TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

#702: The State of Bitcoin Protocol Development in 2026 with Coinjoined Chris

79 min
Jan 10, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Chris discusses Bitcoin protocol development in 2026, covering covenant implementations, quantum resistance timelines, second-layer protocols like Lightning and Ark, and the emerging role of Bitcoin insurance. The conversation addresses regulatory challenges, the maturation of privacy tools, and the need for better communication around technical upgrades to avoid unnecessary FUD.

Insights
  • Covenant implementations (CTV, OpVault) are critical for enabling reactive security models that protect against both cyber attacks and physical coercion, yet remain stalled due to social consensus challenges rather than technical limitations
  • Quantum resistance is a multi-year infrastructure overhaul requiring changes to PSBT standards, wallet software, and mining systems—rushing implementation poses greater risk than the actual quantum threat timeline
  • Second-layer protocols (Lightning, Ark, Liquid, Spark) are maturing faster than expected without protocol changes, enabling a sovereign banking stack that could rival traditional finance infrastructure
  • Bitcoin insurance and multi-sig custody solutions have moved from uninsurable to mainstream institutional adoption following the 2024 Bitcoin ETF approval, demonstrating how regulatory legitimacy drives product innovation
  • Prediction markets on Bitcoin represent an underappreciated use case that could drive massive adoption by enabling insider information to flow efficiently through financial markets
Trends
Institutional adoption of Bitcoin self-custody and multi-sig vaults accelerating post-ETF approvalSecond-layer protocol maturation enabling payment and financial services without protocol changesEuropean regulatory arbitrage creating favorable conditions for Bitcoin businesses (Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland)Covenant proposals gaining grassroots support despite developer gridlock on implementationBitcoin insurance market emergence as critical infrastructure for high-net-worth self-custodyPrediction markets becoming primary mechanism for truth discovery and insider information pricingPrivacy-first wallet UX improvements reducing friction for non-custodial self-custody adoptionNation-state Bitcoin adoption creating demand for advanced security primitives like covenantsQuantum resistance research progressing steadily with realistic multi-year implementation timelineDecentralized finance stack building on Bitcoin layers rather than alternative L1 blockchains
Topics
Bitcoin Protocol Covenants (CTV, OpVault, CAP)Quantum Resistance and Post-Quantum CryptographyBitcoin Insurance and Multi-Sig CustodySecond-Layer Protocols (Lightning, Ark, Liquid, Spark)Bitcoin Inheritance and Estate PlanningPrediction Markets on BitcoinBitcoin as Reserve Asset for Nation-StatesPrivacy-Preserving Wallet TechnologyBitcoin Mining and Transaction EfficiencyRegulatory Frameworks for Bitcoin (EU, US, Germany)Self-Custody Security ModelsBitcoin Payment Infrastructure (Bitrefill, Strike)Stablecoin Adoption and Tether EconomicsBitcoin Developer Consensus MechanismsWrench Attacks and Physical Security
Companies
BlackRock
Bitcoin ETF approval by Larry Fink legitimized Bitcoin as institutional asset, enabling insurance companies to offer ...
Tether
Discussed as most profitable company globally, buying 8,888.8888 Bitcoin quarterly; enables sanctions evasion and int...
Coinbase
Referenced as custodial exchange where Bitcoin inheritance is trivial versus self-custody complications
Kraken
Mentioned as example of secure intermediate address for covenant-based vault spending restrictions
Unchained
Collaborative multi-sig custody provider securing $12B+ in Bitcoin for 12,000+ clients using two-of-three key model
Bitrefill
Bitcoin payment integration enabling goods purchases; integrated into Bitbox hardware wallet
Block (Square)
BitKey hardware wallet provider offering embedded two-to-three multi-sig for non-technical users
Liberty Mutual
Major insurance underwriter now backing Bitcoin insurance products after 2024 regulatory legitimacy
Allianz
Insurance company that reversed position on Bitcoin coverage following ETF approval and regulatory clarity
Google
Mentioned as private company advancing quantum computing research alongside other tech firms
Microsoft
Referenced as quantum computing research company alongside Google and IonQ
IonQ
Quantum computing company advancing practical quantum systems
Wallet of Satoshi
Custodial Lightning wallet that shut down EU operations, migrating users to non-custodial Spark implementation
Blink
Custodial Lightning wallet recommended for onboarding new users to Bitcoin
Liana Wallet
Non-custodial wallet with privacy-conscious descriptor management and inheritance features
Bitbox
Hardware wallet with Bitrefill integration for Bitcoin spending
Cold Card
Hardware signing device with secure elements; no known hacks despite security research
Ledger
Hardware wallet mentioned in context of wrench attack defense and decoy wallet strategies
Polymarket
Prediction market platform enabling insider trading and information discovery
Stacks (STX)
Bitcoin L2 enabling smart contracts; mentioned in context of prediction market infrastructure
People
Chris (Coinjoined Chris)
Bitcoin protocol developer and insurance entrepreneur; founder of BitSurance; advocates for covenants and self-custody
Marty Bent
TFTC podcast host; discusses Bitcoin adoption, protocol development, and institutional trends
Michael Saylor
MicroStrategy CEO; major Bitcoin advocate credited with institutional adoption but debated on actual impact
Paola Arruino
Stablecoin creator credited with driving crypto adoption in Argentina more than any other individual
Nick Carter
VC investor who promoted quantum FUD narrative; later invested in quantum-secure blockchain company
Jameson Lopp
Bitcoin security researcher tracking wrench attacks on Bitcoiners; maintains GitHub database of incidents
Jonas Nick
Cryptographer working on libsecp256k1 library and post-quantum signature research; low-profile builder
Mikhail Kudinov
Researcher collaborating on hash-based signature research for quantum resistance
Miguel Ras
Physicist from Fidelity who analyzed quantum key-breaking claims and found methodological flaws
Matt Corallo
Bitcoin developer who proposed consensus cleanup addressing time-warp and inflation bugs
Antoine Poinsot
Bitcoin developer working on consensus cleanup proposal with Matt Corallo
James O'Byrne
Bitcoin developer who framed OpVault covenant proposal focused on preventing exchange hacks
Steve Lee
Bitcoin developer who organized quantum resistance conference
Christian Decker
Bitcoin developer; featured in German Bitcoin trading card game
Gigi
Bitcoin educator and writer; featured in German Bitcoin trading card game
Robin Linus
Stacks/Bitcoin L2 developer; close friend of Chris; building Alphen and Citria prediction markets
Jack Dorsey
Square/Block founder working on Bitcoin inheritance and custody solutions
Ross Ulbricht
Silk Road founder; subject of potential Trump clemency discussed by Chris
Kion (Kilian Kuhn)
Bitcoin privacy software developer facing legal charges; subject of potential Trump pardon discussion
Donald Trump
US President; discussed for potential Bitcoin clemency and Venezuela military operation
Quotes
"In a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins."
Marty BentOpening
"There are two kinds of Bitcoiners: people that come for number go up and fucking liars."
ChrisMid-episode
"Covenants would make lightning better, they would make self-custody better. We would have reactive instead of proactive security."
ChrisProtocol discussion
"Bitcoin is for anybody who wants it and it strengthens your network. But the more greedy somebody is, the better it is for everybody else."
Marty BentInstitutional adoption
"The unintended consequences are not quantifiable if you do it. And also they are not quantifiable if you don't do it."
Chris (quoting Jameson Lopp)Covenant discussion
Full Transcript
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free. When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Chris, I've been enjoying your game, sir, online. I had to reach out and say, I need to get you on the podcast to talk about Bitcoin. How are you? Doing well. I'm very slathered. Thank you. You're the tallest troll on Bitcoin Twitter. How's it feel? That is actually something I've never heard. I've heard like tallest shit poster, but tallest troll, that makes a lot of sense. I take it. Yeah, I was thinking, guess what? We're three days past the 17th anniversary of the Genesis block, and I think you've been in Bitcoin for quite a while. We had the pleasure of meeting in person in Riga, Latvia, at the Baltic Honey Badger Conference in 2024. I haven't caught up since, and like I said, I've been observing your game. on X. And I think 2025 particularly was a crab year in Bitcoin price. We sort of ranged and people get very crabby when they range. We had narratives popping up, whether it was the op return limits getting lifted, Bit444, Bitcoin knots, and we tied the year up with quantum FUD. What are your thoughts on the state of discourse around Bitcoin protocol development specifically? Protocol development, I think, is just chugging along just fine. Besides this critical bug that they just found in Bitcoin version 30 that deletes legacy wallets. But other than that, I tried to make light of the filter situation the entire last year, I think. and I'm very happy that we moved on now to the quantum fund. I think February 1st is like the BIP44 signaling day or something. I have not seen a single node signal that or a single miner. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Why do you think these narratives manifest within Bitcoin? Quantum specifically for me was like, come on, guys, we've been talking about this for years. now all of a sudden. Yes, some people suffer from main character syndrome and then it's a good angle to remind people, hey, I'm still around. I mean, the irony, I have nothing against Nick Carter, even though he blocked me. But he came up with these very nice dice, the FUD, Bitcoin dice, where Quantum was one side and now he's like investing with his VC funnel. He led and invested in like a company that makes blockchains quantum secure. And like that company, like I stalked it on LinkedIn, now proudly says we're making Solana quantum secure, which, you know, sure, scam some VCs. I'm fine with that. But like preaching or like he ended with like, everybody's going to dump on Bitcoin now because I said so. And I wrote this blog post and I think that's too much. I mean, it's worthwhile having these conversations, and I like to see that our smartest cryptographers are working on something and that we're not unprepared and we actually have contingency plans. But, yeah, I mean, it's just boredom, I think, because not that much happens and everything has been going too well. Price has been quite high. You know, need a new narrative. Yeah, and now the price is drifting higher to start the year. people. I haven't heard any quantum fun since around Christmas time. Yeah, I mean, it's going to happen soon that they're factoring like larger numbers. Like, there was this paper, I think Reardon, Brian Black, like he went through it and like who was the physicist from Fidelity? What's his name? Miguel Ras. Yes, Miguel Ras. there was a paper claiming oh we have a broken 6-bit ECC key like an elliptic curve key and then he went through this paper and he saw you guys guessed 100 times and a 6-bit key to the power of 6 is like 64 there are 64 possibilities and you guessed 100 times so I'm not that flustered that any sort of key is being broken in the near term future let alone like 128 bits so yeah yeah what um again like what do you think just like the broad state of bitcoin itself not the protocol well the protocol and the industry you've been working as we were discussing before this on satskeeper you're working on a bitcoin insurance yeah i mean i have like a few companies that's that deal with self custody with inheritance and insurance of bitcoin mainly i'm focusing my energy on the store value aspect of Bitcoin. Like I wish more people would use it as a medium of exchange, but that simply is not the reality. Like I use my Bitbox and they have like a Bitrefill integration. And from time to time, I use Bitrefill to purchase goods and stuff, but I know that I'm in the absolute minority. And I would have thought like 10 years ago, like in 10 years from now, like we would see a lot more adoption that way. And again, I'm a Europe poor. I was not blessed with like 4 million square terminals where you can now pay with Bitcoin everywhere. I think this is like the most enormous news that has happened last year. But yeah, I think more companies are coming in, more like retail investors. The interest is not really there or isn't back like it was in 2021. But we have a lot of interest from institutional holders to have Bitcoin on the balance. and have it properly in self-custody. So that's what I observe. You mentioned that you're a euro poor. What is the state of the Bitcoin industry and the posturing towards Bitcoin as an asset from European officials? And what are the boots on the ground reports of individuals? So I reside here in the small Grand D.C. of Luxembourg. I'm sure you can point it on a map as an American high school educated person and our finance minister, he just spoke in Bitcoin Amsterdam the sovereign wealth fund of Luxembourg purchased 1% of their holdings into Ibit which is a ginormous step I would say. Luxembourg is a small country, 600,000 inhabitants but a ton of people from Belgium and France and Germany come here to work and there is this thing where if you work for 10 years, even if it's minimum wage, you are entitled to a fat pension once you reach retirement age. And that was paid out from this wealth fund. It's not a kingdom. We have a Grand Duke. And that was set to expire in 2045 or something because markets, whatever, and they're spending too much money, as all governments do. So I think it's like the right choice to pivot a little bit into Bitcoin exposure. So I'm bullish on that. I'm natively German. I'm not that bullish on that country. We have a really strong Bitcoin community. And I would say of all the European countries, we have the most toxic Bitcoin only maximal crowd. Like if I go to a French Bitcoin meetup, it will be a Bitcoin meetup. but people will, yeah, show you IOTA and Ethereum and Solana and all those good things. IOTA is still around. Yeah, IOTA is German, by the way. And it is quantum secure because I know that I invested like in 2015, 2016. When did it come out? Like I bought that whole bullshit. David Sonsible was his name. Like, oh, it's not binary. It's ternary. You have minus one, plus one, and zero. I bought this whole quantum bullshit 10 years ago. My IOTA bags during my shitcoin period, those would have been some cool Bitcoin. It's still around. Just yesterday, I saw a paid ad for IOTA, which is insane to me. They were funded in Bitcoin, I guess. I remember the Iowa Day. My shit corner day, around that time too. It seems like we've been in Bitcoin around the same amount of time. What drew you to it originally? So I had a friend in university who was really into this. He was really paranoid. And he gave me Bitcoin for free, like a ton of Bitcoin. And I was thinking, hey, I don't need this. I have PayPal. I have all the means to pay for stuff and goods and services. And once it reached like not Euro parity, like was that 50 cents or so, like I sold my bag for like a graphics card and neglected for like two years. And then it came back. I thought, fuck, should I have kept this? But I was not a cypherpunk. I was an engineer. I was at university with like technical minded people. And there was a lot of conversation about like Bitcoin. but I didn't grok it until, let's say, 2017 when I realized, hey, hang on, all my stock gains. I came in, and I always am gladly admit this, I came in for number go up. I always say there's two kinds of Bitcoiners, people that come for number go up and fucking liars. And I admit that people come into it, and then they change, and then they stay for the sovereignty, and they stay for the freedom money and like the fuck you money and those great, great aspects. But maybe today with all the education that we have, like a lot more people come into it from that side without this number go up. But back then, I would measure everybody went into Bitcoin because, wow, this is an asset that goes up. And, you know, that's why my genesis. Number go up is the best technology that humans have ever come into contact with. It is somebody, because we were discussing this earlier. I use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. I pay Logan. He's on here now. He gets paid in Bitcoin every two weeks. Other members of our staff get paid in Bitcoin by my VPN service with Bitcoin. And the payments aspect is very useful, incredibly important. But I think people try to over-index on that, even though I use it every day, literally, as a payment means. People over-index on that and try to fade number go up. Because it's like, oh, we just sound greedy here. But I think it's going to get down to Bitcoin's sort of path towards success. You need number to go up massively over time. Yeah, I mean, it's inevitably like people will have more eyeballs on it and more people will accept Bitcoin and want to be paid in Bitcoin. If it's like crab walking for like five years, I'd be fine. But I would assume that adoption would like not grow as steadily. I use Bitcoin daily again in my company. Like I pay people in Canada and in Australia and I'd rather put a bullet in my brain to do like a wire transfer and wait like three or five days. and pay like 50 bucks in fees like from a German bank to a Luxembourg bank to like a Singaporean and like it takes ages and with Bitcoin like just like and it doesn't get old like every time I get like a separate invoice and I just pay it in like a couple seconds and then the guy texts me man are you ever like asleep or what no it's like sending like this bearer asset like this digital cash at the end of the globe in like a second and like there's nothing I can do to take or claw it back and that guy is paid and no intermediary has been paid. Maybe like, I don't know, Lightning or like an on-chain fee of like a couple cents right now. That's amazing. But I get that I'm like an enthusiast. Like I run my own nodes. I have like enough liquidity management to like pay any invoice. Like I pay several million sets easily when other people struggle with that. Like the technology is not, or the UX is not there yet. Like I'm really bullish on Arcade and all these things and I'm happy that people, like smarter people work on that. But yeah, I want to see more people use it. Are we a dying breed? People that run our own nodes and self-custody? I think if you last year taught us anything, is that running a node makes you a Bitcoin. There's a lot of LARPing around that. Every customer that I get, they're really privacy conscious these days. It used to be only the tinfo-wearing weirdos were into this, like us. We are like, oh, I'm using a VPN. That is weird. Nowadays, it's absolutely normal. And now when I onboard people, like I'm a big fan of Liana Wallet, I always explain the privacy implications of connecting your wallet descriptor to an external node because then, of course, you leak your holdings. There's no loss of your keys, but you lose some privacy. And especially with a wallet like Liana, it's a single click and have a pruned node installed fully. There's no porting magic. Everything happens in the background, and it's like 35 gigabytes of blockchain data downloaded over the next two, three days or so. And I show this to people, and they're excited. Wow, now I have my own full node. I can onboard people now 100% the right way. They get like a hardware signer, they get like a multi-sig, they get a node. And I think that interest has grown. So no, we're not a dying breed, not on my one. That's good to know. What do you think about, obviously, Jameson Lopp has been following the wrench attacks on Bitcoiners. And I think that is, as somebody who's really focused on self-custody, multi-sig self-custody specifically, what do you think about the conversation around self-custody and the fears that are beginning to increase because of these wrench attacks which if you look at it and you take eight billion people into accounts and all right maybe we'll shrink the the total addressable market to the amount of people that hold bitcoin or wider crypto to maybe hundreds of millions i think there was 35 $5 wrench tax last year. I think it was even more. I think Jameson Lobb actually used to manage this GitHub all by himself and now he has somebody who puts all those data entries in there because it was one a week, like 52 or something at least. That drove me to launch BitSurance. I know how to perfectly protect my Bitcoin against any form of cyber threats. like that that is solved like we have hardware signers we have geographically distributed multi-sigs i would say it is because the magic of bitcoin script as opposed to any other shit like you have all the primitives all the security built in natively on bitcoin to be protected against hacking like you can be socially engineered um but like most of these hackings again like they they are like down to user error like in the end like the person being hacked uh signed the transaction because he was duped. That is solved. I would wager actually there has not been a hardware signing device that has been hacked. We all wear these tinfoil hats like, I don't know, cold card with a ton of secure elements, etc. Everything like that is solved. But for the life of me, I could not figure out what I would do in the event somebody kicks in my door. If somebody comes in and threatens me, my family, or anybody I love, I can, of course, start drawing a chart and tell them, hey, I have a five of six, whatever, multi-sig. I have this time-decaying thing. You can't physically... You have to abduct me to different places for me to sign the transaction. Wouldn't it be great if I could give them an old ledger or something with some Bitcoin, even a larger sum, and they would be happy and left me alone, maybe? Why can't I insure something like this? We were looking around in 2022, 2021, when we launched the idea, the company was founded in 2022. And nobody would want to touch Bitcoin as an insurable medium, whereas you can insure your gold bars against a robbery. You can insure your fine art against robbery. That's no problem. But Bitcoin back then was uninsurable. And that's why we launched the insurance with the hope to give you a bargaining chip in the event of a $5 wrench attack. And since then, AnchorWash has also come along. And I think that is the last missing mosaic, like a puzzle piece in your perfect security setup if you have cyber protection plus $5 wrench protection. And what do you think changed the minds of Lloyds and Ludnin and other insurers out there that are getting them comfortable too? I mean, Becca is very persistent, I think. She changed her mind there. Um, so like we, when we launched, we talked to virtually every single insurance company in Europe, um, and they laughed in our face and like, uh, closed the door and some people re-invited us and kept like screaming us along. And sooner or later you realize, oh, there's like two people, three people, five people in these calls. Um, suddenly you realize, oh, you're being abused for like, uh, educating their staff on Bitcoin, but they're never going to sign or underwrite your product. and that abruptly changed in 2024 when was it like the Bitcoin ETF launched I think as soon as Larry Fink blessed this asset as like okay this is here to stay you get a callback from Allianz, you get a callback from all these other insurance companies because they realize okay this is not just some crazy assets there is some money to be made insurance companies they need to like invest in products that are of interest to be insured. And yeah that was a blessing We launched in 2022 We had a white label insurer which was like kind of unknown And yeah they went under sadly not because of us They had like a financing round for like 50 million euros. And then like by the end of 2024, they had to file Chapter 11. No customers of ours was like hurt by that. We could migrate. and now we have Liberty Mutual, like one of the largest species insurers in the world as an underwriter and they are not messing around. It's good to have these financialization developments. I'm not a big fan of BlackRock but it helps bring the conversation forward. Sup, Freaks. This rip at TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey. BitKey makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose. It is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two or three multi-sig. You have one key on the hardware wallet, one key on your mobile device and Block stores a key in the cloud for you. This is an incredible hardware device for your friends and family or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time, but haven't taken a step to self-custody because they're worried about the complications of setting up a private public key pair, securing that seed phrase, setting up a pin, setting up a passphrase. Again, BitKey makes it easy to use, hard to lose. 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Just resilient, shared custody that gives you institutional-grade security while keeping you sovereign. Unchained also lets you trade straight from your vault. Access Bitcoin-backed commercial loans, open a Bitcoin IRA where you hold your own keys, and set up personal, business, trust, or retirement vaults. They even offer inheritance solutions built for long-term hobblers. Or opt for the highest-level private client service with Unchained Signature and get a dedicated account manager, discounted trading fees, exclusive access to events and features, and much, much more. If you want a partner that helps you secure and grow your Bitcoin without giving up control, go to unchained.com and use the code TFTC10 at checkout to get 10% off your new Bitcoin multisig vault. That's TFTC10 at unchained.com. It really does. It's weird how social, the social aspect of a social signaling from those we perceive to be successful comes into play here. And it's weird. I think that's another thing I've been grappling with, but just sitting back and observing over the last few years since the ETFs launched. and here in the States as we've had these treasury companies launch and Michael Saylor really skyrocketed himself to the top of Bitcoin fame, if you will, for lack of a better term, is this sort of confrontation with the cypherpunk roots that Bitcoin was founded in and grew up with and the suits coming and saying, all right, we like this asset too and people reacting to it. I think, I mean, I've always been in MBK's camp where Bitcoin is successful. Everybody's going to want to adopt it and you just have to accept that. It's a great thing. What do you expect? Everybody wants a piece of the pie if we build something this good. Of course, nation states will come. Of course, financial players will come. Bitcoin is for anybody who wants it and it strengthens your network. But the more greedy somebody is, the better it is for everybody else. But there's entirely new dynamics now. I don't know. With Venezuela, I don't know if that is fake news or something. It's really weird that, okay, there's a state with 600,000 Bitcoin and Donald has just abducted. We were talking before we hit record about how Odell likes to troll in the chat. He's actually trolling me in the chat right now because I did a short video on the Venezuelan story, and then our team here at TFTC clickbaited it. The tweet says, what if I told you a DEA informant might control access to 600,000 Bitcoin? That's a wild theory, but I don't know. Do they have 600,000 Bitcoin? Maybe. I mean, it's just like some assumption, and I'm pretty sure that Maduro didn't. I mean, he had like five different output changes, maybe at like a lot of hardware designers stuck in Nike. What is the European perspective on what the U.S. just did over the last five days? So like demonstrably, like it's not constitutional what you did, pretending like otherwise is like a little bit like muddying the waters there. But like these constitutional rules, like they work in like stable systems, like it's like currently the world is not that. And I think the general reaction in Europe would be like, orange man, bad. And like, he can't do that. But like, if you talk to anybody who has actually lived under Venezuelan communism, like they understand viscerally, like they're very relieved. Like they're very happy that he has been removed. And it's like one of the cleanest military operations to have ever occurred. like so clean that some people might say okay this was like he he cut a deal and voluntarily like came to the drop-off spot um but like my take is again uh like this was necessary uh it's i'm happy he's gone and um yeah even though like i i believe more so than trump i believe in soft power and he does not believe in that like at all like he like soft power only works on people that listen to reason and there are some international players right now who would not listen to reason and yeah occasionally reminding everyone uh where the largest stick resides um that recalibrates like some incentives uh much faster than like some un statements or like some european thing are wagging so yeah i'm on board with this move but i i would not want to be on the receiving end like I think there was definitely a pre-arranged deal. If you look at how happy Maduro is when he's sitting with the DEA agents, it's like, you knew something was happening. But going back to, again, who knows whether or not they have 600,000 Bitcoin, but people have been speculating. These stories have been out there. It's been actually funny to watch the Venezuela Bitcoin story hit mainstream, because I'm sure, as you know, if you've been in the industry for a decade, You know, the Venezuelans, I think on a per capita basis, were some of the largest adopters of Bitcoin simply because they needed to because they had hyperinflation and the dictatorship that they were trying to evade. And Bitcoin mining was big in Venezuela. I think they were top three country at one point about 10 years ago. And then Maduro came in and ruined that by seizing all the mining operations. operations. Obviously, the diaspora that has resulted from the socialist dictatorship over the last 25 years, you have people sending money back to Venezuela using Bitcoin and stable coins. And so Bitcoin's been a big theme in Venezuela for well over a decade now at this point. But I think the theories about how the Maduro regime may have acquired 600,000 Bitcoin Again, whether or not they did is yet to be determined, but the theory is that they were doing two things, one of which was swapping gold for Bitcoin with other countries. They're a gold-rich country, and they wanted to diversify those gold holdings into Bitcoin because it allows them to do things that you can't do with gold, mainly send large amounts of money over the Internet. And then the other was they were selling oil, routing around sanctions, selling oil for Tether, and then converting that Tether to Bitcoin because they didn't want Tether to blacklist them. And if you think about them doing that, like you said, I did not like the Madora regime. I'm happy that he's out of power. But let's run with the assumption that they did acquire 600,000 Bitcoin and did it in that way. It's pretty cool because it highlights Bitcoin's value prop, which is this neutral reserve asset outside the purview of the five eyes, the G8, UN, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. I always say, to me, as a businessman, the number one use case is international trade with Bitcoin because it saves so much time. And you can find enough crazy people on every continent that accept Bitcoin. And it makes things much, much quicker. I don't know. It's not around me. In Germany, we're not trusted. Or in Europe, in general, we're not trusted with a shopping cart. We have to put a coin in there to release it. and I thought to get rid of the last fiat I will create like a Bitcoin commemorative thing that you put in but you can remove it immediately like you can crack essentially like shopping carts and I wanted to have this made out of like brass and I was looking like where to manufacture this and like in China with Alibaba I found like a brass molding company and they had like commemorative coins with like Ethereum and Monero etc. already in their product lineup. And I asked them, hey, you manufacture this. Do you also accept Bitcoin? And they said, yeah, sure we do. And instead of sending a wire transfer to Alibaba, it goes again, Luxembourg, Singapore, China takes at least three days and it costs me 50 euros. I just sent Bitcoin with 22 minutes on chain. They confirmed a balance payment was not out yet, but the initial payment. and like in less time than it took for them to like uh would have received the money via wire transfer they already like seen cmult the tool they showed me pictures of like here this is the tool like wow this was fucking fast and of course they could at any point could have like rubbed me because there's no you know chargeback but they wanted to have the other 50 of the money and uh then they like delivered uh 2 000 of these like stamped uh yeah brass uh coins to me uh and and was like, wow, this is international trade. This was five years ago. Why would I ever use a wire transfer? People say, oh, I use transfer-wise. Even there, you pay a ton of fees, and then the currency conversion and there's slippage, and it takes time. And yeah, Bitcoin just works globally. But now we have stablecoins. Stablecoins are here. Why do we need Bitcoin at all? Yeah, but people say Michael Saylor has done the most for Bitcoin adoption. I always challenge that idea. He has done more than you and I, probably, definitely. I mean, he has, again, also a very big stick. But Paola Arruino, to me, he is the one guy in the space who discovered and understands product market shit. I don't care about Tether. I have no use for it myself. but I 100% understand why everybody in Argentina prefers the brand of dollar attached to something than this volatile asset of Bitcoin. She has probably driven crypto adoption and with that also Bitcoin adoption more than any other person, I would say, globally. I would co-sign that. It's funny listening to him tell the origin story of Tether, the stablecoin specifically. He was like, ah, we had some customers asking for it, and we thought it would be like a $100 million market cap coin, so we did it. And lo and behold, now we're one of the largest buyers of U.S. treasuries in the world. Can you imagine? He wrote that entirely without cloud. He didn't vibe code it. Imagine that. He had to create this before LLMs. it is uh and it's it's been funny watching uh over the years the tether fud obviously at bit for next um yeah who emerged after the 2016 bit bit for next hack again i fell for the quantum i fell for the bit for next i fell oh you fell for the next of course i i fully i thought oh yeah like why why is there no big four audit why not and then like you see okay they had like liquidation events where they paid out like 20 percent without like flinching an eye like no bank would have survived that like they they are fully funded like nowadays i believe that um but like back then i mean again i'm a gullible person i guess like i i believe that for for some time well what was it uh i think it was i think around the ft yeah i think the summer before the FTX blow up in summer 22, I think they had like a three-day redemption of like 20 billion Tether and handled it. Yeah. Handled it seamlessly. They are very, very liquid. I think like pound for pound, like with 200 employees or so, like they are the most profitable company on this face of the planet. I mean, who's beating Tether as a company like in profitability? I don't think there's some vibe coder out there who's got a fire under his ass right now I'm going to be a company of one that is more profitable. I think it's going to be very hard to be more profitable than Tether. They're buying 8,888.8888 Bitcoin per quarter. It's insane. I used to work in China, and there they are really big into the number eight because it brings luck. And you had to pay more if your phone number that you were assigned to had more eights. Is there an association with that? What is the reason why? I know the port is like 88883. I'm assuming there's some. They're paying an homage to the Chinese tradition of admiring the number 8. That's just my assumption. Yeah, some superstition. I would also buy 8800 Bitcoin if I could, but different side pockets. I mean, you mentioned earlier you're excited about Arcade. And that's something, whether it's Arcade or just Arc generally is, I mean, you have competing Arc protocols, but Arc as a sort of high-level protocol, bringing new extensibility to Bitcoin via second layer and being interoperable, Lightning, another second-layer protocols. That's something that I've been really excited about, and I think it's happening relatively under the radar behind the scenes. Not many people are paying attention, but I think the foundations for the sci-fi banking stack of the future are being built right in front of our eyes. If you combine Lightning, eCashments, ARK, Liquid, Liquid's having its day. It's been around for a decade now. People are finally starting to use it. And then what else is there? You have Spark as well. it feels like we're getting to the point where you can really begin to build out the sovereign banking stack on top of the protocol yeah i mean bitcoin uh is like we have the scarcity with the limitedness through that and we can verify it and then yeah i've been using arcade os like the the arc implementation from um not second btc what's their name i think they're called arc arc labs The wonderful UX with Lightning always say, I have this Bitcoin. Why can't I receive? Oh, you need inbound liquidity. This conversation alone, you would not pick up a normie onto anything non-custodial. They were fine with Wallet of Satoshi. Speaking of Europe, Wallet of Satoshi closed their custodial wallets in Europe one week ago or so. The European Union asked for some data on the users, and they said, yeah, fuck it. We only like to get to withdraw your funds and you can move on to the semi-self custodial wall of Satoshi version. And they're using Spark, right? Cause they, I mean, they shut that on the U S years ago, but they just came back with their non-custodial Spark implementation. So I think it's like some form of like super not private multi-sig thing. I have not looked all too much into it. Like I onboard people if it's custodial, I onboard them with blink. but yeah I mean it's again the tangent I was on was like lightning is too non-user friendly and arcade is amazing like for that I mean it's again like a beta you can use arcade OS and just deposit bitcoin and then you can pay lightning invoices and it just works it's like amazing the only downside you have to be like come online like every month or so which for some people is too much of a hassle I guess but it's amazing that this works without any soft fork, which is like a nice thing. Yeah. And I think they're working on that liveliness UX problem. Both the protocols where you can just automatically push things into the next round. What doesn't exist yet that you want to exist within Bitcoin? I mean, so I'm facing, We work with a traditional bank here in Germany, one of the first traditional banks to adopt a Bitcoin-only education program. And there we had a 3,000-people German Bitcoin conference just in October of last year. And there I had a couple of workshops, and I did my quiz show. And then in the workshops, I was like labagasted and taking back how many older people attended. There was like 80 people and they were like 50, 60, 70 years old into Bitcoin. I was like, wow. And the number one question that came up was always, how do I make sure that my kids get to my Bitcoin? And I was like, yeah, we are kind of young, you know, like we're not really thinking about inheritance planning. We're not thinking about like writing a will or something. But Bitcoin is a special asset where like if you want to inherit it properly, like it's in self-custody. like it's not on Coinbase. On Coinbase, it's like trivial to like have your death certificate and your family gets your Bitcoin, maybe. But like with self-custody Bitcoin, there are so many foot guns. And like in the audience, there are like so many really smart people like asking these questions and think like there needs to be much more user-friendly experience for this kind of customer because like you can do it with a cold card with a BitBox Like the Ana wallet I think is the best go way to do Bitcoin inheritance where you can just have like a multi that degrades essentially if you inactive for 15 months And there I would wish, but this is only possible by SoftFork, that this 15-month relative time lock window would be increased to like 5 years or 10 years or something like that. so in the event that I kick the bucket that my air just has to wait can have a pre-registered hardware signing device and just have to plug it in the UX there needs to improve a little bit and yeah, I mean Jack Dorsey is working on something cool there What's up Freaks? 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So go to slnt.com slash TFTC to get 15% off anything or simply just use the code TFTC when shopping at slnt.com. Patented technology, special operations approved. It has free shipping as well. So go check it out. What's up, freaks? I've been seeing a lot of YouTube comments. Marty, your skin looks so good. You're looking fit these days. How are you doing it? Well, number one, I'm going to the gym more. Trying to get my swell on. Trying to be a good example for my young son. It's a fit, healthy dad. But part of that is having a good regimen, particularly staying hydrated, making sure I have the right electrolytes and salts in my body. That is why I use salt of the earth. I drink probably three of these a day with one packet of salt of the earth. I'm liking the pink lemonade right now. It's my flavor of choice. This is their creatine. I've added this to my regimen. They have it in these packets as well. Makes it extremely convenient if you're traveling. You want to work out while you're traveling, but you don't want to be carrying a white bag of powder going through TSA. It's very, very nerve-wracking at times. You have to explain, hey, it's not what you think it is. It's creatine. I'm trying to get my swell on. Make sure you're staying hydrated. I have become addicted to these. It's made my life a lot better. I can supplement this for coffee in the morning and be energized right away. I can supplement. I can bring the creatine wherever I need to. I just put a couple packets in here before I head to the gym, bring this to the gym, drinking out of a glass bottle, make sure I'm not injecting any microplastics into my body. Go to drinkssauté.com, use the code TFTC, and you'll get 15% off anything in the store. That's drinkssauté.com, code TFTC. What software would you need, like some sort of covenant? So, yeah, covenants would be great. I mean, covenants essentially solve everything. They would make lightning better. they would make self-custody better, like we would have reactive instead of proactive security again, yeah, I'm like just fucking ship CTV now, please or for me, like CTV just in French, like template hash like I'm fine with all of these but like the development and that's like very slow, it's good that it's slow, I would say but yeah, I'm afraid that too many people say like being one of them are like preaching the ossification of Bitcoin, which, in my opinion, is way too early. Like, we're not there yet. We have the 20... What is it? The 2064 bug? We need a hard fork at least once. Yeah, I mean, eventually we need to have those. Again, we wasted the entire year of 2025 talking about a fucking nothing burger, about a data carrier size limit increase, which is like there's so many strong economic incentives that this will not be used or abused. And like all these, whatever, I'm not going to repeat Matt Crater's favorite word now, but like all these things were like such a distraction. We could have spent so much more time on actually improving Bitcoin. And we know there are bugs like Bit54 right now, like it reached also some maturity. Like two years ago, three years ago, Matt Corallo had like the great consensus cleanup proposal. and I think Antoine also worked on this now where we have the inflation not inflation, but the time warp bug, like the time warp attack that a miner can do that has been fixed on testnet now this needs to be merged into Bitcoin, like in Bit54 there's a bunch of known bugs known critical bugs that can be exploited now and we should focus on actually discussing those instead of Nodes vs Core or whatever, in my opinion No, you said CTV development slow, but CTV has been sort of in an end state for years now. It's been tested. I mean, everybody, like I made this meme, like this saw guy, welcome to my saw trap. You're a Bitcoin developer. There's a perfectly fine covenant proposal in front of you. Your challenge is to leave the room and leave it untouched. It's perfectly fine. And like everybody comes along, oh, let's have TX hash. It doesn't do enough. let's do check stick from stack two and this and like let's put a template hash like there's so many like it's the engineering disease like ctv is good enough it has been around i think like 10 years now 2015 or so um there's a big bounty nobody has come up with any way to exploit it it is safe it will improve bitcoin dramatically um yeah i i don't know how you could be opposed to this kind of thing. Well, make the sell. You mentioned reactive versus proactive sort of defense and security. How would you describe those and why would you argue that reactive is preferable? So right now, the way Bitcoin works, we have coins, UTXOs. So if you have a big UTXO and you spend it, you risk all of your wealth and hope that 99% comes back at the change output, which is a crazy design if you think about it. Like it's not like Ethereum is account based. You have like a number and it goes up and down, but Bitcoin is UTXO based. And like every time you spend something, you risk your entire, like you dump out your entire bucket of gold and hope that the UTXO comes back. And we make sure like Harvard signers check that the change output has not been tampered with. There's no, like, yeah, there's some kind of attack that replaces the change output. And with all the security premise that we right now have, I make my living selling steel wallets. You emboss your 1224 words into steel, and that is your backup that you need. If your hardware center fails, you go back to this, and you can recover everything. But what if somebody else finds it? He has access to all of your Bitcoin. That is a single point of failure. And with a covenant, you can define, this is my vault. I put my Bitcoin in here. I can define something like velocity, meaning I can only spend this much of my Bitcoin per day. even if there is a breach, like the thief cannot steal all of the funds. Or I can define this is my vault. And from here, I can only spend to this known address, like a hot wallet with Kraken or another address that is also secure. There's an intermediate step. And if I spend to any other address, I have this big red button that I can push and that will claw back the transaction and will send it to another 24 words hammered on steel like hidden underneath a tree or somewhere like you have these options where you see okay somebody's happening and i have an undo option now or i can limit the amount of bitcoin that i can spend and all of these things if i like point them out everybody yeah i want that like everybody tells me yeah this sounds great i want that how do we achieve this and we jump through a lot of hoops right now with like um these decaying multi-six with miniscript um just having a covenant would make this much easier, much smaller, and yeah, the UPS much better. I've always been partial to James O'Byrne's framing of it. Obviously, he had OpVault, which looked at CTV. It was like, okay, if people are afraid of check template verified because they think it's going to bring too much, let's just focus on the vaulting aspect and bring it to Bitcoin and make it so that his framing was making so exchanges can never get hacked again. And I think that's if that's exactly what it does or that's one of the products of implementing something like OpVault is you have the potential to create these transaction structures that make it very hard to get hacked or not to get hacked, but to lose Bitcoin after getting hacked. that seems like something that is very obvious like we should all want that but we have this social aspect of Bitcoin development that throws a wrench in that which is good it's a double edged sword you want that sort of rough consensus gridlock what is it? what is rough consensus? that's a great question I think we're still trying to figure it out I think it depends on what you're trying to get into Bitcoin right? rough consensus is if all the Raybeards are agreed and then the plebslop podcasters are also on board. That is rough. Well, let's dive into that. How do you view it? As a plebslop podcaster that has deferred to the Greybeards in the past, what else am I supposed to do? That's the million dollar question. So I see it as my objective to educate as many people and have this, not astroturf, like what is the grassroots, people want this and people and institutions want this. And if there's enough incentive from a monetary perspective, people, again, you vote by having Bitcoin. If you are an economic player in this, you can vote and be vocal about it. And then we can achieve another soft fork, I think. But for that, we need proper codes, proper tests, benchmarks, fuzzing. And a lot of checkboxes need to be ticked. And the problem with Bitcoin is that every four years we have this big halving event. A lot of new people come in. And if we talk for four years, more new people come in and they say Bitcoin is perfect. And then we just start from anew. So I think, yeah, to achieve another soft fork, we need to figure out a way to get everybody on board in like one to two years to signal for something. But yeah, I'm kind of bearish on that. I am too. I mean, I'm also an advocate for covenants. I know some people may find that blasphemous, but I think having been around for a while and understanding that reactive versus proactive sort of security posture that you just described, I mean, I think that's objectively preferable in my mind. And I think there's a lot of people who look at the magnitude of the changes that came with SegWit and Taproot, and they have shell shock or post-traumatic stress syndrome from the unintended consequences of those upgrades. and they assume that something similar may happen with any other future software, whether it be CTV, CAP, whatever it may be, which is not to say there isn't any unintended consequences that may arise, but I think people do not appreciate how relatively small of a change something like CTV is to SegWit or to AppRoot. Then again, like, a process increase is like three lines of code and like one parameter. So that is never a good indicator. It's just a teeny tiny bit of code. But yeah, like the unintended consequences, I hear this a lot. And to quote my favorite shit coiner, Jameson Lopp, like the unintended consequences are not quantifiable if you do it. And also they are not quantifiable if you don't do it. Like we don't know if you don't do this upgrade. Maybe Bitcoin like apathy will kill it or like people will move on to other things. and therefore because you can't quantify both of them like they even have. Unintended consequences always exist and that's why we move slowly and have a lot of eyes on there so that there are not large mistakes being forked into Bitcoin. That's why I'm also not all too keen on having a quantum fork I bet it's now with some non-hardened post-quantum algorithms or whatever. We need to take time and we need to improve it because there will be a lot of tech that if you introduce a new post-quantum scheme that is way too heavy and way too difficult to verify. I just had Jonas, Nick and Mikhail Kudinav on and talk about their hash-based signatures, their research paper. It shrinks. Yeah. And I don't think people understand or appreciate, like, how much you need. Like, you're going to need to overhaul every wallet software that exists. Like, because standards like PSBT, you're going to have to change. It's not like you just get quantum-resistant addresses. You can use everything that's existed before. And that was the most disheartening thing about the narrative and the main character syndrome sort of forcing itself into the conversation. It's just like nobody's talking about this. It's like we've been talking about it for years. Yes. Like Steve Lee had an entire conference and invited you and you didn't come. because I mean if the rush to upgrade is I would argue riskier than being slow because like you mentioned earlier who knows when quantum is actually going to manifest and you can really there are so many canaries that will drop before ECDSA is threatened again we know with the Snowden leaks the NSA is working on quantum computers for quite some time and you can't assume that not everything will be out in the public, not every achievement. But with all these other companies, these private companies like Google and SciQuantum and Microsoft and this small IonQ, as soon as they factor a larger number and they need a bridge loan from a VC, they will come back. Look what we did. They will telegraph their advances. Oh, I'm just taking my lap here. and like we have more than a decade at least and in that time again journalists like and then tim they they improved on the post-quantum algorithms that the national institute of standardization and technology suggested and said like here we have these i think they call sphinx algorithms and then they said hey we take this out and we can shrink them make them smaller they're still way too large to to have like proper throughput in a block but you see there is steady progress and then there's Lara Scheichelman. A lot of other really smart people that are not VCs are working on it. Give them some time and do not distract them with bullshit discussions. Yeah. I mean, that was the illuminating thing from my conversation with Jonas and Mikhail. Just like the wallet, particularly if you have relatively low-power hardware wallets, like the amount of time it's going to take to sign those signatures is going to be significantly longer than it takes today. And if you've ever done something like a DLC, even on a mobile wallet, you know, the signature sort of rounds for that take a minute up to two minutes sometimes. Yeah. I mean, like a multi-sign with like 50 cosigners or something, like you can test it. Like you realize, I mean, MDK is not cheap. It's like a security. This is the design decision to not have like a fully functioning computer in You could add more oomph into this, of course, but you want to have it purpose-built, and now it's purpose-built for that. But for post-quantum, we have to change mining QR codes, wallets, nodes. There's a ton and ton of things, and we need upgrade hooks so everybody's on board and nothing breaks. It's these things where you realize a decentralized system has a lot of advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages if you want to move into one direction quickly. A bank can do key rotation. A bank can easily become post-quantum. Not a weekend maybe, but it's possible with a centralized exchange. With Bitcoin, there will be a two-year process. Wallet software has been built up over some projects more than a decade. They're literally going to have to just throw out the engine, essentially, and rebuild from scratch. yeah I mean Jonas and like they're working on the SCP-256-K1 library like LipSecP that is the yeah central part of like every like note and wallet and that's I think it's an amazing work and like a lot of people don't know this and they don't know about like who Jonas Nick is I think I'm always like amazed that these are the people that keep a low profile and these are the actual builders and not the people that are the loudest on Twitter. I was very impressed with him. I think it was the first time we've definitely the first time we recorded him. I'm pretty sure it's the first time we ever met too. He can explain things very easily. He's very personable. You can tell he cares deeply about this and understands the third or second, third order effects of these changes that people are flippantly trying to rush Bitcoiners into. Yeah, I mean, in Germany we have a Bitcoin community, and they recently made... How do you say it? Because I've had people on RHR, Rabbit Hole Recap, I've had people zap us and pump the German-speaking Bitcoin podcast. How do you say it? Ein und zwanzig. Ein zwanzig? means 21 like 1 is 1 and 20 is 20 1 and 20 1 and 20 1 and 20 you can just say 21 people will know but yeah like we have this community and an artist made a trading card game and made 21 Bitcoin personalities And for some reason, I'm one of those, which is undeserved. But Jonas Nick has one. Christian Decker has one. A lot of people like Gigi has one. And I think these are the actual people doing stuff. Again, not VCs, not mechanics on Twitter. Yeah, mechanics on Twitter What else should we cover here? What are you looking forward to in 2026? What do you think the priority should be? I haven't made my prediction list yet But I really, really want I don't have my hat in reaching distance right now I want to see a pardon or clemency for Kion and Bill um like yeah uh i actually like again kian like celebrated christmas and then i saw like i mean he must be happy to go into prison because the last two days before he had to be arraigned like he was arguing with mechanic on twitter and so like i mean this can't be it like the last days in freedom like he has to like argue with people on twitter and like justify things and Oh, Nazis on your side. I want Donald Trump to be cool and send a message that writing code, even if it is abused by criminals, is not a crime. You're not responsible if you write privacy software. You're not responsible if people abuse technology. That's my only wish for 2026. The rest, I don't know. Bitcoin can go down to 30,000 and shake on all the treasury companies. I'm fine with that. But I really want to see Trump doing another solid similar to Ross. Do you think the onus is on the industry in the United States to preserve, from a legal perspective, I guess, preserve the ability to use Bitcoin? It doesn't seem good in Europe right now. I mean, so I have to say the laws around Bitcoin in Germany are better than in the United States. But I think purely by accident. So whereas you will always be tax liable in the event of you like selling or using Bitcoin in Germany, if I hold it for one year, I'm free. There's no capital gains. I can just spend it. And that is like really, really nice. And you have rights to your privacy. so I'm fine with that but that is born not on purpose I think it was done on accident they're talking about let's get rid of this people are speculating and making money on that and we need a cut and they want to remove this one year holding limits and maybe even backdated but yeah I agree it is good to have people in the White House I mean I wish they were more pure I wish they wouldn't do so many crypto scams on the side but as long as the United States allows for Bitcoin to thrive game theories that play other nations will not forbid it and that is again yeah America can be a shining light and yeah Now, it is this weird transitionary period, at least from my perspective that we're in. Where, again, the suits, the big guys, the nation states are coming. And it's like, ah, what are you going to do with Bitcoin? And going back to the conversation, like, softworks, covenants, specifically, if nation states do step in in size in the next few years, like, will softworks be impossible? I think. I have this article and I think Shinobi has never published it why nation states need covenants or rather people living in nation states that have adopted Bitcoin need covenants because one of the key advantages of gold is that you cannot take a pallet of gold onto a helicopter when you flee the South American country whereas if you amass your Bitcoin of the money that you take out of your population, that is very easy to take with you if you flee to, I don't know. I mean, it has happened that some kind of dictator has rugged a population and stolen money by transferring it in a Swiss bank account. Bitcoin makes it so much more easy. And there you could have a proper covenant where like, okay, as long as you're in power, you get to sign. if you get voted out, your key will be rotated out. And I've written an article about we need covenants for nation-state adopting too. The next article needs to be we need covenants to prevent quantum. We need to attach it somehow to fork in covenants, I think. Well, I think you're touching on something that I think is very important and something that Bitcoiners really need to get better at is framing these things. I think of one thing that I'm passionate about and would love to see is PayJoin get implemented widely, particularly with large exchanges. And I know a lot of the exchanges outside of bull Bitcoin shy away from it because they're like, oh, like the privacy thing is too much. It's like, no, you just frame it as transaction batching. We need to save shareholder capital by being more efficient when we spend Bitcoin on chain, when we're sending Bitcoin off to our users. Yeah, not only that. Framing is very important. Yeah, yeah. Like BIP77, I mean, the bull Bitcoin integration is great. Who was it? There was an article with the Bitcoin Policy Institute. Gerald Glickman wrote something, and it was really like an interesting spin on that, where he's saying exchanges should be mandatory coin joining and obfuscating funds because you have a, from a banking law perspective, you have to have a certain level of privacy. You are mandated as a bank to have private customer funds. And with Bitcoin currently, they're like grossly reusing addresses and like they're not doing these things. and he had a very interesting article a couple years ago, like four years ago so I need to find it, I'll send it to you where he's arguing exchanges need to coin join by law yeah it's just this aversion to private, I mean I know why the large governments of the world don't like privacy because they are losing control of many aspects of their ability to rule as they print more money, go into more debt and begin to lose the narrative in the realm of the social. But I think that's the most disheartening thing is we have the potential. Like I said earlier, especially with these second layer protocols maturing to build a completely new banking stack on top of the Bitcoin protocol. And it's desperately needed in this day and age. I think the banking infrastructure is completely antiquated and not suit for purpose in the digital age. And for some reason or another, I think mainly because they worry about losing control or being hindered from actually building out this sci-fi banking stack. I just dropped off. I'm back. Sorry. Yeah. You cut out a little earlier. When you're giving your whole coin join spiel, I only caught the tail end. But luckily, all this is being recorded locally, so it'll look good in post. Yeah, so, yeah, coin joining, the UX is great. Another thing that would improve it is Sysa. Like, signature aggregation has been discussed for quite some time. If we implemented that, I think. Greg Ross said it would be cheaper than a regular transaction to do coin joints with Pfizer or CISO. That was funny, going back to the quantum thing too. It's like, how much of this stuff are we going to focus on? And then it's like, oh, we have to do quantum resistant addresses that completely... I don't know if you could do CISO, CISA with quantum resistant addresses, but if you could, that would make more sense too. Yeah. We need a Bitcoin PR department to spin these things. That is, yeah. Who should do that? I mean, I don't know if you're being facetious there, but I think these things do need to be articulated to the broader market in better ways. Yeah, it's oftentimes you see very smart, bright developers. We need autist translation services for Bitcoin. Yeah. We need autism to ADIQ translation services. Yeah, more and better communications. Also, like learning from 2025, if communication can be improved, lots of trauma can be avoided. Yeah, there was a lot of drama in 2025. Here's the hoping that there's a bear market in drama in 2026, but I won't be holding my breath for that. I guarantee you there will be more. I'm really, really bullish on drama and trauma. What are your hopes for 2026? sakes um selfishly i hope that uh that bitcoin collateralized residential mortgages become a thing here in the united states i think that would be massive but uh okay i think uh no i mean it was a big theme in 2025 i wrote about it talked about a lot but again as you may be able to tell i think this emergence of these interoperable second layer protocols is really powerful and fascinating to me. And I guess my hope for 2026 is instead of quabbling about different protocol changes, getting distracted by op return or quantum resistance, people begin focusing on like, okay, how can we leverage these second layers to create more extendable Bitcoin user experiences and build cooler end products at the end of the day that make Bitcoin more useful for individuals. Are you bullish on Citria? I mean, am I going to use Citria? Probably not. I mean, as soon as there will be a polymarket, Calci prediction market type on Bitcoin, and I think like with Citria you can build something like this I think that will be a very big inflow into Bitcoin and there will be a lot of you know prediction markets not only funded by Rob Hamilton but like actual prediction markets like you too what's wrong with something like Predicts right do you need to do all that Predicts is like custodial and with like an EVM type of layer 2 which I'm always very impressed like Robin Linus is a close friend of mine and I really like appreciate what they are building there like Alphen and Citria and like all these things that I didn't think were possible to build on Bitcoin without any changes to the code I think it's very cypherpunk I again I'm not interested in any SDR whatever virtual machine but yeah prediction markets I'm very surprised how big they have become and these things I think they will come this year. Are you surprised? Why are you surprised? It was predicted that prediction markets would become a thing. This is a long-awaited version. There's this great quote by Michael I think in 2018 where he's like denigrating Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a sad. It will have the same future as online gambling. Online gambling is bigger than ever as his Bitcoin. He's right on the money. He took the wrong on that bet. I'm not a... I played the Tone Race Poker Tournament poorly, and I'm not really into gambling, but I see what's like... It's a very nice way of finding truth, because if people put their money where their mouth is, I trust those polls more than a general Twitter poll. let's say. Agreed. And that's what it was actually, I'm not sure if you saw it, but Brian Armstrong came out, I believe it was yesterday or the day before, and people were saying like, hey, you guys just recreated gambling. And obviously, yes, to an extent, some of these prediction markets are gambling, but he acknowledged like, hey, this is actually a way to discover truth faster because you have insiders who are financially motivated to leak information playing on these prediction markets. And we've seen that come true. And you have a bunch of people saying, oh my God, this is terrible. We don't like insider trading in traditional markets. And it's like, true, I don't like when politicians insider trade off of information that they glean from subcommittee meetings that are not public. But I think this is different. I think the dynamics... Is it more that you don't want them to have it or is it more that you would be fine if everybody could do it? Exactly. In a free market, again, there is no such thing as insider trading. It truly, truly doesn't exist anywhere in the world, but in a truly free market, I think insider trading is just called trading. Yeah, I think you articulated very well my thoughts on it. As long as everybody can do it, it should be beneficial. You saw it over the weekend when Maduro, there was an insider who hopped on the poly market. and made a bunch of money. I was looking in my signal chat whether or not I was invited to the Pete Hexeth Maduro signal group chat, but I wasn't. What would you say if you hopped in that group chat? I mean, I would be a fly on the wall, and then I would put an outsized bet, and then I would do the Dennis Porter style huge breaking and lower the whistle as soon as we have internal confirmation that the ego has landed or something. I don't know. I would monetize it. I agree with you. I think prediction markets are going to continue to grow. Whether or not they manifest on Bitcoin, I think they should manifest on Bitcoin. I think ultimately they will. But I think more broadly people don't understand, still don't grasp the profundity of what's happening right now and don't grasp how this is going to change the world. Like right now we're seeing it in dinks and dunks, like one-off events. But once that hits scale and the people are conditioned to go to prediction markets to make bets about certain events, particularly insiders with knowledge of these events, It's going to really change the dynamics of how information flows and how the world actually operates. Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite stories. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to share this, but I'm going to do it anyways. I can remember the electric money documentary about who Satoshi, like HBO, this documentary, like two or three years ago. Peter Todd. And everybody says, oh, it's Adam Beck, it's Hal Finney, it's Len Zazerman. And there was a polymarkist. And there was one very outsized bet on Peter Todd. And with documentaries that have been recorded months in advance, people that have been part of this documentary had some insider knowledge. And, yeah, some people, you know, do bet on themselves. which you know it was a big fan when I learned that like don't hate the player, hate the game like why would you bet on something like I mean I get betting on like an election where like everybody knows the outcome at a certain point in the future but why would you bet on something that hasn't been decided in the past like movies are generally not like live streamed like there's like an entire production team that knows what happened there but yeah Yeah. It's a brave new world. It's a brave new world. Chris, where, um, or anybody's so curious, find out more about you, what you're working on seed or biturance. Yeah. Uh, follow me on, on, on Twitter at coin joints. Um, uh, I, uh, post about my work. I do, uh, weird acquired taste memes. Um, you can write me an email, Chris at seed or.io or at biturance.io. Um, always happy to talk about Bitcoin. Always, yeah, up for a conversation there. Well, keep it up. Like I said, I've been appreciating your game from across the pond here. It's a very good game. It's my star rising. That's what I was just saying. I don't know if it can, you're very tall. I don't know how high it can rise from here. But, yeah, thank you for doing this. This was fun. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Marty. All right. All right. Peace and love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. 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