Happy Birthday Bitcoin (15 Years)

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is January 3rd, 2024. Can you believe it? Almost a quarter of a century has passed in the 21st century. It's been one hell of a ride, all things considered.

I remember when I was a kid, getting the Sunday newspaper and flipping to the comics. I loved the Rocky Mountain News because they had the best comics. There was one called "Zits," and I remember it showing 1999 turning into 2000, with the character saying, "Finally, it's over." It feels like just yesterday, and now we're almost 25 years into it. It's crazy how much has happened.

We've seen the rise of mobile computing and social media, the advent of 4G and 5G, and the dawn of AI. I remember watching The Twilight Zone episodes with William Shatner, where there were gremlins on the wing and episodes about how computers and robots would take over everything. That was in the 1950s or early 60s. Now, here we are, with large language models (LLMs) growing exponentially. Exponential technologies have really defined this whole century.

It's also a time of great unrest. Institutions are falling apart everywhere you look. Everyone's unhappy about something, but they can't agree on what that something is. Deep down, they know they're getting screwed somewhere. There's been a lot of propaganda, hate, and anger, but there's also a lot of positivity.

Many people want to make the world a better place and are trying to find a way to make it happen. On January 3rd, 2009, Bitcoin turned on. It's an amazing thing. The very first block of the network started, and it took a little while for things to get spinning up. Now, look at where we are 15 years later.

There's a global movement of probably more than 100 million people. If that were a religion, people would be concerned it would displace Christianity in a decade or two at that rate of growth. More than 100 million people believe we should be our own bank, in control of our money, assets, and identity. We should be able to check things. The concept of inclusive accountability is crucial.

Now, Bitcoin's not the end-all, be-all. It can't run the revolution itself; it serves as a foundation upon which we can build. It shows that you can have decentralized gold and take institutions and services from the government and put them into the commons, running them on a transnational basis. It's the single biggest innovation mankind has seen since the invention of the corporation. That's the inspiration that drew me into this space.

I thought I could do better, and I was inspired to do better because of Bitcoin. Thousands of entrepreneurs in our industry have done just that. For example, look at Cardano. I have a little device here; it's a Beelink GDR, a mini computer. It has a Ryzen processor, a nice graphics card, 64 gigs of RAM, and a two-terabyte hard drive.

This cost less than $1,000 and is powerful enough to run the Cardano network—actually, it's overpowered for our entire network. The cost of this technology goes down every year. We've democratized the ability to run a global institution that can manage all the assets, identity, and voting systems of the future for governments, people, and corporations. We live in a time of enormous innovation where everyone has an opportunity to have a say and participate. This year, the governance of Cardano will likely turn on, for better or for worse, likely with SIP 1694.

Stake pool operators will have a lot to say there. If that decision goes through, thousands of people who have never met each other will now serve in a kind of digital Congress across the world, making big and small decisions, discussing philosophy, and unlocking more than a billion dollars of assets sitting in our treasury. They will decide what the budget ought to be, where to deploy those funds, and how to get things done. Intersect is already operational with more than a thousand members and is growing rapidly. The GitHub repositories have been transferred over, and they now control the product backlog and the code of Cardano.

It's a giant open-source project inspired by organizations the Apache Foundation and the Linux Foundation, combining best practices from 30 years of open-source principles. When you combine that with a blockchain-based government, you have an open-source project like no other—one where you work for the protocol, not a person, and you can legitimize changes and decisions through a democratic process that is as secure as possible. We have a long road ahead. There's a lot to do, and we still face hard problems. If you look at the Ethereum roadmap, it's a good roadmap, but it's pushing complexity and the elegance of solving problems to layer two.

At the end of the day, they've kind of given up on layer one sharding and scaling because it's hard, especially with the design decisions they've made. We haven't given up. When you look at input endorsers, it directly tackles one of the biggest problems of how to scale, especially when combined with technologies like Mithril and extended UTXO. These are inevitabilities; it's not a question of if we can do it, but when it will get done. With minor, we talk about multi-resource consensus, which allows us to incentivize storage, network, and computing in addition to the security of the system.

This means we can create future variants that provide decentralized resources, essentially offering a hosting layer and service layer for everything needed to fully embrace Web 3 without a single central actor in charge. By having rich proofs, you can interface with these systems as a light client and still maintain a full node's worth of security because you can always check it yourself. That's the most fundamental truth we learn from Bitcoin: when you say "be your own bank," it means you can check your own ledger and verify that you own your own property. Analogously, in crypto, you always have to ask, "Can I check it myself?" These are basic principles that I believe have not been lost; in fact, they've been reinforced and rediscovered time and again through hacks and trust failures.

We look at things like Luna and FTX and ask ourselves how that happened. It was because human judgment and character were substituted for things that could have been done by machines and should have been done by machines. At the end of the day, people are people, and one thing we've learned 24 years into the 21st century is that people will always let you down. There are no exceptions. You learn this first as a kid.

You look at your parents and the big people in your life growing up, thinking they're perfect. Little by little, you start discovering inconsistencies and problems, realizing they're not as perfect as you thought. This is why many teenagers rebel. Later, as adults, you accept them for who they are and find ways to love and embrace them despite their flaws. The same applies to every institution we have.

When we look across all the institutions of the United States and the world order, we see that they do a lot of good but also a lot of harm. It's sometimes difficult to reconcile how a nation-state or organization can save lives while also taking them. Where are the feedback loops to improve things? No one is perfect, but the only way to get better is to acknowledge problems. We need the right structures to detect them and ensure people agree on them.

The issue is that we're moving into a post-truth world where people don't want to admit mistakes or see flaws in the things they support, even when it's obvious there are concerns. Blockchain technology is the antidote because it acts as a cognitive mirror, whether it's convenient or not. The Bitcoin blockchain will operate as intended tomorrow, the next day, and every day after that. Cardano will do the same, as will Ethereum and many other true blockchain systems in the ecosystem. What we do with that information is a personal choice.

We've noticed that people who rely on power structures being inconsistent and divisive are attempting to destroy the blockchain industry because they understand they cannot survive in the light of day. They have to operate in darkness. We're headed in the right direction. Fifteen years in, it is truly exceptional to receive such a gift—a gift of hope, liberation, and one that keeps on giving. Sometimes, in Cardano land, people call us a cult because I go on YouTube from time to time and spread the good word.

To be fair, there is something philosophical, almost spiritual, about what we do. At the end of the day, what we're selling is not a financial product, technology, or some club. We're selling something much more fundamental: an ecosystem of ecosystems. The blockchain industry as a whole embodies the concept that you have a god-given right to be in charge of your own life and the ability to consent to things. Every single one of us was born into governance systems we didn't construct, don't control, and have little say in how they evolve—from how your money works to how your education works, to who is considered famous, rich, and powerful.

What makes what we do so special is that it's the first time in our lives that we have taken that power back. We've reevaluated and decided how money should work, how voting should work, how our assets should work, and how our identity and privacy should function. Maybe it's inconvenient to some, but at the end of the day, are we in charge or not? Every single person who opposes the industry is really saying, "You can't be in charge; we are. Sit down and shut up.

" I wouldn't want to be on the bad side of 100 million people because when you wake up, it will be a billion. Just the Roman Empire tried to fight off the inevitability of Christianity, the same thing is going to happen. Philosophy whose time has come will come in a flood, and that's what our industry is doing. That's what Bitcoin has enabled. It's not about proof of work or a particular block time or monetary policy; it's about the tides of freedom and liberty.

Just the American Revolution in the 18th century brought that concept to Europe, we saw shortly thereafter the French Revolution and legitimate discussions about rule by the many instead of the few—the concept of consent of the governed instead of the divine right of kings. It's not always perfect, and you can always find flaws or issues. America wasn't completely free in the 18th century; we still had slaves and had to have a brutal conflict in the next century to start resolving that. But that was a massive step forward when you think about it. Kings basically enslaved their entire society; every single person worked for them.

They weren't subject to the rule of law or human rights. You were basically their servant, for better or for worse. Some had a little more freedom, some a little less, but you worked for them. The idea of getting rid of them and replacing them with leaders we can replace as a mass is pretty special. It starts the process of freedom for all.

The problem is that our lives aren't ruled anymore by kings and queens; they're ruled by institutions, bureaucracies, and unelected officials that, by aggregate, run everything—corporations, giant soulless faceless entities that have agency and identity but no human one. This uneasy alliance of organizations creates a status quo that doesn't particularly care if you're well-educated, healthy, have opportunities in life, enjoy the fruits of your labor, or are treated fairly or discriminated against. All it cares about is its own self-preservation. The more soulless entities we can take and put into the realm of cryptocurrency, the more we can imbue them with principles of reciprocity, fairness, and human rights, ensuring that each person has the ability to grow and rise. That's the life's work; that's who we are.

It doesn't matter who's in charge of the movement. It can be faceless like Bitcoin or have some faces like Ethereum or others. What matters is the philosophy. Fifteen years in, we haven't lost that; it's only grown stronger. Now there's an army behind it—science, engineering, nation-states, and institutions that are much more credible and stronger.

We're not judged by our mistakes and failures; we have many because we were the only ones willing to make mistakes. We're judged by the fact that we continue to succeed despite the entire world order unifying to prevent this philosophy from moving forward. That is what makes this special. Thank you all for being part of it. It's the privilege of a lifetime to meet you and be with you.

I have my own failings and mistakes, and there’s a lot to do. I have to be kinder, nicer, and more collaborative in 2024. There’s a lot to learn, a lot of partnerships to make, and a lot of people to elevate for all this to work, especially on the Cardano side. That's underway and happening, especially with Intersect and SIP 1694. At the end of the day, I'm still me.

There's a genuineness about this medium; I just turn on my phone and tell you whatever comes to my mind, for better or for worse. I've learned a lot along the way and will continue to learn. The only constant is the need for change. I have to change the format sometimes, adjust the message a bit, and be more precise in certain areas, especially as the stakes rise. But we will never lose sight of the prize, which is to build great technology to liberate and open people up.

There are a lot more CEOs in the room now; we've hired six CEOs in the IO family—people like Eron, John O'Connor, and Sean Ford. They do great work, are smart, and are great leaders. What's nice about having good CEOs is they teach you how to be a better leader. Each has been a CEO before and brings with them all kinds of tools and techniques. That's what excites me about 2024—the opportunity to be a student again and learn.

The cup is going to get emptied, and we get to fill it up. I'm spending this entire week on the metacognitive science of learning how to learn. There are so many interesting things to explore, like personal knowledge management systems, memory techniques, and the latest cognitive neuroscience on retrieval practices and interleaving. There are so many cool and interesting things now that we didn't have or were in their infancy ten years ago. This constant reinvention, layered with new things like extending one's brain into the AI world and connecting that to a second brain, is what it takes to be a leader.

The fundamentals remain the same: treat people with dignity and respect, operate with integrity, and work hard every single day. I'm proud of the work we've done since I started and today. I'm proud of every single person in my organization who walks with me. I reflected on 2023 and thought about the incredible work that went into Input Output as an organization and the community as a whole. You all showed up to the workshops and lifted mountains, and it means the world to me.

2024 is going to be a challenging year. We're going to learn a lot, do a lot, and build a lot. But I have no doubt that when we close out the year, we'll be a hell of a lot stronger than we were when we began. When we look to Bitcoin's 16th birthday, we can look back and say we carried the torch, pushed forward, and did something special. In the arc of history, these will be the days we look back upon and say that was the moment, that was the generation that restored and returned liberty to the masses and prevented institutions, corporations, and transnational bodies from shrouding the world in the darkness of rule by the few—the heartless few—and instead gave it to everybody.

Thank you for being part of this. Thank you for being part of the family. We have a lot of work to do. It's going to be a long year, but it's going to be a fun year, one that I think we will remember fondly. Cheers!