Bitcoin Tech Talk #288

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What I'm working on

1. Airline Miles - My column this week was on airline miles and how they’ve essentially ruined air travel. Airlines are now banks than print airline miles and use air travel to discharge their miles debt. The completely backwards system is a good example of fiat contagion.

2. What Bitcoin Did - I made the moral case for Bitcoin on Peter McCormack’s podcast. The Monero fanbois are after me for saying what I did about their anonymity set, which you would expect since Submarine Swaps completely obsolete their coin. Once you understand the moral case, it’s hard to not recognize the moral imperative in Bitcoin.

3. Rants about NFTs - In both podcasts, I talk about NFTs and why they’re scams. Both podcasts are very pro-NFT, so some fireworks went off. I enjoyed bursting their bubbles a bit and showing them that you can do an NFT much easier using a website. I felt like I was explaining how Santa isn’t real to these people.

What I'm up to

1. BitDevs April 2022 - I’ll be at this week’s Austin BitDevs meetup (April 21) with my fellow Austin Bitcoin Devs. If you haven’t been to one, it’s a great way to meet a lot of fellow Bitcoiners and I promise no altcoin talk, which is in contrast to Bitcoin 2022. Come for the signal, stay for the meat.

2. Beef Initiative Conference - I’ll be speaking at the Beef Initiative conference on Saturday, April 23. The alliance of Beef and Bitcoin makes all the sense in the world and I’ll be speaking this week on faith as well! This is going to be a great event in Texas Hill Country. If you haven’t been out west of Austin, this is a great opportunity to see just how great it is.

3. Fossil Future - I’ve been reading this wonderful book by Alex Epstein. I got an advanced reader copy because I’m planning to interview him in a month or so. Trust me when I say that the book so far is a tour-de-force. It’s so logical and based on first principles. Go and preorder the book. It’s really that good and I promise you’ll think about energy very differently.

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