Bitcoin Tech Talk #416
Interesting Stuff
Millenial Male Feminism - The article is about the flavor of male feminism that has emerged in recent years, that of men that aren’t so much supportive of feminism as they are unthreatening. Despite their demeanor which is so aptly captured by the Try Guys on YouTube, the sexual scandals around them belie something a lot more sinister. The fact that this is a critique from the left shows just how tiresome this neutered form of masculinity has become, which unfortunately is a consequence of the “nothing matters” mentality that fiat money produces.
Pseudo Paganization - There’s been a lot of talk about how the west is going away from Christianity and becoming more pagan. As the article shows, it’s not so much the embrace of new religions as it is the desecration of Christianity that defines the paganness of the current cultural moment. The main thing I see is that most people are going in one direction or the other, that of deeper religious faith or that of a meaningless nihilism. What characterizes this nihilism is a belief that you can believe whatever you want, which is incredibly easy to fall into with fiat money.
Easy Money AI - AI definitely does stuff that couldn’t be done before and certainly isolated achievements are pretty impressive. That said, the amount of money that has been invested in AI is nothing short of astronomical, particularly by the big tech companies that are hoping for some new consumer hit. But as the article points out, there’s a lot of easy money that went into AI and thus, probably a significant amount of malinvestment. Which inevitably means that there will be some sort of massive bust, which in turn will need some bailing out.
The Denigration by the Art Elite - Readers of my book Fiat Ruins Everything know that I believe modern art to be an artifact of fiat money and the status hierarchy that it’s produced. This article is specifically about the art elite and how they put down art that they don’t like, which is usually a lot more representational. Where I didn’t go, and where this author goes, is that the art that’s pushed is a way to demoralize the elite’s enemies specifically, by gaslighting them about what’s good or bad art. That kind of gaslighting, of course, is very much true of money.
What I'm up to
WeAreChange - I was on this libertarian news show with Luke Rudkowski and Clint Russell among others to talk about the various interesting news items. We talked about the Federal Reserve, Trump assassination attempts, Alex Jones, Diddy and much more. It was a lot of fun hanging out with these guys and they are definitely aligned with Bitcoiners.
PlanB Forum - I will be in Lugano for this annual conference on October 25-26. There will be a debate with Jameson Lopp on protocol ossification and a talk on the virtues of Bitcoin that I will be presenting. This is one of the prettiest cities I’ve been to for a Bitcoin conference and if you’re in Europe, it’s pretty fun and affordable. Please come by and say hi if you’re around!
Rogue Food Conference - I will be at this food conference on Nov 8-9 as an attendee in Dallas, TX! The lineup is heavy hitting with Joel Salatin, John Moody and others. There’s also a butchering class which I’m looking forward to as well. Use SONG10 for a discount!
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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Bitcoin
Shielded Client Side Validation - This is a paper that turns everything about a blockchain based transaction system on its head. The main idea is that instead of publishing proofs to the blockchain, the recipient, or client, verifies a proof sent directly and not over the blockchain. The innovation here is the idea of shielding the transaction, as to make them more private. The main innovation is that there’s a hiding commitment, which still locks the coins to the owner. There’s a lot here and the full paper will require study, but it’s a very interesting new way of providing privacy.
Headers Vulnerability - A new disclosure for Bitcoin Core, involving nodes prior to v24.0.1. The vulnerability is in a header chain that’s extremely long but presumably low difficulty that would crash nodes by exhausting its memory. Surprisingly this has been a known issue since at least 2019, though the attack was a bit unlikely given the large number of blocks that would be needed to crash a node, with, say 1 GB of RAM.
Casa Security Briefing - Casa has a briefing on two different attack vectors that have been in the news, one by a user on Gemini who was tricked into sending coins to an attacker controlled address through some social engineering and the other considerations of hardware compromise given what’s happened in Lebanon with exploding pagers. The former is a much bigger threat than the latter, though it’s worth considering verifying as much as you can exactly where your hardware comes from.
Lightning
Potential Censorship - A paper from Dresden University of Technology looks at the feasibility of censoring transactions on the Lightning Network using malicious routing nodes. Though routing nodes aren’t supposed to have much information about who’s doing what, they figured out who’s paying based on observed network traffic and did stop certain transactions from routing based on their network position. Interesting reading about possible mitigations.
BOLT12 Merged - The long-running lightning protocol upgrade has finally been merged into the BOLT repository. There are several lightning wallets that already implement this protocol like Phoenix, and indeed offers can be used for a whole lot of things, which should be interesting to observe going forward. There’s already a thread about upgrades to the standard on delving.
5 stories - Blink SV has published an article on how Lightning has impacted 5 separate communities. From circular economies in Italy, adoption in Nigeria to remittances in Venezuela, the stories all show how much money has stayed a rent-seeking staple of most developing economies and Lightning is an excellent way to get around them.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
HeatPunk Manifesto - Obviously inspired by the Cypherpunk Manifesto this is a document worthy of that legacy. The main idea is that you should be able to spend energy how you want for whatever reason you want if you pay for it. Moreover, the manifesto specifically talks about Bitcoin mining as not just a right, but a benefit to civilization. I’ve seen a lot of different articles refuting the energy argument, but I can’t help but think something like this is going to be much more effective as it stakes out ideological ground in ways that other articles do not.
SilverGate Hit - The article is a pretty serious accusation against the Biden administration, essentially saying that they forced SilverGate to shut down as a way to attack the crypto space. In a sense, this is despicable in that they shut down a bank as a supply chain attack on the space instead of prosecuting the fraud and scams. But in another sense, this was the shot they took to destroy the industry and of course it hits the centralized players much harder. The Biden administration won’t be the last ones to try something like this, particularly along the fiat rails that they control to try to damage Bitcoin.
Merchant Advantage - While store of value rightfully takes center stage for the argument for buying Bitcoin, there are real economic reasons why merchants are itching to switch. As this article points out, payment processors like credit card companies take a significant chunk of profit which merchants reasonably think should be theirs. The method of payment use case will depend on this dynamic where merchants demand Bitcoin as the preferred option rather than accept it somewhat reluctantly. But for that, we need more merchants that understand the advantages that Bitcoin gives, particularly as a store of value for their company.
Quick Hits
First Amendment Right - NYDIG has published a paper arguing that Bitcoin is a first amendment right.
Bhutan $828M? - The source is a bit iffy and no other outlet seems to be reporting this, but Bhutan apparently has $828M worth of BTC, which is 1/3 of its GDP.
DLC Markets - Institutional discrete log contracts are coming…
CZ out of prison - He was after 4 months.
Brink Annual Report - The Bitcoin grant organization has a list of the people who have received grants and what they’ve worked on.
Fiat delenda est.