How To Program a Bitcoin with Jimmy Song

“I thought I was going to be a math professor but I realized it was kind of a lonely road and I ended up as a programmer and why I ended up as an educator.”

A Bitcoin Core Contributor and former VP of Engineering for Armory. He caught the Bitcoin bug back in 2011 and started contributing to Bitcoin open source projects in 2013. He’s a contributor to CoinDesk and has a popular Bitcoin Blog. He’s been teaching blockchain to engineers for over 3 years. Jimmy graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics.

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Brett:

I'm excited about our next guest. He is out of the great state of Texas, in the Austin area, and he is a Bitcoin Core Contributor and former VP of engineering for the armory. He caught the Bitcoin bug in 2011 and started contributing to the Bitcoin open source project in 2013. He's a contributor to the coin desk and has a popular Bitcoin blog. He's been teaching blockchain to engineers for over three years, and he graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. Please welcome to show with me, Jimmy Song. Jimmy, how are you doing?

Jimmy:

I am Great. Thank you for having me, and thank you for that lovely introduction.

Brett:

Absolutely excited to get to know you a little bit more, and for our listeners who, who haven't had a chance to, to hear you for the first time, perhaps? Would you give them a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Jimmy:

I've been a programmer all of my life. That's my trade. I've been a programmer since I was like nine years old when I got my first computer from my dad, and it was like a Commodore 16, and because it wasn't the Commodore 64, which had all the games, I ended up doing a lot of programming on it just to play around. But I've been a programmer ever since then, and my first job out of college was programming for a startup. I did startups for a long time, and I did something like 13 different startups and a span of like, 13 years something to that effect. But 2011 was when I heard about Bitcoin, I got into it on a much deeper level in 2013, and I've been writing teaching about it since about 2017, and I've written three books on the subject of Programming Bitcoin, which is a book for programmers to learn about the Bitcoin Protocol. The Little Bitcoin Book, which is a book for a general audience to learn about Bitcoin and Thank God for Bitcoin, which is the moral argument for Bitcoin from a Christian perspective.

Brett:

Fantastic, and I'm looking forward to diving in with an expert like yourself on all things Bitcoin, and so we're talking Bitcoin with Jimmy song. By the way, you can learn more about Jimmy Song, get ProgrammingBitcoin.com that's programmingbitcoin.com. But before we go, into too much into the topic here, I want to take one other step back, Jimmy, and I'm just always curious about people, and their strengths and their background, and kind of how they came to be. But I want to I want you to go back maybe to your high school days, the earlier days, and the younger, Jimmy, and I believe we've all been given certain gifts in the sly, some people call a strength, some people call them superpowers. I'm curious, what are the one or two gifts that you believe you were given, and how does that help how you help and bless people today?

Jimmy:

The main thing is math. I've always been attracted to that field, and, all through high school, I did all sorts of math competitions, and for a long time, I thought I was going to be a math professor and I was a math major in college, as you mentioned. But throughout most of college, while I did well in the math classes that I took, even some graduate ones, I realized it was kind of a lonely road, a lot of math professors and up sort of like working alone, most of their day, and I realized, I'm too extroverted to do something like that. I ended up going and doing more computer science stuff, a lot more programming. But I would say, sort of an affinity towards, mathematical programmatic kind of things, which is why I ended up as a programmer and why I ended up as an educator as well.

Brett:

That's awesome. I love how you combine the two and it's fitting exactly where you're at, and I think we all hit certain points in our lives, in our careers, where everything comes together with the strengths we've been given and the experiences we have, and now you're using that for helping the world cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. This is so cool. Let's dive into the topic, and we're just talking Bitcoin with Jimmy Song so I think Jimmy will what's the number one secret? I guess to the current state of Bitcoin, and maybe the next six to 12 months of where you see the technology where you see the coin, where you see the assets going right now?

Jimmy:

There's a major soft work upgrade that's happening to their coin, and it's called taproot and the full sort of the extent of what it will enable isn't really apparent right now because a lot of wallets and exchanges and so on aren't really taking advantage of it because it's not active on the network yet, but I think we'll see that play out over the next two or three years. Suffice it to say, it will give a lot more ability to have a little more privacy on-chain, it will make the lightning network or layer two solutions a lot faster and better. A and B these might sound like gobbledygook if you're not in the industry, but this is what I sort of like swimming every day. That's how I would describe it there. There are major upgrades that are coming to the Bitcoin protocol that is not required by any means but it will add some new abilities I think will be very helpful for a lot of people.

Brett:

If Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency world, it was a nine-inning, let's say baseball game. What ending do you think we're in right now, and why?

Jimmy:

I would say maybe the second inning, I think the first inning was sort of like the initial sort of enthusiasm stage. But, we're still very early. The latest numbers I've heard something like 6% of the US has some exposure to cryptocurrency, and by the way, I do make a distinction between Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, I tend to view Bitcoin very differently than all the other altcoins largely due to the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, whereas all the all coins seem to have a single point of failure, what I would call centralized. There there is a difference there. But regarding Bitcoin, I would say we're in the second inning, because we are still early, not that many people are really involved in it. It's kind of like I would say, internet circa 1995 1996, or something like that, where a lot of people were talking about it, but not necessarily like actually on the internet, although some people were obviously.

Brett:

That makes sense. The second any, and essentially, only 6% of the US has some, and that's interesting to the altcoin versus the decentralized aspect of Bitcoin versus centralized. Would you dive into that a little bit more, or just because I think that's really important to understand.

Jimmy:

Decentralized means that there is no center, there's no single point of failure, there's no place that can get regulated or choked or something to that effect, then all other sorts of like cash systems before Bitcoin, essentially suffered from that law, including, the US dollar and any other currencies of different places where if a symbol entity controls it, there are all sorts of bad things that can happen, including hyperinflation, something that's more decentralized is something like gold, where you don't need anyone's permission. If you have owned some land, you can attempt to dig gold out of the background and so on. But a lot of people don't really understand the difference between the two. I would put it as you don't need anyone's permission to go get gold, but you do need permission if you want to print the $100 bill, and that's otherwise you would get like, arrested by the Secret Service and so on. Bitcoin, it's kind of unintuitive but Bitcoin is actually decentralized and digital at the same time. Whereas all of these all coins have a central controller a choke point somewhere that can get regulated somebody that that can do something to make it worse, and, Gary Gensler, I think, testified before Congress yesterday and pointed out that other than Bitcoin, he thinks most of these other coins are illegal security. That's something to keep in mind.

Brett:

That's really important to know that the EU, because you've got to get all if you're doing something that's going to be doing currency, and it's worldwide is changing things, you got to ideally get as much much support from all facets of government are the people of the banks. Bitcoin seems to be the one that's sticking the most. Is that a fair summary so far?

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