Okay. So, as we already said, Bitcoin must be preserved and improved in three ways. Universal decentralized money. So, Bitcoin has three sort of principles hat define its identity. We must preserve and improve univers universality. We must preserve and improve decentralization. We must preserve and improve Bitcoin's monetary quality or moneyiness is another word that people like to use for that. anything that helps uh that improves these qualities helps Bitcoin win. Anything that harms one or more of them can be considered an attack on Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin loses, humanity loses. So, this is very very important um subject to I think I hope to most Bitcoiners. Bitcoin must work for every human being, not just banks, governments, funds, and wealthy investors. Ordinary people must be able to spend, earn, withdraw, self-custody, and verify. this this is something that we have to continue working towards because it's it's something that Bitcoin does not scale to a global user base and remain decentralized as it is now. but with improvements in technology and Moore's law, we should expect this to happen in the next, you know, few decades probably. So but all we have to do is keep our eye on the on the goal, right? t the goal. The goal is universality. custodial exposure and payment processing is not enough. These are choke points where authorities can come in and uh um take control of the system. the old financial system must not be rebuilt on top of Bitcoin. Otherwise, we failed.
Bitcoin must remain decentralized. No developer group uh minor or custodian or government can become Bitcoin's ruler. Influence is not authority. Is much harder to control hundreds of thousands of small node runners and pleb merchants than to control a handful of large nodes. Decentralization is what makes Bitcoin neutral. A lot of people say BIP 110 is you anti-neutrality or something like that. And you know, our response is no, it's pro- neutrality because we're trying to make sure that Bitcoin stays decentralized. Decentralization is what makes Bitcoin neutral. Bitcoin's particular consensus rules are actually not neutral. They are they are geared towards Bitcoin being better money. decentralization prevents the the money printer from returning in another form. ust said, we want Bitcoin to be better money over time. Also, um, Bitcoin has not yet outco competed the dollar. So, we know that generally speaking, the US dollar is considered to be better money than Bitcoin. As Bitcoiners, we know that this is not true. But the the rest of the world does not believe us yet. So, we have to continue improving Bitcoin's moneyiness. that's its unique purpose, universal decentralized money. It's not a good database, uh, image host, token platform, or permanent file server. Other systems can perform those functions better. Bitcoin's consensus and policy rules should serve its monetary mission. This is what I was saying. Bitcoin's bit Bitcoin's rules are actually not neutral, right? Like like the the enforcement of the rules is neutral because of Bitcoin's centralization. But the rules of Bitcoin themselves are are not neutral, right? They're pro- Bitcoin. They're pro- money. They're pro- decentralization. They help Bitcoin improve and fulfill its its function. Again, Bitcoin defeats fiat by becoming better money. Bitcoin's principles should not be for sale. The only way we win is if these three principles are not for sale, not for short-term fees, speculative demand, institutional improve institutional approval, not even for a much higher Bitcoin price. Of course, we know if we if we succeed eventually, then eventually in the long term, Bitcoin's price will be higher than it ever could be if if we uh if we sell out our principles. so as we said, as I said earlier, NGU is great, but you know, come for the NGU, stay for the actual monetary revolution. so as a thought experiment, imagine, so imagine you're an infinite money printer or you're you're you have an infinite money printer and Bitcoin is coming after you and trying to out compete you. How how how much you try to stop Bitcoin from doing that or to kill Bitcoin or or or stop it in its tracks? Well, you can print a bunch of money, right? You could print Bitcoin's entire market cap. You could say, "Hey, Bitcoiners, I have $1 trillion or10 trillion." and I'll give this to you if you make Bitcoin small and unscalable. So, what would your response be if somebody offered you, you know, $10 trillion to make Bitcoin small and unscalable? This guy, this guy says no. Yeah, I agree with that guy. Yeah. No, we should say no. We should not sell out our principles. We want Bitcoin to be to to be to overtake the the money printer and replace it. if they offer us a trillion dollars to make Bitcoin centralized, should we do that? No. If they offer us a trillion dollars to make Bitcoin something that isn't money, should we do that? No. Exactly. If we compromise any one of these principles because someone offers us enough money, we have sold out. We have sold out our principles. We have sold out Bitcoin and we have sold out the future of humanity. We must not sell out. Bitcoin does not fix itself. Consensus rules do not interpret, enforce or repair themselves. Bitcoin survives because people understand its purpose. Its principles are not protected by mathematics alone. They survive because node owners value them and enforce them. Culture is therefore part of Bitcoin's security model.
So another thought experiment, imagine there's an inflation bug in the software that somebody accidentally introduces. Would we say that inflation is legitimate now because consensus allows it? Would we call the bug would we call fixing the bug censorship? No. I think the answer to to those questions is obviously no. We would just fix it, right? We would consider it a bug and we would say let's fix it. And if core refused to fix it, node runners would route around core with a UASF. The rules exist because we enforce them. The 21 million limit is protected by node runners. If the culture stops caring, the rules can decay with it. So again, if there's an inflation bug and the culture says, "Oh, that looks fine." Then what happens? The bug doesn't get fixed and now Bitcoin has arbitrary inflation and now Bitcoin is terrible money. so again, culture is part of the security model, right? We have to make sure that our cultural values are solid. If the culture stops caring, the rules can decay with it. If Bitcoiners forget that Bitcoin is money, inflation double spins can eventually become acceptable. Bitcoin does not protect itself. When Bitcoin breaks, it is up to us to fix it. Many developers understandably treat Bitcoin as a profession. But for many node runners, Bitcoin is a way of life. Running a node is closer to censorship than censorship. Running a node is closer to citizenship than consuming a product. For many of us, Bitcoin is preserving Bitcoin is a duty to humanity. there's this notion that oh, you just run a node because you're selfishly running a node. And that's kind of true, but that isn't everything there is in life, right? We want to feel like we're part of something bigger than us. Bitcoin is not about us. Bitcoin is h uh our our descendants and the rest of the world and the future of humanity. um we are providing a valuable service for humanity by running a node and making Bitcoin function properly. So how did core threat core 30 threaten this? Core30 um did more than just change relay policy. It changed what Bitcoin officially treats as legitimate. It moved large file data storage toward normal supported use. Policy defaults send a cultural signal which has a real effect on Bitcoin's actual purpose. Core developers may say otherwise, but actions speak louder than words. There's three categories of transactions. There's invalid transactions. There's valid but abusive or unsupported transactions. And there's valid and legitimate or supported transaction types. Invalid just means the consensus rule say your block is invalid if it includes a transaction like that. so you literally cannot include that transaction in a block otherwise you're not in you're not participating in Bitcoin. The second category is the domain of um standardness or default policy. And the this is a um uh Satoshi deliberately left category one uh very very broad because um if it's too narrow then we have to hard fork to add to to loosen the rules and add more functionality. So he left it very broad and then within that very very broad scope of consensus um he disabled pretty much everything and that was uh is standard um that became the standard rules. So that's that's category two is where relay relay policy works. and that that dictates what things are valid but we don't support or we consider to be an attack or an abuse. And then category 3 is just valid and legitimate or supported. These are payments, right? Because Bitcoin is money. It's supposed to be used for payments. So payments go in in category 3. Before core30, data spam was valid but abusive. So it was in category
part 2 of Chris Guida's talk