Bitcoin Tech Talk #409
Interesting Stuff
Inverting Assumptions - The article is about epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, but it touches on a lot of things. The main idea that I got from this piece is that the frame around which we think about certain problems assumes some amount of goodness. That is, we assume wealth, truth and beauty are common, when they are exceptions, not the rule. The state of nature, in other words, is full of bad things like poverty, lies and ugliness. It is virtue coordinated on a societal scale that brings in the good things.
Crowdstrike Post Mortem - Bits about Money has an analysis of the bug that stopped airlines and banks and many other industries. The main thing I got out of the piece is that a lot of the risk assessment of software was essentially outsourced to government regulation and sadly, that left huge portions of the economy in a similar position: that of having to rely on this one provider. And of course, if everyone relies on the same centralized thing, then entire industries become pretty fragile.
Therapy Culture - This is an insightful takedown of the culture of therapy by someone that's very much a fan of therapy. The main idea here is that it gives license for people to be deeply self-centered, leaving little room for duty, sacrifice or even discomfort. The irony, of course, is that the goal of therapy is to help people grow, but such a culture leaves people in a place of stagnation, much like fiat money does to civilization.
Narcissistic Art - This author puts into words something that I've felt for a long time, which is that much of modern art is an exercise in narcissism. As I've pointed out in my book and elsewhere, so much of modern art is now about the artist, rather than the art, hence the signature being worth more than the work itself. Yet in a way, that focus is deeply self defeating as any artist knows, there's no real impact without some external standard to be measured against.
What I'm up to
What is your Bitcoin Story - I recorded this podcast about a year ago, and it's finally on YouTube. We talked about my book, Fiat Ruins Everything and the different incentives of Fiat money that causes so much bad behavior.
Road to Freedom Conference - I will be speaking at this event in Santa Barbara, CA on September 20-21 hosted by Young America's Foundation. This is an event specifically for conservative college and high school students and I will be making the case that fiat money is an impediment to freedom and that Bitcoin liberates us from monetary tyranny.
Plan B Forum - I will be speaking at this event in Lugano, Switzerland on October 25-26. This will be my third straight year at this event, and among other things, I will be debating Jameson Lopp about Bitcoin Ossification with Stephan Livera moderating. It should be a good time.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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Bitcoin
Dark Skippy - Some Bitcoin researchers have put out a video showing a firmware exfiltration vulnerability where they sign with a bad random seed in the signature and leak the private key through it in a transaction. The blog post here is by Nunchuck.io to summarize what it is. It's a bit of a weird exploit as the hardware device needs to be compromised with bad firmware before anything bad can happen, but it's a vulnerability that you need to be aware of. Check the firmware signatures before you install!
Block Withholding Attack - AJ Towns posts to the dev list about a potential vulnerability in Stratum v2, which is that submitted shares may be of invalid blocks. This is specifically a problem for Stratum v2 as miners can construct their own blocks, but that also means that the server would either have to validate the blocks along with the shares, or accept shares without validation. The former can be made very expensive computationally by submitting blocks with non-mempool transactions, and the latter opens the door to the block withholding attack. It's an interesting discussion and reminds us that Stratum v2 isn't all rainbows and ponies.
Fedi Launch - Fedi has launched their app for a Chaumian e-cash system for Bitcoin. Their strategy is to empower specific communities to run their own federation and allow e-cash transactions between them, making for private and more or less instant transactions. It's different than Lightning in that there's no inbound liquidity problem, no routing and no on-chain footprint on a per channel basis. But of course, there's always a tradeoff, and theirs is that you have to trust the e-cash mint. Presumably, that's someone in your community and not a faceless corporation, so this may become the banking solution for Bitcoin for people that don't want the responsibility of self custody and want to outsource it to a trusted friend or family member.
Lightning
Mutiny Shutting Down - The innovative web wallet is shutting down, partly due to burnout, partly due to the business model. It's sad to see, as they were doing something genuinely new, but such is the life of being a VC-funded startup. It's very hard to make it in the Bitcoin space as a software wallet, because it's so hard to make money with it. Best of luck on their pivot.
Participation for Sats - This Breez post is more about how their LN API is being used by a company called SATO, but the more interesting usage is that they have their own forum that they are paying users to post. It's a different model than something like Stacker News where users reward other users. Will this be a new model for seeding forum communities? It's honestly not a use case I've thought of, but it makes sense given the micropayment nature of Bitcoin.
Voltz - This is a new custodial Lightning wallet that's adding a bunch more goodies to make it more worthwhile to not have possession of your own keys. Of course, Wallet of Satoshi began that model, but Voltz adds a few more things, like having their own eCash mint, LN URL, point of sale services and more. I don't like custodial wallets in general, but for reasonably small amounts, this may be the correct tradeoff with privacy, convenience and presumably good channels/routing built in.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Yen Carry Trade Unwind - The Bank of Japan raised interest rates from -0.1% to +0.25% and that caused some turmoil in the markets. As many commentators have pointed out, so many people were borrowing yen, converting to another currency and buying store of value assets that the yen was weakening significantly, recently hitting 161 JPY/USD, now down to 147 JPY/USD. The interest rate raise means that there are will no longer be negative rates to borrow, and the markets responded by dropping significantly.
The Bitcoiner Test - This is what it sounds like, a test to filter for actual Bitcoiners instead of people that just know a few buzzwords. The main use case is for hiring, but I suspect it can be pretty useful for gated communities and such. Would MBA types struggle on a test like this?
Bitcoiners and Politics - This is a long read, but spells out why Bitcoiners need to care about politics. We would love to ignore politics, but politics, unfortunately doesn't ignore us and as the post says, most of politics is deciding who to steal from and who to give those proceeds to. Sobering reminder that it's a fiat world out there, and they still want your resources, even if it's in self-custody.
Quick Hits
Tourists taken for $700k - In one of the biggest physical attacks to date, this happened in Costa Rica to a bunch of Israeli tourists.
No appeal - For CSW in his legal case in the UK. No more financial backers, I guess?
DoJ seeks 30 years - For alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov.
Pacific Bitcoin Cancelled - On the heels of their recent layoffs, it looks like the third edition of this conference in Santa Monica is now off.
Fiat delenda est.