Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mark Mass Show.
We're always talking about the way the world is changing, of course as we look at it through the lens of politics, finance, and technology, and of course that technology is bitcoin that is changing the world through the decentralized technology.
You know.
I'd like to bring to you some late breaking news so you can see how the world is changing. And of course of interesting guests. You don't have to just listen to me all the time. And today I have Steven Barber coming onto the show. Always a wealth of information and fun guy to talk to you. I'm looking forward to this. He is the owner of Upstream.
Data, Inc.
Which is sort of turning trash into treasure, maybe even better than turning track. It's like it's like almost like the ultimate form of recycling waste into treasure.
Maybe would you say that, Stephen.
It's not a bad analogy. Yeah, we specialize in turning waste gas, wasted methane into bitcoin.
But it's not just that, right, So it's like I revised it from turning trash into treasure, but it's actually it's actually better than that, because like trash would just whatever sit there in a landfill, but this methane is just leaking in right right now. The options are we either flare it or vent it into the ecosystem. And so you're taking that and instead of just letting it seep into the ecosystem or burn it off, you're actually using it and turn it into something valuable.
Yeah, exactly, like pretty much every oil gas well or oil well in the world when it's like cracking a can of coke, Like as soon as you release the pressure on that thing, there's like there's gas that comes out of solution. So every oil well out there, pretty much conventional at least, has that gas that comes with it.
And so yeah, the problem of course being if you're stranded energy, you know, like remote oil wells out in the middle of nowhere, and you don't have pipeline infrastructure to sell the gas, then you have to do something with it. So in a lot of cases, that's too much gas to do anything with, and so we build products that people can buy and it turns that gas
into bitcoin. It's basically it's natural gas engines fully like a fully kitted out skid where the fuel gas plumbs in through the engine, generates power, sends electricity to the mining side, which is what we call the load center, and that turns it into hashes, and of course those hashes reward you in bitcoin.
Now, I know in Canada and the United States, there's a lot of regulations around, you know, for these energy companies of how much gas they can in some instances even how much gas they can flare or event into the ecosystem.
So that's sort of.
Like what you're talking about, where they're forced to do something with it. And if they're stranded, if they're so far from a pipeline, then they don't really have a good option, right they could either shutter it in or use an option like this. I mean, is that sort of how the regulations work.
Yeah, Basically, you're there's a couple of ways you can control your gas flow, so you can rate limit you're well, So like most most people when they drill a well, they want to produce it at max potential rates because that's what they're that's where they're making money. It's selling it well. But the more you produce, like the more you pump the oil to surface, the more gas that
comes with it. So a lot of the regulations will force the oil company, you know, they might be allowed to vent or flare up to a certain limit, but to stay within that limit, they might have to throttle their downhole pumps and throttle a well, depending what what the completion looks like in some jurisdictions, like I think New Mexico right now, I'm not sure so sure about California,
for example, where where you're sitting. But certain states have different rags and some of the REGs are no flaring whatsoever, so you're not you're basically not going to get a permit, or if you do get a permit for routine flaring,
it only be temporary. So that's where they're forced to well either not develop the property or if they do develop the property, they have to you know, pay a lot of money out to get pipelines, in which case might be very far from the market, so you spend a lot of money at pipelines.
I want to ask another question that I think it can be more fun and interesting for the listeners. So you know, there's a lot of attacks on bitcoin, fudd if we will you know, if you're uncertainty to out a lot of attacks on bitcoin, specifically around the amount
of energy it uses. A lot of the counter to this, you know, from bitcoin minors, let's say, but also some political organizations around bitcoin mining as well push back and they try to say how clean bitcoin is and how much renewable energy it uses, and how it's helping to actually cut down on CO two and things like that. I've considered, I've been asked to join some of these political organizations, and I'm like, the problem I have is I sort of reject that entire premise, right, I sort
of reject that entire premise. I don't think we need to be arguing that bitcoin isn't a waste of energy. I don't think we need to be arguing that it cuts down CO two missions because I don't even think that's the problem in the first place. And I'm curious your take on that.
You know, there's been over the years since I got into the space in like twenty sixteen, that's been one of the most common FUD vectors. You know, the most common social attacks on bitcoin is that it's is it
a good use of energy? Just because obviously the trend and hash rate and the underlying power usage that goes under that hash rate is up and up and up like exponentially, and of course one day it'll plateau somewhere, but it is going to very high places, like it's going to be a lot of load on energy systems across the globe. I've always just started with when people have brought that up to me, well, bitcoin's a waste of energy for that person, it might be a waste
of energy. Like if they don't use bitcoin, then sure, like you don't, you'd have no you'd take no value from it. Sure, that's your That is the root of what value is. It's always a subjective thing. I always just use the same example, like I don't personally like certain vegetables like cauliflower, but I don't go around saying saying that it's a waste of energy just because I don't eat it. I don't eat it. There's a whole
industry around growing cauliflower. I'm sure it's quite a lot of energy actually that goes into it, right, So you know that to me is fundamentally where the argument ends. Is for a lot of people, bitcoin can be a waste of energy in their subjective view, and that's just fine. But there's a lot of people paying for it, including both of us and many of your listeners. And to us bitcoin is useful and therefore it has value. That's
just really where it ends. But if you want to like dig in further, I mean, if you look at where bitcoin mining is applied, it's often applied at sources of energy that can't find a market anyway. I mean that's because that's the way it's trending. That's you know why I call my company upstream Data. We're going upstream in the energy system, and that's more or less where you get the cheapest energy because it's the most wasted energy.
We specialize in that in the natural gass side, but our customers use our packages.
Everywhere.
We have people on solar wind where they curtail it.
So if you think about waste the way I've thought about it is like to your point, like you don't like cauliflower, what a waste to make cauliflower?
Right?
I see some guy meditating for you know, thirty minutes a day. What a waste of your time to sit there and just stare into space. But for him that holds his whole routine together, for example, Right, So it's like, who's to say what's a waste?
Right?
But what would be a waste.
I think is sort of maybe we could agree on is like if I had a bunch of steak that I just cooked up and then nobody ate it and I had to throw it away, Well maybe I kind of wasted that steak, if you will, right. So from that perspective, then when they say that like bitcoin is a waste of energy, well that's actually not true because mostly what I think you're framing up and what I see is that bitcoin is actually using wasted energy.
In a sense, we've already created the energy.
The energy is already there, and if we don't use it, the energy goes away. That's the steak. We might as well just eat the steak, right, We might as well just use the energy is there. So it's not really waste energy. It's actually using wasted energy.
Yeah, I mean it it enhances the efficiency the power generation system. So if it's wind power, most people don't argue that wind power is bad for the environment. You know, there's definitely a nuance to that topic, but most people
agree that it's it's a good thing. And so bitcoin mining going upstream to wind firms and taking all the surplus power that the wind firm cannot ship because the demand isn't there when it's being generated, which of course is the main problem with sources of energy like wind. That's great, I mean otherwise it's just getting curtailed like it's not being generated. They you know, the blades get in set, so they don't, they don't. There's no load on the system, and so bitcoin generates a load on
on these. You could basically pick any source of power whatsoever, whether it's a thermal power plant being like coal, natural gas, nuclear, for example. Bitcoin makes them all more efficient. They makes them all more energy efficient because it's effectively just a buyer blast resort. And every single kind of power plant will have periods where it needs this buyer blast resort because even like a coal plant.
I'm gonna I got to cut you off before you give me that example, because I got to run into a break. If you're just tuning into the Markmas Show, sitting down, Stephen Barber from Upsteam Data Inc. We'll be back with more in a minute. I got to take a very quick break. Don't go away your back all right, welcome back. If you're just tuning in you're listening to the Mark Mos Show, Sitting down. Stephen Barber from Upstream Data, Inc.
And we're talking about upstream data. We're talking about using wasted energy and how we can turn that.
I cut you off before the break.
If you want to go ahead and just kind of finish what you're saying, you're gonna be an example.
Yeah, just an example of like even like a thermal power plant, like they operate at most most peak efficiency, like the best heat rates when they're at you know, nominal load. And one problem you see today is when you have all this other load or or this other generation come out on the grid, like wind and solar that can offset what's coming from these reliable base loads.
And so if they operate at a lower lower than nominal capacity than they're designed for, they actually burn energy less efficiently, especially coal plants for example, Like they'll burn coal at a worse heat rate than they would otherwise. So having just always having things at nominal optimal generation is a net benefit. And it just goes back to the point you said earlier, like any the stakes are getting thrown out, we need to stop throwing out the
stakes and start frying them up. And that's what bigcoined out exactly.
Now, once you mine it, let's let's let's kind of move up this a little bit. So once you mine it, most of these miners now mine inside of a pool, so they pool their resources together to try to earn more rewards that way. I know you've been throwing out some tweets lately kind of talking about some of these pools and being are they custodial pools?
Are they non custodial pools?
Mean?
Do they hold your bitcoin? Do they ky see you?
Do? They have to know your customers, They have to collect all the data on you before they'll pay you out to the bitcoin.
So I'm curious your take on that.
And then we can talk about a new mining pool potentially that was trying to fix that and it's sort of gone.
Off the rails a little bit.
But what's your take sort of on the way this this mining mining pools potentially, like I said it, with some censorship ky C in there, how that's starting to develop?
Yeah, I mean the general trend over the last number of years is mining pools have and they will continue to be get under more scrutiny from different regulators. I guess it's hard to pin them down on what they're you know, they're not so much like a financial services in a way, they're more of a server providing you know,
a place to pool compuation. So it's but they also end up pools generally custody bitcoin, So that's one one thing that's that's a concern, Like most pools do, and the reason they do it is because there's an it allows for much more efficient payouts. Like to put it in a nutshell, you think, pay more people out in a more efficient manner, unlike an exchange which might be
acting as a custodian for other reasons. That's one thing pools. Uh, there's there's been pressure, like some pools are preemptively gone forward with oh fact compliance right for example, so basically just blacklisting or providing not including certain utxos and transactions in their blocks and effectively censoring bitcoin because of pressure from regulators. So like most of the pools that I've done this, like Marathon, Marathon's pooled this for a period
f two pool reason most recently. And the funny thing is they did it preemptively because they they're sort of almost what I say is like they they're they're positioning for regulatory capture, which is probably inevitable. I think it is inevitable that pools, mining pools at least like within the threshold will be licensed. That's like likely they're going to be the trend. It's just why you in.
Like the developed world, like in the US or Europe for example, then you're saying to start a mining pool, then you would need some You're you're thinking your your prediction would be that they would be required to have some sort of a license by the government of a pool.
I expect eventually that's likely what's going to happen. Yeah, I mean it it just generally, I mean that kind of thing, and it might be very it might be sort of like tiered where if you're just like small or something, you know, you might not have to it might be a very lightweight thing, but you might have to register. There's all kinds of things, I mean, just because of the nature when you like sort of zoom
out the nature what bitcoin is. It's a competitor to FIAT, it's a competitor to central banking really in my view, so I think it's pretty much inevitable that they're going to push it's the easiest way to call it socially, attack bitcoin or attack bitcoin if you want to put it in that kind of you know, frame of view is to put in do it through regulation, licensing, permitting, yeah, axing.
And obviously they could set up these pools from anywhere though, right So, I mean they can easily set up because it's just a place where it concentrates these computers, this computer power, this hash.
Power, if you will.
So, I mean there's no reason why they couldn't just go set up the pool in El Salvador or Argentina now or something.
Oh of course, yeah, you can set the pool up in a jurisdiction. Of course, the regulators might just say, well, you're serving an American client, right, so that's a problem, and that's what they do in America. If you serve ers, and even if you're abroad, that can be a problem. I think that was like you know, bitmax had to deal with that. But the thing about pools, you remember, and it's the beautiful thing about bitcoin, right, like a
public pool where you're opened into everyone. That's pretty much. I find it hard hard to believe that they're going to be able to find a way to be publicly available and somehow circumvent any regulation that might come because by nature being publicly available, and the tools they have at their disposal to identify the operators. You're likely just going to have to comply with whatever regulations come. And
it's not that that in itself is a negative. It's more so just you know, the regulators are going to sort of create a white market for bitcoin mining pools. But you can also run pools like bear in Mind mining solo. You can still run a private pool. And that's one prediction I've made is I think we're going to see more were like you.
And I, Hey, Steven, Like, let's just set up a little pool between ourselves kind of thing. Yeah.
Like I actually one day part of my part of my software which I won't bore you guys with today, but like part of my development plan with my business is it's leading to a point where I could offer
a private pool because I build infrastructure for people. The thing about and this is probably too deep for this podcast right now, there is a lot of problems with opening a pool up to the public because you can get it's called block withheld, you can be attacked by your own customers, and also like you can actually pay them to attack you if you're not And there's really no way around preventing that from happening outside of having software having full control of the mining stack that's on
your pool. So I think as bitcoin develops towards more adversarial conditions, it becomes bigger globally, it's more competition, and you might have even like state attacks against it, or if that doesn't happen and you have like just just aggressive pools against each other, I think we're going to see development towards private pools. So that's like I'm running a pool, but I'm not letting you in without me like having some kind of contract access to your front.
Do you think those those smaller mining pools, though, can be competitive and still provide economic you know, advantage, or at least be competitive in that sense.
Yeah, I do think pools can be competitive. It is a tough business, like if you're purely a pool and you're not doing if you look at most pools today, like I'll just use brains Pool, slush pool, it's the oldest pool, you know. They they offer not just mining pool as a service, they offer like firmware, and they drive their pool through firmware sales, effectively like installing their firmware drives into their pool. So like pools have generated.
Let's let's hold that difficult to take a very quick break.
If you're just tuning in listening to the Mark Mass Show sitting down with Stephen Barber, we're talking about sort of the intricacies of bitcoin and bitcoin mining. It's important stuff we're gonna dig into a little bit more a minute.
I gonna take a very quick break, though, don't go away. Bear back, all right, welcome back.
If you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Mass Show sitting down with Stephen Barber. We're talking about bitcoin using wasted energy, the attack vectors on bitcoin, and we're talking about specifically the mining pools and some of the attack vectors there. So you're gonna say that maybe some of these attack vectors could be solved by setting up like private mining pools, where a group of people known people to each other could set up their own pool.
And I think you were going to say, could it be economically competitive with larger public pools.
Well, the cheapest way of mind is actually solo mining. It's cheap in the sense you don't pay any fees, You just pay the cost to run a note and stuff. Why it's expensive is because you don't get your payments regularly, so the cost of capital is quite expensive. You might mine for months if you're small and not get your paid. Cost on your money is quite significant, and so like there's almost a trade off. Like solo mining, it is actually long term cheapest. It's just most people can't afford
to wait for the block. And I'm not so much saying that, I think that I think we're going to see it a bigger trend towards private pools, mainly because I think as a network gets bigger, a private pool can operate cheaper than a public pool because it doesn't have to worry about the risk of block withholding attacks.
That's or it doesn't have to price in the risk of block withholding attacks because presumably a private pool has control or somewhat control over the mining hardware that's connected to it, and that's like maybe a deep to get into technically. But that's one reason why I think we will see more private pools.
Well, the reason why, I mean it is pretty deep and probably more technical than I want to get into for most people listening, but I'm just the reason why I'm interested in it is because what we're seeing right now is sort of it depends on where you're at in the world, but even in the United States, the Land of the Free, we're having a very very adversarial take starting to happen in the United States with Elizabeth Warren sort of running this war path on, you know,
basically creating rules around bitcoin and cryptocurrency that could effectively make it almost impossible to run, you know, putting keyc rules into all these different places that it just doesn't work. And so on one hand you have that, on the other hand, you sort of have all these ETFs that are about to pop up, so you know, could happen any day, could happen before this is even aired. At
this point, it looks like it's happening that quickly. We've seen the SEC has shifted and made all of these funds now go from physically settled to now cash settled. So now the funds aren't even buying and selling bitcoin, they're just doing all the cash. So we're basically just betting on the price of bitcoin, we're not even buying and selling it. And then we have Elizabeth Warren over here saying like all self custody and transactions on your
own could be deemed illegal. And if you put those two together, then it sort of looks like when they're starting to like, well you can own it, but only you can own it through a fund which doesn't actually own it, but you can't own it on your own.
It looks like there's.
Like this attack vector that's just like pushing us into this path. Then you add on what you're talking about as far as then the mining pools are even regulated, so you can't even mining get it that way. So now you can't get it through mining, you can't custy it yourself, and you can only own it through an ETF that doesn't even actually own it. It looks like that's sort of where we're going. Would you say those are attack vectors that you're looking.
At, Yeah, I would, I would. I would say that the who I call the evil fiat maximilists or that is exactly what they want. That's what they're trying to do. It just remains to be seen if there's enough of
a private interest. You know, the US is the one place that I would hope would push back on regulation, and luckily we do have several you know, good lobby groups helping push back and then there's good states where they've really ablished like they're open for business and bitcoin mining, obviously a few of them being like Wyoming and Texas and the like. But yeah, I think I think that is actually the biggest risk to what we're going to see, just like as people in the bitcomining ecosystem is, is
them coming harder towards pools. The way it's trending is more regulation. But I think it should be expected because the government, whether you're federal or state level, they tend to, you know, at some point when when there's new businesses, new ventures, new innovation being happening and developing, it's only usually a matter of time before they get involved with regulation on that, with permitting on that, and you know, they that's what they're in business for. They need to
get their cut. So it's it's not surprising to me, but I do like what I see, even with the some new initiatives in the in the like the pool, the pool ecosystem has been pready dead for several years. So like a few new pools came up, like Ocean Demand Pool, and I think they're trying to solve a very real problem, and so it's good to see more options out there, but I would expect regulation is just something we're all going to have to you know, expect
and work through. The really thing that bugs me is that the big pools, and it's not I'm not really here to name names, but the big ones, like the two biggest ones, are foundering in a pool. It's in their best interest, just like just like it is for coinbase to build for regulations to come in, because they're they're the most well equipped to navigate regulation. It's just the nature of big business versus small business, and big
businesses generally want regulation because they build regulatory motes. They might say they don't, but that's the fact, like they want. You generally see big businesses lobby for specific regulations that they can navigate. They can keep the massive amount of overhead on staff to keep on you know, in line, whereas like the newcomers, especially as that regulation gets set
up and those moats are built. And that's usually what I'm whining about on Twitter is like, you know, generally speaking, is these people have like it's almost like a incentive to usher in the REGs because they can keep their competition at bay because they're going to be the best equipped and.
Sure, yeah, we see that all the time.
And that's the corporatism, if you will, corporatocracy of the world right where these big businesses use use the regulatory system to build these moats. I mean we've seen it time and time again. I mean, Amazon's a perfect example of how they've done this. I remember why, I used to sell internet products a long time ago, and they pioneered a bill because at the time, in the United States, you could buy stuff on the Internet and not pay
sales tax. And Amazon pushed a bill that would require all these internet sellers to actually have to collect sales tax. And of course, you know you had to dig to find out Amazon who was pushing this?
But why would they do that?
Well, to your point, for Amazon, how big they are and how much staff they have, they could figure out. And in the United States, tax selles tax collected on a county by county basis not even a state by state, So it's like, how many thousands of counties? How am I supposed to keep track of that? I can't, But they have the bureaucracy, they have the manpower to do that, and so since I can't do it, they can. Well,
I'll just have Amazon sell my products for me. I'll just list everything onto Amazon, let them take a cut of everything I do, and then they'll take care of the sales tax for me.
Yeah, it's great business, Like sell the solution to the problem. You you help me.
Yeah, exactly right.
So you know, and what we just saw, I don't know if you saw it. Well, I'm sure you've been seeing what Meal is doing down in Argentina. I mean he just went and cut like three hundred and eighty regulations and yeah, and I watched his talk this morning. It was in Spanish, but I read the transcription and he called this out exactly. He said, you know, like in Argentina, we're not even free. We have to be
given permission for everything. And so he's just like that out, which you know, I guess we'll see in real time, I believe, I'm sure you would agree. Well, hopefully unleash you know, this economy, this h this creativity.
You know, maybe it'll be a big miracle.
Yeah, that's the nature he's doing. What you know, I hope to see broadly, I mean the nature of bureaucracy just gets worse and worse and more entangled over time, and usually people have no incentive to come in and remove the bureaucracy, to remove the rags. So you need people like him to sort of, I guess, rise up popularly with the hatchet and chopp things down. Chop down the yeah, chop down the forest and allow people that.
I mean he literally ran on his campaign.
He was running around with a chainsaw and like, hey, I'm taking a chainsaw and he did.
I mean so far.
Donald Trump ran on a campaign of I believe he promised to get rid of I think or three regulations for every new one he put in place, and I think it ended up being more than that, like five regulations for every new one.
That's pretty good.
I mean, he at least made a dent. Mealey is like holding my beer. Here's three hundred and eighty, like just gone right, Like it'd be pretty interesting if you're just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show. I'm sitting down with Stephen Barber from Upstream Data, Inc. It's helping people turn trash into treasure with bitcoin mining.
I want to come back. I want to ask you.
About ordinals and inscriptions and things like that, but you're gonna take a very quick break. If you're just tuning in, you don't want to miss this. This is probably the most debated topic maybe in the space.
We'll be back with more in that in a minute. Don't go away, all right, welcome back.
If you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show, sitting down with Stephen Barber from Upstream Data Inc.
Now, Stephen, we're.
Talking a lot about the mining and we talked about the pools. I want to talk about this next piece, and this is the ordinals and inscriptions. Just like anything, there's pros and cons to everything, So I guess it depends on which side and pros and cons that you're on. On the pro side, it's generated a lot more fees for the miners, so I'm guessing the miners are probably
liking that. The con side, people aren't happy that it's increased their transaction costs, even though considered, you know, comparatively, it's still pretty reasonable. And then so there's that, there's the pros and cons there. Then you have sort of some of these bitcoin maximalists who think it's a misuse, it's a waste, if we want to frame it that way. It's a waste of the network using it this way.
Where do you how do you view this?
How are you sort of breaking down dissecting this topic.
Well, I'd like to I'd like to think I would balance you because I've always liked the framing that you know, Bitcoin you sort of have like on one hand, like merchants like people, me and you, all of us transacting with each other using the network. You also have miners, which are basically providing the underlying service, and there's overlap, but like when you think about them in two discrete like buckets of network participants, Well, miners like the people
I sell to, they love ordinals. They don't know or care whether it is or they might know, but they in the end, if we don't care, it's more fees, it's more revenue, So of course we love it. So I'm sympathetic to that because it's it's increasing our sales, it's increasing our revenue. But I'm also a user, so like I don't like paying high fees. And my personal opinion, like on NFTs and inscribing JPEG's in the blockchain, is I don't really see the market for it other than
people speculating and gambling. So in one hand, you can lump me in the Bitcoin maxi group. That's really you could say against them. But meanwhile, I was one of the first people inscribing on ordinals. I have an ordinal like from way back because the way I my my take on it is if you're node, if you're running bitcoin core, which is the reference protocol, and it accepts a transaction, and that transaction is valid, and I really don't care what you use it for. It's not my business.
You don't care if somebody were transaction fee, right, I mean, who's to say what a waste is?
Yeah? If and and honestly, if you're interested in just putting you know, the cliche monkeys on the blockchain all day and you're paying for that, like I don't really care. I mean, that's we already have a spam throttle with block size. Uh, that's why there is a block size, and so people can't just spam infinite JPEGs. There's a limitation on it. And as long as I really like my no doesn't know what these things are. You have to interpret the transaction data just to know that it's JPEGs.
Of course, like there's there's signals and flags.
But don't you think though that maybe one?
So I mean to your point, like, if who's to say I'm wasting energy, who's to say I'm wasting block size? Like who's to say what a waste is to me?
But don't you think? I mean? And certainly we saw when these first started.
That it was a bunch of really really horrible JPEGs if you will, the monkey.
JPEGs they were.
They were the worst jpeg not even the good ones that we saw, like of the whatever they were, I forget the big ones, the apes or whatever from a couple of years ago. These were like the peppies, these were like really bad ones. But I feel like from an economic standpoint, incentive standpoint, like from a you know, from a competitive standpoint, like it seemed like that was just kind of being done to sort of prove the case.
I think if you think about this two years.
Five years, ten years out from now, like they're probably not using that. If we think about inscribing stuff on the blockchain, you know, seeing the Wikipedia being put on the blockchain, seeing the Bible being put in the blockchain, or three D gun schematics like that seems like a
pretty cool use case. I suppose of stuff that you know, we want to preserve for all time, and I think so one, I guess, do you think the monkey jpeg is like a little introductory use case that probably goes away because it's why would you spend that much money to send it?
Do you see a higher use case of it? I guess I'll just throw that out there.
I think I think it's you know, it's just data, right, so whatever data is valid, and if it's pure, if it's just the pure transaction and it's just for me to get my bitcoin to you at the lowest bites right in the lowest fee, that's the best use case in my opinion, because it is a cash network, it's a payments network, it's a monetary system, and that's I think. The only thing I.
Would say to this case is like in the eighties, we considered information like my morning newspaper, my nightly news.
Today it's like a.
Kid on Instagram in South Pacific posted a picture and.
I see what the waves look like.
The information has changed, and I think what we consider money or even value communication is going to be different in the future.
I really just try to be agnostic, Like I just think, whatever the node allows as long as I'm running and then that node software because I presumably agree with the rule set. What an argument do I have, like against how anyone else wants to use it? I just think it's fine use it.
Also, like, high prices create innovation, right, So if oil prices go really high, you start figuring out how to get cheaper oil or maybe an EV or new technologies, right, and so like maybe higher fees will start to push new technologies on layer twos and layer threes and things like that.
They will absolutely will. I think the lightning people. I say the lightning people just because I haven't been participating in the lightning economy too much, but the people that are really building their businesses around lightning and like, and also their intellectual capacity around developing it, which is definitely going to be a massive, like way a scaling solution for bitcoin an important one. This is good for them. Costier base layer stuff does unfortunately price out some of
the market. That market is therefore forced to use some kind of substitute, whether it's a layered substitute like through a custodian or non custodian, or in some cases they don't use it at all. They use something else entirely. They might even use gold coins for something like I don't know, maybe that gets re monetized at some point. But these are good things. I agree completely. It prices in the necessity to drive more resources to towards new tech.
So that's the other thing I was talking about. So I was talking about this the other day. You know, if you look at the monkey jpeg, the NFT things, so to speak, right, like, the people that are buying monkey JPEGs or NFTs whatever, they're not buying into the ethos or I should say, more specifically, the real value of bitcoin being censorship resistant, immutable, decentralized, they're just buying.
They're gambling too. I mean that you made that point.
We saw what happened in Ethereum back you know, a couple years ago, when the JPEGs were really going hot. The transaction fees got so high that all the NFTs jumped to Salana where they were much cheaper. So the people that want the monkey JPEGs, they're gonna they don't want to pay high fees, They're going to go to where the fees are lower. So when you start thinking about this from a competitive landscape like the financial transactions
will always win out. Like the financial the JPEGs don't care, they don't want to pay high fee, They'll just go to Salon, and so Salon is always going to be there for them. So I think a lot of that just sort of takes care of itself.
So one, I'm curious.
Your point on that. And then the next question I want to add on top of that is your take on that we have about a minute a half.
Two.
Do you think that when we make these changes like tap route, we get unintended consequences like this? And do you think it'd be a danger to go back and rechange it now to try to fix this? And who knows what unintended consequences we get from that.
Yeah, And that's why I've been I stir a lot up on social media when I criticize the development process at bitcoin core, because I think there's been cases, especially when they're trying to rush upgrades, you know through the system, like through minor activation, like softworks like early signaling, and they're literally out like people are literally out campaigning to mining pools to like, hey, please activate this and please
signal this. It's just a terrible way to go about it in my view, And the fact is, like no one's perfect. Huoing the Bitcoin cored development process, it's not perfect. And I think because me, you and I think most of the listeners here were really big into bitcoin. We think it's the future of money. I think it's critical that we don't rush things. I see this as a system that's going to last a thousand years. People might laugh at that, but I really do think it has
the fundamentals to last one thousand years. And so you know, I don't see a rush like I just think. I'm like an ocifist, like I want I want the code to stop developing, or at least develop at the correct pace. And let's not I shouldn't say stop developing. I just want things to be you know, we need a solid foundation for everyone to build on and shifting it, you know, we should be very careful about. But that's the nice thing is the users can choose what software to run.
And that's why I have an upgrade in my node. Personally that the node I do use at home in a long time and I don't plan on it.
All right, Well, we got to wrap it up with that.
If you're just tune in you're listening to the Mark ma Show. We've been talking with Steven Barbara from Upstream Data, Inc. You should definitely check out what he's doing. We'll make sure we linked all that in the show notes down below, and with that we got to sign it off.
Thanks so much, Thanks Mark,