Bitcoin Tech Talk #311
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What I've been working on
Altcoin delenda est - I made the argument in this article about how altcoins are immoral and sully Bitcoin’s good name. VCs, media and altcoiners are largely responsible for the current state of affairs and I argue that we need to be more forceful and condemning their affinity scamming. Bitcoin will do fine, of course, but the people that it can help are suffering because of the massive confusion from these people.
David Perrell Podcast - I talked to David Perrell about curiosity. He’s an amazing writer and more importantly, he consistently finds interesting things to write about and does a great job teaching this skill in his Write of Passage course. So much of good writing is not only getting readers curious about the topic, but also, listening to your own intuition about curiosity.
Bitcoin Train - I talked to some people at Baltic Honeybadger about the economic aspects of Bitcoin. The text is in Italian, but my answers are in English, so you can understand it. I go over the importance of the 21 million limit, rent-seeking in the current fiat monetary system, and why altcoins are fiat scams. I want to explore this idea that the built up capital over the past 2000 years is being spent down in Europe.
What I'm up to
Roma - I’m in one of the most historic cities in the world. I visited Bascillica di San Giovanni and was blown away by the sculptures and paintings in there. This church is probably not even in the top 20 in the sites that most people visit in Rome, but would be in the top 2 or 3 almost everywhere else. I’ve had a much greater appreciation for things that last since getting into Bitcoin and what I’m finding is that what lasts are built from stone, aren’t easy to steal and have people that care deeply about it.
Thank God for Bitcoin - We’ve launched a media company for Christian Bitcoiners! The main idea is to provide content for Christians who are curious about Bitcoin and Bitcoiners who are curious about Christianity. There’s a surprisingly large amount of overlap, especially looking at money morally that we are exploring. The first podcast where Jordan and Dave interview me should be coming out shortly.
Gold Wars - I’ve started on this very interesting book and though the author clearly has no idea about Bitcoin, there are a lot of little tidbits that I’m learning that I’m finding enlightening. For example, Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 was ultimately justified under the War Powers Act, proving that “emergency” war powers never really get taken back. I’ll provide some perspective on the book when I’m finished, but I’m enjoying it so far.
Tweet of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
v3 Transaction Proposal - Gloria Zhao has proposed a new transaction version, meant for L2 protocols like Lightning. The main impetus is that there are certain types of attacks that can be executed in the current mempool to delay Lightning transactions. The main proposal is that v3 transactions are replaceable in the mempool regardless of the nSequence setting and unconfirmed v3 transactions can only be v3 (though after confirmation, they can be any). The idea is very interesting and not a use for the version field that I would have thought of. Still, this is very much worth considering for the sake of mitigating against the various attacks on Lightning settlement.
SeedQR - One of the most interesting backup solutions has emerged to store seed words. Instead of writing down the seed words on paper or steel, this uses a QR code to store the seed words. The QR code can be punched into steel which makes it a lot smaller than the typical seed plate. Verification requires something like a Seed Signer to check, but it’s probably a lot less error prone than writing words down. I know from experience that a lot of people have terrible handwriting and a lot of those backups have trouble being recovered.
Bitcoin Developer Report - NYDIG has released a report about Bitcoin development. The report covers the actual developers themselves, including its history starting with Satoshi Nakamoto. The various breakdowns of who’s contributing what is eye opening. I suspect that most people don’t recognize a lot of the names on this list, nor the countries where they hail from, but it’s a great way to get familiar with and thank all the individuals that have made this project possible.
Lightning
LN App Template - If you’ve ever wanted to build a Lightning App, this is it. I love SDKs that do all the ugly and difficult things for you and this is pretty much what this template does. You have the ability to authenticate with Lightning, payments and invoices already. It’s just a matter of putting your idea into a lightning app!
Custodial Lightning - BitGo is expanding into the custodial lightning space by taking care of all the liquidity and key management. This should make it much easier for BitGo customers to integrate lightning as they’ll take care of all the hard parts. I would challenge open source developers to help make something that will be as easy to integrate.
Deezy Routing - This is an interesting post by the people from Deezy arguing that it’s relatively much easier to make money by opening channels to Deezy. They provide liquidity services and are happy to pay routing fees, which makes it more profitable for those directly connected to them. I suspect that there’s a point of saturation coming and this arbitrage isn’t going to last, but the idea is sound.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
PoS is Ludditism - Level39 makes this very interesting analogy that proof-of-stake is essentially going back to human labor and trust in place of the obviously more trustworthy machine. One of the weaknesses of putting people in trust positions is that it’s almost always a moral hazard. People are very creative about monetizing trust and it’s always at the detriment of the system itself.
SEC expanding scope - Buried in this very long charge by the SEC against Ian Balina is a little tidbit which seems to extend their authority to Ethereum due to their new move to proof-of-stake. This is not a surprise as anything so obviously and completely centralized is likely to get captured by government authorities. The window of the “crypto” wild west is starting to close and I expect these centralized coins to either be banned or heavily restricted in the next 5 years.
Third Rail of Bitcoin - The third rail of politics for a long time has been retirement and in this article, Swan’s VP of Product talks about how Bitcoin can integrate into this very powerful political realm. Many people have wanted some Bitcoin exposure in their retirement accounts and as the population ages, there will probably be a lot more Bitcoin money in retirement accounts, which will leverage this third rail. This is not an angle I would have thought of, and is worth reading and thinking about.
Quick Hits
Big data is bought - Turns out the US military is buying all the data your ISP is able to get from you.
Jesse Powell stepping down - Jesse is no longer CEO. I honestly wonder if that means the company is looking for another CEO that can lead it into an IPO.
Trezor enables coin-control - The hardware wallet has always been dependent on the software to do this, and the default app now lets you choose the UTXOs you want to spend.
CSW not doing well - From obvious forgeries to nonsense technical explanations, this case is about what you would expect from this scammer.
Neither is Do Kwon - He’s on the run and trying to avoid going to prison. One wonders if this is the fate of many altcoin pumpers to come.
Colorado taking BTC for taxes - It’s apparently only through PayPal, but it’s a start.
Fiat delenda est.