Bitcoin Tech Talk #312
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What I've been working on
The Moral Case for Bitcoin - My talk with Rahim Taghizadegan about the moral case for Bitcoin is up. This was an interesting conversation and it made me realize that a key basis for the morality that I espouse is individual liberty. It’s really difficult to make the case for self-sovereign money without that particular axiom. The talk was in English in front of a German speaking audience, but it was a lot of fun, nonetheless.
Bitcoin and the American Dream - My Twitter Spaces with the Texas Blockchain Council is up. As you can tell by the name of the organization, I’m going to have some problems with how they present Bitcoin and I tell them so. I made the case over and over that altcoins are immoral and that so many people have been rent-seeking. Bruce Fenton made an appearance as this is a political organization. The instinct with these organizations is to be so nice to people that they’ll comply, when in fact, that’s generally a terrible strategy.
Broke Woke Economics - I’ve submitted my piece for the next print edition of Bitcoin Magazine. Unfortunately, it’s not available for you to view online, but the argument I make is that some seriously terrible economic policies are going to be tried very soon. Price controls, escalation of war and even more sanctions are in store.
What I'm up to
New Book - The working title is “How fiat money ruins everything,” and it’ll be a summary of why things suck so much and how fiat money is to blame. I was hoping to get this book out by the end of the year, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to given some of the editing and preparation that needs to happen. There will be some premium editions of the book with leather binding and gold edges, which I hope my words can be worthy of. I’m not sure how those will sell in a bear market, but stay tuned.
Lugano PlanB - I am scheduled to speak at this conference later this month and the lineup is looking stellar! It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Switzerland and I look forward to the beauty of the Alps. My talk there will be based on the book I’m writing and I’ll be commenting on many aspects of life. In a sense, if Bitcoin Fixes something, it implies that said thing has been ruined by fiat. I’ll show how this is true.
Sao Paulo SatsConf - I’ll be in Brazil for this conference in November. My last visit to Sao Paulo was delightful and I can’t wait to go back. I regret not taking a helicopter ride there as it’s reasonably priced there. The conference should be a fun one leading up to the main Latin-American Bitcoin Conference, which I’ll also be speaking at. I’m not sure how many people will have the predilection to go, but given the tremendous numbers I see in the countries here in Europe, I imagine the numbers in South America will also be huge.
Tweet of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
ZeroSync - This is an alternative way to bootstrap onto the Bitcoin network by using UtreeXO and STARK proofs to get the current blockchain state. The vision of the project is to have a custom subset of the blockchain that’s easily query-able. This is in a sense what wallets already do, but zerosync adds the ability to provide proofs. This project is what something like UtreeXO can become, which is a way to have a full node running on much more space limited hardware.
24.0 RC - Bitcoin Core 24.0 has a release candidate and we have a very thorough “what to test” document. The main feature that caught my eye is the ability to watch descriptor wallets. The software is now migrating all wallets to the descriptor type and the notation is notably in miniscript. That will probably be the standard way to describe wallets going forward, which I hope every wallet adopts. Wallets, especially ones that support altcoins, are very limited in the security they offer to users and having more choices to secure Bitcoin, especially with the features offered in Taproot is something I would like to see.
BIP351 - Private payments, or successor to BIP47 is now defined! Not only that, but there’s already an implementation. The main benefit is that various address types are explicitly set and there’s no public notification address as in BIP47. There were a lot of reasons BIP47 hasn’t been popular, not the least of which is the fact that there’s already a standardized address scheme in Bitcoin, but perhaps this standard has enough benefits that it has a chance of getting some adoption.
I2P tutorial - If you’re one of the many people that think TOR isn’t very private, then this is for you. The tutorial shows how to set up your core node with I2P. This requires Bitcoin Core 22.0 or higher as I2P support was added at that version. Some jurisdiction somewhere is going to ban Bitcoin and they still won’t be able to stop this. Also, 24.0 has a feature that creates a disposable I2P address for every outgoing connection.
Lightning
GRID - This is a project for buying/selling electricity using lightning. Electricity is one of those industries which have unfortunately monopolized and lacks a truly competitive market. Projects like this along with deregulation should make energy markets a lot freer. Most people around the world are strictly limited in the electricity they can buy, but what if there were a free market? Would wind energy really beat nuclear? There are other issues to consider, but projects like this make small amounts of energy easy to pay for.
Silent.link - This is a service to get an eSim using Bitcoin or Lightning with zero KYC. Our phones are some of the most personal and easy to track devices to see what we’re doing, so this is an excellent product that I hope gains more traction. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get another phone to make this really private as your phone has an identity that can get tracked. Still, this is a great option for privacy advocates.
Regolancer - Existing rebalancing software is a bit slow, so rkfg decided to do something about it by making another rebalancer. This is one of those things that most people won’t care about, but the few people that care will really care. Routing nodes care deeply about the ability to route payments and having unbalanced channels means less payments routed. For me, software like this is a great indicator that the network is growing.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Bitcoin and History of Virtual Currencies - Gigi has a wonderful longread on virtual worlds, money and digital scarcity. The post is an entertaining examination of various networked games and the economies that flowed in each. The main conclusion is that all of these economies were flawed due to a central controller and there not being a proof-of-work. Bitcoin in that sense is unique because of its decentralized nature and the energy required to produce it.
Economics of Bitcoin Security - Braiins blog has an excellent post on the discussion around Peter Todd’s proposal on increasing the block subsidy. The post goes through various attack vectors that miners can engage in and the economic incentives at play. The basic theme is that it’s more or less economically irrational and way too risky to do 51% attacks of any kind. They point out that the main thrust of Peter’s concern is in the distant future and that it’s likely not something we need to worry about in any case.
Slamming the Elites - Nayib Bukele writes this mic-drop op-ed in Bitcoin Magazine. He points out all the lies from the international press and how none of what they say makes any sense. As he points out, the country is growing and thriving by any economic measure. His main point in this article is to show that there’s a different perspective if you actually visit the country. Having been there twice, he’s right. The place is improving every day and there are entities that are trying very hard to discredit him.
Confessions of a Eth Dev - A former Eth dev from China explains why he left Eth and why Proof-of-Work is way more secure than Proof-of-Stake. The article is enlightening in the things that engineers should be thinking about, such as attack vectors, privacy, and centralization. He’s very honest in his assessment and though it’s similar to a lot of criticisms of Ethereum from Bitcoin developers, it’s very interesting hearing from someone that was contributing to Ethereum.
Quick Hits
IP Takeover Hack - Hackers gained control of a range of IPs, hosted their own smart contract there and defrauded a bunch of people out of their money. It wasn’t much ($235k), but it just goes to show how any single point of failure can be exploited.
GBP/BTC Volume Up - May be a hedge for some people that are noticing the massive money printing in the UK.
BitDeer - Jihan’s new venture is aiming to buy mining equipment from distressed miners.
Say no to CBDCs - BTC Policy Institute puts out a paper on why CBDCs are not a good idea.
Fiat delenda est.