Bitcoin Tech Talk #447
Interesting Stuff
Jordan Peterson’s Downfall - The one-time voice for disaffected men has suffered something of a fall since his heyday and this article aims to figure out what happened. His main rise in fame began with his standing up against forced pronouns in Canada, and slowly morphing into a call to better manhood. But it took a weird turn with his addiction to prescription medication, his induced coma and afterwards becoming what the article calls Golem Peterson, a kind of NPC Zionist. The article speculates that his coma and addiction changed him quite a bit as the pre-and-post coma Peterson seem to behave very differently. Personally, I think he was always more a neo-conservative and less the intellectual hero that people viewed him as and having grown up in the fiat system and not having broken out of it, he’s still playing by its rules.
Parental Perspective - If you’re a parent and wonder how to describe various things to your children, this is an excellent overview to install a sense of magic about the world in them. The article describes four seemingly mundane things: teeth, whales, germs and music on the radio. Yet in describing them as to a child, the author shows just how connected each thing is not just to humanity but to nature. He calls it the “Lore of the World” and it’s an appropriate way for us to relate to these things and to realize just how interesting seemingly mundane things can be.
Feminism and Fertility - It’s tempting to blame the lack of fertility on all kinds of modern phenomena. Dating apps, social media anxiety, cultural vibe shifts. But could there be a much more banal explanation? This is one of those articles that spells out the obvious in a way that isn’t obvious with conventional wisdom. Namely, that the fertility rates we have are exactly the result of the policies that western societies have pursued for the last 50 years. Feminism, in particular has pursued all manner of birth control (now being used by 50% of the 15-49 female population), delayed or eliminated marriage and delayed or eliminated child-rearing. Policies have consequences, intended or not.
Bronies - You’re probably a normal individual that doesn’t think about these things, but I’ve always wondered whatever happened to this very eclectic and strange group of men that liked My Little Pony. The article is long and explains not just where that community has gone since their heyday 10 years ago, but also their origins on 4chan. It’s a long and strange story, where apparently a lot of them end up trans or fascist, which in a weird way makes sense. I suspect there’s a lot of nihilism, narcissism and general meaninglessness which led to these outcomes, and in many ways reflects the evolution of the internet the past 15 years.
Shiloh Hendrix - This feels like one of those cultural milestones and the article touches on exactly why. If you’re not familiar with what happened, this woman called a 5-year old black boy the n-word for stealing stuff from her 18-month-old child’s diaper bag. She’s been doxxed, including her social security number, but she’s raised money to combat the doxxing, which so far is around a half million dollars. What makes this case a watershed moment is that 5 years ago, she likely would have been cancelled and that be it. The fact that people are actually supporting her makes her a white Trayvon Martin or OJ Simpson, someone that’s being defended not because of the merits of her case, but more to attack back at the system attacking her. We’ll see if she gets her money. Payment processors are generally very reticent to allow things authorities don’t like.
What I'm up to
Bitcoin, Christianity and Belief Systems - I recorded this Q&A at Lugano Plan B last year. We talked about religion, faith, belief systems and virtue. The interviewer was asking more about my belief system and the perceptions around Bitcoin as something cultish. My view is that Bitcoin, like Christianity is the intellectually honest conclusion and answered along those lines.
TGFB LV - The BBQ and get-together is coming up in 3 short weeks on May 27! Get your ticket today to hang out with other Christians before the main conference. I won’t be at the main conference, so if you’re coming to Las Vegas, this will be the one opportunity.
BTC Prague - I’ll once again be at the biggest European Bitcoin conference June 19-21. I have a talk I’ll give about why the Bitcoin Price keeps going up and a debate about the Long Term Security Budget. Suffice it to say that both those appearances will feature some of what’s happened this past week.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
Bitcoin
Relay Policy Drama - Antoine Poinsot makes the case for the OP_RETURN change, which would lift the limit on the single OP_RETURN output that’s currently part of the standardness rules for mempool filtering. The main reason is that he believes the limit to be ineffective as the transaction creators can bypass the mempool and submit them directly to mining pools to get mined and can do so in more harmful ways like in the witness field or in a p2tr output. He justifies removing the configurability of the OP_RETURN size option as too costly to maintain without much realistic effect on the network.
BIP30 Consensus Bug - Ruben Somsen noticed a possible consensus bug in the implementation of BIP30, which was created to counteract miners accidentally using the same exact coinbase transactions for different blocks. Essentially, if the blockchain were to be re-orged back to block 91879, there could be a fork by a client that sees a spend from the duplicate transaction in 91880 that happens later. Note that these are blocks from 2010, so the possibility of a reorg this big is almost nil, but it is still one of those interesting edge cases that cause forks that we should think about.
Payjoin Timelock Privacy - Privacy is a bit difficult onchain because of the common input owner heuristic which chainanalysis companies use to de-anonymize transactions. Coinjoin and Payjoin are ways to defeat this heuristic by combining inputs from multiple owners. This article is about how Liana uses timelocks for inheritance purposes and how it uses Payjoin to anonymize whenever the timelock comes up for renewal. It’s an interesting concept and if more wallets had a timelock feature, this could be very interesting as a way to regularly mix coins.
Lightning
15% - Coinbase, which only integrated Lightning a year ago, already has 15% of its Bitcoin transactions on Lightning, which is astonishing given how the company has traditionally been opposed to integrating it. This shows just how many users are not just using Layer 2, but how relatively small the amounts must be to make the costs relatively low. Imagine if they had integrated Lightning back 4 years ago, how much more of their transaction volume would be in Lightning. Alas, they still seem determined to add more coins rather than focus on Bitcoin.
Griefer Penalization - A paper by John Law goes into how to prevent spam on Lightning by making griefers, or channel partners acting badly, to pay certain fees. The main mechanism is a burn output that is spendable in 20 years, but in the meantime is available to neither should any amount end up there. The fees end up there if one side griefs. It’s an interesting way to prevent certain types of behavior on Lightning, which if they become popular, this type of mitigation will need to be implemented.
BitGo Lightning - BitGo has also integrated the Lightning Network, and it’s what you might expect, a custodial solution where they open the Lightning Channel for you and they control the key. They’re using Voltage to integrate, and as with their other offerings, you essentially have an account with them and you can transfer using the Lightning Network rather than on-chain which reduces the fees.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
Bitcoin Vibe Shift - This is an article by a hedge fund that is finally dropping Ethereum for Bitcoin. The reason is very practical as Ethereum just continues to do very badly (the short ETH ETF is one of the best performing this year). But the more salient point is in the last two paragraphs where they identify the more obvious cultural trend. That is, Ethereum is dying and there’s no energy in it anymore, while Bitcoin continues to get more mainstream, particularly institutional attention. Perhaps the long awaited separation of Bitcoin from crypto is finally reaching the normies.
North Koreans Infiltrating - This is a blog post at Kraken about a candidate that was applying for a remote security role at their company that looked suspicious. It turns out that this is most likely a North Korean agent. Apparently the candidate was able to pass the various technical tests but couldn’t name simple things like a good restaurant in Houston that he likes to go to. I’m guessing a lot of these exchanges have a North Korean agent on their payroll.
No Strategic Reserve in AZ - The first Bitcoin reserve bill to hit a governor’s desk has been vetoed. Katie Hobbs explains in this letter how Bitcoin is an “untested investment.” The bill would have put in allowed seized funds to be converted into Bitcoin and managed by state officials. Yet, somehow, 15 years of history is considered “untested” by Hobbs who clearly wanted to dismiss it. I’m going to guess that this isn’t going to look good for her if another state adopts it and it does well. The game theory of Bitcoin reserves are such that if you miss the boat, you will likely be punished pretty severely.
Quick Hits
15,355 BTC - Strategy is now up to 553,555 BTC, which to give some context is not much less than the entire 3.125 BTC/block 4-year era which produces 656,250 BTC. They’re also planning to double the capital plan to $84B.
Regular Voting Abuse - Polymarket apparently has created incentives to cheat for its prediction market. I guess you’ll have to vote harder.
StackMath - You can model how many Bitcoin you would have to stack by when to live off of it for the rest of your life.
Coldcard Case - You can disguise your ColdCard Q to look like a retro GameBoy.
Fiat delenda est.