Oddbean new post about login | logout “I've been warning Bitcoin developers for ten years that privacy needs to be provided for at the protocol level. This is the final warning. The clock is ticking.” - - @Snowden
CISA.
lol. I think it’s called Monero.
Yep. Bitcoin is an asset. Monero is a currency.
Id be completely open to this if transferring between the 2 worked privately and at scale. But thats not how it works.
There is no way for an outside observer looking at the chain to know that Bitcoin you sent from address A to address B was a Monero swap As for the at scale part, check out SeraiDEX and Haveno. Both are going to be launched sometimes this year.
SNOWDEN IS THE GOAT! 🐐
Reject Question?
Found out be a liar That’s caught thieving
WE COULD HAVE HAD MIMBLE WIMBLE AT LEAST ALREADY BUT WE DON’T AND THAT SPEAKS VOLUME AS TO WHAT DEVS WANT BITCOIN TO BE…
Devs don't control bitcoin.
Did you write the code you use to run Bitcoin? Did you write the code the miners use?
You don’t need to write code, you choose to run code.
Yeah the code the devs make
You choose which devs code you want to run. You can also write your own code to run.
And the majority of node runners choose which software?… core right?
But if old nodes are not able to understand new ones you get a fork. And nobody can force noders to upgrade.
It’s not like we haven’t forked before…
Yes. But we are more lindy now. Try convincing long, longer, longest term and future hodlers.
Wrong! #Bitcoin runs by a consensus of The Virtuous Full Nodes and Bitcoin Loyalists. Not! by majority rule. Or the size of your special interest bank account..👍🧡😊
WORD..🧡😊
How far had he seen? Thanks to everyone who gives us their knowlegde! 🎩💜🧡⚡ nostr:nevent1qqswux9fewf6rruzxrek22pgjxpx0mfr93rlzu0atenc0vms7f8ajwgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzqpxfzhdwlm3cx9l6wdzyft8w8y9gy607tqgtyfq7tekaxs7lhmxfqvzqqqqqqyetqpye
Is fedimint technically outside the protocol level?
If he means base layer, then no. If he means L2 then yes. Can fuck around and find out on L2.
He is very clear. It needs to be at the protocol level.
Ship has sailed to be making sweeping changes to the base layer. People are storing their life savings in this now. L2 of gfy. Satoshi surely considered this already and decided the tradeoffs weren't worth it.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I don't consider Satoshi a god. This isn't just his protocol.
Never going to happen. This is hard fork territory, nobody wants to fork the King.
It appears that Ed doesn’t realize that is hard-fork territory (soft at best) and that developers don’t control Bitcoin.
Why not have privacy on the base layer?
Cause someone could sneak in an inflation bug?
How?
Should ask state level actors. Not my business. But transparency at the base is a pain for the corrupted.
> But transparency at the base is a pain for the corrupted. What do you mean?
Fiat is the opposite
Bitcoin has a 15 year record of running as it is. You change the code this much, you start over from zero.
You know what else has a record of being as it is? Government.
Saying something is already in a certain way means that nothing ever improves. If there's an improvement to be had, there's a change to be made.
Change introduces risk
And such changes to fatal outcomes. A sound base keeps the house stable in case of disasters.
Because you can trustlessly atomic swap for Monero and back. Get off your maxi horse and use Monero if you need base layer privacy. Nobody is saying. Sell all your Bitcoin for Monero. Reasonable people say. Sell 1% and hedge your privacy risk and have fungible money ready to spend.
This is what happens when people have the idiotic “politics don’t matter” mindset. We allow government to implement KYC so now we are left running around needing to introduce changes to the base later in a reactive manner to address the harms done by KYC. Until ops realize politics does matter we are just gonna be on a hamster wheel reacting to what government does and needing to create freedom tools. The root cause of the problem is policy not lack of privacy in the base layer.
Things won’t improve materially until bitcoiners start wielding political power
People can drink now because we found a political solution to prohibition not because people built more speakeasies
if the political process was an effective way to constrain the state we wouldn't need bitcoin in the first place.
The need for bitcoin in principle has nothing to do with the State and more to do with the limitations of gold. That bitcoin and gold help escape actions made by the government is a tangential benefit. All we have is the political process for what actually matters. Politics is how humans live together. Bukele is the best example of what can be accomplished by wielding political power. Bitcoin didn’t magically fix the rest of the central american countries and it won’t the rest of the world. El Salvador didn’t need another mixing service or monero, it needed good leadership and political action. Same goes for every country
“PoLiTiCs dOnT mAtTeR”
Agreed. Implement Confidential Transactions. The suits, ETFs and regulated exchanges will probably dump the Bitcoin price to sub $10k, but it’s a good thing in the long run.
If attempts were made to alter the base layer to this extent I'd seriously consider selling down my stack. There is no way I'm leaving my entire net worth in protocol change of this magnitude. L2 is where you fuck around and find out not L1. Satoshi made lots of tradeoffs, it's safe to assume privacy was one of them. nostr:nevent1qqswux9fewf6rruzxrek22pgjxpx0mfr93rlzu0atenc0vms7f8ajwgprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctvqgsqfjg4mth7uwp307nng3z2em3ep2pxnljczzezg8j7dhf58ha7ejgrqsqqqqqp48sxev
Panic is when you're most vulnerable to make mistakes
Ossification is not an option.
Proposed Bitcoin Privacy Improvements https://sethforprivacy.com/posts/proposed-bitcoin-privacy-improvements/
You’re free to propose a fork, Ed.
Not possible to have privacy at the protocol level ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Monero wants to have a word with you.
Have fun with inflation bugs
Be honest. How much "money" do you still hold in dirty fiat shitcoins. And if it's more than 1% you are a huge hypocrite. Monero is not competition for Bitcoin. It's competition for fiat shitcoins. And at that it's 1000x better. Bitcoin being digital gold is great. But keeping not at least a small amount of ready to spend private cryptocurrency in your pocket is imo dumb. Most people give a fuck about fiat inflation bugs and keep their shitcoins anyways. That said I worry less about a Monero inflation bug than direct security consequences from using BTC in a non private way.
https://www.moneroinflation.com Ironically btw Bitcoin has had two inflation bugs before. #monero, zero.
You are looking at this wrong, because getutxoset you can find the inflation bugs. You can't find them on monero.
oh no! math is scary!
We've been warning Bitcoin users for ten years that privacy needs to be provided for at the protocol level. But because the protocol that does that is named Monero and not Bitcoin, nobody listens. You all made your bed and get to lay in it. nostr:nevent1qqswux9fewf6rruzxrek22pgjxpx0mfr93rlzu0atenc0vms7f8ajwgppamhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5pzqpxfzhdwlm3cx9l6wdzyft8w8y9gy607tqgtyfq7tekaxs7lhmxfqvzqqqqqqyrx5j0c
I said it before but repeating - as I understand the base layer would be used for large transactions because fees will be prohibitive for average person - means transactions between corporations or nation states would be on base layer . Why would you want them private ? They should be mandatory in public eye .. As for buying coffee and pledging #Sats to open source - I guess #lightning is already private - could be more ! That said - I guess Satoshi's knew it well ! Who is better advocate of privacy than the one absolutely "unknown" ..
I agree, bitcoin will be the settlement layer that resolves disputes and transfers funds from one private channel (be it 2 party or a channel factory) to another.
What's the arg against monero? Network effects too strong, focus on the leader? Feels way simpler compared to btc
1- What is the cap? 2- Look at the chart against BTC. XMR is melting
1. You can only use the cap argument for so long to justify a network that barely functions under any load. Gold has been mined for thousands of years. What matters is that issuance is decentralized, predictable, and requires PoW 2. Don't get into Monero for the purposes of degenerate gambling. It's p2p digital cash. Use it to transact. It's not an investment or stock. No promises were made to make you rich. https://image.nostr.build/975326fdc046527477af1c338f959485e7ff210e5ebd7129dd115c28131f1fa6.jpg https://image.nostr.build/1f90427dc509f688d750d255d92b72f31f9bd43b8d097617e5418697e49f98a7.jpg https://image.nostr.build/4546e4e58976e70d252c1a1dec4e86a1de8d0ddbb577227e85ff069b94a0a277.jpg https://image.nostr.build/80fbb7770109c61e10775484e031bfed633b94e7883c562df5e7e4d6aba2899a.jpg
Thank you for your elaborate answer. I understand your point and I have had some XMR in the past. At the moment I am not seeing using it again. If privacy is a must for me in some small transaction, I believe I would do it through lightning or some non KYC stack I could get.
Although better privacy than on chain Lightning privacy is not as robust as Monero. When you open/close and receive it is particularly bad. This all assumes you are running your own LN node, otherwise you have no/little privacy from custodians or LSPs. Lightning is also not very good for moving larger sums. You'll likely run into routing failures. I'm sure you already know all these things though.
I do. But I am not seeing using monero for large transaction. In my case it would be always less than 500 usd, like some HW wallets or vpn subsciptions type of thing. I am not complete ignorant on the potential of using XMR to buy of sell BTC on places like Bisq, but for my own use I have no need for it and would prefer to use some coinjoin service. I am not saying that you are not right. If I was a darknet guy looking to use the markets there, I guess monero would be my choice. But that would be the only case I see for myself.
Why is Monero privacy only for people who use darknet? Its such a silly logic to say you prefer Bitcoin as it has weaker privacy/darkenet associations. kind of begs the question, why not use something even LESS private and LESS darknet asociated like paypal or visa. Either you want good privacy or you don't. Privacy isn't only for darknet users, its for law abiding citizens too . If you don't want privacy what IS the point in bitcoin? Just to profiteer at rising prices? Because that is its only remaining utility if privacy is not.
Privacy has existed on the protocol level for Bitcoin since day 1. Run your own node. The only people who don't have privacy with Bitcoin are the ones who aren't running Bitcoin. Running Bitcoin = Running your own node. Now with platforms like start9, you can get a full Bitcoin Core node behind tor out of the box after a few clicks. There are no excuses. The fact that you gave up your ID to a KYC exchange or used a samourai node or any other node thats not yours is not Bitcoin's fault. Its yours. If you use the internet without a condom (vpn/tor), you are going to get sick (rekt)!. If you give your xpubs to third parties, youre going to get rekt! Bitcoin in perfect money. It only takes you to fuck it up.
there are other ways to doxx your utxos besides an exchange, the protocol is not great in this aspect
There are many ways to crash a car too. Bitcoin teaches individuals sovereignty and responsibility. Bitcoin teaches many things and those things learned along the journey can be applied in many other areas. You can lead a horse to water.... Some people commit suicide. I guess life is not great in this aspect either... If you look for ways to doxx yourself you will find them. If you run bitcoin and use common sense, you'll be just fine.
respectfully disagree, it's orders of magnitude easier to involuntarily get a utxo associated to your legal identity than to crash a car or commit suicide unless you never spend bitcoin which goes against the whole point
I didn't say it was more difficult and I also respectfully disagree. if you follow best practices its almost impossible to associate a utxo with your legal identity. Even a pseudo identity for that matter.
By "follow best practices", you mean "not using Bitcoin", right? That's the only way your words make sense. If you pay someone without spending the full UTXO, you're always creating some sort of a pseudo identity. Say you paid for a domain online, then bought dinner using the change. Your face is now linked to that domain thanks to CCTV cameras. If you paid for a VPN, then sent the change to someone on Nostr, your social graph is now linked to your IP address. It just takes some digging and a few subpoenas. Bitcoin is good and useful. But you have to acknowledge its flaws. Otherwise, we're no better than a cult.
And all this for using software? Come on. Haldeman novel level.
What? Do you not understand how the UTXO model works?
fully. Do you not understand the best practices to not have to worry about that?
it should be easier
All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. — Morarji Desai
You know Bitcoin is programmable money? You know you can set your changes address to another wallet you own with a different set of XPUBs. You can pay for a VPN with Bitcoin lightning and generate no change. My IP address is never my own, not only because of a paid VPN but also because of tor combined with that. Digging and subpeonas will get them to a different REAL IP address everytime. Then there is blockstream, FM radios, etc. Just because you haven't educated yourself about how Bitcoin works doesn't mean it doesn't. Next the monero shills will tell us that monero protects them from security cameras for their infinity fiat money lol This sure has been an interesting Friday so far :)
Who cares what XPUBs your wallet uses? If you're doing it right there's no difference. One could even use a non-HD wallet and then there's no XPUB to begin with. Regardless, that change is still linked to your spend, though. It's a pseudo identity. Unless you use the VPN *on top* of Tor and not the other way round (which is a bad practice, ask the Tor devs), the VPN will gladly give the IP you're connecting from to the police. If you paid on-chain, your change is linked to it. Unless of course you trust that "no log" policies are real. > You can pay for a VPN with Bitcoin lightning and generate no change. Well, do you do that? Sure, you can break the link by depositing it into Lightning, or use JoinMarket. But all of that is expensive. > Next the monero shills will tell us that monero protects them from security cameras for their infinity fiat money lol I don't use Monero. But, yes, if there's no trace to follow, it doesn't matter that your face got captured on camera, because no one can see where the UTXO came from. Same with Lightning, but that only works at places that take it.
You can be somewhat pseudonymous on Bitcoin but that has nothing to do with privacy. All actions are still visible to everyone in the world. Monero is not meant to protect you from security cameras. It protects your transactional privacy on chain and nothing else. Everything you speak of is external to that and applies to every other crypto including Bitcoin. You shouldnt need to be an engineer to drive a car. Likewise, you shouldn't need to be one to achieve transactional privacy. That is just terrible design.
nice iPhone bro!
Monero on the other hand has serious fiat cult vibes lol expensive, uncertain, soft money
I plan to install @Start9 on a mini-pc later tonight. My hardware just arrived!
This makes me happy. I will be here partying like every friday night. Let me know if you need help. Curious about the hardware too! On to new beginnings, self sovereignty and privacy. On to using BITCOIN!
if you need help, let me know ive done that several times 🤙
Got @Start9 up and running about an hour ago! I’d like to get the WiFi working but I get “RPC ERROR: WiFi Internal Error No WiFi interface available.” It works with ethernet so I have some troubleshooting to do.
WHat hardware is this. Most units we ship don't hvae WiFI, and WiFi is being removed as a feature altogether soon.
You’re confusing privacy with anonymity. Totally different beasts. Bitcoin isn’t anonymous so it’s not perfect money. Great SoV though. We know many of Satoshi’s addresses, transactions and blocks he mined. So you’re saying he fucked up real bad? Umbrel does IBD over tor and it’s free and one line of code on pretty much any piece of junk hardware with enough storage. Why is Start9 such a revelation to people with a $1300 price tag for prism hardware and spec isn’t that good.
I'm not confusing anything. Its very easy to switch to a new set of xpubs anytime among other techniques if you fucked up that bad to start with. no he didnt fuck up, how do you know those are his only xpubs? Start9 is free. Just download the image. its also more secure. Umbel uses http.
Not that easy. One of my wallets has over 1500 UTXOs, all carefully curated, isolated, consolidated, labelled over the years. You don’t just hit the nuke button and sweep to a new xpub like changing a show on Netflix.
In this case you should have followed best practices from the start. Now you will have to curate all over again yes. Education is important.
If you make a fuck up, how does moving to a new xpub help? There is no backward facing privacy. It’s just a series of breadcrumbs to new addresses. Only way is to coinjoin and that’s fast becoming a dead duck. You can’t erase history. Bitcoin wasn’t designed to be private or anonymous and we shouldn’t assume otherwise. It’s got so many advantages of other forms of money but this area is a real weakness. Satoshi wrote about this extensively.
hey if you screw up, you have to take certain measures. There are even easier ones, ie: over the counter non-kyc cash exchanges, Bitcoin Lightning, swap to an altcoin and back. these are the tradeoffs for not RTFM its not bitcoins fault, its yours!
Running a node is a way to enhance your privacy but Bitcoin is still a transparent ledger. Privacy is a spectrum. Let's be intellectually honest.
yes Bitcoin is a transparent ledger indicating a bunch of John Doe's. Please tell me which transactions are mine on this transparent ledger. The proof is in the pudding.
I don't need to. You have it all figured out. Your transactions have no deterministic links. You're debating in good faith.
Thanks for keeping it intellectually honest. Just because someone doesn't have it figured out, doesn't mean nobody does ;-)
Privacy already exists if you need it. Buy from non-KYC sources. Do not exchange into fiat currencies thru KYC exchanges. Trade Bitcoin for service and product with bitcoiners that understand this principle. They’ll never know who you are.
We got the ETFs, the Trojan horse of freedom is in, it's time to stop walking on eggshells and do it.
We need a publicly auditable blockchain. How much gold is in ft Knox ? The public is not allowed to know, the public is not allowed to audit it. For 3000 years we could never audit publicly the base money supply and the movements of the base money. This is the root of our big problems. The govt going beserk with a cartel of money producers because nobody really knows what they are up to.. We have public auditability of money now, for the first time in 3000 years, and this is the big bitcoin breakthrough. We also need personal anonymity and we have that but that's largely up to the individual. The protocol is fine.
It can be publicly auditable AND opaque. This is a very common misunderstanding. You have to trust something in the whole system, that trust might be reasonably placed in cryptographic primitives that assure anonymity and privacy as well as assuring no inflated coins are created, primitives which have been reviewed and audited, over and over again. From compilers to central processing units to hash functions, you are already trusting a LOT in Bitcoin. #monero adds a little bit to that gigantic pile or complexity. All of this is explained in https://www.moneroinflation.com
So, if monero is so good then it can be used as a privacy sidechain to btc, as can perhaps LN. Because , as it stands, xmrbtc is getting hammered. I don't think monero will ever have the first mover network effect, mining power and number of nodes. Also, I don't like tail emissions. Inflation is a distortion of price throughout the economy, leading to malinvestments and economic malaise. No thanks.
I largely agree with all you said, which is why all my wealth is in BTC, not XMR. But you can bet it's XMR i'm gonna use when I need to make that $20k payment that is not gonna route over LN and which I don't want to keep on a wallet I need to remember to open every 2 weeks in order not to be rugged.
Then don't use Monero to save. Use it to transact. You already do this with fiat. Network effect isn't some immutable law of the universe. Dominant brands and technologies die off in the market all the time. Ask Kodak and tape cassettes. Monero is already proving that theory wrong in DNMs. Monero and Bitcoin have roughly the same amount of nodes. You can't directly compare hash power because they use different PoW algos. *unpredictable* inflation and centralized issuance leads to distortions in the economy. Monero is predictable, decentralized, and even smaller inflation than gold. https://bitnodes.io/ https://monero.fail/map
All of what you say is true, except once you take the first inflation step the market never trusts you again. With money its all about trust. Its like tax, once introduced it never gets withdrawn and only gets worse. The market has voted , xmrbtc is plummeting over the long term. Bloated block chain also a factor ? . Use monero as side-chain to spend privately. Imo
Not sure what you are talking about. Gold has inflation and it has been that way for thousands of years and it is much larger mcap and more trusted with value than Bitcoin. Even Bitcoin has inflation right now. Using xmrbtc price charts is only a single metric and is price discovery in action. Here are a few examples that show the market choosing Monero over time: https://image.nostr.build/975326fdc046527477af1c338f959485e7ff210e5ebd7129dd115c28131f1fa6.jpg https://image.nostr.build/1f90427dc509f688d750d255d92b72f31f9bd43b8d097617e5418697e49f98a7.jpg https://image.nostr.build/4546e4e58976e70d252c1a1dec4e86a1de8d0ddbb577227e85ff069b94a0a277.jpg https://image.nostr.build/80fbb7770109c61e10775484e031bfed633b94e7883c562df5e7e4d6aba2899a.jpg
Xmrbtc getting hammered , long term. Market doesn't like monero vs bitcoin https://image.nostr.build/3ed53724b92be715c2a5d3fe792157db488cce164169c20731b4e7b4b8331eb3.jpg
Then why is it rising by every other metric I've shown? Maybe you are right degenerate gamblers and speculators are the only ones that don't like it. It's clear that those who actually use it are adopting it.
Monero is auditable, it is also anonymous. How much is the audit, who owns it is not. Don't get me wrong, I am not for changing the code for this, I do think it is a layered solution but this objection is now why. It just doesn't track with reality.
I'm deducting sats, a negative zap if you will. This is not all caps. Be better. nostr:note1acv2njun5x8cyv8nv55z3yvzvlkjxtz879cl6hn8s7ehpuj0myus3n0f28
I've been warning Bitcoin developers for ten years that sats will be the standard. This is the final warning. The clock is ticking.
This gets a repost nostr:nevent1qqswux9fewf6rruzxrek22pgjxpx0mfr93rlzu0atenc0vms7f8ajwgpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qqny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysxpqqqqqqzl3uywg
clever ui/ux “silent payments” is not privacy in the least
@Laeserin This is what I meant: nostr:note1acv2njun5x8cyv8nv55z3yvzvlkjxtz879cl6hn8s7ehpuj0myus3n0f28
Nope the label shitcoin existed during this time and many of us called out Snowden as a shitcoiner directly. But he did not care and only now gets it because his precious zcash is dead (and people that listened to him lost all their money). Vitalik even defended zcash when the community called out Snowden. They only praise him now because incentives align. But in the end he is just riding the free ride now retrospectively telling a fiction about how he said this all along. Grifter and opportunist.
I remember things a bit differently. Before 2014, I never once heard the term "shitcoin". Charles Hoskinson and I, were asked to create and host a show to be called Let's Talk Altcoin, which we did a few shows of to feel it out. Lightcoin and Ethereum were definitely not referred to as shitcoins. Despite never calling myself a Maxi, I guess I can claim rights to it considering I was the only one around only into bitcoin. So shitcoin came AFTER bankers joined post Silkroad. Zooko came along with Zvash much later and after Vitalik bit the big one forking the chain after DAO hack, much to my and other's dismay. As for Snowden, I can understand his desire for greater security. OGs, early adopters and the generation called enthusiasts don't seem to have the same animus for alts that the later gens do. Bitcoin has also become a very culty space where competition is bad, personalities reign over principles and the echo chambers clang loudly. It's a bummer as it has polluted and poisoned people. From my view, Bitcoin Community was what the feds and their collaborators practiced on to divide and conquer before the country then world at large. No good deed goes unpunished.
I remember things a bit differently. Before 2014, I never once heard the term "shitcoin". Charles Hoskinson and I, were asked to create and host a show to be called Let's Talk Altcoin, which we did a few shows of to feel it out. Lightcoin and Ethereum were definitely not referred to as shitcoins. Despite never calling myself a Maxi, I guess I can claim rights to it considering I was the only one around only into bitcoin. So shitcoin came AFTER bankers joined post Silkroad. Zooko came along with Zvash much later and after Vitalik bit the big one forking the chain after DAO hack, much to my and other's dismay. As for Snowden, I can understand his desire for greater security. OGs, early adopters and the generation called enthusiasts don't seem to have the same animus for alts that the later gens do. Bitcoin has also become a very culty space where competition is bad, personalities reign over principles and the echo chambers clang loudly. It's a bummer as it has polluted and poisoned people. From my view, Bitcoin Community was what the feds and their collaborators practiced on to divide and conquer before the country then world at large. No good deed goes unpunished.
