Bitcoin Tech Talk #407
Interesting Stuff
History of Apprenticeships - The article goes through what apprenticeship was and how it worked. What was particularly interesting to me was the skill that it produced through holistic education of a profession. As the author speculates, the apprenticeship model creates a lot of tinkerers, who ultimately create inventions. Part of what fiat has robbed is this innovation vector.
Building the Wrong Things - Along the same lines, there's been since 1971, a focus on building things that amuse, rather than things that expand. As the author says, it's a failure of imagination, and more importantly, spirit. The naturalistic assumptions underlying the current entrepreneurial environment leads to the nihilism which debases the desire to build something beautiful into a desire to make money. Sadly, scamming is too often the result and we get stuff like NFTs instead of nuclear jet engines.
Centralized risklessness - The article is written by a former academic and is a lament at how nobody funds the things that will truly change things. As he points out, the incentives are completely off for quantum leaps in progress simply because the funding is so centrally controlled. The grant givers may say they want moon shots, but the people that actually implement such things inevitably fall back to credentials and previous work. As he points out, there simply is not enough risk taken to get moonshots. Sadly, the author misses the role of centralization plays in the mess we have in academic research, but the analysis is great.
Bowing to the Left - This article is about how Christian Evangelicals have been preferring to appeal to the left for the last 50 years. It's definitely something I've noticed and likely the result of the power that the left has held over culture. What's fascinating about our cultural moment is that the right is starting to produce culture and at least anecdotally, this seems to mean a little less deference to the left and a little more respect to the right. The cultural products of the left have largely suffered because of the heavy handed agenda driven mandates of the bureaucratic class, so in a sense their degradation of art is fiat money's fault.
What I'm up to
Bitcoin Values - My panel from Bitcoin 2024 is up. The topic was Make Bitcoin in America Great Again. There are some of my rips from this panel that have been going around on X and if you're wondering why I was so pissed off, it was because of the panels that came before, specifically, the Blackrock interview, ETF discussion and the banking panels. It was a great discussion and a reminder to hold onto the values of Bitcoin.
Live Desk - I was on the Bitcoin 2024 live stream with Rizzo, Cason and Michelle. We talked about the banking takeover and how they seem to want us to bow down to them. As you might expect, the three of us guests were critical of their attitude, particularly at the conference.
Lugano Plan B - My current plan is to not do any public Bitcoin conferences until this one in October 25-26. I have some things coming down the pike that I'm not ready to announce which will demand more of my time, so it'll be a few months. If you haven't been to Lugano, it's a beautiful place and I love going. Tickets are pretty affordable for such a big conference, so get your ticket soon!
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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Bitcoin
ProtonWallet - The makers of ProtonMail have created a non-custodial wallet for their users. It looks like they are a web wallet using the blockchain.info security model, where your password encrypts all the wallet secret key data. In addition, they are integrating the wallet with their email ecosystem, meaning that you can just send Bitcoin between users using their protonmail address. This feels a little old fashioned as Lightning is far more used for peer-to-peer transfer these days, but perhaps that's on the way.
StatechainJS - The prolific supertestnet has created an implementation of statechains, with a single operator. In practice, Statechains act a lot like ecash, but with the ability to recover the funds should the operator go down. The trade-off is that if you either have to spend the entire amount of the UTXO or have some alternative way to get change. I hadn't heard it framed as an alternate to ecash, but in many ways, there are parallels.
YubiKey Wallets - Apparently, Yubikeys can now store seed phrases! This is an update to their hardware and makes for very interesting use cases. Casa is the first to take advantage, allowing their customers to store the seedphrase on the Yubikey for one of the keys to a multisig vault. I am guessing they won't be the last to use this functionality.
Lightning
Channel Recommendation Bot - If you have telegram, you can click this link. This is a bot to get recommended channels for your node. You enter your node's pubkey, add how many sats you want the channel to be and it gives you a recommendation. It's crazy that such a valuable tool is free, but that's where we are with the network, I suppose. I expect services like this to cost money in the future.
Taproot Assets Release - Lightning Labs has released their long awaited (and litigated) colored coins protocol. Their plan is to have stablecoins on it which would allow for atomic swaps over lightning, leading to peer-to-peer exchanges. This is a big undertaking, due to all the infrastructure that needs to be built on top, like wallets and such, and it seems Lightning Labs is the creator of all of the necessary bits to make this protocol go. Time will tell if the market adopts it.
Alby Hub - The well known browser plugin has a lightning node and wallet setup that's single click. The idea, like many lightning-in-a-box providers, is to allow users to set up a lightning node quickly and create friendly UIs or abstract away the difficult stuff like opening channels. What's particularly interesting about this product is that it supports *multiple* backbends though it uses LDK as default.
Economics, Engineering, Etc
Trump's Speech - It was rather disappointing, especially after RFK Jr's clearly researched and substantive speech, but he's leading in the polls, so he gets top billing here. The main points of his policy are the establishment of a strategic reserve using the 200k coins held by the DoJ, firing of Gary Gensler, and a pledge to never do a CBDC. There was nothing about tax policy, which honestly needs deep clarification.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Legislation - Lummis followed up Trump with a concrete proposal for a Bitcoin strategic reserve, which would direct the treasury to acquire 1 million BTC (including the 200k held by the DoJ), hold for 20 years and use it to pay off the national debt. This is an excellent first step to solving the nation's woes, as the ability to sell the reserve will keep the dollar stronger than it otherwise would.
Democrats U-Turn? - On the heels of all this Republican embracing of Bitcoin, it seems Democrats are questioning their current Warren-led hostile stance. Rho Khanna spoke at the conference and seems to be unaligned with the Elizabeth Warren faction. There's definitely some debate developing as the Democrats work on their party platform ahead of their convention next month.
Quick Hits
Pension Funds - Are saying Bitcoin already won. They're acquiring some in Jersey City.
Bitcoin Research Institute - Is being established at the University of Wyoming.
Altcoin Conference Report - Peter Todd reports on a “Bitcoin developer conference” which was being used to promote altcoins on Bitcoin.
Nakamoto Institute - has a beautiful new web design for their timeless content.
Fiat delenda est.