Bitcoin Tech Talk #317
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What I've been working on
Cypherpunk Culture and Bitcoin Maximalism - My article for Bitcoin Magazine was about the pre-history of Bitcoin and the intersection with the Cypherpunk movement. I argue that Bitcoin Maximalism is an extension of that self-sovereign Cypherpunk spirit. This was inspired in large part by my panel at Lugano’s Plan B conference where I interviewed Adam Back, Nick Szabo and Paolo Arduino. That video hasn’t come out yet, but I realized that a lot of people don’t know the history and how Bitcoin developed so I wrote this for Whitepaper day.
Whitepaper Day - I spoke to CoinDesk about Whitepaper Day and I argued that the Cypherpunk spirit is being denigrated through altcoins and their VCs. I think that Satoshi is given a lot of lip service without actually adopting the spirit that led Satoshi to create Bitcoin and that’s what I ranted about.
Meat Mafia Podcast - I did a podcast with Meat Mafia a while back, but the video is now up on YouTube. We talked a lot about blazing your own path, which I think is the smarter way to go, even if it’s much scarier. The fiat world has made going to well-trodden industries feel much safer, though it’s far more competitive and less well compensated. Hope this can inspire you to explore becoming an entrepreneur.
What I'm up to
SatsConf - I’m in SatsConf this week and will be around Sao Paulo. The Brazilian Bitcoin community has grown since I was last here 4 years ago, interestingly also before the World Cup. I’ve already had some great Churrasco, so suggestions on some things to do here would be appreciated!
laBitConf - I’ll be in Buenos Aires next week for laBitConf. My talk is on the first day in the morning, which means that I’ll be a little freer than usual during the last days of the conference. Please drop by and say hi! I look forward to the 10th edition of this conference.
Thank God for Bitcoin conference - I won’t be in LA for Pacific Bitcoin Conference, but my coauthor Jordan Bush will be hosting a Christian Bitcoin conference or meetup around then. I would encourage fans of the book to attend!
Tweet of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
Whitepaper Errata - David Harding has a nice annotated whitepaper, pointing out the errata. For those that worship Satoshi, or praise it or talk about it in generalities, this is a wake up call. People that actually know Bitcoin have more nuanced views on the whitepaper and the code base. He points out the code that’s since changed as part of the annotation, which I found enlightening.
RBF Bounty - Peter Todd has instituted a bounty for miners in the form of RBF transactions. He’s broadcasting a low-fee transaction and following that up with an RBF replacement that has a lot more in fees. He’s hoping to get miners to support RBF by giving them an economic incentive. He’s the author of the SHA1 Pinata which was claimed after Google found a collision in 2017. Using economic incentives tends to work, so my guess is that miners and pools will be supporting RBF very soon.
I2P primer - I’ve been hearing a lot of problems around TOR lately and it’s sad because the privacy that it offers is likely illusory. I2P is a lot more robust and this post goes through all the differences between I2P and TOR. I2P certainly seems like the better tech because of the efficiency and the focus on a more general privacy rather than on exit nodes. There is I2P support in Bitcoin Core, but more software could use I2P support in the future and hopefully, this guide can help some developers start.
Lightning
lnd/btcd halts again - A huge transaction with 500,001 empty witness elements brought down lnd. The ostensible reason was that btcd wasn’t updated with new transaction limits (specifically, 500,000 witness elements instead of 4M) for Taproot and that caused btcd to not accept the block with this transaction. For me, this is a lesson in doing a code review. It’s hard to know what was missed in implementing something because the code isn’t there to review.
Counterparty/RGB/Taro - Assets on Bitcoin face off! The article shows how they all work and why they all suck in a way. RGB/Taro have the advantage of being able to be used on Lightning, but Counterparty is easier to recover from a disaster. Having been a colored coins developer (the grandfather of all this stuff) I think the real weakness of all these things is that the asset on top of Bitcoin is inevitably centralized. Trading a decentralized asset for centralized is what’s happening and I’m not sure there needs to be trustlessness given that the centralized asset requires trust anyway.
South African Supermarket Chain accepting LN - This makes me want to visit South Africa as it’s a major grocery chain. That said, I’m curious how many people will actually pay with it. How many people are on the Bitcoin standard there?
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Energy and Prosperity - Lyn Alden does a great job showing how energy use means more prosperity and that the whole Bitcoin uses too much energy FUD has it all backwards. Her analysis is sound and from first principles and reminded me a lot of Alex Epstein’s work. The concepts explored about energy density, portability, and speed are all great ways to think about energy because these are not concepts people really get. Much like money, energy is something people think they understand because they use it a lot.
Circular Economy - Circular economy and spending initiatives have been gaining a little bit of steam the last couple of years and this post points out the many ways in which you can earn Bitcoin. I still think this is not necessarily the right approach as the demand to pay/be paid in bitcoin has to come from the merchant side, not the consumer side. We saw back in 2014-2015 many merchants support Bitcoin, but the amount spent trickled to zero after a couple of months.
Deribit out $28M - Deribit suffered a hack for a relatively small amount. What’s interesting is that we don’t have the abundance of investor money willing to bail out these hacks. My theory is that hacks like this and bigger will start meaning bankruptcies instead of bailouts, though probably not this one. In a cash crunch, there’s more incentive for hackers to exploit bugs and less incentive for VCs to bail these guys out.
97.7% of Uniswap Tokens were Rugs - I preach that altcoins are scams all the time, but I’m even surprised by this very high percentage. Next time someone tells you that they’re researching altcoins, cite this paper and show just how terrible token sales are and how many people get screwed over by them.
Quick Hits
Debt interest payment up - The interest payments on the federal debt is going to be the top budget item soon. Probably nothing.
Email’s path to centralization - Gradually then suddenly. We have to be careful.
Web3 is not the web - It’s Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet saying this.
Chaum on CBDCs - The creator of e-cash is now into CBDCs, no doubt using some of his ideas from DigiCash. Sad.
Lebanon use of BTC and Tether - High inflation means an opportunity for Bitcoin and it looks like a lot of people are flowing that way.
SBF and Celsius - There’s a lot of smoke around SBF and his supposed success in this industry.
Fiat delenda est.