One great moment from my debate with Paul
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Sweet argument.
I love handing out QR codes with small amounts of e cash on them.
Handing someone a piece of card stock sends a message. This is paper backed with peer-to-peer electronic cash. Scan the QR code and you get some sats.
The head shaking from you and Danny at the end 😂
“Cashu didn’t exist in 2022.”
🎬
"Lighting network doesn't work?"
Don't believe your lying zaps
This was a difficult episode to listen to.
We’re living in the future
Gotchya!!
In Tech Terms, 2022 actually feels15 years behind what's happening right now in mid 2025
Imagine not touching Lightning since 2019 and declaring it dead
Many OGs out of touch.
Casey Rodamor told me there is WOT on Nostr and it will never work.
Who is this noob?
Paul got Tucker’d
This guy has always been full of shit.
Nice
Geez 🙄
💯
Good thing we have intelligent freedom fighters out there spreading the word
the mic drop moment
Oh that’s awkward
Oh snap. Haven't seen this yet. Without watching though. Massive props to anyone willing to debate either side of bitcoin. Its massively beneficial to humanity and takes guts to do.
Beautiful, it’s like visual poetry. The editing to pull back and show symmetrical head shaking from yourself and @Danny Knowles
Paul: *has legit criticisms of Bitcoin and lightning*
Alex: “have you heard of ecash?!? 🤨”
Bitcoiners: *clap like seals*
You are free to use a privacy shitcoin instead if you’d like
New idea: PrivvyCoin. When we launch, we'll be airdropping to our bros that will let you API into, and provide exclusive access, to our globally launched and already present PortoJohns- or as we call them BlockSquatters.. Yes, these are floor hole toilets, but think of the time you'll save not putting toilet paper on the seat. Also, BYOTP.
😂😂
Come onnnnnn this is genius we're going to be rich!
Rich you say…well in that case…
Ok great, no returns. I’ll be over here, but by all means can you just stand just there on this rug that I assure you is nailed down.
Rug?
It'll be fine!
that was rough to watch. seemed like y'all were talking past each other often. Paul has a point that L1 and lightning does not scale to 8 billion people. However, today lightning scales enough for the current use case and provides value to many people globally. Lightning is not useless TODAY, but may be in 50 years, who knows?
Paul is 100% right…in 2021. He’s wrong in 2025, albeit with some legitimate, albeit rudely and misleadingly put, criticisms.
A cautionary tale for us all: BTC moves so fast and changes so much that if you aren’t constantly trying new stuff and updating your mental models, then even if you have many years of experience in BTC you can be grossly inaccurate in your assessment of where it is today and how people are using it.
Uh…that was a punch. 😅
The other 93 minutes were hellish to endure. I was waiting for Paul to go into a ‘this is definitely-definitely not my underwear’ fit.
Hey man I’m a bitcoiner, I just think it’s silly to all dog pile on a guy who has legit concerns and criticisms. I’m less concerned about the privacy aspect (I am concerned about that) and more concerned about the scaling issue. As far as I understand it, there is no scaling solution that creates self sovereign Bitcoin for 8 billion users. If he or I are wrong about that, please correct us.
Glorious
Correct. There is currently no way for all 8 billion people to self custody BTC
This is not a reason to spread ridiculous FUD about Lightning and to wholesale ignore all kinds of useful open source technologies
Agreed. But to his point, 8 billion people can’t even use lightning in a non-custodial way, so what are we talking about here? Lightning works really really well for a small group of people, I don’t think anyone is denying that. I’m sure not. It works great and I love it. But it doesn’t work for 8 billion people, and that’s his point.
Great work
What I understood from that guy was 'I just disagree because I'm edgy'...
Cool story bro. lol
And saying lightning doesn’t work for 8 billion people isn’t “FUD” it’s a fact lmao. Not every criticism of Bitcoin is “ridiculous FUD.” That mindset is so bad.
Can you expand on this? Have the fundamentals (in terms of scaling) of lightning changed since 2021? His argument is that we should be building something that can scale to the whole world, rather than accumulating a "sunk cost" in something that can't ever reach that scale. I think that's a reasonable argument (although he has a knack for rubbing people the wrong way, for sure)
Everyone knows this. You can describe Lightning intelligently without saying the whole thing is a scam which is what Paul says
I think I actually lost braincells listening to this dude having absolutely zero arguments besides ‘this on dude said it won’t work years ago’
You earned my sats
I do not mean that. I full disagree with him there.
I would say his high level meta ongoing point that I think had validity is some bitcoiners(more the X crowd and not the Nostr crowd) are getting complacent and trusting permanently suboptimal solutions, e.g. custodial solutions are fine for me forever and lets cozy up to the government, etc.
While I think BIPs 300/301 and miner cotrolled drivechains that are user hostile and have zero protocol guarantees that they won’t rug you, change their state, etc are insane, I do agree with him we need to have more open minds to change. The ossify forever crowd got way bigger way faster than I personally think is healthy. We will need at least a few forks to survive.
You disagree with him on the impossibility of lightning to scale to the whole world?
Yes indirectly in that he assumes complete stasis in both consensus and layer two architecture. meaning if we get CTV+CSFS and ARK gets deployed with those some level of self custody will scale MASSIVELY bigger than he is stating.
Said differently that is a static and narrow minded view of the BC landscape while innovation is happening.
What kind of changes in consensus are you referring to?
On a long enough time frame it seems reasonably likely they we get some sort of covenants soft fork. Maybe big or small, maybe soon or very far out. But there’s a decent chance.
It could easily work for many many tens of millions of more people than it serves today!
Are you using Primal’s custodial wallet, @gladstein? Can you even really consider that “using” Lightning?
I’m almost always using a self-custodial set up
What percentage of Lightning users do you think do that, versus either a custodial setup or using an LSP (which are singular points of failure and major targets for the Feds)?
Not sure but it’s lightning connecting different pools either way
Do you understand Paul’s point? If Lightning coalesces around a handful of powerful nodes (maybe it already has?), you really don’t have any guarantee they’ll use Lightning to settle transactions.
In fact, there’s strongly incentivized NOT to use Lightning, because it’s more expensive than creating their own private messaging service (similar to what the Silvergate Exchange Network was between banks).
And that’s not even getting into the risk of the government shutting down these players altogether, which deals a SEVERE blow to Lightning.
He absolutely did not make this point
He just said LN was cope and a failure which is laughable
Many times I argued that LN is far from perfect, won’t be digital cash for everyone, etc
What you miss is LN is an open global network
Can't say I know how to use ecash or cashu. What problems do they fix and how can I utilize them?