Bitcoin Tech Talk #429
Interesting Stuff
Rent-Seeking Causes - The article starts with a mini-review of the popular book, Bullshit Jobs. The book correctly finds that a lot of jobs in the current economy is essentially rent-seeking, but fails to correctly diagnose why by blaming it somehow on capitalism and the oppressor/oppressed dynamic of Marxism. The author here much more cogently explains the economic reasons for rent-seeking, all of which are interventions into the free market, particularly through ex-nihilo debt. As he argues, banks as they exist are artificial and not part of a free market system. It really is the bad money that causes all the rent-seeking.
Mechanics of Depopulation - Depopulation is an emerging reality in a world with falling birth rates and this article looks at what towns that experience human abandonment look like. The popular conception is that in the absence of human involvement, other species thrive, increasing biodiversity. Yet as the article points out, that is not the case. Most abandoned places have less biodiversity and there’s plenty of evidence that oftentimes, humans are needed to keep an area biodiverse. In other words, humans have a role to play in nature, which many people on the radical environmentalist movement think to be non-existent.
Meaningless Homo Economicus - The article is about why modern life feels so empty and how so many people live a homo economicus way of life. That is, they treat every interaction as some sort of economic calculation, especially in the US. But as he points out, this completely removes real meaning and leaves us deeply unsatisfied. There are many philosophies that are relatively modern and have a lot of sway: Darwinism, Freudism and Existentialism. All three are inward facing and don’t take into account the individual’s place in community. The author sees this as a capitalist phenomenon, but I see it more as a fiat phenomenon, where debt allows you to disconnect from community and be as selfish as you want. And in being a selfish individual, homo economicus loses his soul.
The Case for Marrying Young - Written by a guy in his 20’s who has been married for 5 years, this is something I’m going to be sending my children. As he points out, the fears of marrying too young being a major reason for divorce is overblown, and indeed, young adult life these days does not set people up well for marriage, so skipping it may very well be beneficial to the marriage relationship. There’s also the fact that marrying young means that you both know that you need to grow and generally, you grow more mature faster in marriage than out of it. This is the sort of wisdom that gets lost within the conventional narrative around marriage and one of the subtle reasons why the birth rate keeps plummeting.
My Best Talks of 2024
Given that it’s the end of the year, here are the favorite interviews/talks I gave this year.
Virtues and Vices of Bitcoin - I gave this talk in Lugano about what prevents people from buying and holding Bitcoin through the lens of virtues and vices. Every virtue is a moderation between two extremes and I describe the all-too-common reasons why people either fail to get in, or get in and manage to get wrecked. It was a fun talk to give, blending Bitcoin with morality in a way that I hadn’t before.
Destroying Rent Seeking - I gave this talk a couple times, once in Capetown and a second time in Dallas, but the main crux of the talk is about how rent-seeking is a pernicious force on civilization and that destroying it is a moral imperative. Bitcoin really is the first weapon that cuts it from the roots and it’s that which will finally put an end to the unhampered growth of the administrative state all around the world.
How Fiat Ruins Churches - I gave this talk at Lipscomb University to show exactly how the fiat mentality has penetrated the church. Unfortunately, the debt-based building, emphasis on scale and outsourced virtue are all too common in most churches today and in this talk, I show what sort of effects this has had on the church’s mission. Suffice it to say that churches need some serious reform to get out of this pernicious mindset.
My Best Articles of 2024
Saylor Moon - The continuous buying of Bitcoin through debt instruments is something I wrote about back in March and it’s definitely come to fruition over the last few months. I also predicted in the article that mining companies would be interested, and indeed MARA and RIOT have both issued debt. Zombie companies, or companies that otherwise would not get any publicity have also started accumulating Bitcoin. The speculative attack is under way and it still feels like the early innings.
Ordinals are a Fiat Scam - This was written during the height of the craze, and in many ways I feel vindicated now that they’ve mostly gone to their deserved altcoin graveyard. As I argued in the article, these were altcoins that were dressing as something different and “on Bitcoin” when they were really the same scam all along.
AI and Bitcoin - I wrote this article to talk about the malinvestment in AI. It’s seemed like a fiat hype cycle much like other technologies I’ve seen the last 25 years from “internet” to “e-commerce” to “blockchain” to “social media.” To be sure, there are plenty of successes in there, but there are also an incredible number of failures, a huge waste of resources that I see happening again in AI. I suspect I won’t be vindicated on this one for a few years yet, but there’s already talk of AI fatigue.
My Best Interviews of 2024
Problem of Political Authority - I talked to Robert Breedlove about this classic libertarian book about what philosophical basis that political authority derives from. Essentially, there’s no justification for political authority because there’s no real way to opt out of whatever “social contract” you supposedly agreed to. We talked about a lot of other things as well and I appreciated Robert’s skills as an interviewer.
Bitcoin and Christianity - I talked to a couple of Christian guys in Canada about the connection between Bitcoin and Christianity. We talked about natural rights, the role of government, and the philosophical root of why Bitcoin is a much more Christian money than fiat money. We talked a little more about real estate because that’s what the hosts were doing, but we also talked about stocks and savings and investments that are now having post-modern mechanics. And of course, I talked about how churches have been corrupted by fiat money.
Madness - I talked to a friend of mine in Austin who’s not in the Bitcoin space about Bitcoin, and this is what came out. He’s a really good interviewer so we went all over the place from Bitcoin to Christianity and fiat money. I guess those are things I normally talk about, but the way we talked about them was different somehow in this interview. For example, he asked me if Bitcoin is a religion. It was a really fun one to do and has a lot of clips on YouTube.
What I’m Promoting
Bitcoin
Nunchuk Taproot Multisig - This is, to my knowledge, one of the first uses of MuSig2 for the purposes of securing funds (there have been MuSig2 uses in opening Taproot channels on lightning). As the protocol requires two rounds of interaction, they’re only letting you use hot wallets for now, and indeed, that’s to be expected as I’m unaware of hardware wallets that support MuSig2’s interactivity requirement. Still, this is a good step toward utilizing some of the privacy features of Taproot, even if the UX is hard.
Chaincode FOSS Program - This is an excellent program for those that want to start their career in Bitcoin Open Source. The two month course gets you through learning enough about Bitcoin and Lightning development to get you through to being a contributor. Applications close December 31, so apply if you have any desire whatsoever in this regard.
HRF Grant - 7 Bitcoin went to 20 worthy projects, many of which are core developers and many others around specific technologies. A surprising number went to developers in Africa, who probably have fewer funding sources than devs on other continents. Congrats to everyone who received a grant!
Lightning
UMA - You can now send money from/to USA/Mexico using the Universal Money Address which is the brainchild of David Marcus at Lightspark. The sender sends dollars or pesos and the recipient receives pesos or dollars, but the rails behind it is the Lightning network. Remittances have been a dream of Bitcoiners for many years now and nothing’s quite met the mark in terms of usability. This may be it, and Lightning is the rail that made it work.
LNhance - This is a soft fork proposal that’s specifically geared around making the lightning network better. It has four different OP codes, including OP_CTV, OP_CSFS, OP_PAIRCOMMIT and OP_INTERNALKEY. CTV and CSFS may be familiar from the covenants discussion, and perhaps INTERNALKEY as well. But these four allow for symmetric channels, channels which can be opened non-interactively, channel factories and some enhancements for vaults and Ark. It’s an ambitious proposal and a bit of a repackaging of CTV for reconsideration. While the new primitives are interesting, I think the cost to the entire network in the work of upgrading everything is not something I’ve seen many people discuss, let alone try to account for.
Eclaire User Experience - This is written by a guy that spent a year using Eclaire to manage his lightning node for the past year. There are many gotchas, most of which revolve around settings which could result in unpleasant things like force closures. As he points out, he’s most glad that he used reliable hardware and had backups of everything. As you might expect, there’s a good deal of learning to do to make everything run well, and using Eclaire, especially for routing, as this guy seemed to do, requires some technical expertise.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Diary of a Bitcoin Critic - It’s one thing to be ignorant of Bitcoin, it’s completely something else to be observing it for 12 years and thinking it’s Bitcoin that’s the problem and not your assessment of it. But that’s exactly what JP Koning has done. The main critique, as is common with a lot of Bitcoin haters is that Bitcoin’s method of payment use case isn’t good enough for what they want to do. They seem to completely ignore the savings aspect, which is what’s valuable and lacking in the fiat system. It’s a good reminder that these critics don’t matter and in many ways, they’ll be made completely irrelevant by their being so utterly wrong.
p2p Bitcoin = criminal - At least according to the Bank of Italy. Obviously fiat institutions want to be in all payment flows so they can collect their rent, but this is more than a little bit of motivated reasoning. They suggest that any transactions that don’t involve fiat institutions as being criminal, which is a severe restriction on personal freedom. Money is at the heart of property rights and the philosophical grounding for their position is deeply authoritarian.
ABC Shenanigans - Farida Nabourema has been organizing the African Bitcoin Conference for the last 3 years and the story she has to tell is, frankly shocking. Lots of betrayals, big money grabs and financial difficulties that she had to go through is quite insane. As she lays out, there were a lot of people that betrayed her trust to take significant amounts of money and largely through the generosity of organizations like HRF was the conference able to pull through. I’ve heard from many Africans that rent-seeking is especially bad on the continent and reading this story confirms their assessment.
Quick Hits
5262 BTC - Microstrategy continues executing their infinite money glitch.
F2Pool Sanctioning Transactions - 0xB10C has been following this closely and it looks like the only pool sanctioning certain transactions.
Russia Bans Bitcoin Mining - Didn’t really work out for China, but I guess maybe they’ll have more energy to waste?
AML/KYC in Europe - Looks like there are going to be a lot more regulations coming with respect to self-custody in Europe starting December 30.
Tether puts $775M into Rumble - The popular uncensored video platform is likely to get some sort of Bitcoin integration in the future.
Fiat delenda est.