Bitcoin Tech Talk #293
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What I've been working on
Pizza Day - I reflected on Bitcoin Pizza Day (May 22) and how it’s such a common fantasy for people to think they would have held 10,000 BTC had they bought it in 2010. You wouldn’t have because the resources to learn just weren’t there. The article is a reminder that daydreaming about what might have been is a waste of time and that we should instead level up our games.
Wind and Solar - My other article for Bitcoin Magazine sure triggered some people! It’s about how wind and solar are unreliable, fiat-subsidized boondoggles. I make the case for how “green” energy has been used to oppress developing countries the same way the dollar has. Fossil fuels are a huge builder of civilization and few people understand the extent of its current role.
Bitcoin Misconceptions - This article was written for a Christian audience as a way to dispel some misunderstandings about Bitcoin. My main argument is that digital things can have value and that Bitcoin breaks our mental models of digital things. If you have any Christian friends or relatives, particularly older ones, this is an article tailor made for them.
What I'm up to
Oslo Freedom Forum - I’m in Oslo for the annual HRF conference! I’m sure there will be some video coming out for the two sessions I am involved in: A Sustainable Financial World and Bitcoin 101. If you’re around please come and say hi!
GPT-3 - I’ve been playing with GPT-3 as a writing aid. It’s pretty interesting what you can do with it and I’m wondering why no one has put a GPT-3 payment bridge using Lightning. For those that are unfamiliar, GPT-3 is an AI that can answer questions, continue writing based on prompts you give it and even edit your text. The API calls cost money, which you have to prepay. Using Lightning for interacting with it makes so much more sense. Maybe there is something like what I’m envisioning and I haven’t discovered it, but if it doesn’t exist, this might become a side project for me.
Traveling - I’m in Oslo this week, but after the lockdowns of the past couple of years, I’m planning to do a lot more travel over the coming 12 months. I would love to hear from you if you have suggestions on interesting Bitcoin places to visit!
Tweet of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
Package Relay - Gloria Zhao presents a really well thought out way of relaying groups of transactions called “packages.” The idea is that instead of relaying individual transactions which individually could be rejected for not meeting a minimum fee, nodes relay packages which are groups of transactions. This is very useful for bumping fees on transactions which are pre-signed by essentially adding a child-pays-for-parent transaction instead of a RBF fee bump. The idea is fantastic but it seems the implementation is not trivial. Very interesting idea and it will hopefully make more rational decisions for nodes easier.
Cryonics and Bitcoin - Jameson Lopp goes through a fun thought experiment on the security needed to preserve Bitcoin over an indefinite amount of time. The ostensible reason for this is in thinking about cryogenic preservation of your body and how that would require a very different security setup for your Bitcoin. There are a lot of interesting sci-fi scenarios he thinks about, including being able to hack into your brain. How do you preserve Bitcoin in that case? His conclusion is interesting, and in many ways, traditional.
Passphrase vs Multisig - Unchained Capital blog has a thoughtful article on the benefits of using a BIP39 passphrase versus using a multisig. The post goes into all the security and cost concerns and pits the two methods against each other. I found the article particularly valuable for the framing because the benefits and drawbacks are clearly outlined. I’m hoping that multisig becomes much more a standard going forward as the main reasons for using a passphrase are convenience-related.
Summer of Bitcoin - Congrats to the 83 people who made the cut! This is an excellent program for developers and something I encourage pursuing.
Lightning
LNMe - So simple that I’m surprised no one has done it before, but this is a Lightning invoice generation web page that you can host. Run LNMe on your server and have a simple payment page that you can direct people to for payment. Invoice generation is one of those things that’s a bit of a pain, but this would be useful for any sort of retail payment. I know this would have come in handy at a lot of my book signings.
Lightning Setups - Voltage has a great article on setting up your lightning node. They go through all the tradeoffs that come with various levels of privacy, convenience and liquidity. The payment case for Lightning is getting stronger, especially as many people are starting to get deplatformed from traditional payment methods. The more authoritarian governments get with money, the better Lightning will look.
Bolt Card - This is an NFC card that can do LN invoice negotiation and pay without any pesky UI. The demo is impressive and combined with the ability to convert from another currency to Bitcoin, this can be a way to accept fiat payments for merchants on a Bitcoin standard.
RoboSats - This is a peer-to-peer Lightning for local currency exchange that gives you a ton of privacy. For those that claim that Bitcoin is trackable, I challenge them to try to dox one of these transactions. There are multiple levels of privacy and the tutorial is worth watching.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
More Countries adopting Bitcoin - El Salvador is leading the charge in adopting Bitcoin by bringing in 44 countries to discuss how they can all benefit by going on it together. Galoy covers how their visit to El Zonte went. We don’t know how serious they are about adopting, but this reminds me of Michael Saylor holding a similar event for corporations. The benefits here are enormous given the way IMF treats so many of these countries. It seems it’s not just individuals that want self-sovereignty through Bitcoin, it’s countries as well!
LUNA bailed out whales - There are some allegations that the whales (like VCs) got out first while retail suffered. This wouldn’t surprise me in the least, given that the VCs were the ones who did the hard work of hyping the currency. Like any scam, the scammers always get out first. I’m going to guess that there are at least going to be massive fines, if not jailtime for the people involved if this is true.
Mining Distribution - The US is now the world leader in hash rate with 37% of the global hash rate. Amazingly, China comes in second at 21% despite their ban. Khazahkstan is third with 13%. Within the US, Georgia is first with 31% of the total US hash rate, Texas is second with 11.2% and Kentucky is third with 10.9%. Mining has reset significantly over the past two years and I expect the distribution to continue to change and distribute over the world in the coming years.
Quick Hits
Bitcoin Price - Core developer AJ Towns gives his thoughts on Bitcoin price.
Bitcoiner Events - Great website for what’s going on all around the world. Glad they finally have one that’s not mingled with altcoin crap.
MiamiCoin down 85% - Francis Suarez burned his reputation for this piece of crap. Hope this teaches politicians to do a little more due diligence.
Novo on LUNA - Novogratz justifies his decision to invest in LUNA and it’s what you’d expect, a lot of platitudes and little substance about the clear scammy nature of the coin he tattooed on his arm.
YC startup getting sued - Stablegains is a YC startup that apparently just put their client’s money into the LUNA stuff. Now they’re getting sued.
Fiat delenda est.