Practice English Speaking&Listening with: This week in Bitcoin- 3-8-2019- Coinbase situation, Canadian audits, Lightning Network, Facebook

Hello everyone this is adam meister the bitcoinmeister the disrupt meister

welcome to this week in bitcoin today is March the 8th 2019 strong hand long term

thinking on kompis capable bitcoin is the next bitcoin one bitcoin equals one

bitcoin all right all you long-term thinkers you got a show for you today

we don't know where must stop more at is but he should appear in any moment you

never know but we got to D in Israel where I am and we've got Boris he's uh

where you're in the Netherlands now right Amsterdam yep and yes

okay so Judy's been all over Twitter lately all these these guys Twitter's

are all linked to below so find out find out more about him that way we'll talk

about you know specific things they're getting into in a second but OD is is

known for his hilarious Twitter comments and he's been talking a lot about what a

lot of people been talking about this week at the the delete coinbase I guess

theme on Twitter and well I mean give us a broad overview of it I would say what

why is it important and what exactly was it and did it succeed in what you were

trying to do yeah so I guess about two or three weeks ago coinbase announced

the acquisition of neutrino which is some sort of a blockchain and

intelligence or analysis company similar to chain alysus and other companies like

that and I guess this is a generally an acquisition of a company like that makes

sense for coinbase because they that's one of the things they have to do is a

regulated exchange however within like a week or so a lot of people started to

bring out the history of the leadership and the executive team of neutrino which

were involved in hacking team which is another Italian company that had history

of selling spy to governments and oppressive regimes

who were tracking journalists and human rights activists and so on and actually

the spy were made by hacking team helped to jail these people and perhaps worse

than that so yeah so those are some you know morally questionable people with

morally questionable pasts and I think that the thing that you know really

really made a lot of people uncomfortable was this issue of having

them get access to financial data inside of going beso coinbase you know kind of

gave them the task to spy on their own users on their own customers and it

makes sense that corn-based would want to track their users but you would not

want to have these kind of people have access to this data I believe so I think

this was you know this was my baffled bother me personally and I think this is

what bothered a lot of people so so this is what started the kind of delete

coinbase movement a lot of people were posting tweeting screenshots of them

closing their coinbase accounts which by the way over time became difficult it

seemed like coinbase might be making it difficult for people to close their

accounts perhaps because this movement started

moving and eventually Brian Armstrong the CEO of coinbase had this statement

or he said that he reassessed some things based on this movement and they

decided to the way phrase that was he decided to what was it I think I forget

the the the word he didn't say that he's gonna fire the people who were from

Audrina we said that they were going to you know there was some obscure term

which I should look up where he said they they wouldn't be part of the

company anymore at some point there was there was not finality toward it it

wasn't like not Pinotti not clear schedule

and you know it wasn't clear who exactly is being let go and are they going to

have some business relationships when they're out of the company so it wasn't

100% clear but it's a step forward I mean they did listen in a way they did

acknowledge that this was a mistake so that's something but I think we would

want to see more clarity of that for sure

well here's the thing so you're saying it they were spying on their on their

users but aren't all the exchanges doing this and I and you'll say well these

guys that they had working there were like the worst of the worst I guess um

but for me it was more of like a public awareness campaign that yeah everyone

should know that all of the exchanges are doing this and at the same time you

do under I mean you understand why coinbase duh I mean they've chosen this

route I mean I guess let the market decide is what I say if people people

want to be spied on I mean people people don't care anymore

certain I mean a lot some people some people don't care it happened that's

true yeah yeah so okay so what is there is there a next step are you are you

happy with this conclusion I mean you know I'm happy that people are more

aware that's for sure I'm happy that people realize that this is happening I

think that there's now a good time to discuss what this kind of you know kind

of tracking means you know practically for people and there are some practical

meaning here you know people don't think about let's say you were a large trader

right let's say you were meaningful significant trader who does a lot of

trades and a lot of hold right companies like this can gather data from a lot of

exchanges and use that to try to figure out your trading strategy for example to

try to front on you and make trades before you get to them because they have

information on what you're doing on other exchanges to so they can actually

beat your strategy so if you're a trader at point base this might cost you money

maybe you don't your privacy at all but this might

actual cost actually cost you money because insiders can see your data and

beat you at your own game so you know these things are valuable they have

value so yeah all right now now that is a very that's a very instant that's a

very interesting point I hadn't heard that before and I think some of the

impulsive traders that might make them a lot less impulsive but okay so they

there was also something that came out in all this that they had been selling

users information before so that's why they got this new spy company that that

was also disturbing to say the least yeah who I'm sure other exchangers are

using that previous we don't know who they were using beforehand people have

come up with theories but but but again it seems like guy it's the Wild West out

there III would assume if you're dealing with a lot any many exchanges that

they're selling your information it just that's just the way it is

yeah I would assume that too they would probably say that they're not but you

know there's a difference between they would say probably if they don't sell

you like your full name to someone else and maybe that's true but against in the

grand scheme of things it doesn't matter you know your full name is not the thing

that matters what matters is the connections they can make between your

transact transactions to an entity and whether or not they they attach a name

to that identity or not just knowing that this is one entity is very valuable

you know because this is financial data this is very valuable and someone else

can't touch your name that entity doesn't matter it's not this is not a

difficult part so yeah I would say they I'll say this also here in Israel and

this is I'm going to tie it in a little bit people a few people have asked me

for cheaper with it there's not a cheap way they say to buy coin B to buy

Bitcoin here and in in America there's only so many onboarding options also so

this is this is another issue we if Bitcoin

becomes a mainstream popular again people start hearing about it they're

going to be people that want to to get into it and the easiest of the easiest

options for people it is are places like this and I know it presents a conundrum

of sorts were and again the sign if you know if people came up with a cheaper if

people are tired of paying high fees for some of these exchanges well if

something she just came up with lower fees and made it more accessible then

more people would get on but at the same time they would probably make it more

spy-worthy also so I don't know it's just it's just something I was thinking

about there that there's a there's a lot of different directions that this can

all go in and I think I think we're still gonna have a lot of people giving

up information for convenience and for for cheapest for just to save to save on

some fees so I don't know if you have anything to say about that I mean

actually in my experience in Israel in the last few months the Bitcoin market

price is actually lower than it is in most of the world so if you actually if

you hold some Bitcoin and you want to get rid of them you probably get a worse

price here than you would price we would get in in many other places I think this

has a lot to do with the way the banking system works here and the difficulty of

getting fiat money into Israel from other countries but you know um so you

know it makes arbitrage opportunities more difficult than in other places but

yeah I mean obviously in any country in any place if you're gonna use a

regulated exchange then you're gonna be tracked and people should be aware that

and make their own decision but there are other ways to get bitch one you know

this isn't the only way and you know some people would say that it's easier

to get to get this coin with cash you know each one has their own preferences

but it's not the only way that's for sure

alright bars we've said so much here your turn your turn to chime in on

situation yeah I mean privacy and whatnot please I think there's a couple

of issues to start I mean to start I think most people who use coinbase use

it to purchase the first Bitcoin or maybe do their first purchase or

basically they're just using the eco system for the first time and when

you're doing that you're never thinking about the consequences on a long-term so

you might spend I don't know $100 worth of Bitcoin and just try it out only to

find out that in a couple of years that hundred dollars has become worth a lot

of money and I know someone in the Netherlands here who had that basic that

problem he bought a lot of Bitcoin way back in the day then spent more than a

few hundred dollars but it was significant I mean a thousand plus

Bitcoin and when the big cash for came he splits and send it to two coinbase

and basically sold it and got his bit going back and at that moment he

basically doxxed himself it turns out that the Dutch IRS office is one of the

purchasers of this information from coinbase so they asked him very specific

questions about where the Bitcoin cash came from where the Bitcoin went to

basically the chain analysis leading starting from his just at one point base

transaction DOCSIS complete assets it was incredible and he never thought

about it because he wasn't active in a Bitcoin community then relief he never

really realized what privacy means and that's a problem with privacy you you

you you tend to underestimate the value of it until it's too late

and then there's no way back and that's the thing with coinbase I mean they've

got 25 million users who and all of them were dogs all their information was sold

to whomever I mean there's no way to to tell who it was so - but just imagine

what could be so - and this is a big problem I think for everybody who ever

used use a service like coin base and on the other hand I think the real

problem with this I mean everybody should figure out what this means for

themselves but the big problem is that these very large companies are so

incredibly tone-deaf to the to the basic to the criticism from a community and I

see this in video games a lot to like companies like EA and Activision and

they they basically they publish these games that are broken the community goes

buckwild over the broken games and they they completely ignore all the criticism

they don't even react to it and this is something that's really interesting

because the I think there was a summer on Twitter I saw respond from some lady

who's a PR executive may be working with coinbase

and she said for a big company like coinbase it's really important to want

something like this happens so PR disaster like this you have to start

communicating with the community because otherwise you lose grip on the on the

discussion you lose you lose the topic and that's exactly what happened I mean

just the fact that you have something like a hashtag delete coinbase

this is deadly for in PR terms for companies like this and in that respect

I find I mean it's maybe it's a little bit of an American culture I think

companies in Europe tend to be more communicative when it comes to these

sorts of problems but in America it seems like all these PR departments of

these kind of companies that just freeze up they just have no idea what they

should do they don't see anything out of fear of saying something wrong that

makes a problem worse and and this this coinbase actually I think this coal base

will exist for a long time but this is the end of coin base because people will

wake up to the fact that there's probably better alternatives and there

are now better alternatives and if you look at Europe and especially the

Netherlands I mean we've had way better alternatives for getting Bitcoin then

the options that you have in the u.s. so I think most Americans start to find out

that there's there's different alternatives that are better and

probably more privacy privacy friendly but I'm not sure about it but I can

imagine that there's better options well it goes back I don't know if this

is the end of coinbase I think the ease-of-use and this the newbies needing

to be on board it easily it will prop it will prop them up I don't I think this

will be a bump in the road there'll be people have uh they don't have long

memories especially people who aren't into space yet they Rudy do you think

this is the end of coinbase er no no I don't think it's the end of coinbase I

also wouldn't want to wouldn't want it to be right what I would I would prefer

to see is you're going quite see coinbase get better at this and to

respect their customers and their customers privacy more and you know

unlike some you know a lot of people say about Facebook that it doesn't matter

what race what you know what Facebook leaders will say Facebook cannot respect

privacy of their users because that's not the way they're built and I'm I'm

not sure that this kind of a thing is true for coinbase as well because

coinbase you know it's a company that serves customers who buy

cryptocurrencies and they make money of that so I do think that there is an

opportunity for change there when coinbase realizes that if they treat

their customers well they might stay and they might be able to grow their

business and and it might be beneficial to everyone involved that they do these

things in a way that's better for their customers as well so that's what I would

like to see you know I don't want to see coin basis of fear but also you know

there are a lot of other companies now you know you have square cash in the

States is doing very interesting things for allowing people to very easily buy

bitcoins with you know a nice interface and so on so coin base is not the only

one doing that I hear Americans saying good things about Gemini too so that's

in the stateside and all around the world there are new exchanges popping up

so I think that we'll keep seeing more and more alternatives so no I don't

think Congress will disappear but I think that you know there are early

advantage of having a nice user interface you know people will catch up

to that other businesses will catch up to that and become better at that so

so yeah we we already have alternatives and I think we will have better

alternatives with time and we also have alternatives for people who are very

cautious about privacy and over a privacy aware like bisque like ha dejado

and so on so you know you have like you have a few local bitcoins comparators do

that that have less strict kyc restrictions so yeah there are a lot of

options now yeah I do recommend people who do mess around in altcoins and

whatnot and that is risky and as gambling to try out bisque

let this be a time where you're like let me try something different

learn learn learn the best skill it's it is an inch I of uh open it up and

checked it out it's it's very intriguing and I think it could be I think it could

be big I mean it's it it's definitely in their early stages so yeah I mean

there's not a lot of volume Oh bisque there's that it's not for newbies that's

and coinbase is okay well lesson I'm gonna talk more about since we're

talking about privacy that this came up on my show yesterday I sent you guys the

article about the Canadian tax authority sending certain Canadians that they know

have cryptocurrency a question here very invasive questionnaire asking them all

about their public addresses and have they use shape-shift it was disturbing

borås thoughts on that yeah it's exactly that it's really disturbing and it's it

doesn't surprise me we all know that these governments are at least the rest

the the tax officers they really need this information what I find strange is

that they don't just buy it I mean there's companies who are offering this

information like chain analysis or coinbase

that we just discussed it's weird that I don't just buy it and they ask people

for it and the interesting part is it's what is the information that they're

missing so I can imagine that they have all this this this information about

addresses and amounts Bitcoin but I can imagine that I once

read an article about Israeli company that does a lot of chain analysis

they're really good at it and they they get most of the information from the

metadata so it's not just the exchanges it's your social media it's it's

basically all your official accounts they're all getting pasted together and

with that they they kind of find out a more God is here yeah Oh keep going well

so I guess these they need this information and and I the more

information you have the more conclusions you can get from that so

basically I think they are asking for metadata so if you if you give up your

some address that you once used you will probably Docs most of the addresses that

you will use unless you take extreme measures to sort of circumvent that and

most people won't do that yeah so that's I think this is this is

mostly about like getting information and starting up their investigation in

how they should deal with cryptocurrencies and I think most most

tax officers are struggling right now because there's just not a lot of

knowledge around there all right I will never ready pound that like button is me

red is in the house we'll get to him in a second remember everyone's linked to

below Judy you were not in your head during a

lot of that what what information do the Canadian tax authorities not have or do

they just instead of buying it they're just gonna scare people into giving it

for them to them for free I think maybe that's the reason yeah so so first of

all I agree that it's not surprised you know they want this information and to

me well I mean actually I wasn't surprised by any of this but I think for

a lot of people what was very surprising is how knowledgeable they are you know

if you go through the questions you see that they know what they're talking

about you know they know what questions to ask

they know what to expect and they know the terms they know what they mean they

know you know what people are likely to be doing so I think that a lot of people

felt for years that they're kind of under the radar and no one's going to

figure out how this works but you know it seems that

the authorities in the last two or three years they have a very good

understanding of how this this world functions so I think this may be

surprised some people as as to what kind of information they have and what kind

of questions they're asking for well a lot of time tax authorities what they do

is they you know they they already know the answer but they're going to ask you

anyway because maybe you will spill out more than they already know and also

it's a nice way to maybe cause other people to to come forward as well so you

know it doesn't mean that they don't have information to just you know they

want to hear you say it in a way so yeah it's not a surprise it's not a surprise

at all and it's true that you know whatever kind of information you're

gonna give away unless you're extremely careful it's probably gonna do naanum

eyes everything that you do but you know I think that a it's to be expected B I

think that made people a lot of us are law-abiding citizens and we're you know

ready for this moment and and and everything is fine if X authorities want

formation then they probably a lot of people were aware that they're gonna

hand out this information at some point so you know that's probably something

that some people were prepared for but yeah I think that this is a time where a

lot of people will realize that early decisions that were made maybe even

years ago where privacy it wasn't taken too seriously are suddenly affecting

their futures and and also you know me personally I'm not that concerned about

tax authorities again I think that a lot of us saw this coming and we're prepared

for that but this also means that a lot of other people have access to your

financial activities not just the tax authority so the tax authorities can buy

information anyone else can buy that information too if they have enough

money to pay and that's what I'm more concerned about

I'm concerned about how you know anyone can learn about your financial activity

not just the authorities so yeah that's that's what I'm more concerned about

it's very interesting that they had shape-shift actually listed on there and

IB they clearly have hired someone at least one person who's bidding the

cryptocurrency space there's for sure I mean I've been doing those things for

many many years it's not they don't maybe they didn't understand

cryptocurrency specifically but they understand communities they understand

businesses they understand those things they know they need to get people who

know something and you know it's a contractor or whatever and learn about

the the businesses in this world and it's not the first time they're doing it

I don't think that we should be surprised that this is happening all

right Marad can you hear us he's you still

having some technical issues over there that's uh yeah well we'll work through

that more I guess you can't hear us right now all right so we'll go do that

oh yeah Boris please take it yeah what's interesting is the way they phrased it I

mean if you read this this questionnaire it feels like you're you're like it's

there they're accusing you of something and that's the that's a problem I have I

mean if I open a newspaper I see an article about drug dealers using Bitcoin

for money laundering you know its usual blah blah and it feels like they they

sort of copy this narrative and use it towards people who need to pay the taxes

and I have a problem with that and in the Netherlands they go a step further

if you use services like tumblers or something like that that's an official

indication for money laundering so if you use something like that you really

need to know what you're doing and the reality is that people will use

something like that maybe and it was a big wallet or just add some extra

privacy there don't there's no idea what they're doing and it's being judged by

some someone at a tax office as being something that's related to money

laundering which shouldn't be the case and then if you

compare this to other assets let's say you have some gold at home or some

silver are they gonna ask you where you got it what you did with it do you keep

it in your basement or in a safe or in a vault or do you keep it at the bank

I mean it's nobody's business really and because cryptocurrency is so new and

Bitcoin is so new they don't realize that it's basically none of their

business if you do your text if you do your taxes just gonna state what you

have what you earn your property tax whatever in whatever country you live

you don't need to specify if it's Bitcoin or if it's some other coin or or

if it's gold or whatever it is that you have you just declare your value in in

Canadian dollars or in Euros in Europe whatever that's it that's that should be

enough and apparently it's not really clear if that's enough and that makes

everybody a little bit of comfortable it makes me uncomfortable well it there

there's gonna be a legal in Canada I'm not familiar with illegal with the law

but how much can they really have is is this an overstep did they ask too much

it are there some privacy issues involved in America I don't think this

would pass I think the ACLU would get involve I who knows I hope it doesn't

come to this in America I mean I think for for for I mean I wouldn't like to

get a question here like that with 12 pages with 58 it's C and you know that

was a great point that you made it seems like it was written by the people who

write those flood articles it had that same tone to it it had that same like

you're a drug dealer you know tell us why you're laundering

money it basically was saying all right Marad can you hear us all right do you

have thoughts on this yes on the Canadian privacy issue on the coin based

privacy issue where we're getting into also in France they said there is a

French official that said they want to make anonymous coins illegal we got a

lot of privacy stuff going on I've been expecting this for a while

I've been saying that they're going to start demanding your bid

going to drive their normalizing the destruction of cash they're going to

start normalizing negative interest rates being okay and more and more and

it's just going to be in their total interest to turn learn be existing sort

of a complete surveillance panopticon so to speak um so it depends thing we can

essentially as a community build these technologies and put them into enough

people I expect governments to be increasingly more competitive

increasingly more sort of aggressive about the stuff Rui your main points

came through there it's still a little it's it's definitely choppy on your

hands so you might want to get rid of the video like you can just do only

sound that might work I don't know that yeah the connections a little uh yeah

there we go we'll try we'll get another question your way in a second all right

so let's move on we're talking about big corporate awk about coinbase which is

the biggest of corporations but one one story that's actually from last week and

I just want to bring it up this week so you guys could chime in is this Facebook

coming up with their own coin positive or negative I I think right now they

want to do a stable coin okay I think it's a way to get more people well I

think more people will find out about cryptocurrency this way I think that's

good I also think they'll eventually change their mind and won't be a stable

coin and it'll just be their own way to print their own money and to become as

like powerful as a nation so Rudy did you have thoughts on Facebook coin and

pro or con yeah I'm I'm not sure I think we discussed this the last time I was on

but a lot I have a lot happened since then yeah so so yeah you know we keep

hearing about this Facebook coin again and again and Facebook is also talking a

lot about privacy recently and how they're trying to maybe become a company

that's specs privacy a little more yeah I mean

you know they're the Facebook coin is all about you know the rumors we hear

about the Facebook corner all about very putting coins for multiple currencies

and some kind of a basket that you that will be pegged to some cryptocurrency

and the question I have about that is as usual why is it like a token why is it

the blockchain or why isn't it just a venmo or PayPal competitor or where you

can you know you have a database and you send the balance to your friends what

does the blockchain add because it's pretty obvious that you will have to do

every kyc requirement imaginable and so on and they will obviously keep the the

permission to confiscate your funds and I'm not saying that this isn't useful

I'm sure it can be useful for some people I'm just not sure what the

blockchain party is all about seems like I suspect that it's mostly about buzz

and hype and that's why they're using this word so yeah I'm not sure why we

care about that it could be a way just to get around to make it seem like

they're not printing their own money make it seem that's the I mean how long

can you you know you can't lie to all of the people all of the time right how

long is this who's going to work and also they're not you know they're not

printing anything anyway they're holding they again what the rumors say is that

they're going to hold coins in in in custody and give you tokens for it so

that's you know faithful yeah that's that is step one

definitely I'm just thinking maybe they get that off the ground they had their

little stable coin which is basically just paint out but then they'll take it

to the next level I mean with the peg and create the their own you world

currency yeah why not they aim high over there that's what I

forget you know that break or magazine did a story on this this week that's why

I'm bringing it up again I mean again it's been in the new you know at first I

didn't take it very seriously was it was just rumors and now it's the rumors are

getting a lot more and it definitely seems they've been

talking to people and that that you know one day we're gonna wake up and they're

gonna say they have something and I'm just I'm trying to get myself ready to

say you know I'll try to look on the bright side and I think it'll get people

in the crypto currency I think I think the smart people who don't know about

Bitcoin right now will play around with the Facebook coin and then be like wait

let me get the real thing that's that's Bitcoin Center

but Boris what did you have any thoughts on this pro or con or yeah I mean the

same question said yeah hoody has what I find really interesting is I mean

they've probably been looking to China you know we chad has a has a payment

option and it's got nothing to do currency but basically it's become

standard in in China and also a little bit outside of China and Facebook

obviously wants to do something like that and there's probably some some some

challenges with regulations in the US and this crypto currency thing might

sort of navigate them around that that could be on the other hand I mean people

are gonna spend the the least the money was the least worth at first so it means

that people gonna buy coffee with the Facebook coin and they'll do their

savings in Bitcoin just like Venezuela is teaching the people about Bitcoin by

enforcing the petrol same things gonna happen with this yeah

I like that doubt pound out like but all right I want I want to give everybody

update on MU rat he's got a real bad he's not in the USA right now he's in a

place with a bad bad internet connection to say the least so he unfortunately he

won't be joining us again break it back on this show but we'll have him on

another day well let's get into uh well I had some questions for him but we'll

talk about Boris's poll here and it's linked to below everybody a poll that he

sent out on Twitter what value aspect of Bitcoin do you find most important

technical speculative monetary or political and now right now monetary is

winning I would think that's the case and

speculative kind of bleeds into monetary I know the difference but some people

like it confused but what's up with that poll and what are you thoughts your

answer to it well I started this because I mean I do a couple of podcasts and

talk to a lot of people about Bitcoin and what I've noticed is that some

people love it for the for the technical side of it and when you challenge

certain views they use price as an argument for or against there or basic

to to to establish their argument and I feel that you have to sort of like take

all these separate subjects apart from each other and what's interesting is

that I mean I don't believe that Bitcoin has political value yet but I believe

that everybody who voted for political for political value aspect of Bitcoin

believes that that's something that we might be going to I mean I can imagine

that one country start to add Bitcoin to their national reserves Bitcoin will

absolutely have political political value aspect and I think it's important

that people start to understand that there's different aspects of Bitcoin

that you cannot really compare to each other I mean the whole Bitcoin

maximalism discussion basically revolves around what your context is the viewing

Bitcoin I mean I would proudly call myself a maximalist but that's because I

like the economic side of it I mean I'm basically I've got front-row seats for

the revolution that's that's why I like Bitcoin and a technical aspect of it and

let alone the speculative assets I really don't care too much about I place

this poll and it was sort of a something to add on the interview that Peter

McCormick dates on what Bitcoin did podcast with Andreas Antonopoulos Anna

dray said what most aterial maximalists don't get that the moment their token

against any form of monetary value it loses its utility and I find that

fascinating and most people don't realize that if you work with an utility

token or if you it's sort of I mean people mix it together because it hasn't

really proven itself and if you look at all

points in this problem is everywhere people build utility tokens give it a

monetary value I think it'll be okay it won't be okay it's I mean one of these

value aspects is going to be dominant over the other ones and you can even

imagine that once Bitcoin gets a hundred percent political value everybody that

it will lose its monetary value because nobody will be using it people will be

just modeling it until I mean for a couple of generations because it's so

valuable so I find it interesting to look from these different perspectives

at Bitcoin and I was just thinking but what do people think of that and I was

really surprised to see that 53% of everybody who filled in the poets it's

from an eleven hundred forty six votes right now still six hours left over a

thousand people said fifty-three percent of them said yeah monetary value is most

important and I agree and I find it fascinating that people see that people

really are capable of judging Bitcoin for all that it is because you need to

understand every different value aspect to understand Bitcoin this is also a

challenge it will take a couple of years I'm sure it took us a couple of years to

learn all these different aspects and if you starting Bitcoin I think this is

interesting because you probably start out thinking about tech maybe

speculative value and not thinking about the monetary value that comes later and

yeah that's why that's I hope to make that a little bit of give them a visual

visual with this poll early thoughts on that well what value asked at a Bitcoin

do you find most important I agreed that it's the monetary value I mean I look at

Bitcoin mostly as a digital asset that is unique because it's you know it

behaves like a lot of other physical assets like gold but it's digital and

it's unique in that it manages to simulate those qualities and maybe even

be better at them and I do think that the technical value is interesting but

only insofar as it manages to to sustain Bitcoin as

this sort of digital asset with the monetary policy that is unique so the

technicalities of Bitcoin are only interesting if you want to convince

yourself that it's monetary properties are robust and are actually working as

you expect you know because just having those typed in some PDF file doesn't

make it so you need to understand how it works to convince yourself that it

really works but that's the only reason why the technicalities matter and

similarly you know the more political and the more community side of things

it's also important because it also plays a part in making this asset what

it is but again they're only interesting in so far as they help you understand

why the asset functions what's really important is a digital asset Bitcoin

itself and its monetary policy and its monetary properties yeah I definitely

agree that this is the most important thing about all this all right we're all

we're head and the majority said the same thing pound that like button I want

to talk about a technical aspect of Bitcoin right now the Lightning Network

well since I'm when I was at the Tel Aviv Bitcoin Embassy on Sunday everybody

was talking about how the Lightning torch was being passed from someone

associated with Iran who had gotten it from Iran and it was being sent to the

Tel Aviv Bitcoin embassy in it successfully it went through and it was

a people learned about the Lightning norge people learned about the Lightning

network OD any insight I thought it was a good gimmick I thought was a good peek

way to get people involved with aware of the Lightning Network what about that

and also to tell us some other lightning news if you've got it yeah so you know

the Lightning torch I think it's a it's this sort of a very very fun game

and a very fun way for the community to interact and it's also a fun way for

people to learn about lightning for the first time which is great a lot of

people installed and trial anything for the first time through that

even people who didn't end up getting the torch the so called torch they still

went through a lot of the steps you know they download the wallet they open some

channels they learn what an invoice is they twittered it so they learn about a

lot of the moving parts and now they understand lighting better than before

so that's great we also need to remember the whole thing

that it's not very similar to what real world use is gonna look like

right them people aren't going to get a payment and send it to someone else

we'll just send it to someone else and so on and tweet about it this is not you

know and people are not gonna pay each other just so that they can say that

they used lightning we were hopeful that they're gonna pay each other because

they wanted to do any some real actual economic activity right there you really

want to buy something so the way that people will actually use lightning is

gonna be significantly different than how this played out and I wouldn't call

this real world use in any way and I think it's also brought up you know

things like custodial wallets and things like that that a lot of people use that

personally you know I think they're nice they're nice to look at but you know

they're not they're not why we're doing all this I would say that for most

people if you're gonna use a custodial wallet then you lose your privacy you

lose your security you'll lose your serenity serenity you it's no longer

trust minimize you're trusting this company so you kind of lose all

everything right the only thing that you get is you can say you can claim that

you made lightning transaction but you lose all of the benefits so so yeah I

don't I'm not I don't know if custodial wallets are good way to recommend people

to use lightning and I definitely try to recommend people to use you know the

real wallets where they hold the funds themselves so that's something that I

hope that people will try and also you know buy real things at the Bitcoin

Embassy you can you know you can buy beers and you can

buy snacks with lightning when we did the Bitcoin party a few months ago you

could pay for I know hats and t-shirts and so on with

with lightning so this is something that I hope people will try more as for

what's going on in the more technical side then you know some of things that

are interesting one of them I don't know if people might have heard the word the

word one ball one ball thrown around people sometimes use that that's W um Bo

it's a word from Sponge Bob the TV show but lightning developers adapted it to

mean lightning channels that are that don't

have a size limit right so most lightning channels do they have a size

limit of I believe it's a 0.16 Bitcoin so 16 million satoshis but going forward

people will be able to open limitless channels so this will enable you know

larger payments and so on so this is something that's coming along there's

some work on labeling payments to you know to a person who publishes a public

key instead of paying for an invoice so if you if you tried lightning in the

past you know that you have to if you want to accept fines you have to first

generate an invoice which is a random string and it looks like a Bitcoin

address just longer and you give it to someone to someone and then they pay the

invoice and you have to create an invoice for every payment you want to

receive so there's some user experience work on removing that step for people

who don't want it although I think it's very useful but if you don't want it

then you'll be able to just pay someone directly and you know really there's a

lot going on in lightning there's now a clear mobile for Android which is one of

the lightening wallets is going to release support for receiving funds soon

up until now you could only send funds so they have a wallet coming up that can

receive funds to which will make things much easier for people we have

you know things keep happening it's hard to even keep up oh yeah there's all

right interesting stuff Boris real world use cases for

lightening thoughts on that you you always have ideas about lightning yeah

absolutely and I mean I'm a game journalist I started out as a game

journalist 20 years ago and I think video games thoughts gamers about

Bitcoin before Bitcoin even existed but this lightning demonstration I think

it's a demonstration by the community to show the world what lightning can do and

it started out small and then we got Jack Dorsey on boards and people were

sending transactions from airplanes midair stuff like that was super cool

and even the transaction that you just mentioned from to Iran which is a I mean

there's a boycott going on from by the US which is not it's not a small thing

so this is really interesting when I was on your show three months ago I

mentioned that tipping got me just started and it really launched a day

before that and nobody really everybody's like yeah okay not a typical

whatever I what really caught on to it if we if we fast forward to today three

months later there's 14,000 people who are actually using it and I think if you

use it you're most likely to you know are close to or have already installed a

lightening nodes and are probably figuring out how lightning works and

it's fascinating I love it I love the way it works and I mean there's a whole

thing in video games and I think this is where I don't know if you know the the

technology director from from Google what's his name from a singularity

project oh man I forgot his name he once said that a video games are the

harbinger of everything and I think what we're seeing right now is that there is

this race to get crypto into video games and there's a lot of alt coins altcoins

who are specializing in sort like building tools for game developers to to

use this and the thing with the Bitcoin community is that it's it's not so

organized so people who love video games are building video game

might be able to build some tools and I think there some tools are or have

already been built but I think we're on the I mean if we if we talk three months

from now we'll see some really interesting examples I mean we have

koalas to do but they're basically the only ones that are really talking about

using lightning in video games and this is something that's that's it's going to

take off in the next year it's going to be incredible but it's it's still in the

face that game developers need to understand every aspect of Bitcoin not

just some tool that I can use in there in there in there in the engine that

they use we need to take it one step further and I think I mean the people I

talk to the universities that I talked to they're all getting interested

they're all understanding that this is the next step that they have to take I

mean we and to be honest I mean they're talking about crypto but it's only gonna

be lightning that's the only interesting way to implement real monetary

transactions in video games this is gonna be huge yeah III again I like the

combo of video games in crypto and it will if if Bitcoin can be incorporated

through the lighting Network into video games into some like must play a video

game it'll be huge it will be huge and it'll have we just have to be patient

wait to be patient here now I I do I do like seeing people working on the

Lightning Network but I wanna I want to tie this into the beginning of the show

again we were talking about privacy and this is something I forgot to bring up

I really hope some of the developers are working on some privacy solutions I

think this connect Canada situation should really boost that to the top you

know we've had scaling issues before we've I think I think privacy is the big

thing that that the the the the developer type of people out there

should be thinking of how to how to make it so that Canada doesn't even want to

ask you well not not make it impossible for Canada to know really what you have

I hope a solution like that can happen and and again maybe though it'll be

developed in an all coin like one arrow or Z cash I don't know but yeah that's I

I just thought of that he ain't now ante at the end of the show anyway let's uh

let's tie it up here is there any anything else that has to be discussed

any any story you want to bring up OD anything that was left out any privacy

type of thing you want to comment on a theory I'm hard forward anything

anything that happens there were things well as far as privacy is related and I

think that lightning should make things better you know because if people use

lightning more for making payments then you don't submit your transactions on

change so not everyone sees them you know you counterparty or knows about

your transactions not everyone knows about them so that's much better for

your privacy not only where you know authorities are related but just you

know where everyone you're working with is related you don't want to bust you

know what you're using your salary on and you don't want your you know you

don't want your whoever it is you're paying rent on your house you don't want

them to know what your salary is you don't want your co-workers to know what

your salary is there's a lot of things that you want to to keep private

so yeah lightning should help with that a lot and you know the things coming to

Bitcoin that should improve that for owned chain as well so you know once

noir is in then with time a lot of transactions we'll be able to look the

same you know multi-sig transactions lightning transactions various kind of

scripts they could all all look like the same kind of transaction which would

make analysis more difficult so yeah and of course wasabi wallet is a great way

to try to delink coins from their past which is also useful so yeah you know

there are a lot of advancements recently about privacy and I think people should

take time to learn about those alright you've got a are you gonna do that

podcast regularly now you just debuted a new podcast good

yeah so me and Lauren stay home for my green address we started a new podcast

it's called reckless review and you can find it on reckless reviewed horse and

what we do is we speak about you know we try to make the technicalities of

Bitcoin more approachable we really you know right down into the technical

details but we try to make it in a way that people can understand what we're

talking about and we also like laughing about everything in this space because

the space is hilarious let's now let's face it taxes or not everything here is

there I mean there is so yeah that is an awesome breaking down the technical

stuff so everyone can understand it I think that's a stretch that you're

striving for that I wish you much success in it's a Judy is linked to

below his Twitter is linked to below so he's retweeted about the podcast and

everything on there all right Boris I'll let you have the

final words any subject matters any stories you want to share final thoughts

yeah if you talked about privacy people think that it's just one thing privacy

isn't even a technical issue you know privacy has many faces it means

something different for everyone and that's one of the things I took away

from your podcast you always say that I mean personal responsibility is the new

counterculture you have to think as a user about what it is that you want to

keep private the rest you share it with the world but if you think about that

you'll find the means for it and Bitcoin is already there the means are there to

be private to transact anonymously it's everything is there just people don't

know how to find it and the real problem is that they find out wael years later

that they should have thought about privacy before that so if if people are

watching and are figuring out what privacy is just take your own

responsibility and try to think ahead that's that's the most important thing

very good advice there I like I like ending it with a personal responsibility

as a new counterculture comment there okay dudes thank you very much for being

on the show pound that like button everyone I hope you all enjoyed it we do

this show every Friday I will be back in the USA next week so it'll be at a us a

friendly time the westcoast guests are gonna finally

be able to return to the show because they're all asleep now in LA I mean we

haven't had like an L a guest or a San Francisco guest since the entire time

I've been in I've been in Israel but I will be back I will be in Los Angeles

next week so it it'll be different but of course everyone in England and Israel

in the Europe will be asleep by the time we get it's a Bitcoin world people I

love it I love I had a blast here in Israel it's not over yet but I'm gonna

leave soon but so thank you go to the Tel Aviv Bitcoin embassy you could see

od there quite often on Sundays I run into him all the time there it sits and

he saw me actually running on the streets of Tel Aviv I find I definitely

become part of the community here definitely but they're very friendly

here all right dudes i'm adam meister the bitcoinmeister disrupt meister bang

that bell button to get a reminder when we go live well maybe if they want to

send you a reminder you know youtube town that like button disrupt meister

dot-com follow me on tech vault-tec HBL alt on twitter shabbat shalom i will see

you guys tomorrow on our regularly scheduled show bye bye see ya