S17 E48: Robin Linus in the 1000 BTC Car, Driving to BitDevs Atlanta

0:46Vlad Costea We're rolling, I think. Hi, Robin.

0:49Robin Linus Hi, Vlad.

0:50Vlad Costea So, what are we doing today? We're on our way to the BitDevs meetup, no? BitDevs. There's a barbecue there, but we're riding in the fanciest car ever. This is a 2011 Toyota Prius, which cost 1,000 Bitcoin. Crazy, right? Nobody needs a Lambo when you can have a Prius. Well, it's Japanese, and Satoshi was Japanese, supposedly, at least in name.

1:25Art Should be able to make it through.

1:27Vlad Costea So it's one of the coolest cars you can get.

1:31Art It's possible that we're going to hit something here right now. That's why I came in here, so I should be able to see it. Car navigation: Your route avoids a crash on 10th Street Northwest. You're on the fastest route. You should reach your destination by 5:51 p.m. Head toward First Drive, then turn right onto First Drive.

1:51Vlad Costea Look at that navigation system on the dashboard. This is a 2011 Toyota Prius. So there are not too many like it, especially not bought with Bitcoin.

2:10Art Yeah, true.

2:11Vlad Costea What's the story behind this?

2:13Art So it was purchased in 2011 by Rassah. He was the dev who made Mycelium, and then he had it from 2013 until around 2019, and he would take it to, like, shows and conferences and stuff. And then in 2019 he totaled it. He had an accident and it got totaled, and he was intending to, like, have his insurance just take it and total it out. And, no, don't... I talked with him and, no, so I said...

2:51Vlad Costea Look at the front camera.

2:54Art So I said, you know, you can't just toss this thing out. It's like a historical thing. So myself and a partner, we bought it off of him, and then a third partner helped us to have it all fixed up. And now we take it to, like, shows and conferences and stuff. And yeah, that's it.

3:27Vlad Costea I remember this was auctioned on Scarce.City for a while.

3:31Art Yeah, so that was a third of a share. It got sold on Scarce.City. So our third partner, he essentially paid to, like, have the car fixed up. So there's a few of us partners who all hold the car in there, and we take it to, like, shows and stuff now, and we kind of, like, have these kind of talks and stuff. We share it, essentially.

4:06Vlad Costea Yeah. Mycelium wallet was pretty OG. It was possibly the most popular open source mobile wallet at the time. It was bigger than Electrum. I think Electrum was big on desktop, but for mobile, Mycelium was the thing. But I think Mycelium was only on Android, and I think Blockchain.com was the one that was popular on iOS. If you had an iPhone, you were using Blockchain.com on iPhone, but on Android, Mycelium was the way to go. And I think still today there are a bunch of OGs that use Mycelium.

4:43Art Still? That's cool.

4:45Vlad Costea I mean, I remember seeing, I'm not going to tell any names, but I remember seeing someone who had like a hundred Bitcoin in their mobile wallet, and it was Mycelium, and he was just flashing, you know, like, "Hey, look at me, I'm OG. I have this since 2012" or whatever.

5:04Art That's pretty OG for sure.

5:06Vlad Costea So honestly, it's not impressive, because at the time you could only buy one tenth of this Prius. This cost 1,000 Bitcoin. What can you buy with 1,000 Bitcoin today, Robin? A thousand Priuses? How much is it? Eighty million dollars, something?

5:24Robin Linus Something, yeah. Eighty-three, I think, at today's rate. Probably you can buy, like, the entire street that I grew up in.

5:33Vlad Costea You could probably buy the entire neighborhood, and like everyone's cars as well. That could be a nice flex, right? To be like the king of your childhood neighborhood.

5:48Robin Linus Yeah, buy everyone's house. Own all of them.

5:51Vlad Costea Yeah. Like, "Oh, I'm such a nice person, you can stay here, but I own it, and I can evict you when I want. And I own your car." We are in Atlanta right now attending TABConf, the last edition of TABConf, number eight.

6:11Robin Linus What is Atlanta famous for? Georgia Tech? Coca-Cola?

6:16Vlad Costea The '96 Olympics.

6:18Robin Linus Oh, right, yeah.

6:20Art Hershey's, isn't it?

6:21Vlad Costea Martin Luther King.

6:24Art Yeah, he did stuff here. He was born here. Oh, really? Yeah. There's also a famous aquarium.

6:31Vlad Costea I've been to... I haven't visited.

6:34Robin Linus Right, I've heard of that, yeah. With, like, sharks and so on.

6:41Vlad Costea And what else? They have Waymo on the Uber app. The Atlanta Hawks. Oh, and BitPay. BitPay is from Atlanta.

6:52Robin Linus Oh, really?

6:53Vlad Costea Yeah. I've heard stories about Jeff Garzik, who had a lot of Bitcoin and had a lot of fun around here and was owning an apartment in a very fancy place, in the mansion.

7:04Robin Linus Cool.

7:05Vlad Costea I did have Jeff Garzik on my podcast. You can listen to him. I think it's Season 15, Episode 60-something.

7:12Robin Linus Okay.

7:13Vlad Costea I'm just advertising now. I'm not telling you personally to listen, I'm telling them to listen. Get cultured, learn about Bitcoin history, the people who paid 1,000 BTC for one Toyota Prius, which is very wholesome. But would you say that if someone finds out that there's another car that was bought for Bitcoin before this one, this Toyota Prius loses its value?

7:43Art Yeah, for sure. But that's not going to happen, I don't think. No one was buying cars in, like, 2012 for Bitcoin, I don't think.

7:51Vlad Costea So how was it bought with Bitcoin, more specifically?

7:54Art So he did four payments of 250, and it's really hard to find the exact payments, because in those days they, like, intentionally tried to obscure it. So it's kind of hard. So we have it, though, narrowed down to, like, ten potential, like, candidates that occurred, like, during that time, that were for 250 BTC. So we're not exactly sure of the exact thing. We roughly know, like, mostly.

8:41Robin Linus How did the buyer and the seller find each other? On Craigslist or something?

8:45Art I'm not sure. I don't know.

8:47Robin Linus That's good.

8:48Art I'm not sure.

8:50Vlad Costea Could be part of the lore, right?

8:51Art There's some, like, forum. I imagine some, like, libertarian 2013 forum. They're probably talking to each other like, "Yeah, I'll do that." Or maybe Bitcointalk.

9:03Robin Linus Bitcointalk, I was just going to say. Probably that.

9:07Vlad Costea So do you plan to use this until it dies, or do you want to sell it?

9:10Art It's already died, like, twice.

9:13Vlad Costea I mean, Bitcoin died like a thousand times.

9:15Art Yeah. So yes, I'm open to selling it. If someone can, like, pay 1,000 BTC, I'll sell it. It'd be cool to, like, maintain the, like, have it be a, like, stable token of sorts. It's, like, perma-1,000 BTC. So if, like, somebody pays me 1,000 BTC now, it'll still stay 1,000 BTC. So it's, like, for sure it's going to go up in value. But... turn here, sorry.

9:50Vlad Costea Yes. It's funny, because you're using the navigation from your phone and not the one from the dashboard.

9:57Art Well, the touch thing isn't doing it on here. I have to change out the touch panel on here.

10:07Vlad Costea So how much of this car is still original? Because you said it was totaled.

10:12Art Close to everything. It's been, like, fixed up. So we have a new motor in here that we had put in, so I can take it here in time. However, we still have the actual, like, motor in storage for it, so we're having that motor, like, fixed up and then put in here all over again. The bumper got changed out, so that's new. Everything else is original.

10:49Robin Linus So engine, transmission?

10:52Art The engine currently in here isn't Rassah's engine. We have the engine in storage, and we'll have to, like, have it be fixed up and stuff.

11:08Vlad Costea Do you need help with navigation? Because you're driving with one hand and holding the phone with the other.

11:13Art It's because I'm talking and I'm, like, distracted.

11:18Vlad Costea Okay, let's do the talking, Robin.

11:20Art Yeah, you guys should probably talk for the next, like, ten minutes, because I'm driving in circles. I got that ADD, I'm sorry.

11:27Vlad Costea It's fine. So Robin, if you could buy any car with Bitcoin, what would that be? You have a budget up to a thousand, by the way.

11:37Robin Linus Up to a thousand?

11:38Vlad Costea Up to a thousand.

11:40Robin Linus VW Käfer.

11:42Vlad Costea Oh, you're a fancy guy.

11:44Robin Linus Fancy? You know... do you know VW Käfer?

11:48Vlad Costea Is it like a custom car brand?

11:51Robin Linus It was, like, I think, the most built car in the world. How do you pronounce it in English? VW? Volkswagen? The Beetle.

12:06Vlad Costea Oh, that's what you want? A Beetle?

12:08Robin Linus Yeah, the Beetle. I mean, you only gave me a thousand bucks.

12:12Vlad Costea A thousand Bitcoin.

12:13Robin Linus Do I have a thousand Bitcoin or a thousand dollars?

12:16Vlad Costea No, a thousand Bitcoin.

12:18Robin Linus Oh, okay, okay.

12:23Vlad Costea Well, you thought a thousand dollars in Bitcoin? Oh, this is the Coca-Cola building right here. So I'm not sure if it's visible on camera, but it's amazing for someone who's been drinking Coca-Cola since he was like three years old or whatever. Crazy parents, by the way.

12:41Robin Linus You drink... no Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is bad for you. Drink water instead.

12:47Art Tea is nice also.

12:49Robin Linus Tea is nice.

12:50Art Yeah, I like tea.

12:52Vlad Costea Testosterone. Yeah, T. I'm actually at this hotel, Hampton Inn.

12:58Art Oh, yeah?

12:59Vlad Costea Yeah, it's a shithole. I don't recommend it. But yeah, it's fine. It's close to the conference.

13:04Art That's an advantage, indeed.

13:06Vlad Costea It is. And I have breakfast with people who are also from the conference.

13:10Art Oh, that's good. Maybe I should come in there for the food. I'm just going to hang out with you guys in the mornings.

13:20Vlad Costea You can try. Yeah, but the food is not great. Like, I would not recommend it.

13:25Art I don't imagine it would be. It's just standard, like, hotel food.

13:29Vlad Costea Yeah, but it doesn't even taste good. I see some very fancy Camrys that you have here, like the SE or something. They look much better than the ones we have in Europe.

13:42Art Oh, really?

13:44Robin Linus So, I would get this car.

13:46Vlad Costea Show us, Robin. Oh, like an SL from the 1970s. You need to turn your phone towards the camera. You have good taste. I have to admire this.

14:00Robin Linus It's an SL. It's a 280 SL.

14:08Vlad Costea I sort of agree with that. If I was going to get any car, it has to be something classy.

14:13Robin Linus Well, and this car might actually not lose too much value in comparison to Bitcoin.

14:19Vlad Costea It's possible, yeah, because it's a collectible.

14:22Robin Linus Yeah. I think it still will lose a lot of value in comparison to Bitcoin, but maybe a little less than the Prius.

14:31Vlad Costea What I think I would buy is every car, at least the starter ones, from Need for Speed Underground, and then tune them and mod them to make them look like the ones from my video games. That's one childhood fantasy.

14:45Art And then would you go on races with them?

14:47Vlad Costea Maybe. Like pink slips. You know pink slips? It means you're basically racing, and the loser loses the car and the winner gets the other person's car. Pink slips are like the documents for the car in the US, and that's why they call it pink slip. But if you have fuck-you money and you can do this... I mean, I guess it's thrilling when you know that if you don't hit the gas very hard and you don't shift your gears at the right time, you're going to end up losing the car.

15:27Robin Linus I would rather have a thousand Bitcoin to promote Bitcoin usage for payments.

15:36Vlad Costea Oh, you're always the hero, Robin.

15:39Robin Linus No, I think the world would be better. Like, my life would be better if I could pay with Bitcoin everywhere. It always makes me so happy to pay with Bitcoin.

15:47Vlad Costea Well, BitPay is from Atlanta. We should go to their office, say hello to them, ask them, "Hey, what have you been doing for the past decade?" They didn't grow that much, right?

15:59Art Not that I'm aware of. At least not for Bitcoin. I think for stablecoins.

16:05Robin Linus Oh, yeah. I recently used them. You need to KYC now, right?

16:11Vlad Costea For what?

16:12Robin Linus For paying anything.

16:13Vlad Costea On BitPay? I think so. I think that's why BTCPay was created, because they added KYC to BitPay. And Nicolas tweeted, "My faith in you is broken. I'm going to make you obsolete." Because they added KYC. I think it was also the SegWit2x thing at the time that was causing people to become emotional. Can you see in the rearview mirror because of my arm here? Okay, that's good.

16:39Robin Linus But I don't think BTCPay Server is actually, like, having... they're not really competing on the same product, because the key thing was that they were exchanging the money immediately, such that the merchant didn't have to touch Bitcoin.

17:01Vlad Costea Yeah, especially the volatility, right? But it had product-market fit for a while, because businesses were not happy with the chargebacks that they were getting. And at least with this BitPay integration, they would receive the money immediately in their accounts. Oh, this is an SL, but a modern one.

17:26Robin Linus Ah, no, no, that's... yeah.

17:29Vlad Costea The old design is just the best. Car navigation: At the light, turn left onto Ivan Allen Jr. Boulevard. I think this is like the second-generation Prius, if it's from 2011. The first one is from the '90s, early 2000s. I think '98 was the first Prius model. Tell me in the comments if I'm wrong or something. But it came along... Can I upload this to YouTube?

17:53Art Yeah. And Twitter, I don't know.

17:55Vlad Costea Okay. Do you have anything to say to your mom or something?

18:01Robin Linus To my mom? No. Like, to the audience: spend Bitcoin.

18:06Vlad Costea On what?

18:07Art On what, Rob?

18:08Robin Linus On cars. You should buy a Prius with Bitcoin.

18:12Vlad Costea Are you advertising any service that sells cars for Bitcoin?

18:16Robin Linus I don't know. There must be one. ChatGPT? Should we ask ChatGPT?

18:23Vlad Costea You can try. ChatGPT is also on your podcast. But you can also... so if you hold 1,000 Bitcoin and you don't know what to do with it, you can contact our friend from here. Can I mention your name?

18:38Art Yeah. Art.

18:39Vlad Costea Art. And he's the one who owns this. He's going to let go of it for 1,000 BTC, just so you know. Is that why it was on auction on Scarce.City?

18:51Art No, that was a share of the car. So that was a third of a share of the car. So there's currently three partners in total who, like, have the car.

19:04Vlad Costea Ah, I see, okay. Oh, so you're one of the owners?

19:07Art Yeah.

19:08Vlad Costea Interesting. You tokenized the car?

19:11Robin Linus Did you tokenize it?

19:12Art No, we didn't tokenize it. We thought about it, and then, I don't know.

19:19Vlad Costea So how do the shares work? Is it one third, or is it like 20, 40?

19:24Art No, that's, like, a third each.

19:26Vlad Costea Okay. So how do you share it? Like, does every person drive it for ten days a month?

19:34Art The two dudes are busy doing other stuff, so I have it most of the time, and I take it to, like, shows and stuff.

19:46Vlad Costea Yeah. What's the mileage on it?

19:49Robin Linus Oh, what is the mileage?

19:51Art Well, mileage is 198,095.

19:58Vlad Costea That's really not bad for something from 2011.

20:02Art No, no, it's not.

20:03Vlad Costea I can think of cars that are like five to ten years old that have been used much more intensely than this one. So a Toyota should run for at least 500,000.

20:16Art Yeah, it seems about right.

20:18Vlad Costea So this baby is just getting started. It's not even halfway into its existence.

20:25Art Exactly.

20:31Vlad Costea Did you find any service, Robin?

20:34Robin Linus Let's ask. "Hey, I want to buy a car with Bitcoin. Please find me a car online that I can pay with Bitcoin, and tell me how much it is."

20:44ChatGPT (voice) Let's see what I find. Yeah, let me check.

20:47Vlad Costea Oh, that's a weird voice. Your ChatGPT sounds hot, dude.

20:52Robin Linus Yeah. Yours doesn't sound that hot?

20:54Vlad Costea Did you set that on purpose?

20:55Robin Linus Yeah, of course. This is the hottest voice, isn't it?

20:59Art Yeah, sexy ChatGPT.

21:02Robin Linus Which ones are you using?

21:05Art I don't use the talking feature. I just type and it types.

21:08Vlad Costea Yeah, me too. I hate talking.

21:10Robin Linus Really? Yeah, I'm actually having, like, phone calls with it.

21:13Art I'm bad with that voice.

21:15Robin Linus I talk to it all the time, too. Like when I'm cooking or something, when I just have nothing to do and I don't have my hands free.

21:23Vlad Costea Dude, you're like the character from the movie Her.

21:27Robin Linus Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm not in love with it. I'm just asking, like, weird shit, like, I don't know, how quantum mechanics works and, like, how the vacuum field and shit like that. Just, like, random stuff that I'm just curious about. But I'm not in love with it.

21:54Vlad Costea Yet. It's taking it a while to give you an answer.

22:01Robin Linus Maybe the intelligence is too high. It was on Pro, now it's on High. What do you guys think of the new iPhone? The foldable iPhone? iPhone Duo?

22:13Vlad Costea I don't care about the new iPhone. I don't think about the new iPhone. I don't know, I just practically don't find any moment when I would want to have a larger screen.

22:25ChatGPT (voice) ...LX listed at $29,443 at a Honda dealer in Missouri, and the dealer explicitly says they accept Bitcoin through BitPay. At a recent rate around $83,445 per Bitcoin, that price is roughly 0.353 BTC, before taxes and any extra fees. You can call them at 816-355-5142 to confirm that the car is still there, and to ask for a written Bitcoin invoice before you send anything.

22:57Art I know, I know, I know. Sorry.

23:01Vlad Costea And we just went the wrong way. We caused a traffic jam.

23:06Art I'm sorry.

23:07Vlad Costea Uh-oh. Do you want me to, like, navigate?

23:10Art No, no, I'm almost there.

23:12Vlad Costea Okay. Please don't kill us in the last meters. We were going to have an accident in the Bitcoin car. The most expensive accident car, right?

23:33Art I mean, GPS here isn't really reliable. It's sending me down these, like, one-way streets. Car navigation: Turn right onto West Peachtree Place Northwest. Sorry.

23:45Vlad Costea It's all good, man. We survived. Barely.

23:54Robin Linus So now a car is 0.5 Bitcoin. So you could buy, like, 2,000 cars for the price of this car.

24:03Vlad Costea That was a Honda Accord, right?

24:05Robin Linus I think so, yeah.

24:06Vlad Costea What year? Let's see. Honda Accord LX, 2026 Honda Accord. I mean, what's cool is that it's still a Japanese car, so you're respecting the tradition of buying Japanese cars with Bitcoin. Satoshi's vision. They say that Bitcoin is life-changing technology, but why can't it be car-changing technology?

24:38Robin Linus Wife-changing technology?

24:40Vlad Costea Wife-changing? I like that. No, life-changing. Wife-changing happened to a lot of people. They went through nasty divorces, and then somehow they found a hot Latina or whatever. Now life is nice. None of my business, by the way. I'm not judging, I'm just observing. Anyway, we're heading towards a BitDevs barbecue.

25:13Robin Linus It's important, like, don't date any girls that don't own any Bitcoin.

25:18Vlad Costea No, that's bad advice.

25:20Robin Linus No, it's good life advice.

25:21Vlad Costea You're going to end up forever alone.

25:23Robin Linus Really? I know a lot of girls that own Bitcoin.

25:27Art They're starting to, yeah. Car navigation: Then continue straight to stay on West Peachtree Street Northwest.

25:35Vlad Costea It's a cool building. So why would you want your girl to own Bitcoin? What's the logic?

25:44Robin Linus Well, it's proof that she's smart. And it's good for your children if they have a smart mom.

25:53Vlad Costea I think there are other ways to prove intelligence.

25:56Robin Linus Sure, it's, like, not the only way. That's true. But it's valuable. It's a good indicator.

26:05Vlad Costea That was hot. I guess you missed it. It was nice.

26:14Art Only half a confirmation. Car navigation: Continue straight to stay on West Peachtree Street Northwest, then you will arrive at your destination.

26:20Vlad Costea Okay, we're very close right now. You said we're going to the hotel first, and then...

26:26Art Well, first...

26:27Vlad Costea To the barbecue?

26:28Art I can, yeah. I just need to...

26:30Vlad Costea It's fine. So, Robin, are you into German cars? Because you mentioned how you're going to buy a Beetle with a thousand dollars, or a Mercedes-Benz SL with more money.

26:48Robin Linus Yeah. Like, that's not necessarily patriotism. I just think they are, like, objectively the nicest cars, in my eyes. Maybe it is, like, because I'm, like, conditioned that way, but, like, in my eyes, this, like, old Mercedes is, like, the peak of car design.

27:13Vlad Costea They are nice.

27:14Robin Linus So what? Of course, there's, like, a few Ferraris that are also extremely great, but it's a bit too fancy, you know? Like, I'm not going to say that on camera.

27:33Vlad Costea You're not going to say what?

27:36Robin Linus Like, I don't need a car that, like, compensates.

27:42Vlad Costea Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. So no Porsches?

27:47Robin Linus Yeah, right.

27:49Vlad Costea I mean, Porsches are nice. I usually judge people when they have an oversized car for no reason. Did you just...?

27:58Art Yeah.

27:59Vlad Costea You bent the front bumper. Now it's worth 999 Bitcoin.

28:05Art I'll be right back. Or if you want to head up to... it's up to you.

28:09Vlad Costea We're just going to film around the car.

28:12Art Yeah.

28:13Vlad Costea But I'll let you get out first, so I don't film you by accident. Just please don't lock it.

28:20Art Yeah.

28:34Vlad Costea Look at this beauty. Look at the dashboard. Look at the wheel. 1,000 Bitcoin. The Mycelium guy was loaded. I actually had the car door opened for me by Robin. We're in valet mode now. So this is the car. It's kind of amazing. Beautiful Prius.

29:11Robin Linus Oh, so he doesn't drive around with the other license plate.

29:15Vlad Costea Yeah, he has a Bitcoin license plate. So cool, man. 2011. He sort of scratched the front bumper here. So I guess if you offer 999 Bitcoin for it, it's probably a fair price. Look at the headlights. They're so cool. Beautiful design. Would you pay 1,000 Bitcoin for this if you had a million Bitcoin?

29:56Robin Linus Yeah, of course. I'm a payments maximalist. I think you should use your bitcoins, and they should, like, flow. So if that's the price, then yeah, you should pay it if you can afford it.

30:12Vlad Costea But do you hodl, or do you just pay? Look at these buildings, they're super tall.

30:21Robin Linus If I had a million bitcoins, I would invest them all into advertising Bitcoin. Bitcoin payments.

30:29Vlad Costea Oh, so you want to become the new Roger Ver?

30:32Robin Linus Yeah. Go into every shop and be like, "Hey, have you heard of Bitcoin? It's the coolest technology for accepting payments." I'd hire an entire army of people who are good at that. Not sure if I would be good at that.

30:45Vlad Costea But how do we scale it, Robin?

30:47Robin Linus We're scaling it with Shielded CSV. Shielded CSV is insanely scalable. With, like, the basic protocol, you can scale it to 100 transactions per second, but there's all kinds of aggregation techniques with which you can scale it to 4,000 transactions per second. And if you are accepting, like, optimistic data availability, then you can even scale it to, I think, 100,000 transactions per second. So I think we can put basically all of the world's transactions on Bitcoin. So scalability is not an issue.

31:19Vlad Costea Well, I think Visa does, like, what, 10,000 transactions per second?

31:23Robin Linus I think on average 8,000, and peak is like 30,000, like during Christmas holidays or, like, Black Friday.

31:33Vlad Costea This is OG, made in Japan.

31:35Robin Linus I think 60-ish thousand or something. That's the maximum capacity. But the entire world only processes about 60,000 transactions per second, like 60,000 digital payments per second.

31:54Vlad Costea Oh, there's a sticker here. I guess this is a cap or something. You can tell that there is some rust, maybe. I don't know if there is any rust under the car. Let's take a look. I might devalue the car right now if there is any rust underneath.

32:12Robin Linus Uh-huh.

32:13Vlad Costea But anyone who wants to buy this deserves to know. I'm filming under the car, so you can see what's happening. It's a 15-year-old car, from 2011.

32:28Robin Linus That car, by the way, is a proof that the people who are saying Bitcoin first needs to be a store of value and then it can become a medium of exchange, they are wrong. Because obviously Bitcoin was used as a medium of exchange before it became a store of value, and if these people would not have used it as a medium of exchange, it would have never become a store of value.

32:52Vlad Costea I just hope that Roger Ver listens to this, because that's music to his ears.

32:57Robin Linus Sorry?

32:58Vlad Costea I just hope that Roger Ver listens to what you just said, because that's music to his ears.

33:03Robin Linus Roger Ver was absolutely right about that. I'm a payments maximalist, so we are brothers at heart in that regard. I'm not sure if just, like, increasing the block size would solve all the problems. I do agree, though, that probably it would have been the right choice back then. I think it was not worth having this war over the block size for... what was it, like 8 megabytes or something?

33:35Vlad Costea Actually, there were lots of proposals. There was BIP 101 that was saying let's double the block size every two years. But SegWit2x was 8 megabytes, no?

33:45Robin Linus Yes, that was a compromise.

33:47Vlad Costea No, it was 2 megabytes and SegWit. So yeah, it could achieve 8, I guess.

33:51Robin Linus Yeah. It wasn't such a big deal. It was just a hard fork that was turning people away. It would have just been 1.6 times 2, right? Because currently we have 4 megabytes, but we're only using 1.6.

34:04Vlad Costea Yes.

34:05Robin Linus So doubling that block size would have been only, I don't know, 3.2 megabytes effectively.

34:10Vlad Costea It's possible. But right now... so the problem is that there was so much fragmentation and so many forks that we lost some very good users and businesses.

34:21Robin Linus Yeah.

34:22Vlad Costea And we didn't lose them to Bitcoin Cash or BSV. We lost them to Ethereum, and then Ethereum lost them to Solana and Tron and whatever. So there's a lot of fragmentation in the space. We could have had Bitcoin only, like, for real, not just in narratives and larping and signaling.

34:37Robin Linus I think it's sad that all of the stablecoin volume went to other chains. I'm not sure if we can get it back. Probably it's very hard, because network effects are the complicated problem. I don't even think scaling Bitcoin is the hard problem. I think gaining network effects is the hard problem. But currently the network effects are on, like, Tether and Tron.

35:02Vlad Costea Unfortunately, yes. And I think Tether freezes funds every week or something.

35:06Robin Linus Let's turn around, such that the car is in the background while we are talking about...

35:11Vlad Costea Oh, yeah, that's actually a good idea. Car maximalism.

35:16Robin Linus No, payments maximalism.

35:18Vlad Costea There's actually a place in the US that's called CarMax. Or CarMax Cars. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to dox his license plate. Maybe I should ask.

35:33Robin Linus Can you blur it later?

35:34Vlad Costea I can. Toyota. This is what 1,000 Bitcoin can buy you. What would you do if you had 1,000 Bitcoin? Tell me in the comments. Look at this handsome guy. If there is any lady watching this: are you single, Robin?

36:00Robin Linus So-so.

36:01Vlad Costea That's a yes.

36:03Robin Linus No comment. No comment.

36:05Vlad Costea Oh, that means he's married.

36:07Robin Linus No comment. No comment.

36:12Vlad Costea Like, how would you rate the ride with this Toyota Prius?

36:24Robin Linus Infinitely better than the ride that I had this morning in a self-driving car.

36:31Vlad Costea A Waymo?

36:32Robin Linus A Waymo, yeah. Waymo on Uber.

36:35Vlad Costea How was that?

36:37Robin Linus Well, it's extremely futuristic. Having an invisible driver steering the wheel, with an invisible driver...

36:51Vlad Costea Of the free market.

36:53Robin Linus Right, yeah. The invisible hand of the free market.

36:57Vlad Costea There's some very cool building here.

37:06Robin Linus And it didn't ask me for tips, which made it much cheaper than the usual drive.

37:14Vlad Costea I had to pay a tip for my Uber here, and I was kind of surprised that the minimum is 15%.

37:20Robin Linus Yeah, I think it's very normal here.

37:22Vlad Costea Tipping in the US is so different than tipping in Europe. I was thinking maybe 5 makes me generous, 10 is a lot, but 15 was the minimum and 30 was like the default option. I was like, who pays 30% extra for someone who just did their job and got paid for it?

37:40Robin Linus Last time when I was in Germany, after being here in the US for a while, I tipped 10% at a restaurant, and they asked me if I did, like, a calculation error. They asked, like, three times if I'm serious.

37:58Vlad Costea So we were talking about this car, but I got to ask you, Robin: what did you like the most at TABConf?

38:06Robin Linus What did I like the most at TABConf? Well, generally, I just love being around these people, because it feels like family. They all know all the weird stuff that I love to talk about. It's very rare that you can just walk into a room and everyone there knows a lot about Bitcoin, and I like that a lot. Seeing my friends. Also, just talking to, like, these critical people. For example, last night we had a dinner with Peter Todd and Paul Sztorc, and those were, like, two extreme opposites. And listening to their points of view, you learn a lot, I think. Especially when they're having an argument.

38:54Vlad Costea Did they have an argument last night?

38:56Robin Linus I'm not sure if I'm phrasing that correctly. They just had a discussion.

39:03Vlad Costea Okay. Because I was sort of invited to join, but I was too tired, and I said, "I'll just go to sleep."

39:09Robin Linus You missed very good steak.

39:12Vlad Costea I had steak before that.

39:14Robin Linus Maybe you've seen Paul's tweet: all of us made a guess when the next soft fork will happen. And the most depressing thing was Peter Todd guessing that the Great Consensus Cleanup will come in, like, '29.

39:31Vlad Costea Yeah, speaking of cleanup...

39:33Robin Linus Like, if it takes until '29 and if all we get is the Great Consensus Cleanup, I'm out.

39:39Vlad Costea I don't know. Lower your time preference.

39:43Robin Linus Make a Solana memecoin. Just burn my reputation completely to the ground, so that I can never come back.

39:50Vlad Costea Actually, I think people are going to love you for that. You're going to get, like, ten very devout followers who are going to be like, "This guy made me rich." And they will make troll accounts just to defend you. What's the Robin Linus coin? What's it going to be called?

40:11Robin Linus BitVM?

40:13Vlad Costea Yeah, the BitVM coin, right.

40:14Robin Linus We need some mnemonic name, right? Otherwise people won't...

40:17Vlad Costea I'm sure that someone watching this will make the coin and give you, like, a share, and ask you to tweet about it, and say, "Well, that money is going to go to development."

40:26Robin Linus Not yet. I'm still very optimistic. We're going to get BIP 448, TEMPLATEHASH. It's going to reduce the interactivity requirements of BitVM bridges. We're going to do non-interactive deposits. I think it's going to be great. We can do all kinds of cool things with covenants. Still a little bit retarded that we cannot have, like, a decent upgrade for a SNARK verifier. I think eventually it will come. Also, maybe Simplicity.

41:00Vlad Costea Why would you want to get the scripting language from Blockstream and Liquid?

41:05Robin Linus Because soft forks are all about feelings and opinions and, like, points of view. Like, it's not about technology at all. It's not about facts. You can see that from Taproot. Taproot was a shitload of complexity for very little gain, and still a lot of people loved it just because the right people pushed for it. And Paul Sztorc actually said the right way to activate a soft fork is: you need the approval of Greg Maxwell, and then you need Pieter Wuille to, like, implement it, and then just post it on the mailing list and then say, "I don't want to have anything to do with the activation. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to do this, but here's the code." So that's basically what we need, probably. That had a 100% hit rate, and everything else had a 100% miss rate. So we should try that. We should try to get something that has Greg Maxwell's approval, and then we should get Pieter Wuille to implement it, and then we should just activate it. And I think the thing that is most likely to get Greg Maxwell's approval is Simplicity, because Simplicity is a very deep, nerd-sniping rabbit hole, and that's what the people who have a say love.

42:32Robin Linus We just need to route around Michael Saylor. So we got to tell him that this is the only way to save Bitcoin from the quantum threat. This is the most sane way to make Bitcoin post-quantum safe, because we can try out many different post-quantum signature schemes. We can try out hash-based schemes, we can try out lattice-based schemes, we can try out isogeny-based schemes, and all of the good stuff that might be a little bit too experimental to enshrine it into Bitcoin Core. And that is the way how we're going to save Bitcoin from quantum computers. The only way. Otherwise we're all going to die.

43:12Vlad Costea No, that was a Chinese television guy saying that if Bitcoin becomes successful, we're all going to die.

43:17Robin Linus Really?

43:18Vlad Costea Yeah. It's like an old, sort of very meme-worthy video. So the owner of the car is coming. Oh, he's going to cover his face. That's perfect. We can film the car. Is it fine that I recorded the license plate?

43:34Art If you blur it out.

43:35Vlad Costea I'm going to blur it out. Okay. Because I've been recording around it, and we're just talking about Bitcoin stuff right now. Robin, let's go. Is it possible that you hold this, like, on the dashboard or something, and we keep talking, so all of us are in the shot? I don't know exactly how to tell you to hold it, but you'll figure it out. Yes, like this. Did you put your seatbelt on? Are you safe?

44:12Robin Linus I'll totally put my seatbelt on. I almost died just the other week. Like, it was crazy. We were on the highway in an Uber, and the car in front of us, it just fell apart. What do you call the thing between the wheels?

44:31Vlad Costea The thing between the wheels?

44:33Robin Linus Yeah, the rod between the wheels.

44:36Vlad Costea You mean the transmission?

44:38Robin Linus The transmission, yeah. The transmission fell apart, and, like, the entire car fell apart in front of us. And if we had been, like, just one or two seconds faster and closer to the car, we would have died.

44:52Vlad Costea Yeah. So I was thinking that this is going to be a ten-minute recording.

44:56Robin Linus Yeah. I think, given the fact that we almost died just a second ago for, like, going into a street the wrong way...

45:04Vlad Costea Yeah, it was close.

45:06Art Close call. Got to pay attention if you're driving.

45:12Robin Linus So how do we do that?

45:14Vlad Costea We also have you. I think that's fine. Like this. I don't need to be in the shot all the time. But I was thinking this is going to be, like, a very short video, but it turned out... I think I'm going to post this as a podcast episode.

45:28Robin Linus Okay.

45:29Vlad Costea Which means that I got to plug my sponsors. What's your favorite sponsor of mine, Robin?

45:33Robin Linus Of course, LayerTwo Labs.

45:35Vlad Costea Oh, do you like them?

45:37Robin Linus Yes. Always the best.

45:39Vlad Costea Go to eCash.com. Check out drivechains. You can test the software now. It doesn't suck as much as it used to. Now it's less buggy than before, and it keeps getting better. Go to eCash.com and claim your free airdrop. I think it will be October 31st, Halloween day. You don't have to do it on the first day. You can do it any time afterwards. Just wait for it to become easy and safe.

46:05Vlad Costea This is a very demanding maneuver that you're doing, Art, right now. At least you have the rearview camera.

46:13Art Yeah, that helps for sure.

46:16Robin Linus And most importantly, now that Paul forked off, we can finally activate BIP300. There is no reason to not activate BIP300 anymore, now that Paul forked off. The only reason, the only, like, real justifiable reason against BIP300 ever was that you don't like Paul's Twitter, which is understandable to some degree. I'm also not a huge fan of Paul's Twitter. I love Paul in person, but I think his Twitter is a soft fork marketing nightmare.

46:53Vlad Costea Did you have the address, Robin?

46:55Robin Linus No.

46:56Vlad Costea I have it on my phone, but I'm using my phone for recording.

47:00Robin Linus I'll check it out.

47:01Vlad Costea Yeah, I think I sent it to you, so you can navigate. Yeah. The other sponsor of this podcast is Orange Rock.

47:08Robin Linus Oh, is this it?

47:09Vlad Costea Okay. Which is the place where you can trade without KYC and without registration.

47:14Robin Linus Cool. Orange Rock.

47:16Vlad Costea It's important that you can do this, and it has a very nice interface, and you can trade on your phone. There's an iOS app. I think it also works in your browser on desktop. There's also a desktop app that's coming. So no limits, no KYC, privacy-friendly. Check it out. It's OrangeRock.com. Brought to you by the same team behind Bitcoin.com. So it's not like they're complete strangers who came out overnight and said, "Trade on our app." Look, Robin is already about to place his 100x or something. Is it not focusing on your phone?

48:00Robin Linus There we go. OrangeRock.com. KYC is the illicit activity.

48:08Vlad Costea There's also SideShift, the place where you swap between coins, and I usually tell people to swap their stablecoins on SideShift. And what I did recently was to actually pay the graphic designer who did the very nice Forks magazine that I launched here in Atlanta. And he wanted Bitcoin Cash, so I went to SideShift.ai and I swapped BTC for BCH. It worked instantly. The fee was low. It's pretty cool.

48:36Vlad Costea Here's the Forks magazine. Robin, of course, has a copy of it, because he's a cool kid. Only 60 of them were printed for TABConf, and he owns one of the 60. The Forks List of the richest Bitcoiners. One day you're going to sell this for 1,000 Bitcoin and buy this Prius.

49:01Robin Linus Let's do it. I'm all for that.

49:04Vlad Costea Oh, there's another Prius on the road.

49:06Robin Linus Would you sell it for 1,000 Bitcoin? What's the lowest price you would sell it for?

49:10Art 999 and a half.

49:13Robin Linus So, special offer for BTC Takeover viewers.

49:19Vlad Costea You get a discount. So you mention Bitcoin Takeover podcast, and you say you found out about the car from this video, and you can have it for 999 Bitcoin and a half. $50,000 off.

49:33Robin Linus Yeah, that's a lot of money.

49:35Vlad Costea It is. And there's also Cake Wallet, which is the wallet that supports pretty much everything. Do you like Cake Wallet, Robin?

49:44Robin Linus Of course. I love Cake Wallet.

49:46Vlad Costea What do you use it for?

49:47Robin Linus Well, Monero.

49:49Vlad Costea Oh.

49:50Robin Linus It's the best Monero wallet, I think.

49:52Vlad Costea Oh, I can clip this. Is it?

49:54Robin Linus It is. It's just a fact, no?

49:56Vlad Costea It is, yeah. They're putting a lot of engineering effort into making the best Monero wallet. Yeah, and it also works with Zcash, also works with Litecoin and Ethereum and Solana and whatever.

50:09Robin Linus I just saw a podcast with Seth for Privacy, and he made a really good point. He said that he thinks the most important thing that's currently missing in the privacy landscape is UX. Like, you need UX-friendly privacy. And I totally agree with that. That's what we should strive for: to make privacy as usable, or even more usable than, like, regular cryptocurrency payments, such that it just can become the default. Because privacy is the strongest the more people are using it and the more normal it is. Like, it should be the default. You shouldn't even think about using the private thing. It should be just the thing that you use. And I think Cake Wallet is doing a great job at making it as simple as possible without losing the key properties.

51:06Vlad Costea They also have, like, 2 million downloads. I'm not sure if that means 2 million users. Maybe it's like half a million users.

51:13Robin Linus Yeah. I've heard they have, like, on the order of half a million monthly users, which is pretty impressive.

51:18Vlad Costea And that's good for liquidity.

51:21Robin Linus Yeah. And good for privacy, because you have a large anonymity set.

51:28Vlad Costea Yeah. I was just telling Vik that maybe, like... there is a feud between Kruw, who is, like, the guy who's running the Wasabi Wallet coordinator, and Vik, who is the CEO of Cake. And I told Vik at some point, "Why don't you use your money to basically integrate Wasabi into Cake? I think everyone is going to win if you do that."

51:51Robin Linus What did he say?

51:52Vlad Costea Well, I don't know. Maybe it's happening. He doesn't reveal his secrets. That's the thing about him. He sort of hints that he's working on something. I think now he's working on Radar, which is a fork of Signal where you can send Bitcoin directly inside of the messaging session. So it's sort of what they intended to do with Libra at first, at Facebook. And then they tried to do something similar on Signal. They had something called MobileCoin, and it never took off. But now they do this with Bitcoin. Bitcoin on... what's the name of that Lightning, not-Lightning service?

52:36Robin Linus Spark.

52:37Vlad Costea Spark. Yeah. So you can do it with Bitcoin on Spark. Is it real Bitcoin? That's another conversation.

52:45Robin Linus Spark is fully custodial. It's just non-custodial in name only. And I don't get why the word non-custodial doesn't mean anything anymore. Why so many people are just accepting that Spark would be non-custodial, even though you totally have to trust that server to not rip you off. And also, hardly any wallet actually implements the unilateral exit, because that's complicated. And that's why, even if the protocol itself would not require trust, the unilateral exit requires trust, which is kind of, like, defeating the entire purpose of a unilateral exit. So I think Spark is actually dangerous, because it's so good UX-wise, and it creates that narrative of being non-custodial, even though this is a lie.

53:39Robin Linus And I think it's totally fine that they are lying to regulators. Putting it on their website to lie to regulators, such that they don't need a money transmitter license to run this service, is totally fine. But I think the Bitcoin community shouldn't lie to itself, which it's currently doing, and I think that sucks. And not everything, but, like, a huge part of the ecosystem is centralizing around Spark, and that becomes a single point of failure. If tomorrow someone in the US government wakes up and stops believing the lie that they would be non-custodial, Spark suddenly has to KYC all of their users, and then suddenly you have to KYC half of the ecosystem, and then we have wasted years that we could have invested into building actually decentralized solutions.

54:35Vlad Costea I agree with you. I just realized that the check engine light is on. It needs to be serviced ASAP, man. This is like another Bitcoin off the price. It's like 998 and a half, because you need to service the engine.

54:50Art It's true. It has to be serviced.

54:58Vlad Costea Yeah. Anyway, another sponsor.

55:00Art The A/F sensor has to be changed out. That'll be done soon.

55:12Vlad Costea I got to mention Braiins Hashpower, which is a service where you can rent hashrate. If you want to mine Paul's eCash fork, or you just want to try your lottery ticket on Bitcoin BTC, or you want to mine Bitcoin Cash, or you want to 51% attack BSV. I'm not saying you should, I'm saying you can. Don't sue me, Craig. But you can use Braiins Hashpower. They have a lot of access to ASIC miners. Most of the time, if you live in a country in Europe, it's cheaper to rent hashrate from Braiins than to actually mine from home. And it's specialized hardware that they're using, which most likely you will not be able to source for yourself at home.

55:59Robin Linus Can you mine your own templates?

56:01Vlad Costea I think you can. It depends on the pool that you're using, probably, right? I don't think that's a default setting, but since you're renting hashrate from some other third-party miner, maybe you can negotiate that. I don't know, I didn't think about that. But yeah, you can use Braiins Hashpower for a lottery ticket to claim the whole Bitcoin block reward for yourself, or to mine Paul Sztorc's eCash hard fork, which is also using SHA-256. Check it out. It's Braiins with a double I, braiins.com/hashpower. And it's not like... once again, like I said in the case of Orange Rock, it's not like it's a new company that came out of nowhere. Braiins is actually the rebranding of Slush Pool, which is the first-ever Bitcoin mining pool.

56:46Vlad Costea Oh, I own this kind of... Lexus. Do you see it? The silver one? That's my car, except that it's red.

56:57Art Let's see if there's any other spots.

56:59Vlad Costea How would you rate my car, Robin?

57:01Robin Linus Which one?

57:02Vlad Costea Oh, you didn't see it. It's the one coming from the left side. You can't see it from here. I guess you're going to have to look behind. Oh, you parked next to another Prius, which is really cool. But a cheap one.

57:15Art Yes.

57:16Vlad Costea I mean, it's the same generation, I think, but it's not a thousand Bitcoin. Once again, Robin opened the door for me.

57:30Robin Linus Of course. And another important service announcement from the Annex Mafia: if you're having any hashpower, make the annex standard.

57:40Vlad Costea What's the annex?

57:41Robin Linus The annex. The Taproot annex. That's a way to, like, make Bitcoin private. You can publish private Bitcoin transactions in the annex. And that's why I opened a pull request in Bitcoin Core to make the annex standard. It's just a policy change. Consensus remains untouched. Even Peter Todd reviewed and ACKed the pull request. So it's ready to get merged, I think. It's basically just a copy of what he already has running on Libre Relay. And it makes Shielded CSV much better. So private Bitcoin transactions at scale become better with annex standard.

58:33Vlad Costea Anyway, that silver car, do you see it? This one.

58:37Robin Linus Yeah.

58:38Vlad Costea That's what I have. The one on the left. Lexus.

58:42Robin Linus Yeah, it's basically Toyota, but the fancy Toyota, right?

58:46Vlad Costea The fancy Toyota. Just like the Mercedes-Benz of Toyotas.

58:49Robin Linus No, it's like the Audi for Volkswagen, you know?

58:52Vlad Costea The Audi, okay. It's the same brand, sort of. Same components, but one has more premium materials. It's this one. It looks fancier. A thousand Bitcoin for mine. Mine is red, actually. I was going to get one in silver at some point, but, you know, silver is too common.

59:21Robin Linus I have a bicycle.

59:23Vlad Costea What kind of bicycle? Oh, this is a Cybertruck. I'm always surprised to see them. I think they are illegal in Europe.

59:31Robin Linus Yes, they are.

59:33Vlad Costea Oh, there's two of them, yeah. HODL... Barbarian Capital. We can have a live battle here between...

59:55Robin Linus Yeah, why don't we have a live battle?

59:57Vlad Costea Shielded Bitcoin versus... I got to mic you up.

1:00:00[unclear speaker] No.

1:00:02Vlad Costea You don't want to be on camera?

1:00:04[unclear speaker] I don't think we should have a live battle.

1:00:07Vlad Costea Okay, I won. I mean, Robin was into boxing at some point, so don't fuck with him. Oh, I was just putting you guys on the spot, I'm sorry. But Shielded CSV is supported by Blockstream right now. Why? Why?

1:00:27Robin Linus Because Jonas is the first author of the paper. Jonas Nick, the director of...

1:00:33Vlad Costea Don't you think it diminishes the credibility of the project now?

1:00:37Robin Linus Does it? Does Blockstream prove to be super incompetent?

1:00:41Vlad Costea That's a good question.

1:00:43[unclear speaker] How do you comment on the allegations of...

1:00:46Robin Linus Can you say it again?

1:00:47Vlad Costea Come on, say it, say it.

1:00:50[unclear speaker] How do you comment on the allegations of money embezzlement of the CIO of Blockstream, which supports Shielded CSV?

1:00:56Vlad Costea Can I film you, or...?

1:00:57[unclear speaker] No.

1:00:58Vlad Costea Okay.

1:00:59[unclear speaker] Better not record this at all.

1:01:01Vlad Costea No, it's going to be on my podcast. I'm just not going to mention who said this.

1:01:05[unclear speaker] That's really bad. I mean, there's a website about it.

1:01:09Vlad Costea Oh, Ekrem, you can come here. You want to be on camera? Oh, hi. This is...

1:01:15Ekrem Bal Hi, I'm Ekrem, one of the co-founders of Citrea. We are building a Bitcoin ZK rollup and privacy app called Crest.

1:01:22Vlad Costea Yeah, the second coolest privacy protocol on Bitcoin.

1:01:25Robin Linus There's no second.

1:01:26Ekrem Bal There is no second best.

1:01:28Vlad Costea Yeah. Told you.

1:01:32Robin Linus So the privacy wars have started on Bitcoin, which is a great thing for the users.

1:01:37Vlad Costea Dark Wallet.

1:01:39Robin Linus Dark Wallet? No, no. Dark is, like, too shady. It scares away users.

1:01:44Vlad Costea Oh, Wallet Bazaar, then.

1:01:47Ekrem Bal He's using the compliant language.

1:01:49Robin Linus Compliant language. We got to use the compliant language. It's just about scalability, usability. Privacy is just, like, enlightening.

1:01:58Vlad Costea Yeah, sure. You're kind of losing the battle, by the way.

1:02:04Robin Linus Am I?

1:02:05Vlad Costea The winner is who, like, stays the longest out of prison.

1:02:09Robin Linus Their protocol is used by terrorists.

1:02:14Vlad Costea I'm a terrorist. I use Citrea. It's so good. No, I'm kidding. I mean, that's what ladies call me: a terrorist. I'm a sex bomb. Who's singing that song? "Bad boy on the dance floor... sex bomb." Is that Michael Bolton?

1:02:35Robin Linus No, Tom Jones.

1:02:37Vlad Costea See? Music trivia on the podcast. We actually started this because we were in the first car bought for Bitcoin, and it was 1,000 BTC in 2011.

1:02:46Ekrem Bal Right, yeah.

1:02:48Vlad Costea You want to see it? I'm not going to film you or anything.

1:02:51Ekrem Bal All right.

1:02:52Vlad Costea Let's go for it. Well, let's go take a look at it. Let's see if someone else wants to see it. Do you want to see the 1,000 BTC car? There's a car that cost 1,000 BTC. This is Rob Hamilton, the CEO of Bitcoin.

1:03:08Rob Hamilton Good to see everyone.

1:03:10Vlad Costea You want to see the 1,000 BTC car?

1:03:13Rob Hamilton Sure.

1:03:14Vlad Costea Well, let's go. Oh, boy. It's a Toyota Prius from 2011. Classy. Bought by the lead developer of Mycelium wallet.

1:03:24Rob Hamilton Hell yeah. That was a big wallet back in the day. I remember that one. Oh, I remember that wallet back in the day. It was a big one.

1:03:31Vlad Costea Yeah. I have to hold the microphone to him so that he's audible.

1:03:34Rob Hamilton Well, I guess there's at least 1,000 BTC in that wallet.

1:03:39Vlad Costea You can hold this.

1:03:41Rob Hamilton You got it. Man on the street, Rob Hamilton, reporter for the Bugle News, coming at you live. This one? I think that's a good deal. What do you guys think? 1,000 Bitcoin? I mean, that means each of those wheels must be at least, what, like 5 Bitcoin each, right?

1:03:58Vlad Costea Yeah.

1:03:59Rob Hamilton They bought it with Bitcoin back in 2011? It was bought?

1:04:03Vlad Costea Yeah.

1:04:04Rob Hamilton There you go. Was it, like, $2 a coin then? What?

1:04:08Vlad Costea It's possible, yeah, something like that.

1:04:10Rob Hamilton It's great value. Hey, hey, hey. It's a hybrid, all right? This is bleeding-edge technology back in 2011. This was a hybrid. This was a nice car in 2011.

1:04:21Vlad Costea Well, I didn't know you can self-park.

1:04:23Rob Hamilton Apparently I can. I'm already an insurance salesman, might as well be a used car salesman, right?

1:04:27Vlad Costea A wheel.

1:04:31Rob Hamilton Excellent. Very cool.

1:04:33Vlad Costea You're on camera right now, so you can go the other way.

1:04:38Rob Hamilton I have no idea. I just started walking with Vlad, and now I'm standing here with a microphone and a camera, so I'm not sure what else. You want me to dance? What do you need me to do? I have no idea what I walked into here.

1:04:48Vlad Costea Me neither.

1:04:49Rob Hamilton Excellent. Well, here you go. Thanks for having me on, Vlad.

1:04:53Vlad Costea Well, maybe we can do a full episode sometime.

1:04:55Rob Hamilton Happily. Whenever.

1:04:57Vlad Costea Yeah. But it's just that when I see that you're on other shows, I sort of delay the invitation, because I don't want to get the same information, relay the same stuff like everyone else.

1:05:07Rob Hamilton You and I having a conversation is going to be a very different conversation than most of the podcasters anyway, right? Like, you have a different perspective.

1:05:18Vlad Costea I left my backpack in your car, by the way. Art?

1:05:27Robin Linus You want to have your microphone back?

1:05:30Vlad Costea Why don't you want the microphone anymore, Robin? Are you done with this interview?

1:05:34Robin Linus If I'm walking around here and I'm talking, then you're going to record me. I have, like, very important political matters to discuss about soft wars.

1:05:43Vlad Costea What? Who?

1:05:45Robin Linus Yeah, Peter Todd.

1:05:47Vlad Costea He wants to champion a soft war. You go ahead and ask him. You can interview him.

1:05:52Robin Linus Well, like, his opinion on soft wars is very sad. He thinks Great Consensus Cleanup in 2029, which is by far the saddest thing I've ever heard.

1:06:08Vlad Costea This is like Bitcoin Uncensored, by the way. This is what they used to do. We're waiting in line for a steakhouse dinner or something. Okay. Art, I just want to let you know, my backpack is in your car, so I'm going to have to take it when we leave. I think that's the Bitcoin Spaces guy, no?

1:06:27Robin Linus I don't know what Bitcoin Spaces is.

1:06:29Vlad Costea You don't know Bitcoin Spaces? A new naming protocol.

1:06:31Robin Linus Oh, I know that, yeah.

1:06:33Vlad Costea It's Mike Carson.

1:06:34Robin Linus The same as Andrew, I think.

1:06:36Vlad Costea No, I mean, Mike Carson is the CEO. I don't know who the other person is.

1:06:40Robin Linus I see.

1:06:41Vlad Costea But they're not paying for this dinner. We had to pay $44 to get here. Are you happy about the $44 you had to pay for this dinner? You're not on camera, by the way.

1:06:55[unclear speaker] What's going on?

1:06:56Vlad Costea $44 for this dinner. What do you think? Is that a fair price?

1:07:04Robin Linus I don't care. Well, the better question is, like: did you pay with credit card or with Bitcoin?

1:07:13[unclear speaker] I mean, homemade barbecue with good company, $44? If we had non-custodial Lightning, sure, but we don't have it.

1:07:24Rob Hamilton I paid with Lightning.

1:07:25[unclear speaker] Same here. Phoenix.

1:07:28Robin Linus Me too. Phoenix, right. This better be fatty. That's all I got to say. Here, see? I doxed myself. Lightning payment. And I paid even for the conference with Lightning. And Stanford. I'm a payments maximalist, and you should become one too.

1:07:45Ekrem Bal You can also use Crest next month to pay on Lightning as well.

1:07:49Robin Linus Really?

1:07:50Ekrem Bal Yeah. Next month. Or maybe soon.

1:07:52Robin Linus This is cool. Yeah, I even bought a coffee at Stanford with Bitcoin. Two Ts. Oops. That was too much. Well, it's not that embarrassing. It's just Venice AI, SMS for Sats. And yeah, I bought, like, my Bitcoin name: robin@bitcoin.

1:08:10Vlad Costea So what's that for? How does it work?

1:08:13Robin Linus So it's a name protocol that tries to, like, unify the landscape of different addresses in Bitcoin. So, like, you have an on-chain address, and then you have, like, a silent payments address, you have a Lightning address, maybe you also have an Ark address and a Spark address, or, like, whatever. And their protocol tries to, like, unify all of that on, like, for example, robin@bitcoin. And then I just tell you, "Hey, I'm robin@bitcoin," and then you type robin@bitcoin into your wallet, and then your wallet connects to, like, some Bitcoin name server or whatever they call it.

1:08:56Robin Linus And then... he has a microphone.

1:08:59Ekrem Bal Oh, I didn't know that. Does it support Crest addresses?

1:09:02Robin Linus Well, it does. It supports any address format. Like, you can just make new record types.

1:09:07Ekrem Bal That's nice.

1:09:08Robin Linus It's like, the protocol is open, you can just add new record types. And then, like, basically your wallet negotiates with, like, the other wallet, or, like, with what it knows from your public records, what is the best way to pay you.

1:09:22Ekrem Bal I see. That's cool.

1:09:24Robin Linus Yeah, I think that's really cool. Especially now that we have this, like, Cambrian explosion of L2s with all kinds of different wallet formats, it's going to be important that we have that. Because I don't want to explain to users that there is Lightning and Spark and Ark and on-chain and, like, all kinds of shit. The UX just needs to be simple. So there needs to be a unified way to pay people. And the good thing about that is that it's actually verifiable. Lightning addresses, they already exist, and they are kind of cool from, like, a UX point of view, but from a cryptographic point of view, they suck, because it's basically custodial, since the server can just, like, swap out the address at any point in time.

1:10:14Vlad Costea Christian, do you want to be on camera?

1:10:17Christian (Alpen Labs) Maybe later.

1:10:18Vlad Costea It's like a cameo.

1:10:20Robin Linus Just a random... It started out as... When mainnet? When Alpen mainnet? When mainnet?

1:10:27Christian (Alpen Labs) Oh, that's not for me to say.

1:10:29Vlad Costea So this is Christian.

1:10:31Christian (Alpen Labs) Look at our public channels, right, to find out more.

1:10:39Robin Linus Okay. What are you most excited about right now?

1:10:42Vlad Costea Can you guys fight or something? Can you get me a million views?

1:10:47Christian (Alpen Labs) I don't know. Fight with Robin? They're also doing privacy.

1:10:52Ekrem Bal Yeah, privacy. But they are both doing rollups.

1:10:55Christian (Alpen Labs) Yeah. Like, SNARK garbling is very cool. Like, there were two papers recently, right, about that, and now we have to use it, right?

1:11:03Robin Linus What are these two papers?

1:11:05Christian (Alpen Labs) Our paper has, like, a very long name. Internally we call it Talos, but, like, I think it's called Succinct Garbling with... or something. Look it up. And then there's another paper... Come here, come here... which is called Argo. We call it Argo proper.

1:11:23Vlad Costea Oh, hello.

1:11:24Christian (Alpen Labs) It's also very cool.

1:11:26Vlad Costea You need a microphone.

1:11:28Paul Sztorc Hello. What is this? What's the question? What's this for?

1:11:33Vlad Costea We were having a battle between Alpen and Citrea right now. And also Robin joined the privacy wars.

1:11:39Paul Sztorc Okay, great. Who's going to win? What's the criteria for winning?

1:11:44Vlad Costea Well, staying out of prison is one criteria.

1:11:47Paul Sztorc So who is better? Who has the edge in that?

1:11:51Robin Linus They don't. Their protocols get used by terrorists.

1:11:55Vlad Costea And I just said that the ladies call me a terrorist in bed.

1:11:59Paul Sztorc Call me. All right. That sounds like it could be a good thing, if... you know, at least you have users, because most people don't have any. So I think, you know, make hay while the sun shines. What else? What else are you guys up to?

1:12:15Ekrem Bal We shouldn't discriminate users just because of their political opinions. We respect the users' privacy to some extent.

1:12:23Paul Sztorc What extent?

1:12:24Ekrem Bal Well, maybe not to the extent of, like, international terrorism.

1:12:30Robin Linus Okay. But, like, tell us about privacy protocols on eCash.

1:12:36Paul Sztorc We have zSide, which is the... from the Zcash altcoin. It just takes their Rust crate and plugs it in, and it hides the sender, the receiver and the amount.

1:12:46Robin Linus When did you fork it? Like, do you know the name of the pool?

1:12:50Paul Sztorc It is Orchard, but we updated it after that bug they found. So it's post version 15 or whatever it is.

1:12:57Robin Linus Is it formally verified? What's it called? Ironwood.

1:13:01Paul Sztorc I'm not a fan of this formal verification thing. I think it's a red herring.

1:13:05Vlad Costea You want to join the interview?

1:13:07Paul Sztorc I think it is useful, but I don't think it's that useful, because you tag a bunch of things as, like, what you want versus what you don't want, and then the formal verification can't make sure that that tag is right. So it's not that useful. But I guess I think it is probably better than nothing. But I don't think... people think it's like a magic bullet.

1:13:25Robin Linus You have to be careful what you prove.

1:13:27Paul Sztorc Right, exactly. You could just be like, oh... because how do you know that you set it up to verify what you thought you were going to verify?

1:13:32Robin Linus You never prove "my protocol is secure." You prove something very specific.

1:13:37Paul Sztorc Yeah. Well, is that Tadge?

1:13:40Robin Linus Yeah, that's the legendary Tadge Dryja.

1:13:43Paul Sztorc A lot of legends here. Good to see you. I don't know, someone gave me this microphone. I don't know.

1:13:48Vlad Costea We're talking about... We came here with the first car that was sold for Bitcoin, 1,000 BTC. It's the Toyota Prius that's parked there.

1:13:55Paul Sztorc The first car?

1:13:56Vlad Costea Yeah.

1:13:57Paul Sztorc Really? Amazing.

1:13:58Vlad Costea You want to see it?

1:13:59Paul Sztorc There was one that was auctioned off. It was auctioned off in Miami Beach or something, I thought. Wasn't it? Is that a different thing, or no? I don't know.

1:14:08Vlad Costea He doesn't agree.

1:14:10Robin Linus I came here in a 1,000 BTC car.

1:14:12Paul Sztorc He came here in the car?

1:14:14Vlad Costea Yeah, yeah. He gave us a ride. That's when we started recording, and then it sort of turned into an interview.

1:14:22Paul Sztorc Okay, great. Excellent.

1:14:24Vlad Costea Then they started a privacy battle.

1:14:27Ekrem Bal Yeah. We like that. Privacy is... We want privacy.

1:14:31Paul Sztorc We do. Most private chain or whatever. Yeah, that's great. Money is only worth it if no one knows that you own it.

1:14:39Robin Linus Tell us about privacy.

1:14:40Paul Sztorc Otherwise, I'd rather just not even have it.

1:14:43Rob Hamilton I still think it's probably not the most expensive car ever. Like, the car in Dubai was, like... the one-character license plate.

1:14:49Paul Sztorc That's a good goal. So if you backfilled... like, if you were like, what would it have been if you were at the peak?

1:14:56Rob Hamilton Like, 1,000 Bitcoin today is still, like, less than what the Dubai sheikh's car is worth.

1:15:02Paul Sztorc If you're like... it's a million-dollar car. This is 80.

1:15:04Rob Hamilton That's $80 million? Yeah. Okay, that might rival those. But they have cars today that they pay, like, $10 million for the car and $40 million for the plate.

1:15:12Paul Sztorc I would never ride such a car. It's very interesting, though, Dubai cars.

1:15:16Robin Linus $80 million is the minimum. Minimum per wheel.

1:15:22Vlad Costea Love a Prius.

1:15:24Paul Sztorc Yeah, I had a Honda Civic for a really long time. It was, like, just a reliable car that gets you from A to B. You can learn a lot about someone from the kind of car that they get. It depends on what stage of life they're in.

1:15:35[unclear speaker] Yeah. How can you put a price on saving the environment, after all? Even for an $80 million car.

1:15:39Paul Sztorc You could put... as an economist, you could put prices on that.

1:15:42Rob Hamilton $10 million, apparently, for the Prius. For $80 million there.

1:15:46Paul Sztorc Cool.

1:15:48Vlad Costea So, do you guys want to see the car?

1:15:50Rob Hamilton Yes. I'm going to grab some food first.

1:15:52Paul Sztorc I'm going to grab some food as well. Yeah, I think we're going to get into it in just a minute. I'll see you guys in there.

1:15:58[unclear speaker] You saw the... eCash.com, right?

1:16:00Paul Sztorc That's true. That is it. Yeah, eCash.com. That's what it is. That's what eCash is. There's a big sign. You can't miss it.

1:16:08Robin Linus zSide. Are you going to have a naming protocol? A name protocol?

1:16:12Paul Sztorc Yes.

1:16:13Robin Linus Yeah?

1:16:14Paul Sztorc Yes. It's called BitNames right now.

1:16:16Robin Linus BitNames?

1:16:17Paul Sztorc Yeah. I'm a huge believer in the name. I think Namecoin was the first altcoin, co-invented by Satoshi. I think it has enormous potential, actually.

1:16:26Robin Linus I think so, too. When are you going to relaunch Truthcoin?

1:16:30Paul Sztorc It's already, to some extent, out, but Truthcoin is so complicated that I don't know if it'll make the October 31st, but it will be very shortly after. You can use it now. People are already tinkering with the front end and stuff, so that's a good sign.

1:16:43Robin Linus Sweet. Rock and roll. BitNames. How do you prevent squatting?

1:16:48Paul Sztorc I have a long, giant piece of writing about this. But what you do, the short version, is you split into two worlds. The ICANN-style names that are ICANN-based, like google.com, and then the different kind that aren't, so something like google.anarchy or google.bit or whatever. And you respect all the property rights of the original set. So you say, actually, you can basically claim google.com in BitNames if you own the real google.com. So you basically front-load... you hard fork the UTXO set of the ICANN database, and then you add in new stuff. So you can still own, you know, robinlinus.bit, and then you can do all your whatever stuff there. So the idea is people have multiple identities very easily. So you have the one identity that's just plugged into everything. So you have, like, the Robin Linus Instagram, MIT, Stanford experience. But then you have your other identity, Dread Pirate Roberts, where you operate your Flakka empire, or whatever else.

1:17:51Robin Linus What's Flakka?

1:17:53Paul Sztorc It is a type of drug, they say. I don't know what that is.

1:17:57Robin Linus Well, why do you know what that is?

1:17:59Paul Sztorc Because I used to live in Florida.

1:18:02Robin Linus Can you buy it with zSide coins?

1:18:05Paul Sztorc Presumably, you know, it depends on liquidity, obviously. There's a buyer and seller.

1:18:13Robin Linus Amazing.

1:18:14Vlad Costea Do you guys want to go outside?

1:18:15Paul Sztorc Yes. Yes, I'm hungry.

1:18:17Vlad Costea Okay, let's go. This was the Toyota Prius you can buy for 4,000 BTC.

1:18:24[unclear speaker] Sorry? You should film this.

1:18:26Vlad Costea I should film what?

1:18:27[unclear speaker] BitLab.

1:18:28Vlad Costea BitLab? I don't want to dox anyone. I know that some people were in the background.

1:18:33[unclear speaker] Well, it was other people, but I can take over.

1:18:36Vlad Costea I didn't even know that. Okay, party people, thank you very much for watching this. Robin?

1:18:44Robin Linus Make the annex standard.

1:18:46Vlad Costea The what?

1:18:47Robin Linus The annex.

1:18:48Vlad Costea What's the annex, once again? The annex is... is it like the annex? A-N-N-E-X, or N-X?

1:18:56Robin Linus A-N-N-E-X. How do I pronounce it? Annex. Is that correct?

1:19:00Vlad Costea You said annex.

1:19:02Robin Linus Annex. The annex. Yeah, it's mostly on the first syllable. Yeah, annex standard. Check out the PR. Thumbs up, review it, and merge it.

1:19:13Vlad Costea Okay, I'll see you in the next one, party people. Got to go eat some steak, and maybe watch the battle between Citrea and Alpen. Once they get drunk, maybe they start a fistfight. I'm not going to film that if it happens.