 Next question from Drew, the next Bitcoin protocol update, what's the latest on Schnur signatures, masks, grafters, tap routes, and when can we realistically expect to see these features? That's a really great question, Drew. In fact, I was reading an update, which was a summary by one of the core developers working on both Bitcoin... as well as Lightning Network, Rusty Russell, who did a summary of some of the latest changes... and summarized the expected state of the next big upgrade to the Bitcoin core protocol, which is called Segwit V1. Segwit V1 is not the one we already have, but the one we already have is Segwit V0. The reason it starts from zero is because the version of the scripting language inside Segwit, which is actually one byte in the protocol, as programmers do, is indexed from zero, so we start counting from zero. The Segwit that was introduced by software into Bitcoin in August 2017 was Segwit V0. The next upgrade is going to be called Segwit V1. That refers to a project version, which is literally the scripting version number that goes in the protocol... that tells you what version script you're trying to satisfy in the Bitcoin script language in order to spend the UTXO. With V1, which is going to be the next upgrade, this can happen by a soft fork, a number of things are being introduced simultaneously. The first one is a new signature mechanism called Schnur signatures, which provides a number of significant improvements. A change in the signature format that reduces it from, I believe, 73 bytes at the moment, down to 64 or something like that, or 68. A new version, which is Schnur, which allows signature aggregation, smaller signatures, and a number of other really interesting features to come in later. Taproot, which is a privacy enhancement that allows you to have a number of complex scripts all present the same as a single public key payment. Which is a great privacy enhancement, because it means that if you're using complex scripts, whether lightning, multi-signature scripts, time lock scripts, or various other privacy enhancing scripts, perhaps confidential transactions and things like that, then no one can really distinguish that UTXO from a UTXO that is simply a payment to a public key. That really enhances privacy, because you can use privacy without sticking out like a sore thumb. Mast, which is Merkleized Abstract Syntax Trees. This is the ability to have a complex script expressed as a binary tree with a Merkle root, which allows you then to pay to the root of the Merkle tree and execute any one of the branches without revealing the contents of the other branches. So you say, okay, there's this very complicated script. You don't know what it is, but what we do know is that the root hash of the Merkle tree that expresses this very complex script is X. Now, I'm going to use one of the branches, the third branch, and here's the third branch. It's the only one I reveal. You don't know what the other branches are or how many there are. And here's a proof that links that third branch to the root, showing that it was part of this very complex tree script. So now I can spend it, but you don't know what else was in there, who else was allowed to spend, under what conditions. Compare that to how it is today. If you do a multi-sig, every time you do a signature, you have to show all of the keys that could have spent it, but didn't. If you do a lightning network spend, when you close a channel, for example, then what you're doing is you're showing that this was a lightning payment, and you show the channel public keys in the spend. You show the entire structure of the script with Merkleized Abstract syntax trees. This would be much, much more private, much more obfuscated, but also much more efficient. You can represent a script with a thousand branches as a tree with only ten levels. That's fantastic. It really reduces the amount of data you need to present in a signature of a massively complex script. There are a couple of other important changes, including the change of how validation of scripts works. One of the important changes is to change the unused operands. In the old script version, these were called upnup. Nup means null operand. It doesn't do anything. They will be changed with something called op-success, which is interpreted by the script as a successful execution. That allows you to do upgrades where you introduce new operands in the place of op-success, and the script verification validation process is much more straightforward, and it's easier to do much more complex upgrades with future soft forks in the same version of the Segwit script. I know this is all very, very technical. There's a great post on the Bitcoin developers mailing list. If you want to read all of the details, there's a bunch of other details about how this increases upgradability for future scripts, too. But so far, that's the bundle that is planned for the immediate future. Realistically, when do we see these features? Some discussions are about seeing a soft fork activation within the first six months of 2019, which introduces Schnorr signatures, taproot, mast, and a bunch of other little things that will make future upgrades easier. That would be BioSoftwork, it's opt-in, and it's backwards compatible, and would be a fantastic development for all kinds of privacy reasons, for scalability reasons that include some significant scalability improvements, and will also increase the privacy and scalability of the Lightning network by making it much easier to open and close channels and reducing the complexity of the Lightning peer-to-peer protocol through a Lightning protocol called L2ELTOO. So that's what's coming next in terms of development. Thank you again for being here, and thank you for coming. My question is, I have so many questions that I'm going to pick one. For example, related to improvements like confidential transactions in Bitcoin... In improvements like? Confidantial transactions in Minecraft. What is your take on that regarding privacy and functionality? And also, given that these kind of changes can be controversial, do you think that this kind of technology enhancement has to consider the adoption or the detrimental adoption? No. I am absolutely for and optimistic about privacy-developing technologies. I think they're absolutely essential. And in fact, what we're seeing is an explosion in privacy-related technologies. One of the things that people don't realize is that sometimes you don't do privacy because you don't need to, and then suddenly you need to, which is that our entire crypto space is driven by evolutionary imperatives. When governments start trying to stop cryptocurrencies by monitoring networks, then cryptocurrencies become network stealths. When they start trying to confiscate cryptocurrencies by monitoring identities, then cryptocurrencies develop confidential transactions, etc. A lot of this is going to happen in response to crackdowns, to pushback. We're going to see development of this technology. Bitcoin itself, which is the granddaddy of the cryptocurrencies, wasn't the first. It was maybe the 20th digital currency, and the other 19 weren't decentralized enough. Decentralization wasn't a feature that we needed until we needed it, and then it was developed. So privacy will happen, and I don't care about adoption. One of the interesting things about the way forks play out nowadays is, I think of forks now as the multiverse of development. Every possible universe of choice will express itself in a fork, and you, if you want, will be able to live in that universe. It might be lonely, it might be greatly successful. Who knows? It depends on your definition of success. So how free we are now. We can explore all possibilities. Everybody gets their own crypto. And some of them are going to be screaming, You're not the real ex, and you're a shitcoin. And just ignore that, too. Because it doesn't matter. In the end, we get to explore all technological avenues. And what an amazing environment in which we can experiment. Let's hope we don't stop experimenting. I am much more afraid of stagnation than I am of reckless experimentation, where 99% of the experiments fail. Edison once said, you failed to make a light bulb 9,000 times. Why do you continue? And he said, because I've discovered 9,000 ways you can't make a light bulb. Just keep trying. So maybe we'll discover 9,000 ways you can't make a crypto. Right? We're trying 1,200 at the moment. That's a pretty good run, good experiment. Considering a human is a lazy creature, in the hypothetical case that somewhere in the future crypto becomes mainstream, do you think people will sacrifice user experience in order to have privacy and anonymity? Or would they prefer a nice, god-of-all smartphone client that does everything for them, but controls them? I think the answer is absolutely clear. They will choose the colorful compliance surveillance control system. If you're interested in the philosophy behind this, the really two giants in the space of human control and the descent into totalitarianism are George Orwell, of course, 1984. His dystopia is a dystopia of fascistic control that is obvious in your face every day, but inescapable, and I think he was wrong. Because what we're living now is another future, and that's the future of Aldous Huxley. You have to read Aldous Huxley to understand where we got. His idea was that the totalitarian fascism would come wrapped in a sugar-coated, beautiful experience where you would be nulled and dulled into compliance through entertainment, through addiction, and through stimulation. And if that doesn't describe modern social media, I don't know what it does. So people will choose that. That is the future we're trying to avoid or at least disrupt. Here's the thing, freedom doesn't need to go mainstream for it to give people freedom. Meaning that if 80% of the people choose the candy-colored interface of Facebook coin that has full surveillance and controls their lives and gives them little stimulation through dopamine every time they use it, that's okay as long as some of us have the ability, as Rodolfo said, to opt out and use the other system. So is there a door that allows you to exit that? Because some people will need to exit, and when they need to exit, they will find that door. They will work very, very hard to find that door. So laziness is the luxury you have when they're not shooting at you. Laziness is something that is a luxury in an environment where you're not starving, where you're not freezing, where you're not killing your family, where you're not in a totalitarian disaster. But one in Venezuela is lazy. It's impossible to do that. So the more comfortable a society is, the more lulled into subservience it is, the more lazy people will be with their choices of freedom and privacy at least. But can we keep a door open? Can we have an alternative choice? That those of us who see or want to see can go there and then guide others to that exit so that we can find some freedom and we can. Because at the same time that today we live on the internet of Facebook, we live on an internet that is a giant surveillance machine full of happy images that pollute your brain and make you believe the biggest lie that mankind has ever invented, which that other people have happy, uncomplicated lives all the time. And if you believe that, you will be very miserable for the rest of your life. It's all fake. That drug of all these other people seem so successful, I must be doing something wrong, that drug exists. That is the world we live in. 500 people showed up today to hear about something that isn't giving them comfortable truths like that. We have already chosen to listen to something else, to do something different. The same internet that is the surveillance hell of Facebook and dopamine injection, is the internet of the dark net, is the internet of the tour, is the internet of whistleblowers and truth archives, is the internet where Bitcoin was born, is the internet where 1200 cryptos are operating today unstoppable, uncenturable, and disrupting the most powerful governments in the world. Those are the same place. We have opened a small door, and through that small door, freedom is flowing, and it gradually makes that door bigger and bigger and bigger. Yes, most people, when Facebook does a coin, when the US dollar is a digital currency, when it comes with super convenience already in China, they are doing this with a program called Sesame, that has a financial and social political score. I just read the other day of this feature that it has, where if you are in a train or in some public space, and someone near you hasn't paid their debts, it identifies them. I don't know, so you can scream at them and go, pay your debts! Some people are going to use that. The question is, what are you going to use? I'm not going to use that. And then find ten other people, give them a copy of Aldous Huxley, slap them in the face, tell them to delete Facebook from their phone, and show them a new path, because we have hope. And in order to build that hope, we have to work together. Thank you so much for coming out today.