Bitcoin Tech Talk #404
Interesting Stuff
Divorce sucks - This article goes into the experience of divorce from the child's perspective, looking at it later as an adult. Suffice it to say that it's a very boomer thing to do, which is to say, extremely selfish and high time preference. The emotional trauma alone should put much more hesitation on no-fault divorce for married couples with kids. Divorce is one of those fiat world things that looks locally good, but terrible when you zoom out.
Brain Sex Differences - The study cited looks pretty convincing and shows that male and female brains operate very differently. This is obviously problematic for the ideology that says all gender differences are a social construct, so there's a bit of a tiff about it online. This is something I've seen a lot in the fiat world as people demand the world be as they perceive to be fair rather than the as it is.
Power of Null - This is an old essay, but it's one I hadn't read until recently and it's about the power of setting the null hypothesis. The idea is that you start with the assumption that phenomenon X is random and the burden of proof is on those that say it's purposeful. As the article states, the sovereign sets the null hypothesis and can thus get you to believe almost anything not directly experienced. It's a propaganda technique and the whole article goes into why it results in such deep control of the public conventional wisdom. Sadly, Fiat money gives the sovereign a legitimacy in setting the norm that it doesn't deserve.
Why Assange was freed - The article is about the wins Libertarians have experienced the last couple weeks. What was insightful was the reasoning behind the Biden DoJ as to why they freed Assange. Essentially, they couldn't guarantee first amendment freedoms for Assange because it would become a precedent. Also, with the UK election this past week putting conservatives out of power, there was likely to be some sort of resolution by the UK courts before they left. Hence, the DoJ took the best deal they could get, which was admission of wrongdoing.
What I'm up to
Bitcoin as SoV - I did a Twitter Spaces to talk about a lot of different topics, including reminiscing about the block size wars, why I write about the things I write about, and of course, ossification. We went through some history of some technical features, including the dud BIP0037 SPV and why we need to be very careful about new features in Bitcoin.
Thank God for Bitcoin Nashville - I'll be at my favorite conference of the year in a couple of weeks in Nashville. My talk will be about financial holiness and what that entails.
Bitcoin 2024 Nashville - I will be speaking at this conference July 25-27 and will be on at least one panel (Make Bitcoin Great Again) and also signing books (Fiat Ruins Everything).
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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Bitcoin
OP_CAT details - The Blockstream blog has a pretty thorough description of how OP_CAT enables covenants and how it would be used to perform some of those functions. The main technique is making the signer put constituent parts of the transaction into the unlocking script and using OP_CAT to concatenate, then hash them which can then be checked against the signature. The post goes into the perceived dangers and how it would affect Bitcoin.
Mass Disclosure - A whole bunch of vulnerabilities in older Bitcoin Core versions have finally been disclosed. These are all at least several years old clients and pertain to many different kinds of attacks on nodes. It's a reminder that software needs maintenance and there are still bugs to be found.
Teaching TX - 0xB10C has created a transaction with a whole bunch of interesting inputs and outputs, which seems to be a way to teach what various limits in Bitcoin are. The address of one of the outputs, for example, is a legit segwit v1 address, but it's only 2 bytes of data in the address, making it a very short address. There are inputs and outputs of almost every type, including p2pk, p2pkh, p2sh, etc. Examining this transaction in detail would be a great way to learn about the various common smart contracts on Bitcoin.
Lightning
Phoenix BOLT12 - The latest release of Phoenix wallet now has support for BOLT12! This includes offers and tipping and goodies that essentially make it less dependent on the current structure of the web which is a contrast to LNURL. Unfortunately, only 5.1% of the lightning nodes on the network so far support BOLT12, so it's not easy to use these features yet, but perhaps this is a reason for people to switch.
Routing Node Concerns - This article goes through what the difference between an end user lightning node and a routing node are and likens routing nodes to a bank intermediary. I've said this before but these routing nodes are operating very differently than the end user nodes and they have a very different set of concerns. I suspect that BOLT12 adoption, for example, will depend significantly on winning over these nodes. The article is worth examining closely if you're interested in either being a routing node or making software for them.
DocStr - This is a nascent project to replace Google Docs using Nostr and Lightning. For now, all docs are public and can be collaborated on, so it's a little more like Wikipedia with Lightning, but there are plans to make things more private. We need more decentralized alternatives to Google services and hopefully, this is one of many to come.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Mt Gox - Mt Gox creditors are finally set to receive what they're owed from the exchange's collapse over 10 years ago. This is around 47,000 BTC that will be going to a lot of very patient people, who have been forced to hold for so long. The concern among the traders has been that there would be a large dump of coins on exchanges, but I suspect that this is a bit overblown. First, there have been ways for creditors to cash out by selling their claims to hedge funds like Fortress for many years now. The people that have held their claims until now have done so purposefully, and I suspect they'll hold a little longer, at the very least.
Germany - The German government is selling the coins they have on the market. This is rather strange since they have offers by various players in the market to do a direct buy without slippage. The US government did something similar with the Silk Road coins years ago, which Tim Draper bought for around $600/BTC, an obviously great investment. That said, as Germany doesn't have its own central bank, but has a continental one in the ECB, perhaps there's no easy way to save Bitcoin as a reserve asset for their country.
Future of Real Estate - The current state of affairs in Real Estate is that much of its value comes from the store of value premium. What will real estate look like in the future as Bitcoin takes away that role? The article brings to light a lot of different factors, like utility other than a place to live. A significant part of the store of value premium has aggregated to housing rather than other uses of land. Will manufacturing capacity or land fertility become a bigger factor? I certainly hope so as that would indicate an economy that's acting a lot more rationally by building.
Quick Hits
TDev out on bail - Between Assange and this, I'm starting to think the Biden DoJ is hedging for the libertarian vote.
CSW assets frozen - In fear that he would scam the court, the UK court has ordered a world-wide freezing order.
BTC Bolivia - Bolivia has reversed its 10 year ban of Bitcoin.
Yen Keeps Debasing - Recently reaching 162 JPY/USD, the carry trade is destroying the Yen. Either US lowers rates, Japan raises theirs or the Yen keeps debasing. There's no other release valve.
Fiat delenda est.