Bitcoin Tech Talk #383
Interesting Stuff
Denmark, Liberal Utopia? - There’s a persistent desire by more socialist elements to imitate Scandinavian countries in terms of economic and social policy. This is an article to describe what Denmark is really like and whether those on the left would actually make the same tradeoffs. The main points of the article are that there’s little to no immigration, that schools and college are deeply meritocratic and that economic constraints in social services generally mean severe limitations on what you can get. The main thing I got out of the article is that the system leftists want is currently funded by fiat money and that economic reality comes in very quickly in any socialized system.
Inflation in Prison - Not something you’d typically think of when it comes to the knock-on effects of inflation, but even in prison, there are deep consequences of inflation. As this article written by an inmate of 22 years points out, the prices of everything at the commissary increase with inflation, but their minimal wages don’t. They really don’t get paid much (less than a dollar an hour), but what they get paid is still debased significantly and it can be felt. As the author of the article points out, the prison work system is very much a leftover of slavery and inflation is in many ways making slaves of us all.
Birth Control Side Effects - This is not a topic I think too much about, but the article is a review of a book on oral contraceptives. Birth control is one of those ubiquitous things that we very seldom talk much about, but have a huge effect and the review lays out some of the many second and third order effects, particularly around mate selection. As is implied in the article, there is probably a large effect on fertility rates, for example. Anabolic steroids have a similar effect on male bodies and are way more controlled. It makes you think about how different society would be without it.
What I'm up to
Cypherpunk Origins - I talked to Aaron van Wirdum about his new book, The Genesis Book. Despite having studied this topic extensively, I found his approach not only original, but new and interesting. We talked about Hayek vs. Keynes, Stallman and hacker culture, Diffie, Helman, Merkle, Cypherpunks and much more. If you want to know where Bitcoin came from, this is what where you can learn.
Throwing Mountains Part 1 - I talked on this Christian men’s podcast talking about the new book and some of the topics from it. We talked about my origin story in Bitcoin, how I ended up in Austin, and biblical warnings about monetary debasement. I had a rant about airlines and how they’re really banks discharging their debt through flying people around and I made a case to Christians to learn more about Bitcoin as a way to get away from fiat money.
Advancing Bitcoin - One of the oldest Bitcoin developer conferences around the world, I’ll be at this conference March 14-15. If you’re a developer, it’s a great way to learn and connect with not just developers, but companies that are looking to hire. London is also a great city to visit and much more affordable these days because of the strong dollar. You can get 25% off using the code “SONG.”
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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Bitcoin
Citrea - This project is making ZK rollups in Bitcoin using BitVM. The idea is that you can prove any kind of second layer using this system. They claim that they’ll have a trust-minimized two-way peg, which essentially completely displaces the need for BIP300/Drivechains, and adds a lot of more generalized programmability. This method of smart contract execution, which is based on fraud proofs seems much more likely to scale, and much more flexible than, say, your typical altcoin’s conception of smart contracts.
Node Upgrade Stats - Jameson Lopp analyses the behavior of node runners and specifically when they upgrade. What seems to be the case is that previously, most node runners were upgrading with each release of Core. As he shows, while the software upgrade cycle is still every 6 months, node operators are upgrading a bit slower. As he suggests, the lengthening of the upgrade cycle is a good thing as it ensures a level of backward compatibility, though perhaps makes it potentially more difficult to do a soft fork.
Hardware Wallet Considerations - This very thorough article goes through all the various considerations from a security perspective for hardware wallets. Some of the considerations being recommended here include firmware validation, various forms of phishing, reducing software attack surface by getting custom hardware and so forth. Useful for both hardware wallet buyers and manufacturers.
Lightning
Revelio - A paper from a bunch of ETH researchers from Switzerland have found a privacy attack against the Lightning network. According to them, the attack lets the attacker estimate the payment amount and de-anonymize about a third of the payments seen. Their conclusion is that the reason for the attack’s effectiveness is that there are too many centralized nodes that route a lot of the traffic.
Lightning Wallet Review - Anita Posch has done a practical review of various lightning wallets. She tested sending and receiving with these wallets in real world conditions and has many criteria that she evaluated with. Her conclusion is that Phoenix and Mutiny were the best given her criteria. The whole post is worth reading and we need more tests like this to understand how these wallets perform in the real world.
LDK Hackathon - At Advancing Bitcoin will be a lightning hackathon using LDK. There are some nice prices totaling $7500. I’ve found that these events often end with some interesting products. If you’re a Lightning Dev, this is something you should definitely think about doing.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Bitcoin-Only VC Investments - TenVC makes the case for investing in various parts of the Bitcoin infrastructure. The main thing I got from the article is that all of these investments are by nature pretty low-time-preference investments. VCs in crypto have gotten used to almost immediate payoffs with token sales. I still believe that VCs are still essentially funded by fiat money, but if you’re going to play these games, this is the way to do it.
Allegory of the Cave - The post is a fun analogy between Plato’s famous allegory and Bitcoin ETFs. In a sense, the ETF is that fake game of shadow identification while real Bitcoin is in the real world above. The general tendency of most things in the fiat/financial world tend to be like this where everything is packaged up in a similar way as to make distinguishing pretty difficult. And investing, as a result, has become a game of identifying shadows. Nice article and worth thinking about how much of this dynamic occurs in other aspects of the fiat world.
COPA v. Wright - The trial to neuter the lawfare of CSW has started and is expected to last another 5 weeks. What’s come out so far is a mountain of evidence submitted by CSW that have all been manipulated, forged and altered. The sheer amount of time to do all of these must be in the hundreds of hours, and no doubt, this is what he’s probably been spending all his time on. Despite pretty much everyone agreeing that his submitted evidence is all forged and fake, there are still people that believe he’s Satoshi. But then again, there are still who believe Anna Anderson was Princess Anastasia.
Quick Hits
Microstrategy Keeps Stacking - They now have 190,000 BTC, which is not far from 1% of the current supply (around 19.6M).
Hawaii stops regulating - Apparently, Hawaii is no longer trying to regulate “crypto”
Chinese Miners in Ethiopia - Mining equipment banned from China is now in Ethiopia of all places.
Bitcoin-dev Moved - The new mailing list is now hosted at Google.
Fiat delenda est.