Transcript
Transcript: Shake Your Adversary’s Hand With Portland Hodl | BTP Episode 22
0:04AI Rob Hamilton This is AI Rob Hamilton, CEO and cofounder of Anchor Watch. Haters have been trying to cancel me for laughing at the plight of plebs. Some have even started calling me the giggler. But nothing makes me laugh harder than people trying to have Anchor Watch ads banned from Bitcoin podcasts.
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1:04Portland HODL win nowhere. He ain't go nowhere. We can't get a stop now. We have a list of basically nots notes that advertise them nots, and then they the users of Comcast have data caps at their house, typically. And these are these are residential ASNs. They're not like the Comcast business blocks. And so, yeah, like, I was
1:46Portland HODL okay. I I am, like, basically peering with them and asking for an IDD for a fresh node. Maybe I have, like, 96 of these nodes running right now because I want to to get IDDs from all these these clients. Sometimes, the IDD at least not nodes. No. They're core nodes. They're they're actually master branch. But continuing on, yeah. Essentially, just, like, asking again and again and again, allegedly.
2:12Richard Greaser He is one of the most sophisticated attackers of Bitcoin.
2:17Portland HODL How how many of them do you think know that the max upload target, comp option exists? It's not an option if you're on Umbral or start nine. The Apex Predator
2:28Richard Greaser of adversarial transactions.
2:32Portland HODL You see wait. You can't modify you can't modify your comp file? You you you you could. I I'm just saying after the box when you click your GUI options, it's not there. But, yeah, so I I've successfully tried to be from, like, several Comcast nodes at this point.
2:45Richard Greaser If you cross paths with him on chain, know you are not his peer, striking fear in Comcast node runners all over the world. His name is Portland HODL.
2:59Richard Greaser He has agreed to sit down for an interview on the world's most thermodynamically sound Bitcoin podcast to tell his story. So sit back, relax if you can, and listen
3:13Richard Greaser as the ghost of the Merkle Tree shares his perspective with Richard Grieser and Rod Palmer on this special edition of Behind the Bitcoin podcast.
3:26Rod Palmer Most people who get orange filled follow the same ritual. They set up a node, argue about hardware wallets on Twitter, and dedicate their lives to the cause of decentralizing and protecting Bitcoin, usually from feds. But one man took a different path.
3:43Rod Palmer He didn't just get orange pilled. He mainlined the entire mempool. He made adversarial transacting his MO. While the rest of us obsess over cold storage setups, he obsesses over finding cracks in the code because nothing says love like constant psychological warfare with your favorite protocol.
4:03Rod Palmer While we stack stats, he stacks exploits. While we argue on Twitter about whether BRC twenties are spam, he stress testing incentives until they beg for mercy. While we cosplay cypherpunk revolution, he's actually poking Bitcoin's weak points not to destroy it, but to make it indestructible. He is, in a sense, the only Bitcoiner brave enough to attack Bitcoin every day so the rest of us don't have to. Today, on behind the bitcoin podcast, we'd be go we go behind the game theory, behind the culture, behind the paranoia
4:36Rod Palmer with the notched pet himself, Portland HODL. Buckle up, listeners. We're talking to an adversarial peer. Welcome, Portland Hoddle. I have one question for you to open this. Would you call yourself a hero or a villain of Bitcoin? I would say
4:53Portland HODL I'm the hero of Bitcoin that Bitcoin needs. Some people may not like it, but I think we all need Bitcoin to be stress tested. We need it to be poked. We need to find this thing, make the honey badger the strongest
5:10Portland HODL species on Earth that everybody can use without worry of an attacker taking advantage of this permissionless system.
5:19Richard Greaser So there's been a lot of confusion recently, on how consensus is reached on anything pertaining to Bitcoin development. You've got people like Dennis Porter who think that Bitcoin is government and it should be more democratically decided by the users. You've got other people that see Bitcoin Core as kind of like a benevolent
5:43Richard Greaser dictatorship. How how should the community determine if we need a hero or not?
5:54Portland HODL The reality is that the community shouldn't have heroes. Bitcoin is basically like a meritocracy. Don't trust and verify. And what I mean by that is, like, in Bitcoin, you need to be your own hero, and you need to do your own research on absolutely everything. And that is because of the fact that every hero story also, at the same time, probably has a villain arc somewhere inside of it. And everybody that, like, you look up to usually ends up probably at the end of the day at some point, like, quote unquote, like hanging themselves. Very few people in Bitcoin survive at all the levels of purity tests from every side. And we saw this with core developers recently. These people were quote unquote heroes of Bitcoin
6:36Portland HODL that we we we loved what they did. We're we were thankful for the work all the time, finding the exploits, patching them, making this thing basically bulletproof for everybody to use. And now you turn the the the table about a year and a half, two years later from the the kind of start of some of these this questioning on specifically x. And now they're villainized by a large portion of specifically, like, the Twitter audience. And what I want to point out about Twitter specifically, that is the most divisive microcosm of Bitcoin. So it is a part of Bitcoin. You have economic actors, influencers,
7:13Portland HODL devs, like, everybody. Like, it is the platform to go to to talk about Bitcoin. But at the end of the day, there are many other platforms. YouTube, internal chats, even at companies, all have some economic influence. But, yeah, nobody in Bitcoin should have a hero. Everybody should be their own.
7:32Rod Palmer I what about I mean, at the end of the day, if you think about Luke, he saved Bitcoin multiple. I I was reading the other day. It's like 2,013. There were 2,017. Luke saved Bitcoin. And at some point, don't you earn the right to be a hero if you saved Bitcoin multiple times? Like, what's the incentive to save Bitcoin if you won't be a hero forever? If you don't get your your jersey retired and hanged at the Bitcoin conference in the rafters, like, why should I want to be a hero
8:07Rod Palmer and save Bitcoin?
8:09Portland HODL It protects, like, your your your own incentives. You want the the perfect money. You want number to go up very likely. And as such, saving Bitcoin, like, if you actually save it like Luke did, well, you just preserved your own incentives. And, like, what that also leads into is I believe you can be a hero in Bitcoin, but nobody should be ever judged based on their past at all. Like you can go like, hey, you have some merit, I believe what you've done, you've demonstrated technical capability, but an individual can turn on a dime, right? Like good actors can become bad, bad actors can become good, the definitions of these things themselves are not actually set into stone, and as such, yeah, you need to evaluate every individual on literally a now basis. Is this guy a good actor today? An example like, has somebody been paid off by a government agency to become a Chainalysis firm? I don't necessarily know of somebody that's done that, but at the same time that would represent maybe somebody who was good in the past who is now bad. Somebody who's bad maybe leaves and says, hey, I realized I was a shitcoiner and I came back to Bitcoin. That person can now be good.
9:17Portland HODL But, yeah, it depends on where they are at the moment to be how somebody should look at them. They shouldn't they should not look at the past, really.
9:25Richard Greaser We talk about this a lot on the on the show, this this issue with resting on your credentials
9:31Portland HODL being present. Appeal to authority. Right? Isn't that, like, an entire type of fallacy an individual can commit?
9:39Richard Greaser Yeah. It's hard because So one of my questions for you is, is it dangerous to refer to or to suggest that Bitcoin is fallible in some way or another?
9:54Richard Greaser Because so many people see this currency as a savior. You know what I mean? Like, we look at the world around us, it's ran by gay retards,
10:08Richard Greaser essentially. And they're collapsing everything. Fiat money is collapsing everything. They're inflating it to infinity. Society's crumbling, people need a sense of certainty, they need a sense of hope.
10:26Richard Greaser Bitcoin comes along and then Portland HODL is suggesting that it's not perfect and infallible. Is that a dangerous thing to present into
10:40Portland HODL I You I would I would like to respond. I've actually, I think, demonstrated the opposite. And what I mean by that is though I have, attempted to poke, prod, and find weaknesses in Bitcoin, there have not been any. There's been I have not been able to stop a block. I have not been able to break a signature. I have not been able to take funds from an individual.
11:02Portland HODL Like, that is the beauty of this, like, journey is, like, every single thing I have discovered or found has been a minor inconvenience to somebody in terms of, like, mempool policy or your max target upload for the amount of data you can send per day, but nothing has actually broken Bitcoin. And so from a technical perspective, Bitcoin is probably one of the most infallible pieces of software we have is humanity. Released once and it's literally just continuing to work every single day. The
11:34Portland HODL node Satoshi had on his laptop, I built and ran that version of Bitcoin. Today, connected it up without any code modifications, you will sync to the exact same chain tip. One release of a piece of software and it just works. Unbelievable. I do believe Bitcoin is close to infallible as software. The social aspects of Bitcoin are a very different issue. I think people are fallible. People can use bitcoin in insanely fallible ways.
12:02Portland HODL The incentives ultimately align to make bad actors go broke. And then the final component of what is the fallible aspect of bitcoin? Like where is the potential boogeyman in the room? I would say that it's mining pools and Bitmain. Those are the only two things. I think literally the incentives also solve this problem as well because even if they get centralized so much and a bad thing happens, number goes down, less profitable, more companies spring in to basically pick up the pieces, it all works out long term. That's my belief and that's why I think it's okay to test and improve Bitcoin every single day.
12:38Portland HODL So, trust. Bitcoin Taiwan. I don't think anybody should say Bitcoin is dead, quote unquote. Bitcoin's not dead. I do not think Bitcoin is dying. I think Bitcoin is stronger than ever. With that said, yeah, there are, like, little points you could point out that aren't perfect.
12:53Rod Palmer I wanna I wanna push back a little bit because you say, hey, nobody's questioning your technical chops or your, your your expertise here. But even though you were not able to find a way
13:09Rod Palmer to harm Bitcoin and to break Bitcoin, Udi and, like, some of the ordinal and KC ordinals Yeah. Were able to find it, and they were able to find a way to break Bitcoin using spam. So how do you how do you address that if how do you if spam breaks Bitcoin?
13:28Portland HODL So the the argument that Bitcoin has been broken specifically by Oodie because of spam, I rest on the definition of breaking Bitcoin being you are able to stop the Bitcoin network from operating, not by controlling who is buying block space or what is the contents of block space. It's if you can actually get the network to stop producing blocks or break a block to the point where it's not valid anymore, like you actually crash the software out. So with that said, though Ooty created an environment by using spam, ordinals, and inscriptions, if you define it that way, he only created a fee market
14:10Portland HODL that because Bitcoin's a free market and miners are rational profit seeking actors, took these quote unquote spam transactions, the other actors on the network were not wanting to bid as much to buy that block space. So Bitcoin was 100% never broken by UTI. I think that is a completely false claim. I think it may have been used as part of, like, an outrage marketing campaign to probably try to get people interested in his collections of JPEGs.
14:39Portland HODL So no, Bitcoin, to my definition, was never broken by ordinals or inscriptions. Everything functioned perfectly. And if we could just zoom all the way out, the beautiful part, how are ordinals doing today? Do we, like, how are these ordinals and ruins, etcetera? They're not gone.
14:56Rod Palmer And I and I would I would I would say that some of these people, the loudest critics of booty and ordinals, would say, but I think Bitcoin is broken if it is gay. And if these fee markets for ordinals make Bitcoin gay, then it is it might as well be broken because I don't wanna use gay money.
15:18Portland HODL Yeah. I, as a developer, have a tough time determining, like, how to define what what kind of spam makes Bitcoin? Like, how did how does the spam make Bitcoin gay? It I I don't have a technical definition for you. I would just go off of what the Supreme Court has said in the past. I know it when I see it. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Describe it to you, but I know it when I see it. Yeah. So but it's, like, all of a sudden your your view of Bitcoin is changing into, like, a more gay view, and that's up to you whether or not you like it. But it seems like it's, like, more of a a negative thing that's become gay because of these spam transactions. The fact is, though, it kind of
15:59Portland HODL like, the actual effect of it is mitigated by the fact the attacker or quote unquote the person making these things runs out of money, and that's what's happening right now. The spam transactions, they're still there, yes, because people are putting this content on chain, but with that said, you you could easily outbid it today. So if you wanna transfer a transaction, you could do point five sats per vBuy below any previous possible threshold before July. You could never do a fee this low until this year on Bitcoin. So with that said, if you want it to be a little less gay, as you say,
16:34Portland HODL you got to pay up. You got to pay for that block space and turn it around.
16:39Rod Palmer That's the thing with Bitcoin. It's permissionless. You can do make Bitcoin what you want Bitcoin to be. What your money? Yeah. Put your money where your mouth is. Yeah. Put your money where your mouth is. Yeah. And date up those blocks. Richard, did you have a question?
16:55Richard Greaser I I wanted to let you go on this train of thought because I've got a a segment on a different topic.
17:02Rod Palmer So it's but what about the the fact that this spam, it builds up, and it makes it harder for people in the global South to run to be a node runner. I mean, think about when I was when I was 13 years old, I I got Napster. I waited four days to download The Middle by Jimmy Eat World,
17:26Rod Palmer on a 28 tanker flank connection. TikTok zoomers, broccoli haircut kids, like, they don't have the patience to wait a week to download a node if they need to be sovereign and have permissionless access, you know, res sensor system resistant money, call this they don't have time to wait a couple days to download a node. How do we solve that if these spammers are make are filling it with a gay history? They don't wanna download a gay history on the blockchain.
17:56Portland HODL That's that's first of all, let's address two things here. First of all, the type of content on the blockchain. So that you cannot control. It's a permissionless system. If you absolutely cannot have that specific type of content, you can do one thing basically. You can run a pruned Bitcoin node, AKA you download the blocks and even whatever content they have in them, you'll throw away after you're done. So you can you can kind of you can put this on your system for a little bit. It's in RAM, but it goes away. The second thing is, okay,
18:29Portland HODL let's talk about the reality. Has spam actually made node running worse? The answer is, to a slight degree, yes, because of the fact that the average block size, the amount of data being added each time a new block is mined, did increase for a period of about like a year and a half.
18:49Portland HODL Thanks to the balance of Bitcoin, which is four megabytes per block, you can't go past that. Like, that's the hard limit. Bitcoin, if you are running a Bitcoin node, you have to think adversarially. You need to run a node expecting the worst case scenario. Somebody could do four megabyte, four megabyte, four megabyte, four megabyte. But overall, the actual time chain itself is growing at a rate which is barely noticeable compared to different noticeably barely noticeably different compared to the past. That's my statement on that. It's like there's nobody has provably shown that the spam has made Bitcoin node runners
19:27Portland HODL any worse off materially. So that's what I'd say.
19:31Richard Greaser To clarify, thinking adversarial when you're running a node, is that just for a economic node or is that for a virtuous voting node too? Or is it all new? Oh,
19:44Portland HODL okay. So an economic node is a virtuous voting node. There's no difference. Like, economic influence is one of the pillars of, like, influence in Bitcoin where you have, quote, unquote, voting rights if you could think about it in any concept. And, yeah, at the end of the day, you need to think adversarially when you have any amount of money invested in running a Bitcoin node or if you could potentially have any expenses related to running a Bitcoin node. Example, AWS, right? Like if you have a monthly bill, you should have some like investment into making sure this thing doesn't like uncap loss you to the end of time. Also, like if you're storing your money in a hardware wallet, you want to make sure your node is absolutely at the correct chain tip. As such, think adversarially, how could somebody distribute a bad binary? Why not just build it from source? Is your copy of Umbrel like legit? Like just very basic checks can prevent a lot of pain and hardship and it becomes much more important,
20:42Portland HODL like, not just node running, but wallets specifically, like anybody out there, like, just always if you're using a software wallet, do not trust that wallet on a desktop computer. Always look at the outputs on your hardware wallet to make sure the addresses are correct. But in terms of the Bitcoin node, like, how do you have, you mentioned the term like voting
21:04Rod Palmer and virtues.
21:05Portland HODL Bitcoin nodes in of themselves have no influence, no voting rights per se. Running a node does not give you the right to vote for anything. The reason why is, let me take the scenario of I run an AWS account
21:23Portland HODL and I have a lot of, I have a lot of capital. Let's say like $10,000 I could spool up probably 2,000, 3,000 Bitcoin nodes and put them on the network. We have 20, let's say we have 20,000 nodes.
21:39Portland HODL Does that give me roughly one sixth of the voting rights on the Bitcoin network? Do I suddenly just get each of my node raises its little node hand and goes, I like this software, OPCTV. No, that's absolutely not the case. Bitcoin is rough consensus. As such, your node, its ability to have influence on the network
22:01Portland HODL depends on the scaling factor of your economic influencer hash rate. What I mean by that? You can either one, mine with that Bitcoin node with your hash rate, and then you get to influence the contents of what is being written to the Bitcoin time chain. That is amazing. That's where a lot of the policy disagreements actually come from, is the fact these miners have so much influence relative to the just kind of relay nodes on the network in terms of what gets put in blocks. And that's purely because mining nodes are the only ones that can put anything into
22:32Portland HODL blocks. Right? And then the other way is economic force. Okay. My example on this one is let's say I, Portland HODL, run a hamburger shop in El Salvador. And so this hamburger shop takes Bitcoin and lightning payments, and I am really opposed to op CTV.
22:55Portland HODL This is a pretty brutal example, but I'm gonna use it anyways. And I go on Twitter, I say, hey, my hamburger shop, we we don't like op CTV. We want our money to stay the same. It's got to be really, really solid, and we don't trust the the proposal after reviewing it. Okay. So great. Everybody's going to go, that's a nothing burger. I don't care that much. It may get a few like retweets, etcetera. But what happens when an economic node that controls billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin wants to make a decision at BlackRock
23:26Portland HODL or for example at Coinbase and they say we support CTV, then a lot of people get involved because of the fact that their money is tied up with these institutions. In the case of, for example, BlackRock, iBit, it literally says in the prospectus of their ETF, in the event of a fork in Bitcoin, we select the version of Bitcoin
23:47Portland HODL to be the holdings of the actual fund itself, and we will liquidate the other side of the fork. That node runner right there has tons of influence to decide a complete liquidation event of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, as well as, like, the direction of the next fork, because everybody's got their value locked in this thing. So that's kind of my point. It's like just running a node or spooling up a bunch of nodes for the sake of having nodes does not do anything other than make the Bitcoin time chain more available.
24:18Rod Palmer Yeah. I I do think, though, that it is also fundamentally it it depends on, like, when you what you're talking about is, like, the actual incentives, how they play out on chain. But there is a little bit of a second layer, whether,
24:36Rod Palmer you know, the cultural second layer, you can't have you know, Matthew Carrater recommends, start nine, for example. So a lot of the knots, nose runners have been biased. If you pay $900 for a a a start nine node server, had that that is an economic decision. That is a political decision. So there you have to take that into account. Like, start nine is selling so many nodes. There is, it does tell you something about the, seriousness
25:06Rod Palmer of, you know, these these knots people to, make this decision.
25:12Portland HODL Yeah. And to that, I would say that, like, running a node is amazing. And you're also creating, like, economic influence for Start9. And Start9 has some used their influence. For example, they have created now, like, a knots download and even publicly like stayed on their Twitter, like, hey, we kind of like are into this now and we were kind of like really saying like, hey, you have this option, really pushing it. With that said, though, like think about it, like you buy this $900 node from start nine. K? Your your Bitcoin journey has began. K? Let let's get you started. We're gonna do a lightning we're gonna run some lightning channels, some LND, etcetera. Cool. Because they can store a lot of spam. Let's put it that way. You can't set a lot of spam. You can handle it. But, yeah, it like, you're not gonna have a problem. Like, if you gotta start nine, I don't think you're gonna have a problem downloading the time chain as long as it's not the Raspberry Pi variant. But regardless
26:02Portland HODL okay. You got this node, and Bitcoin is like getting serious, like it's soft fork time, what influence do you have as that node runner? Like what what can you do? Like that you you're pinned up against the wall, these devs have told you you're going to drink CTV whether or not you like it, What can you do with your $900 node?
26:25Rod Palmer Well, first of all, you can handle, IVD downloads, so you're a little bit more fortified. But you can, you know, you can refuse to filter their spam or to relay their spam, their transactions. So they can't they can't go through you. That's it. That's the only thing. Yeah. Well, there's there's one other there's the there's the ultimate option as a node
26:50Portland HODL runner. You can say that, hey, I don't want to accept the block that you've produced as the miner. You the miner pushes down your nodes throughout the CTV block. I'm using CTV as an example because most people know what it is hopefully, but, like, your node, you could say, hey, I'm done, no more, and you could say, I don't want this block. The problem then becomes your node is stalled out, it's not taking any more blocks because you're refusing to build on top of the chain tip. You have no economic influence, you can't cry to anybody saying like, hey, I forked off the network because I didn't want this block in there. That's
27:25Portland HODL why economic influence matters because if somebody forks Coinbase off, right? Let's say Coinbase forks off because they invalidate, that situation becomes much different because now people have tons of value locked up in this exchange that their chain tip isn't moving forward anymore. Miners probably have some investment in this, and so this interaction is what really is the meat and potatoes, but buying a $900 start nine is an amazing educational tool, and I'm saying this for any node specifically. You can learn how to be a Bitcoiner and a node is the first touch point and one of the very few touch points you can have to actually like feel bitcoin, right? Like you're doing something with this invisible money and that's
28:08Portland HODL really good. That's actually like if you look at my history as Portland Auto, I got started with run a node, Like literally, that was, I was, hey, running node. I would help people with Bitcoin tech support was my first spaces I ran. I ran every week on Monday, Bitcoin tech support, and I'd help people with their nodes. And so with that, though, I also had, like, my initial fallacy was I literally said the quote, one node, one vote. That was in my, one of my first Twitter spaces because I didn't understand your influence on the Bitcoin network through economics or whatever. You gotta be doing it.
28:44Rod Palmer I think that I I don't think that there's anything wrong with saying one node, one vote because, if if if if running a node just gives you a vote, that ultimately doesn't matter. Like, your vote doesn't matter. Voting doesn't matter. It's about how much how much money you control. So, yeah, one node is one vote, but one vote doesn't equal, you know, one vote in terms of
29:07Portland HODL influence on the actual network. It's really Like the scale of that vote, per se. Yeah. I guess you could say, yeah, you're voting with your node, but, like, the amount of vote you get is
29:16Rod Palmer very You're voting with your node, but most people that have power are voting with their wallet. And if your wallet doesn't control a lot of UTXOs,
29:24Portland HODL well, nobody cares what your opinion is. That's even that's a little bit tricky as well though because what value okay. Let let's talk economic influence, like, how how running a node affects somebody even with a ton of Bitcoin here. I'm gonna give the example. You are Satoshi. Okay? And you run an economic node at start nine, you got, and you connect Sparrow over Tor, and you're you're you're still remaining. You're completely a non. Okay. Again, Bitcoin is changing. The fork is happening. What what can you do? What influence do you have right now, like, with your node? What what what's the only thing you can do?
30:02Richard Greaser I think one of the primary things you can do is you can tweet about that you have a node, that you're node runner, and it gives you a sense of credibility when you're arguing with people on the internet.
30:12Portland HODL Well, technically, yeah. I guess you could do that, but it's not gonna have a whole lot of influence per se. The most you could say is like, hey, I'm gonna dump these coins, and and I will create a negative market event, and then if you guys don't go with it, and even then, like, your node can get forked off the network, and you wouldn't be able to dump your coins because you forked, you still have to follow the fork to dump your coins unless you dump the free Right. Yeah, sorry, I'm done.
30:35Rod Palmer No. No. You're right. You're right. So I my point is not so much that, if you control all the Bitcoin, like, you control the network. However, if Michael Saylor what the the fork that Michael Saylor chooses, should it come down to something like this? Will so his but Michael Saylor doesn't run a node, so he doesn't even have to have a node
30:56Portland HODL to to vote. He's prying he's boxing the Coinbase. No. He yeah. He's he's gonna he's gonna rely on Coinbase or the the the federal government will be like, hey, Michael. We have a start nine for you, and that will be Michael's node. He'll have a he'll have his start nine, and he'll just kind of probably trust and don't verify on that one, and he's gonna follow whatever orders he's told because any individual in Bitcoin, like, working for Mara, which is a publicly traded company, you should always assume that those Bitcoin are captured. In a moment's notice, if the government says, you're giving us the keys, they will comply.
31:31Rod Palmer Well, so okay. But there is a value, to running a node even if it's not, so powerful in the democracy on chain democracy. But but what about the problems of just, you know, I'm running a node to send a political message, and I I got my Umbrel, and I do my my my knots node. And then, you know, maybe I don't use it for a couple of years, But then I there's this comes to a a point where I do need to use it. And because I need to use my node, I need to be transact on chain sovereignly.
32:05Rod Palmer It's probably a bad, you know, climate outside of of my subnet in my house here. It's probably there's probably reasons that I'm doing this out of, out of the blue. But I haven't used it for years. I don't how how do I know not just being surrounded by FedNodes, who are gonna, you know, screw me over when I try to use this for the first time?
32:28Portland HODL So from the actual software that Bitcoin is, you do validate the rules that your node has installed in Bitcoin Core or NOTs on your start nine. So you can guarantee
32:42Portland HODL that even if the nodes are these Fed nodes, have surrounded your node, all your peers are just Feds, you know you're at least getting a source of truth on that node. The other note as well is that you could use the whole thing becomes that point like a privacy thing. So I guess I'll elaborate a little bit further, censorship potentially as well. So maybe the Fed nodes could be running like a blocks only or a malicious node set, so your transaction doesn't get broadcast.
33:11Portland HODL Then you can mail it to somebody, use mempool dot space, broadcast your transaction because you don't actually need to use your node to send transactions. You only need to get your node to the chain tip to spend your UTXO in that case. You just need to be able to sync the IBD. Your peers, if they're malicious Fed nodes, could maybe, well, I guess let's make the joke here, they could ask for a bunch of IBDs and run your Comcast bill up, so that could be a problem, but I would just suggest maybe, like, you could call up Comcast or maybe it'll just take the warning with Stride. You'll just be like, hey, my bad, one month, I just gotta get this transaction out, I'm gonna be downloading with my start nine here. And then the other thing is, like, ultimately, privacy. So, like, okay, you're surrounded by Fed nodes, your IP's already completely doxxed, like, they already know who you are, they're listening to you for a reason, like, you're done.
33:59Portland HODL You need to use Tor at that point. You need to use a real manly privacy tools, like, actual mountain man, go get your Tor connection set up. I think start nine actually uses Tor by default and bypass these these clear net, clear net privacy, like, basically issues that are created because your IP address is associated with your ISP, can be associated with your name as well. So
34:23Rod Palmer Yeah. It would suck though. Like oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
34:28Portland HODL Well, I I still wanna segue into a different topic, but if you wanna continue on this one, feel free to. No. Go feel free to segue. I saw it on this one. Yeah. Just basically use privacy if you're surrounded by Fed nodes. Go just set up a a Tor connection or an I2P, and then you can bypass most of that. Like, just don't use the default, hey. I'm gonna use my Comcast connection to go out.
34:49Richard Greaser So what what we've really been learning from a lot of the arguing on, online recently is that this is not much of a technical discussion or argument. It's a very social based
35:05Richard Greaser argument and discussion. There seems to be a growing rift between the podcasters and the developers. Podcasters, developers, miners,
35:18Richard Greaser they oftentimes clash with each other for a variety of reasons, but they're all part of the Bitcoin security model. They all secure the network in various ways. The podcasters bring users and market demand to Bitcoin so that the miners can mine profitably, so that developers can receive funding,
35:38Richard Greaser There's justification for it. They're they're all important. Do you do you see
35:45Portland HODL I actually see the replacement of developers with podcasters long term. I I think that the the the problem with developers, even like our our podcast today, it's they're they're hard to communicate with. Like, you you have, like, this different species right now, like, on stage, and the podcasters can communicate very clearly, like, excellent audio quality. They they know how to handle PR with individuals. They know how to how to relate. The the issue with devs,
36:12Portland HODL as we've seen with specifically like Bitcoin Core, they didn't relate to the people. They didn't have a podcaster out there to represent Bitcoin Core. And look at what happened. They got absolutely crushed.
36:24Richard Greaser So Well done. Their credibility is trashed. It's gone. They they do have podcasters kind of springing up to to represent Core now. So you've got Stefan Lovera. You got Shinobi. Did you see that podcast that Shinobi did with Gloria?
36:42Portland HODL Paul Moore (3five forty three): No, I did not. I've been pretty lax on my forty hours a week. I apologize.
36:49Richard Greaser It was pretty good. They did it at the MIT, Bitcoin Expo. And, it was the first time that I learned that Gloria didn't have a beard. And so that was a pretty shocking moment for me. I feel like that was a pretty important piece of information to know. I think a lot of a lot of podcast listeners would benefit from knowing that Gloria doesn't have a beard. No. Gloria does not have a, a beard, as the Twitter profile would suggest.
37:16Portland HODL I don't know why that specific photo was chosen. So but here we are.
37:21Richard Greaser I mean, I can understand why. Like, I think it's hard being a woman in a lot of circumstances in Bitcoin. And, I mean, you see this, you know, historically, like people like JK Rowling, they use pen names in order to not deal with the scrutiny or the stigma around women authors. And I feel like it's a similar thing with submitting a code. People put into question, they're like, You're a woman, you're young, and then you're hot.
37:50Richard Greaser Why are you in this position? Do you deserve to be in this position? Whereas, like, man, like the beard, in a lot of ways, acts as kind of like that pen name of bringing legitimacy to her code. Because the problem is a lot of people
38:05Richard Greaser don't take the time to or aren't capable of of reading and and critically analyzing her contributions. So they yeah. I mean, I I think the beard is is very useful, but at the same time, you know, I think people would also benefit from knowing that she's hot.
38:25Rod Palmer Right. Not some right nots runners can't code. They can't recode, so they can't read the the code or see her his her GitHub history and respect, her her, experience and skill, but the beard lets them know, like, oh, okay. I should list this is, this is a,
38:44Richard Greaser an account with authority. Yeah. They can't read the code, but they can they can read her LinkedIn profile. Well, they also
38:52Portland HODL use the same code that's written by Gloria in Bitcoin knots because they take Bitcoin Core and they apply patches to it to make it knots. It's literally Bitcoin Core at the core with a, a fun new GUI to use with more more sliders and more selectors.
39:07Richard Greaser Yeah. Well, I think the so kinda go back to the original question I was asking. So you you were talking about how the podcasters are gonna become developers. I I think what has become super clear is the importance of public relations
39:23Portland HODL in general. And Yes. Absolutely. And what I mean by podcasters are gonna replace developers, I'm being facetious here to a degree because it's a fun podcast to be on here. But at the end of the day, look at the contributions Mechanic has created
39:41Portland HODL to society's perception of Bitcoin and node running in general without any technical background on that. Right? So, like, in like, mechanic doesn't contribute code. He doesn't put in the work to make Bitcoin secure or make that machine tick, but he also has the authority to tell people
39:59Portland HODL exactly how everything should work and so he's conjuring into reality his own version of Bitcoin. So with that said, like podcasters, I think will become sort of like wizards of Bitcoin where they get so much influence through their ability to communicate
40:18Portland HODL that they will conjure the version of Bitcoin that they see best fit and the people that want or that listen to these podcasts will then become the apparatus or the instruments of execution to help achieve, to basically make that a reality for these podcasters. So the podcasters are going to become the devs and then the devs are just going to become the labor, basically. That that's kind of my my thought on podcasting interfaces with Bitcoin is that
40:48Portland HODL the actual pillars of security of Bitcoin where you or, like, the influence of Bitcoin, you have, like, the devs, the miners, and the, sorry, the economic actors, that's actually going to just become miners, economic actors, and podcasters. And the Right. Yeah. And then so, and we're seeing like the effect of podcasting and like bitcoin has become now like the term suit coiner is very thrown around so loosely in bitcoin communities. The podcasters are the interface between the capital that NGU enjoyers
41:21Portland HODL so much want and covet, right? They want that NGU. Like, I'm okay with losing a little bit of cyberpunk for that. The podcasters will be that interface going forward and the devs will execute the podcasters requests, all leading to that NGU, the incentives of Bitcoin,
41:37Rod Palmer and, that that's it. So podcasters are the devs. I agree, and I don't think there's anything facetious about that observation because I I read a good tweet where somebody and I love everybody agreed with it, so it must be true that the new the most popular programming language in ten years will be the English language because of AI. It won't be c plus plus it won't be Rust, it won't be Python. So and you said it yourself, the the devs don't know how to communicate. The the podcasters are the ones who articulate the vision, using the English language for the most part, on podcasts. And so naturally, the the Apex articulate
42:18Rod Palmer English speakers will be the ones who, control Bitcoin. And and our vision, the pod the forty hours per week vision, wherever that is,
42:30Portland HODL will will take over. It won't be Russ Bitcoin. It'll be it'll be podcast Bitcoin. Painful journey for a lot of devs that have to get canceled along the way, but it it's happening right now. There's there's nothing like, we are seeing this and witnessing it real time. And so when the culture comes back, podcasters are your devs.
42:49Rod Palmer It's not learn to code, it's learn to podcast.
42:51Portland HODL Learn to English. Just interface with the AI. Just that's all you gotta do. Like podcasters with, like you kind of brought in a new dimension to this with artificial intelligence. At some point, the podcasters may not even need devs to execute their visions any longer. They will just go to chat GPT and ask, I would like a more restrictive policy in my node. I would like to block a specific node.
43:17Portland HODL My Comcast users have been affected. I need to protect them. And the AI will write this node software to do everything the podcaster wishes. The podcasters are the summoners of Bitcoin.
43:30Richard Greaser Absolutely. I mean, I think we're leading the way on this trend. I we may have been the first Bitcoin podcasters to have our own Bitcoin implementation with Bugle Corp.
43:41Portland HODL And then so real quick, as a as a like, can you go over real like, I haven't ran the Bitcoin Core or sorry, Bugle Corp software. What should you guys do differently than Bitcoin Core? And why did you guys decide to fork? Like, I I as a dev, I've always wondered, like, what what was it that made you,
43:58Richard Greaser like, diverge from? We were the first we were the first Bitcoin implementation to, merge Peter Todd's poll request, the opportune poll request. We did it because we were tired of waiting. We wanted less restrictive
44:15Richard Greaser relay policy because we are journalists. We we support free speech, and we felt it was important. Yeah.
44:24Portland HODL So I I gotta throw it out there, though. I was the first one to remove operator from the Bitcoin core implementation at marathon for slipstream.
44:35Richard Greaser So we were the first podcasters to do. We were the first podcasters to do. We were the first open
44:40Portland HODL source. You did it like for commercial. First open source implementation fulfilling satoshi's true vision versus this closed source empire like, corporation.
44:49Rod Palmer One question is, you know, people are upset about, the potential of having a a big Comcast bill. But can you talk about and we kind of alluded to this. You know, if you're gonna run a node, if you're gonna be on the network, if you want to,
45:08Rod Palmer have you have make this impact, whatever impact you're trying to have, know that there are vulnerabilities, risk, that there's things you have to think about other than spam. Because, like, everybody the the not people, they're they they have spam derangement syndrome is what I've been calling it. But there's other threats out there that they might not be
45:30Rod Palmer thinking about. Is how what what kind of mindset mentality do you need to have to go into being a NodeRunner? It's not just, you know, a LARP. It's it's a serious thing.
45:41Portland HODL So in terms of just being a Bitcoin node runner, like, pretty much, you should just I actually I don't think the average user needs to worry as much about specific elements because of the fact that, like, a lot of the devs have done the lifting of poking it before them to make sure that these things don't negatively impact them. Like, they can't have specific, like, transactions
46:05Portland HODL happen that make their node not work or a specific block request, etcetera. And so, yeah, as a node runner, the most important thing is focus on your privacy and just in general, just use your node, keep up to date, watch this thing, and interface with it. That's that's the most important thing. But as somebody who wants to actually, like, improve and make nodes better, you gotta you gotta you gotta actually look at code. You actually gotta review. You have to you you got to push Bitcoin to its limits, and that's what, I do. That's, like, my whole philosophy
46:36Portland HODL is that I want to find the points where Bitcoin can be improved for global adoption of Bitcoin as money for miners, node runners, and just it's going to work without question. And by doing that, like, I've come up with some pretty interesting, like, little vectors that are problematic for Bitcoin. An example would be on my Twitter, I have the, the poison blocks, the mempool anarchist cookbook that is actually, like, a really bad Bitcoin transaction that can happen right now that we need to patch out. The poking and like I didn't actually attack any Comcast nodes, but I brought it up in discussion, that was a pain point people realized like, oh wow, like nobody had really thought about this, but you need to think like your adversary in Bitcoin's is permissionless. Anybody can use it. So if you are on one of these limited connections,
47:26Portland HODL can the software itself determine ahead of time? And that's something people are now thinking about. Can we create a version of Bitcoin that will automatically determine if you have data caps or not so that it'll automatically limit that upload. But if you're running a node, you do need to understand, like, hey, the Bitcoin time chain is huge. You're downloading stuff for sometimes days at a time. And if you have a limited Comcast connection that has 1.2 terabytes a month before you get your warning, you will blow through 800 gigabytes of that or two thirds with one piece of software. So as a node runner, you need to think about, like, your own individual circumstances,
48:02Portland HODL but the majority of these things are handled. I have just went out onto the fringes and found something that a select few nodes may be impacted by.
48:13Rod Palmer Yeah. I think there's the, you know, mind your own business. I think that, there's a lot of node runners who, for the majority of them, should just mind their own node. Just mind your own node
48:26Rod Palmer and, didn't stop worrying so much about these theoretical potential future threats to be just mine your own node and you go from there.
48:39Portland HODL Which yeah. That's basically the way nodes work. Like, in general, there's, of course, fringes in the because Bitcoin is so marginal, and what I mean by that is, like, it is relatively stable. Bitcoin is the same rough thing it was fifteen years ago. Any little deviation from that can create a new cycle. Somebody literally just finds some specific, like, Comcast thing for a user that that shouldn't I'm a I'm a nobody on Twitter. That shouldn't have blown up because nobody should have cared. If I didn't say anything, nobody would notice because nothing even happened. But, like, yeah, that's the ultimate point is that very small things devs say can have huge influence
49:19Portland HODL because of the fact everybody is seeking with a $2,000,000,000,000 asset the latest thing that's happened on something that's 15 years old. So for example as well, you've recently had it kind of stir up in Bitcoin Core, literally calling one group calling for a credibility crisis
49:38Portland HODL corrupt core, etcetera for changing the value of op return that gets relayed on the network per Bitcoin core version 30, not even removing the option. But regardless, like, the statements made have been like, hey, this is going to break Bitcoin, etcetera. That is completely false. Like it's on the margins, a nothing burger that gets blown out of proportion because it's the topic of the day. It's the only interesting thing that I believe anybody could find and you can see that how volatile this is during these specific events
50:12Portland HODL by how distracted individuals get with like bigger fish and what I mean by that is like, okay, x thing happens, blows out of proportion on Twitter and then somebody else does something even remotely slightly bigger that is still to me pretty uninteresting and that becomes the new topic because of the fact that the attention has shifted. It's moved on. It it was nothing bigger in the first place. It was just a point. It was a wedge. It's something you could put in, something you could discuss. It's engagement. And on every side of all of this, I'm just going to say, there's money being made. If you run a pool, you can make money by running a loose mempool policy. We've seen literally miners increase their profitability
50:51Portland HODL by accepting more transactions through these non standard, like non gossip channels, okay, well, what about the other side? If you run a tight end pool policy, go say that you're saving bitcoin through relay policy, like you're going to get more members. It's like everybody
51:08Portland HODL the podcasters are the ultimate winners. They get content all the time. So, like, the only people that I would say are true, like, in the middle, like, not getting a ton is those that aren't learning and just sitting through these kind of discussions without using their their their life's time. Like, you should be learning about them. You should be critically thinking. But everybody had an incentive to make this drama happen. Every single side did.
51:32Rod Palmer My my final point on this topic is that, you know, we learn as in spaces earlier today, some shit winner came in and was telling us all these threats to Bitcoin. It's like I've heard them all years ago. This is also if you want to to scream at the top of your lungs for everybody to hear that you found a new, you know, vulnerability or a new thing that breaks Bitcoin or a new threat to Bitcoin, h I I'm not listening to you unless you listen to forty hours per week. Unless you listen to forty hours per week, and I'd know, like,
52:04Rod Palmer if you haven't, go listen, and it gets probably been addressed already. This is probably known. Just calm down. And if you're not listening to Bitcoin podcast, it's just like, I don't have time to listen to all the threats that you you found on Twitter that are a threat to Bitcoin. It's just listen. Go listen to the podcast. What is what is the meme? I I have I found Bitcoin, and I'm here to fix it. Like, that is a very common thing. It just
52:29Portland HODL the new perspective, you finally looked at the elephant from the lens you have, and you've decided, I can fix the rest of the pieces I don't understand. Like, that is so incredibly common in Bitcoin. Absolutely.
52:41Richard Greaser Well, on topic of using, Bitcoin as money, that's a even controversial statement in and of itself, but we're big believers in that here at the Bugle. One thing that we do before or at the end of every show is we go through our fountain booths. So we're big supporters of the value for value economy. I think
53:05Richard Greaser who's the biggest winner of the drama is PodConv. The podcast conference industrial complex is the winner. One of the ways to disintermediate
53:18Richard Greaser PodConv is the value for value ecosystem. Jason Brett (3one twenty three): A 100%.
53:26Rod Palmer When they try to distract you with the latest thing, the current thing, sometimes you have to go because when you have to to go subterranean, you have to go to the value for value, the intellectual Silk Road, Nostra, Gertjats, retreat from the timeline. It's a they're jamming you. It's a psychological warfare, but the signal is real
53:46Rod Palmer on the found boost timeline.
53:51Richard Greaser Absolutely. So for our last episode, I don't think you had an opportunity to listen to it because you've been, you're a busy guy. You're busy arguing. You're busy, coding. The last episode we did was with my, good friend, Open Mic. He runs a company called Tunester, which is a streaming platform for musicians to be able to earn Bitcoin.
54:17Richard Greaser So one of the problems with There's a lot of problems that musicians are facing as far as being able to earn income. When you're adding a live stream to all your live events and you have the potential to earn hundreds or thousands of dollars from people watching and around the world, it really is a value add for Bitcoin. I think it's a
54:41Richard Greaser or sorry. Value add for the musician. I think it's a really cool project that I'm a big fan of.
54:47Portland HODL Have you heard of Tunster? I have not heard of Tunster.
54:52Richard Greaser Are you a musician or you that you like music?
54:55Portland HODL I do love music. But with that said, it's classical music. So typically, my music flavor is going to YouTube and finding some longer stretch and then, just programming while I listen to that.
55:08Richard Greaser I'm a big classical music fan as well. Who are some of your favorites?
55:13Portland HODL I like Bach particularly.
55:17Richard Greaser K. Yeah. I've been let me look at I'm looking at my plate list, my classical playlist. Been listening to a lot of Tchaikovsky. What do you like about Bach?
55:34Portland HODL Specifically, I just feel like in general, just it is easy to listen to, and it's not super slow. And in, like I don't know. I just I I just like the style. That's all I can say on that. I'm not an aficionado. I typically just put on the playlists, and I've noticed that those are the most common ones that I will end up bookmarking.
55:53Richard Greaser Very cool. But, yeah, that was that that's kind of a summary of the conversation that we had last or, well, couple weeks now. But, yeah, first boost of the show, Shadrach, our good friend, very cool guy. 323
56:12Richard Greaser SaaS says, woo, exclamation point times four LFG, hashtag 40 HPW. Thank you, Shadrach.
56:21Rod Palmer The next one is, it's from Rev Hoddle up there in Michigan on the homestead. He boosted 1,121 sets. He said, I look forward to Tunster TRL,
56:33Rod Palmer which was, my idea for bringing, like, Carson Daly t r l to Tunster and having a a top 10 countdown. But, we can all send in our, groupie videos from the local Bitcoin meetups instead of Times Square. Any of those local Bitcoiners out there can, come hang with me at the South Bend Indiana Bitcoin needup the first Thursday every month at Lang Lab, 06:30PM, learn something, earn something, share something, buy something, build relationships and resilience with local Bitcoiners
57:03Rod Palmer who cast our our vote for the best music in all of Bitcoin culture while we're at it. So thank you, Rev Huddl. Rev Huddl is, he he he uses the boost section, to comment and always to have us read
57:18Richard Greaser an ad for his local Bitcoin meet up there in, South Bend, Michigan in South Bend, Indiana. I've never been to South Bend. I like I like Indiana a lot. I've never been to South Bend, but I just like Notre Dame quite a bit. I think they're a bunch of arrogant assholes. They always start Like, we're getting into the football season. Sports ball season is starting folks and
57:47Richard Greaser Notre Dame probably has a much higher ranking than they deserve, again, as always. So what happens is what happens when you're the premier Catholic sportsball team. And there's over like a billion Catholics. It's a rig system where they always rank Notre Dame way higher
58:08Richard Greaser to get the Catholics to watch sportsball. You gotta sell the advertisements to advertisers, for sure. But it's cool that How does Bitcoin fix
58:21Richard Greaser Notre Dame getting unfair coverage on ESPN?
58:25Rod Palmer I don't know. I don't answer that.
58:29Portland HODL No. Portland, are you a sports ball fan? Do you like sports? No. I absolutely not. I I don't even like ESPN, Notre Dame, like, I know ESPN is sports ball channel and Notre Dame soccer team? I I have no clue on any of this.
58:43Richard Greaser So no Notre Dame, like, their their big thing is, football.
58:51Portland HODL Football is soccer globally, kind of correct? No. I'm just kidding. No. I I have no clue on that. I apologize.
58:58Richard Greaser So you you never were much of a a sports ball person growing up. Like, did you Never. Ever. Did you what what did you do growing up? Oh, what I did growing up?
59:14Portland HODL I was I I did a lot of motocross as, like, a kid. Right, and, I was always into specifically Legos and, like, electronic gizmos, but in my fifth grade year, that's when all that changed. I forget which age that correlates to, but I, built my first computer from scratch that year, and then I was, like, then I became like, okay, let's keep building and, like, overclocking and, like, that's all I did was just, like, modify computers and write code and just have fun, you know, and that that's that became my passion. Like, from there on out, I I never had time or cared about sports specifically because I just don't understand it. Like I don't want to take the time to understand the rules. I don't understand the emotions people feel. Like people get very riled up about these people throwing a ball around and I just never
1:00:01Portland HODL have been able to recapture that level of an endorsement rush from a guy running across a white line or something like that.
1:00:10Richard Greaser Very good. Yeah. I built computers growing up. That's what I did. I I wonder if that plays into the conflict that you're having with the podcasters right now. Boba ten thousand says, from an old fat musician songwriter, you want a crowd feeds off a crowd. It's called excitement. First off, Noster will most likely never be mainstream. It's too privacy oriented.
1:00:35Richard Greaser Therefore, when an artist stays niche, they should expect a niche crowd. The music business has always been about business. Sadly, it should be treated as such, which most artists are not business oriented. They need help. You don't become the Rolling Stones on your own. V for free is a great idea for music, but change is mostly a decade plus at best. Most of the folks on V for V music won't last a decays,
1:01:05Richard Greaser only for monetary purposes. But again, until Noster becomes simple and mainstream, they will never find a crowd. If they are good, they need TikTok, Insta, and YouTube to get popular enough to go out and tour. It's a numbers game. Sorry, not sorry.
1:01:23Rod Palmer Always the optimist. Bubba. Bubba, he he's great. But Bubba is an artist. Bubba is a songwriter. Bubba was a musician. And he is you know, I I tried to say some of those things a little bit softer, but Bubba will put it to you
1:01:40Richard Greaser exactly how he sees it. Jeff Ross (3three 30 three): I think he made a lot of really good points with the it's like a lot of musicians are not good business people. They need Jews behind the scene. This is why the Jews control the music industry. It's not some elaborate conspiracy. It's just that Jews tend to be good at businesses. It's the same thing. Devs oftentimes aren't the best communicators, so they need podcasters.
1:02:09Richard Greaser Very it's a thing. Well, thank you for the boost, Baba. Really appreciate it. Yeah. I don't know if Noster is going to be coming in stream. I like what's happening on Noster though. I'm enjoying it. But I guess we're kind of a nature podcast. You have to listen to forty hours per week to actually understand what the hell we're talking about, which is kind of a big ask for normal people that prefer to watch sports ball
1:02:34Richard Greaser instead. Alright.
1:02:38Rod Palmer Avi Burra, 10,000 sats. Thank you, Avi. Overn mic is the face of the value for value revolution. That's right. The tunester tunester, is is and there's not much else out there, and it's,
1:02:57Rod Palmer for building something cool.
1:02:60Richard Greaser Jason Peterson (3five 30: I think to change the world, sometimes you just have to be a crazy person and do things not just because everybody else sees it. A lot of times, you have the vision for something and you just go with it and the market follows eventually. But so a lot of times, it doesn't. But it takes crazy people to do things like that.
1:03:25Richard Greaser Maybe Mike's crazy. I don't know. He seems pretty rational to me. I like him a lot. Well, thank do do you know, Avi Portland? You
1:03:33Portland HODL ever No. I don't. I've never interacted.
1:03:36Richard Greaser He's a great guy. He's got he's got the biggest, like, nostril oriented podcast, the Plug Chain Radio.
1:03:43Portland HODL Very active. I I actually should listen to that. That is that's an that seems really cool.
1:03:50Richard Greaser Are you are you ever active on Nostril?
1:03:53Portland HODL Nostril, not so much as I have quite a few gripes with the UI UX and specifically, I I do have an account. I actually I did, the first grinding of an in pub. And what that means is, like, my in pub is actually in pub seven seven seven seven seven seven seven and then a bunch of digits because I use my computer to try random private keys until I got that vanity URL.
1:04:19Portland HODL But in terms of my experience with Gnoster, specifically, it using Amethyst on Android as my client and snort not social, and this is probably about a year ago, overall, just like lots of issues loading content, things crashing, and I feel that the discussion is a little bit narrow in scope for compared to, like, what I like to see. I like to see a lot of Bitcoin content from Bitcoin developers in addition to a lot of general developer content as well. So I can kind of, like, combine these ideas of, like, hey. Like, this programming language has now implemented x feature.
1:04:55Portland HODL Can I use this to build on Bitcoin? I I'm always looking to make those kind of links. I just don't see enough of that on Oster with a bad UI, UX. I kind of just I understand its potential. I just am not it's not where I wanna be at the moment. So
1:05:12Richard Greaser What what year did you get into Bitcoin roughly?
1:05:16Portland HODL What do you mean by get into? Because there's, like, a couple touch points. Like, actually understand it or, like, first touched sat? I guess first touch it. First touch it was 2010.
1:05:28Richard Greaser Okay. So very early on. And then, like, when did you get really interested in Actually, like, convicted, 2018.
1:05:35Portland HODL Like, I, before I had done, like, lots of Bitcoin mining. And so from GPUs to ASICs and then every like, I sold all the time and from there, like 2013 was the first big one, liquidated the whole stack, price went down massively, I think like $200 to $160 I literally said it was a scam. I was very young, I didn't understand what bitcoin is for. I didn't even understand the power of what bitcoin is. I literally thought it was a get rich quick scheme, okay?
1:06:03Portland HODL Exit bitcoin, don't even touch it, don't even think about it for years. 2016 rolls around, I'm working at Intel, people are talking about bitcoin. Hey, do you want to go in on some miners with one of my coworker? We, we buy miners, we mine Bitcoin, we sell the miners when we're done and then and, sold, I did liquidate all at that point again
1:06:23Portland HODL and then the final, like, after this, I never liquidated Bitcoin again, and that was in 2018. I was like, I I started, like I did a lot of Linux contribution or sorry, Linux kernel contributions in 2017. And I started, like, actually looking at the Bitcoin code, and then, yeah, it became like, holy this is actually really excellent software. Like, this is gonna work. This isn't gonna break. Like, I tried figuring out ways to break it and it doesn't break. So at that point, I was like, okay. Bitcoin has never done me wrong. I love Bitcoin. It's really cool. I know how to mine with it. And then I just started doing acquisition of Bitcoin personally, like, stacking my sats. I haven't mined since though, that that 2017.
1:07:06Richard Greaser So you just need, like, technically, like, another seven years of Nostra development to be interested in it for the UX to improve.
1:07:14Portland HODL Or I got I I would literally have to go through and actually do the proof of work, review the Nostra code and go like, hey, this is okay. Philosophically though, the incentives are very different. Like Bitcoin to me, like, oh, this is going to get me in so much hot water. Bitcoin fundamentally
1:07:33Portland HODL solves a problem with humanity and that problem is that nation states can't stop touching the money printer. The temptation to put your hand in the cookie jar and grab unlimited cookies is always throughout history been a problem. Every nation has experienced inflation.
1:07:51Portland HODL Satoshi created the cure to inflation. That seems to me like a bet I want to take to fix humanity and a movement, like, I really want to be a part of. Like, that is the fundamental to humans, to fix. Like, the amount of suffering inflation causes is absolutely insane and Satoshi just comes out with a fixed cap supply for an asset that permissionlessly can be moved between person a to person b. That is like that's why I like bitcoin.
1:08:19Portland HODL Nosto is a different proposition where it benefits me and it's kinda like censorship free communication, but I I don't think I've grasped, like, why it's the the movement that fundamentally
1:08:34Portland HODL changes humanity. I think Bitcoin is that. I think Nostra's very cool. I just haven't found, and maybe I will, why it is a level that I want to, like, why even need it at the end of the day? Like, I feel like most of my communication is not that adversarial in nature. I if I get deplatformed, I trust Nostra enough to be around. But at the same time, like, I I just You just you're not
1:08:59Rod Palmer you're just not is into v logs, vlogging,
1:09:05Portland HODL and saying good morning as people who are, like, hardcore Nostril users are. You know? Yeah. I get it. I get it. I guess so. I I don't know how to dance around the dance around the subject. I just I just didn't see the the proposition why I it incentivizes me to use Bitcoin's incentives are very clear.
1:09:22Richard Greaser Yeah. I think a good place to start is listen to forty hours of blockchain radio.
1:09:29Portland HODL How is it, Dev, do you find forty hours? When you're fighting AI to China bots, everybody's trying to pay you less all the time. You're getting attacked on Twitter. I I think it's time. I I got I got I got I that that's a skill issue that I can't listen to forty hours a week. I need to put in the work. That's that's Never, yeah. You caught Never never never judge a man until you've listened to forty hours of podcast and his headphones. Everybody's got time constraints. Everybody's got responsibilities,
1:09:58Rod Palmer family. They gotta drive out to get raw milk and and beef towel from the rancher, an out an hour outside the city. It's difficult, but, the everybody's you know, it's we we still strive. We we still try to listen to forty hours every week, and, it's part of part of the benefit is figuring out
1:10:19Rod Palmer how to get it done. Finding that stranded stranded time to to mine for orange filling stories on Bitcoin podcasts.
1:10:27Portland HODL Yeah. Sign up. Performance
1:10:29Richard Greaser Performance enhancers help a lot. You know, so, like, smoking cigarettes makes you more productive at work. You get your work done quicker. And then,
1:10:38Portland HODL drinking lots of coffee, you don't have to sleep as much. I'm a big I'm a big caffeine, guy. I love I love caffeinated beverages. So coffee. The one I found out recently was, Celsius. Those were pretty good. What else? Yeah. That's that's that's my jam. Drink a little drink some caffeine. I feel amazing.
1:10:60Richard Greaser Makes it it just makes life better. Good a good comp of coffee. I think cigarette.
1:11:05Portland HODL Maybe not the cigarette for my case. But with that said, yeah, definitely before coffee, like, brain feels slow, very, like, kind of, like, agitated, and then you you have some caffeine, and you're like, hey. How's your day? Things are amazing. Everything's great. You're just typing away, making stuff. It's oh, it's the best. I love it.
1:11:26Richard Greaser Absolutely. Alright. Well, let's, blast through these. Boost, Pies, 121¢, LFG, strong-arm, strong-arm, strong-arm emoji,
1:11:38Richard Greaser Pies, one of our most consistent listeners, boosters, absolute legend. You see him all over the found timeline on everybody's podcast commenting on it. Once in a while, you'll see him get a little bit grumpy with the podcaster. He keeps people in check. He is an enforcer of no nonsense.
1:11:57Rod Palmer He's a Wild West wild guardian, for sure. Next one, Noster gang, 101 sets, listener aggression is advised, rock and roll
1:12:10Rod Palmer emoji. Hell yeah. Thank you, Nostra Gang. Nostra Gang's in those boosts almost every week as well.
1:12:20Richard Greaser Two angry cunts podcast. Great podcast. Oh, here we go. It's, Sylvie. Her name is Sylvie Rod.
1:12:29Rod Palmer That's right.
1:12:30Richard Greaser Co hosted by Bubba, who boosts us earlier to I don't know if I said the amount. 2222¢. In my opinion, the way to spread the v for v niche space of music within an already niche Bitcoin space is to not pigeonhole oneself into only Nostra centric mindset. There are v for v music shows. The creators of these shows put a lot of time creativity into their shows and the artists they choose to play. Support
1:12:58Richard Greaser the shows and artists any way one can. KISS. Okay. So here's a bunch of, shows it looks like. So, at UpBeats, at the
1:13:13Richard Greaser Dew Durer Fowls, at Mike Newman at Colo Mono and others. That's cool. We'll have to check those out and and follow him on the roster. It looks like two angry cons apparently was talking about me, on their most recent show. I got it tagged on Oster this morning, I think. But, yeah, appreciate it, Sylvie. Thank you for the,
1:13:38Richard Greaser the boost.
1:13:41Rod Palmer Next is from Open Mic. 7,777 sats. He was of course, we were interviewing. Thanks for having me. Watch out for pirates. Yeah. Watch out. If, yeah, if you live if you live in Minnesota, the land of many lakes, there's a good chance you might run into Somali pirates if you're out boating. So
1:14:02Rod Palmer don't don't take that for granted.
1:14:05Richard Greaser Have you heard about this Portland? What's happening in Minnesota?
1:14:09Portland HODL No. I typically don't keep up with news cycles of any sorts, really. Like, other other than Bitcoin Twitter. Like, that that's my that's my life.
1:14:19Richard Greaser So in Minnesota, they they have the largest population of Somalis outside of Mogadishu, and they are now taking over the lakes.
1:14:30Portland HODL And What do you mean taking over the lakes? Are they swimming, canoes, boats?
1:14:35Richard Greaser Pirate ships. Are they Pirate ships.
1:14:38Rod Palmer Arms? Smallly pirates. Okay. Yeah. Most of them have arms, and they're showing up to, you know, it's it's Labor Day next weekend. So they're gonna be about a lot of people out on the boat, join Labor Day weekend, the end of summer. Beware, cap your, your water cannons,
1:14:58Rod Palmer set up on the starboard side, you know, or both sides if you cab it. Keep a smallie pirates at bay.
1:15:04Richard Greaser Yeah. You you go on the Lades Lakes or you wanna go tubing or or wakeboarding, you might not be the captain for very long. Let's just say that.
1:15:17Portland HODL I think, Bitcoin could fix this. Like, maybe if The United States had big enough strategic Bitcoin reserves, they they would have enough excess, capital to deploy maybe some I don't know. Two bombers to the lakes and, take care of the pirates. Like, I I I feel like yeah. I feel like they could take care of it. Or, like, maybe that, like, having a hard money would be able to create incentives
1:15:42Portland HODL for people not to to necessarily need to use violence to take each other's other's boats. They would they would have enough wealth to build more boats, right, or have the boats that they need. I I I just, I feel like this this is a this is a Bitcoin fixes this kind of problem, are these Somalia pirates on the lakes.
1:15:59Richard Greaser Well, I think Somalia, was fairly decent. I don't know if it was ever decent, but it was a lot more stable before the CIA started messing around with it. So if Bitcoin can disintermediate the CIA, the pirates won't have a need to leave their homes and go to Minneapolis. But,
1:16:21Richard Greaser this like in the short term, from the status standpoint, Bitcoin could fix this because, El Salvador, the richer they get as a country, the bigger the prisons they can make. And Donald Trump can start deporting the small pirates to El Salvador. Too spicy but topic for me there. Shout out to Naya Bukele, the most based prison warden in the world. Bitcoin podcasters love him. And then the last boost, Lahav, CliffShark, thirteen thirty seven SaaS, says social Bitcoin score.
1:16:55Richard Greaser So this is an idea that we presented in the episode, is to come up with some sort of standardized test. It's like you submit somebody to a questionnaire, which consists of all the purity tests, so they're new to the space. They have a social Bitcoin score, you know whether or not to follow them on Twitter or to have them on your podcast right off the bat, are they going to pass the purity test or are they going to naively step on land mines left and right?
1:17:27Richard Greaser Le Havre of Cliff Shark is the videographer behind all of the great videos that the band, Scardust, has on their YouTube channel. Really cool guy. But yeah. Well, that wraps up the the boost. Portland, really big thank you for coming on. This is, Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah. I hope you, get the That's great. Go on a lot of lot more podcasts.
1:17:54Portland HODL Yeah. We'll we'll see. We'll we'll definitely see. I think my goal for the kind of the coming future, I wanna get back into doing more Bitcoin education like I originally started on Twitter and kind of rehosting some of these spaces, not like essentially like node running, but more so like what makes Bitcoin tick. An example is like a mini script space. I want to be able to tell people and have a slide deck where people could reference this is how mini script works and put it very simply. Like, tie everything up with bows. Become become the podcaster this dev wants to be on the inside. And only practice can make that happen, I believe.
1:18:29Richard Greaser I'm excited to see, the tweet or the screenshot of you and Danny Knowles talking two bald men together, the the the picture of Becca, Rob, and Danny was great. I think that there this trend of of hairless Bitcoin podcasters is
1:18:50Richard Greaser or Bitcoin podcast conversations is awesome.
1:18:54Portland HODL But Big thing. But really, the the question I got for you, which bald Bitcoin podcaster or which bald Bitcoiner is most closely representative of Lex Luthor from the new Superman movie. I think you know the answer right now. You probably do.
1:19:13Rod Palmer Is this a real one? It's it's it's staring right in front it's staring right across from me right now.
1:19:20Portland HODL As I say, it's Portland Hoddle.
1:19:22Richard Greaser I don't know. The the giggler's giving you a run for the money. Okay.
1:19:28Portland HODL No. I definitely, as of this week, have gotten plenty of, like, Lex Luthor screenshots from the latest Superman comparing my desire to poke Bitcoin and improve Bitcoin with that of, well, Lex Luthor from Superman, who is the absolute villain movie.
1:19:44Rod Palmer I've been spreading the Portland huddle looks like Lex Luthor, meme pretty aggressively,
1:19:51Portland HODL so I'm partly to blame for that. Okay. I I I I I approve of that, actually. Like, freedom of speech, baby. Let's go.
1:19:58Richard Greaser Is the new Superman worth seeing? I I saw the Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
1:20:04Portland HODL So do you guys do you want me to you all since you guys have a lot of viewers, I'll keep it very light. Overall, I would say if you're spending less than $17, I know you could stack some extra SATs or donate to the bugle. But with that said,
1:20:20Portland HODL if you want to just treat yourself to a good time, I feel like that was one of the more fun, modern movies I have watched. And, yeah, like, I I don't remember the last time I saw a movie I considered even good walking out of the theater. And that was when I went, it was it was worth the money. I I I wasn't pissed that I I paid for a ticket and I could have bought Sats instead.
1:20:41Richard Greaser Man, that might be a controversial that might be the most controversial thing you said on this whole, show today. Yeah.
1:20:50Portland HODL And to be honest, like, I'll I'll I'll make a note. There's a specific element in the movie people really hate and think the entire movie sucks because of it. I'm willing to overlook that.
1:21:02Richard Greaser The overarching story
1:21:04Portland HODL is worth it. The the single field It's good value. It's good entertainment. Like, it's specifically watching myself on screen, I'm probably a little biased. So yeah. That's I I'm really biased here. So, yeah, go watch me as Lex Luthor in the new Superman movie. Yeah. You like Superman movie because you see yourself in the villain. Yeah. Well, quick question to the the podcasters in the room. Do you guys listen to your own your own podcasts? I do. Absolutely. Okay. Cool. There are some of them down there. A movie, man. It's it's good.
1:21:37Richard Greaser I mean, I feel I feel like if you're not listening to your own podcast and you don't enjoy the content that you're doing, that's probably not very good in the first place.
1:21:44Rod Palmer Right. Right.
1:21:46Portland HODL I'm not I I'm guilty of this as well. I've definitely, like, watched the after the they cut it up and do all the editing and listen to myself, I'm like, okay. I sound pretty good. I appreciate that. That's good. Oh, I agree with this guy. This guy's awesome.
1:21:58Richard Greaser It's good. You're you're very well spoken to have, for sure. Thank you. I I I'd love to have Luke on the podcast at some point, but I'm a little bit nervous about it. You know, I'd ask him, like, what do you what do you think is exciting about Bitcoin? He's silent for, like, five minutes and the response, I think it's an interesting technology.
1:22:18Portland HODL Like, it it makes for a rough interview. I think it I think if you get him a few Doctor Peppers, he'll he'll perk up. He he'll he'll he'll start he'll loosen up real good. He'll start talking about the the Bitcoin he loves. Yeah. Not sure I speak for him anything.
1:22:34Richard Greaser So closing up the the interview, you got any final closing thoughts, Portland, for our audience that you think is supportive?
1:22:44Portland HODL Yeah. I I do. And my my closing thoughts are like, we just talked about a barrage of, like, fun humor, parody, satire, and some even, like, really technical topics. Understand, though I poke Bitcoin and, like, that's, like, that's what makes me comfortable with Bitcoin is FUDD ing my own bags.
1:23:04Portland HODL But the reality is, like, you should always take to heart, like, the thing like, in my opinion, the things that were told me are still absolutely true. This is good for Bitcoin. Like, everything ends up turning good for Bitcoin. Even, like, the Comcast nodes allegedly getting DOSed, which they technically didn't get DOSed, like, a lot of people learned about Bitcoin configs. Bitcoin is for my friends. It's for my enemies. Understand Bitcoin is a permissionless network. Anybody can use it. That is the actual value of Bitcoin is the fact that nobody can stop you from using it. Honey Badger, like, it's anti fragile technology. So just under I want people to understand, like, Bitcoin is one of the best technologies we have as humankind, and it is absolutely, like, Honey Badger, don't give a fuck, strong technology
1:23:50Portland HODL that isn't going to be defeated by any one human being. Like that that's ultimately it and poking and like making bitcoin better, we need people to do these activities, Ideally, in a white hat way where they disclose and talk about it and, like, bring to attention. Yeah. Like, just understand, like, nobody's breaking Bitcoin in a absolutely like, you're gonna lose your life savings way. That's what I got. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on,
1:24:21Richard Greaser and thank you everybody for listening to the show. We'll catch you on the next episode of Behind the Podcast. No time for nuanced discussion. Must protect Bitcoin from destruction. The time chain is my religion. I will protect it with precision.
1:25:13Richard Greaser Policing unity from being in the bamboo,