Bitcoin Tech Talk #439
Interesting Stuff
Why Christianity - One of the most lucid testimonies of a convert that I have ever read, complete with different levels of awareness of what was going on in his life. It’s definitely not the typical Christian story, about how he was bad and then found God and all was right again. He goes through a winding spiritual journey, from growing up in a Christian environment, being enlightened by Dawkins, finding no ground in atheism, escaping into hedonism, finding that unsatisfying and entering into spiritual practices like meditation and still finding it hopeless. He found his final resting place in Christianity and you can’t accuse him of not exploring deeply the many alternatives. The piece showed me just how unreal everything seems without a good grounding, not unlike measuring value with a fast-depreciating currency.
AI Dependency - The article is about research on how AI is used so much in certain contexts that its users are now reliant on it to perform their functions. Much like calculators obviate the need to learn long division, it seems AI is obviating the need for all kinds of skills, like research, writing and even thinking. Of particular concern is its effect on children, many of whom are already saying that they find AI useful, but often don’t feel like they’re learning anything.
Aid that doesn’t Help - Joel Salatin writes on his blog about his two experiences with international aid that focused on farming. Both are surprising in how beneficial they sound to the public (feeding people in Africa! teaching farmers how to grow stuff in Belarus) but in reality enrich large corporations while making the countries that they’re supposed to help poorer. It turns out that what’s supposed to be charitable aid often is just a subsidy to the large corporations that lobby the right departments to get the money that’s supposed to help the people in these countries.
Terrible Lincoln - Lincoln has a special place in contemporary historians’ minds and for many, he’s the greatest president ever who did everything right. This article is a much harsher evaluation of his presidency, particularly with respect to his justification for war and his conduct during it. It’s going to be a jarring read for anyone that reveres Lincoln, but the article is pretty well researched and the facts about him, like the fact that he inherited slaves and sold them instead of freeing them. Of particular interest is how he predated the Federal Reserve with Legal Tender and National Currency Acts, which essentially let him print money in what was a hard money system.
Crisis for Democrats - The article is about the current Democrat coalition and how it has been shrinking the past few years. The main insight is that there’s a “Mean Girls” phenomenon within the party that alienates men, particularly white men. What’s more, this trend isn’t subsiding and seems structurally embedded within the culture of the party. The culture is such that it demands ideological conformity, and any deviation is swiftly punished, hence the Mean Girls analogy. What was clear to me after reading this article is that the centralized power structure of the party is rock solid and not under threat. I don’t think there will be a shift until there’s a moral revolution.
What I'm up to
Crypto Summit Live Stream - I was on with Pete Rizzo on his new podcast, Supply Shock, to talk about the Crypto Summit and the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve that Trump announced through and executive order. We had a good time talking about the various things that were going on in DC and also reminiscing about the book we wrote together for policy people, Bitcoin and the American Dream. I apologize for the horrid audio on my part, I don’t think my browser gave permission for the real mic to be used.
Free Trade Doesn’t Work - I published this to various platforms, but it’s essentially a libertarian case for tariffs in the US. Fiat money gives foreign countries a potent weapon to destroy or compromise US companies and the mitigations that would work for other countries, like capital controls and currency debasement, aren’t available for the global reserve currency issuer. As such, tariffs are a reasonable way to bring manufacturing back to the US and add some resiliency to the brittle supply chain of world production.
Programming Blockchain - There is still time available to apply to the Programming Blockchain seminar in Austin TX, March 31-April 1! I will not be running this seminar again after this final time. Join over 700 alumni that have gone on to work at the biggest Bitcoin companies around the world!
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
Bitcoin
Panopticon - Want to be notified on your mobile phone when a transaction has hit your wallet? You can use a public block explorer, of course, and most mobile wallets do exactly that, but what if you don’t want to use a public block explorer? Surprisingly, no one has built anything like this, so this project is for connecting to your own electrum server to notify you when coins have hit your wallet.
MicroStamper - Most seed plates are large and clunky and are obvious to the naked eye. This is a seed plate that’s meant to be hidden. Amazingly, you can stamp 24 words into a single washer the size of a quarter, making it much easier to hide. Reading it is going to require really good eyesight or a magnifying glass, but the tradeoff is nice in that you can hide it inside a bank safety deposit box between a couple of quarters and no one be the wiser.
Hiding Bitcoin in Memes and Emojis - Stegonography, or the practice of hiding data in images has been around for a while, but with cashu, you can actually hide Bitcoin using the technique. There have been a few different memes and emojis that have been used to hide the transaction. With cashu specifically, there’s no blockchain to analyze, so it’s private and transferred without the two parties even having communicated directly.
Lightning
Excessive Fallback - LND has responsibly disclosed a bug that affects a setup where during a brief time when multiple hashes are needed to be handled, the wrong code path is executed, allowing a connected node on the route to steal the amount locked in between the hash time locked contracts.
LNScratch - If you have a lightning wallet, you can register here to win a daily prize of 2900 sats. It’s a kind of faucet in that Bitcoin is given, but only those that register using their own lightning wallet are eligible and only the winner gets the amount. It’s a bit of a niche use-case, though, as anyone that registers has to have some inbound channel capacity already, in which case they probably have some coins to send.
Lightning.video - You can monetize videos without giving up so much personal information like you do on YouTube. Payments are why video platforms require so much KYC, and this site bucks the trend by letting you upload a video and collect sats in a paywalled fashion.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve - Trump has issued an Executive Order taking the current Bitcoins under government control into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The reserve can be grown by the Treasury and Commerce Secretaries as long as it remains revenue neutral and doesn’t cost taxpayers. In addition, they established a Crypto Stockpile, which unlike the SBR will not be grown, but is there to keep track of the assets.
El Salvador IMF Deal - The details of the IMF deal that El Salvador made are coming to light and it frankly doesn’t look that great. They are restricted in most of their Bitcoin endeavors, taking back the legal tender status and at least if the language is to be believed, to no longer be allowed to grow their Bitcoin stockpile after some point. Nayib Bukele claims that they will continue to stockpile, and indeed, they grew their stockpile by 5 BTC on Sunday. Some more clarification would be helpful as it’s unclear whether they have to stop or not as the president is saying one thing and the IMF documents another.
Spending Bitcoin is Rational - Parker Lewis puts to bed the lie that spending Bitcoin is irrational. The argument he gives is based on the fact that we all need to consume to live and all spending decisions are essentially balance sheet decisions. It’s only under the ridiculous rubric of homo economicus that such a generalized statement can be stated as fact, and indeed, abstractions are not real life.
Quick Hits
Securing Elections - A Tennessee Republican County Vote was secured using SecureProof which runs on OpenTimestamps.
Saylor’s Advice - Michael Saylor writes on what he thinks the US government should do.
Texas SBR - The bill has passed the Texas Senate and looks slated to get passed soon.
Bitcoin is DEI? - A progressive argument for why Bitcoin enhances DEI.
Fiat delenda est.