8:00

a telegram group and they

8:03

keep pushing. They were totally convinced that

8:05

there must be some way to activate,

8:07

to implement the ZKP verify in Bitcoin

8:09

script. And I thought actually it's

8:11

nuts, but I liked reading what

8:14

they were saying. And then

8:16

at some point, somebody

8:18

came into the group who talked

8:20

about optimistic verification, the

8:24

met proposal, maybe a third of that, probably

8:26

Ethereum people are not that familiar with its

8:28

Mercalize all the things it's called. And

8:33

when I dug more deeply into that, it

8:35

became apparent that something like that should be

8:37

possible in Bitcoin script as it

8:40

is right now. And

8:42

then I started playing around and then I

8:46

built like a first version that was very limited

8:48

and didn't really solve the problem. But

8:50

after a week or two, it just

8:52

suddenly became obvious how to do it. And

8:55

then Super Testnet started

8:57

building prototypes and he

8:59

actually started telling everyone about it and everybody

9:02

got excited. So I just wrote very quickly

9:04

a white paper and pumped it out and

9:06

yeah, suddenly, but VM was a thing. Where

9:09

would you say you get your like

9:12

engineering chops from were you a cryptographer

9:14

by trade before discovering crypto or did

9:16

you learn cryptography through Bitcoin? Like where are

9:19

some of your like in technical competency come

9:21

from? Yeah, I

9:23

studied computer science. I

9:25

was always very interested in math as well, but

9:28

like I started out more like

9:31

building apps, web

9:33

apps and more like

9:36

on the user interface side of things. I also

9:38

like design a lot. And

9:40

when I started to work on Bitcoin, it

9:43

became obvious that it doesn't really scale.

9:46

It doesn't really work as money because

9:48

it's just too expensive and too clunky.

9:52

The more I tried to solve

9:54

that, the more I had to

9:57

think about cryptography and then I

9:59

really. with

18:00

that. I think it would be an absolute failure. If

18:02

it would be clear that Bitcoin is just an asset,

18:04

I would quit today. I think that's

18:06

totally not inspiring to work on. I

18:09

think we need better money and that's

18:13

why I'm in it. My

18:18

personal perspective is that

18:20

I don't want to convince

18:23

them at all. That's why I built

18:25

BitVm. It's permissionless. I can't just

18:28

build on Bitcoin. I don't have to ask

18:30

anyone for permission. I

18:32

could say I can like it or he can dislike it,

18:34

but it doesn't really matter at all. If

18:37

it catches on, it catches on and he cannot

18:39

stop it. I

18:42

think that's fine. I

18:44

wonder why people like Safedeen Amoose,

18:47

the author of the Bitcoin Center, why

18:49

he's talking about these

18:52

things because his

18:54

book sounds more like as if he would want us

18:56

to use hard money

18:59

and not just Bitcoin

19:01

as an asset. It

19:03

doesn't really make sense to me that he's having

19:05

this position. As

19:08

I said, it doesn't really matter at the end

19:10

because it's a permissionless system and

19:13

we can build on it. What

19:16

we're doing with BitVm shows that there are

19:19

ways to do it without

19:21

asking others or without finding consensus

19:24

among the entire community. It's a good explanation,

19:27

good way to delineate the camps. Those that

19:29

believe that Bitcoin should just be an

19:31

asset or that's what they're most interested in,

19:33

those that believe it should be an asset

19:36

and a currency, I think you fall into

19:38

that camp. There was another camp that felt

19:41

that way too back in 2017 and they

19:43

forked off and they did the Bitcoin Cash

19:45

type thing. It was a departure in terms

19:48

of how they thought about Bitcoin the asset,

19:50

but also their philosophy for how to actually

19:52

scale this. I'm guessing you're

19:54

not in the big block philosophy because

19:56

you've stayed with Bitcoin and you're trying

19:59

to scale the net. network as is

20:01

with these four megabyte blocks and

20:04

do it via ZK proofs. But

20:06

talk about that. Why didn't

20:08

you go fork off and join

20:10

the Bitcoin Cash crew who is

20:12

also talking about Bitcoin should be

20:15

currency, a means of payment

20:17

and not just an asset. Why have you stayed

20:20

with Bitcoin up until this point in time? Well,

20:24

I think there's only one Bitcoin. And

20:28

I'm not that set on the

20:31

block size as it is right now. I

20:34

would be open to discuss block

20:36

size increases. I

20:39

totally see the counter arguments. I

20:42

totally think that most

20:44

people should be able to run

20:46

full nodes and

20:48

sink within a reasonable amount of time.

20:51

And I think that is a very fundamental

20:53

property of Bitcoin and we should not relax

20:55

that. We should not harm that. But

20:58

on the other hand, computers

21:00

are improving a lot. Internet

21:03

connectivity is improving drastically.

21:05

And over time, we can

21:08

definitely increase the block size safely, I think.

21:11

If we can do it right now, if we

21:13

should do it in a couple of years,

21:15

that's open for debate. But in general,

21:17

I don't think I don't think it's like

21:20

a bad idea in general. I think it

21:23

is definitely worth talking about that.

21:26

And even back then, people like Adam Beck

21:28

said that it

21:30

makes sense to like double the block size

21:33

in, I don't know, five year

21:35

intervals or something like that. And

21:38

I don't like I think there is kind of

21:40

like a trauma trauma in the Bitcoin

21:43

community because of that block size wars

21:46

that it became like kind of a stigma to

21:48

even talk about it and to

21:51

mention it at all. And I

21:55

kind of understand where this is coming from,

21:57

but I feel like the

22:01

new generation of Bitcoin developers like

22:04

me or the people that I

22:06

hang out with, they are way more

22:09

open to these ideas. And I

22:11

think it would be fine to increase the block

22:13

size over time. I'd

22:16

like to hop back into the

22:18

BitVM conversation. When

22:20

you were explaining it in your background and the progress that

22:22

you've made so far, there was a

22:24

Eureka moment of sorts, I think, with

22:27

the optimistic proving. Can

22:31

we walk us through that moment? What was

22:33

that Eureka moment? Keeping in mind that Ryan

22:36

and I and our audience aren't that technical

22:38

and the places that we are technical are

22:40

usually in the Ethereum context. So explaining like

22:42

we're dumb, can you walk

22:44

us through the Eureka moment of the BitVM that you

22:47

had? Yeah, I think the Eureka

22:49

moment was when I

22:51

realized that you can introduce

22:53

stateful scripts by

22:55

using lamppot signatures. In

22:59

Ethereum, statefulness is like

23:01

totally baked into the system. It's

23:03

like the most normal thing to

23:05

have like a contract that sets

23:07

some variable to some value and

23:10

then like the next person who calls

23:12

the contract has the same value for

23:14

that variable. That

23:16

is something very basic

23:19

that is totally fundamental

23:21

to any advanced smart

23:23

contracting language and

23:26

that is the thing that just

23:28

was non-existent in Bitcoin. In Bitcoin,

23:31

every script is completely stateless and

23:34

the execution of one script is completely independent

23:36

of the execution of another script that is

23:38

following. That

23:41

was kind of like the fundamental hurdle that

23:43

we had to overcome. Yeah,

23:47

the key idea was that we can use

23:49

lamppot signatures to do that and lamppot signatures

23:51

is a very simple signature scheme that is

23:54

just based on hash functions and we do

23:56

have hash functions in Bitcoin script. if

42:00

Bob didn't do a valid pack out or if the

42:02

operator didn't send the money to Bob, then

42:06

anyone can challenge the operator. If

42:09

he's not challenged, then after two weeks, he can

42:11

just take the money off the bridge. If

42:14

he is challenged, then he

42:17

has to go down the unhappy path,

42:19

which means he has to make a

42:21

commitment to his trace, his

42:24

trace of the computation of the

42:26

verification of his snark. He essentially

42:29

runs, he verifies his

42:32

own snark and then gives us a

42:34

recipe and says, those are the intermediate

42:36

results that I

42:38

came to. If

42:41

any of these intermediate results is incorrect, then

42:43

you can challenge that particular step. You

42:46

can just execute the correct script, which

42:48

is a huge script. It's like a

42:50

slice of the computation. You can just

42:52

execute it and show what is the

42:54

correct result and show that the correct

42:56

result is not the same as what

42:58

the operator claimed. And that disproves

43:00

the operator and then you can just slash

43:02

them and take the deposit, the

43:05

collateral, sorry. And that's

43:08

essentially how the bridge works. New

43:10

projects are coming online to the Mantle Layer

43:13

2 every single week. Why is this happening?

43:15

Maybe it's because Mantle has been on the

43:17

frontier of Layer 2 design architecture since it

43:19

first started building Mantle DA powered by technology

43:21

from Eigen DA. Maybe it's because users are

43:23

coming on to the Mantle Layer 2 to

43:26

capture some of the highest yields available in

43:28

DeFi and to automatically receive the points and

43:30

tokens being accrued by the $3 billion dollar

43:32

Mantle Treasury in the Mantle reward station. Maybe

43:34

it's because the Mantle team is one of

43:37

the most helpful teams to build with, giving

43:39

you grants, liquidity support and venture partners to

43:41

help bootstrap your Mantle application. Maybe it's all

43:43

of these reasons all put together. So if

43:45

you're a dev and you want to build

43:47

on one of the best foundations in crypto

43:49

or you're a user looking to claim some

43:51

ownership on Mantle's DeFi apps, click the link

43:53

in the show notes to get started with

43:55

Mantle. Are you worried about the security of

43:57

your cross-chain transactions? Cross-chains with confidence Celo

46:00

forum to shape the future of Ethereum. Follow

46:02

at Celo on Twitter and explore the ecosystem

46:04

built for the real world on celo.org/quest. So

46:06

one nuance I want to get into is

46:08

the idea that if I'm Bob on the

46:10

layer two, and I just want to exit

46:13

the system, and I

46:15

send I make a transaction to

46:17

withdraw to exit, I'm actually not

46:19

getting my bitcoins, I'm getting

46:21

somebody else's bitcoins, and then my bitcoins are

46:23

going to be paid back to the person

46:25

who gave me their bitcoins. And

46:28

so this puts up this

46:31

makes a bridge, capital inefficient, because

46:33

some operator has to take up

46:35

two weeks of lockup cost, in

46:38

order of opportunity costs in order to actually

46:40

facilitate the exit. We were doing a podcast

46:42

with Eric Wall. And he was

46:44

talking about some of the potential edge cases that

46:47

this might create just because there

46:49

might not just be enough capital to do a mass

46:53

withdrawal. I'm totally I'm unsure

46:55

about how to articulate the scenario

46:57

that I remember Eric Wall was talking about it,

47:00

but he was alluding to the

47:02

fact that this might create an edge scenario in

47:04

which like, there's a lot of people asking for

47:06

money and there's not enough money in the bridge.

47:08

Maybe you can articulate that edge scenario and whatever

47:11

thoughts you have. Well,

47:14

asked him on Twitter, and he

47:16

publicly admitted that his attack like

47:18

they wrote this new nice article

47:22

about bit VM being fundamentally broken

47:24

or something and asked

47:27

him and he had to admit that it

47:29

doesn't actually apply to our model. It applies

47:31

to a different model that somebody else is

47:33

building. To

47:39

be honest, I cannot take Eric very seriously. He's not

47:41

a builder.

47:46

I don't know if he has ever built

47:48

anything. And I think it's always easy to

47:50

shit on people's things. And there's a lot

47:53

of politics involved. There's a lot of things

47:55

with that soft work that he wants to push through. And it's

50:00

that the BitVM designed kind

50:02

of like, almost like collapses down to

50:04

sort of a like a multi-sig. You

50:06

almost have to go through this like

50:08

really messy bankruptcy type process in a

50:10

mass exit type scenario. And Robin, you're

50:12

saying that's actually not true. That so

50:15

we can exit this. It's not all that

50:17

different from maybe an optimistic roll

50:20

up on Ethereum in those ways. Maybe

50:22

just like put a bookend on that

50:25

critique and why you

50:27

don't think it applies. He

50:30

thinks it doesn't apply. Like I asked him

50:32

and he admitted that it doesn't

50:34

apply to our protocol. And I'm

50:37

happy if he shows us a flaw in

50:39

our protocol. I also

50:41

discussed it with lots of researchers and

50:44

because like he created lots

50:46

of waves like in that week, everybody asked me

50:48

about it. And yeah,

50:51

but it's very hard for me to argue

50:53

against it because usually

50:56

when you criticize other

50:58

people's constructions, then you

51:01

state how their constructions work. And then

51:03

you point out particular flaws, but he

51:05

didn't do that. He worked

51:08

on some hypothetical

51:10

thing that is totally unrelated to

51:13

what we are building. And

51:17

then it's very hard to argue

51:19

against it when he is confusing terms that much.

51:22

I think it's just not honest to call it BitVM

51:24

what he was criticizing there because that is not what

51:27

we are working on. So not at

51:29

all concerned by that critique. Well,

51:32

I mean, there is that capital constraint that

51:35

is real, but it's not as catastrophic

51:37

as they made it because they claimed

51:39

stuff like that. All

51:41

the operators have to front as much capital

51:43

as the total value locked, which is totally

51:45

not true. As I

51:47

just explained, the

51:50

operator has to front as much capital

51:53

as a single party needs for like

51:55

a single unit. Let's say,

51:58

I don't know, a thousand BTC is locked.

52:00

and 10 BTC is the unit, then

52:02

the operator has to front 10 BTC

52:05

for two weeks. And if

52:07

all people want to exit at once, which

52:09

is also a strange assumption in my eyes,

52:11

because depending on what you want to use

52:14

it for, if you want to use it

52:16

for ZK coins, there is no centralized operator

52:18

or something, sorry, no centralized sequencer. It

52:21

is not a realistic scenario to say that

52:23

there would be a mass exit or so,

52:26

just like in lightning, nobody's talking about mass

52:28

exits, because why should everybody exit lightning at

52:30

the same time? There is no reason to

52:32

do that, and that's why nobody's concerned about

52:34

this scenario. And even in

52:37

lightning, where there is no

52:39

capital question at all in that regard, it

52:42

would be a huge issue if everybody would exit at

52:44

once, of course, because the chain

52:46

space is limited, but that's a

52:48

totally different discussion. A

52:51

different critique that I think still

52:53

holds is the actual

52:55

incentives to front that capital, the

52:58

business model of being a bridge operator.

53:01

Two weeks of holding X number

53:04

of Bitcoins, generally that comes with

53:06

opportunity cost. What

53:08

are the incentives of being a bridge operator, and what kind

53:10

of earnings potential might they get? Do they get to charge

53:13

a fee for the service? Like what's the deal here? You

53:16

simply pay a fee. Bob doesn't

53:18

get actually 10 BTC, he would get,

53:20

I don't know, 9.5 BTC or something.

53:24

Is that determined by the market? Yeah,

53:26

it's just determined by the market. You make an offer to the

53:30

operator. Also, if actually all people wanted to

53:32

exit at once, which as I said, won't

53:35

happen, I don't see a reason for that, then

53:38

you can still incentivize the operator

53:41

to prioritize you by just paying a

53:43

higher fee. And

53:45

there's many, many operators, and so they're competing on fees.

53:48

Yeah, exactly, they're competing on fees. And

53:51

also, the fees are, if

53:54

actually all people wanted to exit at once,

53:56

then it would be kind of natural for

53:58

them to expect to pay higher fees. And

54:00

even if there would be a liquidity issue,

54:03

then the high fees

54:05

would be quite a convincing

54:07

argument for other

54:09

people who have liquidity to give it to the

54:12

operators because the operators would immediately make a profit

54:14

from it. So it's like a perfect

54:17

business model. You just give

54:19

me the capital for two weeks and you

54:21

will get more money back.

54:23

So these fees are

54:27

essentially the solution even if there would

54:29

be that mass exit case,

54:31

which I think will not happen. So

54:33

Robin, what type of entities do you expect these operators

54:36

to be? Say like these 100 operators

54:38

or these kind of like some market

54:40

maker types, right? Are we looking at

54:43

like a jump capital or something like that? Is

54:47

that the type of entity or who will

54:50

they be? And I don't know if you even have kind of

54:52

like examples of who you expect to be one of

54:55

the 100. But yeah, what's just

54:57

sort of the profile of an operator? I

55:00

think very similar to the liquidity providers on Lightning.

55:03

It's essentially the same business. Got it. Okay,

55:06

cool. So there are a lot

55:08

of projects out there that are branded as

55:10

being a Bitcoin layer too. That's

55:13

kind of one of the Bitcoin Renaissance themes

55:15

that we've seen in the last year or so.

55:17

And there's a lot of skepticism about some of these

55:20

projects. There's also a lot of excitement out of these

55:22

projects. But one common theme is like all the projects

55:24

say like, oh, we're going to use the bit VM.

55:26

All of them. All of

55:28

them, yeah. Generally, what

55:30

do you think about this category? I

55:32

would imagine like that's actually kind of the point of

55:34

what you're trying to build. But

55:36

also some of these Bitcoin layer twos

55:38

are not real. Is the critique.

55:40

I'm wondering you just like high level thoughts about the whole

55:43

entire category of Bitcoin layer twos these days. I'm

55:46

not very proud of having created this

55:50

kind of layer twos.

55:55

If I compare it to Lightning, like there

55:58

are many points of critique of Lightning. I'm

56:01

not the biggest fan of Lightning. I

56:04

do think it is a great project,

56:06

but it's not really

56:09

solving the issue at hand. But

56:14

these other L2s, most

56:16

of them are very sketchy in my eyes.

56:20

In general, there's that thing in the

56:23

crypto industry that when

56:25

there is a hot topic, there's

56:28

hype. And when there is hype,

56:30

then there is easy money. People

56:32

want to invest. People think there

56:34

is that opportunity to make

56:37

a quick 100X or something. And

56:40

then there are always projects who

56:42

are exploiting that, who are

56:45

selling stupid ideas to

56:48

greedy investors. I

56:50

think that's what we are seeing there mostly. And

56:54

I want to talk about all of them. There

56:56

are a few exceptions who are doing great work

56:58

and who are contributing a lot to BitVM as

57:00

well. I don't want to

57:03

name names because I

57:05

did that in the past. And then

57:07

I heard they are selling tokens with

57:10

me endorsing them, allegedly,

57:12

which I don't like

57:18

tokens in general. I don't

57:20

like tokens without a clear business model. I think it's

57:23

totally fine if you sell tokens, if it makes sense.

57:26

If there is a clear business model behind it, then I

57:29

will not buy your token, but it's okay

57:32

to sell it. But if the token

57:34

is the only business model, then I think

57:36

it's pretty sketchy. And

57:38

we are seeing that a lot with BitV

57:41

ML 2s, and I don't

57:43

like them at all. I think it's

57:45

bad. I think it harms

57:47

the brand. We've

57:50

seen cycles like this play out before. People

57:52

love tokens in crypto. They love to play

57:54

with tokens. They love to speculate on tokens

57:56

optimistically. It's a casino. It

57:58

is a casino, right. optimistically, that

58:00

also does create meaningful projects. Like

58:02

this is the financing of what

58:05

hopefully could become meaningful Bitcoin layer

58:07

twos. Is this the path that you

58:09

see some of these Bitcoin layer two projects on is like, like,

58:12

once we get past the degenerate gambling phase

58:14

at the end of that tunnel, we'll end

58:16

up having some like functioning like quality Bitcoin

58:19

layer twos. Is it fair to call this

58:21

like just a deal with a devil or how do you think about

58:23

this? I

58:25

don't want to make any deals with the devil myself.

58:28

Like all these investors came to me at first and

58:30

I told them, go, please leave

58:32

me alone. But

58:40

yeah, I mean, I see your point, in

58:42

general, also, like as someone

58:44

who is active in that CK scene, I

58:48

see many of these CK companies who

58:50

are doing amazing research, they do have

58:52

tokens, and I don't think that tokens

58:54

make any sense at all. But

58:57

if they would have not that the

59:00

token, then they probably would not be

59:02

able to pay all these brilliant researchers.

59:04

And so it

59:07

is kind of like a double edged sword, like

59:09

on the one hand, I'm profiting from these

59:12

scams. And on the other hand, I

59:15

will not I don't want to participate in that myself.

59:19

But yeah, I think in the long run,

59:21

there will be Bitcoin L twos and probably

59:24

some of them will make a lot of money. And maybe

59:27

that justifies the hype or the

59:30

extreme interest of

59:32

these investors. Yeah, it's

59:34

always interesting. Like we had a Casey from Ordinals

59:36

and Rooms on the podcast, you know, like a

59:38

while ago, and he was basically saying, yeah, I

59:41

think a lot of the like the tokens, 99%

59:43

of the tokens, support in this thing

59:45

are just like dogshit. And he's still

59:47

building it, you know, still still kind of

59:49

a builder in the space. So I sort

59:51

of hear that sentiment from Bitcoin builders, like

59:54

quite a bit, they're not necessarily proud of

59:56

what is built on top of it, at

59:58

least in the early stages. But at

1:00:00

the same time, you guys are bit VM

1:00:02

is a permissionless protocol. So you don't

1:00:04

get to decide. It's like not on

1:00:06

you to decide what actually gets deployed

1:00:09

there. And so I mean, that's

1:00:11

an interesting, I guess, tension to have. But

1:00:13

let me ask this from the other

1:00:15

perspective, which is if if

1:00:19

this went perfectly and you had kind of

1:00:21

your vision of you're in it for the

1:00:23

money, scaling the money, let's say that right.

1:00:26

What would you love to see deployed on

1:00:28

top of bit VM? Does it look like

1:00:30

a ecosystem of roll ups kind of like

1:00:32

similar to aetherium? Is it

1:00:34

more along the lines of ZK coins? If

1:00:37

you were to just fast forward five years

1:00:39

from now in your perfect world, what would

1:00:41

you see on top of bit VM? How

1:00:43

would Bitcoin look? Yeah,

1:00:46

ideally, the chain would be full

1:00:48

of ZK coins transactions, which are

1:00:50

completely private and very compact. And

1:00:53

people could use Bitcoin as money again,

1:00:55

as it used to

1:00:58

be before the blocks before the

1:01:00

scaling wars. And

1:01:02

yeah, we

1:01:04

would have privacy and could use it very

1:01:07

well for money for

1:01:09

payments. And I think it

1:01:11

would enhance the Lightning Network a lot if we had

1:01:13

20 X more throughput

1:01:15

on the base layer. So that's opening

1:01:18

and closing channels would be quite cheap, like

1:01:20

in the order of sense. And

1:01:24

hopefully, it would also inspire people or like it would

1:01:26

convince people that it's a good idea to increase the

1:01:28

block size and then we would

1:01:30

be already quite close to scaling Bitcoin

1:01:34

as a global currency. Before the

1:01:36

block size is increased in a

1:01:38

world where bit VM is used

1:01:40

quite heavily and quite significantly, are

1:01:43

Bitcoin blocks just like are the

1:01:45

four megs full of kind of

1:01:47

like these proofs? How much will

1:01:50

this affect main net, do you

1:01:52

think? And what will the Bitcoin

1:01:54

fees be on main net as

1:01:56

a result of this? It's hard

1:01:58

to say. I

1:02:01

mean, they will always be married

1:02:03

to regular transactions. I think all

1:02:06

these institutions who are just

1:02:08

using Bitcoin as an asset, they

1:02:11

will want to do regular transactions

1:02:14

just because the

1:02:16

technology is much more hardened. The

1:02:20

ZK coins would be very novel. It will use

1:02:22

all kinds of novel proof systems,

1:02:24

which have like novel

1:02:27

implementations, novel assumptions that are not on the

1:02:29

base layer as well. I

1:02:33

think there will always be a market for regular transactions

1:02:35

as well, just because the

1:02:37

main system is just more solid, way

1:02:40

more solid. It

1:02:43

will take a while until ZK coins

1:02:45

will not be considered experimental anymore. Just

1:02:48

like lightning, in the beginning, everybody knew lightning was

1:02:51

like, they even called it the reckless version

1:02:53

of lightning. I

1:02:56

guess we will have a reckless version of ZK

1:02:58

coins first and maybe there will be

1:03:00

hiccups and maybe people will even lose some money.

1:03:03

But that's just the way these

1:03:05

protocols evolve, I think. Well,

1:03:07

this has been definitely one of the more

1:03:09

interesting eras in Bitcoin history over the last

1:03:12

18 months or so. It's just

1:03:14

very refreshing to see building come back to

1:03:16

the space and kick some of the laser-eyed

1:03:18

maxis out to the curb and

1:03:21

replace them with people actually developing and

1:03:23

creating value and growing the Bitcoin movement

1:03:25

that started in 2009. I'm

1:03:27

wondering, Robin, is there anything else that's

1:03:29

going on in Bitcoin outside of the bit VM

1:03:31

and the Bitcoin layer 2 space that you're paying

1:03:34

attention to and you're excited about? What

1:03:36

else should we investigate? Another

1:03:39

thing that I find cool

1:03:41

is I was

1:03:43

working with David Chie on his

1:03:46

group at Stanford on Bitcoin-backed

1:03:49

proof of stake, which is

1:03:51

essentially a way to

1:03:54

stake Bitcoins in the main chain such

1:03:56

that you can derive sidechain consensus from

1:03:59

these stakes. a

1:06:00

centralized party and they could just have keys

1:06:03

co-signing some sidegen similar to liquid

1:06:05

or something. I guess that would make

1:06:07

more sense from a technical perspective. But

1:06:11

I think the

1:06:13

most optimistic scenario would be definitely

1:06:15

that Bitcoin becomes the world leading

1:06:17

currency, will replace the dollar and

1:06:20

people will use Bitcoin as they

1:06:22

are using the dollar nowadays. That

1:06:25

would be my hope. And

1:06:28

hopefully, the

1:06:31

biggest hope I have or like the what

1:06:33

I'm dreaming of is that Bitcoin will be able

1:06:35

to defeat central bank digital currencies because I think

1:06:37

they are really evil. I think

1:06:40

this is the most evil technology that has

1:06:42

ever thought of. That

1:06:44

clarity of vision is something I've always

1:06:46

appreciated from the Bitcoin community. And let

1:06:49

me say, I think Bankless is

1:06:51

definitely cheering Bitcoin builders on towards

1:06:53

this endeavor because what you just

1:06:55

described, if we can make it

1:06:57

happen, is a bankless money system.

1:06:59

This is the entire reason why

1:07:01

we're here. I think this is

1:07:05

one of the central goals, maybe the most important

1:07:07

goal of crypto for sure. Robin,

1:07:10

just one last question to round

1:07:12

this out. So David

1:07:14

asked you earlier about when main net timelines,

1:07:16

can you get concrete with us to the extent

1:07:19

that you can on that? Because a lot of

1:07:22

Bitcoin layer twos are saying, hey,

1:07:24

BitVM will be available now.

1:07:26

It's already available even. And

1:07:29

I think that there's some work to

1:07:31

do. So when do you expect to

1:07:33

get BitVM online and

1:07:35

deploy it in terms of dates and what's

1:07:38

going to happen next with the project? Yeah,

1:07:42

hopefully we can complete our

1:07:44

implementation by the end of August, such

1:07:46

that we will have, on

1:07:48

SickNet or like on TestNet, the

1:07:51

first version running so that we can actually

1:07:53

run or verify the first

1:07:55

CKPs on a Bitcoin chain. And from

1:07:57

the end of August, we will have

1:07:59

a very good From there, we hope

1:08:01

to complete a reckless

1:08:04

mainnet version by the end of this year.

1:08:07

That would be the main goal. That

1:08:09

is the focus of our team currently. That's

1:08:12

huge. That would be what? Bitcoin's

1:08:14

15th birthday around that time? Around that time, yeah.

1:08:17

Very good. Robin, thank you so much for joining

1:08:19

us today. This has been a fantastic discussion. Thanks

1:08:22

a lot. Thanks for having me. Guys, got to remind

1:08:24

you, of course, at the end, none of this has

1:08:26

been financial advice. None of

1:08:28

us here are shilling tokens. Of course, crypto is risky.

1:08:30

You could lose what you put in, but we are

1:08:32

headed west. This is the frontier. It's now the frontier

1:08:34

of Bitcoin. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're

1:08:36

with us on the bankless journey. Thank

1:08:59

you.