As the product manager of Liquid securities, Matthew Haywood is one of the people who possess the best understanding of Blockstream’s sidechain. And as one of the nicest people you’ll ever find in the Bitcoin space and the the first developer Nopara73 has hired to work on Wasabi Wallet, Haywood is a really interesting guy who has a lot of fun and insightful stories to tell.

Throughout 94 minutes of discussion, which mark Matthew’s first podcast appearance since his 2015 involvement in Bitcoin, the Welsh sound money enthusiast candidly talks about the various projects on which he has worked in the space and goes on to explain how Liquid functions and why it’s different from the Lightning Network.

In between Bitcoin conversations, Haywood also expresses his concerns for the fiat economic system, the nature of politics, and the custodian onboarding of BTC newbies.

By the end of the conversation, he answers the inevitable question: is Blockstream evil and ruled by reptilian shapeshifters?

Listen to the episode on iTunes and Spotify!

1:00 – Introduction

2:20 – How we met in person for the first time

3:10 – Product manager of securities on Liquid?

5:00 – Working with Nopara73 on an early version of Wasabi Wallet

6:30 – Matthew Haywood’s experience as a software developer and involvement in Bitcoin as a writer for Brave New Coin

12:05 – What is the Liquid Network and what does it do?

16:30 – The use cases of Liquid and Lightning

18:30 – What should get stored on the blockchain and what should be moved to a second layer or sidechain?

28:50 – Bitcoin as free speech money with privacy features 

33:20 – Is there a scaling war going on?

37:55 – Liquid on the Lightning Network

47:40 – Atomic swaps between BTC and L-BTC

50:30 – Welsh people are nice

51:30 – Everyone is mean on Twitter, but nicer in person

56:20 – Automagically as a word

58:20 – Bitcoin Takeover was initially meant to be called Bitcoin in Politics (BIP)

59:00 – Zack Voell and Francis Pouliot have also graduated in political science

1:00:00 – Bitcoin and politics

1:06:00 – The fact that we’re divided perpetuates the fiat system

1:10:00 – Career politicians wouldn’t survive in the private sector

1:15:10 – Hyperbitcoinization and the importance on sovereignty 

1:18:40 – Why bother with sovereignty when you can use Coinbase?

1:25:00 – The security of early Bitcoin adopters

1:27:30 – Is Blockstream evil?

1:33:00 – How to follow Matthew Haywood on Twitter

Donate to Bitcoin Takeover!

If you prefer donations in fiat, use Patreon. For Lightning Network transactions, I also have accounts on Tally Coin and Tippin. 

And if you need a new hardware wallet, a steel plate for your seed words, or Faraday bags for your electronics, then use my Trezor and Billfodl referral links. I’ll get a small commission from your purchase and the money helps me pay for producing the content and keeping it online.

In January 2019, Anthony Lusardi was the director of the ETC Cooperative – a development team that was working on the side of Ethereum that refused to break immutability after the infamous and community-splitting DAO fork.

Yet in spite of this mild case of shitcoinery (which he has cured in the meantime), Lusardi focuses on some of the most pressing issues in Bitcoin: the store of value vs medium of exchange debate, Luke Dashjr’s proposal to reduce the block size to 300kb, the Lightning Network’s burgeoning first year, the rejection of the New York Agreement and SegWit2X, and Gemini’s clueless marketing campaign that lobbied for more regulations.

Listen to Anthony Lusardi on iTunes and Spotify!

Support Bitcoin Takeover

If you’d like to help the Bitcoin Takeover project grow, please donate BTC to the following address: 39B4eMstLhwZoDMbBCaNCPA1ptL7VyCQq5

According to the rules of the first season of the podcast, 50% of all donations will go to the guests (in this case, Anthony Lusardi).

If you’d rather donate some of your dirty criminal fiat, use Patreon. For Lightning Network transactions, I have accounts on Tally Coin and Tippin. 

If you don’t want to donate, but need a new hardware wallet, a steel plate for your seed words, or Faraday bags for your electronics, then use my referral links for Trezor and Billfodl devices. I’ll get a small commission from your purchase and the money helps me pay for producing the content and keeping it online.

Full transcript

Vlad Costea (00:01):

Hello and welcome to the Bitcoin takeover. I’m Vlad. And today my guest is Anthony Lusardi, who is best known for his work at the ETC Cooperative, but at the same time, he’s also won fair yards and proponents of Bitcoin and somebody who really, really believes in immutability and technology behind sound money. So hello, Anthony.

Anthony Lusardi (00:25):

Hey bud. Thanks for having me.

Vlad Costea (00:27):

It’s good to have you, and I’m happy that I get to you. You’re not aware of it, but I’m happy that I get to have guests from all the corners of the world. And I get to ask them about the state of Bitcoin as a, of fixed change on the planet. I’ve had a guest from Portugal, I’ve had another one from United Kingdom and you’re on the East coast of the United States of America. Okay. So I guess the situation of Bitcoin as a currency is a lot better in New York and you actually have places to pay wedded and you have restaurants to pay bills and maybe hotels, which accept Bitcoin. What’s the situation like?

Anthony Lusardi (01:17):

Yeah. I’ve never actually transacted with Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency in person. I mean, I have used them when doing either what would it be like a transaction between two people. Like if I have a friend or something we might trade in Bitcoin bought an umbrella with Dodge fine now long ago. And yeah, but as far as actually spending it, I have seen a couple of places like bars and restaurants that accept the Klein. I have personally used one of those types of credit cards where you pay with Bitcoin and it automatically converts it to cash. So you can buy pretty much anything you want with Bitcoin, which I think is really cool. But yeah, I think still adoption isn’t really quite there as far as being able to transact in person. I think that’s going to improve over the next year or two with a lightning network. Once they really, you know, get some more usage, it can actually do larger, larger channels. Cause right now I think it’s limited to about $160 or so per child, the max reliably. But yeah, it’s definitely growing just nowhere near the point where I think I could actually use Bitcoin day to day yet, at least for what I use it for.

Vlad Costea (02:46):

So when was the first time you heard about Bitcoin and what was the main point that drew you into it? What made you say this is what I, what I like to work for? This is the of money and this is something which I like at least ideologically or practically,

Anthony Lusardi (03:05):

But I didn’t say any of that about the corn. The first time I heard about it, the first time I heard about Bitcoin was like 2013 that I heard about the market crash and I read a little bit about it. I was like, Oh, wow. That seems like a great idea. It’s too bad. It’s dead now. That was my first exposure to Bitcoin. And then I didn’t look at it on or anything really until 2014 when I realized that Bitcoin and these other cryptocurrencies were still around. And that’s kind of what I got into understanding Bitcoin and what it gives you and the importance of it beyond just the ability to, you know, go and make a quick buck, which at first, when I first started in 2014, all I thought to myself as well, this stuff is still here. So maybe it’ll take off again like it did.

Anthony Lusardi (04:01):

And I want to go on a bunch of Dogecoin instead, I think. And yeah, I kind of learned, I learned a lot there. I, you know, learned that fr I was just trading with stuff that I didn’t understand. I was getting involved with buying these cryptocurrencies for just the wrong reasons. And I don’t think I actually learned the importance of Bitcoin or that any of this to really dawned on me until 2015. I think it was when I first really started to take this stuff more seriously. And even then I was still more a theory them because they were doing new, interesting things. It wasn’t until 2016 or so that I really started to truly appreciate the tech and the approach and ideology that the Bitcoin community and the big fine network sort of has intrinsically to itself.

Vlad Costea (05:00):

Was there any point when you automatically associate at Bitcoin with the silk road and you’re taught it’s just money for people who want to buy drugs?

Anthony Lusardi (05:11):

No. I never really thought that I did. It was the silk road was one of Bitcoin’s earliest and largest use cases. That’s not the case anymore, but definitely many, many years ago you know, 2013, 2014, it was definitely where the majority of economic activity around Bitcoin seems to be happening.

Vlad Costea (05:40):

Okay. I was about to ask you about bit license and the fact that in the state of New York, you actually have fewer use cases and it’s actually much more difficult to use Bitcoin in business than in every other state around the U S and I guess here in Europe, it’s much different since the adoption level is much lower and yet sororities don’t really care about regulating Bitcoin or create a single legislative framework for transactions. So how, I guess you’ve traveled around the United States and you’ve seen different approaches to how Bitcoin is used. And do you think it’s stricter and the New York area,

Anthony Lusardi (06:26):

It is for New York residents. It’s definitely harder to get on exchanges. You can only set it on bonds and you don’t get access to a lot of other financial products that come along with that because in New York, any licensed exchange is pretty much just an order book with buys and sells. In general though. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t like the license. I think it really restricts the cryptocurrency market in general. It restricts people from, you know, kind of being able to invest in and use things that they should have access to, you know, everybody should be able to do so. I think one of the reasons why we see Bitcoin in general become so popular amongst a lot of people in terms of buying and selling. Isn’t so much the tech, it’s the fact that if you want access to any sort of good investment with a high rate of return, and of course, high risk too, you need to be an accredited investor. And so you don’t get access to things where you can actually put in a dollar and make a hundred dollars very, very often. I think a lot of people first, when coming to Bitcoin, they kind of look at it like that, where here’s finally this thing where I can invest like the big boys step. But yeah, it’s really, I don’t, I don’t like the license and it sucks that it’s now being exported to other States too, in the us.

Vlad Costea (08:07):

I remember I spoke to Alex Mashinsky, who is one of the VIP innovators. And he also has this venture, which is called Celsius network, which is somewhat of a bank in the crypto sphere. And he said during a conference that for the first time in history, Bitcoin has given regular people the opportunity to invest and make money before the one percenters did. So in this sense, it was something which came from below, from maybe computer scientists and libertarians who are interested in this idea of digital sound money. And it was much later when the bankers realized just what potential this has. And I guess even right now, when we speak, there’s a very limited amounts of institutional money, which is going to get ordered in at least then 2019. Maybe it will get better in time.

Anthony Lusardi (09:12):

Yeah. I don’t know the numbers exactly, but I’ve definitely seen numbers where it seems like institutional investment trends up every year, but yeah, it’s just a way to get access to an investment. I guess they would call it a vehicle that normally regular people wouldn’t have access to. I think you actually, you see that now too, where like what’s that exchange Gemini is now advertising that crypto needs rules and this type of thing, and it’s the right regulatory framework. And I agree regulations are good in some ways because they can protect people. Like it would be great if every exchange could be completely 100% insured and regulated to make sure that they’re not doing fishy things like wash trading, but on the other end the other thing that comes with regulations is the fact that any regular person tends to get pushed out in time.

Anthony Lusardi (10:12):

So we’ll have this glorious period where everybody’s free to do what they want with their money and accept their own responsibility and take their own risks for their own rewards. And yeah, I think regulation eventually is gonna sort of crush that, but at the end of it, we’ll still have a decentralized, highly distributed permissionless money that anybody could use anywhere across the world without fear of censorship or being taken away from you or, you know, state senior HB printing more money to finance for us. So Bitcoin’s still gives us a lot, even if we ended up with those crap regulations, eventually

Vlad Costea (10:56):

Another event or treaty, which I associate with the New York is the New York agreement, which took place in 2017. And I think ultimately it was a big compromise between the different scaling ideas that people had at the time. And it was mainly pragmatic people who didn’t care much about, I mean, they found the middle ground between technology and scalability, and they had this view, which was in the middle between minors and regular users and developers, even though it wasn’t as bad as Bitcoin cash is right now, I guess it’s still had its community. So what is your view regarding to the New York agreement? And is there any thing that you found out just by being there? Was there talk on the streets about it?

Anthony Lusardi (11:57):

Now there was only talk on Twitter. So the New York agreement at first back in like 2016 even was, it was near evergreen was 2017. So yeah, when I first saw it, I saw it that it was generally a good idea. I’ve obviously since then rethought my position quite a lot, and I’m glad that it didn’t go through, but it seemed a way to reconcile kind of tech and politics. There were a good amounts of people who you would potentially lose if it didn’t go through and, you know, you’re just fracturing the community longterm. I think it’s actually been very good for Bitcoin because they’re moved a lot of rather nefarious people from Bitcoin. You know, we had the recent Bcash Wars and that was pretty ridiculous to see how these this part, this particular group of people decided to go about their business.

Anthony Lusardi (13:14):

And, but yeah, in general, I don’t know, I, the SegWit2X was a good idea on paper, but it’s not a very good idea in actuality because not only does a, not only was SegWit2X not needed because SegWit itself already provided nearly double the transaction capacity as pre segue. It also wasn’t needed because, and it should have been resisted because it was a consensus change to the way that Bitcoin works. And any consensus change really needs to be thought through incredibly seriously take a very long time to do. And in general, probably shouldn’t be done as long as the network is operating fine. And for Bitcoin, the network’s been operating quite, quite well for its entire 10 years, except for a few days to maybe a couple of months in late 20 in late 2017 where the transaction fees went up a bit. Yeah,

Vlad Costea (14:30):

Yeah. I can think about, I mean, the idea of two megabyte blocks is not that bad, but it was about the mean of achieving two megabyte blocks, which involved a hard fork. And I guess the most difficult issue about it is not per se to have blocks, which are twice as big because you’ll have them with segway. You have to megabyte blocks sometimes due to the elimination of the block size and it’s replaced with the idea of block weight, but biggest problem was that it created a precedent and which they would hard for the consensus and once they have done it, it could be done once again, might maybe every year in the future.

Anthony Lusardi (15:16):

Yeah. Make larger and larger blocks. And you know, of course, you know, block propagation times and all that also you know, just validation times, those all increase to with two megabyte blocks, whereas seq would actually made processing transactions far more efficient. But yeah, and I think in general, it really, if you have an easy, hard fork, it just shows that you’re not working as centralized. That’s quite frankly, the crux of the issue Bitcoin is very decentralized. And so you were not going to ever get an easy or simple, hard for the only hard fork you are really going to get was a network participants splitting off. And I mean, under most cases, there probably are cases where you can have eventually got a hard fork, but in general, that issue, that coordination issue is actually, I would argue a very good thing because it means that yeah, nobody was able to change the Bitcoin network. They even wrote code to change it and it wasn’t able to be deployed and take over Bitcoin. So I think that’s really, really great. And it was a really great precedent to be set up when it was because like you said, otherwise if you achieve at once, then you can achieve it much more easily the next time. And the time after that,

Vlad Costea (16:45):

I guess it was also the first time when we saw that actually notes are much more important than minors. And there was this whole narrative which came from minors and their financial interests, which said that there is no reason actually, to run your own node, whereas the developers and the coders and those who got into Bitcoin early on and were for the idea of decentralization, as opposed to making a quick buck, they would actually promote every day, the idea that you should run your own node and validate your own transactions. And in the whole process, it’s not just about the transactions, which you validate, but it’s also about having a vote in the network and being able as a participants to say that you want to maintain the current consensus as opposed to any kind of social attack, which can be deployed on the network. And in this perspective, I guess it was fascinating. And it was in viewing to see how the community decided stick together and not do the SegWit two X fork.

Anthony Lusardi (17:55):

Yeah, exactly.

Vlad Costea (17:57):

Anyway, they already had Bitcoin cash to switch to so they could just join that side and say, okay, this pretty much achieves the same goal. It’s a hard fork. It has eight times the block size, which I guess with SegWit2X, you could also achieve eight megabyte blocks if I’m not mistaken or at least four. But anyway,

Anthony Lusardi (18:23):

Yup. Equivalent of about a four megabyte pre-SegWit block.

Vlad Costea (18:27):

It’s not like in Bitcoin cash. We’ve never seen such a demand for block space that we saw blocks fil. And I know that they have the six months upgrade system in West. They hard fork in order to increase the block size, but it’s pretty ridiculous. And as far as I can understand, it is just a way of further centralizing the network and putting the power in the hands of dos who can actually run nodes.

Anthony Lusardi (19:01):

Yeah, exactly.

Vlad Costea (19:04):

In the end, I guess it’s not a popular opinion, but Ethereum seems to have a similar case. And on one hand you have people who argued that there are many more independent nodes being run non deuterium network than on the Bitcoin one. But on the other hand, I saw people like Jameson Lopp, who tried to run their node on the Ethereum network, like a full node. And they had a top notch configuration, which you can build from parts that you can find in regular hardware shops. And he was unable to synchronize. It went up to 90% or something, but it wasn’t possible for him to carry on. And he came to the conclusion that the only way to achieve this apparently difficult task is to have an industrial machine, which has this specific role of running a node and validating every transaction on blockchain. And I guess it’s different with it’s your own classic, right?

Anthony Lusardi (20:09):

Sort of so long actually date succeed in sicking, the Ethereum chain after about four or so days, it’d be five on a very beefy computer, like you said, in general, that was going to sink. I think some of the client software on a theory on men, etc, to have Italy isn’t quite created sinking yet particularly go Ethereum. Isn’t that good parody is way, way better. And I think when I’m not sure, but

Anthony Lusardi (20:48):

I think when Lopp actually managed to sync Ethereum and he used Parity, which has, is much, much more efficient and just simply better at actually following through and syncing all that client’s software is definitely improving over time. So yeah, hopefully those things where the sinking just halts become improved, but it wasn’t that it is taking way too long though. I would say to sync the Ethereum base chains. And a lot of that has to do with how high gas usage has been made. And that’s definitely an issue for any Ethereum base chain, including etc. That we need to really think about in the future.

Vlad Costea (21:35):

I think in terms of scalability, I’ve seen today, one of those crypto Twitter memes, which presented the whole idea of increasing the block size as stacking together 56 K madams, and saying that this is the top technology that we have, and we should have as many as we want, if we want to achieve a faster speed. Whereas the other way of scaling is to create a better technology and maybe improve on optic fiber and the whole cable system so that you improve on the device itself instead of buying many devices and stacking them.

Anthony Lusardi (22:18):

Yeah, exactly.

Vlad Costea (22:21):

I guess this is a good metaphor.

Anthony Lusardi (22:24):

It is. It’s kind of funny how that is.

Vlad Costea (22:28):

And in that sense, I’m happy that we got to this point in Bitcoin development where they have a precedent for soft forking. They saw that at works with SegWit, and now they have ideas such as snore and maybe confidential transactions in order to improve the fungibility and reduce the transaction size. In the case of snore, it’s all about making the blocks that we have more efficient and making every transaction take up of lesser or a smaller amount of space, which is really great. If you ask me, and then you have people like, look dash who talk about decreasing the block size to 600 kilobytes, some of that new nodes can synchronize faster.

Anthony Lusardi (23:22):

Yeah. I think he actually wants like 300, 350 kilobytes and these kind of right over time, that’s not going to work. It’s just going to, it’s going to make everything far, far more difficult to sync. No Bitcoin don’t seem pretty fast already on a beefy hardware set up. You could sync it in like five or six hours,

Anthony Lusardi (23:46):

Which is pretty incredible that it’s been running for 10 years and has very high usage and is able to send like that. I think it’s something every blockchain should strive to get as close to as possible with regards to sick times.

Vlad Costea (24:01):

Yeah. But if you use a raspberry PI, I think it takes about a day or more than that.

Anthony Lusardi (24:09):

Oh yeah. Probably. yeah. That’s a Raspberry Pi.

Vlad Costea (24:17):

I don’t think at least the regular user, I don’t think anyone will buy a high end machine just to run a node. It defeats the purpose. I guess you just want something small, something efficient, which doesn’t take up much space. Doesn’t make much noise and doesn’t consume too much electricity and you just keep it in a corner of your room and forget about it.

Anthony Lusardi (24:43):

Yeah, absolutely.

Vlad Costea (24:45):

That’s why, I guess it’s much more convenient for somebody like me to buy one of those Casa nodes than to actually run a full node on my desktop computer, because I know I use it for different applications throughout the day and I wouldn’t want part of the Ram memory and the processing power to be used at the same time. I want full capacity on my desktop. So I’d rather use a different device for this purpose.

Anthony Lusardi (25:16):

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, I don’t normally run a note on my work or personal computers either normally run them on servers or not a raspberry PI or a Casa node yet though those constant notes are expensive. I’m being honest. So waiting until a cheaper version comes out.

Vlad Costea (25:40):

Yeah, they are. And I spoke to Alena Vranova from Casa, I think two weeks ago. And she told me that there is no chance that we’ll see a cheaper version because it’s just like in the case of an iPhone, you don’t really pay for the hardware. You pay much more for the software and all the developments and the supports that’s going to be put into the product after you purchase it. She actually said that they plan to support the device for multiple years. And they’re going to have employees to answer phone calls and offer you complete support, which I guess to people like us who are enthusiastic, it’s not quite something that we need, but once they get to a larger, I don’t know, once they get maybe shopping models, which purchase nodes, so that day they can take lightning payments, then they’re going to need support desks. Yeah, absolutely.

Anthony Lusardi (26:44):

I guess it’s just, it’s not a, it’s not a product really designed for it’s as officer and people are use cases and I guess I just don’t overlap with them.

Vlad Costea (26:57):

So when you think of Bitcoin, do you automatically associated with gold or do you see something more in that

Anthony Lusardi (27:07):

Is, is Bitcoin being digital gold? Not enough. I think that’s a good, amazing, incredible use case. But yeah, Bitcoin is first and foremost, a very digital replacement for gold or for just money or value storage in general. It’s also the world’s most decentralized timestamp server, you know, it’s the so really interesting thing. It’s definitely not one thing, but I mean, Bitcoin main use case I think is more than enough. I don’t think Bitcoin itself needs other things tacked onto it. I think if you want to do that, then you go and do that with all declines or some other thing. I actually don’t even agree with in general with forking cryptocurrencies and a contentious white. So contentious hard forks I disagree with in general, because you should just start a new network. You should start with your own Genesis block. You keep all the same rules. You keep all the same issuance, but you know, taking a different blockchain and just kind of copying the account balances and watching it. I just really, really disagree with in general, do you believe that

Vlad Costea (28:40):

Maybe the greater adoption of the lightning network will lead to this scenario where lots of altcoins just become redundant and people stopped buying them and they just die?

Anthony Lusardi (28:54):

I, yeah, I think a lot of altcoins will fade out. I don’t think all of them well I’m obviously bias but even ignoring my biases, I don’t and not saying for any specific altcoin, but in general, I would say that people are really bad at settling on just one thing. We don’t seem to have just one of any type of thing. So the idea that we would settle on just one global money is also very unlikely that’s even for, you know, for example, privacy coins the level of privacy that some privacy points can give you. Bitcoin’s probably never going to be able to achieve without either using layer two networks or without a hard for, and the fact that there’s other cryptocurrencies that give you that and they can do it on layer one with the maximum amounts of decentralization without having to resort to layer two, I think is really interesting and important and probably a particular use case that people are gonna want.

Anthony Lusardi (30:12):

Same thing with having digitized types of smart contracts between people. You know, you can do that on layer two, but then you still rely on the layer, two routes. You haven’t removed all the trust, the same way you would on a layer, one blockchain. And I think that’s another area where there’s going to be use cases and things sticking around because of that, because they do other things. I think it’s really cool how much potential decentralization and permissionlessness that proof of work in general is getting us I think Bitcoin is such an excellent and probably the best example of that, but I still think there’s a lot of room for others.

Vlad Costea (30:59):

I’ve heard. What I think is a very interesting point of view in regards to altcoins, which comes from Udi Wertheimer, who was a developer. And he told me that even though the lightning network will someday reach this level of adoption, which is unprecedented and impossible to compete with altcoins will always find a way to reinvent themselves and say that they provide something unique difference or just the opportunity to go 1000 decks in a couple of years.

Anthony Lusardi (31:41):

Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d agree with that. I don’t think altcoins’, sole reasons for existence are to promise something better where we’re generally trying to promise the same thing that we’re trying to pro give, give the same type of decentralization to other things, and you’re not going to ever get that on lightning network. That’s just not the way that it’s going to work. Even lightning network itself, even though you’ll be able to make confidential transactions and potentially even choose your own routes through the network. You’re still not going to get that type of decentralization where there’s no set of parties or there’s no, I guess, I don’t know. It’s just layer is never going to be as decentralized as layer one and that’s the way it is.

Vlad Costea (32:40):

But do you ever recommend that there will come a moment when maybe that Ethereum classic will join the lightning network and we’ll be able to do atomic swaps and maybe make smart contracts on the lightning network, which gets settled on the main chain?

Anthony Lusardi (33:01):

Yeah, maybe atomic swaps and that type of thing are kind of hard to do cross chain they’re already hard to do. It’s already kind of hard to do on a single chain, but yeah, I could, I could see it.

Vlad Costea (33:20):

I know that up to this point, maybe the vision for Ethereum classic is to scale to sidechains and have as many applications that are deployed on specific side chain switch, fulfilled the requirements. And do you think that it will be as successful as we see that it is with Bitcoin right now with what’s it called? Blockstream is what’s the name of Blockstream site chain? I forgot. Well that quit. Yeah.

Anthony Lusardi (34:01):

Remains to be seen. We’re still such chains are still definitely being built, but are nowhere near production ready yet and yeah, we’ll hopefully see more of them. Obviously there’s a lot of benefits to layer two. I just don’t think layer two provides every single benefit under the sun. If it, if it did, then you wouldn’t need big wine and you clearly need big hearts.

Vlad Costea (34:31):

Right. Because I remember there was this discussion that you can actually build a Turing complete site chain on top of Bitcoin, even though I’m not sure how it works with the final settlement. And if it can have all the functions of material, maybe that someday that will be possible, but I’m not sure if it will have all the features.

Anthony Lusardi (34:56):

Yeah. I don’t think it’ll work the same way. The final terms of the settlement would have to be agreed upon on layer two before getting to layer one. Whereas with smart contract platforms, the file settlements can actually happen on layer one itself, you know, the final logic around it can happen on there.

Vlad Costea (35:24):

I think I’ve heard this argument from Donald McIntyre who also works or used to work for Ethereum classic. He once said that in every venture and then every business or industry you have at least two or three or four different alternatives to the main one, just in case one fails or has its limitations or it gets overcrowded. And that’s one of the reasons why he thinks that proof of work will have three or four blockchains to function simultaneously.

Anthony Lusardi (36:04):

Yeah. Yeah. I think proof of work in general is probably going to have now I think cryptocurrencies are going to settle on three or four cryptocurrencies. I think whether or not they’re crucial work is going to depend on how and how we can all properly communicate the importance of proof of work as a means towards decentralization.

Vlad Costea (36:32):

Right. But at this point, it’s very interesting to see the dynamics of the market and how sometimes you have this, these ideas for Bitcoin side chains, which other people turn into altcoins, which have the rise and then you see them fall all of a sudden, but the idea is still there. And maybe someday we’ll see something like Mimble Wimble, or advanced confidential transactions and other innovations which have been made in the space being deployed on Bitcoin side chains.

Anthony Lusardi (37:11):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope to see these things expand everywhere. I think just going back to the cryptocurrencies thing, I think the important thing to keep in mind is that when false equivalencies are made between all non Bitcoin and cryptos kind of weakens, the argument for POW and it makes this kind of space for the ripples of the world to, you know, move in. But yeah, I mean, remember when bowls in interesting tech, I don’t know if it’s beneficial on a side chain, because it seems to rely just on a lot of coin mixing or enjoying type operations. But yeah we’ll say,

Vlad Costea (38:10):

I guess Bitcoin, I mean, in terms of Bitcoin maximalism, it’s useful to keep Bitcoin as the main actor as the King of this kingdom of cryptos, but it’s also useful to at least take some lessons from the history and the experiences of every other altcoin out there as even though maybe that they will never reach the same scale of adoption and they will never achieve mainstream success. They still have history and you see how the community reacts and you see how different features get added and how the consensus works. I guess, from a development point of view, all of the altcoins which have been deployed and are Bitcoin hard forks can be lessons for the Bitcoin developers in terms of how to operate and what kind of mistakes they should avoid.

Anthony Lusardi (39:11):

Yeah, definitely. There’s definitely a lot of lessons to learn and, you know, as far as mainstream adoption goes, I think I think Bitcoin needs to kind of be careful because there’s a lot of coins that don’t share that type of ethos or that type of approach to running their network that have now, because we know about cryptocurrencies they’ve advanced far faster, they’ve grown at a much higher click than a Bitcoin currently is. And I think that that’s something that’s kind of overlooked, you know, Bitcoin had a substantial head start and my fear is that in 10, 15 years we see Bitcoin actually gets replaced by another cryptocurrency. That is a cryptocurrency in name only. And kind of just, you know, this was all for nothing. And a new generation will rediscover all the advantages of decentralization and, and proof of work in particular and how it helps achieve that. But yeah, that’s kind of a scenario that I don’t want to see happen. So I think it’s important for Bitcoin in general, to be aware that a lot of people are not going to care and that education of people is very vitally important to getting proof of work and Bitcoin in particular, to stay where it is which is in my opinion, absolutely necessary to the real future of this space. Otherwise it just becomes backwards.

Vlad Costea (41:01):

Sometimes I see Bitcoin as a one sin, less civilization chance to get away from money, which is owned by the government because otherwise it’s very hard for me to imagine how a new actor can step into the scene and benefit from the same kind of enthusiasm and actually grow in a decentralized way that is ethical as opposed to having pre mines and rewards for the founders and a centralization, which is granted by the existence of the founders themselves.

Anthony Lusardi (41:39):

Yeah, exactly. And yet a big one is that one in a million shot to actually have that otherwise it may just get replaced by things that aren’t anything like it, but yeah, I really, really, really, really hope it doesn’t. But the more like I look at it, it’s more, you even just see these stupid ad campaigns about how crypto needs rules, the more the more, I wonder if it’s gonna end up going that way. And hopefully Bitcoin can grow to a critical mass to where it’s used so much that this becomes impossible, but I don’t think we’re quite at that point yet

Vlad Costea (42:25):

About data from the Gemini exchange. I guess it made me lose some respect for the Winklevoss brothers. They got in at a point when maybe Bitcoin was not as popular and they saw the potential in it. And maybe that their trust in the cryptocurrency has given Bitcoin some more legitimacy in the eyes of some investors, but at the same time, they, I, I’ve never actually seen them defend the cypherpunk ethos. How would you pronounce it? Ethos of Bitcoin. I’ve never seen them stand for the ideals of Satoshi or Hal Finney to them. It’s just business. And I guess that’s something that should be worrisome and should be a big red flag for us, at least for those who use Gemini, which in itself is a KYC exchange.

Anthony Lusardi (43:28):

Yeah. It’s tough.

Vlad Costea (43:32):

I hope I don’t get sued for making these claims, but I don’t think there’s anything untrue and the statements that I’ve made.

Anthony Lusardi (43:41):

Yeah. yeah, I think it’s kind of, it’s silly to portray cryptocurrency like this and to say that, you know, we need these certain groups to bring rules in order to the situation like we’ve gotten along absolutely fine before this. So it’s just but that’s the type of thing that I see eventually happening is where we need to get to a critical mass first in order to have true decentralization and true usage of Bitcoin globally. But anyway, but I hate to cut this short, but I have to head out. So yeah,

Vlad Costea (44:29):

That’s fine. I’m really that you’re able to do this and maybe that some other time, maybe in another season of the Bitcoin taker, we can talk some more about the same topic Sydney. It was good to have you and thank you for listening,

Anthony Lusardi (44:50):

Right. Thanks for having me. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.