 Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. So in this session, I would actually like to explore what sets Bitcoin apart from other cryptocurrencies. And so obviously, there's a lot of factors to take into account. I've only got 90 minutes and 47 seconds. So I'm just going to focus on some of the key considerations here. But so just before we start, what is actually Bitcoin? So Bitcoin is a digital asset. And I would actually call it a synthetic commodity money. So synthetic, it's just in a digital realm. It doesn't have physical nature. So it's something abstract. Commodity, because it doesn't have a formal issuer. So it's nobody's liability. And it also got an predictable supply, which is also kept, which makes it artificially scarce. Now, a very important characteristic of the asset itself is that if you properly store it, it becomes very difficult to seize. So it has characteristics that are very similar to bear assets. Now, on the other hand, Bitcoin is also a payment system, or payment network. And so actually, a censorship-resistant system to transfer value around. So it's open. You don't have to ask anyone for permission. Anyone can participate. And there should be no third party interference, which means that nobody should be able to block or censor a payment or transaction. What's very important here to understand is that those two things are inextricably linked. So Bitcoin, the asset, plays an essential coordination mechanism in the underlying economic incentive design, which itself is really the foundation of Bitcoin security model. So now if you go and strip the asset away, then the system stops functioning. So you can't really separate those two. Now, how does Bitcoin actually achieve censorship resistance? I would say two things. So first, through massive duplication and redundancy. So data is shared and broadcast to everyone in the network. Every single node needs to first verify every single transaction and install it forever. Second, we've got proof of work or mining. So there's going to be a few sessions after that, so I won't go into detail. But proof of work is essentially really a conflict resolution mechanism to decide if you have two valid but conflicting blocks, which one actually gets processed in the absence of essential authority. Now, that is a very resource-intensive process. And so it costs quite a lot of energy. And I think we're going to talk about this in future sessions. But so lots of people actually say, oh, Bitcoin needs to become more efficient. And I actually think that it's an oxymoron because I believe Bitcoin is inefficient by design. So it's precisely because it is so inefficient that it prevents any single entity or group of entities to dominate the network. And so this is very important to keep in mind. Now, how is Bitcoin different from other crypto assets or cryptocurrencies, whatever you want to call them? A few things. So first, I actually think it's a use case that does require censorship resistance. So if you take a step back, and actually for any given blockchain application, whether it's storage, computations, whatever, if you actually ask, do you the benefits that we get from that censorship resistance, do they actually outweigh the costs that are associated with it? And it turns out, for most applications, that's definitely not the case. So censorship resistance always a nice-to-have feature, but often really the high costs associated with it just don't make for a viable use case. Now, if you want to build an alternative full-stack financial system, which is what Bitcoin is trying to do, then you need to have a censorship-resistant base layer. Now, whether the costs associated with that are actually worth the benefit, so I think it's a discussion for another topic, another time. But as a result of all of this, Bitcoin has got the highest network value of all cryptocurrencies and by far. So right now, it is over $150 billion that are stored in Bitcoin. Now, second, Bitcoin also got the highest level of security. So it means it's by far the most expensive system to attack. Now, Bitcoin is backed by an enormous amount of hash rate. So yesterday it was 43 extra hashes. I think today we're at 48. Altamar was around 58, I think. And so we're really not talking anymore about small enthusiasts that run a few machines in a garage, but this is really a multi-billion-dollar industry that has emerged. So we have huge data centers. And as you can see in that map that are geographically distributed, pretty much all across the world. So this map is based on a list of hashing facilities that we identified, so it's around 120. And so as you can see, really, it has essentially moved out from China to other regions as well, which means that, at least from a geographical point of view, it is definitely more distributed, which makes it also less susceptible to changing political conditions in given countries. Third, I would actually say Bitcoin is the most decentralized cryptocurrency system out there. Now, just one note, decentralization. Many cryptocurrency projects think that this is a goal that you want to achieve, but it's actually rather a means to an end in that end being precisely censorship resistance. Why do I put decentralized in quotation marks? Because it's a very ill-defined, muddy concept. That is also very difficult to measure. However, some data points that we can have a look at. So for example, there's over 100,000 nodes on the global level, so you can see they're pretty much nicely geographically distributed as well. Actually, Bitcoin got a very wide-kind distribution. So we estimate that there are at least 50 million holders or users, and those range really from individuals to large institutions. So in terms of distribution, it's definitely more distributed than other cryptocurrencies. Now, hashing used to be pretty centralized two years ago, mostly in China. Now, as we can see from the previous chart, essentially, it is definitely less centralized. Also, mining pools have a lot less power than January believed. So they're constantly put in check by all these hashers because switching costs are very low. So if my mining pool operator, which I essentially use as a service provider, misbehaves or disagree with the pool policy, I can very easily switch to a different pool, and that keeps the check on pool behavior. Bitcoin also got a relatively healthy ecosystem, so you have multiple different implementations. Lots of developers working on different projects. And then finally, a point that I'm going to get back to you at the end of the presentation is, I think, the key feature of Bitcoin is that it's very resistant to change, so you can't easily change any system rules. Now, looking at activity, Bitcoin also has the highest activity end usage level. So just looking at on-chain activity, for example. If you remove change transactions and non-economic transactions, then actually, on any given day, on average, Bitcoin transfers $5 billion of value across the network. Now, also in terms of transactions, generally, on average, it's around 300,000 to 400,000 transactions, which represent roughly 600,000-plus payments per day. Now, also looking at trading volumes, so if you remove all the wash trading and all the fake volumes and so on, you get to number that's close to $1 billion a day. Now, also, lots of people actually say that Bitcoin is a store value and still needs to get the unit of account and medium of exchange function, but I would actually argue that it already is a medium of exchange and unit of account in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. So pretty much every single cryptocurrency is quoted against Bitcoin. And if you measure a portfolio performance, you always take Bitcoin as a benchmark. So in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it already acts or has all three functions of money. Now, also in terms of asset support, so if you look at what do service providers actually support, so that's wallets, payment service providers, exchanges, Bitcoin is pretty much universally accepted, a lot more than any other assets. And also, we can see really an institutionalization that has started over the last two, three years. So we've got new rather incumbents, regulated entities, institutions that try to provide regulated services that make institutions comfortable. So we have new financial products, such as features, future, sorry, trackers and so on, new exchanges that launch, as well as custody solutions. And what's interesting to note here is that this institutionalization seems to be pretty much limited to Bitcoin alone, with a very few exceptions. So what makes Bitcoin now different from other crypto assets? Nothing, it's mainly three things, although again, I don't have too much time, unfortunately, to go into all factors. But really, the key is the first move advantage, I would say, and the network effect as a result. So then likes to refer to Bitcoin's immaculate conception. So what he means by that, and I don't want to put any words in his mouth, is that there is an anonymous founder that left the project, so completely disappeared. Initially, it has relatively fair distribution, so pretty much anyone could participate just having a computer, provided, of course, they knew about Bitcoin. And so what that means is really that Bitcoin was relatively decentralized right from the start. If you have any new coin that launches today, you can't really avoid having some sort of centralized control element in that project before you can actually bootstrap it. Now also, something that people often tend to forget is that Bitcoin had a more or less two-year grace period before actually people started realizing that Bitcoin was there. So during the first two years, almost nobody knew about it, which meant that developers had time to actually focus on product development, make it more robust and fix box before, essentially, others could really attack it. Now if you launch any coin today, it will essentially be under attack right from day one. And then third, I think it's pretty obvious, is a bit on brand recognition, which I think we all agree on. So any blockchain use always makes a reference to Bitcoin. Everyone has heard about Bitcoin, although many don't really understand what it is. So really in terms of brand recognition, Bitcoin trumps any other cryptocurrency. And so really we have that kind of positive feedback loop here where you have users that use the system, which drives up prices and has resolved network value, which then incentivizes hashers or miners to actually add more hashing power, which creates more security for the network, which then over time, again, drives network activity. And the thing is today, it's really almost impossible to recreate the same economic incentives that actually pay for the security. So to get a network value that is high enough to incentivize miners to actually provide that service to secure the network is really, really difficult today to actually bootstrap that right from scratch. Second, I think, really is the design philosophy in Bitcoin. So it's really based on a security first approach or mindset. So really the key is to ensure the liveness of the system. So let's avoid at any cost anything that might disrupt the network. And so this also explains in the focus on preference towards soft forks or hard forks when upgrading the network, as those are backwards compatible, less disruptive for the network, but also focus on the base layer keeping it as dumb as possible, so with very limited functionality to reduce attack surface. And as a result, you focus more on optimizing that base layer and actually scale in different layers. So you build different systems and layers on top of it, which each might have different functionality and also different security assumptions. And then any proposed change really has to go through an extensive and long scrutiny. So just taking Segwit as an example, it took more than two years of testing before it actually got added to the code base. So it's all of this design philosophy, which is very different from many other cryptocurrency projects, which really have a move fast, break things attitude and be a lot more flexible. And so this ties really in the final point, which I personally think is the most important thing is Bitcoin's widget social contract. So what I mean by that is that essentially cryptocurrencies are more socioeconomic systems rather than just purely technical systems. So essentially can liken it to a sort of social contract that is implicit and agreed upon by all participants in the network. Now that social contract determines the key properties of that cryptocurrency. So in the case of Bitcoin, for example, there would be 21 million coin limits and other factors that actually make Bitcoin what it is today. Now that social contract is not written out somewhere. It's kind of like implicit. So everyone that down is given software implementation runs it, connects to the network, implicitly agrees with the rules. And that social contract is expressed essentially via the protocol rules, which you can kind of like into a constitution. Now the thing is that constitution's in the end it's all about code rights. So code can be copy pasted. Anyone can just change parameters. So what is the most important thing here as Eric Wall rightfully points out in his tweet is that no properties of any given cryptocurrency are essentially real unless it is extremely difficult to change them. And so if you have lots of that happens in lots of cryptocurrency where you have scheduled hard forks to change the rules every other day or every other week, well then none of these properties are actually real because it can't be guaranteed that they will still exist in a few months time. And so this is really my opinion. The key feature of Bitcoin is that it's extremely resistant to change. So we have that very diverse set of constituencies, could be miners, developers, hollers, and even different factions and tribes within those constituencies that all have different goals, different essentially visions for what Bitcoin is. And as a result there's constant infighting and no single party or group of people essentially can dominate the system and then the narrative over what Bitcoin is. So that's social contract. And so this really creates a very healthy system of checks and balances between all these different constituencies. And so just to give an example, so we've had that civil war going on in the Bitcoin community of a block size debate. And so if you can't even agree to increase the block size from one megabyte to two megabytes, you can be reasonably sure that the 21 million coin limit will also never find agreement to actually be changed. And so another example would be a segway to X so kind of like that corporate takeover that actually got fought off by an intolerant minority that was very vocal about it and actually caused all the businesses to reconsider their strategy. So that just shows that Bitcoin is extremely resistant to change and that is precisely what makes its key properties as real as it can get. Okay, just for the end, just like a few cautionary words as well. So it's not a panacea either. So let's not forget, as Jakama pointed out, it's still an experiment. Now there are many challenges and open issues that still remain. So for example, scaling, privacy, fungibility, but of course there's also interesting new projects that work on facilitating these. Now, one question that came up quite a lot into the past few days, the viability of the economic incentive model. So when the block subsidy drops or approaches zero, will fees actually be able to compensate for that loss in subsidy? And if yes, does that then mean that only a very small set of large institutions we'd be able to use a base layer? And if yes, what does that actually mean for Bitcoin itself? Now also one thing is we often refer to Bitcoin as being censorship resistant, but the thing is you can only find out how censorship resistant it is if it actually gets attacked and ideally by very large state, let's just say state level actors. Now the thing is has Bitcoin already been truly battle tested? We don't really know, I wouldn't say, I don't think so actually. So it's been very robust, but these attacks were very, very small compared to if a very powerful state actor tries to actively disrupt it. So right now Bitcoin is censorship resistant, yes, but the actual litmus test is really if somebody actively tries to shut it down. And then finally also regulations. So we have these two types of those sides of the ecosystem that kind of like diverge, one is the more regulated side, then the other one is the offshore unregulated side, including mixers and shady exchanges. And the thing is how can we bridge both worlds without actually sacrificing some of the key properties that make Bitcoin what it is? But then again, there's also reason for optimism. So Bitcoin has demonstrated tremendous resilience and robustness over the last years. So it's been operating for over 10 years now with near zero uptime, near zero downtime, actually. And so that and all the developments on top of it actually make me very confident in it. But again, let's not forget, it's still an experiment and there's still lots of things we actually do not understand about Bitcoin, including that social contract who is participating in it, who can influence it, how does that form and evolve. Even the economic incentives are still very poorly understood. So there's lots of research that needs to be done. But yeah, that's it. Thank you very much. So feel free to drop me an email whenever you have a question. And I'll have you can put it.