How Bitcoin’s Three Pillars are about to Fix money – The Clear Crypto Podcast | Episode 3

A Vision for Bitcoin’s Future

The episode kicks off by putting Eli Ben-Sasson in a hypothetical time machine and asking him what Bitcoin will look like in five years.

His answer is bold and clear. “The use of Bitcoin in five years will be that, first of all, it is in much more use,” Eli predicts. He envisions a world where the “velocity of Bitcoin”—the number of times a single coin is used in transactions—vastly increases. This won’t be a niche activity for a select few; it will be a “beautiful, blooming economy” built on the same principles of security and decentralization that its anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, first laid out.

This vision sets the stage for the episode’s central theme: moving Bitcoin from a passive asset to an active, global financial infrastructure.

 

From the Ivory Tower to the Blockchain Frontier

So, who is the person making these bold predictions? Eli Ben-Sasson isn’t your typical tech CEO. He spent years as a university professor, deep in the world of academic research. What brought him from writing highly specialized papers to running a major blockchain infrastructure company?

“It’s the same feeling that brought me to academia,” Eli explains. “Love, inspiration, and values.”

He fell in love with Bitcoin in 2013, captivated by its “vibes, the ideology, the promise, the vision.” This journey from theory to practice underscores a recurring theme in the podcast: crypto is more than technology or an investment; it’s a culture driven by a powerful set of ideas about how society can function.

 

The Scaling Problem: Blockchain’s Built-In Speed Bump

To understand Eli’s work, we first need to understand one of blockchain’s biggest challenges: scaling. As discussed in previous episodes, blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are intentionally slow. This slowness is a feature, not a bug, designed to ensure maximum security and decentralization. However, it also creates a bottleneck, limiting the number of transactions the network can process and making fees expensive during high demand.

This is where Eli and Starknet come in. Their section of the crypto “orchestra” is dedicated to scaling. By building on top of the main blockchain, Layer 2 solutions like Starknet allow for a massive number of transactions to be processed quickly and cheaply without sacrificing the security of the underlying network.

Starknet has already worked its scaling magic on Ethereum, and now, it’s turning its attention to Bitcoin. Why? Because, as Eli points out, Bitcoin in its current state struggles to fulfill Satoshi’s original mission.

“If you go back to Satoshi’s words in the famous white paper, he talks about the need for any two interested parties to interact and transact in a way that is completely trustless,” Eli says. “The sad reality is that today, this is not the case on Bitcoin.”

 

“In Math We Trust”: The STARKs Approach to Scaling

To scale Bitcoin, especially a network so fiercely protective of its integrity, the method matters. Eli’s approach is rooted in a technology he co-invented: ZK-STARKs, or Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Arguments of Knowledge.

It’s a complex name for a beautifully simple concept: a cryptographic proof that is so mathematically sound that it is completely trustworthy. Anything verified with a STARK proof is guaranteed to be correct.

“Bitcoin’s motto is ‘In Math We Trust’,” Eli notes. “All of the technology that I co-invented… has always been backed by the integrity of math to the point that even if we wanted to violate integrity, the math… would prevent us.”

This is how Starknet scales Ethereum today and how it plans to scale Bitcoin tomorrow—with a method that honors the core values of the chain itself.

 

A Meeting of Minds: Vitalik Buterin on Bitcoin’s Evolution

The announcement of Starknet’s plan for Bitcoin was marked by a fascinating conversation between Eli and Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. One might expect a sense of rivalry, but the dialogue revealed a shared respect and a common goal.

Vitalik, whose own journey began at Bitcoin Magazine, expressed his support for the initiative. “Realistically, you know, Bitcoin and [Ethereum] are probably the two most sturdy and stable systems to actually run this kind of thing on top of,” Vitalik commented. “If it succeeds here, then we’ll see how that goes from there.”

This cross-chain collaboration challenges the narrative of crypto tribalism. As podcast co-host Gareth puts it, “The brightest minds in the space are starting to realize that, hey, we need to help scale Bitcoin… because that is gonna unlock the true value of that chain.”

 

The Great Debate: To Change Bitcoin or Not?

While some scaling can happen now, unlocking Bitcoin’s full potential may require a small tweak to its core code. This idea has sparked a passionate debate within the Bitcoin community.

• The Traditionalists: This group argues that Bitcoin’s code should remain unchanged. Its value lies in its predictability and stability, and any alteration risks compromising that.
• The Evolutionaries: This group, which includes Eli, believes that a small, carefully considered change is necessary for Bitcoin to fulfill its destiny.

Eli’s argument is direct: “We are failing to meet the standard that Satoshi laid out.” He compares Bitcoin today to a Rolex—beautifully engineered, incredibly valuable, but not something you use for everyday activities. “It is something that only the very rich can own in a self-custodial way as intended, and the rest of us can only access it through third parties.”

By not evolving, Bitcoin risks becoming a pet rock for the wealthy instead of the peer-to-peer electronic cash system for the world it was meant to be. He argues that increasing its utility will bring in more users, generate more fees to secure the network, and ultimately drive its value to “even higher heights.”

The most astonishing part? The proposed change is tiny. “It’s nine lines of code,” Eli reveals. Nine lines of code to potentially change the global financial system.

 

From a Rolex to Global Financial Plumbing

What could Bitcoin become? Not just a Rolex, but the fundamental infrastructure of our economy.

“When we buy groceries, when we buy a cup of coffee, when we send remittance and cross-border payments, when we take a loan, buy assets… these things can and should be built on an infrastructure that is based on Satoshi’s core principles,” Eli envisions.

Gareth passionately agrees, recounting conversations with Bitcoin pioneers like Adam Back and citing the work of journalists who have seen Bitcoin used as a lifeline in countries ravaged by hyperinflation. In these places, Bitcoin is not an investment—it’s a payment network. It’s doing what it was designed to do. The goal of scaling is to bring that utility to everyone.

 

Satoshi’s True Invention: The Three Pillars of a New Social System

Towards the end of the episode, Eli unpacks the core ideas from an article he wrote, “Satoshi’s Invention.” He argues that Satoshi’s true innovation wasn’t just about math or computers—it was a revolutionary new way to build social constructs like money. This new method stands on three powerful principles:

1. Broadness: Everyone is invited to participate in operating the system. This is a stark contrast to the traditional financial world, where participation is exclusive and permissioned.
2. Incentivized Integrity: The system rewards participants for behaving honestly. Miners are given new Bitcoin for securing the network, creating a system where everyone has a vested interest in its integrity. We are not asked to trust people in suits; we are asked to trust a system of incentives.
3. Public Verifiability: Anyone, on a simple computer, can check every single transaction to ensure it was done with integrity. There are no hidden ledgers or backroom deals.

These three principles—Broadness, Incentivized Integrity, and Public Verifiability—are what make Bitcoin revolutionary. They create a system based on individual empowerment and freedom.

And this is where Eli’s work clicks into place. The technology behind Starknet exponentially expands that third pillar. “With enough math,” Eli explains, “you can use your laptop in order to verify the integrity of an exponential amount of computation… On your smartphone, within less than a second, you can verify the integrity of an amount of transactions that is all of the world’s transactions in a day.”

This is the final piece of the puzzle, enabling Bitcoin to scale to a global level while holding fast to the principles Satoshi laid out. It’s how Bitcoin moves from being a Rolex to becoming the payment network for the world.