Why Bitcoin’s Biggest Taboo Is Now a Serious Proposal

Hey everyone, I'm here with my co-host, Taylor Monahan, security expert.

Uh, Luca is out today.

I believe he's visiting Antarctica, that's what I heard.

Um, So, no, I'm joking.

I'm joking.

Obviously he's not visiting penguins in an ark.

I like how, how you survived?

You're like he's allowed to visit the penguins in Antarctica.

Yeah, I was legitimately just got so jealous.

He could be, he could be.

I didn't, I never realized that you wanted to go to Antarctica so badly.

Um, so yeah, it's just, just the two of us today.

Um, so let's, uh, let's kick it off, um.

This, this first story is.

Uh, this, this first story is BI 361, um.

So, uh, this is pretty crazy.

Um, I feel like the, the Bitcoin quantum stuff has been Floating around for a while, people are getting freaked out.

Nick Carter's, uh, losing his mind over it.

Um, this is the first thing that we've seen that hasn't been like, Oh, we should think about it, but like, we should start doing things.

And Bitcoin doesn't usually do things.

So, like, I don't know, what's your, what's your take on this?

Cause uh this feels like a new front in the quantum Bitcoin war right now.

I mean, it's wild because it's like the, the hardline Bitcoiners.

Um, and I think we talked about this on a previous show, but I said, the thing that scares me about Bitcoin and Quantum is their ecosystem and their developers, their engineers, their coordination mechanisms are not at all prepared.

Like they've they've just done such hard lines in the sand over so many years.

And now where it's getting to the point where it's like, wait, this is actually a legitimate real threat.

Now we're sitting here like, uh, what do we do, right?

Like, what do we do?

And apparently, They still have it in them.

They still have the ability to do that.

Well, OK, so maybe, maybe for, for, uh, for the audience, um, let's go back, uh, let's go back, um, and, and go over some Bitcoin lore and Bitcoin history.

Um, but before we do, let's, let's do a quick, uh, ad break to get started and then, then we can come back and, and, uh, hit this story.

So, um, all right.

Uh, so before we go deep into OG Bitcoin lore, uh, here's a word from the sponsors that make this show possible.

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All right, we're back, everyone.

Um, so, so I think, uh, Bitcoin, 2009.

Let, let's talk about Bitcoin, right?

2009, Toki uh releases the white paper um on the cypherpunk mailing list.

Um.

Most people are like, uh, like, some people are like, cool, they start doing some stuff, they, they, uh, mine some Bitcoins, they send some Bitcoins around.

Um, and at this point, you know, if you read those conversations and you read the discussions and, and all of that stuff, um, there is a really strong sense at that point, at least for me, and I, I'm curious your take, that code is code.

Mhm.

Like this is a piece of software, right?

Like, like a code, like we haven't yet come out of the code is code part of the Bitcoin story, right?

And then, um, it goes a bit crazy.

Some stuff happens like 2010, 2011, the first exchanges launch, um, and, and it still feels, you know, like there's, there's the, uh, the first bug.

Where like infinite bitcoins get minted, the mg is squashed, the chains rolled back, like, we're still in like coda's code land, right?

And then somehow.

Between the peak in 2011.

Into the like bear market, that, that, I guess, first-ish bear market, right?

Um, the religion of Bitcoin starts to become a thing, right?

Um.

Satoshi steps away, um, different people start to like take up the mantle.

You get these evangelists who come in who are like super excited about Bitcoin, and it becomes somewhat religious at that point, but still software, like there's still software guys doing software to it, and that's OK.

Um, and then we go through until like the folk wars, I guess for wars, and that.

And that's what solidified.

No, no, no, no, no, like no more.

This is no longer code, right?

Yeah, yeah, and this whole time, right, Ethereum is like 2014, Ethereum white paper, Vitalics on stage, um, a lot of Bitcoiners were, uh, Even the Bitcoiners who hadn't necessarily been that interested in like the other coins prior to Ethereum, a lot of the Bitcoiners moved to Ethereum or to at least like a multi-coin point of view at that point.

And then once the Fork wars happened, a lot, you, you sort of like the people that really remained in Bitcoin were The ones who were, were so religious, let's say, which I mean, you know, that makes sense, right?

Like there's a, there's like an evolutionary self-selection process going on here, right, um, you know, I think that there was maybe, uh, Uh, you know, if you go read like the Bitcoin forums as well, right?

There's like, already you see this schism starting of people that rejected shitcoins, which back in the day was like a fork of Bitcoin, right?

Like, you know, colored coin, all of these things, right?

They rejected all that stuff.

Um, they're like, no, no, no, guys, like Bitcoin is the thing, you have to focus on Bitcoin.

And the most interesting thing for me is, if you, if you go back and look at the psychology of that, right?

It is Very transparent and very clear how much of that is driven by financial incentives.

The people who didn't go into, you know, like, it starts off as like, no, no, no, my coin is better.

I want my coin to go up, right?

And then it also ties into my coin is a religion and your coins are the devil.

And, and so, um, And they also like every time anything would happen, right, we had Ethereum, we had the Dow hack, we had Eos trying to put like government governance completely on chain via like a multi-billion dollar ICO like you just had so many things happen, so many chains died, so many, uh, I guess like.

Charlie Lee, Carlie Lee, like dumped all his coins, like a lot of bad stuff happened, right?

Like, and this validated their position as being correct over time, right?

Like it, um, I mean, I fought with the hardline Bitcoiners about the Dow for in 2016, and it was like violent like they were very like.

This they're like this is like a little bit of this was always gonna happen.

This is inevitable.

You guys are bad people, of course you're gonna start doing bad stuff.

We told you there was a lot of like told you sos like so, yeah, you know, like and then also like, and now that you've done this, now you have to do it for everything else, right, which is always the argument like once you do it once you're gonna do it for everything.

No, well, no, actually.

You don't have to do it with everything and maybe we should have done it for more things, but anyway, so here we are, right?

So, so all of this like, and we're still in like 2017, yeah, right, um, we're still in 2017, you know, we then have the ICO boom, right?

And but Bitcoin also hits 200.

Which, like, was an insane number like to go from.

You know, there were things that had like kind of gone crazy before, like, gone up a lot, but like this, suddenly this thing that was like in the, you know, hundreds of dollars when I started, you know, uh, when I entered the space, right?

Um, and was in the like, dollars of dollars for a lot of the people who were like still around, like, you know, like, you go to a conference and you'd see like, You know, Charlie Shremwa, like they're all of these guys like wandering around that were like super OG Bitcoiners that had been around since 2010, you know, uh, 2011 era Bitcoin, um, and all of a sudden it'd gone up 20,000x.

Yeah, it's completely insane.

And this was like it's just insane, right?

Like, and it, and it did it like I remember I got on a plane and Bitcoin was 110 and I got off the plane and it was like 180 and I was like, what is that? like how is this possible, right?

Um, so, so we're still, we're still in 2017 and then from like The 2018 bear market, post Fort Wars, post all of this stuff, Bitcoin just ossified so hard.

I, I'd love to see a graph of like how many Bs, like the BP rate slowed down a lot.

There were like a lot less bips, right?

Um, and then you.

I don't know if this is like the emergence of these people or the ascendancy or they kind of came in, but you had a lot of people come in that turned Bitcoin.

It was already somewhat, there was a religiosity at that point, right?

But they turned it into like hardcore religion of like, no changes, no anything, um, you know, this is, uh, like the, not just like.

The stuff that was in the white paper, right, like, not like because you go back to the white paper, it's like there's a payment network, right?

No, it's um, it's like.

Uh, it is, it is like really deep fundamentalist like religion, where like, there are certain ideas that have taken a hold of the, of the Bitcoiners, uh, and there are certain people who like sort of dominate the narrative, and One interesting thing is that they're very like aggressive and very quick.

I think it's like a lot of times people describe it as like a uh like an immune system, right, like a new idea or a new thing or a new person.

We don't want this, right?

Like we've seen what happens if we allow people to have ideas and so it's like all of that gets immediately rejected even if like even if.

Even if people don't understand what the idea is, like, just the idea of having ideas is like shunned and rejected like pretty violently.

So you have this phenomenon where like anyone who's actually getting interested in Bitcoin often is pretty rapidly excluded.

Like you have to be really, you have to have really thick skin and a really like solid mind and like goal if you're gonna stick around.

Um, otherwise, you have so many other opportunities, right?

Like, you can go build anywhere.

Why would you, like, why would you sort of like, trudge through this, this shit?

Um, but then the other thing that's, I think, interesting is that the only, I it's like the, the only ideas that weren't rejected were these, these sort of like, Whatever, like the Satoshi's vision shit, right, like the, like the ones that were sort of approved, um, and so there have been new people that have come into Bitcoin and have a voice in Bitcoin, um, or even people like James and Lap, right, who's who's been in Bitcoin is still in Bitcoin, um, it's very hard for them to get new ideas in like you basically just have to like Even if you have respect and, and, you know, you're an energy or whatever, it's still very hard.

And, you know, so then this cycle, right, this most recent cycle, we're in a bear market during the like late, late bear early bull of last cycle, um, some people.

We'll get some crackhead ideas.

Um, we're gonna make, like, you know, and, and it's interesting because there, there have been things that were like approved, acceptable ideas that were done like Lightning Network, right?

Lightning Network is one of those things where it's like, I think all of the Bitcoiners are like, no one's gonna wait fucking 10 minutes, bro, for like money to settle.

Like, so let's just quietly all agree that we need the lightning network to allow us to actually be useful, right?

Um, and so, so that was allowed to go through, and that became a thing, and then, you know, like that's an approved.

Side chain, whatever, like, and, and so it's weird, right?

Like it's like, uh, this is fine.

But then, you know, and this, and again, like this sort of speaks to, I think this most recent cycle, how little, um, kind of, uh How, how hard it is for things to get even through the like Bitcoin consensus religion, even if they happen, right?

So then you have like ordinals and people that were like, they they have to start to kind of find end runs around this religion where they're like, oh, what if we take this thing that they thought was safe, and we morph it into something where we can like do NFTs, right?

And like we can do these weird bitcoins that it's like a Satoshi that is special or whatever and it's like, you know, let's ruin fungibility with this like weird bit of tech that they didn't suspect and but it's all like end runs around the like the ossification of this thing, right?

Um, and then you have people like sailor coming in that are like, you know, this is a societal thing of that it's gonna protect us from.

The world somehow like, you know, and, and you get these like these prophets coming in that are like somewhat self-appointed but they're in the, the, the vein of like Bitcoin religion and so they can kind of create their own little like, Semi-religious forks, right, like Mormonism, you know, like all of a sudden you have Mormons running around who are like, this is kind of directionally the same.

There's like guys and stuff and a book, but it's like and so, so, so all of that, um, all the background to all of that is, meanwhile.

Everyone has known that the cryptography that secures this entire thing.

Is somewhat at risk.

Like, I don't like, is it fair to say, is there anyone in Bitcoin who doesn't believe that quantum cryptography is a risk at all?

Like I haven't seen that.

I think so, uh.

Is there anyone who's like so religious that they're like, no, no, no, math doesn't matter anymore.

Like not only is code not code, but math is not math.

Like Bitcoin is stronger than math, right?

Like they all kind of I think it's, yeah, they accept it to a certain degree.

I think that.

I think there are people that you'll see on the timeline who it seems like they're saying that like quantum isn't a risk, but I think that the disagreement is like very, yeah, at the surface layer, and it's like time and approach, and it's again, it's this immune system reaction where it's like people are trying to change things.

We, we must reject this, like they're gonna corrupt the system or whatever.

Um, but when you get to the heart of it, I think everyone agrees that like, at some point quantum is going to be a thing.

And if nothing is done, then the entire blockchain breaks because the core architecture is based on the cryptography.

If you break the cryptography, then.

Then it's broken, right?

Like you, there's everything that the blockchain gives you is gone, um, and so then the question becomes what the hell do you do about that, right?

You can't just like let it, like you can't just take this way and be like, oh oops, like, and we're done, right?

It's still software we can still upgrade it.

Like we can fix this, we can address this.

Uh, the decision is like how and when and how and when's gonna do it.

And, and, you know, also consensus, right?

Like there is social consensus, and, you know, this is one of the things that I think, uh, like Vitallic really gets right among, among, you know, there's a lot of things that Vitali gets right, but this is one of the ones where it's this idea of like, you know, fuzzy consensus, not having, you know, your point about eos, right?

Like, let's just put it on a chain.

Well, now there's one like, There's one guy that's like, actually, I will decide everything, right?

Like this idea that there is a social consensus layer that must also, you know, that humans are humans, and code is for humans, and therefore, we must, you know, kind of, uh, subsume the code consensus part into like the human consensus part.

Um, and, and so, Now they're like, OK, let's, let's figure this out.

Now, what is maybe the most interesting thing to me in this proposal?

So the proposal is freeze the coins.

I read this and I was like, what is happening right now?

Like, and, and so I just, I wanna be, I wanna be really clear about how wild this is as a proposal and even coming from like Jamison, like, it's completely insane.

Guys, because it is the antithesis of Bitcoin, not even like just the hardline Bitcoiners.

Like if you're in Bitcoin, you are against freezing the word freezing, blocking, freezing is blacklisting.

And it's not, again, it's not just the hardline Bitcoiners like this is a, this is a core tenet of Bitcoin, is that like the chain, the chain gods, the people writing the software, the people, the nodes, like, cannot do this, right?

Like they cannot, no one can do this.

Nobody can take your coins, nobody can freeze your coins.

There's whatever, like, the number of coins is a religious aspect, like all this stuff is religious.

And then Jason, I wake up and I look at my feet and Jason's like, so.

I have a bit to propose that we freeze the coins and I'm just like I'm so excited for this timeline.

It's gonna be so this is, this is like my, my hot take is this will be insane.

Like we're gonna have, and it always happens in a bear market, right?

Like there's always a bear market thing where like, you know, and Bitcoin, I don't know that Bitcoin can escape scrutiny anymore.

I think it is too large of a thing.

It's, it'll be interesting to see if like.

Inner Bitcoin schisms make it out into like the larger, but I feel like sailor or someone's gonna get up and talk about this and it's gonna turn into a, like, I just don't think you can quietly do weird shit anymore in a bear market and have no one notice.

But we'll see.

It'll be interesting to see how, whether or not this happens, right?

But even the concept of this being proposed is crazy.

But my, my, my take.

When I saw this is, this is genius on a couple of levels, right?

Um.

The reason why people are so religious about the, the, you know, coin number and all of that stuff is like this immutable ledger that, which, by the way, you know, again, it's not 100% immutable cause there was a little mistake back in the day where it became not immutable for a minute, but um we'll ignore that for a second.

But, um, one of the biggest issues in Bitcoin.

That is almost like a weird unintended consequence of Satoshi leaving, which was amazing for Bitcoin, right?

So like, I think everyone agrees, Satoshi not being around to say dumb shit on Twitter or whatever would have happened, right, has allowed Bitcoin to get to this level of, you know, religious movement, whatever.

Um, but the consequence of that is, of course, Satoshi was around early and mined a fuckload of Bitcoins.

So, you have the Satashi wallets that are sitting there that are like this ticking time bomb of like, if these coins move, if, you know, what if Satashi tries to sell them, or like, what if, like, what if his family tries to, like, what are all of these things?

This in one fell swoop is like, actually, no.

There's no.

This has been part of the conversation for years, right?

Like there, this was like the earliest fud, I think it's on my original fud dice, right?

The original fud was Satoshi is actually alive and he just sells all of his coins.

The dev is gonna dump on us.

The dev will, will FSH and it'll be over, which, you know.

At the time, yeah, like at the time it was true.

It would have been catastrophic as well, like 2014, 2015, it would have just ended Bitcoin.

Like if, if, if Satoshi woke up and literally just dumped all his coins and just like capped, it was, it would be immediately over, um, and so I think it's interesting because there were conversations.

Not necessarily by like the Bitcoin community, but there were conversations of people who were saying like, we, we could eliminate this one this real risk, but also all of the fud if we just freeze Satoshi's coins and it was never accepted and this is why I find the, the, the, the governance, right, the way social like the social system works so interesting is that So often, Bitcoin has done this thing where they just reject everything.

They never really like debate it or consider it.

It's just rejected on the face of it.

It's rejected because it's a new idea.

It's rejected for whatever reasons.

Fast forward, like, OK, so you can say back then, it was decided that it was not a sufficient risk or threat or it was against the moral values or the religion or whatever to like even propose freezing Satoshi's coins, right?

But now we have quantum.

And suddenly it's on the there's a reason. suddenly there's a, there's a real devil.

There's a real devil, and this is for like you can, you can imagine someone standing up in front of their parishioners, right, some Bitcoin priest on, on CNN being like, guys, we must do this.

Satoshi would have wanted this.

This is what Satashi would have wanted if Satoshi. knew or was alive or whatever the, and we should talk about this, right, because there, there was some interesting Phil Dyan uh posted a really interesting thing that I, I wanna actually dig into.

I don't know if you saw this.

Um, I retweeted it, but we'll get, we'll get to the Satashi thing, right?

But It's very easy to say, Satashi would not have wanted those coins to be stolen by fucking Google or whatever, like, or China or whoever we think has like a magical, you know, 4000 cubit quantum computer, right?

So, like, there's, there's an absolute ticking time bomb here of like quantum will get to a point where we can.

Just break the cryptography, right?

And also, correct me if I'm wrong, um, the early Bitcoin wallet cryptography was worse than the, like, the wallets have gotten better over time, right?

And so part of the, the proposal here is it's not, uh, it's not like we're not gonna freeze every Bitcoin wallet.

There's like a, a sense of if the Wallet doesn't upgrade or it doesn't have some uh quantum resistance or something, right?

So, you know, those OG wallets that were like minted with, you know, whatever, uh, you know, the, the original software was before, um, before a bunch of changes were made, if those coins are still sitting in those original wallets, they will get frozen.

Now, Yeah, I don't understand.

I, so Bitcoin basically has had a few different iterations of.

Like, let's call them like the core cryptography today, like most people are familiar today, if you like make a wallet, you get a seed phrase and that drives addresses and stuff.

Back in the day it was different.

The address types are different, um, for I think like they're 39, like there's, there's been a bunch of, but, and, but again, correct me if I'm wrong, right, like, um, the quantum resistanceness, if you will, of these wallets is not identical.

Like, like, so, uh, you know, the, the, the first few wallets that were until, you know, whenever, like, I don't know what the, the first change was that, uh, BI 39 was like seed phrases and stuff.

I don't know if that baked in a bunch.

I can't remember.

I don't know my Bitcoin law that well, but, um, but, um, but the early wallets were like, uh, just like whatever, right?

It's fine.

Like they weren't designed to be like.

Yeah, so from like nation state actors trying to hack them, right?

Like this is still like a software project, and so those wallets would require less quantum because the thing is like quantum computers will get better and faster.

So the, the point of this is the amount of time that a quantum computer would take to break the cryptography is going down.

So at the moment, like a standard computer would take longer than the heat death of the universe to break the encryption.

Cool, awesome, right?

Um, the best quantum computers we have would still take that long, right?

Like it speeds it up by like, you know, 3 orders of magnitude, but it doesn't matter, right?

Like it's still gonna take too long to actually crack these things.

But if you get enough.

Cubits in a quantum computer, all of a sudden it goes to like, oh I can break it in 30 seconds, right?

Yeah, and specifically, OK, it's, we're gonna get a little deep, but I'll, I'll, I'll keep it a little bit simple.

You have the private key and the public key, and the public key is actually not your address, it's actually a separate thing that then derives your address.

Um, and with Bitcoin specifically, because it's, um, it's not like accounts based like Ethereum and Salon are, you have the unspent transaction outputs.

It's basically like these chains of transactions.

You don't have like an account.

It's, it's hard to explain if you don't, if you're not like Bitcoin first.

But basically, the different ways that the coins were mined, the different ways that the wallets were generated, whether or not you've signed a transaction with that private key before.

There's all these different factors that, that come into play and back way back in the day, the public key, so again, this isn't necessarily your address, the public key, um, the way like the early scripting was that public key is actually public, which, because it's like kind of your address, it's used to drive your address, that's fine, usually, right?

Like it's, it's, it's like an Ethereum, it's like an identifier, right?

You can't go backwards to the private key, right?

Like that's the whole thing.

If you know someone's Ethereum address or the public key, you can't get their private key.

That's, that's cryptography in a nutshell.

That's why these things are secure.

Quantum threatens that.

Specifically, Quantum, uh, like the way that they're assuming the signatures and the cryptography is gonna be broken. is partially that you're gonna basically, let's say, go backwards from the public key.

And again, this is like a very oversimplified explanation of this stuff.

Um, but there's like a few things that were especially prevalent with the very early, early Bitcoin addresses that make it more likely that the super advanced like.

Uh, quantum mining operations, we'll be able to get those prior to, say, some of the newer addresses.

And then obviously if we evolve stuff, right, if we upgrade stuff and we, we use cryptography that's, you know, uh, not susceptible to these flaws, then, then we're fine.

The question is like so Doshi, so Doshi has all his coins in these addresses with the worst, the worst address, right?

Like the worst, the like most susceptible to quantum stuff.

So this is what's really interesting though about this proposal.

This is why I think it's both.

Genius and also kind of a nightmare, right?

Let's imagine for a second.

That's why I think it's, it's important that we talk about, uh, Satoshi for, for a sec, right?

Did you find that Phil Diane, uh, for editing?

It was, yeah, it was, it was the most recent thing that I retweeted.

So, so, um.

If you say.

And here's the problem.

If you say we're going to freeze all the addresses in 90 days that don't do whatever the thing is to become quantum resistant, right?

Um, and, and, you know, this is, this is not what this thing is proposing.

But if you were to do this, if you were to say, OK, there's a hard deadline for you to upgrade your wallet.

In order to upgrade your wallet, in most cases you're not upgrading your wallet, you're moving your coins.

And so in order for Satashi, if this were to pass, to be OK, the coins would need to move.

So this now becomes a forcing function.

If Satoshi has just quietly been sitting there and not saying shit for 15 years, right?

And all of a sudden it's like, well, actually I want the optionality of selling my coins, right?

Um.

I don't want to get locked forever.

And this is, this is the problem, right?

Let's imagine that we knew in 30 days, there's going to be quantum computers that will be able to crack all of these addresses, right?

The interesting thing about this is, then there is no way for anyone to prove that they own the address.

Anyone who has a quantum computer that is sufficiently powerful can be like, no, no, no, I'm Satashi, right?

Yeah.

And you know, and that's the only way to prove it, right?

Like the only way to.

Even if you don't wanna, even if you wanna upgrade the cryptography, even if you wanna do some fancy mechanism that doesn't require like moving the coins, ultimately it comes down to the fact where those, like, you're gonna sign something, whether it's a signature to move the coins or a signature that upgrades or prove exactly and so the issue if, if you do it now before quantum.

You can like rest assured that like the person who signs is the person is the person with the key, etc.

Once you get to this point in time where like quantum becomes a real thing and and there's supercomputers that can break these, then, then anyone can like prove they're Satoshi, and you can't.

There's no like the, the in the case of Satoshi, hopefully there's some like other evidence that they could present, but that's not the point.

The point is we don't want anyone to prove they're Satoshi.

We want no one to try and prove this.

We've, we've dealt with this before.

It was not fun.

Um, there was.

A crazy guy, Craig Wright, who, and so let's, let's, yeah, so let's just close out, right?

So the thing that's now interesting about this, assume that this, this passes.

There are 3 phases, um, that are, uh, 3 years and 5 years, right?

And this is where I think this is not amazing.

Like, it's not amazing because if it does pass, now you have.

Like, and the reason why I said 30 days, right, is because 30 days we could handle.

I don't know if we can handle another 8 years of, like, there's a deadline coming that Satoshi needs to do a thing in order to not lose access to these keys.

And before, it was like, well, it's been 15 years, like, of course, it could happen, but it probably won't.

But now it's like, uh, if it could happen, it probably will.

Right, like if someone still controls those keys to move those coins, you would imagine that this will force them to do it, right?

Or maybe not, maybe they accept them being burned.

So if they do, in 8 years' time, after this passes, there will be a day.

Where the coins will be locked forever.

And at that point, You know, if Bitcoin's a million dollars or something, right, it becomes like hundreds of billions of dollars of Bitcoin that's now just off the market, and it's, this is never a problem ever again.

Um.

You have to imagine on that day there's gonna be a God candle the likes of which we have not seen before.

Like it'll just be crazy, right, because all of a sudden the risk of Satoshi is just gone, right?

8 years feels like a long time.

Like, can we just tighten this down to like a year, guys, like and just close it out in the share market.

Like, I don't know it's gonna be, I mean, it's really interesting because the thing is that.

Let's say that this proposal passes, right?

And we, and we all do this.

One, it's a, it's such a long time period that I feel like people are just gonna be like, OK, well, we'll deal with it.

Also, things might change.

And then all of a sudden it's gonna be like a year from now and you're like, oh shit, I need to do something.

This is the thing.

That's why I'm like this is really how people do shit.

If we have the technology, let's just get it done in the bear market.

Like the bear market to do shit like this, um, so but then there's another period of time after, right?

Like you, this is like an arbitrary self-imposed.

The timeline then there's an unknown period of time in between the, the, the last date where everything's frozen or whatever and the date where like quantum is real, meaning that like someone broke the keys during that period of time if Satoshi or like you know people are talking about like well what if Someone was in jail and they get out of jail and their coins are frozen, right?

We should have like a process for them during that interim period of time.

There's theoretically a way where you could either you could do something quite arbitrary, right?

Like, right, you could.

Selectively unlock certain things for people to prove or whatever without risk because of the, without the quantum risk, right?

Um, there's all sorts of things that you could do.

Uh, however, the question is like, would Bitcoin actually do this.

And it's tough because just the freezing of coins themselves sort of undoes a lot of what I know about Bitcoin, right?

And so you can imagine if you actually, if they actually carry on and freeze these coins, I think that the otherwise non-existent conversations will actually exist because it's kind of moved, uh, it's they kind of moved the goalposts on themselves, right?

Um, and I think it'll be really interesting, but it's a bit terrifying because.

Even though I guess like you have this, when you lock all these coins and it's like definitely locked, um, that's like a huge, yeah, the God candle, oh my god.

However, 8 years, 9 years, 10 years of just like God.

It's a long time.

It's gonna dominate the conversation, and I don't know that anyone wants to talk about this forever, and I suspect, I don't know, I wish we could have talked to Jamison, but like I suspect that he's Part of the reason he's putting this proposal out is to like force people's hands.

I, I agree.

It's like, let's, let's, you know, sometimes it's like let's do something that is unpalatable, right?

Force people to the table to actually do something that might be more palatable, um, so it could be just, you know.

40 chests here and, and it's trying to force the thing.

Um, but you have to imagine that there are some people in their heart of hearts that are like, it would be really good if we could just deal with these fucking stoshi coins and be done with this.

Can we please do that?

Can we lock these coins?

Because if we do, the thing, you know, especially if it was done under the guise of like, we have no choice.

This is a math problem, guys.

Like we have no choice, we must do this, you know, we're not evil, we're not doing the wrong thing, we're just protecting the coins.

And again, you know, I go back to like, imagine there's a guy in front of people, all of his Bitcoin parishioners that's like, this is what Satoshi would have wanted.

I know he came to me in a dream and said, lock the coins.

Yeah, lock the coins, bro.

Um, and so, you know, if that happens, I think.

This is the only way that you could ever close out that like Satoshi fund.

Otherwise, like this, you can, you know, we used to talk about this.

What if Bitcoin's a, what if Bitcoin's $10 million each, right, in like 30 years, and the Satoshi coins are like, it just gets like absurd, right?

Like, it's, it gets to the point where it's like, it's worth more money than like gold times 10, and there's just like one key that's secure. all of this value, it's, it's a bit insane.

Um, all right, so before we talk about Satoshi, because I think this is, this is a topical thing, uh, let's go to another ad break and, uh, we can come back and, and talk about whether or not this person might be able to unlock the coins.

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All right, we're back.

Um, so there was a story that we were going to cover and we didn't end up covering, um, uh, a couple weeks ago, um, where, or maybe even last week where the New York Times was like, Adam Bach is Satoshi.

Yes, right, um, and you know, This is, this is like, there's a whole bunch of reasons why like, it's not, it's clearly not true, right?

Um, but, uh, Phil Dyan, um, who is like an OG crypto guy and, and ET guy, um, has, uh, tweeted something, I think yesterday or the day before, right?

Um, that was like, it's not Adam Bach, guys, like it's obviously not Adam Bach, but, but.

Maybe it was Adam Back, because if you look at his style of writing, his style of writing is very similar to the style of writing you can go back and like, and the New York Times did this, right?

Like, there has to be something here to this.

And so the theory is that Adam Back, um, is the guy that wrote the white paper.

Yeah, or it was like on some of the accounts, like doing something else.

Yeah, so, so the idea that this is like a, a 2 or 3 person team, right?

And you know, the idea that Satoshi, uh, is not one person, it's multiple people has been going around for a long time, right?

And there's questions like, was it 30 people?

Was it the CIA?

Was it, you know, the NSA?

Was it like, you know, there's all like, and, and I think, um, most of the rejections of that are like, you can't have a conspiracy of the NSA for 15 years and have it not leak out that like, actually, they wrote Bitcoin, right?

Um, and so, you know, there, there is this like skepticism around this idea that.

That, uh, you know, it's this one guy, right?

Um, there's a skepticism that one person could do it.

There's a skepticism that it's multiple people.

And then it's like, well, it has to be some, like a human did this.

We didn't have agents yet.

So, clearly a human did this, right?

And so the idea is that they've matched up the writing, and this is the one guy theory.

If there's one guy that did it, it has to be this guy, right?

And then, um, a bunch of people like, but look at the code.

Look at the way that like we've got code examples and like there's not the same person writing this code, like it's very obviously not the same person writing the code.

Um, and so, um, Phil Dyan is like, there was a guy that wrote the code, there was a guy that wrote the white paper and like had control of some of the accounts, and then there was like the genius philosopher person that like pulled this all together and like, you know, took all this prior art because Bitcoin.

Bitcoin did not get created from whole cloth in 2009, right?

There's like 20 years of prior art, e-cash, like, you know, a ton of different things, different schemes, cryptography schemes that someone has cobbled together.

That's the genius part, like connecting all of these dots, right?

Um, you know, the, the idea of, of, you know, essentially creating a blockchain from all of these disparate components that have existed.

No one had put them together.

So, um, The, the idea is that Hal Finney is that guy, right?

Hal Finney was the like genius, visionary person that like connected all the dots, right?

Adam Bach is the guy who was like, uh, you know, talking and, and writing things and like the public face of the thing, right?

Um, and that's like, that is credible, like this is a credible when you, when you start looking, but then the, the, the theory goes for, for Phil, that there was a guy who wrote the code.

And apparently, he's been saying this for like a decade, that it's this David Kleinman guy who wrote the code, right?

So, On the weekend, I guess last week, right, Phil sees this thing and it's like, it's not Adam Back, like it's just obviously not him.

He, he could have been part of it, but it's not him, it's this Phil Kleman guy who wrote the code.

The code looks like dotnet slob.

Code, right?

And the closest, uh, person who was in the area is this Phil Kleman guy, right?

Um, and so, uh, sorry, this Dave, this Dave Kleinman guy.

So then he somehow goes on like an autistic dumpster dive.

All of this like material and finds an email in the Epstein files.

Um, and this email in the Epstein files is like, uh, a couple of people talking about something that happened in these computers that were like seized in like one of the early investigations, right?

Um, and, uh, the, the person writing the email is like, hey, I've got a guy, uh, who's I've got a guy, this guy, this guy, this guy cloned the machines and like whatever, did like did this with the hard drives and like, can we get these hard drives back, and the guy's name is Dave Kleman.

And Phil is like, This is it, right?

That's the 3.

This is the 3rd guy.

Like this guy is, you know, and, and so because apparently Adam Bach was on the island and you know, we know that.

Oh my God, the whole Epstein, the connection that this is a shit show, um, but.

This Epstein nexus of now there is like a direct connection between all of these three people, um, is crazy, right?

And so the interesting thing about this is Dave Kleinman is also dead.

Weird.

So, so and how Finney's also, is also dead, and there's another favorite guy.

I cannot remember his name, an OG cryptographer who is also dead, is also dead.

So, so there's, there's like multiple ways that this could have been.

2 people, 3 people, 4 people, and most of them are dead except for Adam back, right?

Um, and, and so I know, right?

Um, and, and so, uh, so, so anyway, this, this is a whole thing, this, this conspiracy theory that it's like this is the group of people, but the, the most interesting thing about this conspiracy.

Theory is, it's not exactly a conspiracy theory because someone had to do this.

Like, there is an answer to the question of who was Satoshi, and it was either one person or multiple people.

And even for me, I'm like, this is the closest, I haven't like scrutinized this like super deeply, but I, I, you know, I trust Phil's autism, and I'm like, This is a good theory.

I mean, I think that like my takeaway is.

I don't think we'll ever know for sure.

I think at this point, it's They're either they're dead or if they're alive, like they made the decision long ago to like destroy everything, like really destroy it.

Um, and like no matter how much they regret that choice today, like they can't.

They can't go back.

Yeah, um, and I actually, but you know, I don't, so motives are interesting, right?

But if someone did that, let's say in 2011, right, um, there was a single Satashi and that single person burned all the coins and it's still alive, right?

It would, it's, you know, they've gone 15 years without like trying to chase glory, right?

And also, Satoshi had like a bunch of addresses, right?

So like, this is, there's like a cluster of the main addresses, but, you know, it's possible that that person burned the main addresses and still has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin today, right?

So, um, so, you know, it's not like they're like living in poverty in, in, you know, a back alley somewhere or whatever.

Um.

So anyway, we, we can, we can maybe we can get Phil on the show, um, and, and talk about this, um, talk about this theory, this, I mean I would love.

I love the Satoshi theory.

I love all of them.

Like it's so interesting.

It's so interesting, but this is the only, this is the first time that I've seen like a coherent theory of like, here's the group of people that was small enough to be small enough and dead enough in the nicest possible way, like, literally, like if your theory is it was these 5 people and they're all alive and they never.

Talk to each other or whatever, like, I just don't believe that.

Like I, I don't know that that's possible for that to be the case, that there were 5 people in 2009 that were all collaborating and conspiring to do this thing, and none of them have broken ranks or none of them have ever been seen in the same room.

Like, I, that, that just beggars belief, right?

Um, anyway, uh, let's move on to our next story, um, which is conveniently also about freezing coins, um.

And, and so this is World Liberty Financial versus Justin Sun, um, and, and the situation is, and this, this is a thing that happened a while ago, but Justin, I think, has come out and somehow something's broken his brain and he's like, I'm not going to just quietly sit here anymore.

I'm going to actually like start, you know, firing shots back.

Maybe he's mad that we're not winning as much as we were promised, uh, I think that's, so that's part of it.

Is that he's just mad, and the other part of it is that.

I guess the World Liberty Financial guys have.

Propose the, OK, so if you bought, you bought these coins, right?

They're all locked.

I did not.

So no, I went to the, I bought the, I bought the Trump coin.

I know, no, no, no, I bought the Trump coin.

Um, I did not go into the World Liberty ICO.

Um, I was stupidly, I wish that I had, but I did not do it.

Um, and, and I, so I bought, I bought Trump coin, and interestingly, I bought Trump coin.

I went to that first Trump dinner, and Justin's son was there, and he got presented with a Trump watch, and he was very happy.

About it at the time, so it's going a little bit.

The relationship has soured a little bit over the intervening year or so.

Interesting.

OK, so there was an ICO for, I can't keep all this straight, but I know this, there was an ICO in like late 2024 for World Liberty Financial.

The terms were the tokens are locked, the end.

We'll figure it out later, but right now you can buy in, but we're in a rush.

We're in a rush, guys.

We don't have time to think through all the details.

Let's just get this thing, and so I guess now it's not that today has arrived where they figure out the details, but today is the day that they have decided to propose the new lock structure.

But it's created an interesting dynamic because, um, Well, uh, because everyone bought these tokens with literally accepting the fact that they would be locked until someone decided at a future date.

That something else would be done to change the circumstances.

Um, and so now they're making a proposal that basically is like, there's some of the coins, it's gonna be a 2 year lock with another 2-year cliff.

With some of the coins, it's like a 2-year lock with a 3 year cliff, maybe there's some other things, etc. etc.

That's what they're proposing.

Justin's coins are, they're frozen though.

They're frozen.

They're like, so it's weird because, yes, because nobody can transfer their coins, but there's a few people who bought the coins who then had the coins additionally frozen, so.

So even if, uh, even if they could, even if the global rules lift and they're allowed to transfer the funds, there's a select, yeah, there's a select group of people where they can't, they'll still be blocklisted.

So that's why Justin's upset, rightfully so.

Everyone else is also upset because they're like, we don't like these terms.

And then it's again, it's to me it's the interesting, the, the perverse incentives, right?

Your choice is carry on.

How things were, which is literally, they're gonna be lost forever or accept these terms, and people are mad that they have to make that choice.

Why did you buy into the ICO with those terms in the first place?

They thought we're gonna win.

They thought we're gonna keep winning, and there's gonna be so much winning that they wouldn't care.

They wouldn't need the money.

They would have plenty of money.

They would have won so much.

This was a detail.

This was a minor detail back in, in 2025.

So, so, um.

One thing that, that I think we've talked about on the show quite a bit is like, uh, you know, this idea of, um, token holder rights.

You know, and, and what rights did Hogan holders have, and when we were looking at the story, the thing that kind of jumped out at me is like, Part of the tension here, right, um, is, as a token holder, you have no legal rights, usually, right?

The, the interesting thing about tokens is most of the time, the most rights you ever have is when you have the piece of paper that says that you will get tokens in the future.

That's actually like a legal document in most cases, right?

Now, There's usually a bunch of ways that that document has, you know, little loopholes written in where things can change, but like, at least you can go to a court of law and say like, hey, I've got this thing, and if they give this to someone, they've got to give the same thing to me, even if they change all of the terms and make it terrible for everyone.

Um, and, and I was reflecting on like, part of the tension here.

Is, um, that in normal reality.

You have the ability to um adapt to the world through the issuance of new shares, right?

So you as a founder, you're an idiot, right?

Um, and one of my, one of my best, uh, examples of this is like Shane from Polymarket, right?

So Shane from Polymarket, um, who, who I went into the seed round, um, I knew him, I knew him.

Quite well at the time.

Um, I'd go and visit him in New York when I was in New York and, and hang out.

And this guy was like the most cracked guy.

Like, you couldn't bring him out in public, like, he was so, like, just for the mission.

He just wanted to talk about, like, you know, he was just like, so, so deep down the like, prediction market.

Rabbit hole and why it was so critical and why it was so important, like, genuinely, like ideologically, but also a really good startup founder, which is a scary combination, right, when you have someone who gets startups, gets the grind, gets all of these things, like is trying to be successful, trying to build something, um, but also is like ideologically like, like jacked in, right?

And so, So he.

As everyone does when they're an early founder, like, does a bunch of dumb shit, like raises money from idiots and like, does all this stuff and like almost runs out of money.

And, you know, he had the double, uh, whammy of like also having three letter agencies coming after him all the time for fucking annoying reasons, right?

Back in the day.

Um, and And he, you know, he resisted all of that, fought through it.

This is the guy who like got raided by the FBI and then tweeted an hour later, new phone, do this, like, just like absolute crackhead person, right?

Like just crackhead energy.

Um, but the interesting thing is you never hear anything about people complaining about like, You know, there's no token, there's no polymark.

People kind of say, when is the token coming, right?

But those are usually people who are farming the airdrop.

But you never hear investor complaints about like, oh, Shane, you know, screwed me over or whatever.

And, and, you know, this is despite the fact.

They've raised a ton of money from a ton of places from like ICE or whatever.

He really flipped the three letter agency thing and was like, uh, get money from ICE.

And, and so, uh, so, so anyway, so, uh, different ice, um, different ice to clarify, um, and, and so, um.

But, but interestingly, like, as, as seed investors, and there's a bunch of people that were like seed investors, then they went into Series A, Series B, there is this mechanism where your early mistakes as a, in his case, like 18-year-old founder or 17-year-old founder or whatever, where you raise money from the wrong people, get erased over time.

You raise more money, you issue more shares.

There is like a built-in, very clear, well-understood mechanism where you can Raise some money and have not the best terms, but like, it's very easy for you to like over time, kind of water that down and get to a better structure that makes more sense for you.

Tokens, unfortunately, it's like, hey, we're gonna sell all the tokens.

There's 50 of them.

I'm gonna sell them to 20 people.

One of them is Justin's son.

He owns 30 of them, and then 20 minutes later, you're like, ah, that was dumb.

Like, why did I do that?

And so then you're forced into being like, well, what can I do?

I'll just freeze his tokens.

That'll be fine, right?

So, like, but seriously, like you, you, you don't have, there's no relief valve for the dumb things that you do early on in token land, because they're immutable fixed supply things and you can't issue more of them.

And I think this is like the, the nexus of the tension that creates all of these issues, right?

Um.

Yeah, that, and, and by the way, and the fact that like nobody is being clear on these things like at all ever, right?

Like nobody has clarity on what I'm sorry, but like.

Why, why did you invest in an ICO where like everything is indefinitely locked until like I thought I was gonna win, bro.

I don't know how many times I've, I like, I was sure this guy told me we're gonna win so much that we never won that much before.

You're trusting these people who are not have zero incentive to help you out on the right.

Like you're just trusting them, but, like legitimately, this is the reason, right?

When you invest in any token.

If you are clear-eyed about it, you know that they're like, there's, there's no rights, so they can do anything to you.

And the problem with that is it means that there is no gradient of like risk, right, at any moment at any.

Time, anyone who is a token issuer can completely fuck you over and just go, uh, like, we just changed the tokens, bro.

Like, I don't know what, you know, I don't know why you thought we wouldn't.

We just froze your, we just did, you know, we can do almost anything, which means that they become uninvestable.

If anyone can do anything to you at any time and there's no legal recourse, right?

I mean, you know, I go back, like there's still a lawsuit, uh, to the best of my knowledge, I gave up, I capitulated off for like 5 years, right?

There's still, there's still a lawsuit where a bunch of us invested in Curve.

We gave Michael and Curve a bunch of money, um, you know, at the time, this is prede by summer.

This is like, you know, call it May 2020, right?

Um, and at the time, Michael didn't really need the money.

He, he'd done well from, uh, from like Swiss Borg, a couple of other previous startups, whatever.

Um, and so, but he I thought it was a good idea to raise some money from like, good investors, they would help to like evangelize Curve, whatever.

And then two months later, Defi Summer starts, and he's like, yeah, I don't need your money anymore.

I just said, no, right?

I'm not.

Now, the interesting thing about that is, he says, no, I don't want your money.

And we all say, we won't take it back.

And so.

The money sits now, he could have sent it back, but like, I don't know why he didn't send it back, but he didn't.

So I sent him $80,000 in uh USDT.

I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure it's 80 $800,000 in USDT and like at least it wasn't.

Jesus.

No, no, this is.

Stables.

Yeah, it was curved.

It was a stablecoin exchange.

Come on, I couldn't take.

OK, OK.

OK.

What was he gonna, what was he gonna put next to it, rap like an idiot.

Like, anyway, so, so, um, so we send stables and there's this like Mexican standoff for five years of like the investors who are involved go after him.

They sue him in Switzerland, they sue him in America, they sue him in like every jurisdiction they can find, right?

Um, and they keep losing.

Because I have to imagine, and I never read like the transcripts or like, I don't even know if there are transcripts, but I have to imagine the judge was like, you gave, you sent someone some magic beans.

Yeah, 5 years ago and never got them back, never got any, like, what do you expect?

What did you?

There's no structure.

There's no structure.

And so, you know, like, Michael took everyone's money, refused to give it back or didn't want to give it back or whatever.

And then, but then eventually, like, I was like, all right, clearly I'm never getting these curve tokens, so I just went and messaged.

Him one day and was like, can I have my $800 USDT back?

And he's like, yeah, sure thing, set it straight back.

It was like actually quite easy, um, and so, wait, so he just didn't want, he just didn't want to do like the curve part of it.

Yes, he just didn't want to tell the.

He was like.

Because the token price was like because he didn't need to 0001, you know, we would have gotten when T5 summer hit and the curb price went like $7 right?

We would have, and, and in fairness, you know, like to him, selling tokens to people too cheaply is the worst possible thing you can do to your protocol because they will, they will dump on you the instant they get the chance, right?

And so he was just like, uh, actually this is negative VV.

I'm giving you the money back.

And he didn't have to because you guys didn't agree to anything up front.

He held it for like and he's literally sitting on the table every once in a while, like every 3 months he'll be like, I wonder if the money's still there.

It's always still there.

He never touched it.

He just left it sitting in a wall.

He didn't need it.

Like he did not need the money.

I know.

So this is OK.

At some point we're gonna have to fix this, but I gotta, I'm not, I'm not gonna.

Leshner is trying to fix it for us.

Right.

Robert Leschner, uh, we should, we should have him on the show, uh, at some point.

He's, he's basically saying like, guys, this nonsense token shenanigans, this is not you can't have no rights.

Like, of course people are gonna get screwed.

And by the way, like even if they don't get screwed, right, even if the objectively best possible outcome happens for all involved parties.

People are still gonna be upset because they think they got screwed, right, because the grass is always greener, you didn't have clarity, the expectations are out of whack.

Whenever you have misaligned expectations, people start feeling betrayed, then people get very irrational and very illogical, and, and everything goes out the freaking window.

And so until we get to a point where, um, There's like, it's not just, it's not just like this trust, like we're gonna do right or, you know, uh, or there are no laws, like we're not gonna do anything, so everything's fine.

Like, we just, right?

Like, no, neither one of those is true.

Like if you're investing in something, if you're buying something, especially with a lockup.

I don't know, it's just, it's just insane terms, um, you, yeah, I don't know.

Investing in something that has a lockup where there's literally no forcing function, timing, anything to ensure that your, uh, like the, the choices they make in the future are gonna uphold you.

What, like they're not gonna, it's not, they're not going to.

Something, oh, yeah, like, given enough time, something will break and, and it'll break down.

And, you know, again, why did this happen?

Incentives.

It happened because the incentives were really skewed towards, it'll be fine, right?

We don't need to worry about this because it's positive EV to give people money, send them.

Tables, you know, like, at that time, I didn't know Michael that well.

He wasn't like a, you know, like he was a guy that I knew, but like, I just sent him 80,000.

Like, there's no, I don't even, I don't think there was even a, I can't remember signing a contract.

I just sent him there absolutely was not a contract.

Otherwise, you would have some recourse.

Yeah, well, that's a good you wouldn't be like jurisdiction offing finding a judge to explain the magical bean situation.

Oh man, um, all right, before I wanted to, I wanted to just super quickly because this is the same, it's basically the same conversation, right?

Have you been following the scroll ethery thing?

I have not.

Let's, let's talk about it, OK, so basically.

There's some tea.

We don't know the tea.

There's tea.

It'll come out later, OK?

But basically, Ether F is leaving scroll.

And then it appears that scroll has like, Is it weird that I didn't know either I was on scroll?

I didn't either.

What they're not just on scroll, like, like what, like, no, I don't know.

There's no way that they're just on scroll.

They're not just on scroll.

So like this seems weird, like they were on a chain and they're leaving the chain.

It doesn't seem like that big of a drama, but I maybe I'm missing.

OK, well, yeah, I mean, but I guess because scroll is, that was probably like one of the biggest things.

Scrolls obviously like, oh shoot.

So Scroll then Then the validators or the fee mechanisms like.

Because I guess either if I has to like migrate stuff off and like do things to wind things down, whatever.

I guess they like cranked up the fees on the on the chain to like make it really expensive.

Sorry.

It's great.

It's so funny.

Yeah, they're like, oh, you're leaving us.

Like, let's charge a buck.

Like we're gonna make you pay as much as possible.

That's the story so far.

I don't know if there's some other stuff going on too.

The much as possible is like 15,000 a day, right?

Like it's not like, um.

OK, like it went from like $0 a day to to like $500,000 or something like that, um, across, across, you know, a few 100,000 but so basically it says like for ether5 things the fees like originally were $250 a day and then it cranked up to $16,000 a day.

However, there's other activity.

These are like network fees, right?

So there's other activity on the network that also now have to pay higher fees.

And so I think that's one of the conversations is like other people are like.

Wait, just because you're like punishing them or whatever, like why can you just selectively punish them instead of punishing us?

Yeah, yeah, and I don't know, like the whole thing to me is just, it's just, I don't know, it's very weird, um, well, so I also like I got a conspiracy theory for you now.

We can start a conspiracy.

Theory here.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Why has Poly Maret not left Polygon, i.e., Matic, right, for like 7 years when they easily could?

What if Sandeep the entire time is the CEO of, uh, of Matic?

What if the entire time he's been saying to Shane, if you try and leave, we will charge $100 per transaction?

Yeah, I mean.

I didn't know this was possible, to be honest.

I mean, I guess like I never thought about it.

It is.

That's the whole point of blockchain, right?

Anything's possible.

Anything can happen.

So that's wild.

I also think it's just a wild choice because if your blockchain is not getting the desired traction in terms of usage, and then when you're like main guys is leaving.

I feel like you're the worst possible choice to make is to make it more unusable by making it more, yeah, but it's like on the way out we're just gonna burn everything down, right?

Like my, my favorite, my favorite, uh, thing in like startup reality like dimension of like, you know, uh, optimization and risk is platform risk.

Platform risk is like the realest risk that you, you know, um, and there's like, just amazing examples across all of startups of like Farmville on Facebook, and then they're like, actually, we're gonna do games ourselves, like, so many examples of like people that were like, we've made it, it's going amazingly well, and then the platform.

Like, ha ha, we own you, right?

Um, this is just such another great example of platform risk.

Like you think you're going to like an immutable ledger and these ZK moon math guys are gonna like be your good friends, and then they're like, actually, we own the platform and you can't leave.

Yeah, and that I think the platform risk, I think a lot of times people like look at it a bit black and white, like, uh, like, can they freeze you, right?

That's the conversation.

Um, are they gonna run, but it's like there is so much risk introduced when you're dealing with, um, this sort of stuff, and I think that a lot of people are like, well, they would never freeze us.

Like scroll would never freeze either 5, like, and if they did, there would actually be like recourse.

But that's not the only risk, right?

There's a lot of risk.

We never told you the fees would be cheap, bro.

Like, I bet they did.

I bet you like the first thing that they said and they're like white papers, like the fees will always be the cheapest here ever.

And they're like, uh, just delete the white paper.

It's fine.

Just get, it's just the whole thing is crazy, and I don't know.

Yeah, like, I, a lot of times like when we talk about like the L2s and like the centralization and the risk, I feel like we're, we're not, we're still not having mature enough conversations about this where like we're actually thinking about the risk and then actually mitigating the risk.

I think it's just often the conversation turns again back to this like.

The FBI is gonna force us to freeze your wallets, and so long as that's not possible, then it's fine.

No, it's not freaking fine, dude.

The perverse incentives are real, and people will screw each other over.

And if you have no accountability, no recourse, like you just gotta sit there and eat your fees like, but this is, so this, OK, so this is this, I think there's a through line.

We've got two more stories we can like quickly speed run them, right?

Um, the next one is.

4 minutes.

So, all right, we got 4 minutes, 2 minutes.

Let's do this.

So this is a platform risk all the way down, right?

So Cal Swap's DNS gets hijacked, which is a thing that happens to like a bunch of people all the time.

It happened to my family office.

Um, they were able to like get into my domain hosting place for my family office URL and social engineer that like, it happens all the time.

DNS is a giant fucking platform risk.

For every single crypto company, and so one of the things that I, I saw, um, someone say is they're like, oh, there's like some better DNS service that, but DNS is like a thing, right?

Like it's a thing on the internet that you can't get away from, right?

So, um, I don't know if you have any hot takes on this before we, before we go to the next thing.

There's, we're at the point where the DNS hijacks that we're seeing are not actually compromising the.

Team's accounts, their social engineering people behind the scenes, and this is what happened to me.

I went and said, no, no, no, our agents, our guy, these were human agents 4 years ago, right?

Our agents are not, uh, able to change DNS, right?

And then I went and social engineered.

This is my favorite part.

I went and social engineered another one of the agents and was like, hey, I have this problem.

You seem like a really nice guy.

Like we went through a whole thing and the guy was like, Oh yeah, we can totally do that.

I just admitted that they, I was like, well, OK, that's good.

At least I have some closure here.

Um, so yeah, that's exactly what probably happened.

Like, of course they can change the things they're in the system.

Like, come on guys, um, so the final thing is, uh, cashtag speaking of platform risk because my, my hot take is that X is one of the most.

Giant.

It's been platform risk all year, where they keep nuking all of the crypto stuff.

And then Nikita gets on the timeline.

It's like, it's been a bad year for crypto.

And it's like, yeah, you call this, like it's so much of this is you doing insane things to us and killing our reach and like whatever, right?

It's like, it's been a bad year.

So we're going to replace.

Our old cash tag system with this new cash tag system so that you're now even more locked into X and beholden to us, and we will determine whose cash tags are shown when you have a certain ticker.

They're basically turning themselves into like the ticker police now, where they own the, like tickers.

It's crazy.

Also, Who the fuck uses cash tags?

Like this is such a 2017 Elon, well, no, no, no, they nerfed cash tags.

Elon came out and said anyone who uses cash tags, you're, we're like nerfing you.

You're not getting any reach, like whatever, and they're like you're a crypto scammer, obviously.

Oh man, um, so yeah, platform risk all the way down.

Um, it's been a good show.

Uh, let's wrap it up here.

Um, so thanks for joining us.

Um, hopefully we'll have Luca back from Antarctica next week.

Um, maybe Tay will go to Antarctic. next week.

I don't know.

Now, now we know that it's your life's dream.

Um, low key is, dude.

Yeah, I get it.

I get it.

Um, remember, what happens on chain never stays on chain.

We'll be back next week.

Until then, do your own research before aping in.

See you.

Bye.