Oddbean

Something I shared on Twitter, interested in the perspectives here too: “I want #bitcoin to do three things well: 1. Send 2. Receive 3. Store Personally, I’m only interested in development which ensures #bitcoin does these three things better, faster and more securely while maintaining maximum decentralisation. All other use cases to me represent a grift on the #bitcoin system from privileged people who don’t prioritise these three things highly enough. So many people have worked so hard over the last 15 years to get #bitcoin where it is, battles against so many powerful forces, yet #bitcoin survived. Now we are degrading the #bitcoin system for non-monetary use cases. H/t to @GrassFedBitcoin - something we discussed deeply yesterday.”

He's referring to ordinals & other non-bitcoin things being added onto the blockchain. Some people are very upset with it & consider it to be degrading. Others feel it's nothing to be concerned about.

Yeah I had Wallet of Satoshi orginally & they closed down then something weird happened with my Alby wallet & my sats disappeared. Primal wallet doesn't seem to work so I've not been interested in setting up another wallet for Nostr. Fortunately my Coldcards & Sparrow work great! Thanks though 👍

Innovation explodes during times of user pain. I honestly don't want any soft forks for a long time to allow maximum amount of innovation to occur that does not need a change to Bitcoin. We are so early and cryptographic solutions are popping up all over the place to deal with scaling options and alternate solutions. Let the builders build for a decade and then let's talk about if Bitcoin needs to change.

I could see future soft forks that enable functionality which is both useful for the three things you mention (e.g. vaults, new layer two techniques) AND enable stuff that NFT degens like. That way you get more people to contribute, review and test code. As long as these new things don't degrade the core functionality of course. (I also don't agree that the current "degradation" is important. The main effect is higher fees, but in the future fees probably need to be even higher to offset the lower subsidy. Any use case that depends on low fees has always been on borrowed time.)

I see it the same way. I assume it depends in the end what bitcoin represents for you. I believe numbers 1-3 are at the core for someone who views bitcoin through the monetary lense and probably also for someone approaching it more from the philosophical and societal aspect of it (because the impact of bitcoin in those realms are primarily derived from its properties as sound money as well, so secondary or layer 2 properties derived from its core layer 1 monetary bedrock). If you view bitcoin more from the technical and protocol site, the "thing" you want bitcoin to be could be different. I can understand that...I just hope we don't break bitcoin along the way.

What if we don't find the solutions you wish for? Will you keep your opinion about other developements being grifts? Then EITHER you can only count on "3. store", but send and receive will get much worse. But at least decentralisation would stay the same... 🙄 OR while keeping 1, 2 and 3 you cut decentralisation into different parts like "trustless, "permissionless", "private" and "immutable" and lower them as needed.

I agree that these three things are fundamental that #bitcoin needs to do well and keep doing well in the upcoming and long future. If not you could argue bitcoin has failed based upon the ideals it was conceived upon. However at the same time it’s a technical exercise or maybe a puzzle to some of us which provokes our curiosity and creativity. And those traits are very subjective which results in the discussions and conversations the community is currently having and which you try to enlighten and put into context with your episodes. Even after 15years where already much has happened I have the impression where just started this journey.

Like it it not, Bitcoin is a distributed database with a programming language. Improving the basic attributes for manipulating said database will inevitably also improve its usability for non-monetary purposes.

I agree with your 3 needs. That’s what I want too. I’m not a dev so I don’t understand much of the discussions about op codes. But the philosophy of #bitcoin is really interesting to me. Saylor’s view resonates with me. The fact that he has such conviction and he put so much money into this is also amazing - he backs his views with incredible action. Many are talking about having to fix the problem of not enough bitcoin (utxos) for everyone. But if we look at the gold standard, I’m not sure how many people actually held and used gold in the past. Surely not everyone owned a gold coin?

Even though I think most current use cases besides payments are regarded, I do encourage anyone to build whatever they want in whatever way they can. Nowadays we can do things on the internet that we couldn't imagine 25 years ago. That's because people tried building stuff instead of just making email better and faster. I hope in 25 years from now we can do things with bitcoin that we cannot imagine right now. Let builders build and the market will decide what will be used or not.

I largely agree. But I’ve never been one to slander my competition. I don’t think it helps to have that attitude in a free market. Invite it, cheer their victories, give credit where credit is due, but work your ass off to beat them all the while.

This interview really changed my point of view from "if it is a valid transaction it is ok" to "this needs to be stopped". I run my own node, so according to @GrassFedBitcoin the power should be with me, but I am still not sure what I can do. Run a different node software, or just express my outrage on X? This is an honest question BTW. Thought the episode was excellent.

Digital Proof of Work > Separation of Money and State Any other attempt at "use case" is: 1. Missing Forest for the Trees 2. Affinity Scam Altcoins are a rebranding of fiat central banking Read: "Fiat Ruins Everything by Jimmy Song" https://nostrcheck.me/media/72eded948e607562f2c97ac39be6029f6c5297368d1ae6b63b331c391fc4ef56/ecc8ba68905659c2e7709c35c0cd49ba0dfa2ba02d4c1dff117e543877d8fb55.webp

- Translated from Spanish by Argos - #Runes, #Inscriptions, #NFT, #Ordinals, #Tokens, #Covenants, #bitcoin, etc..., I'm not very clear that it's all these things, basically because I'm not interested. I should probably report before I speak, but life doesn't give for everything. I'm interested in #bitcoin because it solves several problems that humanity has. To limit growth, to have a hard money (which is what makes it possible), to have a decentralized money (because it's the only way that in the long term it remains hard and that it can avoid censorship, by removing these powers to banks and governments). For all these and some things we need bitcoin. No, we need bitcoin to certify the ownership of some JPEGs, or introduce sats into the numismatics, or... . NOBODY!, jeopardizes the certification of the possession of an art work, or... I'm sure if NTF holders need a work-test network to certify their possessions, many geamers and other graphic card users, they'd be willing to take out a money by providing them with the computing capacity to secure that network. I'm sure they'd find it cheaper and with enough network security. It seems that in the bitcoin chain there is already some child pornography. Having that is stupid. It doesn't help a coin or value deposito like bitcoin. And it gives an excuse to the "forces of order" to knock down doors, to confiscate nodes and stop bitcoiners for possession and distribution of child pornography. Miners should process transactions based on their commission, time of arrival at mempool and alphabetical order, if this is possible. NO, for the value a supposed ordinal or NTF entrusted to the sats involved in the agreed transaction outside the chain. Even so, child pornography as bad as it is, "AN EVIL ALREADY DONE". What would happen if instead of pornography, what they put into the chain, were the instructions for the development of weapons of mass destruction?, allowing "A FUTURE EVIL", wouldn't the "forces of order" more legitimized or forced to throw doors, confiscate nodes and stop bitcoiners? Covenants..., they can open a range of possibilities in the way bitcoin is used, but... I'm afraid of giving exchanges and governments tools so they can dictate how we spend our bitcoins. If they only sell with kyc now, with the covenants, could they sell bitcoins that can only be released when the address of which they leave or to which they are registered in a kyc database?, is it an address with a specific format issued by a central "AUTORITY"? I don't know if this is technically possible, but I think the idea that it poses is already understood, in these forms or in ways that we don't imagine and that they would subtract freedom from the way we used bitcoin. Just like today you can do something similar with multifirm or similar. There are those who would say that it is free for users to decide that bitcoin to buy and how to use it, but does anyone think that a world where all the televisions sold have WIFI, someone can buy a TV without WIFI? :[ Better not run. It speaks a lot of what is allowed and is not allowed to do in Bitcoin's network, and if anything allows the code, but you filter it in your node, it's CENSORSHIP. I think bitcoin censorship is to censor the exchange of sats according to the addresses, not according to the annexed information they can carry. Just censor free transactions of any aditement, naked bitcoin, would be censorship. Filtering transactions for their "colors" is just voting for what bitcoin you want. It would be like voting with my node, but without a hard fork. Everything that exceeds a hash, which certifies the validity of data external to the chain, should be able to rot. I don't know bitcoin at a technical level to know what possibilities it offers to enter information in its different fields. But I believe that any technical possibility of filtering everything that does not resemble a HASH should be implemented. Certain miners for greater short-term profit can contribute to the destruction of bitcoin. We want bitcoin to be ethereum, solana or anything else?, don't we?, because we keep it as simple and constrained as possible to perform the function of money and reserve value, eliminating, to the extent possible, or as soon as possible, everything that separates it from that objective. Non-monetary or value reserve uses of gold, industrial or jewelry value distort their valuation. Making it a worse money. The same occurs with bitcoin if used for other purposes. Bitcoin is based on incentives, but these incentives come from the code. So it would be better than the code removed everything that did not help Bitcoin to be a better means of payment and storage of value. Perhaps allowing external protocols to point to bitcoin through a hash is not so bad, even if they distort bitcoin valuation as a means of payment and storage of value. There are parts of the code that allow "good things", such as being more flexible in their use through multifirms or having more privacy through mixtures. But what do the urinals, NFTs, Runas, etc...? Anyone who has seen the documentary "Money Masters" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utTMZBgYKuE or "Inside Job" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2IaJwkqgPk , will know why Bitcoin is necessary. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", Satoshi Nakamoto. We've found a chance to fix the world by fixing the money, DON'T LET IT GO!

Are you subtly referencing runes by any chance? 😂 As a miner I love Ordinals, but I'm also a node runner, so I hate storing other peoples JPEGs. But primarily as a HODLer, I dislike them intensely. Imagine queuing at a central bank a century ago to store your photo albums of cats in their safe? Except that because of the queue, you had to wait 7 days in line and pay $50 in fees because other people wanted to cash $1M cheques.