Carlos Toriello reveals how Bitcoin and OpenTimestamps can transform public recordkeeping into an incorruptible system of truth, starting with elections and scaling to all of humanity’s digital history.
In this episode, Carlos Toriello of Simple Proof reveals how Bitcoin is evolving into a foundational technology for truth and accountability by anchoring digital records to its timechain using OpenTimestamps. Drawing from his election audit work in Guatemala—where timestamping protected both data integrity and personal safety, Carlos explains how the same process has now been adopted in U.S. elections, including in Screven County, Georgia. By hashing documents to the Bitcoin blockchain, Simple Proof creates immutable public records that prevent tampering and ensure verifiability. Thanks to Merkle trees, this system can scale to secure trillions of files using less than 1% of block space. Yet despite its security, uptime, and neutrality, Bitcoin is often excluded from government blockchain initiatives in favor of protocols with corporate backers—an oversight Carlos believes must be corrected. This episode reframes Bitcoin not just as a financial tool, but as the world’s first incorruptible archive for public truth.
Carlos Toriello’s appearance on TFTC’s 600th episode reframes Bitcoin as a tool for preserving truth, not just wealth. Through Simple Proof’s use of OpenTimestamps, he envisions a future where elections, public records, and personal data are protected by cryptographic proof rather than institutional trust. With minimal cost and unmatched transparency, Bitcoin can deter corruption, defend history, and safeguard digital integrity. Carlos’s message is clear: Bitcoin must be part of the government’s blockchain strategy, because in a world of fragile systems and fading trust, it may be our strongest defense—for money and for memory.
0:00 - Intro
0:42 - How Carliño's year has been
6:34 - Explaining with Screven County example
16:15 - Fold & Coinkite
17:53 - The data from Screven county
26:45 - Expanding the use case
29:47 - Unchained
30:48 - Why bitcoin is the best solution
37:44 - A blockchain for enemies
46:38 - Changing history
52:49 - Retiring civil servants
57:31 - Preserving privacy
1:02:54 - Responsibility of preserving data
1:05:54 - Calls to action
(00:00) anything digital can be anchored to bitcoin as a source of Truth the JFK files if someone had a desire to change those files do we have a record of all of those changes elections are particularly times sensitive this has been used in the United States election system this was never possible before if you are a state employee and you are concerned someone is coming to take over your systems we're seeing right now go buy and signatures on the auto pen stuff you could scale this to all data that is produced by all of
(00:41) humanity this is a big episode episode 600 of tftc wooo thank you Logan crazy to think 600 episodes we're here and I'm very excited that we're sitting down with carlinho for the because it's getting back to the roots of what this show is we're we're we're in an era of Bitcoin where everybody's focused on number go up nation state adoption state level adoption corporate treasury adoption there's other things going on in Bitcoin important things world changing potential Beyond number go up and you and your team at symbol proof are
(01:26) are working on that and or an exemplary use case case of Bitcoin and what I can do to bring back transparency and level the pay playing field of fairness in our society so thank you for joining me for for Episode 600 it's an honor and uh hello to everyone so yeah pleasure to be here and a lot has changed since the last time you were here what was that like was that exactly a year ago or is that two years ago at this point BTC Plus+ said Austin is that that was last year right April maybe May so almost a year ago a
(02:02) little less than a year feels like four yeah at that point we were talking about the work that you did with simple proof Digital Witness stack work and it seems like a lot has changed since then so before we jump into the broader discussion why don't you give us an update on how the last 10 months has been for you appreciate it well it's been a whirlwind I've uh never been more bullish than I am at the moment right and uh for us it's been uh you know my background for folks that don't know is I was raised in Guatemala
(02:41) and I have been an election auditor here and was privileged and honored to lead a a community volunteer effort called Digital Witness that performed a realtime election audit of the 2023 elections in Guatemala using uh Bitcoin both on chain and through the lightning Network and submitted our auditing you know our um you know civilian run audit of the elections mostly in real time and our final report March of last year and after finalizing that joined the simple proof team and so I am now a uh member of simple proof so the work that I did
(03:24) as an auditor relied on simple proof we consumed simple proof Service uh for the not at work and so it's just uh I I I we eat our own dog food right I am convinced that uh without it I may have gone to jail and so it's very nice uh to have cryptographic proofs that can demonstrate and allow anyone to see that what you're talking about isn't made up right it's it's on um right it's uh like anyone can verify trustless right and so what simple proof.
(03:59) com is is a start that has built on top of the open timestamps protocol which has been around since 201 2015 16 I think we went over this last year we went over this last time it's been around it's been around yes um and uh we're the first folks that have decided to you know try to build a business on top of this so you know for to kind of help folks understand it's like um for example strike is to the light Network what simple proof is to open time stamps right we want to make open time stamps sexy again and just more commonplace and just
(04:42) a part of everyday life not only for bitcoiners but also for other users and what open time steps does is an extremely and perhaps the most data efficient way of using the Bitcoin time chain as a database of time stamp and so building Merkel trees you can use blocks uh on the blockchain as a source of time to date digital information thereby knowing when something was created in the Digital Universe this is extremely important for arguably anything and everything that we do online like we can Envision and imagine
(05:24) a future where your nostr notes your Twitter you know tweets your emails absolutely everything has a time stamp to bitcoin um because there's no reason not to and you know currently where we got to start is in elections because elections are particularly times sensitive right if it is possible to um circumscribe you know limit anything that is produced from an election to election night and and and the moment when it happens you dramatically increase the Public's and election Auditors kind of like what I was doing
(06:06) their ability to verify that and so after having been a user and proven that it is incredibly valuable I joined the simple proof team and uh last year the call to action was the elections were happening in November and fortunately we were able to find uh people to work with in the United States and so this has been used in the United States election system as of November 2024 massive a small step but an incredible step and to refresh everybody's U sort of understanding of how you're using open timestamps at simple proof to basically timestamp this
(06:53) voting data into Bitcoin let let's refresh everybody's memory or anybody who's new here walk them through how exactly this works and it's a great question because uh immediately A lot of people will say that voting on blockchain like uh electronic voting like that's uh not a good thing and I am sympathetic to that argument uh but I also think you know there is electronic voting but there is paper-based votings right so it's there's a spectrum of ways in which Humanity votes what we have done and what we have built is an ability where
(07:34) anything digital in voting or in any public record or your tweets whatever anything digital can be anchored to bitcoin as a source of truth right and within voting and specifically in the case for example of scran County Georgia where we worked in November we did not work with the votes right so this is not this was not a voting uh blockchain voting this was the voting system in scran County Georgia produced a result and that document eventually became a digital file that was published on the internet and so our client was
(08:24) very concerned that as you know election results not you know directly votes election results once they're made public uh you know they're sensitive and so what we've did was just protect and timestamp those ultimate documents the the the final uh results with Bitcoin via transactions on uh the blockchain uh with Merkel trees that allow anyone to using cryptographic proofs prove that those results happened and if anyone tried to change them after the fact it is um very easy and simple to demonstrate and prove that alterations
(09:10) occurred is that helpful yes so as people weren't using simple proof hashes to prove that they voted a certain way people voted those voted were those votes were tallied then you'd have documents released showing the results at different points in time and you were taking those documents hashing it into Bitcoin and then I mean it's similar what happened in Guatemala to a sense like you guys actually helped prove that there was some meddling there well yeah so the Guatemala case was uh well let's uh potentially not get into
(09:45) that quite yet but it was very similar um in that once the elections produce a result often times there's a type of um you know pyramid or or just a uh you know system where these results bubble up into the final Tey so you can think of a voting system has the individual votes at the very bottom of the pyramid then the next level over is your polling you know machine or or your polling location uh where wherever you give the vote like there's a total there uh then within the polling place right a voting Center there's a bunch of you know
(10:26) locations that add up within a Precinct they voting Precinct there's also a bunch of polling so it's all of these steps that lad up into the final result which can be a county a state a city or eventually even a national level right so it's in our case in scran it was at the level of the scran County Board of Elections when they produced their final results that they submitted to the Secretary of State the folks at the scren County uh registar office had proof that they submitted that information to the Secretary of State
(11:05) and therefore if anyone hacked secretary of state scren county was protected and you could argue scran County in that sense became the first County in the entire United States where you know you could even have had you know nation state level attacks breaking down uh you know the Secretary of State's office in in Georgia scran was protected right and so uh we have proven that it can occur at a scale that is as Rural and as small scren county is a beautiful place the the the main city is Sylvania Georgia it's got 15,000 people living there and
(11:43) so this isn't something that is only affordable to the giant Metropolis of the world um that have gigantic it departments you know of multiple people this is literally a threepers office where a single person was doing essentially all of this work so um proving that it can and and it was an IT specialist it was uh a a wonderful woman and bitcoiner called uh Stacy Scott and she was able to integrate with within her systems in the simplest way possible where um within two weeks we were able to do this should we share screen and
(12:20) show a little preview of my pleasure I think I think this would be good it's only two minutes right yeah oh the the actual uh sure uh you want me to show the yeah I think this would be of course I think most people watch this podcast these days so um taking you now to let so can you see my screen yep uh films.
(12:44) simple proof.com we've made a few uh but our most recent one is this two-minute trailer called immutable history chapter 1 uh so without further Ado the real Focus has been on making sure that everything is fair and that every everyone who is supposed to vote can vote and that was where they were talking about some of the cyber security issues and especially of like Ai and how it could be used against us on Election night I would run the reports and bring that information into this office where we have the computer that's connected to
(13:17) the internet when that information touches the internet it should also get timestamped to the Bitcoin blockchain so Stacy came to our second official Meetup from maybe her political beliefs I think that's kind of what led her to it but it is important that it's the Bitcoin blockchain because it's not controlled by anyone even our rural small county office was easily able to afford this technology it was not expensive at all it's the first time an American institution decides to invest in protecting and preserve its
(13:55) history with the power of the Bitcoin Network verifying don't just trust you verify so it's taking that responsibility for yourself and not just counting on somebody else to do it for you I think as Americans is very important that we remember the people that created our nation that's what's going to help us remember to to keep those freedoms we have to keep fighting and we have to keep remembering the importance and preserving those freedoms no I think it was important to play the video too because it really
(14:36) humanizes and contextualizes just how granular something like simple proof can get and I don't think many Americans despite the fact that we've grown up to try to understand that we live in this Democratic Society where you can vote and uh not until recent years particularly The Last 5 Years Have We Become acquainted with how the election process actually works and um the story out of Georgia really really humanizes it this is how it actually works you have somebody like this running um an election process in their County and
(15:13) they literally run to their computer upload to the internet and there are many people that are surmising that that's where things may get corrupted and so having the ability to timestamp this is very important for sure and you know also you know a lot of people have different feelings about democracy and voting but uh you know it's it's at the end of the day it's still people right like we don't have robots running all the show yet so it's uh the people are what make the system that you're in right and uh not all voting is created
(15:44) equal and it fundamentally comes down to who's there and and more often than not the folks that are uh decide to get involved in this because it's not a high paying job it's it's it's hasl you know political risks it's um you know plenty of folks are not going to be happy with your work and so it's it's kind of thankless um and we shouldn't just assume that all people that are involved in this are you know bad quite the opposite it's it's how do we help folks that are there so that those that want to do a good job have it easy and those
(16:18) that want to do a bad job have a harder time Su freaks do you have a credit card are you getting cash back or Airline points or points for some other service guess what those are shitcoins you want to be stacking Bitcoin I have some groundbreaking news for you the team at fold has finally released the Bitcoin rewards credit card they have a wait list going to be Distributing the cards later this year so you want to get on the weit list full Plus members are going to get unlimited 2% Bitcoin back on this credit card if you get on the
(16:52) weit list they're up to $200,000 in prizes they're going to be given out so get on it as quickly as possible go to tftc doio fold and get on the weight list there if you're on the weight list you have the potential to win some of the prizes check it out sup freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at bit key bit key makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose it is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two three multi- you have one key on the hardware wallet one key on your mobile device and block
(17:25) stores a key in the cloud for you this is an incredible Hardware device for your friends and family or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time but haven't taken a step to self- custody because they're worried about the complications of setting up a private public hey pair securing that seed phrase setting up a pin setting up a pass phrase again bit key makes it easy to use hard to lose it's the easiest zero to one step your first step to self- custody if you have friends and family on the exchanges who
(17:53) haven't moved it off tell them to pick up a big key go to big keyworld use the key tftc 20 at checkout for 20% % off your order that's bit keyworld code tfc2 and so let's to further conceptualize this and really make it concrete for people let's jump into what actually happened I think you have the data that was actually uh uploaded and hashed yep into into Bitcoin um from Severn County scran County scr County scren Georgia yeah so I'll pull that up again um so there were many things that ended up on the uh block and the blocks
(18:36) uh but this is kind of the easiest way to understand really what we're talking about at the end of the day so what you see on the screen is the certification of returns produced by the county of scran state of Georgia where the Board of Elections and the registar superintendent supervisors Etc uh below signed that this all of the information that they produced is official and this is still analog right so this is also to demonstrate for people to see that this wasn't natively digital right you can see these the the signatures here are
(19:13) from the board of directors in the registar and it was their own pens writing this down plus they have their seal and they created this document that they signed together in this location but now the requirements are this needs to get uploaded to the internet right and so how does a document like this get uploaded to the internet well uh they scan it and as soon as they scan it they use one some computer to connect to the internet and send it and so our argument is that's when it's vulnerable right as soon as it was created they could use
(19:47) our services and that's what happened uh Stacy Scott which you can see here she literally just um sent an email to us through her uh email server that's run by uh the state and so we received that document and immediately we hash using shot 256 um and it was confirmed on bitcoin block 8732 um which has a time stamp of Novemb
(20:19) er 12th at 12:58 p.m. and so yes of course obviously the certification didn't happen on Election night it was a few days later so that's kind of the point of like as the elections happen certain things are produced and so what we can do like I showed you earlier is provide people the ability to see the document download it for themselves to their desktop so that they can extract the shot 256 and verify that it is indeed the same one that you're seeing here so once you do that you verify that the document that we're showing you on the screen is the same one you can
(20:49) download on your computer um and then uh in on top of that you have the OTS files which stands for open timestamps and that is uh what I'm now showing on your screen which is all these cryptographic proofs so mathematics uh proves all these are all the proofs but this is kind of gnarly and and difficult to follow so what we've built is what we call the OTS Navigator so what you what we're showing here is the Merkel tree that was built and specifically the path that ties that specific document to a Bitcoin transaction so at the bottom of
(21:28) the tree we reveal the Sha which is starts with 21 a935 which again is the same one that was showing you at 21A 935 and so then we just walk you through uh how this sha gets combined with other Shaws and their proofs and it's kind of woven together mathematically all the way up to the final root hash of this tree and the difference between the root hash and the rest of the tree is that it includes a transaction ID which you can just copy um and pop into your own Bitcoin node but we also include a link to mempool
(22:05) dospace that I have already pulled up so here's that transaction you can see the time stamp there which is uh November 12th 12:58 p.m. um just confirmed here on you know Time Zone GMT minus 6 and so the magic is really that the Merkel root the hash exists in the details of that transaction so we pull up the details and then we can and let me try to bring this up a bit uh um basically the detail section of that transaction includes uh that root hash and so this transaction which uh has in the op return function E9 BB3 contains this
(22:52) Merkel root of this Merkel tree and so if we follow all the mathematical proofs we get back to this document thereby using block number 8732 to demonstrate mathematically to anyone that cares to believe in mathematics uh that that document is at least as old as that moment in time this is not perfect but it does mean that someone like Stacy and her Board of Elections can sleep soundly at night knowing that no one can attack them after the Bitcoin block the Bitcoin blockchain has three to six blocks uh past 88732 um the only chance that someone an
(23:39) attacker would have is if they can sneak something around the time of that block and you know spam the chain with with other confusing things and that's where it's it's not perfect but you've effectively eliminated the ability of any attacker in the future to change the data and Hood wink Q with um you know a slight of hand as it were MH and that attack Vector too they would have to know that you're submitting that hash at that particular point in time and know a man in the middle you then or try to double spin or not even double spend
(24:14) reorg or whatever it may be it's uh it's still a risk and especially you know 10 20 years from now more things can be built to make that attack Vector harder but what any everyone should recogn ize is let's use something that's kind of in the uh you know uh you know in people's minds right now is the JFK files right uh recently we have more information about them but it is you know what was the date last week right so earlier this week yeah right so March 2025 and this all happened in the 60s a long time ago at
(24:56) this point so it means that folks if someone had a desire to change those files and literally when you when you like redact them you you're changing them right and so like if you've ever seen anything that has you know the Black Ink on it that's changed right but do we have a record of all of those changes so that we would know like are the files that were made public this week were they produced last week or were they produced 10 years ago 20 years ago 30 years ago so the further back in time that you can actually go and know
(25:32) when something was produced is just extremely valuable to know whether or not what you're looking at is credible and you know there's no no such thing as 99% certainty or 100% certainty but the close the more you can reduce the variables that can affect whether or not you can trust something the higher of a chance that you're talking about what actually history yeah and so that's where in in the video you saw it's immutable history chapter 1 because it literally means that the the document that I shared scran County's election results and
(26:14) certification results are the first documents in US history that anyone from this moment on will be able to refer back to with full knowledge that they have not changed since they were produced by the people responsible for that record and so there's no reason for this characteristic to this immutable history to not be the a standard operating procedure for all election systems everywhere in the world but more importantly for all public records produced by all governments everywhere and this is obviously a Hot Topic here
(26:58) in in the United States now with Doge and Elon sort of signaling we we're going to use blockchain technology to make sure these records are kept safe and transparent and I know that you're very interested in that particular focus and worry about potential ways in which the government could incorrectly implement this type of setup I think we have learned that there's a a lot of um things that could be done better and what I've noticed is that in the blockchain Doge conversations it seems that they have been able to speak with representatives
(27:48) of uh I believe they use the phrase public blockchains to discuss the way in which they could be used to combat waste Fraud and Abuse and for example just protect records and it would seem that the fact that Bitcoin lacks a CEO that could not be called to be present at these conversations has meant that in the analysis that is being done in there in the evaluation that is currently happening about how to use blockchain technology to combat waste front abuse Bitcoin does not have a seat at that table um and so
(28:29) I'm concerned that the greatest strength of Bitcoin the fact that there is no CEO is in this regard our shortcoming and I just am imploring folk that may be able to speak with Folks at Doge and other federal agencies that as they're doing and and to be honest state and local right like and County right if if there's anyone working in government right now that is evaluating block chain technology if your analysis does not include Bitcoin it is certainly incomplete and it would be important to have a complete analysis that considers
(29:12) how Bitcoin can be used as a tool and whether it can solve the problems that you have and all that we ask is a Fighting Chance right to just say here is how we would do it these are the security advantages the uh and this is how much it costs and and we believe that it is actually quite likely that in all cases using Bitcoin to timestamp all data by the government will be the most secure and the cheapest solution possible and all that we want is for the folks that are making that decision to evaluate it and you can call Stacy Scott in scren
(29:51) County Georgia and the elections um uh office the the registar and ask her this rip was brought to you by our great friends at Unchained as bitcoin's role in the Global Financial landscape evolves understanding its potential impact on your wealth becomes increasingly crucial whether we see measured adoption or accelerated hyperbitcoinization being prepared for various scenarios can make the difference between merely participating and truly optimizing your position this is important freaks this is why unchain
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(30:45) Bitcoin strategy go explore the potential Futures at unchain dcom tftc Bitcoin is going up make sure you're protecting it the right way make sure you have a good partner that is unchain go to unchain dcom tftc so let's deal man this why do you think it's the most secure and what proof do you have that it'll be cheapest so in terms of security uh the Bitcoin blockchain is the longest running blockchain public blockchain right I believe there are other blockchains that prede Bitcoin but they weren't public and so it is the longest running and has
(31:23) the highest availability right I'm I'm not sure exactly the decimal point but it's definitely 9.99 sorry 99.99 and I don't know how many decimal points we've accumulated at this point in terms of bitcoin's uh Network uptime and so just from that regard immediately you should know that an comparing bitcoin's Network uptime to any other blockchain uh it's a longer uh Network presence right so it's just older and it has higher uptime in all regards then in terms of security it is at this point I believe the only one that has proven
(32:05) beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is beyond any one person or institution's control right and then in terms of cost which is what usually folks have used to claim that Bitcoin is not the right tool for this job because of the magic of Merkel trees and specifically the open time stamps protocol all that is required is one transaction per block and you could have a Merkel tree or even a Merkle mountain range which we need not go into and I am not equipped to answer uh adequately uh you could have a you know trillions of files in one
(32:56) single Merkel tree pointing back to a single transaction and so this is not an an important for folks that know about Bitcoin this is not spamming the Bitcoin time chain I've sat down with uh Peter Todd the uh main developer of the open time stamps protocol shout out to him and the open timestamps foundation and all the developers working on the open source protocol of open timestamps of course all the open source developers everywhere and uh according to his calculations you you could scale this to all data that is produced by all of
(33:32) humanity and require less than 1% of each block space so they're the important evaluation that everyone needs to do in particularly bitcoiners is if for less if we sacrifice less than 1% of a block to make all of human history immutable and future proof it against any attackers you know AI aliens whatever whatever you're afraid of 10 years from now sacrificing 1% of the block space is worth it and from a cost perspective it's you know you always have to pay the binder fee but if you scale to trillions of file and that's literally why we want
(34:18) to provide government because if Government leads with this then the scale that that allows would then open up the ability to offer this also to the private sector to social media companies to everyone eventually because right now it's too expensive for a you know social media company to include it in all its uh posts and stuff like that but eventually you can bring the cost down where this is people would not give it a second thought just like when you put a staple on a few documents that you know a bureaucrat is pushing around from one
(34:53) desk to another and you staple them together when was the last time any human being ever considered the marginal cost of a single staple on a few files that's what we're talking about here in terms of when this scales it is going to be you know just seen a second nature and a part of digital information and not having it is akin to walking around naked in a public Street like looking at a public record looking at a digital file that doesn't have an accompany Bitcoin time stamps is like looking at a human being that's walking naked in the
(35:32) Public Square so the steel you know to summarize the Steelman it's it's it's the most secure and as it scales it's going to certainly be uh most the cost effective and affordable and what are what's the competition out there what what are the the blockchains the Alternatives what's their pitch and their I guess tradeoff balance you'd have to ask that them my impression is that the um transaction output of other blockchains would allow to have every single file with an accompanying transaction and so their argument is if
(36:13) you have a you know one transaction on bitcoin per uh document then it's completely un feasible and there's literally not even enough block space but that's where you know open time stamps protocol is so uh powerful where it's it's literally just one transaction per block that you would need and you could provide that safety guarantee to everything and so I'm to Steelman the the the other options it's uh if you for some reason have a you know Contracting uh you know specification that requires that each document have
(36:55) its own transaction then then yeah then you know Bitcoin can't compete in a contract that has that kind of framework but we would posit that that's an incorrect framework what what you want is the mathematical proof you don't care about how many transactions went through uh the chain right it's it's if you have the mathematical proofs and but standing behind those mathematical proofs the strongest Network then you know it's really up to the evaluators to decide if this is up to the task and it seems to me that the fact that the White House
(37:31) through an executive order has clearly established the difference between Bitcoin and other digital assets that there seems to be a case that Bitcoin stands alone uh and that in this in the blockchain for government conversation it must be a part of it completely agree this is I this is so incor because I've been I'm usually early to these Trends hand up a little early but as we know timing is everything in this market whether it's DLCs I've been pumping DL Matt makes fun of me all the time for being a DLC bull it's coming DLCs are
(38:07) going to be a thing they already are they're going to be scalable people are going to be using them but open time stances one I remember when it launched I think 2015 2016 whenever it launched I was like holy crap this is amazing and for the better part of 10 years we've seen oneoff implementations of a tweet stamp was one that was pretty cool that I was using for a while until that bot got shut down um but it seems like the the marriage of open time stamps and this critical historical data whether it's in regards to elections or government files
(38:43) and information that that the public should be aware of and that information should be transparent this seems like the perfect marriage and you combine that with this Administration and the way they're posturing towards the industry in a in a very uh a posture of embracing the technology and implementing it and um then you triple couple that with all the noise that's around the admin in terms of the other blockchain projects that are are trying to get favor and position themselves to to get implemented in a way and uh you
(39:19) get a pretty cool landscape where it seems like the timing is perfect and that's why I'm happy you're doing what you're doing and that you are the guest for Episode 600 because I think it is critical at this particular juncture as you mentioned there have been a lot of public blockchain um public blockchain representatives in the room but Bitcoin being the oldest public blockchain longest running highest uptime most secure network uh is truly a public blockchain in the sense that doesn't have Representatives outside of individual
(39:52) users um that that don't have corporations or foundations excuse me set up to to basically represent Bitcoin as a whole it's truly distributed decentralized and emergent for sure and you know something comes to mind is Bitcoin is money for enemies right uh well it's also a blockchain for enemies right and definitely from our perspective I've never been in government so um I am very interested to follow what's going on right now in this battle where it seems that do is is is leading of saying we have to scale back there's there's
(40:41) Legacy systems that have been built up at some point you got to like tear some stuff down and reboot um but of course that means that there's an adversary on the other side of the folks that built those Legacy systems that are very nervous about what's going on and I you are not wrong in being nervous because it's this is adversarial right and and I'm not I don't want to take aside and the beautiful thing about Bitcoin is it doesn't take aside right it's it does not sensor it's not your friend it's it's Bitcoin and
(41:15) so if from it benefits both sides right if the people that are coming in to want to review and figure out what has been going on they would benefit from everything that they're looking at having the full knowledge and and Mathematics to prove that what they're looking at is actually what they're looking at and hasn't changed um and to protect them from 10 years from now if there is a you know every action uh creates an equal and opposite reaction so I would say that if there are folks going into these agencies you know
(41:53) ripping things out then you know it would be I recommend that they look at the open timestamps protocol because there's a very simple way to as before you take possession of something digitally to time stamp it right to say and this is why it was useful to me when I was an election a is the election authorities were going to give me a bunch of Digital Data and so I was I I needed proof to say I got this and I worked off of what you gave me and I can prove that what you gave me is this it's the same situation with folks that are
(42:27) going into agencies right now if you get data being protected and be having proof that you never manipulated it you just work off of what your adversary gave you um protects you from any future attack from an adversary that is all of a sudden maybe now in the White House saying claiming that you changed something but it also protects them as well because if you were in or if you are right now a federal employee a state employee a local employee and you are concerned that someone is coming to you know take over your
(43:07) systems please look into the open timestamps protocol because it would behoove you to have that protection of saying this is while you had system access this is what's there and so you also like removing the ability to change the past benefits everyone who wants to find out what the past was the only folk that don't benefit are those that want and have become accustomed to changing the past yeah it's very powerful extremely profound when you think about it too and and I think that's a perfect framing it's like uh cya cover your ass like in
(43:58) particularly here not particularly here in the United States happening globally you've seen it up close in personal yourself but I think considering the hyperpolarized nature of the political landscape in the United States and just an easy loow hanging fruit example of this is the executive order ping pong that we've seen across administrations over the last 15 years it's like you get an office you negate all the executive orders that were signed before you issue your own and then rinse and repeat on and into the future and
(44:33) we're seeing this we're seeing right now Joe Biden's signatures on the autopen stuff like imagine a situation in which a president signed an executive order signed a bill into law and was able to digitally all right I'm hashing it I signed it at this time and here's here's the proof oh and and signatures signatures are great right so oh fundamentally what simple proof does is solve for when right when a digital thing happened now signatures and there are many ways to do this solve for who right and there's a I mean we're working
(45:06) on and and want to work with more uh folks to include this right so there's we can create who and when simultaneously and and event you know then the actual file is the what right uh then there's where which you can also include information on where and so just populate and creating a complete picture of the story who what when where eventually helps you get to why right why is always subjective right but if you if who what where and when cannot change and can be referenced back to then it's just a lot easier to not trust
(45:52) but rather through trust minimized processes establish your confidence interval or level in the data that you're looking at and so it just happens that this was never possible before and so it's counterintuitive that Bitcoin can bring about this peaceful resolution right money for enemies brings about peace uh it's the same with with digital files and Truth the fact that adversary political adversaries that are having to change seats in office do not trust that their adversar will play nice uh is what increases the conflict right so if if if
(46:33) no one could change the history then I think we could actually increase the likelihood of there being more collaboration between adversaries and it's good to have competition and adversaries but uh you know let's just not kill each other yeah you have the the Mexican standoff meme of like B bin put it perfectly many years ago like this this is bitcoin's consensus like boom like similarly with this Digital Data same thing it's like if you change it we're going to see you and that bol's going to going to come your way and going to lead to the
(47:10) downfall of all of us and and and arguably the the mere fact that it exists the same with the money printer right if if money printing exists and is possible Humanity cannot resist that so if changing time history is possible Humanity will not resist that and so Bitcoin has potentially removed the money printer's ability from government it can also potentially remove our ability to change the past why not do both I'm all him I say we do it how uh I mean you mentioned we have the what you mentioned ideas on adding
(47:56) The Who you had the what and the when adding The Who and the where mhm how are you thinking about doing that um I've heard a lot of things from uh you know magnetic forces to GPS you know it's uh unclear at the moment but open to suggestions and it's more a matter of simple proof and our apis and and and our sdks and and and the the the the building blocks that we are uh creating are to make it as easy as possible for those that want to work on that to just plug in right so it's it's also similar to you know kind of going back to what I
(48:33) said earlier about the lightning Network and and strike right it's the the more people are connected in the lightning Network the stronger the network becomes and it's the same for us right it's it's those that want to create truth um we want to make it easy because if someone is solving for wear and has the best way to solve for where then you know just connect to our when solution and and let's Let's uh accelerate the uh ability for truth to win right because the the fact that someone can change history right now leads to people changing
(49:11) history and it creates a dynamic where those that are willing to do those things to alter the past unfortunately benefit from getting away with it where whereas those that want to do good and don't want to uh change records that shouldn't be changed they if if if like I'm imagining there must be people and potentially listening to this episode right now that may have spent an entire career trying to be public servants good public servants maybe they're Bay coiners and you know spent 30 years and maybe thought they
(49:48) had 20 more years working uh within government that are now very concerned even though they didn't do anything wrong that there's nothing protect ing what they did really at the end of the day it's all a database and everyone like a database is under someone's control so unfortunately changing history benefits those that you know creates the wrong incentives so that folks that just want to do a good job are more nervous than those that don't and if we remove our ability to change history I believe we can put a
(50:27) dent into increasing the incentives of if you did your job right if every time you logged into to your government issue issued laptop or terminals or whatever you want to call those machines that obviously as my my understanding are full of spyware that like track like every little keystroke you ever did and there's got to be a log in there of absolutely everything you do there's no reason why every keystroke isn't some kind of information digital information that keystroke can also be converted into hash can be you know incorporated
(50:56) into a Merkel tree and just absolutely everything that is being done while you are a public servant is tracked forever right but in an immutable way so that if your worst enemy ends up holding office and having a position of power over you after you return power you should be able to you know as George Washington put it uh uh retire under uh um a fig tree right you should be able if you did a good job you should be able to chill right and and if if public servants that are doing a good job were you know retiring without the you know monkey on
(51:35) the back of their mind saying you know something could happen that's that's just wrong right so I I would hope that there's there's this so much there's so much benefit to this that even those that would benefit from things not changing actually at the end of the day they when they do their their calculation their game theory they'll realize we have to do this especially if you're concerned about artificial general intelligence or any other kind of non-human intelligence suddenly uh competing and potentially
(52:09) becoming the Apex uh Intelligence on this planet because if if if they have access to that power of changing our history then I'm going to bet that they're going to use it and so I don't know where I stand really I think there are much more much smarter people that know whether or not artificial general intelligence is is already here or is going to happen or if you know uaps or are actually from some other dimension or whatever it's just having this on the board as a potential play means that someone will use it so
(52:47) it we all benefit from just removing this and Bitcoin is the first time so over the last 16 years it's the first time that Humanity has even had the option of doing this so let's do it you think going to the incentives too you're walking through the use case if you're a public servant you want to be able to retire under the Fig Tree you want these assurances of the Digital Data being hashed so you can prove like here's what I uploaded at this point in time um it's hashed in a block that was produced 100,000 blocks ago and there's no way to
(53:20) basically change that hash at this point conversely it's like as an American citizen as um uh ad administrator of a government agency or whatever if somebody under you or you yourself does something bad and the government has adopted this technology and all this stuff is being uploaded you can easily go back and verify that they did something nefarious in the past so it's easier to surface the corruption as well if if it does occur and the likelihood is since this exists the incentives are such that you arguably should not be corrupt because
(53:55) you will easily get found not only will you easily be found you also risk that it could happen if it doesn't happen tomorrow we have the rest of history and so maybe you get lucky and you got away with it but you know maybe your grandchild decides to oh I want to go into Granddaddy's records and your grandchild stumbles upon holy crap like granddaddy did some stuff that and so it it's it's also your own the idea of Legacy right it's like do you want are you comfortable with at some point in the future your descendants um learning about what you
(54:33) did right and so like I we all I think have a conscience right and big part of that is can if you if you know that that's going to be forever scrutinized then I do think it pulls on your conscience more powerfully than how it already should but you know people respond to incentives and there's a lot of calculations that that can affect a person decision making and and as this becomes standard there's also like sure we can easily think of why this would be you know as Citizens we should demand it from government because it's it's a
(55:08) matter of why as we realize that this is this this this is possible right let's meme it into existence and because we're we're discovering that this kind of behavior from public servant and is possible we can we could make this standard um well we could also make it standard for you right like your own files like i' I've recently looked at stuff that I wrote 10 years ago I'm like I don't like did I wrate that like did do I trust my own personal files like I I try to be a a good big winner and like have my my my own server and and all
(55:41) that but if someone were managed to hack into my stuff and change things to change me and and and what I what I thought was was happening how do I even trust myself right like it's there's mental health issues where you know just Alzheimer's I mean there so many things that if you eventually build the tools where it it's just running on your machine and and and the the proofs are there and then you can like make proofs of proof so that finally at the end of your life at the end of your service as a public servant you can take one final
(56:15) proof that you take with you and it's a simple file maybe a few kilobytes and if anything ever changes you you can contrast that right so and here's the the other like you know incredible moment when you realize and you actually could do this respecting privacy respecting top secret classified information I don't want to know this simple proof has no desire to handle sensitive top secret classified information if if if we're required to we'll we'll end up you know doing all that and and hopefully you know getting
(56:52) those you know accesses but i' I'd actually rather you not do that and the beautiful thing about the open time stamps protocol is you can run the client and all you need to do is put in the hash so we could just do the hashes and I have no idea what's on the other side the only and no one in our team no one at at open time Stamps no one knows it's zero knowledge essentially and so you just you just take your proofs and so as as a citizen as a human being your own personal files you could at at the end of every day at
(57:25) the end of every session just have the one final proof of everything you've ever done so that if the AI or or the AL aliens ever come in and and try to attack us that you you can quickly check the check some to see is has have things changed without my authorization you're you're completely negating the whole um the whole plot line to Minority Report right now well that's a future thing right so what what's well yeah yeah I mean was in the future the precogs are like you're going to kill somebody on this day let's pretend like
(58:01) it was Tom Tom Cruz you killed this person and it was really the the guy running the precog program and what what's the name of of of that in reality right like uh Whitney web is talking pre crime pre yeah so pre- crime um yes we should uh want to make it much much harder that for if if those systems ever do exist for someone in that position to be a able to get away with murder right just like it happened you know in in Minority Report it's it's it's very like it's not impossible but let's just make it harder like like there's no reason
(58:38) why we should continue making easy for people that lie like there Bitcoin is a trust machine Bitcoin is truth let's use it to its fullest potential instead of just leaving stuff on the table because you know I don't know why we're we're not demanding this to be honest yeah and I sort of rush past which is a very important point that many people may not pick up on intuitively which is the ability to preserve privacy while utilizing this and so the example you use me personally I want to Hash things into the blockchain to prove
(59:19) I did something at a certain point in time let's run through the scenario at some point in the future God forbid the government comes after me and they try to say I did something digitally in the past and they're trying to um trying to pin me for a crime they don't know that I've been hashing my personal data my digital life into the Bitcoin blockchain over time and I have the ability well actually you think I did this on this day here's proof that I was doing this on that day and not that so um that's very powerful yeah I mean I
(59:53) I don't know the full details of it but for example another thing that's you know you know in people's minds right now is Ross right then my understanding is if Ross had had a little demon uh on his laptop just running all these proofs and as soon as uh the FBI sequestered his laptop if he had taken like all he need to say is can I just take like one file with me it's just like your proof Bo and he just takes that and so if and and I'm not saying that they did change I don't even know what happened really but like in his case if they did change
(1:00:28) anything there would be imut immutable and you know trust minimized proof that someone indeed uh changed something after a certain moment in time and so was that someone like Ross or was that someone else well if the laptop is in custody of an agency and no longer in the custody of the person that is in prison then you know what are the odds that of person in prison can access his laptop right and so uh there are clear things that this you know would benefit us and you know maybe let me show one last thing in terms of on on on on the
(1:01:08) screen for folks um if you go to open Tim stamps.org and you should because don't trust verify this is all you know uh open source you literally this has been up here for ages uh the open time stamps Foundation covers the cost it's literally free you just drag and drop a file here it downloads an OTS file to your your desktop um and then a day later you can come in and dve and drop drop it again but this is where you know this this public uh version of this does require that you offer your file right but uh if you like so so this easy like
(1:01:48) on on on the web service uh does require you you you lose that privacy so if you have sensitive files just you know go to the the the code repository like figure out how to run this yourself and then just you it's just a hash it's it's not the file it's just the hash so you can take ownership of this um if and um yeah so you can go to to to to take ownership of this and figure out how to run it yourself so that you're not relying on any you know cool Foundation run by you know uh open source developers you're
(1:02:25) you're literally just doing it on doing yourself and I think recently I don't know if you discussed this but at the end of 2024 there was this kind of scare that the IRS was requiring certain information and attestations from folks and a bunch of people flocked to open time stamps to use it right and you should not be uploading sensitive tax information to this random website right you should hash it and then just upload the hash and you're not re in anything to anyone you do keep that on your files and as long as you take this is you know
(1:03:03) again going to the discipline of running your own know if you protect your files and they're there unchanged then that time stamp will always allow you to prove it which is another awesome thing for for example the national archives in the United States It's the final repository where all the Digital Data produced by all the government agencies end up right and Incredibly since July 1st of 2024 all government agencies and anyone that is responsible for public records that end up at the National Archives can only submit Digital Data no analog is
(1:03:45) allowed anymore they have such like giant like people have seen the the the infamous like coal mine that turned into a an underground you know Warehouse like it's real right and and they're full basically like we filled up all the analog space that there was left and no one want like we shouldn't keep building you know mines under a mountain to to guard analog data so we have to go into digital and so 100% of government records as of July 1st 2024 are digital and so it is important that Nara maintain that archiving culture and
(1:04:26) history and we should help them do a good job and this is not about eliminating them right Bitcoin is not coming for nara's job right like no Bitcoin does not want to replace Nara it's Bitcoin can be used by the National Archives to assure to everyone that the job of the archist is being done well and no one will ever be able to say that they didn't do it well because they'll have the most powerful computer network in the planet to demonstrate it and so it's uh it it highlights how important it is that we take care of our files right
(1:05:11) Bitcoin is Bitcoin do can't handle all of our files right our Collective memory our Collective human culture is up to us it's up to these institutions that represent us it's up to you to run your own note to to to have your own files to keep your own you know if there are movies uh songs or things that you're afraid might disappear like definitely download them keep a keep a log right because like Bitcoin can serve as just uh an independent Arbiter uh notary of sorts to confirm that your log is true and hasn't changed since a particular moment
(1:05:47) in time um but the responsibility is ours right it's the price of freedom is eternal vigilance right we can't shake this off there is no magic unicorn that's coming to save us right yeah makes me so bullish has how's the response from people that have seen what you guys did in Georgia in November been is word spreading yes fortunately but uh we need the help of the community so please if you're excited about this reach out uh however a beautiful anecdote is uh a few bitcoiners from Tennessee reached out and early this month literally like two
(1:06:27) and a half weeks ago we were in uh Tennessee contracted by Bonafide Republicans who were participating in an election a Convention of the Republican party where there was paper ballots and there was very contentious there were two sides that were you know really wanting to win and they voted and the vote produced a certification of results and a few other things and so we were contracted and they we used they used our system uh one of the sides right so and both sides could have but only one side had big Winners uh so you know this
(1:07:03) is just it's it's still something that's very much in the bitcoiner you know mindspace but uh we we're going mainstream now right so the the we can't imagine a situation where any you know School Board election your local high school your local you know Town Hall neighborhood Garden Community whatever wherever you are where there's adversarial context and you're you don't trust that the other side's going to play nice with Digital Data you can use this and it already has right so it what started in scren County Georgia has
(1:07:37) spread to Tennessee and we are you know receiving inbound from an increasing number of folks and our call to action this year is as you saw in the video uh there's also a 99-minute version so go to films. simpler proof.com to watch the full thing um our mission this year is to have as many of these as possible and to Chronicle them right so if it's you in that uh agency in your local Town Hall uh it's a different use case not necessarily elections maybe it's just your your records right your property Deeds you whatever is sensitive to you
(1:08:12) that you're concerned that some point someone with AI could manipulate or or worse just uh Reach Out use us and if it's a good enough story you know let's write chapter 2 let's write chapter 3 let's let's show the world that there are no public records there are no digital files that cannot become immutable and immutable history is now possible let's make it so another call to action for anybody listening to this let's tag Elon let's tag David Sachs make sure that they're aware of this they're having the conversation right now they're obviously
(1:08:52) thinking about this and this what I said on TV earlier this week there's a lot of people donate a lot of money to packs and particular campaigns and that has provided them with proximity to the ears of the people making decisions and they may not be putting the best ideas in those ear and I I having been around for a while uh and have known carlinho for for quite a bit now uh I think what you have built is incredible and as an American citizen I would like to see this technology leveraged because again anchored into the largest computer
(1:09:28) network on the world the most reliable and Powerful blockchain that has ever existed the only one worth thinking about in my opinion uh and number two there's obvious a lot of corruption and a lot of waste and a lot of Fraud and we can do this cheaply scalably quickly like you guys have built the product you can implement this right now oh and that's that's another piece of good news to share is we are working closely with the open time Sams Foundation We Believe that it's important that companies that uh build you know are are are using
(1:10:00) open- Source protocols you know cont contribute and support the open source community that helped develop uh the product and and the underlying tools and our promise and and commitment is we will continue to do everything we can for the protocol to to be improved to benefit everyone right then like obviously we benefit but anyone else can benefit and the good news is it has been improved upon uh uh recently and so if we got a call tomorrow to Tim stamp absolutely every single file that essentially all of humanity is
(1:10:36) creating in the next 10 minutes uh which at this point is I think in the order of billions there is absolutely no limit we can scale this to all files that are created everywhere within maybe like two weeks right so uh and if if push comes to shf maybe even faster right depending on the requirement this can't scale that's uh there's no reason not to and so that's great news right if if it if we all that we want is a chance like it's it's not I'm not saying we're the best uh this is all open source so technically the best
(1:11:15) could potentially be the in-house it Department of the government or or yourself as a bitcoiner running this yourself like dude run your own node run your own open time stamps server uh learn learn how it works uh we just make it easy right so that uh we just here plug in here like boom boom it just happens and it scales uh infinite well to trillions uh quickly and so we just want to make sure that in the analysis of blockchain for government if Bitcoin doesn't have a seat at the table and hopefully many seats like there's no
(1:11:51) reason other companies can't you know figure out how to do this the more the marrier right let's let's let's all start you know converging on bitcoin uh because there's no reason not to and uh those companies that are doing other things we can also work with you right just plug into our apis and start doing this tomorrow right and let's just make sure that this unique opportunity where it is Buzz buzzing right now and and and there are folks talking about how to use this blockchain tool to help create a better world that the most powerful
(1:12:22) longest running public blockchain is a part of that conversation let's make it happen is this event you're going to be at next week live streamed I do not know so I will be at DC blockchain week in Washington DC next Wednesday discussing uh blockchain and voting systems I'm told that there are many other people that are going to be there and so please reach out if you're in Washington DC going to the DC blockchain week and um yeah just uh go to the digital chamber I believe they have a YouTube channel so it's if it is
(1:12:56) live streamed it'll it'll be there I have not received confirmation though all right check it out carlinho thank you for uh for indulging me in coming on for Episode 600 hey it's an honor and uh you know reach out we're on Twitter we're on AER um we're on LinkedIn uh so uh we're we're we're everywhere and uh let's let's make it happen right let's do it tag Elon tag David sax tag tag the dawn to too what up get get get big Don get this on his radar you know he likes signatures he likes he likes doing signatures talking digital signatures
(1:13:34) here he likes truth and his truths uh check me out every truth that uh that Donald Trump publishes the president Trump publishes has a time stamp why is that right well you know why why not have a Bitcoin time stamp to every single truth like there's no reason not to and it's just a better time stamp than a little text right why not big big Dawn big Dawn let's make it happen let's make your truths immutable sir immutable truth peace and love freaks
