WBD700 Audio Transcription
What Nostr Did with Ben Arc
Release date: Wednesday 23rd August
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Ben Arc. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Ben Arc is a free open-source software advocate and founder of LNbits. In this interview, we discuss a range of subjects covering poverty, politics, and technology. We talk about the value of hard work, the impact of Brexit, the potential of decentralized platforms like Nostr, privacy concerns, censorship on social media platforms, and the importance of freedom of speech.
“The model we have now which is corrupt and a bit evil, that will probably still exist, it’s just you have a choice as a user to not use that model.”
— Ben Arc
Interview Transcription
Ben Arc: I don't know about you but we were poor as fuck for years --
Peter McCormack: Yeah, totally.
Ben Arc: -- hand-to-mouth stuff, which looking back now, was fun but at the time kind of sucked.
Peter McCormack: Well, I think what it did, because he was totally unplanned, and I was like, "Right, knuckle down now".
Ben Arc: Yeah, same. And I was a flake, man, before the boy. I mean, had I not had a son, I think I just would have remained a flake.
Peter McCormack: Really?
Ben Arc: Yeah, just been some stoner or something. How about you; did it snap you?
Peter McCormack: No, I was ambitious, I always worked hard. But I was like, I knew then. What it was, the schools I know in Bedford, I knew what they're like; I was like, "Right, I have to make sure I can get him into that school, I need that much money", and I just worked and worked, probably to the cost of my marriage, worked too much stress, stressed myself out. But it was interesting, because a lot of my friends were, you know, I'm 25 and raising a kid, and my friends are all on holiday, Thailand, travelling.
Ben Arc: Oh yeah, it's like pre-retirement, I always think, in their 20s and they're off gallivanting around. And they're sitting around in restaurants and having coffees and it's all really quiet and it's like, you know when people, their kids are all grown up and they're retired?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Ben Arc: It's like, that but in their 20s. That's what I used to think of it as, because I was the same as you, it was just over there. It's not that I particularly wanted it at the time or anything. Occasionally, I'd be like, "Well, it looks quite nice, not really responsibilities!"
Peter McCormack: Well, they had all that and so I just worked. And now I've got to that point, life's not too difficult now. It's busy but it's not too difficult. My son's 19. If I want to go out, he can look after my daughter. She's approaching an age she can stay at home. I'm in the last stretch! One of my friends, he's my age, he's got a 5-year-old and 3-year-old.
Ben Arc: Yeah, it's too much.
Peter McCormack: He's in for the long run, so it's one or the other.
Ben Arc: Yeah, it's funny, having a second one younger, financially we're better off, which is great. We have less energy, which isn't so good.
Peter McCormack: More wisdom.
Ben Arc: There is more wisdom there. And also, I remember with my first, we were very worried, we wanted to give him firm boundaries, we wanted to be good parents. Because we were quite young, maybe we overcompensated too much. Whereas, with our second, I think it's probably true of any second child anyway, we're a little bit more relaxed, we kind of let her just get on with things and we're less intense. So, I think we were probably a little bit too intense with my first boy.
Peter McCormack: I think a lot of parents go through all these.
Ben Arc: Yeah, they go through the same things, don't they? What is really good about that big age gap is, you know how you see grandparents picking up the kids at the playground and they're really enjoying it, because that period of life is really nice, when you pick up your kids and there's other parents and you're chatting to them, and you kind of force hang out together because the kids are going to play together. And I just think it's a really lovely period in your life. And then when it ends, like what's happened to a lot of our friends, it's kind of sad that that's gone; whereas with us, we've got that second chance to do it but actually really savour it. We're not just all flying by, we're actually enjoying the moment.
Peter McCormack: I think I get the grandparent thing as well, because I've definitely sacrificed a lot of my kids' childhood with work. I mean I'm away a lot, I'm working a lot, but I'm I can see the retirement trajectory, right?
Ben Arc: Yeah, then you get to enjoy it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and so I won't be traveling like I am in five years, and certainly won't be in ten years. And in ten years, my son might have a child and I'm like, "Yeah, I'm around, I want to do this".
Ben Arc: Yeah, and on balance as well, it is important to show hard work, to show you're working hard, because that's what they emulate, that's what they end up doing when they're older. So, I think there is something to be said for them seeing you working hard, that's okay. I don't think you should feel bad about going away and working as well.
Peter McCormack: I had the youngest ever guest on the show yesterday.
Ben Arc: Who's that; Ben Weeks' kid?
Peter McCormack: No, Ben de Waal.
Ben Arc: Oh, Ben de Waal. His daughter's insane!
Peter McCormack: Right?
Ben Arc: I was like, "You're the best bitcoiner I've ever spoken to, and you're like 10!"
Peter McCormack: So, she's 12, right? So, were you in Prague; I can't even remember?
Ben Arc: Yeah, I was, yeah. I had a drink with her, I bought her a lemonade and we were chatting around this table, and the whole table was like, "This kid's too much, brain's too good!"
Peter McCormack: She's like a superstar. So, I was backstage before she was about to go on, and I was obviously MC, and before her was Saylor. I was thinking, "Come on, you're putting a 12-year-old after Saylor?"
Ben Arc: Yeah, no, it doesn't matter for her.
Peter McCormack: "That's a bit much".
Ben Arc: It's like, "Are you putting Saylor before the 12-year-old?!"
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, I hadn't seen her presentation at Adopting Bitcoin, and so when she came backstage, honestly, I actually apologised yesterday. I was like, I'd kind of already written her off. I was like, "Yeah, this is neat, you're going to do a kids' presentation on Bitcoin, yeah, whatever. How are you feeling; are you nervous?"
Ben Arc: "Me and my friends at school, we talk about Bitcoin"!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, whatever! And I was a bit dismissive, but in my head, but saying to her like, "Are you okay, are you feeling good?" She's fine, she went out, and I remember when she started I was like, "What?" I walked round and watched it and she blew my mind. So, I spoke to Ben and said, "She's got to come on", and when she was here I said, "Listen, you're not a novelty,
Ben Arc: No, it's not a gimmick novelty act, "If you were an adult, you would be justifiably successful".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, "You are on here, I've invited you for two reasons: one, out of merit; but two, there is a point here in that I can give this to my daughter and say listen to this".
Ben Arc: Yeah that's true.
Peter McCormack: And she's going to care more about that.
Ben Arc: That's true. My daughter would be the same as well, and she'd admire her, she'd be like, "Well, this girl's cool".
Peter McCormack: Exactly. But I mean, you saw her yesterday. A couple of times she blew my mind. One time Ben did. Do you know the genesis of her presentation?
Ben Arc: No.
Peter McCormack: So, they were going to Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador and she said to her dad, she said, "Dad, this is weird because I didn't adopt Bitcoin, it's just always been there". So, that's the genesis of her saying, "You guys go went from Blockbuster to DVD to streaming".
Ben Arc: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: "Well, you've gone from fiat to Bitcoin. Bitcoin's always been there for me". But there was another point, so we were talking about birthdays, she said she always remember her dad's birthday. I said, "I've got a cool birthday. Mine's 31 October". I was like, "You know, not coincidence, whitepaper day". And she's like, "No, it's destiny". And I was like, "All right".
Ben Arc: Intense!
Peter McCormack: She is, I mean, she is insanely smart. And then when she starts talking about Bitcoin, I'm like, "You talk about Bitcoin better than I do".
Ben Arc: Yeah. She'll go on stage and say like, "Fuck banks", or something. It was her opening remark. I think it was in maybe Amsterdam.
Peter McCormack: I hope so!
Ben Arc: Yeah. She went on stage and she was like, "I'm here to talk about Bitcoin", and then, "Fuck banks". And everyone went, "Yeah, fuck banks!"
Peter McCormack: 12 year old!
Ben Arc: The child said it!
Peter McCormack: We've just somehow started an interview without even introducing you and welcoming you back. So, it's quite interesting to go from Nigel Farage to Ben Arc. This might be the controversial one.
Ben Arc: Yeah. It's a good thing I didn't bump into him. So, as I was saying, I was in France the other week and I was in that queue, that big, long UK queue and I was thinking, "Nigel Farage!" I was almost going to turn around to everyone in the queue and say, "Right, who voted Brexit? Okay, fuck off. Thanks for this".
Peter McCormack: Maybe they should have two queues for the voted Brexit, and didn't vote Brexit.
Ben Arc: Yeah the 48%ers, yeah, we should get to go in the European queue.
Peter McCormack: I was at Glastonbury when that vote went through and I'd gone to bed and when I went to bed it was like, I don't know if you remember --
Ben Arc: Yeah, it changed.
Peter McCormack: -- the vote was, we were going to remain. I went to bed anyway, got up in the morning, got the kids up, went to get some breakfast as you do, your wellies through the mud, and there's a woman wandering around, she's crying her eyes out, distraught. I was like, "Kids, you just stay there, I'm going to go and see". I'm like, "Are you okay?" She's like, "No, we're leaving Europe". I was like, "Oh, okay. I didn't know that was what you were distraught about". Obviously found out we'd left and I voted -- well, I wrestled with it. I bet you didn't, but I did wrestle with it. I had Giacomo Zucco in my ear.
Ben Arc: I think the problem is that I don't underestimate Europe's potential to go to war with itself. It did twice in quite close succession and we can't forget that the European Union was partly formed to stop that from happening. And when you have countries which are separated and economically separate, then you have things like currency wars that then escalates into real war, and then can turn into world war, and you end up with your populist leaders, much like someone like Nigel Farage, who was a populist leader. And a lot of the vote was based on kind of a racist, tapping into a very dark part of society, and sort of venting some of that aggression. So, we had the Syrian Refugee Crisis and just poor Syrians who were walking across Europe to come to Britain because they thought it was a good place, a good safe place to be; and then you had Nigel Farage attacking that and then rallying people against it.
So, that was the thing that for me was a no-brainer. We'd got to vote to stay. It's not that the European Union doesn't need a lot of work and it's not like it's the best solution, but it stops us, it seems, it has stopped us from going to war with ourselves.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well that was a switch for me, so I wrestled with it a lot. It was during a time where I was thinking about Bitcoin a lot, thinking about small estates and individual sovereignty was an idea in my mind and then national sovereignty. I was really wrestling with it. My friend Noel, he listens to the show sometimes, I've called him up. I went to uni with him, he's ten years older than me, he's a bit wiser on some of these things than me, and I was talking about the economic reasons and the democratic reasons and he said, "Pete, you're missing the most important thing about the European Union. It's a peace project". And I was like, "Huh".
Ben Arc: Everyone forgot that.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well that's why I voted remain in the end.
Ben Arc: Yeah, I mean it's just dangerous not to, but there we are; we are where we are, we'll see where we end up. But I mean, I agree with you, there is obviously part of me which -- and so then we had COVID shortly afterwards. And us being outside of the European Union and being able to move quickly on our feet actually benefited us as a country. And then when it comes to currency as well, I wouldn't advocate that everyone uses the same currency per se. It's hard, because then you do end up with currency war. But like if you look at the economic crisis and then you look at the way the European Zone treated the Greeks, and you looked at Iceland, which is in a very similar position, but they were able to just create more money to keep the ball rolling to keep their economy moving, whereas Greece couldn't do that because they were using the euro.
So, there is something to be said definitely for countries -- because when it comes to a soft currency or a fiat currency, a country producing its own currency, they have different needs and wants at different times. And if you're using a soft currency, which you do have these extra properties and functions of, that you can do things like quantitative easing, you can create more of it, then those countries are going to need that at different points in time. So, I'm not sure that decision -- I mean, yeah, the Euro failed at helping the Greeks during the economic crisis. So, yeah, I wrestled with that definitely, and I also wrestled with that idea of anarchism, that you want everything to be separated out and have much more smaller-scale democracy, which then scales up. But as you say, as a peace project, it's not the best solution but it's the best solution we have for now to stop Europe going to war on itself.
Peter McCormack: As a more rational British, European, not-so-right-wing bitcoiner, do you feel there's not enough of us? I say us, I mean I think I'm more centrist, but certainly I have a lot of clashes with the more right-wing or libertarian bitcoiners. I've got an ongoing debate with Robert Breedlove about whether we're slaves or not at the moment, and I think you and I are lying a bit closer than maybe some of those bitcoiners. Do you feel like there's less of us, or do you think we're quiet because we get shouted at?
Ben Arc: I think it's probably quiet because we get shouted at a little bit more. I'll say that you kind of need to accept that 90%, 90%-plus of everything you believe to be true is probably wrong. And I think that people who are a little bit more pragmatic and question themselves and don't fall for the ideology so much are the sorts of people who are like, "Am I wrong about this?" they question themselves quite a lot. Whereas, that ideology of the libertarian, the right-wing libertarian, often there isn't that sense of self-doubt. I mean, of course, they'll say it's because they're right which, okay. But I think that we tend to question ourselves a bit more. Because they truly believe in what they're saying and in the rhetoric and in the ideology, they're much more vocal about it and they're much more comfortable with being vocal about it, because they think, "Well this is true and this is right and those other things are completely evil and wrong", and then because of that, it seems they're louder, they're much louder than people who may be a little bit more pragmatic.
But I noticed when I kind of came out of the woodwork and deliberately waved that leftist flag, by calling myself the BTCSocialist, this is where half your audience turns off. I noticed a lot of people, a lot of bitcoiners came out and said, "Oh, great, I'm really glad that somebody's putting a finger up to the right wingers, because I've been here a long time and I consider myself like a lefty anarchist". I think more and more as our community grows and as its gravity pulls in more talent, that we have a much more diverse, clearly overtly diverse culture in Bitcoin than we have had. And I think there is something of a death rattle from those libertarians who took ownership over Bitcoin and were like, "This is ours and if everyone does this thing, we will end up with a libertarian, Austrian economics utopia", and it's like, "Well..." And then you find a bunch of other people who come onboard and want to use the technology because it's great, and they imagine a different type of future with cooperatives and commons and whatever else.
So, I certainly think that there's a lot more acceptance of diverse opinions and thoughts. And there was a period historically, originally it was magic internet money and it attracted a lot of leftie anarchist hacker types, and then the libertarians came in because they see this thing which people are making money on, and that initial first impression which puts the leftie anarchist off is something which is very attractive to them, which is greed and wealth and all that stuff. Fair enough.
Peter McCormack: Is greed fair? Is it fair to say greed? Isn't it more free market?
Ben Arc: Free market, whatever you want to call it. But the things which would put off lefty anarchists -- I mean the lefty anarchists might want a free market, but the thought leader, the bitcoin thought leader who's got the Lamborghini or whatever -- sorry, Peter! That's audience capture, you have to do it, it's part of the brand, it's fine, I understand. But that symbolism is something which would put off someone who's less materially wealth interested and less of a consumer. They're more about the movement and trying to make the world, I don't know…
So, yeah, I think that there was a point where it attracted a lot of -- I mean we had kind of pragmatic people in the centre of Bitcoin, someone like Andreas Antonopoulos, who was very centrist or maybe even left leaning. I know he spoke about Austrian economics and admires that, which is great, but he did tend to also have some sort of progressive ideas. He left and then there was kind of a void, like a vacuum void, an ideological cultural void, which then people like Saifedean stepped in, shared that book which he'd written at that time as well, which a lot of people thought was very good. So, yeah, so it's just a period where it attracted a lot of that mindset of people. But yeah, I mean actually I'm here today to talk about Nostr. I think Nostr's doing a great job on that, so obviously in Nostr, you can use zaps and you can use it to tip people, and people are starting to build products and services utilising the zap technology.
In Costa Rica, I met Rabble. So Rabble was the person who actually employed Jack Dorsey in Twitter. So, when they pivoted from whatever it was before, some podcasting thing, to Twitter, he was one of the people who employed Jack Dorsey to be the new CEO of Twitter. And he is very much a lefty anarchist type. He's the archetype to what I'm saying, he was someone who never liked Bitcoin and just kind of wrote it off, because he looked culturally at Bitcoin as opposed to the technology and what this payments technology can allow. He also had a pre-2018 opinion of Bitcoin, which is based on on-chain and its carbon footprint. So, Bitcoin really wasn't for him.
So then, when his friend, Jack, tells him about this -- because he's a big Scuttlebutt guy. Scuttlebutt is another decentralised social network protocol. He built a bunch of things for Scuttlebutt, and when his friend, Jack Dorsey, told him about Nostr, he then went on to Nostr and started using Nostr. And then he's like, "Oh, cool, you can use this thing called zaps. And what are they using? Okay, they're using this Lightning Network. Okay, how does this Lightning Network work? Wow, this doesn't have the same carbon footprint which Bitcoin once had. Wow, this technology is amazing. I can build these amazing things with it". And now he's very busy and his life is dedicated to building Nostr solutions.
Peter McCormack: Love it.
Ben Arc: Yeah, absolutely. So, going to that conference actually had a wonderful energy because it wasn't just bitcoiners. This is the Costa Rica conference.
Peter McCormack: Nostrica?
Ben Arc: Yeah, Nostrica, because it was, say, 50% bitcoiners and then the other 50% were just people who were interested in Nostr and they'd heard about Nostr, but they were all talking about zaps and they're all talking about Bitcoin, and they're all seeing Bitcoin in this new light as just a technology which they can use to build cool stuff with. So, that's very refreshing. And I've had it a bunch of time when I've gone to conferences, I've met someone who's had a project and they had it on Ethereum, not because they were scammers, but actually they just wanted a certain set of functions which didn't exist on Bitcoin. But now they exist on Bitcoin; with Lightning Network, they've come back to Bitcoin and working on Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Love it.
Ben Arc: Yeah, absolutely. Because there's a kind of an artiness which left Bitcoin, I think, and went off to Ethereum. There's certainly creatives in Bitcoin, I wouldn't say that's not creatives in Bitcoin, but there was kind of an arty sect of developer who left and went to the Ethereum, and it's kind of a shame, like we want everyone working on Bitcoin, don't we?
Peter McCormack: Of course, yeah. Well, I mean the Nostr thing is really interesting because the first time you and I spoke about it was in that, do you remember that weird hospital place?
Ben Arc: Yeah, I looked it up, it was like 18 months, or 2 years ago, or something.
Peter McCormack: 18 months ago, with the weird paintings and the bear, the weird place.
Ben Arc: It's a great interview because we cover a lot of -- like now, if we were to talk about those things regarding Nostr, it would be interesting because we were talking about its potentiality, like what you could build with Nostr. We talked about markets and replacing Amazon.
Peter McCormack: Oh, yeah, we had that chat about Not Amazon!
Ben Arc: Yeah, decentralised Amazon, yeah.
Peter McCormack: But when we had the chat and you were explaining Nostr to me, like in my head I was like, "Yeah, Ben Arc's nerd toy, or whatever". We hear lots about these different technologies, these new wallets, these things, they're all niche, you know, whatever. And then here we are, 18 months later, and there is a massive movement around Nostr. I mean, it's really taken off, which by the way, Danny said, "It's that Ben can see the future", that's what Danny said, "Ben can see the future"! But it must be great for you to have seen this traction, because you were there at the very start.
Ben Arc: Oh, it's incredible. And it was just a technology which any developer, when they engaged with it, they realised what they could build with it and how useful it was and how it worked, and they would instantly fall in love with it and think it was amazing and want to build things on it. But there was just this network effect which wasn't happening; it was happening but very, very slowly, because people would come in and build a great solution, like I made the first Twitter client --
Peter McCormack: You did, yeah.
Ben Arc: -- which then, I think, just it looking like Twitter made a lot of people think, "Oh, this thing isn't just a dorky project, it could be used like Twitter". And then Will made Damus and Damus is a very professional application, Nostr client for Android, another Twitter-like client. And so our community was growing, and we had a Telegram group which was slowly growing. But then, when Jack Dorsey left Twitter and wished Elon Musk all the best, "Hope Twitter goes well", and on the other side he was going to tinker away at this Bluesky thing he wanted to work on of decentralising Twitter, which he'd always had an interest in, but couldn't really do while he was the CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk then sacked half of his mates. And then Jack Dorsey was like, "Okay, fine, let's go".
So, he was looking at other social network protocols which could be used to build something like a Twitter in a decentralised way, as part of his Bluesky initiative, and he looked at Mastodon and Scuttlebutt, and then someone on Twitter said, "Well, take a look at Nostr". So he said, "Yeah, sure, I'll take a look at Nostr" and just like any developer who actually looks at Nostr, actually looks at the protocol and how it works, he instantly fell in love with it and thought, "Yeah, this will work, we can build great things with this. And huge hats off to Jack Dorsey at that point in time, because this was the beginning of the year where there really wasn't any -- I think, Super Testnet's client, I can't remember the name of it, that was the most usable client at the time.
But all the clients were broken. Like the Twitter client I'd made, fiatjaf had forked it to branle, and he created this absolutely beautiful piece of software, very technically brilliant, but sadly just wouldn't work because he picked the wrong local storage database thing. But yeah, all the clients were broken. Even Damus was buggy. So, hats off to going and using these clients, realising they're buggy, but then looking through that and seeing the protocol itself and how it's just a matter of energy. People just need a good reason to spend more energy and time on this thing.
Peter McCormack: So, hold on, is Bluesky being built on Nostr?
Ben Arc: No, so Bluesky, it was funny because Bluesky reached out to us. So Bluesky, for those who don't know, while Jack Dorsey was working -- well actually, this goes back to the days of Rabble. So, at one point, Twitter was pretty decentralised, the architecture of Twitter. But obviously, the company won out, the corporation won out, like the investors, they wanted something which they had complete control over. And there was always a struggle between Jack Dorsey and Rabble and other people working in Twitter, where they wanted it to be -- they understood how important that it had to be somewhat decentralised, because this is a worldwide platform which people are communicating on, and there needs to be some privacy and some autonomy. But yeah, the corporation won out.
So, there was this project, called Bluesky, which a bunch of people were working on, which was this idea of replacing components of Twitter with decentralised platforms, which I think they built but it's very big and bloaty. I think you can kind of build a Twitter thing with it, but yeah, it's just, I don't say "inelegant", but it's quite bulky. Anyway, but there was a period where there wasn't much traction on that project and it was more of a research project, and that's when I initially reached out to Nostr. But I think Nostr was so small at the time that they just kind of overlooked it. So, it took for Jack to actually have some time off, I think, for him to take a good look at Nostr and see that this is something which could be used. And so Bluesky isn't using Nostr, but I think it's incorporated some elements of Nostr. And it's almost a different beast, like it's specific for building decentralised Twitter, whereas Nostr is for building a whole bunch of different things, one of those things is a decentralised Twitter. So, I'm not sure whether maybe they'll give up on the Bluesky project at some point.
Peter McCormack: I think they will. I think the problem they've got is, it's not so much technology as audience. You've got to have an audience to have a reason to use something, right, you've got to bootstrap it somehow. And the great thing about Nostr is that there is that kind of alignment with bitcoiners. So, the bitcoiners are bootstrapping it, they're the ones using it, they're the ones driving it forward, and then from there it can grow. And I think the problem with Bluesky is, well, if you're a bitcoiner that cares about decentralisation, you're going to focus on Nostr; and if you're not, have you got big enough reason to leave X.com to go to Bluesky? There's not really many people there. So, I just think they'll have a bootstrapping issue and I tend to see these things kind of ending up in a monopoly, and I think Nostr will end up being the monopoly.
Ben Arc: Yeah, but a good monopoly.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, great monopoly.
Ben Arc: A resource monopoly. It's funny, isn't it, the way monopolies work? Like, if Microsoft ran all the web servers on the planet, we'd all be up in arms, but the fact that this one's Linux, which runs all the web servers, it's like we understand that these two different systems built in two different ways, that one is good and righteous, and then one is not so good and evil. So it's interesting. That's just for the bitcoiners out there who always -- anyway.
Peter McCormack: Well, you should explain the protocol element again because I know you did it before when we were on, but I think there is that thing where people are like, "Are you on Nostr?" and they think Damus is Nostr.
Ben Arc: Yeah, so this actually goes back to your point about network effect. So, if you look at the internet when the internet kind of started and you had like the BBS boards and forums and stuff, they were kind of interest-centric and there were lots of different platforms, and you'd have to log into all these different platforms. And then it kind of made sense that they were all under one roof, they were all in these big walled gardens. And you'd get these mega platforms like Twitter and Facebook, all these mega platforms starting to appear on the internet. And it's almost like they had all this gravity, which was created by users and the convenience of users all being able to connect with each other.
Then also the capital as well, it had the dotcom bubble and a lot of that money went into creating these mega platforms so they had this capital to build up these mega platforms. And you had this feedback loop, which then just attracted more users, and then you have these huge walled gardens. And then over time, people start to realise that these aren't walled gardens, they're prisons, and there's no freedom of movement, there's no freedom of association, you don't own stuff within that walled garden, it belongs to the garden, whoever owns the garden. So, yeah, as people become more and more disillusioned, they start to flake off and for whatever reason, you know, they're following some politician and suddenly they get cancelled, or there's, I don't know, someone who they follow gets cancelled and then they talk about some other platform which they're using.
Now, a lot of these platforms, these decentralised social network platforms, a lot of their issues in the past has been that network effect of users. You go there and there's not that many users there, or there's a certain type of user. Well, the way Nostr works is it's interoperable. So, like you say, Nostr isn't Damus, Damus is just on the Nostr protocol, so it's just implementing a certain amount of the rules which should be built in Nostr. So, if I post on Amethyst, which is the client I use on my Android phone, and it's really fantastic, then someone on Damus will be able to see that same post. So, it's almost like you get the best of both worlds. You can have like a decentralised system, free and open-source system, where people have freedom of movement, freedom of association. But when they move, platforms aren't losing their network effect of users because they can still pull the data down from those users. So it's really interesting, like it almost needs to exist this way.
So then, it becomes attractive as it scales. So we've got like, I think it's 500,000 active users at the moment, but that's a statistic from about a month ago, so it's probably more. If a centralised platform, or one of these big walled gardens, decides to implement Nostr, say Twitter allows people to use Nostr or pulls in notes using Nostr, suddenly they've got 500,000 extra users, and that'll be millions in a short period of time I'm sure because the way in which the network's growing.
Peter McCormack: So, hold on, is that a bit like some mobile phones, you can be on any network but if you send a text message, you can send --
Ben Arc: Yeah, kind of. I mean, so the interoperability is made possible -- so basically, Nostr is a collection of these things called NIPs. NIPs are Nostr Improvement Possibilities. I think that one of Nostr's successes, coming from the Bitcoin community, is Bitcoin is good at making protocols. Like, we have the BIP system in Bitcoin, when people want to make a proposal to improve Bitcoin. And then from Bitcoin came out the LNURL protocol, which was used in Lightning. So fiatjaf built the Nostr protocol, he kind of cut his cloth building the LNURL protocol, and LNURL has LUDs which are improvements for LNURL. So, by the time we get to Nostr, we're pretty good at making protocols. And all Nostr is, is a collection of NIPs, which are these little standards. So, the first standard is a note. So, let me explain the architecture of how Nostr works before I get too much into that, hardware-wise.
So, you have your phone or you have your computer at home, and then you access a client, which you could download and install, or it could be a website or something. And then you go onto that client and you have a public key and private key. So, another thing bitcoiners are really good at is using public key cryptography, we're used to using public key cryptography, it doesn't scare us. We're public key cryptographic natives almost, we're used to it. So anyway, Nostr makes use of a public key and a private key. You have a public key and a private key. I have a public key and a private key. You have a client. I have a client which you're accessing. I'm just accessing it on a website, you're accessing it on a piece of software you've downloaded on your phone.
You create a note, so just some text, "I'm sat here with Ben doing a podcast", etc, and then you sign it with your private key, and then you push it up to a relay, a piece of software running on a server called a relay. I'm also connected to that relay and I'm following you, so I'm listening to your public key. I'm saying, "I want to get any notes Peter signs and pushes up to the relay. I want to get that note". I get that note on my client, because it's been signed by you, I've got your public key. I can easily use your public key to verify that is in fact Peter, okay cool, and I follow him. And then, that's why you can very easily build kind of a Twitter platform because we're all just signing little notes and proving that somebody's written a note, and then pulling down someone's note if you're following them.
Peter McCormack: But there's only one note, right? So like Damus or another protocol, they all share the same notes. You couldn't go on Nostr and build a whole new social platform that has its own separate set of notes and --
Ben Arc: You could.
Peter McCormack: Oh, you can?
Ben Arc: Yeah, you could, yeah, you can have different note types. Some of them might be long form. There's a really interesting site, Habla, I think it's called, habla.news, I've got it written down there. Let me just make sure I've got the right name for it because people might look it up. Habla, habla.news and that's a long-form platform where people write little blogposts and they're signed and then pushed up to relays, and then if you're following you could get that blogpost pulled down. It doesn't make much sense for those blogposts to be displayed in Amethyst, which is acting like a Twitter client, I mean it's more kind of conversational.
Peter McCormack: Could it accidentally do it though?
Ben Arc: No, it can filter different note types. So, say with us for example, so we have a marketplace application client, so instead of signing little tweets and then pushing them up to relays, so you can connect to more than one relay, your client can connect to more than one relay, which is an important point, you have a list of products and then you sign those products and you send those up and then somebody can buy a product, and we can do it all over the Nostr network.
So, I think in a simple way, it's a bit too simplistic a way of explaining it, but Nostr is a dumb-server, smart-client paradigm. We're used to a smart-server, dumb-client paradigm. So, where does that put the power? So if you have a smart-server, dumb-client paradigm, the server administrators, the people owning the corporation, they're the ones with all the power. If you have a smart-client, dumb-server paradigm, we're the ones with the power. We have our data, we have control and ownership over our data, cryptographic ownership over our data and what we produce. And yeah, so it empowers us, it doesn't empower -- so, it's quite important that those relays, in my mind, that those relays remain fairly dumb, that they're just passing notes from one person to another. I think it was fairly shortly after making Nostr that we decided that relays should store notes for a little while because it's convenient, that they kind of just store notes for a few weeks, or whatever.
But it's interesting because if you look at our current social networking platforms, like Twitter for example, it pretends to be conversational format. However, we know that those tweets are going to be on there forever. So, we're kind of guarded, we think about what we're going to say, we're not going to say anything too outlandish because we're not going to talk like if we're talking in the pub and we say something, and then the next day we regret it. I'm like, "Peter, I'm sorry I said that thing, it was really wrong, I just thought I was being funny, I wasn't being funny, I was a bit drunk, etc. I was an arsehole, I don't know where it came from", and then it's ephemeral, it's gone, you forgive me, it's gone. Whereas Twitter pretends to be conversational, it stores everything forever. So, most of us are guarded, even if you don't think you're being guarded, you are being guarded.
Peter McCormack: You're definitely guarded.
Ben Arc: Yeah, apart from occasionally you get those wild cards, those Trumps, and they'll just say whatever they want, they'll use it in a conversational format, and they'll speak freely on it. So, what happens is that they seem more real, and you're like, "All these other people don't seem real on this platform, whereas this person is just saying stuff, like popping off like they would in the pub". They feel more real. So, it empowers them quite a lot, this weird, fake, not ephemeral conversational format that exists in some of these social network platforms. And then how do they pay for that, the ability to be able to store all that data? Surveillance capitalism. They use algorithms, they push you in a certain direction so they can sell stuff to you. And we all know surveillance capitalism's bad, or has proved itself to be quite bad, well maybe not bad but it's just the real effects of what something like that can cause are only just kind of playing out now sociologically, and we're all observing it.
So then with Nostr, why are relays going to store your data? So, the point of Nostr is it's kind of inconsequential architecture. You can spin up a relay easily, like in LNbits, we have a one-click instal relay and you can just create a bunch of relays, as many as you want, and then people can access them. And you can store data, notes and stuff, if you want for a period of time. Or you can charge people for storing data. So you can say, "I'm going to give you a megabyte of free data, but every megabyte after that is going to cost you 10 satoshis" or something. Or you could charge a sign-up fee so, "I'm not going to charge you for storing data for the year, but every year I'm going to make you sign up to it and it's going to cost you 20,000 satoshis, or something, to sign up to it, and then I'll store your data". I don't know how well that business model will work personally.
Or, maybe the relay has a policy where they're like, "Actually we're going to feed you adverts but we're going to store your data for free, and if you want that, then apply to us and we'll feed you adverts as part of us storing your data for you". But the point is that the model we have now, which is corrupt and a bit evil, that'll probably still exist. It's just you have a choice as a user to not use that model. So, it's the same with the algorithms, because algorithms are important, you want content which is relevant to you. Currently I'm on Twitter, and my global feed on Twitter, or X, whatever the fuck it's called, my global feed, it's not as good as it used to be, so they've changed the algorithm. And that's annoying, I want to change it back, I want to have that choice.
So, I think what you'll see more in these Nostr clients, these Twitter-like Nostr clients, is that you'll have a choice. You'll go into settings and you'll be like, "I want the Rabble algorithm", and it's an algorithm created by Rabble. And it feeds you content from, I don't know, there's three degrees of separation. So, if you're following someone and then one of their friend's friends posts something, then you might get that turn up in your global feed, and then maybe you can tweak it. So, there'll be different shared algorithms. Algorithms aren't necessarily bad, they're important for getting useful content which you're interested in, but we don't want, well maybe some people do, but the point is we have a choice in Nostr, whereas you don't have that choice when it comes to those walled gardens, which are actually in fact prisons.
Peter McCormack: Well, and you also have that protection of the politicisation of technology, which despite what people think of Nigel Farage, this is what came up. I mean, he had his bank account removed because of who he is and his opinions, we know that, and he talked a lot about the politicisation of business. And we've seen it in the US, certain opinions aren't to be held or you can be cancelled or you can be thrown off platforms, and Elon Musk is doing himself to people. No one can throw you off these platforms.
Ben Arc: No, no exactly and if you don't, for whatever reason, say if some client, they have an update where they do start --
Peter McCormack: Censoring people.
Ben Arc: Yeah, or trying to censor people, it's pretty impossible to be honest; but say you download some non-free and open-source Nostr client and it has a thing in there which gets rid of Nigel Farage's tweets or notes, then you can just go use another client. We have this in Bitcoin and this is why last time on that podcast, 18 months ago when we talked about this, I talked about Bitcoin is a commons where it's permissionless, anyone can build on top of it, it's fine. Anyone can build products and services on top of it, anyone can build businesses on top of it. The one thing you can't do is you can't try and co-opt the commons, you can't bring about the tragedy of the commons, which we actively fight, we're always actively fighting in the way we treat Bitcoin, and we're doing the same thing now with Nostr. It's a commons, anyone can do anything they want on there, they can make use of it as much as they want, it meets their own ability to reach their own needs.
But you can also build products and services, but if you try and co-opt the Commons then, yeah, you'll get the blunt end of the community. Well, no one will use you, no one will use your software. So, it's a beautiful thing to see and that's why other developers get excited about it because it's like, "I don't have to ask anyone's permission to build a new version of Twitter", you know? Like, I might see Amethyst and I think, "Okay, that's cool, but I could probably do better". And I could take Amethyst and then I could replicate their UI, but then I could just add a few extra bits to it.
One of the coolest projects to come out of Nostr in the past couple of months is Kieran's zap.stream, which is where you can pay for a service to host a video file for you per minute of video, and then people can pay to stream it or tip as well, and then that's how you pay for the hosting of the thing. And then you can all discuss the video in a thread. So, he made zap.stream, which is a really interesting concept and site, everyone should go check it out, but vital from -- because it's interoperable, this is a NIP basically. And it's interoperable, so other clients can make use of it -- vital from Amethyst. So, I went into Amethyst and there's just an extra little button and I click on it, and then suddenly I've got all these video feeds of people streaming videos and then all these people commenting and stuff.
So now, when I go on Amethyst, because I cross-post on Amethyst and Twitter, I'm like this is a legitimately a better experience, regardless of all the ideological, free and open-sourced, decentralised, Elon Musk's evil, whatever, this is actually a better platform, it's actually a better piece of software, it works better and it's more interesting. But if I didn't like it and they did something I didn't like and there's an update I didn't like, I'll just go and use someone else's client; it's freedom of association.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it's super-interesting you say that, because I'm not cross-posting, well sometimes I am, but I'm using different things and I go in waves. I think Twitter, I'm just going to call it Twitter because it is --
Ben Arc: Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Peter McCormack: I consider it more like a marketing platform or a place to just shout out opinion, whereas I see Damus as a place I go, again marketing still because I'm still sharing, "Here's a show I've made we with Ben Arc, please listen". But I also think there's a better source of replies to questions, because I think that there's higher signal, and so you tend to get a better quality reply. You don't have to go, "Right, here's my question, here's three insults, two adverts and five bits of spam", to get through, "Oh, yeah, and there's a couple of bits here". It is signal, signal, signal, maybe an insult, signal, signal. And so at the moment, the audience is better, I like it more. And so, I've really enjoyed using Damus. I'm not using it out of sympathy because I'm a bitcoiner. I think with some people, there's this like, "I'm a bitcoiner --"
Ben Arc: It's legitimately a good piece of software.
Peter McCormack: A legitimately a good piece of software.
Ben Arc: It's mad that the hack can exist without Twitter, the corporation.
Peter McCormack: It's crazy. My only thing is, and this is where I trigger bitcoiners, but I don't want to know or understand what relays are, I just want to open it and it works.
Ben Arc: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I just want to forget about that stuff.
Ben Arc: Yeah, this is something I have a bugbear with. So, you'll download something like Damus and it will connect to like 20 different relays, default, and then that's a lot, it drains your battery, because you've got 20 different WebSockets connected to 20 different servers.
Peter McCormack: I don't even know what this means.
Ben Arc: Yeah, you don't even know what this means and you shouldn't have to. Well, actually, Nostr is very simple. It's just a collection of technologies which came together so it could exist.
Peter McCormack: Like Bitcoin.
Ben Arc: Bitcoin's the same, yeah. They came together at the right time so it could exist. WebSockets have been around for a while, it's an amazing technology, but all the libraries are kind of buggy. You'd have to wrangle them, you'd have to keep the connection open. All a WebSocket is, is like a bidirectional data pipe, which you make with a server or another computer, and you can share data back and forth and at the speed of light. There's no get and post requests.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Ben Arc: So, you connect that pipe to that relay, I connect that pipe to that relay, and then we just send stuff up and down to it, and then it's sending stuff back. So, there's a few hops, where it goes from me to relay to you, but it's the speed of light. So, I write something and "bing" you've got it.
Peter McCormack: Are there any chances that I don't see messages because I'm not connected to the right relay?
Ben Arc: Yeah, of course, yeah.
Peter McCormack: So, that is a definitely a difference between that and say Twitter. You'd expect to see everything if you wanted to.
Ben Arc: Yeah, but that's kind of one of its intentional properties is that me, for example, I want a vanilla Twitter experience or vanilla Amethyst experience, Nostr experience, I don't want to see gross stuff. And actually, I'm really impressed with Amethyst, because I've not seen anything on there which has made me go --
Peter McCormack: No, what I mean is more like --
Ben Arc: No, but this is part of it.
Peter McCormack: -- I want to see Ben Arc stuff, but will there be sometimes, because I don't know that we're on different relays, I will miss Ben Arc stuff sometimes?
Ben Arc: Yeah, but relays can share information. But there's a couple of big relays which people are going to use, and that's okay. And maybe everyone's just using one relay, one big, fat relay, right. That wouldn't be so good, but maybe everyone is just using Elon Musk's relay and everyone's enjoying it, and then suddenly, because he's got VCs involved, or whatever, or he has investors, he's operating within a country, he has to start moderating and cancelling some people and not allowing some posts to go through, which a relay can do, they can have moderation policies.
The point is, it's inconsequential to spin up another relay, it's easy to spin up another relay, so you just spin up another relay, people move to that. So, you've always got this thing of just these -- it's like Whac-A-Mole, it's really easy to spin up relays. And maybe you just have a relay for friends and family, which just your friends and family access; and maybe you have granular in your client where you're like, "I'm going to post something, but I only want to see friends and family have this". Not many clients do this, I don't think any clients do this currently, but I'm sure it will be something added at some point. You could just then post to that relay for people who are close to you, if you want to. Or you can post to those ones which are connected to the whole world and they're big fat relays.
But it's freedom of association again, just like the clients. As soon as a relay starts acting in a way which a lot of people disagree with, they'll just shed users. So there's, yeah, this free market of relays, people offering these relays. And like I said, they're really, really easy to spin up. We make them intentionally very, very easy to spin up. It's like Pirate Bay, you're never going to kill Pirate Bay, it's resilience; so, it's censorship resistance through resilience, that's what I like to say.
Peter McCormack: So X.com, I hate fucking calling it that, but it's been a great advert for Nostr over and over again.
Ben Arc: It's very interesting, because with the Zuckerberg thing as well with the Threads thing, it's almost like you've got these three billionaires battling it out on the global stage, and Elon's trying to make this everything app, trying to copy the WeChat model. WeChat is successful because the Chinese trust their government and they know that WeChat is basically run by the government.
Peter McCormack: Trust their government, or comply?
Ben Arc: The Chinese generally do, they're pretty trusting of their government, the majority of them, yeah, which is why people will happily use something like WeChat and you say, "Oh, do you know that all this information is getting sent to government?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, it's fine, we trust them. Whereas, I'm not sure that kind of sentiment exists in the rest of the world, and certainly not for a corporation run by --
Peter McCormack: Elon has a lot of trust.
Ben Arc: He does, yeah, he does have a lot of trust, yeah. He will have some users for sure, but when it comes to building an everything app, like an Orwellian everything app in your pocket listening to everything you say and using it everywhere, I'm not sure a lot of people will feel comfortable with that. It's easy to be cynical, but more and more people are aware of privacy concerns. If you remember the BlackBerry, when we first got encrypted messaging on a BlackBerry, and everyone was like, "Well, what do I need encrypted messaging for? Only drug dealers will use it", and now normal people will be like, "Oh, yeah, use WhatsApp, that's encrypted" or, "Use Signal, it's encrypted". So, I think these concepts are making their way into just regular, normal society.
Nostr, that's the everything app of freedom, like you can do everything with it, but it's all based on freedom; whereas something like X isn't, it's that walled garden, it's that prison, that very pretty walled garden.
Peter McCormack: Odell convinced me to get rid of my blue check.
Ben Arc: Did he? Why? I don't know what the blue check is. So, we have to do an iris scan?!
Peter McCormack: Yeah! Well, it's Elon's... So, you used to get a blue check if you were some kind of known person or some kind of media personality, and it was useful because all these scammers who create clones of your profiles.
Ben Arc: Yeah, you'd probably get more visibility anyway, it would put you out there more, wouldn't it?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean look, it was a bit like the elites and the peasants, right, but it was useful, it was a useful thing to have when I had it. And then the blue check, I ended up paying for when you had to pay for it, because I liked longer posts, I liked being able to edit. But now it's a whole part of the Twitter strategy. And I think Elon's saying it's to get rid of bots and he's got multiple reasons to have it. Realistically, he needs to have 100 million people paying $8 a month --
Ben Arc: Oh, to make it viable business.
Peter McCormack: To make it viable business. He borrowed $44 billion to buy it. I mean, servicing the debt alone, God knows what that is. And Matt Odell convinced me, you should not have to give up your privacy and KYC information to use a platform like this. And so I got rid of it. Now, my blue check hasn't gone. I actually found out why today, because I paid an annual subscription and it doesn't run out until April 2024. So, I've actually got my blue check into April 2024.
Ben Arc: You're wearing it with shame!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I am wearing it with shame! I noticed NVK's just got rid of his.
Ben Arc: What if you get in contact with Twitter and say, "Look, I really don't want this blue tick"!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, "Please get rid of my blue check!"
Ben Arc: "Please can I get rid of it!"
Peter McCormack: But NVK just got rid of his, I think I think Marty's got rid of it. I think people are gradually getting rid of them, and I think it could be a badge of dishonour.
Ben Arc: Yeah, to wear one means he sold his soul because he wants the likes.
Peter McCormack: I just don't trust where the whole platforms going now any more. I mean, I'll use it.
Ben Arc: When we were talking about the shadow banning thing, I did an experiment. I kept noticing that when I tweeted stuff about Nostr, like I'm not being an egotist or anything, but if I post something on Twitter, within like -- it's like you, you get a certain amount of likes in the first five to ten minutes, whatever, even if it's a crap post, you get a couple of likes quite early on. I just noticed if I ever posted Nostr, or #Nostr, I would get no likes. And I'd have this post out there for like half an hour and it's got no likes. And I'm like, "People like Nostr, and it was cool stuff I'm posting". I was posting about -- BlackCoffee, who works with us, he made a lamp which would light up when you get zapped. So, it's a lot like with the hardware stuff I do, but specifically for zaps, and it's actually connecting to the Nostr network. It's a little microcontroller connected to a relay. It's cool stuff right. So, I post something about that, people would like that and it had zero likes and I'm like, "This is weird".
So then afterwards, I posted pretty much the same post, but with "Nostr", I just split the letters up rather than have it as one word. And then it got a bunch of likes, and I'm like, "Okay". So, you don't know what they're doing, you don't know what the algorithm -- you don't know how it's working, and you're just beholden to them.
Peter McCormack: But you know why, I mean look, it's exactly what happened when Substack launched their, is theirs called Notes as well?
Ben Arc: What's that, I don't know.
Peter McCormack: Substack is the subscription platform where you can subscribe to content creators. It's pretty cool. I follow Doomberg on there for example. I had him on the show recently, he was talking about it. I mean, he's literally left Twitter. Do you know Doomberg, the big, green chicken?
Ben Arc: No.
Peter McCormack: He writes really just interesting observational pieces and all kinds of stuff. And so, they were using Substack. That's the way they monetise what they do, they write content, I pay $300 a year, and I get all their emails and their articles, right? And Substack launched something called Notes, which is a bit similar to Twitter, in that not only are people now writing these long-form blog pieces, they actually can write little notes; I'm pretty sure it's called Notes.
Ben Arc: What, that's recently?
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, recent. So, what happened was, I can't remember exactly what happened but I'm almost certain Twitter started blocking access to people posting Substack articles on the website. They basically didn't want people to leave the platform to go elsewhere, which obviously is bullshit. And so I wouldn't be surprised if, it's basically protectionism, isn't it?
Ben Arc: You would do if it's your platform, and like you say, it's your business.
Peter McCormack: But hold on. If you think about it like this, Twitter is a place which is the --
Ben Arc: The Agora, the world's Agora, where we can all exchange ideas freely.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and that means sharing links, whether it's the BBC News or CNN or from, I don't know, from an article somebody's written on Substack.
Ben Arc: Well, this is this is what we said 18 months, "Shouldn't something like that not be owned by one corporation and controlled by one person, and in a jurisdiction which can be leaned on by a government? Should it not be a commons? And lo and behold, here we are, 18 months later.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and the really interesting thing about that is, I mean again, I was talking about this to Danny earlier, so Bitcoin has solved the money problem, the decentralisation of money and the centralised control; and with Nostr, a lot of people think it's social media and it solves that. But actually, we were starting to say, "Okay, what other things are there where we've seen this censorship or this central control that's become an issue?" So, for example, this question for you really, could you do GoFundMe on Nostr?
Ben Arc: Of course, yeah, of course. I think it probably already exists.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Ben Arc: This is how rapidly the ecosystem's developing now. The second URL I ever registered, I registered Nostr.com, and the second one I registered was Nostify, because I wanted to make a Spotify on Nostr. I never got around to it. And then I was thinking about resuscitating that project now, and I wanted to make kind of a goofy one. I wanted to have it like Napster, like a peer-to-peer thing. But anyway, so I just do some searching and people are already building. There's a bunch of people building music sharing platforms which are like Spotify. If I want to go on a client and just listen to songs and stuff, I personally believe that piracy is a good thing for the music and film industry.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, pause, we'll come back. Why? The artists aren't happy about it, Metallica weren't happy about it.
Ben Arc: Yeah, they weren't happy about it, but then it forced them to start touring again, and then they'd start producing more music, and that's better for fans. And maybe that's the way they earn money, is by touring. And they'd fill out massive stadiums and get paid out millions. So, why are they complaining that they can't rest on those CD dollars any more? And that's probably a good thing for them.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Ben Arc: And the same with a bunch of bands, like, they got back together, they started having to perform because they couldn't rest on the...
Peter McCormack: What about film piracy though, because film piracy --
Ben Arc: More people are interested in film than they ever have been, and the ability to make films is far cheaper than it ever has been.
Peter McCormack: Cool, love it.
Ben Arc: And how many cinemas do you see closing down? Cinemas are still doing well. There's more people in cinemas than there were when piracy was less of a thing.
Peter McCormack: Post-pandemic, I don't think so. I think cinemas are struggling.
Ben Arc: It may be a part of the COVID thing.
Peter McCormack: It is, it's the straight to stream.
Ben Arc: But also, we didn't start that fight. We were being charged £15 for a DVD, a crappy little floppy piece of plastic DVD, which would scratch and you won't be able to watch the film after a year. So, they shouldn't have done that. And if it weren't for piracy, you wouldn't have Spotify, you wouldn't have Netflix, you wouldn't have any of that stuff, you wouldn't have any of those streaming services. So, it's a way of marching with your feet, is to just opt out and just to pirate, and I think it's a good thing.
Peter McCormack: Now, look, I'm a fan I love Napster. I remember the first time I discovered it I was like, "What do you mean, I can get any song I want instantly? This is amazing". I used to spend a lot of money on CDs. I would buy 30 CDs a month. Yeah, a fortune, I spent hundreds of pounds. Now I spend £15 a month, whatever it is, for Spotify and have all that music available to me instantly. It is genuinely brilliant.
Ben Arc: And that is the information revolution right there.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So you can do GoFundMe, which would be great because we had the situation that happened in Canada, where GoFundMe funds were stolen by the government. I guess you can do Patreon. Are we basically saying you can build almost anything on the internet?
Ben Arc: There's a lot of stuff. So, my personal connection with Nostr is, I made an LNbits extension early on LNbits to show that you can make a proof of concept. That was called Diagon Alley.
Peter McCormack: I remember you telling me about that.
Ben Arc: Yeah, it was a censorship-resistant marketplace, where you had a stall of products and then you would sign them, send it up somewhere and then that would display it and people could access it. And the idea was resilience being easy to spin up. So, if someone took out the front-end marketplace, which is just like a dumb web page which just populates full of data from people, from merchants, then it was like Pirate Bay, it wouldn't really matter, you could just spin up another one somewhere else. No one's inconvenienced by it, the merchant isn't, the customer isn't, because you own all the data, so you have all your ratings and everything.
So, I made that for LNbits, and then the person who really saw value in it was fiatjaf and he helped me work it into something of a protocol, but nothing really happened with it. And then it was months later that he got in contact and said, "Oh, here's Nostr", and I was like, "Oh, that's like Diagon Alley", he said, "Yeah, that's one of the things went into the creation of it", and I was like, "Okay!" So, I had some involvement in its creation and that idea of resilience, it's censorship resistance through resilience, I think is probably the key point. But so, I was instantly sold on Nostr, and then I was like, "Well, cool, I'll build the Diagon Alley thing on Nostr now". And we didn't do it straight away, because we had to do a bunch of other stuff in LNbits, but we've got it now, and the issue of censorship-resistant marketplaces no longer exists.
We have a NIP, NIP15 I think it is, for marketplaces, and it's interoperable, there's a bunch of other clients which are implementing it, there's a couple of social network clients which are thinking of implementing it because clearly, having a Facebook marketplace having a social network attached to selling stuff is powerful. People like it, so there's a couple of social network clients which are thinking of using it. We have a marketplace client, Vlad Stan, who's been doing the majority of the work in LNbits on that. It's more like kind of an Etsy experience now and, man, it's really beautiful. It's just like Amethyst as a social, or Damus as an actual social media piece of software. It feels good, it's a good user experience, and it works as well. And of course, Bitcoin is the best payment rails for something like that, so we've got the marketplace thing, which is great.
I'm interested in that because I want more of the value of what somebody sells to go to the actual merchant, the producer, rather than going to making Jeff Bezos the richest person on the planet. But yeah, we spoke in that last podcast, we spoke about Uber, making a decentralised Uber, which would be easy to do. And there's a couple of people who've tried to make proof of concepts, but I'd love to see an actual functional Uber. And then we spoke about how that could easily be used with the sex work industry.
I actually interviewed, it was about a year ago, there's a sex worker in Bitcoin called, I can't remember her name, she wrote a book called Bitcoin for Sex Workers. And I always think it's a huge industry which clearly is making use of our technology, but we don't directly build stuff for, which we probably should, because they are often unbanked in places like the US and stuff, they're unbanked and there's all these problems. So, yeah, I spoke to her and I talked to her about that idea of workers being able to communicate with customers and then being able to exchange services, so it's reviews on both sides of the transaction, which is really interesting, and it's really good for the safety of sex workers, because they could say what they only want to see clients who have X amount of reviews and a certain rating or whatever.
Peter McCormack: Well that goes back to the Silk Road days, whereby you know my background of that's how I discovered Bitcoin, right?
Ben Arc: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And one of the big issues with drugs is people putting all kinds of shit in there. There's a massive issue with cocaine.
Ben Arc: Oh, the review thing's great.
Peter McCormack: The review thing was unbelievable.
Ben Arc: They would guide each other through taking drugs as well, which was a big support network there, wasn't there?
Peter McCormack: Look, there is a major issue with cocaine at the moment. I mean, I'm ten years since I've done it, but I know these issues, right? If there's fentanyl and cocaine you are risking dying, and they're cutting it with it regularly. There were those four comedians in LA who had got some cocaine at a party, whatever, three died. This is a huge, huge issue and it's because there is no honour in street dealing. But when they took it into the Silk Road environment, I mean even, I can't remember what they were called, the Drug Policy Alliance, said --
Ben Arc: It was a good thing for users.
Peter McCormack: Well, it's for both sides of the party. It took violence out of the equation, and you also had the review system, so I mean you were incentivised to produce a good-quality product because you wanted to be top of the reviews because you could charge more, so everyone was happy.
Ben Arc: But then, the problem with Silk Road is when it gets taken out, all those merchants who built up those reviews and then all those customers who built those reviews, it's gone.
Peter McCormack: They take them off air, yeah.
Ben Arc: Whereas with Nostr, it's interoperable, it'd be pointless to take out our marketplace client because it's just like an empty shell until you populate it full of product data from people's public keys. But if, for whatever reason, the disillusioned government was able to take it out, like take out the repo for it, it doesn't really matter, you could just spin up another repo somewhere else for another client somewhere else somebody can access, or you could run it locally. It was quite interesting, because we were making Nostr marketplace, we were testing it, and so I bought something from Vlad. So, he was running the software locally on his computer, I was accessing the marketplace locally on my computer, and then I bought something from him, both locally, just connecting to this relay. And it was really interesting to not have to be on a website somewhere doing that.
But yeah, just like Nostr's solved the problem of free press, like now everyone in the world has access to free press, can spin up a relay, can run a client and then can publish freely, whereas that hasn't existed in a uniform way before like it does now. And the same with the marketplace thing, it's fixed that.
Peter McCormack: Does it fix the rug issue? So what was happening, after the Silk Road, we got multiple different markets.
Ben Arc: Yeah, because they escrow funds and steal the funds all the funds are in their wallets, whereas with our Nostr market, your funds are with your wallet, it's connected to your Lightning wallet or whatever you connected your LNbits to, or whatever. But you could connect it to, yeah, you could give it an LNURL and then it could use that for creating invoices. So no, it's dependent. If you want to have a custodial service, like Wallet of Satoshi, manage all of your funds, then Wallet of Satoshi is a separate thing, could rug pull you. But no, it's not inherent to the marketplace itself like it was in those other, like Silk Road 2 and whatever.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Sheep Marketplace, whatever, Alpha-something. Yeah, they would spin it up, then once it got a certain amount of traction, they would rug everyone and disappear.
Ben Arc: And everyone kind of knew it was going to happen as well.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Ben Arc: They would use it and be like, "At any moment, we're going to get rug pulled". It's like using Bitcoin exchanges now, isn't it?
Peter McCormack: Well, I had 3 Bitcoin on Silk Road when it went down.
Ben Arc: Did you?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I keep mentioning this, Tim Draper owes me 3 Bitcoin!
Ben Arc: Maybe he might give it you back!
Peter McCormack: I don't think so!
Ben Arc: I wanted to mention this because, there was a point where I could have covered it but I didn't. John Nash, who's relevant to Bitcoin and should be relevant to bitcoiners, because he's one of the founding fathers of game theory and an important cryptographer as well, he had a paper later on in life, it was called Mind on Strike, which is very, very interesting, and it's about when you put a human mind in any kind of oppressive environment, it will just refuse to think. And this is what he experienced when he was doing maths, and he found himself, because of his psychosis, he wanted his mind to be free so he could really explore ideas. But he found that some of the environments he was in were very oppressive and they wouldn't let him explore these ideas. I think it's like if you've ever had an oppressive boss, or an exploitative boss, or partner who's being abusive or whatever, you'll find that you make more mistakes. Like if you've got someone like breathing down your neck, you feel it and then you're making mistakes and you're like, "Why am I being so goofy? I'm not like this outside of this environment".
So, in John Nash's paper, he was talking about how that exists in certain work environments, and that minds can't be free unless they're in a free environment. And I think that exists in social networks as well and on computers. And even though you feel and there's a solution of freedom which exists in something like Twitter, in order to have actual free thought, you need to know that those tools you're using are free, free platforms.
Peter McCormack: You Tube's a better example. There's a three-strike rule, and you don't know when you might get it.
Ben Arc: I don't know what the policies are. It's a multi-million pound business and then suddenly done, that's it.
Peter McCormack: And so, I know factually people, even discussing COVID, I'm not in the COVID debate right now, I'm just saying even saying that word can get them a strike.
Ben Arc: It's ridiculous yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so people avoid stuff now, or people are censoring stuff, and YouTube is an important channel for people.
Ben Arc: Yeah, it's interesting, society having to grapple with diverse opinions because before, if you had quite diverse and extreme opinions, it was hard for other people to seek those things out. They would have to go find that underground magazine, or send off for those CDs by that thought leader producing that content for that particular topic. Whereas now, we've all got access to it. So, I think it's just something humans are going to have to learn to deal with, that they can have instant access to things which they disagree with. But that doesn't mean --
Peter McCormack: It's the end of the world.
Ben Arc: Yeah, it doesn't mean it's the end of the world, like it's always been, and it doesn't mean that they have to disagree with it all the time, it's just it's the new world. This is the way the world works now, you're going to be confronted with things you really strongly disagree with, and you can voice your disagreement with it, but you can't get too offended; it just exists, in the same airspace where you exist. Whereas before, you were kind of insulated from that stuff just by it being hard to get to, or maybe moderation policies in newspapers and televisions, and whatever, and on television. So, yeah, it's just something people have got to grapple with. They are grappling with it and, yeah, YouTube is another example of something we should really be -- well, there should be an alternative platform. It's kind of hard to do because the size of the files. How are you going to pay to store those things on some relay somewhere.
So, this is why the zap.stream is quite interesting, which Kieran's made, because it's more that value-for-value concept, I guess. I'm not sure how successful it will be. I mean, I'm sure it'll be successful but I'm not sure how successful. I think we'll always have a YouTube, and it's storing that data. Maybe as data storage becomes cheaper.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, who knows. I mean, look, we have Rumble as well now, which seems to be the alternative.
Ben Arc: Yeah, there's some platforms --
Peter McCormack: So, is Nostr really just the decentralisation of everything now; is that what we've done? Nostr has enabled anything now, almost anything which is a service or some kind of messaging-based service or product-based service. I don't think you're going to create, you know, you're maybe not going to create Google Sheets in Nostr, unless you tell me you can. But, is it that these can all now be created?
Ben Arc: I wouldn't say everything, but I mean it's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things you could replace just with Nostr clients connecting to relays. The relays don't even have to be specific relays for a marketplace or a specific relay for social network. They're just these relays which are just passing data from one -- it's the miracle of public key cryptography. It's actually quite interesting. I think there was that blockchain fetishism which happened, when people learned about the tools which Bitcoin is made out of, one of them being public key cryptography, and then they conflated that with blockchain, and there's all these ideas for blockchain projects, "I'm going to make a decentralised Uber using blockchain", and they were kind of on the right track, like the tools are there. They don't need the blockchain stuff. Get rid of that; that's cumbersome and doesn't work properly. It's the public key cryptography which makes those things possible. So, I think people had a natural intuition that there was something in this toolset which means we could decentralise all these things, but it turned into blockchain fascism.
I quite like Nostr, because it's like if that were a project made out of, say, the Ethereum community, then there would be ICOs, there would be a coin.
Peter McCormack: You'd have to want to do it.
Ben Arc: Yeah, whereas with Nostr, it's just a bunch of dorks doing it for free, for fun, you know what I mean? So, yeah, and also the other way of looking at it as well, like with this zaps thing, we were asking Twitter for so long to integrate Bitcoin, eventually we just got fed up and we just made our own Twitter and put Bitcoin in it!
Peter McCormack: Well, in fairness, Jack Mallers got there at one point with it, I don't know if that's all been removed now.
Ben Arc: What's that?
Peter McCormack: We had the Bitcoin payments via strike within Twitter.
Ben Arc: Yeah, I mean I don't know. Does that exist? I don't know.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, it was kind of cool, I just don't think it really took off. I think that was more of a Dorsey/Mallers kind of project. It was very cool the way it was. It was super-cool that both Jacks made it happen, I just can't see it being an Elon thing. I would assume he's removed it and he's probably waiting to bring in Doge or XCoin.
Ben Arc: They'll make their own coin when they probably tap the phone or something.
Peter McCormack: Fucking gross, PayPalCoin, or something.
Ben Arc: Yeah, or he might do something good. He might do like an eCash thing and that'll be good.
Peter McCormack: No he won't!
Ben Arc: Well, we've got to be prepared for it, but no, it makes more sense just to use Bitcoin, to integrate Bitcoin, use Bitcoin on there. But yeah…
Peter McCormack: The world of Nostr is growing.
Ben Arc: The world of Nostr is very big, it's too big now to keep up with. Before, you could keep up with it. It's just like Bitcoin; before, you could keep up with it, now you can't keep up with the amount of development which is happening, which is great.
Peter McCormack: The amount of people that keep telling me, "You need to launch What Nostr Did", I'm like, "No, this is all one show, you just have it all together". We need to get rid of "Bitcoin", like I was talking to you about earlier, but then how important is Bitcoin to Nostr, and how important is Nostr to Bitcoin; how symbiotic is that?
Ben Arc: So, I was like an outspoken critic of the zapping stuff because I didn't think it was implemented. I felt there was a more elegant way it could be implemented, which would probably require more thought but it would make it a more Nostr-native way, because we have that dumb-server, smart-client thing; suddenly you're having to use a smart server to enable zaps and I'm like, "We can do this in more of a Nostr-centric way, I think, with a little bit more thought". But it's great, it's showing what you can do, the potentiality to have that inside within a social network.
But also, so early on in the Telegram group, in the Nostr Telegram group, if you spoke about Bitcoin too much, because a lot of bitcoiners come in and go, doing that ridiculous glass-eyed evangelism of Bitcoin and like, "We're all Bitcoin. Shut up!" But they would get banned, because there were some people in there who weren't bitcoiners and it was pissing them off. There were some very talented computer scientists who very interested in Nostr pretty early on. I don't know how they got to it, maybe it was fiatjaf's connections, whatever, I don't know, but they were involved in Nostr pretty early on, and it's pissing them off, this Bitcoin talk. So, people literally got banned out the Telegram group for talking too much Bitcoin shit.
Peter McCormack: That's fascinating!
Ben Arc: Whereas now, so it's very important, like I almost want to see people putting shitcoins on Nostr, just because Nostr is not Bitcoin. Because if Bitcoin fails, it's never going to fail, we all know it's never going to fail, but if say something happened with Bitcoin, it could impact their Nostr and it shouldn't; they should be separate things. They do go together very well, like toast and butter and honey.
Peter McCormack: You don't really want shitcoins on Nostr?
Ben Arc: It's like us with the marketplace thing, it makes perfect sense to use Bitcoin. And like with the zapping thing, me sending a small amount of value to you to say, "I like your stuff", Bitcoin makes sense and using it on the Lightning Network makes sense. But Nostr isn't Bitcoin, it's important to remember that.
Ben Arc: Yeah, so I post from Damus and people keep zapping me. I still don't get the incentive why people do. It's brilliant that they do, I always give those sats away every now and again. I think last time, it was at a conference to a kid, I just gave him all my sats. But I read stuff and I never think to zap someone to say, "Well done". So, I don't get the mindset of people to do that, but actually what I really want is micropayments for single articles, "Zap that, give me that article".
Ben Arc: Yeah, maybe you could paywall like a note and you could just zap it and then you could access it. I don't know if that would work really.
Peter McCormack: Well, you know how when you're reading an article, and maybe you're --
Ben Arc: Like yours, or something.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well, I never really use that, but I know what you mean. But let me think of something more like --
Ben Arc: Paywall articles are ridiculous, like Financial Times.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Financial Times. So, you click theirs, "Right, now to subscribe". I have to create an account, I have to --
Ben Arc: Well, we have a WordPress extension for LNbits, where you can just put the little "Read more thing" in the WordPress. So, when you have your WordPress blogpost or whatever in WordPress, say you write an article in WordPress", and then you put a little "Read more" tag and then that does that thing where you can see the first bit and then it blurs out and you can't see the rest of it until you pay for a subscription or something. Well, we have somewhere, there's an LNbits extension for WordPress where you could put "Pay to read more" and then an amount and then you'll get the blurred out bit, and then click on a thing, it'll generate an invoice and you pay and it just goes "boop" and unlocks it.
Peter McCormack: That's what I want. I just want to press a button and zap and it gives me the article.
Ben Arc: I think we should all actively push for something like the Financial Times, on like the whitepaper day, or something, just as an experiment to say, "Look, just for this one day, do one article about Bitcoin where you unlock the article by using Bitcoin".
Peter McCormack: Do about my fallout with them?
Ben Arc: No.
Peter McCormack: So, I did an interview on one of their podcasts and I'm not the best talker on Bitcoin. I think I'm one of the best question askers but not answerers. But anyway I did it and it was their second biggest podcast of the year. I don't know what their first one was, but it was massive for them. It wasn't because of me, it was because of Bitcoin. It was during a rally, people were hungry during that time. And so, I ended up speaking to their editorial team and they were saying, "We'd like you to write a piece for the Financial Times. This could potentially become a column", etc. So, I wrote them a piece. It was, I thought, a very, very solid piece. And the editor came back with amends, which happens, I get that that happens. I spoke to Alex Gladstein about it, he said, "Get used to it, it happens". But they did it four times, it took over a month and they watered this article down to nothing. It just didn't mean anything by the end.
Ben Arc: Must have taken all the juicy bits out, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and I just said, "This has no meaning any more".
Ben Arc: Yeah, "You write the bloody article if you want".
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so I just pulled it in the end and said, "Oh, fuck you". And it's wrong of them as a financial paper, but I still think they are, "We're going to keep Bitcoin over there".
Ben Arc: Well, yeah, because I mean their legacy user is to legacy finance, isn't it? And Bitcoin is directly challenging legacy finance. There's starting to let it in, the Trojan in, which they shouldn't do, but they are starting to let it in. But that I can see why the Financial Times are worried of its impact on the financial world and if they promote it, because that's what it's for; it's distant technology, isn't it? I'm amazed Bitcoin's got so far without people trying to regulate it, and now it's beyond regulation, it's too big to regulate. Who was it said that; someone in America? One of the regulators.
Peter McCormack: Could we use Nostr zaps at the football club at all? If we had a game that was streaming and a player scores, can we zap the player?
Ben Arc: Yeah, totally. Yeah that'd be good.
Peter McCormack: How could we do that?
Ben Arc: All they need -- oh, so this is beautiful actually, because historically with Bitcoin stuff, it's like, "Oh, they just need to download this Bitcoin wallet, etc, and put the LNURL on the thing, etc". All your football players need to do, say to them, "Download Amethyst, download Damus, make a profile, right?" And then just give me your public keys or whatever. And then you could just display them. Oh no, wait there. You could just make people like me aware of their public keys, and then I could just zap them every time they score a goal, or whatever. Or you could publish it, you could say, "Oh, so-and-so scored a goal, here's their public key", and then everyone will pile in and start zapping them.
Peter McCormack: So, bear in mind they're watching a stream. So, if I post a Lightning QR code for their Lightning wallet, that's very easy to have on their phone and go scan.
Ben Arc: Yeah, like a LN pay thing, you could do that easily.
Peter McCormack: But is there a zap version of like...
Ben Arc: I wanted there to be a zap version of like an LNURL QR-code thing, totally. But no, there isn't. But the way I would do it is, I would say, like when you're watching, you know, Have I Got News For You? and you've got the little app, whatever it is, at the bottom so you can follow the conversation on Twitter. I would make an account for the football club on Nostr.
Peter McCormack: Goals Scored.
Ben Arc: Yeah, and then I would tell people -- give it a NIP5, NIP05, you know, so bedfordfc@whatever. And then, "Go here", or when there's a game on, you say, "Right, everyone follow the game, we're going to do live updates on here". And then every time someone scores you say, "They've scored, give them a tip because they've scored, well done to them", and then all the bitcoiners will pile in and start tipping them. And then your players, they've got Damus installed, they've got Damus on their phone, they've just got their public key, private key, they'll get their zaps, won't they?
Peter McCormack: We need to do that.
Ben Arc: That would be lovely. I really want to do like an R&D...
Peter McCormack: Can you become our Bitcoin Director at the football club?
Ben Arc: I'd love to do some R&D stuff for the football club.
Peter McCormack: Can you just become our Bitcoin Director and just handle all the Bitcoin stuff?
Ben Arc: That'd be ace, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Have you got the time?
Ben Arc: No, but I can have the time. In about three weeks, then yes, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Well, I'm off to Latvia, Australia, Lebanon first three weeks of September. We should meet after that.
Ben Arc: I'm all over the place as well, because I've got the Nostr Asia thing as well.
Peter McCormack: When's that?
Ben Arc: That's in November. But no, there's two things I'd want to do, and this is like incubators for solutions, because for us we make stuff, but it really is real-world feedback where we actually make the good stuff, you know? So, I want to click in with a restaurant, because I think we need better points of sale. You know that in restaurants, you have the restaurant management systems where you can select tables and products and stuff? We need that, we need an extension for that kind of thing. But then also we need like, it's nice to have somewhere where we can showcase the ATMs, the point of sale, the BitcoinSwitch stuff, the zap thing. So, you could have it when football players get zapped, you could have some things turning on. We could do all sorts of interesting things.
So, maybe me and BlackCoffee could come down and we could stay in Bedford for a couple of days and we could work on some stuff, bring a bunch of things down as well, like experiences, you know.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well there's a few things we need. We're not good enough on the Bitcoin side of things and people paying for stuff with Bitcoin. We're okay, but we're not good enough, we need to be better. We want to do interesting and innovative things, like players playing and getting scans and getting Bitcoin for doing things in a game, Man of the Match, we want to do that. Also, my bar doesn't accept Bitcoin. The reason being, I'm the only bitcoiner goes there maybe a couple of other people, and our staff are busy. But next year, when we have our conference on, the one you came to last time, we're going to expand it, there's going to be, hopefully, a few hundred bitcoiners there. I'm going to need to have Bitcoin accepted there, and I want it integrated with the EPOS, so my staff don't even have to think about it. So, there's lots we should do and could do.
Ben Arc: So, my local café, the owner's a bitcoiner, likes Bitcoin, and for years I was working, he kind of knew I was doing some stuff in Bitcoin, but he didn't know exactly what I was doing. But for years, I hadn't onboarded him. All these other people around the world are using LNbits to onboard cafés, but for me there was three things which needed to exist. There was the software point-of-sale, which was shareable, which we made pretty early on. That's Tal, one of our developers, that was his extension. He was the first other developer to work on LNbits other than me, fiatjaf and Eneko. Anyway, that's where you just have literally a QR code and you say to your members of staff, "Right, anyone comes in, scan this on your phone, it'll pop up a point-of-sale. And it's denominated in fiat, with sats underneath, so it's easy for them. So it's, "Okay, £3", etc. So that needed to exist.
Ben Arc: The other thing which needed to exist, because I think that retailers in places where there aren't circular economies, they want to use it as a way of accumulating Bitcoin. So, if they're accepting payments on the software point-of-sale, Lightning payments for coffees and beers, whatever, they like, "What can I do with this this money?" and you're like, "We're going to leave on the node". Really, they want that in their cold storage. So, the other extension which needed to exist was an easy loop-out extension and DNI, one of our other developers, he built the incredible Boltz extension. So, you can say to this extension, "Keep an eye on this wallet in LNbits. Every time 500,000 sats go into this wallet, loop out to on-chain". So, my café dude, he's accepting payments for coffees on Lightning. And then his risk profile, using custodial service, my LNbits server, his risk profile is like £50, because every £50, it just loops out. It does it really cheap as well because Boltz is awesome. It loops out to on-chain and he just collects it in his on-chain wallet.
Then the other thing which I wanted to exist was a hardware wallet, which was cheap enough for me to be able to just give him and say, "Use this hardware wallet", which was the DIY hardware wallet we made, so that was like a £10 hardware wallet. So he can manage his on-chain funds with the hardware wallet. So, now those three things were in place, it's like, "Cool. Now I'm going to show you my shit". And it works perfectly for him. I go in and I'm like, "Are you still getting that money popping into your on-chain account?" And he's like, "Yeah, I am", and I'm like, "Nice", he's accumulating.
Peter McCormack: I feel like with Bedford, I've got this chance to create this circular economy. I'm very careful about doing it because I don't want to be the Bitcoin moron or I don't want someone locally to hear about it, buy loads of Bitcoin and --
Ben Arc: It's osmosis, it can't be full frontal.
Peter McCormack: But we have that focal point in the team, we have the meetup once a month, which can get up to 100 people too, we've got that conference we did last year, 150, we'll hopefully go to a few hundred this year, we've got the mayor of Bedford coming to a game, I've already met with the council to tell them about my plans. I want to build like a Bitcoin Park in Nashville in Bedford. So, I feel like I can use it as a central point to start building these different -- I'd like to put an accelerator there, all these things.
Ben Arc: Do you know what I think what we need in Bedford, which I've wanted for a while, is like a sticker dispenser, right, something cheap which you can give away basically, and it's a little sticker dispenser and on the side it's got a QR code, a faucet, which just gives you, you know, you scan it every ten minutes, or every minute, it gives out 20 satoshis or something. Then, you go on to the other side and then you pay 10 satoshis to get a sticker.
Peter McCormack: Love it.
Ben Arc: So, it just spits out a little Bedford FC sticker.
Peter McCormack: Love it.
Ben Arc: So, a free dispenser, because you would have the kids going up to it and scanning. That'd be cool.
Peter McCormack: We've got loads of those stickers in here. Oh, there's so much to talk about. We should get you down and you just use it as an innovation centre, but just to tell you, my big goal is I want to raise the money, I want to build a training centre, so we've got the pitches for the training and the football, the academy for the kids, all that; but on there, have a structure which is like Bitcoin Park in Nashville, which is an academy for the football with the classrooms, but also a place to host your meetups, a coworking space, a meeting place and potentially an accelerator, so bring all this stuff together in one place. I mean I'd love to have your help.
Ben Arc: Man, the amount of stuff… So, with LNbits, we've got all the hardware projects as well and there's someone just made this amazing coffee machine, so you can sats and so you're automating all that coworking space stuff, like the coffee machine, the printer, the entertainment, the arcade machine, or whatever, I don't know whatever you have in the coworking space; you're automating all that stuff and then the way people access it is when they come to the door, there's just an ATM and they just go up to it and put a couple of quid in, and then they just get some sats and they can use it to experience the things at a discount. In fact, you could rip them off on the ATM and then give them the discount back when they actually pay for the thing. So, "10% discount at the bar if you pay in Bitcoin; use that ATM over there", which is going to charge you 15%!
Peter McCormack: Ben, listen, I could always talk to you for hours. Thank you for coming down --
Ben Arc: Yeah, cheers.
Peter McCormack: -- and let's carry this conversation on. Do you want to send anyone anywhere, make them check something out?
Ben Arc: If you haven't used Nostr, don't be scared. Download Amethyst on Android, or Damus on iOS. I mean, I'm sure there's other clients out there as well which are great, but they're the two which I'm aware of. Then also, Iris, I use Iris on my desktop. It's so simple. It's not like having to -- I don't know, you just literally open up the application, you can start using it, you can create a profile, and it will just kind of -- both of those applications will walk you through using them. And you'll see the user experience is as good as Twitter.
So, I would say, a big shoutout to all the developers who are working on those things, the people who are contributing to building all these great Nostr things, people like Kieran and Pablo of Coracle and Paul Miller, he's been contributing a lot, he's done a lot of the Bitcoin and Ethereum libraries as well, so he's a good cryptographer. He's making our DMs more secure, more encrypted, which is great. Vitor from Amethyst, he just created a new way of doing DMs, which is more secure and encrypted. All those developers out there who are working and building things in this amazing permissionless environment, a huge shoutout to them, and I'll see a lot of them in Nostrasia, I'm really looking forward to that.
Anyone out there who can make it to Nostrasia, I strongly recommend they do, because it's quite an experience to go to a conference where you've got this new protocol which is being developed. We had it with the first Lightning hack days, where you went and there's just this energy, you know. It's just people are really excited about it, they're sitting there grinding on their laptops, they're building things, they're getting excited, exchanging ideas and I think that's going to be one of those sorts of conferences. so if you can get there then go to Nostrasia.
Peter McCormack: Where is it?
Ben Arc: There's two running in parallel. There's one in Hong Kong, there's one in Tokyo at the same time, and I'm very torn between the two.
Peter McCormack: Have you been to either?
Ben Arc: I'm not been to either, no.
Peter McCormack: I've been to both. I'd go to Tokyo.
Ben Arc: It's the Shenzhen stuff see, because I'm a hardware dork, and so I want to just skip over to Shenzhen. I've got a bunch of mates in there I want to go.
Peter McCormack: I didn't get the Hong Kong thing like other people did. It was fine, but also I think what it was is like, the weird thing about Hong Kong, there's a lot of really British things there. I don't know if they're still there, like the road signs and the buses.
Ben Arc: Oh, yeah, because it was owned by the Brits, wasn't it? Yeah, that sucks, you want to get away from Britain!
Peter McCormack: It was a bit weird, but I don't know, it was a bit claustrophobic. I mean, I think it's one of those places if you live there and all the spots to be, it's pretty cool. To me, it was just a busy city. I don't know, I just felt like with Tokyo, I felt I experienced more of a different culture, way more of a different culture. I think Tokyo is fascinating.
Ben Arc: I think Tokyo is the one we're going to. It's the easiest for the family, the family are going to come with me.
Peter McCormack: There you go.
Ben Arc: But yeah, that will be spectacular. And people just use it, a Nostr client experience, it's a great technology. But yeah, it's my first time in Tokyo, and I really look forward to it. Are you going to make it to that, do you think?
Peter McCormack: When is it?
Ben Arc: It's November. I think it's the same time as -- no, it's not the same time as Adopting Bitcoin. It's the same time as a fantastic conference, Satsconf in Brazil, because I very sadly couldn't go to Satsconf because of it.
Peter McCormack: So, November was meant to be the month I'm not going to travel because I'm in 19 days going Latvia, Sydney, Lebanon, and then I'm back for ten days. And then I'm going over to America, then Canada.
Ben Arc: Doing the US stuff.
Peter McCormack: And then, I'm doing the African Conference in December. There's just too many, you know when it starts to build up and up and up. And I'm like, I need to travel less. And I want to be here for the football, so most likely not.
Ben Arc: Yeah, that's all right.
Peter McCormack: But I will look forward to you telling me about it!
Ben Arc: Well, we should definitely implement the Bedford zapping football players thing, because that's cool.
Peter McCormack: Well, how about this. You know we said we're going to put on a Bitcoin Conference, you know the one you came to? We want to expand that to a full day.
Ben Arc: Well cool.
Peter McCormack: Why don't we expand it to two days and make one of them a Nostr day?
Ben Arc: Yeah, that's a great idea.
Peter McCormack: Has anyone done that?
Ben Arc: No, I mean there's just the Nostrica and there's just Nostrasia, which actually they're kind of hard to get to. So, I think if you did a European Nostr conference day --
Peter McCormack: Nostr Bedford!
Ben Arc: -- I mean, there is a Nostr meetup in Honeybadger. In a couple of conferences, I've had meetups, but no, a day would be great. Yeah, do a day.
Peter McCormack: Let's do a Nostr day and a Bitcoin day. Let's get them side by side, boom, and everyone can come watch football.
Ben Arc: I can do a talk happily.
Peter McCormack: We cut that fine, didn't we? All right, Ben, thank you so much. No, what do you mean come and do a talk? You're going to have to help me organise it! You know the movers and shakers in Nostr, not me! All right, buddy, I will see you soon.
Ben Arc: All right, cheers, thanks.
