Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Odd Blocks podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenfal and I'm Tracylliwin Tracy, here's something funny. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm laughing. Sorry, no, uh, we
Speaker 1: actually we're kind of have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: theme going here because on today's episode we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the same thing we talked about last week,
Speaker 1: Bitcoin and making and losing a lot of money off
Speaker 1: of bitcoin. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much exactly that. You
Speaker 1: know what's funny, Like a like a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago or a couple of years ago, when bitcoin
Speaker 1: and other cryptocurrencies were like surging to the moon all
Speaker 1: the time. I remember people complaining to us, They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you should do more bitcoin episodes, because we actually didn't
Speaker 1: do very many in uh, and now bitcoin and others are,
Speaker 1: you know, in the toilet price wise, the bubbles over
Speaker 1: and now we have two in the rows. So maybe
Speaker 1: we're contrarians, or maybe our sense of timing is just
Speaker 1: completely off on what the market wants. Maybe having done
Speaker 1: the podcast for two years almost at this point, we
Speaker 1: are simply running out of ideas. Yeah, that's it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be bitcoin, Bitcoin, episodes from here on out, But
Speaker 1: this time I think it's gonna be a little different.
Speaker 1: So last time, last week, we talked to a trader
Speaker 1: who wrote the bubble all the way up and then
Speaker 1: all the way down, And this time we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking to someone who's also still very active in it,
Speaker 1: but more on the development side and some of the
Speaker 1: interesting technological innovations that are happening in the bitcoin world,
Speaker 1: even amid uh the Bitcoin winter, so to speak, the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin winter. I like that. But the general theme is
Speaker 1: similar to the last episode in that we are talking
Speaker 1: to someone and who still very much believes in the
Speaker 1: future of bitcoin and who is in fact actively working
Speaker 1: to make bitcoin work. Is that right? Yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: another die hard bitcoiner who has been with it a
Speaker 1: long time. And one of the things I want to
Speaker 1: explore on this one is, you know, people, even during
Speaker 1: the ups and downs, people are like, when are people
Speaker 1: actually gonna use bitcoin? When will people use it to spend?
Speaker 1: When will it become a medium of transaction? And that
Speaker 1: is something that our guests UH this week is working
Speaker 1: on directly in terms of building out the technologies and
Speaker 1: the layer on top of the sort of core bitcoin
Speaker 1: blockchain to actually make it a useful currency for spending.
Speaker 1: So it should be an interesting conversation. Great, I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to it all. Right. On that note, our guest
Speaker 1: this week is Pierre Rochard. He is at Bitcoin Advisory,
Speaker 1: which is a firm he launched to help investors do
Speaker 1: their due diligence when buying bitcoin, and he is also
Speaker 1: involved in bitcoin development. So, Pierre, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thanks for having me on, Joe and Tracy. So,
Speaker 1: before we get started, how long if you you know,
Speaker 1: I follow you on Twitter. I have for a long time.
Speaker 1: You're one of a hardcore bitcoin maximalist. You don't double
Speaker 1: another cryptocurrency. You've had a consistent pro bitcoin message for
Speaker 1: a very long time. You weren't just someone who got
Speaker 1: in the party in seventeen. So tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your history and background with bitcoin. Sure, So
Speaker 1: late two thousand twelve, I was wrapping up my master's
Speaker 1: degree and accounting at the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 1: Hook Them, Hook Them, and at that point I was
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with crazy libertarians, as you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Goldstein and Daniel crewis there on Twitter as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we were. We were debating fractional reserve banking as
Speaker 1: libertarians do. Uh, and I at the time, I was
Speaker 1: a gold bug, sound money, a hundred percenters are banking
Speaker 1: type person. Hopefully we won't get into that debate today.
Speaker 1: And to get skip nail fast forward and I as
Speaker 1: part of our debate, bitcoin came up. And I had
Speaker 1: heard about bitcoin in the context of the Silk Road,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really think much of it. But in
Speaker 1: this context we started we were talking about bitcoins, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty one million bitcoins, it's a monetary policy quinquin, and
Speaker 1: that that captivated my imagination and I went down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole at that point. So Joe described you as
Speaker 1: a bitcoin maximal list, which means that you sort of
Speaker 1: don't believe in other um cryptocurrencies or coins. What's the
Speaker 1: attraction for bitcoin? Is it a sort of first mover
Speaker 1: adoption advantage or is it something about the underlying technology
Speaker 1: what attracts you to it? Yeah? So, uh, at first,
Speaker 1: it was really that I had in high school. I'd
Speaker 1: been interested in Linux and open source free software, and
Speaker 1: when I opened up bitcoin, I realized that this is
Speaker 1: in the same vein as as that, and it really
Speaker 1: spoke to the authenticity of it, essentially, which was that
Speaker 1: the person who created this was a not someone trying
Speaker 1: to get rich quick. They were actually trying to build
Speaker 1: a piece of software that would lead to a money
Speaker 1: in payment system that was decentralized. And that I found
Speaker 1: to be fascinating because that's kind of the only guarantee
Speaker 1: that we have for for for bitcoin maintaining its properties.
Speaker 1: It has to remain decentralized. If it becomes centralized, then
Speaker 1: all bets are often will either get shut down or
Speaker 1: it'll change its properties in terms of its monetary policy
Speaker 1: or censoring people or whatever it is. And I'm deeply
Speaker 1: skeptical that other cryptocurrencies that are being promoted will be
Speaker 1: able to maintain their their properties and be remained decentralized.
Speaker 1: So let's just let's explore that a little bit further.
Speaker 1: We talked about maintaining their properties. So you mentioned the
Speaker 1: fact that there will only ever be twenty one million bitcoin. Now,
Speaker 1: theoretically that could change, the code could change, but what
Speaker 1: you say is that it's pretty unlikely given the origin
Speaker 1: and the community, but that other coins where there may
Speaker 1: be a specific founder who faces political pressure or ideological pressure,
Speaker 1: those properties could change over time, and so in your view,
Speaker 1: the bitcoin maximalist view is Bitcoin has the best chance
Speaker 1: of essentially staying what it is forever, right, And you
Speaker 1: you hit the nail on the head when you said
Speaker 1: that the code can be changed, because the code can
Speaker 1: be changed, and lots of people have changed the code
Speaker 1: and either released it as their own version of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: you know, giving it a different name, or the an
Speaker 1: all coin, or creating new code from from scratch. But
Speaker 1: ultimately you have to have other people run that code
Speaker 1: and run it on their computer and consider that code
Speaker 1: to be Bitcoin. And that is the biggest challenge is
Speaker 1: persuading others to run your code. And the code is UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it's called a node, a Bitcoin node, and
Speaker 1: this node is going to communicate with this peer to
Speaker 1: peer network and essentially the lower the cost of running
Speaker 1: a node, the more likely it is that people will
Speaker 1: run one and thus make it decentralized. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the current price slump in bitcoin. What actually has
Speaker 1: accounted for that fall? And you know you're talking about
Speaker 1: this idea of UM replicating the code and the Bitcoin forks,
Speaker 1: do you think that played into it at all? Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't. Uh, there's the people have been creating knockoffs
Speaker 1: of bitcoin for years now. Um, I think that what
Speaker 1: accounts for the fall is that the price went up
Speaker 1: a lot, and uh, it went from the bull Sorry,
Speaker 1: the previous bear market bottomed out about two dollars and
Speaker 1: from there it rocketed up to twenty dollars in a
Speaker 1: period of eighteen months or a little bit longer than that.
Speaker 1: But um, essentially you can't have a go straight up
Speaker 1: like that and not expect a severe correction. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was not at twenty dollars long enough for me to
Speaker 1: get used to it. So four thousand dollars still feels
Speaker 1: very rich. But there's differing views on that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about one of the biggest criticisms of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and it's something you're working and others are working on
Speaker 1: to address. As they say, Okay, obviously it's a mode
Speaker 1: of speculation and people like to trade it, but no
Speaker 1: one actually uses it, and if they do want to
Speaker 1: use it for a typical purpose, it's very difficult. It's cumbersome,
Speaker 1: it's slow. It takes a long time to confirm that
Speaker 1: a transaction has even gone forth. If the network is busy,
Speaker 1: then fees can be very high, which places many everyday
Speaker 1: purchases completely out of reach. Um that existing payment systems
Speaker 1: do very well for most of the things we want
Speaker 1: to buy. Um, you so are all the first of all,
Speaker 1: are these criticisms in your view? Fair? Absolutely? And Uh.
Speaker 1: In response to those criticisms, Uh, there's they're in a
Speaker 1: kind of a bifurcation. On the one hand, if there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bitcoiners who entirely can see those
Speaker 1: criticisms and say, bitcoins a store value. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: it's it's more like holding gold, right was So you're
Speaker 1: not transacting in gold day to day, you know, shaving
Speaker 1: off scraps of gold to pay for your coffee. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a store value. And so I think the and
Speaker 1: that's essentially a narrative because I don't think that it
Speaker 1: matches up to uh, the whole reality. It's certainly a
Speaker 1: part of the reality, which is that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who hold bitcoin in the same way
Speaker 1: that they would hold gold, and they're not actually even
Speaker 1: remotely interested in in finding out whether it's easy to
Speaker 1: transact in or not. They just understand that they are
Speaker 1: able to receive bitcoin and send bitcoin. Uh. To an exchange,
Speaker 1: and and then the speculat sation certainly exists and it
Speaker 1: is a big part of the market as well. Um
Speaker 1: of essentially momentum traders seeing it going up or down. UM.
Speaker 1: Now there's a growing sense that there's a group of
Speaker 1: individuals who want to transact with bitcoin and UM part
Speaker 1: of it is people who they see the price go
Speaker 1: up to x and they want to essentially cash out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you can cash out by going to an exchange,
Speaker 1: or it might be more convenient for you to cash
Speaker 1: out when you're, for example, using an e commerce website
Speaker 1: and you're buying something and they have the option to
Speaker 1: pay with bitcoin, so you say, well, I already have
Speaker 1: too many bitcoin, let's lighten up my bags here and
Speaker 1: I'll use that option. So that's kind of on the
Speaker 1: demand side for for making payments. On on the other side,
Speaker 1: you have merchants that maybe they want to be accumulating bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and accumulating bitcoin by accepting it in the course of
Speaker 1: commerce is has more privacy and possibly a lower cost
Speaker 1: than going out to an exchange and buying it, so
Speaker 1: that that's happening. On top of that, we have this
Speaker 1: phenomenon of existing payment processors censoring individuals based on either
Speaker 1: political reasons or they're they're just de risking, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because they're they're complying with k y c mL
Speaker 1: regulations and they don't want to be on the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the regulators, so they're cutting people off even
Speaker 1: though they don't have uh you know, the person has
Speaker 1: not done anything wrong, you know. And it's across the
Speaker 1: ideological spectrum, right, because we have people who are running
Speaker 1: marijuana shops in Colorado and you know that's probably more democrat,
Speaker 1: you know, left leaning, and then on the other side,
Speaker 1: you have people saying politically incorrect things on the Internet
Speaker 1: and getting shut down, and that's sheneringly more on the right. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I think that across the ideological spectrum our our
Speaker 1: politics has gotten so polarized that the corporations get dragged
Speaker 1: into it and they get lobbied to kick people off
Speaker 1: their platforms. Uh. And that opens up an opportunity for
Speaker 1: using bitcoin in in actual transactions. So here's my question, Like,
Speaker 1: if we back up to the moment when bitcoin was
Speaker 1: created and you were talking about the underlying technology, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't supposed to be a store of value or
Speaker 1: a tool for speculation. Then why didn't we sort of
Speaker 1: have a process embedded into it from the very beginning
Speaker 1: to make transactions easier, Because it's not like people didn't
Speaker 1: see this idea of database sprawl or you know, a
Speaker 1: really long ledger sort of hanging back and forth and
Speaker 1: really bulking up transaction time is coming, right, that's correct,
Speaker 1: and Citaian Documento had a he had included a feature
Speaker 1: that wanted to be lightning, but uh, he didn't have
Speaker 1: it fully thought through, and so his his first iteration
Speaker 1: on essentially and well, let's let's get into this right,
Speaker 1: which is that bitcoin is a a global broadcast system
Speaker 1: where you are having all of the nodes agree on
Speaker 1: the ledger and that imposes a huge amount of cost
Speaker 1: on the nodes, where essentially it's a negative externality. Every
Speaker 1: transaction is adding data to the ledger that everyone has
Speaker 1: to verify, so that doesn't scale very well. It's uh, essentially,
Speaker 1: what the result is that fewer and fewer people run
Speaker 1: notes and then it becomes centralized. So we needed a
Speaker 1: system that allowed us to send payments without globally broadcasting
Speaker 1: and that's so so Tocia had had this in mind,
Speaker 1: but uh, the way he clemented, it just didn't work.
Speaker 1: Before we get further, I just want to sort of
Speaker 1: make sure people understand this concept of global broadcasting and
Speaker 1: why it's so cumbersome. Because we blockchain technology. You often
Speaker 1: hear people say, oh, it's really efficient and it's gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, reduce all these costs. But it's inherently, at
Speaker 1: least in this version, very inefficient in the sense of
Speaker 1: you imagine I was sending you a text message during email.
Speaker 1: I think people could imagine a system in which the
Speaker 1: only way I could do that is to then send
Speaker 1: a copy of that email to everyone who has ever
Speaker 1: gotten an email ever, so they can all see it.
Speaker 1: We can all see why that's just insanely inefficient. It
Speaker 1: happens to be necessary so that uh, for the decentralization purposes,
Speaker 1: that there's no centralized database. We all have degree on
Speaker 1: the emails we've sent. But as uh, you know, as
Speaker 1: a system that just accumulating data, extraordinary negative externalities exactly,
Speaker 1: and thankfully there there's an opportunity here to solve that problem.
Speaker 1: With a paper that was released back in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen describing what's called the Lightning network today and the
Speaker 1: Lightning network essentially says Okay, let's let's use this global
Speaker 1: broadcast system as a a system of last resort, essentially
Speaker 1: as a supreme court. And when when you're doing business, uh,
Speaker 1: you don't take your contract to court every time that
Speaker 1: you are relying on that contract. UH. You only take
Speaker 1: it when there's a dispute uh to the court. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's otherwise it would be a completely unmanageable uh
Speaker 1: judicial system. So that's the idea behind lightning, is that
Speaker 1: you only go on chain when there's a dispute about
Speaker 1: the state of your what's called a lightning channel. And UH,
Speaker 1: this lightning channel, you you open it up by doing
Speaker 1: an on chain transaction and once it's open, now you
Speaker 1: can send value back and forth and you can be
Speaker 1: routing value around without having to trust your counterparties and
Speaker 1: while maintaining a lot of the same properties of of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: There are trade offs, but we can get into it, well,
Speaker 1: so what are the tradeoffs exactly? And you know, if
Speaker 1: I could be cynical about it, it sounds like you're
Speaker 1: sort of creating an additional layer on top of a
Speaker 1: system that has at various times already been criticized for
Speaker 1: being sort of unwieldy in various ways. Yeah. Absolutely. So
Speaker 1: the main trade off today is that you have to
Speaker 1: keep your bitcoins online, and there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: user education about not keeping your bitcoins online and putting
Speaker 1: them into what's called cold storage, right, which is either
Speaker 1: a hardware wallet. Uh. There are a few popular ones,
Speaker 1: including a treasure and ledger, or just printing it down
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper, writing down your mnemonic seed
Speaker 1: and putting it into a bank safe deposit box, which
Speaker 1: is also a little uh iron But so with with Lightning,
Speaker 1: you're you're asking users to keep their funds on their
Speaker 1: computer or on their phone, and really there it's just
Speaker 1: about managing ricks. So it's I think of it as
Speaker 1: a checking account. You wouldn't put your entire fortune on it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just so a way of being able to have
Speaker 1: some walking around money. Um. Now, in terms of the
Speaker 1: complexity from the user's perspective, that's a fair criticism. And
Speaker 1: I think that there's there's a lot of energy within
Speaker 1: the Lightning community into having a very seamless user experience,
Speaker 1: so that you don't even know that you're you're on Lightening.
Speaker 1: It's all abstracted away, so it feels like you're on
Speaker 1: on Venmo or on a square cash app. Does that
Speaker 1: exist currently or is that what you're working on? Essentially,
Speaker 1: Like I know that the Bitcoin core software is probably
Speaker 1: unrealistic for most people to download and run on their computers.
Speaker 1: Is the software to run eatening so that I could
Speaker 1: theoretically one day go into a Starbugs and pull up
Speaker 1: my phone and scan a QR code and make a
Speaker 1: payment for a two dollar coffee and it would instantly
Speaker 1: take it out of some bitcoin wallet that I have.
Speaker 1: Is that going to be easier and less cumbersome? Yes,
Speaker 1: we have a very clear path to that, and it's
Speaker 1: just a matter of executing on it. So at this
Speaker 1: point in time, you do need to be running a
Speaker 1: Bitcoin node that then connects that you're lightning, so you're
Speaker 1: running two notes, a Bitcoin node and a Lightning note.
Speaker 1: And that's the software I've been writing to to help
Speaker 1: with that. And uh, the software I have called the
Speaker 1: node Launcher works on desktop and laptops And essentially the
Speaker 1: main drawback there is that you have to download two
Speaker 1: gigabytes of data. You don't necessarily have to store it,
Speaker 1: but you've got to download it. And here in New
Speaker 1: York city. That's fine because we have fiber and everyone
Speaker 1: has a good internet connection, But once you get into
Speaker 1: rural parts, even in America, uh, that that's just not
Speaker 1: even an option. They can't download transer giarbytes. Thankfully, we
Speaker 1: have a an innovation that has been worked on for
Speaker 1: a long time now that's going to be out this year.
Speaker 1: It's called Neutrino, and Neutrino allows you to not have
Speaker 1: to download the entire two untrigearbytes uh. And it will
Speaker 1: make it so that you can use lightning on your
Speaker 1: mobile wallet without using a bitcoin note per se. So
Speaker 1: I have a sort of existential question which is, let's
Speaker 1: assume that you you figure out a way, um, you
Speaker 1: know that this way of transacting and bitcoin is more efficient,
Speaker 1: it is easier for people to use. Does that end
Speaker 1: up solving the speculative problem which we've seen for bitcoin
Speaker 1: um And by that I mean, you know, a reluctance
Speaker 1: of people to use it in day to day transactions
Speaker 1: because they think that the price is going to shoot
Speaker 1: up to the moon at some point. And there's a
Speaker 1: specific example that I have in mind, which is, of course, um,
Speaker 1: the infamous pizza a. You know, like I think it
Speaker 1: was eight or nine years ago or something when we
Speaker 1: had one guy who paid for pizza using a bunch
Speaker 1: of bitcoins that, you know, a year ago would have
Speaker 1: been worth millions of dollars, and it's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: but people also sort of made fun of him about
Speaker 1: it and said, Oh, I can't believe you did that,
Speaker 1: and you wasted so much money. How do you overcome
Speaker 1: that problem? So I think Lightning is going to make
Speaker 1: that problem worse because ultimately people's anticipation or their projection
Speaker 1: of where the bitcoin price is going is based on
Speaker 1: the technology and the fundamentals that are going to be
Speaker 1: driving the adoption that would cause the price to go
Speaker 1: to that level. And so if if we with Lightning,
Speaker 1: if we demonstrate that it's going to be a very
Speaker 1: efficient system that's going to attract a lot of adoption,
Speaker 1: then we can expect the price to to go up
Speaker 1: even more than it otherwise would. So I think that
Speaker 1: it makes the problem worse in that regard. And really
Speaker 1: I think that the solution is just going to be time.
Speaker 1: And what I've seen is that people who have owned
Speaker 1: bitcoins for a while, they are essentially overexposed to bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and they're always looking for ways to spend bitcoin. UH.
Speaker 1: So I think that will will see essentially, the people
Speaker 1: who bought it twenty thousand dollars in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: they might be in the hottele mindset for another decade UM.
Speaker 1: But people who who bought it five dollars or a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, uh, they might be thinking about how how
Speaker 1: to uh you know, buy a hard drive on on
Speaker 1: online to um or. And the other aspect of it
Speaker 1: is that, um, you people who even who are buying
Speaker 1: it today, UM, they want to experiment. They are fascinated
Speaker 1: by the technology, uh, and they they're very bullish on
Speaker 1: the price, but they're also interested in educating themselves and
Speaker 1: improving their under standing of bitcoin. And uh, I have
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are very new to bitcoin
Speaker 1: who um want to learn more about lightning because they
Speaker 1: just find the idea of a decentralized payment system to
Speaker 1: be fascinating. So I think that you'll have people who
Speaker 1: both are hoddling bitcoin and also transacting in it in
Speaker 1: an experimental way but on some level. And I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of implicit in what you're saying and when
Speaker 1: you describe the people who use it now using bitcoin
Speaker 1: isn't a way as a means of transacting, even if
Speaker 1: it were really smooth, it's still a sort of um,
Speaker 1: kind of a medium of exchange of last resort. In
Speaker 1: other words, if all you're doing is going to Starbucks
Speaker 1: and buying a coffee, even if it were incredibly simple, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just scanning your phone across a thing, and
Speaker 1: it's still like, there's not much reason to do it
Speaker 1: for transaction like that, even in the most simplistic scenario. No,
Speaker 1: there isn't. You could make arguments about privacy. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, do you want visa knowing that you go
Speaker 1: to Starbucks every day? I think that most people don't
Speaker 1: care about that at all. Um, And yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. It is a I think that the most
Speaker 1: underrated aspect of bitcoin is optionality, right, and owning a
Speaker 1: little bit of bitcoin and having a little bit on
Speaker 1: your phone gives you an extra option. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: it's that it's kind of a form of insurance from
Speaker 1: a payment system perspective. I want to go back to
Speaker 1: something you just said about You say, people are um
Speaker 1: who are getting into bitcoin now it feels like obviously
Speaker 1: interest in bitcoin is significantly less than it was a
Speaker 1: year ago. I think it's safe to say. But in
Speaker 1: your world of people who are super into the technology
Speaker 1: and hacking away at lightning and building this out, do
Speaker 1: you still see growth in that community? Yes, to my surprise,
Speaker 1: I do. I hope stay podcast the noted Bitcoin podcast,
Speaker 1: and uh, I joked that we're not getting any new listeners,
Speaker 1: and then on Twitter the next day I got a
Speaker 1: d M of Hey, I'm a new listener, so keep
Speaker 1: it up. Um, So there's definitely there's new developers and
Speaker 1: new users coming in all the time, and I'm still
Speaker 1: accumulating followers on Twitter to my surprise. But um, I
Speaker 1: think that there's a a sense, you know, we just
Speaker 1: had Bitcoin's tenth birthday, and uh, there's a growing sense
Speaker 1: that like this isn't going away, and this is here
Speaker 1: to stay and it will at least be here for
Speaker 1: another decade. So there's a surprising amount of continued interest
Speaker 1: in it, even at the depths of what people see
Speaker 1: as a bear market, even though I still feel like
Speaker 1: we're in a bull market. So what would it take
Speaker 1: for you, as a bitcoin believer, bitcoin maximalist in fact,
Speaker 1: what would it take for you to sort of lose
Speaker 1: faith in bitcoin and change your mind. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the if h if bitcoin became um centralized enough to
Speaker 1: the point where people were making changes to it that
Speaker 1: I thought were unwise, and um that that almost happened
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen. We almost had a hard fork
Speaker 1: that I thought was misguided. Um. And if if that
Speaker 1: hard fork had succeeded, then I I would have likely
Speaker 1: lost faith in in bitcoin. Uh. Thankfully it did. It
Speaker 1: failed miserably, So Uh, that was a moment of victorious joy. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's not a guarantee that it won't happen in
Speaker 1: the future. So there's that aspect of it. Um. And
Speaker 1: then from from the price perspective, I think that I
Speaker 1: would question, uh, my, my understanding of what is driving adoption.
Speaker 1: If the price got down to you know, below a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for an endless period of time, you know,
Speaker 1: for a couple of years or something, then I would
Speaker 1: I would question if the adoption drivers that I had
Speaker 1: analyzed had disappeared or I was under you know, a
Speaker 1: euphoric case. Well, uh, we'll come back and have you
Speaker 1: back on the podcast. If bitcoin is stay, does stay
Speaker 1: for under a thousand dollars for a while and uh,
Speaker 1: we'll see if you've reassessed your euphoricques. Pierre Rochard, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me out.
Speaker 1: Thanks Pierre. That was great, Tracy. I really like that conversation.
Speaker 1: And you know, what I felt was my favorite part
Speaker 1: was actually the analogy between contracts and the court system.
Speaker 1: I've never really thought about that before. That all businesses,
Speaker 1: all transactions have some sort of contract, and the there
Speaker 1: is the implicit backing of the court system saying yes,
Speaker 1: this is who's on the right and wrong side of
Speaker 1: the contract. But if we had to actually have the
Speaker 1: courts adjudicate every contract, um, it would never work. And
Speaker 1: I thought that was a really interesting analogy that I
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense in this context that
Speaker 1: I just never thought about before. Yeah, I really like
Speaker 1: that one too. But I guess my the one question
Speaker 1: I have having listened to that conversation is there's so
Speaker 1: much effort being put into bitcoin and other crypto related projects,
Speaker 1: either you know, to roll them out in terms of
Speaker 1: adoption or to make transaction easier, And sometimes I just
Speaker 1: wonder why, right, Like, why why put all this time
Speaker 1: and energy and money into a project to create a
Speaker 1: decentralized form of money, and you know, Pierre sort of
Speaker 1: touched on the libertarian arguments there, and then I start wondering, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if bitcoin did actually take off, is there
Speaker 1: not a point at which governments do actually revolt against
Speaker 1: it and crack down anyway? Anyway, those are my thoughts,
Speaker 1: shower thoughts on crypto. Yeah, on the flip side, I
Speaker 1: do think it's very interesting that I think when a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and I would say certainly the media
Speaker 1: and speculators and Wall Street in particular, have sort of
Speaker 1: given up on bitcoin or lost interest, and you certainly
Speaker 1: don't hear very much about institutions wanting to buy in
Speaker 1: anymore these days, that there is this community that continues
Speaker 1: to grind away at the core project of building out
Speaker 1: the technology and making it more usable and making it
Speaker 1: more decentralized. And I think that it's sort of very
Speaker 1: um and I don't I don't mean, not bullish in
Speaker 1: the price sense, but bullish in the longevity of the project,
Speaker 1: since that regardless of the price swings, they're just the
Speaker 1: people who are still building it out. Yeah. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean that this is basically what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: for two episodes now there are very dedicated crypto believers,
Speaker 1: and there's a very dedicated crypto community. And you and
Speaker 1: I both remember at this point, I think twice now,
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven and two house and thirteen, we did
Speaker 1: have a big run up in the bitcoin price on
Speaker 1: a relative scale and a big drop, and each time
Speaker 1: we had a bunch of people saying, Oh, this was
Speaker 1: the end of it, this is the end, It's going
Speaker 1: to die, and yet it continues on and people still
Speaker 1: really really have faith in it. Yeah, And to your
Speaker 1: question about, like, well, one, what happens when there is
Speaker 1: the real government crackdown and they really get aggressive about
Speaker 1: trying to stamp it out. In theory, the technological work
Speaker 1: that's being done now to make it more robust and
Speaker 1: more decentralized and more able for people to run their
Speaker 1: own nodes will make that that eventual crackdown even harder
Speaker 1: to execute. Yeah, Joe, do you have bitcoins that you
Speaker 1: can use to buy me pizza? Uh? Why would you?
Speaker 1: Why would you want to have pizza? But um, there's
Speaker 1: got to be something better to buyan pizza? Right, that's true,
Speaker 1: That's very true. When I'm in New York next Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well, this has been another episode of the
Speaker 1: Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wi isn'hal.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwarts, and
Speaker 1: you should follow our guests on Twitter. Pierre Rochard, He's
Speaker 1: at Pierre Underscore Rochard, and you should follow our producer
Speaker 1: on Twitter tofur Foreheads. He's at foreheads T, as well
Speaker 1: as the Bloomberg head of podcast Francesco lead at Francesco Today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.