Bitcoin Tech Talk #501

Interesting Stuff

1. The Veil - writes about the veil as a symbol of mystery and separation between the physical and metaphysical as a way to explain the ancient understanding of modesty. The post is about the role of women in society, but there\u2019s a much deeper truth that I found even more intriguing and it\u2019s the idea that modesty, or privacy, in Bitcoiner terms, has a deep metaphysical, even spiritual function. Indeed, it\u2019s the materialist frame which demands transparency in everything \u201Cbecause you have nothing to hide.\u201D The spiritual framing of privacy is that there are things that are too elevated, too exquisite, too godly to make public and that for their spiritual fulfillment, require privacy. I suspect that many privacy advocates understand this need for holiness (literally, being set apart) deep in their souls even if they can\u2019t really articulate it as such.

2. Boomer Succession - documents how Baby Boomers are clinging to institutional power well into their 70s and 80s with no plans to hand off leadership to younger generations. The result is institutional stagnation across churches, businesses, and civic organizations that are slowly dying under geriatric management. This is unfortunately the incentives of the fiat system, where the profitability of high positions are largely rent-seeking and not value-adding. Institutions can borrow against the future indefinitely, and the people at the top of such hierarchies can profit, leaving successors with the bill.

3. Ethno-Nepotism at SMU - writes about a Chinese-American professor who alleges systematic discrimination by Indian faculty members at SMU. The faculty members used ethnic networking to exclude him from opportunities and retaliate when he complained. The case exposes how DEI frameworks designed to address one set of power dynamics can be weaponized to create entirely new ones. Institutional power games are super-charged in fiat systems and meritocracy goes out the window pretty quickly. Sadly, the most sociopathic tend to thrive at those games and cultures that are least bound by Natural Law tend to thrive.

4. Start Asian Hate - shows how the combination of Asian American achievement, accusations of white adjacency and cultural conservatism have resulted in rather boring art for many years, until the backlash which started around 2021. Despite being Asian American, I haven\u2019t been paying too much attention to the Asian-American art scene, but the tropes that he complains about are all too familiar and his analysis of so many Asian-American elites who have succeeded by assimilating are on-point. The piece was an excellent examination of the cultural insecurity that\u2019s rampant among second generation Asian-Americans.

5. Lost Angeles - gives his firsthand account of losing his home in the LA fires and navigating the bureaucratic nightmare of FEMA and insurance companies designed to delay and deny. He documents how the system that's supposed to help people in crisis is optimized for institutional self-preservation, not actual aid. His campaign for mayor of LA is built on his horrific experience and is gaining traction. He has more than a few parallels with Trump, including his reality TV background. I tend to think of California as completely lost, but if he manages to win, there may still be hope for the dysfunctional state.

What I'm up to

1. Mining Summit - I\u2019ll be at this event on Wednesday and Thursday taking place in Bitcoin Park Austin. Come listen to speakers talk about the reality of mining.

2. BTC Prague - June 11-13, I will be in Prague for what will be my third time for this conference. It should be a good time

Nostr Note of the Week

What I\u2019m Promoting

• Books

  • Fiat Ruins Everything (audiobook)

  • Bitcoin and the American Dream

  • Thank God for Bitcoin

  • The Little Bitcoin Book

  • Programming Bitcoin

Bitcoin

1. Knots 29.3 - Bitcoin Knots v29.3 ships with the Reduced Data Temporary Softfork (aka BIP110), enhanced spam filtering that penalizes dust outputs, and improved sweepprivkeys support for segwit and taproot. The Knots camp was always going to go toward BIP110 and this release confirms it. Whether you agree with his approach or not, finding out what happens with an intolerant-minority driven soft-fork will be useful for the network to know..

2. Monitoring Bitcoin DNS seeds - 0xB10C proposes building monitoring infrastructure for Bitcoin DNS seeds, the critical service that helps new nodes discover peers on the network. DNS seeds are one of those unsexy pieces of infrastructure that everyone depends on but few people think about, and the fact that they can silently degrade without anyone noticing is a real risk. More visibility into Bitcoin's plumbing is always a good thing.

3. OP_CHECKSHRINCS - Blockstream Research proposes OP_CHECKSHRINCS, a new opcode using hash-based signatures that lets users maintain dormant post-quantum protection in Taproot trees while continuing to use efficient Schnorr signatures today. The approach is clever because it does not force everyone to switch immediately but provides an upgrade path if quantum computers become a real threat.

Lightning

1. P2P sats - This is an aggregator of peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading offers from Nostr relays using the NIP-69 standard, showing live bid/ask spreads across decentralized order books. Permissionless infrastructure like this is much more aligned with Bitcoin\u2019s decentralized ethos versus centralized exchanges that can freeze your funds on a whim. No KYC, no middlemen, just people trading sats the way God intended.

2. CenturyMetadata.org - Rusty Russell, one of the most respected Lightning developers, announced he is leaving Blockstream to build Century Metadata, a nonprofit that stores encrypted data for 100 years for a one-time payment. The vision of durable, censorship-resistant data storage is a natural extension of Bitcoin's promise of permanent, immutable records.

3. Predicting Channel Closures - Researchers used machine learning on public gossip data to predict whether Lightning channels will close cooperatively or be force-closed, finding that node activity recency and closure history are the dominant signals. Their best model hit a fundamental information limit because channel balances and payment flows are private by design. This is actually good as Lightning's privacy guarantees make it genuinely hard to surveil, even with sophisticated machine learning.

Economics, Engineering, Etc.

1. Flooding IP addresses - Jameson Lopp flagged a dramatic spike in new IP addresses flooding Bitcoin's P2P layer, with daily unique addresses hitting 250,000, roughly four times the historical average. Whether this is a Sybil attack, surveillance operation, or something else entirely, it highlights why running your own node matters. Bitcoin's adversarial design means it has to withstand potential attacks.

2. The Best Money For Agents - Spiral argues that Bitcoin's Lightning Network is superior to stablecoins for AI agent payments because it offers credible neutrality, built-in privacy, and near-zero marginal transaction costs. Unlike stablecoins that require corporate and government permission and expose all transaction details publicly, Lightning lets agents transact without asking anyone for approval. As AI agents become economic actors, the money they use should be as permissionless as they are.

3. TCP hole punching - A Delving Bitcoin proposal explores TCP hole punching to let Bitcoin nodes behind residential NATs connect directly to each other without relying on centralized relay servers. Making it easier to run nodes from home is one of the most important scaling challenges for Bitcoin's decentralization, since most people sit behind NATs they do not control. If this technique works reliably, it could meaningfully expand the number of reachable nodes on the network.

Quick Hits

• NAKA Dashboard - Apparently, publicly showing the brutal reality of the leveraged BTC treasury play was too much.

• Debankd - This website documents instances of financial deplatforming and censorship worldwide.

• Opposing non-custodial dev protections - The Fraternal Order of Police is lobbying against protections for non-custodial software developers in the Clarity Act, claiming it would hamper law enforcement.

• ViaBTC <1 sat/vbyte - ViaBTC has started including transactions paying less than 1 sat/vbyte in their blocks

Fiat delenda est.