Latest / Monero Talk / No gov'ts are excited about XMR. That's why "I Identify as RNG" wants to contribute to it! | EPI 338

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No gov'ts are excited about XMR. That's why "I Identify as RNG" wants to contribute to it! | EPI 338 · Monero Talk

• Doug All right, floppy, what's going on, man? Floppy hey thanks for having good Doug Good, good. Thanks for doing this. I just shared it on my end, retweeted it. If you could do the same on yours. Let's try to get a bunch of people in here. We're live right now with floppy. I'm not too familiar with your work. I know you were, I guess, part of the Nostra project and then you worked on a coin. You built the CoinJoan implementation on basically Nostra type tech. And now my understanding is your Monero, well, I guess you've always been Monero curious, but now you're ready to, I think, potentially start contributing to Monero. We'll get into all that. Guys, we have 40 live viewers right now. Like and share, like and share. This is going to be a great episode. This is a big deal. I mean, I don't know, unless I'm wrong, but my understanding is floppy is a Bitcoin dev who's been focused on improving the digital cash-like nature of Bitcoin, particularly its privacy features. I mean, once again, he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm talking to a very legitimate cypherpunk, crypto-anarchist, whatever you want to call him, somebody who's passionate about this technology for all the right reasons, looking to build a digital cash protocol that can't be stopped by any government, can't be co-opted by any government. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting words into his mouth, but floppy, you tell me, who are you? Am I somewhat correct in my assessment? Floppy Yes, so I've been involved in Bitcoin since almost 10 years, but, wow, since then, when Doug say involved, like contribute, like contribute developing. Floppy I started the development late. Initially, I was just a user. So I started as a normal user, then I researched about everything. And in the last few years, I've been contributing to different projects and I've also reviewed a lot of Bitcoin core pull request. Apart from that, primarily, I was working on a coin join implementation. It's called Joinster. It uses noster relays for coordination and it's decentralized. But still, coin join cannot be compared to the privacy that you get on Maneru because it's completely different. Doug basically. Okay. You say that very humbly. I mean, it sounds like you're doing very important work. So I love the fact that you're kind of giving Monero credit where I believe credit is due. Have you always had this take on Monero? Obviously, you started off as very much a Bitcoiner. At what point did your eyes open to Monero? Have you always been Monero friendly or has it been kind of a journey? Floppy I was always interested in Meru and one of the reasons is that I like confidential transactions in which you cannot see the amount. That makes the analysis of the transactions. Doug I gotta interrupt. Can you try to raise the volume on your end? I'm trying to do it manually for you from my end. See if you can raise your mic volume. Thank you, Body. Body, tip 50 cents. His volume is too low. Thank you. Greatly appreciate it. Yeah, guys, please let me know if we're ever having any problems that I'm not aware of. And you can send your tips to xmrchat.com slash Monero Talk. You can send your Monero-based Super Chats and we will bring them up on the screen if you have questions for Floppy. Obviously, I don't want to interrupt the interviews too much as I go along. So I'll probably wait till the end for the questions. But please send me as we go along if something pops into your head. If you want me to ask Floppy. Floppy, let's give it a go. Let's see if your sound sounds any better. Guys, let me know if Floppy sounds okay. Go ahead, Floppy. Floppy Is this better? Can you hear? Doug I mean, the sound was already okay on my end for you, but this is what people are saying in the audience. So guys, confirm. Let me know. You don't have to send it as an XMR super chat. Just please, anybody listening, let us know. Is the sound okay? Give a thumbs up. Does Floppy's volume sound okay? Please let us know. Type of comment. Still light. Yeah, if you could jack it up a little bit more, Floppy, let's err on the side of you being too loud. I think this should be better. Okay. All right. I'm getting sound is good. All right. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you there, man. Do you remember what your thought was? If you can, please continue. Floppy So I was saying I was always interested in Monero and one of the reasons is you don't see the amount and transactions on Monero. So initially, I think this tech was built by Greg Maxwell, but people in the Bitcoin world never wanted it on Bitcoin because of... Doug social transactions, right? Floppy Yes, so it's also used on liquid but that's a permission chain which is mainly belongs to Blockstream. So I was always interested in confidential transactions and that was the reason I find Monero interesting. Doug Fantastic. So you were watching it from the beginning once it implemented confidential transactions. Floppy Yes, and I have also been following darknet markets, so I can see that the usage for mineral has already increased in last few compared to a Doug Do you think that's a fair assessment? Because a lot of people say no. I mean, with my cursory assessment, using Tor just to peruse, for research purposes only, the markets I came across, the ones that were thrown at me, were Monero-based. I think Archetype is a major one. I think that's what it's called. That's what I remember it as. That was like Monero only seems to be popular out there. Is that a fair assessment? That's what the most liberally loving people are using out there on the dark markets? Floppy So, I've looked at different markets and there are still markets that still accept Bitcoin, but they also accept Monero. So, I think things have been changing and I think people don't find Bitcoin interesting anymore on dark mint markets and there are different reasons for it. Most people who were using Mixers and CoinJoin, they have found that it's a bit complex to use all those tools and it's comparatively easier and you get better privacy on Monero. So, there's no reason to use Bitcoin for Doug By the way, your mic just kind of almost went up high. Like maybe there's a loose plug because that sounded like it was good, but. Floppy I will try to change something. Doug me one minute. It's okay. It's not bad. It's not bad. And I started to interrupt. Yeah. Next, I want to ask you about Super Testnet because it kind of relates to this topic. I just saw him on Vlad's podcast yesterday. Vlad, by the way, you're doing a great job if you're listening to this. I thought that was a great interview you did with Super Testnet yesterday. And I did see you had Flopion, I guess a year or so ago. But yeah, Super Testnet was talking about suggesting that people are using the Lightning Network now on dark markets or that they should be. What's your take on that? I mean, and also suggesting very strongly in his mind that Lightning Network is actually more private, more digital cash-like than Monero. Floppy So the first thing is people are not using lightning on dark net markets. The market that I consider dark net markets, they do not accept lightning as he considered. Doug such a foolish thing to do. I think you have to be the ultimate. Like who's gonna start you, right? I mean, given, but go ahead. I digress, go ahead, continue. Floppy So, he considers Robos ads and Shopster as DarkNet markets, but that's a different debate and I don't think DarkNet markets should accept Lightning as payment because the users on DarkNet, they prefer on-chain payments and they don't have any, how should I describe this? They don't care like if the Bitcoin community accepts them or calls them shitcoiners or something else. The goal is to get privacy and it doesn't matter what the tool is. So, they don't care if it is Monero or something else and they consider Monero better than Bitcoin in terms of privacy at this moment. Doug So in my understanding, it's also very easy for them to kind of get up and running and using as opposed to if they wanted to use the Lightning Network in the right way as a vendor, right? Like there's mistakes that can be made. You got it right, right? Probably going to run your... I mean, I'm not technically inclined on the Lightning Network side, but I think even Super Testnet admitted to the fact that it's just kind of easier to get going and started with Monero, and then you get its default privacy. Floppy Yes, if you look at the user experience for a normal user on Lightning, it's not easy to use it in a way that it doesn't affect your privacy. Doug So this claim, so his first claim is that there, you know, dark narc markets might start using lightning network. I don't know. I don't think, yeah, I don't think there's too many people out there that are going to take him up on that. Um, but then his second is other, his claim is reasoning behind that is cause he actually thinks lightning network is more private than Monero is like, is that acts as a better privacy, crypto technology than Monero. Um, give us your assessment of that. Floppy I don't agree with that statement and his thought process is that if the transactions are off chain and you don't have a chain to look at the transactions, they can be considered more private than the ones that you see on the chain. But that's not how I look at things. Even if you can look at the chain, you can open an explorer and look at Monero transactions, you cannot see anything that really makes your analysis easier to understand what was the sender, who was the recipient and what was the amount transacted in a particular transaction. So it doesn't really matter if something is off chain, you can still get a lot of metadata if you're using Lightning and if you look at the nodes that have the most liquidity in Lightning, they are mostly the centralized exchanges like Bitfinex and a few other exchanges. So things are not as simple as Super has tried to make in some of the tweets. I mean, he's getting a lot of engagement and people love to say that Bitcoin has better privacy because of Lightning, but that's not the reality. The developers who are actually working on Lightning, they know better about the privacy issues and they have documented a lot of things in the past and still working to try and improve privacy on Lightning. Doug Before I forget, I mean, you know, the whole, whole big topic and I guess we could, we could get into it, but I know you want to come and develop on Monero. Maybe that is something you come and work on, uh, like building the, the lightning network for Monero. Maybe we save, maybe we save, maybe we save that question, but yeah, start to answer. Floppy So, I'm not exactly sure how would that work on Monero, because Monero doesn't have the same scripting that Bitcoin has, so it's not... Doug be a different type of implementation, but my understanding is once full-chain membership proofs is implemented, that opens the door to some techniques that could be used to more easily build a second layer on Monero. Floppy I think someone had shared a link on Twitter a few months back, how you can build payment channels for Monero, so I'll have to research more about it, but I think it is possible, but it's not as simple as it was done on Bitcoin. Doug So basically what Super Testnet is saying, he just doesn't believe that fundamentally, a blockchain can be private, can act as digital cash. He thinks you need to have a second layer on top of it is really what he's getting at. Because all blockchains require some broadcasting publishing of some type of information. And his base argument is Monero publishes things, Lightning Network doesn't even publish. It's just a communication between you and whoever you're transacting with. So he basically doesn't believe that any blockchain can act as digital cash on the base layer. It's kind of what he's getting at. Floppy So, Lightning has two types of channels. You have to publish the channels that are public, and only a few channels are private or unannounced, but even those channels can be discovered, and there was a bug, and I think it still exists in some implementations of Lightning. So, you can even find out the private channels, and every channel is opened and closed with an on-chain Bitcoin transaction. So, I think it's not fair to say that everything is off-chain and only communicated between two people. You can still find lot of details, and if you have more number of Lightning nodes, you get more data about all these channels, and I think these four or five centralized exchanges that have the most liquidity, they are already sharing this data with chain analysis, firms, and governments. Doug But how about his point that because of the nature of Monero, it's a blockchain. Any blockchain has to publish information, even though it's obfuscated. For example, who the sender is, obviously we use ring signatures, there's issues there. It's going to go to full chain membership proofs, but his point is you're still putting out information publicly because of the nature of a blockchain. How do you think about that? Do you think it is possible to have true digital scalable cash on a base layer? Floppy even if you have a second layer like payment channels on Monero or any other chain, you still need a good privacy on chain at the protocol level because the second layer would obviously be dependent on the first layer and you need to have a good privacy on layer one as well. Doug Right. And that is the fundamental issue with lighting. No matter how good its privacy tech is, the fact that you have to on-ramp and off-ramp to the base layer, not even mentioning just the practicality of doing that, not even the privacy implications, but just the getting people on and off the ramp, right? And given that there's only whatever Bitcoin block every 10 minutes that it creates a bottleneck. Yeah. Tell us more about that. What you see is kind of being the flaws there with regards to Lightning Network as it currently is on Bitcoin. Floppy I think the main problem is the user experience is not good and that's the reason things like e-cash exist because if Lightning had the best privacy and there were no problems with the UX, people would have been using it. But you have problems like you need to open a channel to start using Lightning, you need to have some liquidity. Then you need to learn how to manage different channels, how to close them and these things get worse when the fees on-chain gets higher and this is the reason people have started using things like e-cash which is custodial. So I don't think that's the right direction and maybe Lightning can be improved with a few soft folks but people have different views, different opinions and there's no consensus on any soft work right now so I don't see how things would improve in near a few. Doug And so are you are you walking away from an arrow of an arrow Bitcoin development because of this, because of your, you know, the inability to implement these changes that need to be made on the Bitcoin protocol? Floppy I think the main reason is politics. Plus, the whole environment has changed in the last couple of years. I see most people are happy with custodial solutions, which was not the case a few years back. Plus, people have started simping for governments and corporations. So, the primary goal of Bitcoin has come to one thing, number go up and nobody wants to really improve anything in terms of security or privacy. Doug Right. And all the design decisions that that is that are being made or are being implemented that are politically popular are the things that are going to help number go up and privacy isn't one of those things. Yes. Yeah. So do you do you see that changing or it's it's just naturally Monero is the net evolves from that. Right. So like that is the change. It's people that want that now are going to Monero using Monero going to develop on Monero are the others are the are the crypto anarchists of the cypherpunks all leaving Bitcoin at this point. Floppy I don't think everyone is leaving, but I think only a few people are left who still believe things can be improved and they still believe in privacy. But as things are changing in the real world, for example, in the US, we recently had a new president. And if you look at a number of things, everything points out to something, a future in which all Bitcoin projects or companies would be influenced by these people who are in US government right now. So you'll see a lot more compliance, you'll see more people who would be accepting KYC. So I don't think things are going to improve. And most people want Bitcoin as an investment. They are not interested in the transactions part. So I don't think any government has a problem with people investing some money in any cryptocurrencies. Doug Which is why you're interested in it Floppy And the problem is, the reason governments don't like transactions being used outside of the currencies that are printed by government is if people start using Monero or any other cryptocurrencies for transactions, you would see less demand for USD and other currencies. Doug Right. What they really fear is the opting out, not you storing your fiat value in a digital asset and then just pulling out that fiat value. What they fear is you opting out of the financial system and entering into our own outside of their surveillance system and their ability to excise perfect taxes on us. Floppy Yes, completely. I don't think they are scared of any investments. They are scared that people might start using cryptocurrencies for payments and that would really affect the reason they print fiat currency. Doug That is what I'm most excited about too. I think a lot of people in Monero, and that's a cultural thing. That's a cultural difference between Bitcoin and Monero. So not even just from a technological standpoint that it functions better than Bitcoin in terms of being used as digital cash, but the culture in Monero is to use it, is to spend it, is to opt out. I imagine that kind of attracts you to the project as well. Yes. Are you familiar with the XMR Bazaar? I did want to bring this up to you at some point. Yes, I've heard about it. Floppy ever used it. Doug Yeah, I mean, check it out. So this is a project I'm behind. And obviously, I'm not the dev or anything. We got Enarchio actually built this. He also is the guy who built Kuno. And we have Alia who's running the day-to-day. But it's not decentralized. There's a central server. It's kind of like Craigslist, but for Monero. So all the transactions are peer-to-peer. So we're just putting buyers and sellers together. It's really just a place to publish listings. And then the transactions themselves take place between the buyers and the sellers. And we even have a multi-sig feature built into it, which is why I wanted to bring it up because I think that is something you had mentioned. That's something that you would have interest in working on is Monero multi-sig related improvements. Floppy Yes, so I'm not really good at cryptography stuff, which you have in the protocol level at Monero, so I don't think I'll be able to contribute in the main Monero project, but I think I can work at applications level and build different projects, and one of the things which I think is less explored in the Monero world is the use of multisig, so I want to see what all things are possible using multisig. Doug Yeah, I don't think we have the best solutions for that yet. Anarquio was able to build this and everything takes place in the browser, which is pretty cool. So the transactions are... The multisig transactions are built in the browser. And so it's kind of... It leads to a user-friendly experience, right? People don't have to download any clients or anything. It's just all in the browser. So yeah, I would love for you to maybe go down that rabbit hole, get interested in what we're doing at XMR Bazaar. Are there any things in particular that you're thinking about when you say working on multisig? Is it actual applications? Floppy I think basically I want to start with experimenting how Multisig works in Monero, then compare with some of the things I've already done on Bitcoin, and then I'll decide what exactly I would work on. Doug And because what is the relationship between what have you done because you've done like coin joint stuff with this is that are you thinking about trying to do coin like additional mixing in Monero or expound on that. Floppy So, for example, recently there's been a lot of debate around covenants in Bitcoin and one of the use case for covenants is coin pools or join pools. In those pools, you have a multisig which is shared by multiple users. Then those users can exit out of that multisig and there are different things you can achieve with this setup to get more privacy. So I want to see what would this bring to Monero if it is at all possible. Doug Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah, I think RB Runner, I think is one of the good people to talk about probably in the community with regards to Monero multisig. I would say even Anarkio, the guy who's building XMR Bazaar is also a great guy to probably talk to. And obviously, Kayaba, Luke Parker. Have you begun... Do you follow the Monero development threads? And are you in the chats yet? Floppy No, that would be the next thing I need to find more developers who are working on Manel. So next week, next week I would be traveling and I would resume my work in the second week of Feb. So that is the next thing I need to get into all the chat rooms plus interact with different developers, follow them. Doug Fantastic. Are you completely anon or do you go out into the real world? Do you tend conferences or maybe you tend them anonymously? Floppy No, I've never been to a conference since I've been using this name. Some people in Bitcoin know my real identity. Yeah, that's all, but I've tried my best to remain anonymous. Doug Fantastic. That is good. Obviously, we'd love for you to come out, hang out like a MoneroCon or MoneroTopia. I don't know if you're familiar with those. But yeah, most important is if you feel there's a threat there, to stay anonymous. Do you feel there is a threat there, being a developer, working on these technologies? Obviously, we've seen people in a very real way have felt the repercussions of working on this tech. Thankfully, nobody in Monero, because that would, in my mind, really, really be crossing a strong line with what our rights here are in the US. And I don't foresee that happening. But how do you feel about it? Floppy So, what happened with alternative cash plus samurai and a few other people in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, I think it's best to remain anonymous. Plus, even if you are not working on any privacy project, it's still better to remain anonymous and share less information with the world because you never know what happens. And plus, in the US, you can stay, go to codes and have legit documents with TP. But the place where I live, if something is decided, there's not much I can do even if I code. Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug Let me bring up a spoil. This is this is a very specific super Monero based super check. Guys, go ahead. Keep sending your questions. If you have questions for floppy fd, tip the dollar. Does floppy have experience with parallel processing? Could he work on making Monero nodes take advantage of today's multi-core CPUs or even GPUs? Arctic Minds says this would be a big for Monero. This would be big for Monero scalability. I don't know. That sounds like a very, very particular skill set. Are those things you're, you're familiar with? Floppy No, I would have experience with parallel processing, but I can read more about this and see if I can help something or maybe I know someone who can help. Thank you for that. Doug that for that super chat, uh, FD, uh, Matt, uh, Maestro Yanni, Doug just want to say you did a phenomenal job on Luke's podcast the other day. You're doing God's work, brother. Oh, thank you, man. Appreciate it. That was fun. And, uh, most importantly, I think it really helped get Monero out on kind of like the next, the next level beyond the, beyond the, the hardcore Monero people, uh, Luke has cast a wide net or broadcast widely. I mean, has, he has a large audience. So I thought that was, that was an important moment to help getting Monero out there. What do you think about that floppy? Like, uh, you know, are you, are you of the ilk that things are just going along fine in Monero the way they are in terms of just letting organic adoption happen, if we get, we want it, we don't want to be on exchanges. This is good. It allows us to build like strong roots, strong decentralized roots. We have to figure out things like Sarai where we have decentralized exchanges kind of forces us to be opted out and build something that's truly not connected to the, the, the, you know, Tether to the financial system, or do you think there, you know, uh, it's, it's, it's hurting us in that we need to get on listed on centralized exchanges. We need to be out there trying to get the noobs to use Monero. I feel like there's, there's kind of like different camps in, in Monero land. Where would you say you would, you would most likely stand? Floppy I think it's best if we have more P2P exchanges that accept Monero for the trades but it's okay if Monero is not listed on some of the central exchanges. The only problem is you'll have less liquidity which affects the markets in the short term but I think in the long term it's good if we have more P2P markets and they all list Monero as one of the currencies which can be used for the trades. Doug Yeah, I'm super excited about Sarai decks. Havinoh is doing a great job. Even XMR Bazaar could in theory be used for coming together with people that want to exchange Monero for goldbacks or cash. But I do want to see Monero listed on more centralized exchanges. I think it's good to give noobs access, complete total noobs. The type of people that are buying Trump Coin. People have more access to Trump Coin, which launched whatever a month ago. They had more access overnight globally to Trump Coin than they have to Monero. And while I'm very enthusiastic and hopeful that it's ultimately a positive for Monero, because I don't think it's just Cope. I do think it's forcing Monero to build out all the tech it needs to build out to exist outside of the current system. I do think it hurts Monero in terms of adoption and really hurts the noobs. These people are being exposed to Trump Coin instead of being exposed to Monero. How great would it be if these noobs, instead of aping into Melania coin, also then stumbled upon a Monero, learned about it, got into that, pulled it off an exchange? That's my take. Any comment on that? So I. Floppy I think even if Monero was listed on most of the centralized exchanges, he would still have noobs buying these mean coins because the whole reason is to get rich and that's not the reason Monero was created. It has a different purpose. And I don't think you have enough people in the world who care about privacy. So Monero will always have less number of users compared to these coins which have a different purpose to exist. But I think it's still fine if Monero can work for all the people who care about privacy in the world and that won't be a big number, but still I think it's the best tool for the purpose. Doug Yeah, I think it needs to be... I want New York City to become the Monero capital. I want people using Monero just like they've used cash because everybody... We could say just the amount of people that care about privacy is a small amount, but the amount of people that care about using cash, I think is a large amount. They just don't realize it. They're used to being there and existing, but I strongly believe physical cash will be eliminated and the noobs, everybody's going to need some digital form of cash, which I think would really open up the utility way beyond just people that care about privacy, but just people that want to transact in cash. What do you think? Floppy Sure, I agree with that. Doug Oh, just got loud, let's get changing you're messing with the the audio. I think I think it's okay Floppy I think I clicked the mute button. Doug Yeah, we haven't heard you for the last minute. Floppy So I was saying, I agree with you what you said, completely agree with you. And I think even the cash usage has decreased because of different things that governments have changed in the last few years. So if Monero can be the alternative for cash, that would be great. Doug Yeah, that is the dream. How is it going over there in Bitcoin land? Are you getting some pushback? I mean, it doesn't matter, right? You're telling people that you're interested in Monero right now. Are the Bitcoiners screaming at you as you walk out the door? I know they could be a nasty bunch sometimes. Floppy So, some people have already unfollowed me. I have blocked a few people but there was some positive response from a few Bitcoiners. Some people had messaged me that I could still work on Bitcoin and I can work on Monero as well. So, they don't have a problem if I work on both the things at the same time. But there are some people who are really religious about Bitcoin and they think it's not okay to contribute to something else. So, that's how it is and I don't think I have any problem with that. I would continue to express myself. If I feel something, I would always write about it. I don't care what people think about it. Doug That's good, man. That's that's that's the only way to live. How about how about atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Monero? Is that something that maybe interests you? I mean, you know, it's it does exist. There are implementations. But as far as I'm as far as I as I know, I don't. And nobody's really figured out how to make it user friendly. I did the did the experience of doing an atomic swap. Bitcoin and Monero. It's not it's not super smooth yet. Floppy So user experience can always be improved with time, but I think they would be helpful if, but traps have a trade-off, like you will have to take care of a lot of metadata, like which provider are you using for the swap? Is it a peer-to-peer swap or you are using a centralized service or is it atomic swaps? Then the timing, the liquidity, how much amount is being swapped. So there are a lot of things that you need to take care of if you really want privacy in these swaps. And the most basic thing is to swap in installments and not swap the whole amount in one group. Plus, I was working on a bit called Octojoin that will use swaps in it. I think these swaps can be helpful in that project. If you swap an arrow for Bitcoin and go back to Bitcoin, that can be used for privacy for some Bitcoin users. Doug What advice would you give to Bitcoiners out there that are Monero curious to want to, you know, swap some of their Bitcoin into Monero, like, what would you recommend people do? Floppy I think at this point, I've not researched all the options, so I won't give strong advice, but the basic thing is you'll have to take care of the metadata associated with swaps. And the most important part is you need to swap in installments. Don't swap the whole amount in one go. Use different amounts at different times to swap. That's it. Doug And what do you think is the kind of the best privacy tech in Bitcoin right now? I know ultimately it seems like they're not going to get too far, definitely on the protocol level. I don't think we'll see confidential transactions ever implemented, but what is the best way for people to use Bitcoin privately, or do you recommend people that want privacy move into big Monero, use Monero for your transactions, and that if you want, move the Monero back to Bitcoin if you're a laser-eyed maxi that just can't stand the idea of potentially holding something other than Bitcoin. Floppy swap is one of the options but if somebody is not interested in swapping Bitcoin for something else they can always use coin join which doesn't have the same level of privacy but still you kind of kill or delete the history of your UTXOs using coin join. So I don't believe pay join and other things like silent payments and all these things are overhyped and they don't provide the privacy that people are looking for. Doug Do you think we'll see more people move into Monero from Bitcoin that share your ideals that were previously gung-ho Bitcoin, but are frustrated with the fact that it's not living up to its digital cash potential? Floppy To be honest, I'm not sure, but what I have observed is people are not sure how would Monero scale, but I think that is not a real concern because I don't believe the whole world is going to be focused on privacy at any point in future. Then some people just cannot think anything beyond Bitcoin because they think it's a religion and they cannot leave it. So I'm not sure how many people would be interested in Monero, but there are certainly some Bitcoin users who don't have any problem with using or talking about Monero. Doug So you mentioned scalability is something that's often tossed at Monero as a concern from Bitcoiners. What are some of the other concerns that you hear that are popular and maybe what are your own concerns that you have with regards to Monero? Floppy I don't have any concern at this point. Maybe after doing some research, I can come up with some things which can be improved. One other thing which Bitcoin users do not like about Monero is the price or the exchange price of Monero, which they think, I mean, they prefer to hold Bitcoin for a longer period of time, so they don't find comfortable holding Monero. Doug Yeah, that's just, like you said, kind of the religious side to it. How about the audibility? That's something that Bitcoiners often criticize, right? Like, there's only 21 million... Well, there's two major criticisms that's kind of tied in there, right? There's only 21 million Bitcoin, and we know exactly how many there are at any point in time. Whereas in Monero, because it's so private, there may be a secret inflation bug and you can't audit it. And then the second thing being, Monero has a tail emission, therefore it has infinite supply. What are your responses to those things? Floppy I think supply is not, I think tail emission is fine for some people, but they still want to verify the supply at any point. And they think it's not possible in Monero, but I think if they really research about the cryptography used, I think they would find that it's not really the kind of concern they think about because cryptography can go wrong even in Bitcoin. It has already, I mean, in 2018, there was an inflation bug which was not exploited, but it could have been exploited. So it's not always about the cryptography you can make. You can, by mistake, introduce bugs or things can be exploited in different ways. It's not always about the confidential transactions which can be a problem. So I think most of these concerns are over-hyped or maybe they are not really major concerns, but the only reason they exist is because people need to find some reasons to support the thing that they are religious about. Doug Right, right, right. Yeah, the audibility is like, you know, if you're scared of Monero, then you should be scared of Bitcoin, right? Because at the end of the day, it would be some issue with cryptography or how it was implemented. And Bitcoin is susceptible to these errors, as we've seen as well. So as long as the cryptography is correct, the math is good, and things are properly implemented, there's nothing impossible about using cryptography to essentially audit, right? Like, you know, using bulletproofs, essentially, to make sure Monero isn't being minted out of thin air as it's being sent. And then the tail emission, I think, is people just can't really understand that just because it has a tail emission doesn't mean it has infinite supply, right? There's actually less Monero than Bitcoin right now. And there will be less Monero than Bitcoin for quite some time. And that the tail emission may be an essential component for a blockchain to work. And that's why Monero has it. It allows for Monero to be secured in perpetuity. Whereas with Bitcoin, there's a sacrifice, arguably, that's made with their 21 million cap in terms of future security. Any thoughts on that? Or is that something you're familiar with in terms of how Monero works with its tail emission and its dynamic block size and the architecture of Monero? And whether or not this is something that could also be a flaw in Bitcoin, right? We talk about its lack of privacy, but is there also potentially a flaw in its architecture, having fixed block size instead of dynamics blocks, and having a capped supply that could cause issues in the future in terms of security? I know I threw a lot at you, but if you could absorb that and give your responses, that'd be great. I... Floppy think fixed supply is a problem and you already see Peter Todd, he has different ideas to change this using different solutions but I think you need to have a predictable supply, it doesn't matter if it's scabbed or not, the main thing is it needs to be predictable and I think that's already possible of Monero so it's really not a concern and you might see this debate getting more eyes on Bitcoin in next few years maybe after 10 years or something because you already see that there are enough transactions in the mempool so there'll be a time when you'll have less fees and the subsidy already decreases to half every four years so it will be a problem in the future Doug Yeah, I would argue Monero potentially has a more predictable supply because it's already added the tail emission. There's no reason for it to adjust its supply schedule, whereas with Bitcoin, there's that question mark as to whether or not it may need to be adjusted, which puts a question mark over its emissions schedule. Floppy Yes, so you might have seen in the last one year on Bitcoin, there's only one project which has been contributing to the fees and its ordinals and there aren't enough other transactions that really are used for payments that contribute to the fees. So it's already a problem that some people can see, but it will become the main discussion in Bitcoin in maybe next 10 years or something. Doug And then how about the, uh, the blocks, fixed block size versus dynamic blocks. Um, are, are, do you like, do you like this, this feature that Monero has the fact that it has a dynamic block size? Floppy I think fixed block size is fine, but I've not really researched enough about the dynamic block size and mineral, so I'll read more about it in the next few days. Doug We got to get you talking to Francisco Cabanas, Arctic Mind. He's very passionate about those aspects of Monero. He's a core dev. He moved away from Bitcoin in a very large way in the early days of Monero and got involved because what he saw as Bitcoin's biggest flaw was actually its on-chain scalability. He was more concerned about that than the privacy issues, believe it or not. Floppy Interesting. I'll read more about these things in the next few days. Doug Yeah. And what I think is beautiful about Monero, given its dynamic blocks and its tail emission and its privacy by default, is it's built in a way where it cannot easily be co-opted by any government or corporations. Oh, and the fact that it's mined with CPUs versus ASICs, it has all these different features. And the fact that it can scale on chain gives it this strength and resilience where it's not easy for essentially governments to infiltrate. They don't have the ability to surveil it, so it's hard to co-opt it. And that way, they don't have the ability to take over mining farms, because there are no large mining farms or forced mining farms to only transact compliant transactions. Because number one, you can't see the transactions in Monero, so there's no blacklist to be made. And number two, there's no mining farms to even knock on the door of and tell them what transactions they can and cannot process. Have you thought about Monero in that way as well? The fact that it's just hopefully less capable of being co-opted? Yes. Floppy Recently, you might have seen some Bitcoiners being excited about Bitax, which is a small ASIC miner that can be used at home to mine Bitcoin, but I'm not sure how much profitable is it. And I think it's a positive about Monero that it cannot be mined using ASICs and you can use CPUs to mine. So that is one of the positive and you can already see 51 or more percent hash rate in Bitcoin is controlled by, I think, three mining pools. So it's a concern and I think it will become things will only get worse because of the reason that you see most of these mining pools are influenced by U.S. government and you'll have more compliance and some of these mining pools may be asked to censor some transactions in future. So you'll see more problems in future. That's what I feel. Doug We have 377 live viewers, guys, like, share, retweet. Let's get some noobs in here. Let's get them discovering Monero, discovering floppy's journey from Bitcoin to Monero. I think that's the real story here in my, what I'm excited about is that I see intelligent people like yourself that are in crypto for all the right reasons, that are passionate about it for the cypherpunk ideals that you're like, listen, I really love Bitcoin. I wanted it to be digital cash. It's not working. Where could I go to fulfill that desire and self-actualize as I assist in a project that disrupts the financial system and you're choosing Monero? That's why I'm very excited that you're on here today and obviously excited that you'll be contributing to Monero. But I think it's a really important story to get out there for noobs to see and for people in Bitcoin to see, right? Maybe you're not completely, if you're listening to this show, then you're probably not a laser ride maxi. You would have turned it off a long time ago. And so maybe you are Monero curious and so floppy, what would you, what is the response to that? Floppy I think it's not good to become religious about these things. If you look at the pinkings of cypherpunks that existed before Bitcoin, they always wanted better privacy and more freedom. It doesn't matter what the tool is called and how does it work. The goal was to get better privacy and more freedom, and we shouldn't depend on governments and corporations for these things. But if you look at the interactions, the things that Bitcoiners post on social media, it's completely opposite of what cypherpunks are thinking and what they actually wanted. So it doesn't make sense to be religious about Bitcoin. If something is not working, you don't need to completely stop working on Bitcoin, but you can still try to contribute to some other projects that might be good for privacy and provide more freedom. And I think I don't see any other better alternative. Monero has the only chance to become better at privacy. It's already being used on darknet markets, so that is one of the positives. It already has the network effect that other things like Zcash doesn't have. So I didn't have much options and it was easy for me to choose Monero. Doug That's beautiful to hear. That means we're doing something right here in Monero land. And I do think network effect plays a large role in it, right? Bitcoin obviously has tremendous network effect for... You could argue what that is for, ultimately. I guess over there, they say for digital cash storage, right? For digital gold. And I'd argue Monero has the first mover advantage and the network effect for untraceable digital cash purposes. And obviously, network effect is a powerful thing. Floppy Yes, and once you have people accepting it as payments, that makes a lot of difference. And if you look at other cryptocurrencies, there's no better alternative at this moment. For example, Zeecast doesn't have the same level of privacy, plus it doesn't have the privacy by default. So, plus it has its own issues, which I don't think can ever be fixed with the kind of people that are involved in Zeecast. So I think there are better developers and users involved in Monero, and it has a better future if somebody really wants privacy in cryptocurrencies. Doug Beautiful to hear floppy music music to my ears music to my ears. I'm gonna play a quick gratuitous coffee commercial This is coffee that we sell for Monero. I I haven't been giving you this enough attention. Want to get the word out We probably have some new people out there if you want to buy Coffee directly with Monero gratuitous is the place to do it We roast it on demand and you can even send tips to the farmers. We've been doing this for a while now Let me go ahead and run that ad and then if anybody has any questions now is the time to send an XMR Chat comm slash Monero talk super chat. Just go to XMR chat comm slash Monero talk It's you know, we're not trying to grab your money We just want you to use XMR chat comm because it's super cool You could send a tip with Monero attach and attach a message to it. You can do completely anonymously It's on the Monero of essentially peer-to-peer on the Monero blockchain all the tips go directly from the tipper To zebra, you know in this case to me because I run XMR chat comm slash Monero talk But you can create your own if you're a streamer out there You want to accept Monero based tips go set up an account at XMR chat comm it's free to set up. There's no fees There's no fees when you receive it. You receive a hundred percent of your tips And it's a way for people to really take advantage of the power of Monero's free speech money So let me go ahead and play this quick little ad and guys send your send your XMR chat comm Super chats if you have any questions for floppy and I'll bring them up Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making Gratuitous.org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash chip directly to the Guatemalan farmers that made it possible. Proceeds help us grow this channel, Gratuitous and Monero. Doug I really need to update that. So yeah, the coffee comes from Columbia now, but I've been running the same old ad, it's same concept. Coffee is amazing. And it's roasted on demand. Floppy, is there anything else you want to bring up? Now you have the stage, you have the ear of all of the Monero community. They're probably not all tuning in right now, but I feel like anything that gets set on here, eventually the word gets out to the Monero community as a whole. Is there any information you'd like to get out to everybody in Monero land? Floppy said, I'll be traveling next week and start working from the second week of Feb. I just need help from the community to share more information with me about the latest things that are being built. Plus, which developers should I follow or contact? And what all chat rooms can I be a part of? Doug Fantastic. Fantastic. I wasn't going to, well, let me say, maybe I will. I'll announce it now. Monerotopia.com. You could buy your Monerotopia 26 tickets as of today. We just set it up. We were going to hold off a little bit, but we wanted to get the word out at the People's Reset Conference that's happening down in Mexico, Derek Broz's conference. So we quickly set things up. We have somebody down there who is going to be getting the word out about the conference. So since it is up and running, might as well announce it here. The early, early bird tickets are up for sale for Monerotopia 26. There won't be a 2025. There'll be a 26. It's going to be an early 26, though. It's basically going to be a year from now, basically a year from a week from now. It's going to take place in Mexico City again in the same location in Huerta Roma. Anybody who's watching this show probably already knows about Monerotopia. So if you want to help us and give us some early momentum, go ahead and buy a ticket. That would be greatly appreciated. Buy VIP ticket, greatly appreciated. That helps fund the conference. And then there's different variations of tickets. We even have a free ticket for locals that can't afford it, that are interested in these topics. But we ask that you don't abuse that. That is for the locals that can't afford it. But yeah, word is out. Go to Monerotopia.com and get your Monerotopia 2026 tickets for Monero in Mexico. Floppy, man. It would be awesome to get you down there. But like I said, I don't want to ruin your obstacle. I don't want to ruin your anonymity. But I don't Floppy Yes, I would prefer to stay anonymous, maybe if there is some event in Asia, I might be able to attend that. Doug Oh, wow. Okay. Or maybe we have you attend remotely, you know, you could anonymously present. Obviously, it depends. Obviously, it depends how your year goes or you're working on. But if you're, if you're cooking up something good from an arrow and you want to present on it, that would be you're obviously more than welcome. Sure, I would love to do that. Thank you so much, man. This is this has been a pleasure. I don't see any new questions go in, I guess, unless one of my one last of my own questions, because we didn't really talk about much. And it was a big part of your mindset, a big part of the work you've done is the note Nostra. I'm not a big Nostra guy. I've used it a little bit in the beginning, but I just kind of stayed stuck on X on Twitter. So I just don't go to Nostra. Maybe if it becomes more, I don't even know what the best app is to use for it right now. I made an account, like, I guess years ago now at this point and never really got too active on it. But I do think it's really cool tech. Any chance or would it even make sense to see like Monero integrated into Nostra where people can send, you know, Monero tips to through Nostra or whatever. I mean, I'm pretty sure Bitcoin is kind of seamlessly implemented into Nostra at this point. Any chance we see that happen with Monero and Nostra? Floppy I think tips with Monero is already possible using some clients. Apart from that, I think Noster for social media might not be the best use case for Noster, but it can still be used for other stuff like I was using it for CoinJoin or it can be used for any other project that needs communication between two people or more than two people. So, multi-party protocols can always use it for communication. Doug Oh, wow. Okay, I didn't know that, but you don't actually you don't think the social media use case is really it's it's killer app Floppy I don't think it would ever be able to compete with other social media apps like Twitter X or something. Doug So what can you give us more insight into there? What do you potentially see as like the personification of the killer app on Notion? Like what would that look like? What in your mind would be the killer app of that tech? Floppy think a user should not be aware that he is using Noster. Everything should happen in the background. It should only be used for communication, so a user shouldn't be aware of the Noster keys, the private key, and all the other stuff, technical stuff used in Noster. Plus, the reason I think social media apps might not work for Noster is, there'll be a point when you won't have the same amount of funding from Jack and other people who are still supporting Noster developers, and at that point, they'll have to build something which really gets the same network effects like X, Instagram, and other apps that are being used by normal people for social media, and if that doesn't happen, it will always remain a use case for some people to use it for social media. You mostly see Bitcoiners on Noster, and there are some people who are non-Bitcoiners, but they are less, and even their voice is not really visible on Noster because most of the clients, so the clients have things like trending notes and other things which mostly focus on Bitcoiners, so I think it will mostly remain an equal chamber for Bitcoiners, but it can even be used from a network. Doug I bought it just throughout a killer idea, Nostra for XMR BTC atomic swaps coordination. So similar to like how basic swap functions, but using using Nostra as the communication tool. That's that's an interesting thought. Floppy Yes, it can be used for swaps coordination and that can be one of the projects. Doug Yeah, or even just kind of an exchange, like a havino bis type thing. Can you expound on that? I mean... Floppy So, Gnostre can be used to provide a kind of order book in which some people would be trying to swap XMR for BTC and there will be some people who want to swap BTC for XMR. So, Gnostre can be used to match those two people so that they can swap XMR BTC between themselves peer to peer. Doug Oh, and the body's got me thinking now Good ideas body good ideas. What's a motherboard tips $7 or 70 cents? Why did floppy go to death therapy? I had too many files Why did floppy go to therapy? I had too many files. Okay, is that? That's a joke. Um JJ tip 25 cents peace freedom and Monero. Thank you, man Anonymous tip the dollar bump for XMR chat appreciate it And motherboard we do appreciate the $7.77. Thank you so much I don't know floppy if you want to respond to why did floppy go to therapy it had too many files Floppy I don't think I should answer that. Doug Okay, is that a right is that something kind of insider thing to you that I'm not aware of or is that a joke? I don't even know. I don't even know what's going on there Floppy I think someone is trying to true or something. Doug that someone's being an asshole. I'm not even picking up on the vibe. I thought we were trying to make a bad joke. Yeah, we don't need any of that, but we appreciate the $7.77. It's probably some salty Bitcoin. Or maybe what's just happened? Maybe we're overreacting here. Floppyman, thank you so much. This is fantastic. Really looking forward to you contributing to Monero and maybe being a bridge between Bitcoin and Monero a little bit. Some other people seeing what you're doing and being excited about it and following you. That would be nice to see. Welcome aboard. I'm sure the Monero devs will be eager to get your assistance on anything that you're interested in working on. Thank you. Floppy Thank you for having me. Doug Yeah, thank you, man. And we'll be in touch. I guess let me let me close it out here. I will play I will play the the loop out and floppy man. Thank you. We'll be in touch. So thank you. Floppy Thank you. Have a great day. Adios. Speaker 2 Hi, Monero Land. Thank you for joining on this week's episode. 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