The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️

Where Critical Thinkers Meet.

Bitcoin, philosophy, and the long view.

🎙️ @CedYoungelman · 🌐

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

Bitcoin isn't finished. It's not safe by default. It can still be captured.

Bitcoin Core stripped out a filter that protected the network since 2014.

If the node runners lose the fight to restore it, the industry inherits Bitcoin, and a Bitcoin the industry controls is a Bitcoin the state can finally reach.

Are nodes the soul of Bitcoin?

@GrassFedBitcoin, a node runner's node runner, came on to lay out the fight consuming Bitcoin right now, in plain English: what BIP-110 actually is, why he says Bitcoin Core has turned hostile, the spam war over OP_RETURN, why he calls nodes "the soul of Bitcoin," who really controls the network, the "intolerant minority" and the 2017 UASF precedent, and why "21 million is a rule, and that's freedom."

Send this to anyone who thinks running a node doesn't matter.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro: "What is real?"
1:03 Why he likes BIP-110: "basic maintenance"
2:09 What winning looks like: adoption + activation
5:00 What losing looks like: the industry ignores it
7:00 Where BIP-110 gets censored: Reddit, GitHub, the mailing list
8:20 The numbers: ~14,300 nodes, ~15% of the network
9:34 Coercibility & capture: are the plebs corruptible?
12:30 OCEAN, KYC & why the industry is captured by design
16:00 The "intolerant minority" & the populism critique
21:01 85% not running = a non-vote?
22:30 Taproot is "90% trash": the OP_IF exploit
30:33 Sponsors
32:59 Running full nodes: spam filters & property rights
38:00 What Core 30 ripped out, and what BIP-110 restores
42:40 "21 million is a rule. That's freedom."
48:30 "Get out of the way of the immune system"
50:48 Core 30 as the high-school bully
52:16 Does BIP-110 failing mean the death of decentralization?
59:00 The state's Eye of Sauron
1:09:37 Sponsors
1:12:37 Is BIP-110 rushed? The 12-month temporary design
1:18:47 An inauthentic movement?
1:20:41 "King Luke" & the Linus Torvalds analogy
1:24:49 Prune nodes, the tenth man & rage-quitting
1:29:06 Will miners take credit at the last minute?
1:33:00 Holding the line: closing thoughts
1:37:13 Outro

Hosted by @cedyoungelman on The Bitcoin Matrix.

🎧 https://t.co/thpJKqzsyp

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

You are not short on money. You are short on time.

The clock is a technology. It was invented about 600 years ago, and somewhere along the way we forgot it was ever invented at all.

Standardizing time turned it into a commodity that could be priced, bought and sold. Fiat came downstream of that. The first central bank arrived roughly thirty years after the pendulum clock.

Is time upstream of money?

@LanternBitcoin, founder of Block Rewards and author of The Age of Time, came on to lay out the argument in plain English: what the tyranny of the clock actually is, how the Prague Orloj started reshaping Western civilization, Saturn as the invisible operating system still running in the background, why we stopped building 300 year cathedrals and started building boxes, the user illusion and why your experience of right now is already on a delay, AI and the information hyperstream, and why Bitcoin's ten minute heartbeat might be the last guardrail we have.

Send this to anyone who feels like they never have enough time.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Cold open
0:47 Meet Scott Dedels: The Age of Time
2:25 Why write a book that isn't about hard money
6:48 Li Jiang: the lantern as the first link in the chain
10:04 Prague, the Orloj, and the birth of mechanical time
12:50 "Minutes, seconds, hours: entirely made up concepts"
15:21 What life was like before coordinated time
17:27 The tyranny of the clock: Woodcock, 1944
22:52 Coordination, and what Satoshi actually solved
24:59 From the clock to fiat: "time is money"
28:00 Saturn, Kronos, and the watchmaker god
31:36 The pocket watch: time arrives on the body
34:23 Saturday, Saturnalia, and devouring the future
37:24 "Time is not neutral. It moves toward consumption."
41:24 Why most people would worry less about money
43:20 Sponsors
45:21 The many ways we experience time
49:48 Saturn logos, the cube, and the built environment
52:08 The Matrix: a system designed to disappear
53:32 Cathedrals, beauty, and civilizational memory
1:00:19 State capitols, great fires, and the world's fairs
1:06:03 Godel Escher Bach and the user illusion
1:09:50 Your experience of now is already on a delay
1:12:27 A plant medicine detour: perceiving time differently
1:19:53 Bitcoin as a different kind of external clock
1:23:09 Reading: the cathedral in cyberspace
1:25:56 Notification culture and thinking as an ancestor
1:31:24 Sponsors
1:33:21 The clock as an attack vector on deep time
1:35:33 AI, the singularity, and the information hyperstream
1:38:00 The ten minute heartbeat as a critical guardrail
1:41:32 Prediction markets and free will
1:47:49 The tattoo, intuition, and the block universe
1:54:48 Bitcoin, certainty, and the future
1:56:50 The great returning and the long human
2:02:00 "Evaluated by nodes run by descendants we will never meet"
2:09:32 From "what is time" to "what time is it"
2:15:34 Where to find Scott, the book, and Block Rewards
2:16:53 Outro

Hosted by @cedyoungelman on The Bitcoin Matrix.

🎧 https://t.co/a3uZgHWbMY

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

You are not short on money. You are short on time.

The clock is a technology. It was invented about 600 years ago, and somewhere along the way we forgot it was ever invented at all.

Standardizing time turned it into a commodity that could be priced, bought and sold. Fiat came downstream of that. The first central bank arrived roughly thirty years after the pendulum clock.

Is time upstream of money?

@LanternBitcoin, founder of Block Rewards and author of The Age of Time, came on to lay out the argument in plain English: what the tyranny of the clock actually is, how the Prague Orloj started reshaping Western civilization, Saturn as the invisible operating system still running in the background, why we stopped building 300 year cathedrals and started building boxes, the user illusion and why your experience of right now is already on a delay, AI and the information hyperstream, and why Bitcoin's ten minute heartbeat might be the last guardrail we have.

Send this to anyone who feels like they never have enough time.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Cold open
0:47 Meet Scott Dedels: The Age of Time
2:25 Why write a book that isn't about hard money
6:48 Li Jiang: the lantern as the first link in the chain
10:04 Prague, the Orloj, and the birth of mechanical time
12:50 "Minutes, seconds, hours: entirely made up concepts"
15:21 What life was like before coordinated time
17:27 The tyranny of the clock: Woodcock, 1944
22:52 Coordination, and what Satoshi actually solved
24:59 From the clock to fiat: "time is money"
28:00 Saturn, Kronos, and the watchmaker god
31:36 The pocket watch: time arrives on the body
34:23 Saturday, Saturnalia, and devouring the future
37:24 "Time is not neutral. It moves toward consumption."
41:24 Why most people would worry less about money
43:20 Sponsors
45:21 The many ways we experience time
49:48 Saturn logos, the cube, and the built environment
52:08 The Matrix: a system designed to disappear
53:32 Cathedrals, beauty, and civilizational memory
1:00:19 State capitols, great fires, and the world's fairs
1:06:03 Godel Escher Bach and the user illusion
1:09:50 Your experience of now is already on a delay
1:12:27 A plant medicine detour: perceiving time differently
1:19:53 Bitcoin as a different kind of external clock
1:23:09 Reading: the cathedral in cyberspace
1:25:56 Notification culture and thinking as an ancestor
1:31:24 Sponsors
1:33:21 The clock as an attack vector on deep time
1:35:33 AI, the singularity, and the information hyperstream
1:38:00 The ten minute heartbeat as a critical guardrail
1:41:32 Prediction markets and free will
1:47:49 The tattoo, intuition, and the block universe
1:54:48 Bitcoin, certainty, and the future
1:56:50 The great returning and the long human
2:02:00 "Evaluated by nodes run by descendants we will never meet"
2:09:32 From "what is time" to "what time is it"
2:15:34 Where to find Scott, the book, and Block Rewards
2:16:53 Outro

Hosted by @cedyoungelman on The Bitcoin Matrix.

🎧 https://t.co/a3uZgHWbMY

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

Scott Dedels on the time problem hiding inside every money problem:

"Most people would be less worried about money if they weren't worried at all about time. Genuinely, what most people would do if they had unlimited money is have full autonomy over their time. Most of the things people would do with wealth actually relate to time: having the ability to enjoy yourself, be with your loved ones, pursue your interests and passions. Those are time problems.

I think most people are quite happy without fabulous riches. But where they start to really squirm is when they don't have any time.

Which itself is a crazy idea, because even that we think about in this Saturn operating system way. You think about how many, or how few, hours you have. People before this way of thinking was integrated, it just wouldn't have been a thing. You lived in time. Life just happened. It wasn't segmented or partitioned in this rigid way."

@LanternBitcoin on The @_BitcoinMatrix #284.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

@_BitcoinMatrix @firefish_io @Stamp_Seed @cluborange Scott's book, The Age of Time: A Journey Through Consciousness, Reality, and the End of the Modern Illusion.

https://t.co/NmoY3SesA3 for an autographed copy, payable in Bitcoin. Also on Amazon.

Follow @LanternBitcoin.

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

@BlueRidgeBTC Ty!

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

@_BitcoinMatrix @Croesus_BTC @smarterwebco @_BitcoinCenter @TraceMayer @Excellion @JAN3com @thejobchick @GrantCardone @RobinSeyr @MicroSeed_io @TFL1728 @bramk @TomerStrolight @BITVOLT @jimmysong @Daniel21e15 @natbrunell @DavidBCollum @parkeralewis @keonne @SamouraiWallet @WalkerAmerica @JeffBooth @meanwhile @LeboBTC @AaronRDay @leamuirleyn @Beau_Turner21 @AbundantMines @andyjschoonover @JoinCrowdHealth @IIICapital @peruvian_bull @MarylandHODL21 @CrisReed @conhodlan @unchainedcap @Stamp_Seed @firefish_io @secsovereign @timevalueofbtc @TheBitcoinLayer @Humble_Hodl1111 @ByteFederal @PiusSprenger @Campnakamoto @HammerSeed21 @_BitcoinMatrix #284: The Age of Time

"Most people would be less worried about money if they weren't worried at all about time."

@LanternBitcoin on the tyranny of the clock, why fiat came downstream of it, and the 10 minute heartbeat no one controls.

📺https://t.co/L7NHrpJCum

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

37 lines of code. Expires in 12 months. And the loudest criticism is that it's "rushed."

Bitcoin Mechanic on whether BIP-110 is rushed:

"I've been in Bitcoin for years, and I've championed things before that had unintended consequences. SegWit and Taproot, I was a big proponent of both. Taproot was almost unequivocally a mistake at this point. I take responsibility for that, and I definitely ate humble pie over it.

But those were enormous changes. They completely redesigned how Bitcoin works. BIP-110 is ultimately just this: you can only have 83 byte or smaller OP_RETURNs, and there are some guardrails on Taproot. It's incredibly simple to reason about the effects of it. It's a trivial change by comparison.

And it's not rushed, as many characterize it. It's been around for almost a year. It's had plenty of time for people to levy any reasonable criticisms at it, and I deal with them all day. I'm waiting for someone to make a genuinely good argument. And if some unknown unknown occurs, it's a temporary soft fork. It only lasts 12 months. All of it becomes available again in September 2027. It's 37 lines of code, reusing stuff that's been used many times in the past.

Obviously there are some people that really hate this fork. So why are they busy complaining about the fact that Luke's a Catholic? That's not relevant to the argument. Talk about something BIP-110 does, and point out the issues with it."

@GrassFedBitcoin on The @_BitcoinMatrix #283.

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

@SatoshiSound @walitysch1 @Princey21M

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

MUST WATCH 🚨

"Most of the money problems we talk about with Bitcoin they're not money problems. They're time problems."

@LanternBitcoin on the tyranny of the clock, why time is upstream of money, and Bitcoin as a new clock.

@_BitcoinMatrix #284: The Age of Time is out now.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

"Most of the money problems we talk about with Bitcoin — they're not money problems. They're time problems."

I've spent years trying to explain why I never feel like I have time.

@LanternBitcoin on why time is upstream of money, and why Bitcoin is a new clock.

A 10-minute heartbeat no one controls.

[Chris Guida | ⚡🪢 BIP110 @cguida6]

"Not Gonna Node" is the most blatant anti-bitcoin psyop ever

[Nick Szabo @NickSzabo4]

Having a feature that looks like it's intended for non-financial content may be a much larger legal risk than having a feature intended for financial transactions that is subverted to post non-financial content. It's not "all just bits" in the eyes of the law. Caveat IANAL. A feature that looks like it's intended for non-financial content also sends a strong social signal that non-financial content is welcome on Bitcoin.

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

Tomorrow.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

Bitcoin Mechanic on how Bitcoin actually defends itself:

"You have the industry. They run the important nodes, but they do whatever they're told. And then you have the plebs, the ones dismissed as 'not economic nodes.' But I don't buy that. They're still doing something with their node. It might not be a billion-dollar exchange, but they're doing stuff.

Those guys are the defense of the network, because they are uncoercible. They always lead the way. They're the ones who push through the changes that matter, because the industry will never touch anything controversial.

The network belongs to them. That's what I mean when I say nodes are the soul of Bitcoin. I don't mean the industry guys. They just follow and do what they're told."

@GrassFedBitcoin on The @_BitcoinMatrix #283.

[The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast ⚡️ @_BitcoinMatrix]

Bitcoin isn't finished. It's not safe by default. It can still be captured.

Bitcoin Core stripped out a filter that protected the network since 2014.

If the node runners lose the fight to restore it, the industry inherits Bitcoin, and a Bitcoin the industry controls is a Bitcoin the state can finally reach.

Are nodes the soul of Bitcoin?

@GrassFedBitcoin, a node runner's node runner, came on to lay out the fight consuming Bitcoin right now, in plain English: what BIP-110 actually is, why he says Bitcoin Core has turned hostile, the spam war over OP_RETURN, why he calls nodes "the soul of Bitcoin," who really controls the network, the "intolerant minority" and the 2017 UASF precedent, and why "21 million is a rule, and that's freedom."

Send this to anyone who thinks running a node doesn't matter.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro: "What is real?"
1:03 Why he likes BIP-110: "basic maintenance"
2:09 What winning looks like: adoption + activation
5:00 What losing looks like: the industry ignores it
7:00 Where BIP-110 gets censored: Reddit, GitHub, the mailing list
8:20 The numbers: ~14,300 nodes, ~15% of the network
9:34 Coercibility & capture: are the plebs corruptible?
12:30 OCEAN, KYC & why the industry is captured by design
16:00 The "intolerant minority" & the populism critique
21:01 85% not running = a non-vote?
22:30 Taproot is "90% trash": the OP_IF exploit
30:33 Sponsors
32:59 Running full nodes: spam filters & property rights
38:00 What Core 30 ripped out, and what BIP-110 restores
42:40 "21 million is a rule. That's freedom."
48:30 "Get out of the way of the immune system"
50:48 Core 30 as the high-school bully
52:16 Does BIP-110 failing mean the death of decentralization?
59:00 The state's Eye of Sauron
1:09:37 Sponsors
1:12:37 Is BIP-110 rushed? The 12-month temporary design
1:18:47 An inauthentic movement?
1:20:41 "King Luke" & the Linus Torvalds analogy
1:24:49 Prune nodes, the tenth man & rage-quitting
1:29:06 Will miners take credit at the last minute?
1:33:00 Holding the line: closing thoughts
1:37:13 Outro

Hosted by @cedyoungelman on The Bitcoin Matrix.

🎧 https://t.co/thpJKqzsyp

[Adam Simecka @AdamSimecka]

BIP110 is being done all wrong.

If you all really wanted 83 byte limits, you should have just done it the right way - by bribing Core.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

REPOST, recorded December 2025. Samson Mow saw this coming before BIP-110 even had a number.

Samson Mow - Do You Trust Bitcoin's Developers?

"It is a massive shock that Knots has this much adoption."

The man who helped win the blocksize war came on to explain why Core's problem isn't a conspiracy — it's something more dangerous: groupthink. Developers changing what people don't want changed. And a community rediscovering that blind trust in developers is a huge risk, because developers are fallible.

Eight months later: Knots keeps growing, and the flag day is weeks away.

"How can they not see all these things compounding? They must see it. Therefore there's some level of compromise, or they're being bribed or something. I don't think that's it. The danger is groupthink."

Send this to anyone who says "just fork off and make your own coin." As Samson says: nobody really wants that.

@Excellion on The @_BitcoinMatrix.
Full conversation here: https://t.co/KyIMI0rRPy

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

Just something to chew on.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

.@americanhodl8 on how each cycle is compounded by how hard it gets, tough emotional moments in the hodling journey, life-changing money & how plebs are struggling with the nihilism of everyday life.

[Cedric Youngelman ⚡️ @CedYoungelman]

Luke discovered Bitcoin in 2010.

@LukeDashjr was at New Year's Eve Party on an IRC chatroom.

The price was just $0.30 ‼️