Bitcoin Tech Talk #322
What I've been working on
Steve DeAce reads TGFB - Political commentator and Christian has been going through Thank God for Bitcoin on his show every Thursday for the past month or so. Skip to the 50 minute mark to hear from him on Theology Thursdays. I’ve been surprised at the connections they’ve been making, as a lot of the political connections they make, I didn’t even think of. I’ve been surprised that the message is connecting, despite the bear market. I’ll be paying attention to their reactions the next few weeks as they get into the Bitcoin part of the book.
Entitlements and Belief - The more I’m working on my Fiat Debases Belief article, the more I’m realizing how entangled belief and entitlement mentalities are. And what’s worse, the entitlement mindset is what I think leads to depression. When you think you’re entitled to be successful and you aren’t, that’s when you feel terrible about yourself. We’ve been told so many lies about what fiat money can do, that we’ve embraced it subconsciously in the form of self-esteem. More of these thoughts to come in an article soon.
London Real - This is an interview I did 6 months ago about Bitcoin, the gerontocracy, the way fiat money incentivizes the wrong things and much more. As Peter Thiel has said, we live in a world ruled by old people, and their incentives are not aligned with those that are younger. Listening to this reminded me that I need to write an article about how Fiat Debases Youth.
What I'm up to
Colombia - After some time in Peru, specifically Cuzco, Machu Picchu and Rainbow mountain, I’m now in Bogota. The currency here, just like other parts of South America is screwed up and you can tell because their currency ends in a lot of 0’s. 1 USD is worth 4800 Colombian Pesos, which from a denomination standpoint is about as bad as it gets in South America. They’ve more or less taken 3 digits off when posting prices, which is as easy an indicator inflation as you can get. Yet because cash isn’t tracked, I’ve found that in most South American countries cash is still king. Ironic given how terrible they are at storing value.
Fighting with VCs - I had a spat with Pomp over the weekend where he kept pressing me to condemn Bitcoin-only companies for some reason. What I’ve found is that VCs don’t argue honestly and you have to hold their feet to the fire on the stuff that they’ve been wrong on. The guy has worked hard to get a large audience, but the shilling of altcoins has consequences and he’s starting to feel them. Unfortunately, he likes to drag people down to his level to make himself look better.
Israel and the West Bank - I’m planning to spend my holidays in the West Bank enjoying some of the holiest sites of Christianity. If anyone has suggestions on places to visit and/or recommendations on how to convert Bitcoin to the local currency, please let me know.
Tweet of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
Ephemeral Anchors - Greg Sanders has implemented Ephemeral Anchors for review. The main idea for Ephemeral Anchors is that an OP_TRUE output is there specifically for the purposes of bumping the fees of a transaction. This would be a new transaction version (3) and allow new, easier ways to bump transactions without any key material. It’s an interesting proposal and has a bunch of implications for Lightning, Smart Contract composability and more.
Loops possible in Bitcoin - Bitcoin Script does not have any op codes for looping, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. Script isn’t Turing-complete, so it can’t have unbounded loops, but it is possible to implement bounded loops using the script mechanism (mostly OP_XDUP and OP_SWAP along with OP_TOALTSTACK and OP_FROMALTSTACK). The script lets you loop 7 times, though more is possible by using more bits. It would be interesting for Bitcoin Script composability if another language could compile down to Script and does this for you.
BLS Signatures on DLCs - Discrete Log Contracts let you settle some form of smart contract using an oracle. Current DLCs use Schnorr signatures, which require a nonce commitment. BLS signatures don’t have nonces, so using those add a bunch of benefits, like getting oracles to attest to events on demand. The resulting DLC scheme let Oracles remain stateless (that is, not requiring remembering all those nonces!) and make execution of DLCs simpler for all parties. That said, the computational complexity of BLS signatures does mean that there is a tradeoff.
Lightning
BDK/LDK Bounty - There’s about a $50 bounty to make your first contribution to BDK or LDK. There are FOSS advocates that will probably say that this is against the spirit of open source, but speaking as a developer that got into open source development in exactly this way (colored coins 2013), I think it’s a good idea. If you’re a dev and want a good excuse to get into these projects, this is a good a reason as any.
Lightning + Liquid - The Bitcoin Manual explains how Liquid and Lightning can work together, specifically by using L-BTC for settlement. The idea is very interesting since there are already non-BTC assets on Liquid and the possibility for atomic swaps exists on those assets. The main reason to use Liquid, however, is simple economics. The fees to open channels on Liquid are cheaper. As we get fee pressure, I imagine this will become a lot more popular.
PlebDev Lightning Course - A course on building a web lightning app is available on Udemy. I can’t speak to the quality of the course, but the fact that these sort of resources are available is a good thing. More lightning apps instead of useless Web3 stuff would be a very welcome change.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
In Defense of Toxicity - Michael Goldstein continues his Austrian-Bitcoin writing, this time using the example of Mises to explain why Bitcoin Maximalism is logical. As he explains, any “softening” of the Bitcoin message is ultimately at the expense of truth. After reading the article, I was not only excited about what he’ll be writing about in the future, but also pissed off because he hasn’t been writing more! Do yourself a favor and subscribe to his newsletter.
Digital Land Rush - ten31 writes about Bitcoin as digital land. It’s an interesting comparison because land also has the property of being scarce and limited. There’s only so much land that’s without 10 miles of New York City, for example. What this article points out to me is that absolute scarcity is not at all easy to understand and it requires good analogies to really get it.
Strike African Remittances - Strike can now be used to send money instantly to Africa! Having had to deal with many developing world currencies, I can imagine how useful a tool like this would be. Central banks have a significant amount of power to take money from their citizens, through the inflation stealth tax, but also through capital controls. The former is subverted through using Bitcoin as a store of value, the latter is subverted through using Bitcoin as a transfer mechanism. This is a big deal for human freedom.
Quick Hits
FX Market is Huge - $65T, mostly from offshore accounts. And yes, the Fed bails them out, too.
Astral Codex Ten on Crypto - On which he finally identifies all the things Bitcoin is good at, but somehow attributes the benefits to “crypto.” 🤦
Nigeria CBDC consequences - The Nigerian Central Bank is on a war path with their citizens and their first salvo is limiting cash withdrawals.
Dunking on the ECB - Kai explains the stupidity of what the ECB said about Bitcoin.
The Block bribed by FTX - FTX gave the publication lots of money. They probably weren’t the only ones.
Fiat delenda est.