Bitcoin Tech Talk #340
Interesting Stuff
Peak EV - This Mises article makes a bold call that electric vehicles have reached their peak. It’s certainly not the conventional wisdom, but the logic in the article is sound. The costs of electric vehicles are very much hidden, especially around component parts that require significant amounts of the very fossil fuels that they’re supposed to be free from. As we saw with the NY Times article this weak, the narrative around clean energy is very much manipulated and while this article takes it much further than Bitcoiners, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we really have reached peak EV. As we reach hyperbitcoinization, I expect hidden costs like this to come to light.
Demographic Explosion Culture - This article is about the current demographic collapse, going on all over the world and argues that the problem, at its core, is cultural. The impetus for this article are the latest statistics around fertility rates in each country, with a very large amount of the world going below replacement rates. South Korea, where I am now, is at the very bottom with a 0.81 fertility rate. To give some perspective, that means that every generation decreases population by around 60%. The article argues that the culture that survives will be very different than the current one that’s essentially causing extinction. The future, in other words, belongs to the cultures that can consistently produce lots of kids. Perhaps Bitcoiners can take over by just being very patient.
End of Life Dreams - An article on something I really didn’t know much about, which is what people experience toward the end of life and how hospice workers can tell if someone is about to die. Apparently, a lot of people tend to have very vivid dreams shortly before they die of their deceased relatives welcoming them. The conventional wisdom, being materialist in philosophy, dismisses these patterns, but it’s apparently so well correlated that workers can easily tell when someone is about to die. Instead of useless sociological studies on some politically biased outcome, studying stuff like this would be very interesting. Perhaps on a Bitcoin standard, we finally get that.
What I'm up to
Uzmancoin - I did this interview before the meetup in Istanbul and it’s finally released! I talked about my Bitcoin origin story, the nature of decentralization, the need for consensus to change anything and how rent seeking is destroying civilization. The conversation was a lot of fun and it’s in monetarily oppressed countries like this where Bitcoin will really take hold.
Seoul Bitcoin Meetup - I have a couple of meetups this week, this one is on Saturday with a bunch of Bitcoiners and it’ll be casual and we’ll have mostly Q&A. The other one is with KryptoSeoul, which is a more typical audience in Korea, with altcoiners and “blockchain” enthusiasts. I’ll be trying to orangepill them by presenting the problems with fiat money (see the next item). If you’re in Seoul this week, please stop by!
Book Submitted! - My book is now with the editors at Bitcoin Magazine Press, and it’s so far clocking in at 86k words, which should be roughly 350 pages. No doubt, I’ll have to cut some of that. My screed about how fiat money has ruined everything is something I’ve been thinking deeply about. I met with a North Korean defector this week and one of the things we reflected on is the fact that despite the huge economic advantage South Korea has right now, from a demographic perspective the North only needs to survive for 5-6 generations before they can overtake the South. Fiat money undermines even the heavy advantages of human rights and democracy.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Shilling
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Bitcoin
ECDSA Go Bug - Go’s elliptic curve library had a bug that got patched and this post goes into what exactly happened. It’s an amazing description of the details that go into implementing a secure library for doing the elliptic curve functions. Having implemented this stuff before, I know how tricky this sort of thing can be. For cryptography programmers, this is an excellent lesson in how to be very careful and the considerations around constant-time implementations and the optimizations that can be made via lookup tables.
Principles for Storing BTC - Casa has published their principles for key distribution and how they think about the features necessary in a secure setup. The main points are that multiple keys are useful insofar as they eliminate single points of failure. I would agree with them that you should check your setup every 6 months. I would even go further and suggest upgrading your setup every few years. There are always better tools coming out that get proven over time and using them for your security setup is a good thing.
Gigi on Mining - Gigi makes the case that it’s more accurate to say that Bitcoins are issued over time rather than mined. Mining implies some creation of Bitcoins, which is the main point of the piece. The main insight is that energy use is about securing the transactions in the blockchain and distributing the supply of Bitcoins fairly, and not about “creating” Bitcoins. In other words, energy doesn’t somehow get converted to Bitcoin, but rather, energy use is a gauge of collective interest.
Lightning
Civ Kit - A whitepaper has dropped on creating a peer-to-peer marketplace. The key innovation is using Lightning to relay messages and Nostr to host the actual order books. Orders are escrowed using Script and use oracles to both verify and settle. There’s a whole reputation system to help navigate what order book entries are prioritized. It’s a very interesting proposal, and I look forward to seeing this very large undertaking come to fruition.
Fax with LN - Faxes really suck, but when you need to send one, they tend to have no alternatives. This is essentially an anonymous fax service that lets you pay via lightning. Much like the SMS service in various jurisdictions that are available using Lightning, this is another disposable phone number. What we’re finding is that proxies for identity, like phone number can be replicated with money. When will we move to money as the validation mechanism to prevent DDoS?
Lightspark - David Marcus’s startup has finally launched and it looks pretty slick. They provide all kinds of services for Lightning, including opening up a node and channels, more advanced analysis of routing and APIs that look really easy to use. They’re off to a good start but they already have a lot of competition. The models almost all lightning companies go for tends to be some form of taking the complexity out of lightning for a fee, which seems reasonable. I do wonder if that’s a centralizing force that may need some pushback.
Economics, Engineering, Etc.
NYT FUD piece - The piece apparently took 6 months to get ready and still had a large number of errors. The photo they ran with the story was very clearly manipulated to make it look like the place was causing pollution. Riot Blockchain had some fun putting out this amazing video to show that the Times analysis was completely disingenuous and should apply to stuff like EVs. A more thorough rebuttal was provided in written form. I’ve heard through the grapevine that this was ready weeks ago, but they timed the release so it wouldn’t compete with other news. In other words, they’re coming for us.
Mining in Wyoming - This is an interesting account of what stranded gas mining is actually like. The economics of these operations seem obvious, but you forget that there are all kinds of little things, like repairing mining machines, reliability of satellite internet, and managing things when they go wrong. As with most things, making money requires providing value and there are some that will be able to do it much better and more efficiently based on their skills and talents. The cross section of skills needed for an endeavor like this is fairly unique and it’s not for everyone.
Everything Changing - Preston Pysh makes the case that there’s a fundamental shift happening between producing and consuming countries. The article itself is very interesting, but more importantly, points out the reality of being high on the Cantillon ladder, even at the world level. Those at the top may be able to rent seek and live off those at the bottom, but you can only export so many factories, production, and know-how before it comes back to bite you. The current world order essentially can’t last because the producing countries recognize the dollar hegemony as being the raw deal that it is.
Quick Hits
Saifedean’s Latest - Saifedean’s new book is a much needed education in economics. Given how ground-breaking his other two were, this is an automatic pre-order for me.
Letter Against Mining Tax - Parker Lewis and Will Cole wrote some words to Senator Kolkhorst about how she doesn’t understand mining. The legislation she sponsored was probably meant to pass quickly, but Bitcoiners caught wind of it and are now raising a stink.
Dorsey on Nostr - Jack Dorsey explains to politico, of all places, about Nostr.
a16z - Cory Klippsten, who called out Celsius, Luna, and FTX before their troubles, is calling out a16z and their Web3 push.
Fiat delenda est.