El Salvador Bitcoin Law On The Ground

Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, sure about Bitcoin. Have you been wondering how the El Salvador Bitcoin law has been going? Well, the law went live on the 7th of September, and I invited Aaron van Wirdum, Bitcoin journalist, At Bitcoin Magazine, and he's a very well known journalist in the Bitcoin space. And Aaron is actually on the ground in El Salvador, so we get the point of view from the ground, how the rollout went, as well as the good, the bad, and the ugly, the critiques, the protesters, the critiques around the arguments of remittance, and we sort through the fact and fiction, what's the truth of the matter, and what's the real nuance there on the ground in terms of using Bitcoin, the Chivo wallet, using Lightning in El Salvador, and remittances. And we also chat a little bit about Bitcoin Core version twenty-two and Aaron's recent article on that also. This show is brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, and if you want to join, as my friend Hasmukh says, the DCA army, you've gotta set up your Bitcoin savings plan or Bitcoin automatic recurring buys. And with Swan, there's a focus on education and content. So for example, Jan Pritzkir's book, Inventing Bitcoin, you can get that for free by going to swanbitcoin dot com slash free book. And with Swan It's Bitcoin only, there's no altcoins. It's a great place to send your pre-coiner and new coiner friends, and if you are looking to purchase a lot of Bitcoin, if you're a high net worth individual or a corporate or a business, and you want some more one-on-one guidance, a dedicated Bitcoin account expert, Swan Private is the service for you. So if you go to swanbitcoin.com, and at the top you'll see Private, so go there and start setting up your lump sum purchase or your Bitcoin automated recurring purchase plan. Next up is Lend at Hodd Peer-to-peer Bitcoin-backed lending platform where you can borrow or lend out stablecoins globally and anonymously using Bitcoin as collateral. So with lend at HodlHodl, you no longer need to sell your Bitcoin to get some short-term liquidity, you just borrow stablecoins against your Bitcoin and control your collateral in Escrow throughout the whole deal, while stablecoin owners can earn some extra interest by lending their stablecoins out and defining the terms and the APR for their deals. HodlHodl's lending platform is currently going through a major upgrade with many improvements to be available by the end of the month. Sign up to Lend dot HoddleHoddle with a promo code September to get a fifty percent discount on the platform's origination fee once the lending functionality is available again. Have you considered Bitcoin mining? CompassMining dot io are making it easy for everyone to start Bitcoin mining. So on the site, you can go there, you can select the miners, they've got Ant Miners available, and they've also got a Compass Mining mini bundle deal with six Ant Miners. So go and check out the website to see the details in terms of the cost. You select your miner, and you can Two, and then also select the mining pool. You pay the hosting fee, and you receive Sats. It's a great way to get started. Not everyone can access these industrial power rates at home, and not everyone can access this kind of equipment and the prices. So, Compass Mining are making it easy for everyone to mine Bitcoin. Go to compassmining.io and start today. Aaron, I'm a big fan of your work. Welcome to the show. Thank

you. Is this the first time that I'm on your show?

Yeah, actually, I was just thinking about that. It is the first time you're on my show, because now just for listeners, we did a, a Saylor Academy livestream, and I hosted Aaron as part of that. But actually, this is the first time, I've got Aaron on my show, so that's, it's great to be with you. And for listeners who are new, Aaron is one of the legendary Bitcoin journalists, so definitely, he's written a lot of excellent articles, and he's also a podcast host himself. So you guys make sure you go and, check out Aaron's podcast. but the reason I wanted to chat with Aaron today is he's on the ground. So Aaron, can you tell us a little bit about where you are and what your

Yeah, so I'm in San Salvador right now, which is the capital of El Salvador. I've been in El Salvador since early July, small intermezzo, I was at, I was in Nashville in the meantime at the Bitcoin Magazine offices for a couple of days in Mexico, but I've been here for well over two months now, just to see how the whole Bitcoin law was being rolled out and how it would be accepted and just keep a pulse on everything going on over here. I'm still here, yeah.

Yeah, that's great, and I'd love to chat a little bit and see what your perspective is, obviously you're on the ground, because there were differing views, right? Obviously amongst us Bitcoiners, we were mostly supportive, although I would say- In fairness, if we're being principled, we should be against Article Seven of the Bitcoin Law, which mandates that a person must accept Bitcoin, right? And so I think, I mean, my view on this is it's, it's an imperfect step forward, right? Because the mere fact that they are taking away capital gains on Bitcoin and enabling and supporting it, that's obviously a big positive. But from my point of view, Article Seven is a negative, it is a downside from my point of view, and I have seen there have been some protests, but I think it's, it's It's probably a nuanced perspective, and I'd love to hear what you think about some of that.

Yeah, there's a lot going on with that. So if we get to the protests first, there are protests, and they are sort of, branded as no all Bitcoin protests, or, you know, no Bitcoin, anti-Bitcoin protests. But, I'd say that's more of a flag of, that, that the opponents of Bukele are now sort of rallying under. It is, the, the reason is that, okay, so first He's very popular in the country, but he still has opposition, of course, and he has been taking some pretty controversial measures recently as well, like he replaced part of the High Court, the High Court judges, Supreme Court judges, I guess. recently he's also been replacing, firing a lot of regular judges. He, he's, he's definitely consolidating power in that sense. So it, you know, there's definitely opposition against him for these kinds of reasons. And all, all- Also just for policy reasons, people that think that he's not spending enough on this or that, or too much on this or that, or, you know, just, just opposition issues, and, it's focusing a lot of Bitcoin. Now, if you get to the concerns about Bitcoin itself, it's also pretty varied. So some concerns are, you know, I would consider, fud essentially, that Bitcoin is only used, or that it will be used for money laundering. You know, I would argue the same is true for cash, and Bitcoin is actually- Being regulated the same as in most other countries, so the concern, if there is a concern about that at all, then it should be equal for Germany or Canada, or I'm just naming random countries, but it, it's not like it's more open in that sense here. But, but yeah, money laundering, the, you know, it's good for criminals, these kinds of issues. I've heard someone mention that Bitcoin was not for poor people because they can't afford to buy a Bitcoin, apparently not realizing that you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. So there's definitely a lot Information about Bitcoin at this protest, but like you mentioned, there are also some concerns that I would consider valid. One valid concern, well, you already mentioned Article seven, so the mandate is part of the law. Now there are outs in the law, you know, you don't have to accept Bitcoin if you obviously cannot technically. However, when are you obviously not able to do it? That's very ill-defined, that's not specified in the law, so that opens the door for, what's the term? Let's just say a- Abuse of the law, and there is a

power

of, yeah. Yeah, an abuse of power. I've heard examples where in El Salvador, some restaurants were closed during pandemic, during the pandemic, for not keeping to the COVID rules, while other restaurants were kept open, and it turned out that these restaurants that were closed also had issues with bukele. So there, there's a very nice English word that I, that's slipping my mind for that kind of thing. Oh, I

think, I think I know the,

it's like selective enforcement. Selective enforcement, yeah, exactly Outs in Article seven, it also opens the door for selective enforcement potentially, so that's, a legitimate concern I would say. There's also one of the concerns is that there's very little transparency about anything the government is doing really in this regard, which I would also consider legitimate, like how are the funds spent? Or if we want to get more into like a Bitcoin topic with the, you know, the free and open source culture, then no one knows how this wallet actually works, the Wal-- the Chivo wallet that the government rolled out. It's a custodial wallet, but who's holding the funds? That's not even clear or-- So there's a lot of lack of transparency and the government's not really answering these questions. So I, I would say it's, it's Balanced and nuanced in multiple ways. First of all, the protests aren't really only about Bitcoin, and the parts that are about Bitcoin are also a mix of just misinformation and some legitimate concerns. So that's, that's what you're seeing. But if I, you know, my impression is that generally it's more anti-Bukele than anti-Bitcoin, the protest. Yeah, I see. From what I've seen. Yeah, yeah. But Bitcoin is also an

image. Yeah, right. And, as I understand, part of the- That protest or one of the protests, I saw an image of a Bitcoin ATM being burned or something like that, right? So, do you know anything about that?

That's obviously, obviously a very iconic image to, you know, that the media will take and that's easy to spread on social media and that's because it's visual and that's something that people will immediately understand that people are angry about Bitcoin or about Tivo, because the ATMs are also branded as Tivo. So, yeah, that happened, that happened, I think it was two days ago, but that's another good For example, that on-- that was actually the day that El Salvador celebrated two hundred years of independence, and that was also a reason for the opposition to sort of rally protests. So again, I don't think it-- the, these protests was really about Bitcoin, although it may have been a part of it, but, you know, burning down a Tivo ATM makes for a very iconic image that everyone will see. So of course.

Yeah. And I saw some of the commentary from Alex Gladstein, who obviously of the HRF, Human Rights Foundation. Foundation and also a writer for Bitcoin Magazine. He was commenting that some of that tension was potentially because of the bad experience with dollarization about twenty years ago. So do you have any commentary on that or do you agree, disagree?

I have heard that, and I'll obviously, read Gladstein's article and he also had a tweet thread about it earlier. A-and I did hear people, share that concern. I was on a radio show here actually a couple of weeks ago talking about Bitcoin, and then that was also one of the things that- People brought up, and what Alex explained in that article is that if I'm getting the numbers correct, then one dollar was worth eight point seventy-five colon, the colon was the currency before the dollar, but when the prices were changed, when people started pricing things in dollars, they just did a divided by ten kind of thing, and therefore it was as if a lot of things became ten times more expensive overnight. That's-- We actually had something simi-similar happen in the Netherlands. I'm from the Netherlands, as you know. When the, when we changed from the guilder to the euro, we also had that s-similar issue where just because of the exchange rates between the guilder and the euro, it made sense to just round things up a little bit, but because of that, a lot of things went, you know, became ten percent more expensive overnight, and this, Alex explained, e-especially affected the poorer part of the population, the people that would, you know, get their stuff from mom and pop stores that would in fact round their, round their, amounts up a little bit. And part of it is also that back when the dollar dollarization happened, there was also a very strong narrative pushed by the governments back then that it would be an optional thing, that the dollar would just be an extra option, so the colon would still exist and circulate, but the dollar would become an extra option. What happened in reality is that the dollar very quickly just overtook everything. I think within a year or maybe two or something like that, there were basically no colons anymore. So, a lot of people that were, you know, who, that were, who, whose concerns were eased back then on the promise that it would be optional, kind of felt betrayed, and now we have this government saying that Bitcoin will be optional, so they have that sort of natural distrust for these kinds of promises. I do think that this time it actually is different, because this time the dollar is clearly still the unit of account, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. That's also what the government is promoting. Promising, again, you know, depends on your trust in the government, I guess, when it comes to promises from the governments. But in the case of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is volatile, I think we can both agree on that, it makes-- it actually does make a lot more sense to keep things priced in dollars. So if things are priced in dollars, then that concern shouldn't really matter. So you could maybe, categorize that concern as another, you know, sort of not really a valid concern, but, but it is a concern people have and that I've heard, It much, but I did hear it here and there that people have sort of bad memories from, from the dollarization chapter, and it might, you know, inform some of their concerns now.

Yeah, understandable. And so I'd love to talk a little bit about your experiences as well, going around and actually buying things with Bitcoin, right? So I presume, you know, you got a Lightning wallet and you're just going out there and you had a really, big one where you went to Macca's, McDo- oh, we call it Macca's in Australia, but, And yeah, tell us a little bit about, I wanna hear that experience.

I mean, the experience is very-- th-this isn't gonna make for a good story, but yeah, no, it was September 7th, so that was Bitcoin Day. I woke up. Okay, so actually, so let's take a step back. So I've been here for a while now. I've been here since early July, more or less. And while I was here, I was going around, you know, speaking with people, including also financial institutions, just a month before the law went into effect, in the country, payment processors, these kinds of, yeah, financial institutions, and in our discussions with them, it became clear to us that they had no idea what was going on. They didn't know what Bitcoin really was or how it works, they didn't know what the Lightning Network was or how it's related to Bitcoin, they didn't know if they were supposed to be mining, they didn't know if they should be using XRP, Ripple, they, like, they didn't even know where to start. They had no idea, and there was also no So, or at least very little information from the government coming out. Now, they were talking about the Chiva wallets, but there was no Chiva wallet and there was no information on the Chiva wallets, apart from, you know, maybe some slight acts or some, you know, superficial stuff, but n-nothing in depth of how it worked or nothing like that. there was some regulation published like one week before the law about how financial institutions should deal with Bitcoin, and that was mostly the, just sort of the standard, standard KYC/AML type of stuff that That was, I think, quite literally copied from other countries. But in overall, it was just, there was basically nothing, and people didn't know anything about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin wasn't accepted anywhere outside of El Zonta, basically. Some other, you know, some other restaurants maybe here and there if you went to look for them, but nothing on any serious scale at all. And I, I was discussing this with Alex Klasen actually, literally, I think it was literally the evening before the Bitcoin law went into, into effect, we were sort of- Of discussing our experiences in the country, and I think I literally said as an example, "There's no way McDonald's is gonna accept Bitcoin tomorrow," and he completely agreed with that, "There's no way something, you know, something like McDonald's is gonna accept Bitcoin." So yeah, the next day I woke up And I want to get breakfast. There's actually a McDonald's right across the street here where I'm staying, and they have pretty decent breakfast actually here. It's like the typical Salvadoran breakfast, it's not the Stupid McMuffins or whatever, it's, it's, it's actually half decent and it's close, so I walked in and because I'm a journalist, basically, because it's my job to do so, I asked, "Can I pay with Bitcoin?" Just so they could say no, and then I, you know, had learned that my assumptions were correct. But to my stupid surprise, they actually printed out this little receipt thingy, it had a QR code on it. It was a little bit of a puzzle because it wasn't a Lightning invoice or a Bitcoin thing, so I had But it was a URL, URL to a website, and there wasn't lightning info is there. So to my surprise, I could actually pay with Bitcoin, which, which was kind of funny. So I, I tweeted it out with a spelling error obviously, and that became my most viral tweet ever. So now I'm the McDonald's guy, retweeted by Edward Snowden and the, and the president of the country and tens of thousands of other people. So

That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. And so, I mean, do you know whether that was using the Chivo wallet on some kind of web interface or was that like a McDonald's thing that they had coded up?

yeah, they weren't using Tivo, they were using OpenNode. I, I doubt anyone at the nodes actually coded something up, but surely they got some sort of partnership and they made it happen. Yeah, it, it were especially, still now, I guess, but it's especially sort of these big chains, these, you know, multi-multi-billion dollar chains that have started accepting Bitcoin here. I guess, you know, they have the time and, money to actually do it, so, you know, you can go to McDonald's or Pizza Hut or Starbucks or, these kinds of places and they'll accept Bitcoin. it's not really, from what I've seen, it's not, a regular restaurant, just, you know, that's operated by one guy or one family, they are in general not really accepting Bitcoin yet from what I've seen. But it is, there is a trickle going on. I do see there are new additions and there are new, places where I can start to accept it. But so, so far from what I've seen It's mostly like the big chains and sort of working way down to smaller chains are now also starting.

Yeah, that's really cool.

And I have, and I have met, I, I have been at a couple of places that do use the Chivo wallets as well now. So it started out with McDonald's, which didn't, and also the Pizza Hut, which I mentioned, and Starbucks, they're using iBags. But now there are actually some supermarkets, like sort of national, well, yeah, the supermarkets that will exist across the country that start to use the Chivo wallet. But, I think, maybe also Subway or, but I've seen the, I've seen the Tivo Wallet a couple times as well now, which doesn't use Lightning, by the way. or maybe the merchant that's helping me doesn't know how to switch or something like that, but it seems like that's only on chain for now. Right, so

it's, yeah, I've heard different opinions and I've seen different, points of view here, because some people have said they can, they can use Lightning on it, or maybe there was some initial teething issues, so maybe they disabled the Lightning and they're gonna re-enable it later. I'm not quite clear there.

I mean, when it comes to, when it comes to the Chivo wallets itself, so what I just described were basically the merchant solutions. I think it's all in the same app. When you start the app, you can pick if you're a To be clear, I don't have the app because, you know, I'm not Salvadoran, so I can't use it. It's, you need to use your Salvadoran ID thing to, to get it started. But, I have been playing around with other people's apps a little bit. So the merchant solution, every time that I came across one, it works, although it also work, only works on chain. the regular app for users is basically a giant mess. it's working some of the time. So on day one, a lot Downloaded, even though a lot of people also could download it, I think it was downloaded half a million times or something, which is of course a lot. but from every time I tried it, it was either incredibly slow or some weird bug didn't let us scan a QR code or, it just crashed altogether or wouldn't even start up or I think we lost money, I think, well, because we were just playing around with it, you know, sending twenty dollars in Bitcoin to the thing to see if we could get it out of the ATM, no one- No, so that twenty dollars went anymore. So there are lots of issues, they clearly wanted to ship it on September seventh, no matter what, because it's just unfinished software. it did work a couple of times, you know, there were, and I've heard other people that have used it successfully, so it's, you know, it's hit and miss, but in general, it's just clearly unfinished software.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. But, as I understand, the Bitcoin law doesn't mandate that they use the Chivo wallet, they can use any Lightning wallet. But as I understand, in practice, probably a lot of the businesses want to receive in US dollars, and so that's why they are trying to provide the Chivo wallet as a government option for them to be able to receive Bitcoin, but actually the merchant receives US dollars. But in fairness, you could do the same with OpenNode too. So

Yeah, I don't know how the open node infrastructure works exactly. I assume there's probably a conversion fee involved somehow, somewhere. That's not the case with Tivo. So with Tivo, if you are a merchant and you accept five dollars in Bitcoin, you actually literally get five dollars worth of dollars. so the conversion there is essentially subsidized by the government, which is another issue, by the way, which I haven't mentioned that some people, also libertarians might, you know, if, if they're consistent in their ideology would I have to oppose that because now the government is subsidizing that. But, and that's also something that people don't like. There's this fund that, the government has set apart that will buy up these Bitcoin. Now they can of course sell these Bitcoin, but still there, the government is subsidizing the friction there. But, that is, to your point, that is a important reason for people to use the Chivo wallets because then they don't have to pay any conversion fee, they just get literally in dollars what they were paid. So it's a strong incentive to Even though other solutions clearly work better most of the time, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, yeah. so I guess let's summarize it this way then. So if that merchant or user is happy to just stay Bitcoin native, they can just use the well-known Lightning wallets and just fully everything will just work as it normally would on the Lightning network, but where they want the specific US dollar aspect, that's where they tend to be using Chivo or some other solution. and,

yeah, not to mention that if you use an actual Lightning wallet, or a Bitcoin wallet, you control your own keys, which is obviously another benefit. The, the one thing I didn't mention, the other incentive for a Chivo, which I'm sure you know, but I haven't mentioned yet, is the free thirty dollars of Bitcoin. So everyone that opens up a Chivo wallet gets, gets thirty dollars of Bitcoin, which sounds nice and is nice, I guess the two concerns with that is one, again, it's- Government subsidized, you can have an opinion on that. The other thing is that they had this scheme where the first thirty dollars in the Tivo app could only be spent to other Tivo apps So one hop can only be done two other Tivo apps. Now once you've done one hop, it's free. Now you can spend it to any Bitcoin wallet, or you can cash it out in an ATM or whatever. But the first hop is only Tivo to Tivo. So the idea there is obviously to incen- incentivize people to actually use Bitcoin, to actually try it out rather than run to the closest ATM, get thirty dollars out, and never look at it again. So that's the incentive. Right. But what really happened, or at least one of the things that happened, That a lot of people would take their thirty dollars and would go to McDonald's or to Pizza Hut or they wanted to buy something on Bitrevel and they learned that they couldn't and they didn't understand why they couldn't and the McDonald's didn't understand why they couldn't. So now everyone has a bad experience and they think Bitcoin doesn't work because they don't get that the thirty dollars can only be spent to another Tiva wallet. So a lot of people that had their first experience with Bitcoin now had a bad experience due to that restriction, which, you know, I think it's It's very unfortunate that they put that. I get the incent- I get the motivation for the, for the restriction, but it's very anti-bitcoin first of all, and it's just giving people a bad experience, and it's unfortunate that their first Bitcoin experience is one where it doesn't work.

Right, yeah. So I guess we're, we're really going through the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Like that there are a lot of teething issues, let's say. and in fairness, I think it was always going to be this way because we're talking about six and a half million people who many of have not been exposed to Bitcoin, and of course, they're not necessarily on Bitcoin Twitter like the rest of us who are like hardcore Bitcoin people. I can understand where there would be some of that teething issue, but hopefully- As the months progress, things get better and the experience is nicer and slick and easy and a bit better for people, so that it's not such a jarring experience, not being able to spend your satz, right?

Yeah. Well, you mentioned we've been through the good, the bad, and the ugly. I guess I've mostly been through the bad and the ugly so far. Maybe, maybe that's my journalist mindset, where I focus on the things that are negative. To be clear, in general, I think it's absolutely great that a country, or at least I think a country like From Bitcoin, it's just unfortunate that some of these bad aspects, are there because now that is becoming a focal point also within the country, you know, like the protests we've mentioned, and they actually have a good point. Like if, if these bad aspects weren't there, if thirty dollars was freely spendable, if it wasn't mandated, like if, if these things were cut out of the law, then it would just be great and I'd be a very happy guy here. But, I'm, I am a happy guy, but now, now there's so much negative Focus on, which was so easily to avoid with, and that's unfortunate. But, you know, it's the, but it's the first country, it's the first country that tried something like this. So obviously there are gonna be lessons to be learned and obviously there are gonna be kinks in the cable that are gonna have to be worked out. So, I also, I actually don't want to sound too negative, I'm sounding too negative probably. In general, I think it's a great opportunity for everyone here. Of course, and I've had, and I've had great experiences as well someone on Twitter, what was his name again? I forgot his name, sorry if you're listening. Am I really not gonna remember his name? No, sorry. So that guy, he, he made a suggestion on Twitter where he said, "Hey, is it possible-- " On Matt Alberg. No, yeah, no, it was sorry, Matt Alberg. So it wasn't actually Matt Alberg, it was someone that changed his name to-- Oh, no, thank you, Matt Alberg. That's now we got it. Yeah. Yeah. So, Cash App or Strike or someone else who actually made the original suggestion, Bitriver, I don't remember, someone made the suggestion that, hey, could you go to an, to an ATM there, actually take a photo of the QR code, send that to us, and then see if you get the money out. So I did, and, the video is on Twitter, it's like a four minute video from start to finish where you see how I indeed withdraw cash from a Bitcoin ATM here, sent by someone across the world To also share the screenshot that clarified that he paid like twenty dollars and maybe thirty cents, and I got twenty dollars out, which is obviously, you know, that changes the game of remittances completely. You couldn't do that before. If you wanted to do twenty dollars remittances, you weren't gonna pay half of it in fees. that, that's just completely unfeasible. Better yet, the next day, I went back to my favorite restaurant, McDonald's, and that time, I, I took a photo Of the QR code of my payment for a Big Mac, I posted that on Twitter and someone across the world paid a Big Mac for me with like basically no fees over Lightning, and I was eating Big Mac. You know, that-- these kinds of things weren't possible two weeks ago, and they're possible now, and it's really cool, and it's, it, it, it's, it, it could be a real solution for people here because remittances is really expensive. So, so these are definitely some success stories, and there is a lot of potential there.

Yeah, and I mean, I have listeners all over the world, so there might be listeners out there who are thinking, "Yeah, I like, I wanna come and spend some Sats, and I wanna actually support, the, the idea of trying to have a Bitcoin economy." And so there might be Bitcoiners all around the world who are listening and they just wanna get a perspective from you, what's it like on the ground? And hey, maybe I'll come and visit. I, I will be, coming to visit, 'cause there's Adopting Bitcoin

And all of those things, I think that'll be a really fun experience, just to sort of live in the future, right? And I think some of us, obviously in the Bitcoin world, we've been living in the future in some ways, right? Like there was the Lightning Conference in two thousand and nineteen, and that really felt like living in the future, like you would walk around the conference and you'd be able to pay with Lightning for ice cream or for things, or at, at the various Bitcoin, you know, magazine or BTC Media conferences, there's a big 2019, there was that there and i-i-in the recent Bitcoin 2021. So I think those are some cool experiences for Bitcoiners out there, and I know President Vucela has also mentioned this idea of a Bitcoin permanent residence. So I believe it's three bitcoins, and you either purch-purchase property or, put that into a business, and that will entitle you to residence rights in El Salvador. So that could also be a really interesting aspect. And I know also, there will be no- tax on the gain there. So that's also very potentially interesting. so I guess for anyone out there who's listening and maybe they're thinking about going to El Salvador, some of them might have the concern around like vaccine passports and things like that. What's been the experience there and what's, what's that, what's the kind of rule there in El Salvador?

El Salvador isn't a, libertarian haven when it comes to COVID. they, well, first of all, there's still the mask mandate, although I think it's only indoors. If it's also outdoors, then I've been breaking the law, but, not been, fined for it. I, I think it's only indoors as far as I can tell.

Bucella has actually, from what I understand, been pretty strict when it comes to lockdowns and these kinds of things. In fact, I- I believe, but someone feel free to fact-check me on this, I believe that, one of his lockdown laws was considered unconstitutional, and that's why he fired the, all these judges from the Supreme Court and got new judges in basically to get his way. to get into the country, I think you need, either-- When I got in, I needed either proof of vaccination or negative test. I think that's probably still the case. But if you go to like El Zonte, for example, so what are the mask mandate, for example, which I just mentioned, that's mostly San Salvador, because in El Zonte, I haven't seen a single mask b-b-worn, worn by anyone. So there's definitely a difference, between different parts of the country. one other thing I want to mention, because it's something that comes up a lot, is security, safety. A lot of people are concerned about coming to El Salvador because they've heard bad stories about, you know, the, the gang violence and the high murder rate. I've been here for, you know, two and a half months now, I've not felt unsafe. I've mostly been in San Salvador, and to be fair, I've mostly been in the richer areas of San Salvador. or I was in one of the coastal towns, like the surf towns, the touristy places, and here I felt completely fine everywhere. You probably don't wanna go to bad neighborhoods at night, maybe, but there are Ubers, and you can just Uber anywhere, so why would you walk in bad neighborhoods at night? There's no reason to do that. or maybe like parts of the country that are more controlled by the gangs, but, you know, again, don't go there if you, if you're concerned about that. I think if you sort of stay in San Salvador in the coastal places, then I don't think you need to be concerned. I haven't been concerned. I haven't heard any bad stories. So To conference, I, I think that's, I personally think that's totally fine.

Yeah, yeah. And look, I, I'm, I'm hopeful that we see, it might be a nice experience for people to go and that maybe that helps the overall, if you will, this experiment, if you're gonna, if we're gonna call it that, or this kind of move forward, that, if, you know, they, they, the country supports Bitcoin and more Bitcoiners around the world wanna come there and either as a tourist or potentially as an investor or potentially That they, might wanna consider that. I mean, that's, that's even

one of the arguments that Bukele gave for the Bitcoin laws that would attract Bitcoin tourists. So if you don't wanna let him down, then definitely come down and spend your cents here. Yeah, the o-the other thing you mentioned is the, the free Bitcoin investment that's in the, did something he promised. I don't think there are any details about that yet. that's, that's also sort of a common threat where, you know, there are a lot of, promises or a And see how that plays out. but that is some, same, the other example would be, photovoltaic mining, for example, which everyone is sporting in their avatar. I don't know if that's actually gonna happen, I don't know if that's actually gonna be feasible or cost efficient, and I haven't been able to discover any details about that or any concrete plans. But, you know, maybe it's like the Chivo wallet, where one day it's just there, and then it works half. Or maybe this time it'll work great. We'll have to see.

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Yeah, I mean, I, I think, I think Bitcoin is, or money in general is very much an emergent property. I'm, I'm very much a Hayekian in that sense. I think that's, that's how money works in the same way that language works. You know, people speak language because they want to, not because it's mandated. In fact, if you mandate a language, then people might get angry. We've seen that in Ca- Catalonia, for example, region in Spain, where they wanted to mandate Spanish and people took the streets. language I, I think the most the governments can do is create an equal playing field for, you know, so they're creating an equal playing field for the dollar and the Bitcoin, which, which is good, I think. Ideally, they'd get rid of all legal tender laws, but that's another story. so they can do that and they can sort of offer, you know, fair regulation and or no regulation again, ideally, but let's just say fair regulation for now. And then it's really up to the people to adopt it or not. And It's up to people to discover if Bitcoin, you know, is really gonna benefit them or not, and I personally suspect that it will grow, same as other countries of course, but, you know, now that Salvador is creating this environment, you know, a fertile environment, and I think that, that could really benefit Salvadorans, but it's definitely gonna, not gonna be an overnight thing, it's gonna be years before it, it, it grows, and like you said, two steps forward, one step back, you know?

Yeah, and actually even on that same theme of being a Hayekian, I think Hayek also did write and speak about this idea of to the extent that governments exist, that they shouldn't be thinking of themselves like a, like a top-down architect, they should see themselves more like a gardener, right? You're sort of tilling and you're, you're making a good environment for the people to go and I think that's kind of aligned with what you were just saying there, that it should be to the extent that you think government should exist or not, I mean, obviously I'm a exist, it should be trying to minimize that, trying to set up a good environment for people who can then go build the products and build the services and all of those things. yeah, so, so yeah, exactly. So that's, so that's a good

thing about this law. That's, that's what I really like about this law, that it is doing that. And then we don't have to get into the, that again. But what sort of contradicts that is that mandatory part of it, like that shouldn't be part of it if you just want to provide

a

We've got to get into, and you touched on this earlier, is the whole remittance thing, right? Now, let me set the stage a little bit. There has been very conflicting and different views, right? So if you talk to, say, someone like Jack Malas of Strike, or if you talk to, you know, Most of us who are Bitcoin bullish will be like, "Yeah, it's free remittance now, and it's cheap, and it's fast." But if you talk to, let's say, Steve Hanke, right? Someone who's meant to be a free market economist, but he will be out here saying, "No, it sh- they should be doing a currency board and look how cheap Western Union is." And he'll put it like, "Oh, see, the cur- because you're having to convert back and forth to the US dollar each time, you're paying a conversion fee,

What's the reality or what's the real nuance on the ground there, in terms of using Bitcoin for remittances?

Well,

I mean,

the obvious thing first, the obvious thing is that if you don't convert from dollars and back into dollars, then clearly Bitcoin is superior for remittances because it costs the fraction of a cent, it costs, you know, a Lightning fee at this point to send money from anywhere in the world to El Salvador. Maybe that will increase over time, you know, scaling is still an issue even with Lightning. But at the very least, we can objectively say that at this point, if you use Lightning and people just spend the Bitcoin here, then remittance-- remittance isn't even a term that should be used anymore, same as, you know, long distance calls. It's just you-- we get on Skype or whatever. It's, it's, it's a thing of the past. So would remittance fees be? Now, if you get into his point that if you wanna convert from dollars to Bitcoin and then back to dollars, I think it gets a lot more complicated and nuanced. So one of the things he argues, what he took as an example was basically the pre Bitcoin law remittance fees. So he would assume, I don't know what his exact, I don't know what his assumption were for buying Bitcoin, maybe took the most expensive example there, Coinbase or whatever the most expensive example is, and then send the money here and then he probably assumed the highest possible transaction fee on chain or something, and then he went here and then the highest fee if you go to an ATM, which were in the- It's, you know, could be pretty steep. They, they could charge five percent or maybe even more at some of the ATMs, you know, a month ago. Now that has changed now with the Bitcoin law, because now you can exchange your Bitcoin here in two dollars for free, which I did. So I know for a fact that that's possible. There's no denying that. The more nuance or, you know, if you wanna get more into it, then the question is, okay, and we mentioned this, what's really happening is the government is subsidizing that. It's free The question is, alright, how much is the government actually paying for that? Are they paying less than the ATMs were before, maybe because they got better routes or they get bulk discounts or I don't know how that works exactly? that's a much harder question to answer. Like, is the taxpayer just paying these costs now and would it in fact indeed still be cheaper overall if people used Western Union? I don't have the answer to that, and the, the reason I don't have the answer to that is in part because the government Government again isn't giving any transparency when it comes to these kinds of things. They're not, yeah, they didn't put out a research report where they detailed what it was costing them exactly to do this or what it was costing them before to get dollar bills in the country and how that compares and what the math is and, you know, why this is cheap. They didn't put that out. So we don't, I don't know, I don't think Steve Hanke know, knows, w-w- he's making a- set of assumptions and these assumptions may or may not hold up. I will say that it's, I, I think, and this is for example also Jack Maillard's argument that For, especially for lower amounts, Bitcoin is actually and Lightning is actually a much better solution because there's this base fee for mithens. So you, whatever the amount is, you have to pay eight dollars or whatever it is. So if you're transmitting ten thousand dollars, then maybe these eight dollars, you know, don't really make much of a difference. But if you're transmitting thirty, then all of a sudden these eight dollars make a big difference, and with Lightning you don't have that starting fee. So And the five percent is still the five percent on the other end. So for small remittances, it might actually be better to, use Bitcoin. Now, as you hear, I'm kind of speculating and thinking out loud because I do think that's all we can do at this point. We don't have the exact numbers. So the government is subsidizing it, so as long as they're doing that, then it's obviously cheaper. Other than that, you know, even if the government wouldn't subsidize it, which I might prefer, just ideologically speaking, then it would be Anyone writes in their paper for Johns Hopkins University or whatever, people can just have the choice and pick whatever the cheapest option is. Right now, I think it's hard to say what is actually going on behind the scenes and therefore what is actually cheaper or in which cases it makes sense, in which case it doesn't. I do think Steve Hanke gave a very one-sided example

and that's probably not really accurate of, I mean, and look, I guess setting aside the ideological objection to government subsidizing things, it is, I mean, we wouldn't say, "Oh, Well, I mean, the governments make the roads, right? We wouldn't, like it is, I guess, quote-unquote, free to use the roads, and the people can, civilians can use roads, right? So in the same way, we would say, "Well, civilians of El Salvador can, you know, use Bitcoin, and it-- yes, it's government subsidized, but at least it's free to them." Yes, no, that's,

that's a very good point. That-- no, I agree, that's a very good point that, the government

Why do they subsidize this and why don't they subsidize Western Union remittances, for example? There's still like a choice of what the government's doing. And maybe, and this is me very much speculating, I think that maybe the reason they're, they're subsidizing Bitcoin in particular is because they recognize that being a dollarized country and being dependent on the United States and the US dollar and the Federal Reserve policy is really harming the country, and they recognize that, and that's why they've- I figured, okay, we're gonna subsidize and we're gonna help bootstrap Bitcoin here because that would actually be a way out. That's a much bigger issue, and interestingly, while that's definitely something that people will discuss on your podcast and that people will discuss, that your listeners will know about, that, piece of the argument, that part of the argument has not been focalized here at all, basically. It's not part of the pro-- It's like no one, well, I don't wanna over-- I don't wanna say no one, but it's as big of a Of a topic that is on Bitcoin Twitter, here no one speaks about it, including the government. There was even this part of the initial drafts of the government that Jack Malters, read on stage at Bitcoin twenty-one, twenty twenty-one, where he, where, where it specified that Federal Reserve policy was harming El Salvador or something like that, that was removed from the law. So is that because they don't wanna ruffle feathers? Maybe, I don't know. Is that because they changed their mind on that? Also possible, I don't know. But it is definitely notable that that argument has been almost completely absent here, even though to me it sounds like that is actually the biggest argument in favor of, you know, offering an alternative to the dollar.

Yeah, interesting stuff. And I guess you-- we could also argue that by supporting a Bitcoin network, maybe arguably they're sort of less choosing winners, right? Whereas if they were to subsidize Western Union, they're kind of picking a winner and just giving money to this company, whereas if they sort of say, "Hey, here's the Bitcoin and Lightning network, you're allowed to use whatever wallet you want, but here's the government one if you, for whatever reason, can't choose, or cannot use a private..." market solution. Maybe there's a little bit of an argument on that aspect, but I think the broader point as well that I think the Steve Hankies of the world and others like that ignore is the convenience factor as well, because, as, yeah, people would point out, even people down in Bitcoin Beach and El Zonte would point out that, let's say, grandma or mom back home has to go and ride the bus for a few hours to go get the, get that money out, whereas if, if they use a Bitcoin wallet, they've just got it right there on their And although we don't really like the coercion aspect of Article seven, they can now directly spend the Bitcoin, and that's an important part, right? Because without that ability to directly spend Bitcoin, it-- you can't close the loop.

Yes, but that-- I agree, but that does come back to sort of the original argument that if people actually use Bitcoin, then remittance isn't even an issue anymore, then that word doesn't even make sense anymore. If people do want to get dollars, which was sort of the base assumption for Steve Hanks' paper, then they, in that case, still to go to a ATM and get the dollars out, so that might still require a bus ride, and that might still be a place where the gangs sort of hang out to see who's getting a lot of money. So in that sense, I would say it's probably equal. you can of course keep the dollars in your app as well, you can keep a dollar amount, dollar balance in your app. so maybe you could, counter the argument in that way that people don't actually have to get the cash anymore, they can just pay each other in dollars through the two voi- App, if the Chiefo app works. so, maybe if you wanna make that argument, that they, that then it holds up, yeah. But, but if you want cash, then the problem

is still similar, I would say. Right. And actually, I'm also curious your thoughts on this also, and just your experience on the ground. What's been your experience with talking to Salvadorans and people on the ground in terms of how they manage, how much USD they hold versus how much Bitcoin at Sats they hold? Is it sort of like people keep their tips in Bitcoin and Based off, they're holding USD or what's kind of the sense you have just from discussions?

I mean, I don't think there's one strategy. Some people are happy to hold Bitcoin. I've met people that would accept Bitcoin on one day, but not on another because they thought Bitcoin was going down and that's the day they don't want to accept Bitcoin, but then if you were there a week before, they did. So that would be a case. I mean, I've met, Salvadorans that are basically trading, that are just trying to time the markets so, you Keep it in Bitcoin when they think it goes up, and they tranfer, transfer two dollars when they think it's gonna go down. I don't, I, it's not clear to me that they fully recognize that they're just currency trading, that they're trading Bitcoin, but that is what they're doing.

a-and definitely also just, especially now with this new, with since the law has gone into effect in these big chains, McDonald's and Pizza Hut and Starbucks and, and all those, I'm pretty sure that they just- Converted into dollars immediately, although, I mean, maybe, maybe they'd-- maybe McDonald's would surprise me again, but I, I'm assuming they're, they're taking it in dollars. But, in general, to, to answer your more-- your question more generally, I do think- Volatility is clearly the number one problem. It's also, one of the, so one of the things is that, one of the arguments, another argument that I haven't mentioned is that there's this perception that Bitcoin is for the rich. Here, when you go to these protests, that's sort of one of the things you'll hear, that Bitcoin is for the rich. One thing they might say is because not everyone has internet or because not everyone has, cell phones. I'm not sure I fi-find that argument very convincing. But another argument they will give is that if you're rich, you can stomach the volatility. Well, if you're really living paycheck to paycheck and you need your food to eat, then you're not gonna be able to take any volatility risk, and therefore Bitcoin is, better suited for the rich. Now, that is an argument that I think is like, that actually holds up. That- But yeah, it's true, if you have a lot of money, you can stomach the volatility better. So I do think volatility is definitely the number one challenge, if I have to mention one number one challenge for a country like El Salvador, it's, it's the volatility of Bitcoin. you know, when you, when you, when you price it in day-to-day goods, which most people have to price their living expenses in, yeah, one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, it, it's true and sounds nice on social media, but it doesn't help them very much if they wanna buy pupusas and, and, and the price drops by ten percent.

Yeah, right. And as, as their expenses are, you know, denominated in US dollars, whether that's rent or employees' wages or, you know, food products that You, you know, your wholesale cost of what you're buying, and I can understand that aspect, and it might just be a, a matter of time there as well for people to get accustomed to the volatility, and then at some level, whether they consciously think about it or just kind of do it without really thinking, have a small portion of Bitcoin that they hold, some sat, and then maybe they keep their US dollar for their kind of day-to-day stuff, but over time-

Yeah, that's the, that's the positive side of things, of course, which I of course forgot to mention, As I tend to do apparently. But yeah, no, it is true that, you know, Bitcoin as savings technology, it's also savings technology for people here, and up till now they had no savings technology. They had no, they had no other option to save at all. So it does now offer this to people, so if they can't set anything apart, then now they actually can set something apart, because now they have something to save in, and that is affecting, you know, that's something that, the people from El Zonte mentioned, Bitcoin Beach, that I'll mention a

That they actually do do that, so they're, they're now starting to get more into a savings mindset, and that's, that's very interesting, yeah, that's a positive, side of things, of volatility.

Yeah, that's a really good way to put it, and I'll tell you what, it's like, here's the good counter argument then to the, the protesters in that example, because they would say, "Oh, it's only for the rich," but think about it this way. Right now, if you can't access buying property or stocks, again, which

Stack Sats, you can stack a fraction of Bitcoin, a small amount, and it's actually accessible in that way. Of course, it'll take time for people to learn that and to understand that and to, to, as we say, have a long-term view, but I think the whole savings technology narrative, as our friend Pierre Rochard has, famously popularized, is an important one. I think actually, and also, in, in, an important idea as well for people out there who wanna support, El Salvadorans, as my friend Hasmukh

The price of Bitcoin, if, if you become part of the quote-unquote DCA army and you help, the price stabilize or steadily be rising over time, then that will provide a better experience for anyone who's saving into Bitcoin. And so you're sort of helping deal with that volatility problem if you're joining the DCA army. Yeah, to that point, or I'm not

sure if it's exactly to that point, but you just mentioned, yeah, so let's get back to the protesters again. Like, yes, one of the arguments I've also heard is, you know What are you doing bringing Bitcoin here? So that suggests that they're really looking at Bitcoin as sort of a luxury product, while I, and I think you and probably a lot of your listeners will think, you know, part of the reason that the country is so impoverished, or at least it doesn't help, that the country is dollarized and the dollars being devalued by a different country, and now in a pretty perverse way, El Salvador sort of paying the bill for that, that's not helping making the country richer either. So, you know, if you, if you see, yeah, you Bitcoin has a potential to actually get out of that cycle. Yeah. but yeah, l-like I mentioned, like I mentioned, that's one of the arguments that just hasn't been-- I, I've not s-heard it or seen it basically anywhere, including from the government. It's, it's, it's, it's not one of the arguments for Bitcoin that's being exposed here very much. A-and, a-and that's how you get into a situation where people see that it's a, it's a funny thing, it's a bit of a luxury product and a

Well, I mean, the flip side of it is the opportunities. That if there are businesses who can sell products and, you know, wealthy bitcoiners who wanna come to El Salvador and spend their satz, that's opportunities, that's jobs for Salvadorans. So that's, I guess, that's the, flip side to that particular piece there. I also know you were a part of the Bitcoin meetup in El-- in Sal-- sorry, in San Salvador. So can you tell us a little bit about that? How did that go down? What was the sentiment there?

That's I, it was probably about eight weeks ago, six weeks ago, somewhere around that time, that me and a couple of bitcoiners, there are bitcoiners just visiting the country every week now because, as, at least for the past couple of months that was the case, and in one weekend, me and a couple of other bitcoiners, we went to El Tunco, which is one of the beach towns, it's close to El Zonte, but it's more geared towards, their parties there at night, and, and you can have a, a beer. At one point we were having breakfast with, it was Moritz from Specter, Nicolas from, Galloy and, Fode from Senegal. he, he just got a grant from, the Human Rights Foundation to set up, a course there, for, to help Senegalese work with Bitcoin. Anyways, Moritz sort of jokingly suggested to me, he said, "Aaron, you know what you should do? You should organize a meetup. That way, you don't have to find all the Bitcoiners in

That will make, that will make your job easier. So we laughed for, you know, we laughed, it was sort of a joke, I guess, but then we, you know, we sort of talked about it, and we realized that was actually a very good idea, and we started putting together this meetup. So we put up a meetup page and picked a location, Bitcoin Magazine, I figured Bitcoin Magazine would actually want to sponsor it, so, you know, because we want to help the community and give back to the community in these kinds of ways and support,

To sponsor, and then the first time, I think, we went, we went to a steak restaurant, of course, that, that's obviously the first place you go to for a meetup, and, I think about eighteen people showed up, something like that, and it was a nice fun, and a bunch of, Salvadoran people showed up, and a bunch of, fellow travelers, and, so we decided to do it again, and then the second time, Galois sponsored, and that time, we just went for beers, and And, Bitriver sponsored, and there were probably more than a hundred people. we, we sort of reserved one part of a bar, but the whole meetup spilled over to the whole bar, and it was, it was amazing, it was really cool to see all these international bitcoiners show up for this, but also a lot of locals that showed up, and, yeah, it was a very, very nice end of, of the Bitcoin Day with, a, a party with bitcoiners in the, in the middle of the jungle. In the middle Window area, I guess, I should say.

I'm a big fan of Bitcoin meetups and I, I always try to pop into them or I've, you know, yeah, I went back when I was in Sydney, I was an organizer for them. I think they're a great way to grow the scene and grow the, knowledge and give education as well. So that's, awesome to hear. Yeah, and they're so,

they're so easy to start as well, which is nice. Like it doesn't take that much organization, just pick a spot, pick a,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So definitely, listeners, I encourage you get involved, either start a meetup or go join the local one and, help out in whatever way you can. And also, I'm curious on Bitcoin companies coming to El Salvador. I, I presume you've seen a lot of this. What's been your, what, what have you seen there?

Yeah, so there are a couple of companies that are, or a bunch of companies that are, opening like a second or third office here, or, you know, hire country manager. Bitrefill Strike, also in office, both of them. Paxful has got some feet on the ground here. I-Bags, which is from Guatemala, so it was already close, but they're, at least partly, settling in El Salvador as well. also just, I've met a lot of people from companies that aren't necessarily moving the company here, but a lot of interest from everywhere. Obviously, Atina, which are doing the ATMs, although I think that's, I don't think, I don't think that has been officially

that got the ATM deal. speaking of which, it's still not clear who built the Chiva wallet. There are probably multiple companies involved there, but it gets back to the lack of transparency from the governments. There's, there's very little transparency about these kinds of things. But, yeah, getting back to your point about companies, Wells, I'm, I'm almost certainly forgetting at least one, maybe several. but, I mean, it's small, it's not like, you know, it's not like I've not met a company that's moving its Help with the rollout or, so, so it's creating jobs here as well, at least some jobs, so that's good for the local economy as well.

Yeah, that's cool. So I guess, a-and that's the other thing as well, because this is a global thing, there, there are, you know, developers all over the world who are working on some Bitcoin wallet or Lightning wallet somewhere that's helping in that way as well. So-

I mean, that's, that's the benefits of pl-plugging into an open system like Bitcoin, right? That it's open source

Like as an example, you know, Roy and the team at Breeze, making their Breeze, software in Israel, but anyone in El Salvador can just spin up a wallet and, and it's, it's got an in-built merchant POS terminal, so you can just open Breeze, start the merchant per-terminal, and boom, you're receiving Sats, so all over the Lightning Network. So that's the one example. And it will probably--

And it will probably work a lot better than the Chiva wallets as well. So there you go. Oh, there you go. Sorry, A bit too much on the Tivo wallets, but it is a piece of crap. Well,

I'm sure they'll, they'll, I'm sure they'll improve it. Maybe they can get their finger

down. I'm sure they're improving it, it, you know, maybe, maybe we shouldn't expect too much from them after one week. Go Team Bukele, let's, let's make the Tivo wallet work.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I wanted to ask you actually about, Bitcoin Core twenty-two, version twenty-two. So you wrote an article Or version twenty-two.

The high level comments, I mean, as you know, Bitcoin Core has a new release every six months. I think this one took, took a little bit longer actually, but, it's scheduled to have a new release every six month. so that means they, after, you know, six months, there's a cutoff point, and then whatever is ready is in there, and whatever isn't is a work in progress. So it's not like Bitcoin Core software is released, you know, like some commercial software when they have a new feature ready or it

Interesting things ready for this one, I think one of the most notable ones is, hardware wallet support in the GUI, in the user interface is now basically complete. You still need, HWI, hardware wallet integration add-on sort of software, but then you can just use it from the Bitcoin War, Bitcoin Core wallet. it was already available in the client, sorry, am I saying that right? In the command line interface, sorry. but, that, that was obviously, as accessible to regular users, so now it's available in Wallets, so, you know, you can link your Trezor or Ledger or OpenDime or whatever it is, and use the full security of Bitcoin Core. So that's cool. it's, it's Taproot ready. Taproot, the protocol upgrade will go live in November, and Bitcoin Core twenty-one point one was already Taproot ready, of course, the minor release, but this is the first major release that's Taproot ready. There's also some, minor, there's some minor Taproot support in it, but that, you know, that's baby steps Yeah, exactly. But you can't use like full Taproot functionality, like with all the smart contract stuff or anything like that. It's, you can use Taproots for regular transactions essentially, and you can label your Taproot addresses as such, under the hood, these kinds of things. it's, it's com- Bitcoin Core is now compatible with I2P, which is The, it's like the Tor like, I2P is a little bit like Tor. I don't know the details, I don't know what the difference is exactly, from what I understand, Tor is more centralized when it comes to network mapping, and I2P has a more decentralized solution for that, while it's also a little bit better for hidden services, a bit more geared towards hidden services. So if you never need to leave the privacy network, then it's a bit better for that, while Tor is more, also suitable if you wanna... Connect with the regular internet. let's see what else. Yeah, there was, I think the last big one was the test

mempool except.

Oh, yeah, that's, yeah. Well, again, that's, another baby step, it's like a small step. So the, the bigger idea there, the bigger plan is that, right now, sometimes if your transaction gets stuck, so you're receiving a transaction, but it has a very low fee and therefore it's stuck in a mempool, you can actually speed it up by spending the coins With a higher transaction, transaction fee, sorry. And then what a miner will do is it won't just look at transactions individually to see which pay the highest fees, but it will actually look at combinations of transactions. So a miner will be able to figure out, you know what, if I confirm this low fee transaction, then I can also confirm this high fee transaction, and therefore that, that's more profitable than picking two other transactions. So that's a way for users to get their transactions unstuck. This is sometimes very imp- Important in context of something like the Lightning Network, where if you, you know, sometimes you need to get a transaction confirmed within a certain timeframe, because otherwise your counterparty can claim the funds because, can steal from you or things, yeah? Yeah. So sometimes very important that you can use this functionality. Now, the problem is that what I just discussed is about which transactions are included in blocks, but before a transaction is included in a block, it must first be inclu- first must, it must first be included in a mempool, so in the mempools of nodes for it to even make its way to miners for them to include it in the block. And for mempools, that logic that I just explained child pays for parent doesn't work. So now sometimes your, the transaction you're receiving might have such a low fee that it doesn't even make it in mempools, but then you also can't spend it up, speed it up because the logic that you-- that, that the combination is considered doesn't apply yet. The long term plan is that this will, that this will work for mempools as well, so that the child And logic will come to work for mempools, and so you can use it to get, you know, for the safety of the lightning network, for example. This is a multi-step progress to get there, and one of the steps that's been included in this Bitcoin Core release is that you can sort of test this on your own node, so you can create multiple transactions, test it on your own node, see if your mempool would accept it, and, you know, that's sort of just running a test essentially. But over longer term, this should also be, rolled out On the peer-to-peer network, for example, and then you can actually start sending packages of transactions. So these are the packages. So you're sending two packages as one, two transactions as one package, and then it will be considered as, as such. So one baby step on that, direction. Now, there are of course many more subtle changes and bug fixes and Bitcoin Core just improves in all sorts of ways, but, in my article, what you're referring to, I think I, unless I'm forgetting one, but I think I indeed picked these four as sort of The most notable ones. for more, you can just re-read the release notes, of course.

Of

course.

Yeah. Yeah, but I think, that's a good one for listeners who maybe you're not as technical and you just wanna get a high level, get a few ideas, what were the big changes that came in this recent major release of Bitcoin Core, which is the ref-reference implementation of Bitcoin, and yeah, it's just all-- there's all these little progress being made along the way, and, it's interesting to see, yeah, with test,

One of the concerns, like hy-hypothetically, could be that, you know, s-it, you don't wanna open it up that someone can like DOS the network or shut down someone's node by sending like malicious, you know, packages together. So it's kind of like, how do you intelligently do this and things like that. So, that's all, really interesting stuff to see.

Yeah, and, and of course, the, the one that, the one that's maybe most interesting or most important is actually Taproot. So anyone that hasn't upgraded to Bitcoin The time to upgrade because the protocol upgrade will go live and you're not using full node security if you're not enforcing Taproots starting somewhere mid-November. So, you know, if you haven't upgraded yet, now is a very good time, just upgrade to Bitcoin Core 22 and you're good to go.

Yeah, that's a good call out there, Aaron. so yeah, listeners, make sure you check out your, if you've got a node package, see if they've-- most of them would have put up the update, or they will soon, and so you can update your package there, or you can, you know, if you're running it manually, obviously you know how to do that, to go and get that updated and get up to speed, 'cause there's lots of things happening in the Bitcoin land, whether that's in El But, Aaron, before we- Or,

or it's, Bitcoin, Bitcoin twenty, twenty-two. Can I seal that for, yeah, for a second?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. There you go. I'm, I'm excited for that.

April, coming up, biggest Bitcoin conference in the world. Yeah,

yeah, Bitcoin twenty-two coming up is April, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And it's gonna be up in Miami, right? Yes. So, I'm looking-- I was so upset that I missed twenty twenty-one, but I'm, you know, twenty-one was amazing. I'm gonna make sure I'm there for twenty-twenty-two. It was really

overwhelmingly large, and,

yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think it's just a good chance to meet, lots of fellow like-minded Bitcoiners, right? So, and just to get a sense, and you can sort of meet a lot of the Bitcoin Twitter people who you've been, following online or you might've been interacting with them, Like Bitcoin Twitter comes to life. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, and, I guess someone else described it like that. I don't remember who. Yeah. so that's a good chance to meet people. And, yeah, of course, go and check out bitcoinmagazine dot com. And Aaron, where can, people find you? And of course, where can people find your podcast as well?

Yeah, so people can find me on Twitter, obviously, Aaron van W. the podcast is called Bitcoin Explained nowadays. It was, it It used to be called the Van Wirdum Schurz NATO, we rebranded it, now it's Bitcoin Explained, just a Bitcoin magazine. Oh, we're bringing out a new print publication, in a couple weeks, there will be a print publication which will also include my story on El Salvador, so check that out.

Fantastic. Well, Aaron, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Stefan. Yeah, it's been great chatting with you. Thanks, Aaron. Get the show notes and the transcript over at stephanlivera dot com slash three o five and make sure to share the show with your friends who want to learn about Bitcoin. Thanks, and I'll see you in the citadels.