?  Take me back?

Peter McCormack: I'll go any time, I'll happily go, yeah.

D++: I'm ready to go.  But I think it's absolutely extraordinary.  So, a lot of us thought that this cycle in Bitcoin's history was going to be the cycle of institutional adoption, and we did see some really, really big institutions, such as Tesla and MicroStrategy, put Bitcoin on their balance sheet.  But we took kind of a quantum leap from institutions to countries when we saw El Salvador adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, and I don't think any of us were anticipating that. 

How many of you guys cried at Bitcoin Miami 2021 when Jack Mallers was telling us about El Salvador?  Was there a dry eye in the audience?  I think not.  And Jack Mallers made crying cool again, which I think is really beautiful, right; it's so human and it's so overwhelming to see the power that is Bitcoin.

So, it's going to be really, really fun to see the nation states that continue to adopt Bitcoin after El Salvador, and watch this game theory really play out, whereby they start competing to attract us, the bitcoiners.  And we saw just the beginning of this with the announcement of the Bitcoin city in El Salvador.  And by the way I, for one, am fully ready to move there.

Peter McCormack: And, P, we've got the President coming to Bitcoin 2022.  The announcement's out, we can talk about that.

P: Yeah, I'm super excited about that.  I think, to answer your question, there's the experience that people have with the Chivo wallet, there's some issues there, some challenges, and from what I understand, some of those things are totally valid, there are things that need to be fixed there.  But we're getting there and I think there needs to be more education in El Salvador around exactly what the Lightning Network is, what Bitcoin is, how to use it.  But to see an entire country adopting Bitcoin is one of the most exciting things that I can remember happening in recent years, and certainly of course related to Bitcoin.

I am personally extremely excited, I was able to book President Bukele and there are other heads of state that we're in conversation with, and it just creates, as we all know, this incredible incentive for other very large entities to ape in, right, because as you start to see the power that this brings to El Salvador and the people of El Salvador, other world leaders are, "Oh, fuck"; they don't even have to know exactly what's going on, they're just like, "I have to be part of this, the risk is too great to not jumping in", and that's the thing that is so compelling, or is so exciting to me about what's going on in El Salvador.

And, this is only the beginning.  We're going to see more and more people jump in and start putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet as nation states, and then supporting the Lightning Network.

Peter McCormack: What I was going to throw in there is one of the things that makes me happy about maybe not having this crazy end to the cycle, is that I think it's going to be counterproductive to want to onboard more countries, because you see the runup, you see the dropdown, you see all the bad press that goes with it.  But if we just had this gradual, steady increase in Bitcoin, maybe we go up 20% in a month and down 10%, if we can keep it in that kind of range, I think it makes it easier to onboard other countries.  One county's great, but it's an outlier; two is a movement, and we need that second country.

P: Yeah, I don't disagree.

D++: Bedford.

Peter McCormack: Bedford's not a country; It should be.

D++: No, it can be the first Bitcoin country.

Peter McCormack: Well, it's the Bitcoin capital of the world!

P: Fair enough.

D++: You sound a bit like BitcoinTINA a little bit with this thesis of a stairstep super cycle where we just go up forever, Laura, and that could happen.

Peter McCormack: I think it's more healthy.

D++: Yeah, of course.  We could see another 85% blowoff top; it's impossible to say.  But, P, with all due respect, I'm very impressed that you're going to have the President of El Salvador at Bitcoin Magazine Conference 2022, but I think I'm just mostly excited for the beach parties and the dance parties.  And, Peter, you threw a pretty epic dance party this year; I hope you do it next year.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'll throw a party.  I won't dance, I can't dance.  I'll see if I can get the President to come; that would be interesting.

P: For sure!

Peter McCormack: But yeah, I won't be dancing, because of my back.  I will just stand at the side and just watch it.

P: I mean, you mention the conference, and I think it's one thing that I have been thinking about a lot lately, because I am responsible for building out all the programming and the strategy around that, and there will always be speakers.  I'm not talking about President Bukele, but there are other speakers that we've announced recently that people have been like, "Why is this person speaking?  What the hell?" 

The reality is, I want to create conversations between -- everybody at the conference is interacting with and supporting Bitcoin, but it's not as valuable to basically have conversations where everybody is just high-fiving and slapping each other on the back and like, "Yeah, Bitcoin is great!  We're fucking bitcoiners, high five!" end of story.  I want to have conversations between people who are supporting Bitcoin, working on Bitcoin, driving Bitcoin forward, but actually disagree on really important pieces of what that means. 

It's only through those dialogues, those active conversations, where people are respectfully fighting, that we can further the important topics and most importantly, we can selfishly educate ourselves, right, because everybody's an expert in a specific area of Bitcoin.  But we can also help to educate the average person, right, because the people that are coming to Bitcoin 2022, it's a huge, broad spectrum of people.  It's people like all of us on this call who are deeply in Bitcoin, understand certain aspects of it and contribute to the ecosystem in different ways; and, there are also people who are literally like, "What is a Bitcoin?"

For everyone on either side of that spectrum, or anywhere on that spectrum, observing people who are extremely intelligent having disagreements about the nuances of these topics is one of the most effective ways that we can all learn.  I'm just really focussed on that and creating those exciting, hilarious, important, engaging fights on stage.

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, it's going to be a huge event.  It might be the biggest one ever.

P: Yes.

Peter McCormack: It might be that Bitcoin goes boring after this.

P: It's going to be the largest Bitcoin event in history.  The largest stage last year was 4,000 people.  There are five stages this year.  There's the main stage, which is 15,000 people; there is the genesis stage, which is 10,000 people; there's an entire stage on mining; there's an entire stage on the open-source community, which if you just separated that out on its own, it would be the largest open-source conference in history.  It's a 2,000-person stage, there's going to be an institutional finance stage.  It's going to be absolutely incredible.  There's going to be electricity, fireballs, everything.  It's going to be like Bitcoin Disneyland.

Peter McCormack: Amazing.  I can't fucking wait.  All right, well listen, we've covered a lot today.  Anything we've not covered, HODL, that you want to cover?

American HODL: No, not really.

Peter McCormack: D, anything else you want to say before we exit?

D++: I feel like we did it.

Peter McCormack: We did it, we crushed it.  Do you know what, I'm going back to doing most of my interviews in person now, I'm trying to get to 95% in person, so what we should do is, we'll all be in Miami for a week, we should try and do one where we're all together.  I'll have my whole team there, camera crew, equipment, we should try and do one together.

P: Absolutely.

Peter McCormack: I think that would be awesome.

American HODL: Let's do it.

Peter McCormack: I don't like these remote ones.

American HODL: Yeah, I'm in.

Peter McCormack: Well, listen, it's great to have you on, D.  Tell everyone how to follow you, how to find you.

D++: Yeah, totally.  So, you can find me on Twitter, @D++, dplusplus.me is my url, @dplusplus on Instagram and most importantly, be sure to join Plebnet at plebnet.org.

Peter McCormack: Awesome, thanks for coming on.  And, P, how do people find you?

P: Yeah, my incredibly robust OpSec, no one knows that my real name is Phillip, which is also my Twitter handle, but you just replace the "I"s with "J"s, so it's on Twitter @phjlljp.

Peter McCormack: All right, well we'll put it all in the show notes.  HODL, go fuck yourself, give me your Bitcoin, looking forward to it, man.

American HODL: Listen, the parabola is coming, bro.  December's going to be lit.  I'm not going to be sending any fucking Bitcoin to Bedford, God no.

Peter McCormack: You are, Bedford FC.

American HODL: The parabola's coming and what do I need?  I just need a 5X.  I need a 5X in one month, baby.  Bitcoin can do that.

P: 100%.

American HODL: I've seen Bitcoin do miracles, okay; that's like standard operating procedure for Bitcoin.

P: Not a lot of people know this, but I actually had lupus before Bitcoin, and I rubbed Bitcoin all over my body once a day, and it cured my lupus; it'll cure yours too.

D++: Well, in 2017, HODL, we saw that 5X from November to December, so I wouldn't be surprised.

American HODL: You see?  What's up, Pete?

Peter McCormack: I'll take $288,000.  $288,000 was the target I was happy with.

American HODL: No, we're going to $300,000.

Peter McCormack: Anyway, I'll take your Bitcoin.

American HODL: $300,000.

Peter McCormack: I'm taking your Bitcoin, I'm buying Bedford FC and I'm going to thank you for it.

American HODL: That's very sad.

Peter McCormack: Anyway, listen, love you all, thank you all for coming on.  I will see you all soon.  I don't know where I'll bump into you next, D; I keep bumping into you everywhere, so I'm sure I'll see you soon, otherwise I will see you all in Miami.  Thanks for coming on.  Peace out.  Good luck with Plebnet.

P: Buy, guys.

American HODL: Peace out.