Oddbean

Everyone wants Bitcoin to succeed and save us from the fiat hell. They just disagree on how. I feel some discomfort saying this out loud in here. But I want to stand up beside my tribe to fight the dominant tribe that disagrees with us. "Runes, Ordinals, L2s, transactions all create demand for the Bitcoin blockspace and we should welcome them instead of shunning them. " If you can convince me otherwise, I am willing to join your tribe. Our tribe: @nobody @ck (add others)

I wouldn't say I'm against L2's but the ordinals and inscriptions and all that shitcoining yes 100% lightning has its problems and it's only a short term solution but I'm bullish that better L2's will help us scale bitcoin. have look at https://brqgoo.medium.com/introducing-ark-6f87ae45e272 no promises but it looks like maybe it's going to be VERY useful in the coming years

Shitcoining using Ordinals, runes, etc., isn't the best. But we are yet to find better solutions than gambling. We will find better solutions. L2 scaling is for sure the way to go but this is the path we have to take. Shitcoining on Bitcoin could be a fad that dies but the Bitcoin blockspace utilization will not die. Non-gamblers will only open their wallets if they find something more valuable than the bitcoin they hold. We will find those usecases.

I don't know enough about ordinals or runes to say anything with 💯 certainty. Whatever is best for Bitcoin core/ Bitcoin network should be prioritized imo. Yet bitcoin being about rules and not rulers... if the rules allow it then one can't complain at how the rules are used. As for the network congestion and high fees... eventually fees work themselves out in the long run probably. Yet I do understand frustrations when fees are super high because there are a bunch of jpegs trying to squeeze into BTC... So In short... People should do whatever they want if the rules allow it even if I might disagree with the high fees due to runes or ordinals. I've had to pay high btc fees for things I wasn't involved with for example... Wasn't fun but it's not against the rules. I hope people try to listen to everyone's concerns! There are people in third world countries trying to make ends meet and then there are ordinals and runes trying to innovative and sometimes just trying to make a quick profit... We should carefully consider our priorities! We are a global network after all! 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽 I look forward to the answers!

Bitcoin has very limited blockspace. It is not meant for people transferring 100s of $. It's meant for much larger transactions. The only way you'll transact on Bitcoin is if the value you get out of this transaction is worth more than the fees you're paying. So when the Bitcoin network is used to buy 100 BTC worth of Oil from the UAE, they do not care/about the $100 transaction fees. 1. We need transactions to generate enough revenue for the miners. (Pls tell me if you disagree on this). Else, miners cannot be profitable and will move on to doing other things. Then Bitcoin mining will become a lot cheaper and the price will spiral down with many 51% attacks. 2. There isn't enough demand for the blockspace by pure transactors alone right now. But there is demand for other speculative assets that are put on Bitcoin. Thus, there are more transactions happening right now to create and buy these useless things. a good thing. 3. Anything can be bought and sold using bitcoin. It is similar to buying and selling drugs using Bitcoin, are we against it? Are we against Russians using Bitcoin? No. Why are you against people gambling on Bitcoin? It is a free network. 4. Gambling is not Bitcoin's problem to solve. Trading these useless things is a zero-sum game. People will most likely lose their bitcoins. It needs to be solved by us as a community. We should be against gambling on any chain. 5. With these things in mind, we should things that are valuable enough to justify $1000 transactions. Whether it is an L2 block that amortizes transaction fees among a lot of people and settles on Bitcoin or someone that wants to put an image on Bitcoin for history to remember. It should be allowed. To your point, we shouldnt keep the fees low because we want people from third world countries to transact on Bitcoin. We should scale Bitcoin to accommodate all of their transactions. Scaling is done by building L2s that are more valuable than trading runes or ordinals. So the value you generate by enabling thousands of people to use Bitcoin will be greater than the mere $500 transaction fees.

I like everything you said. I'll need to look more into all of your 5 points to give you a specific response. As for your first question it makes sense that fees would need to be high enough to incentivize mining profitability. Idk what the exact fee % range should be but miners should of course be rewarded. That makes sense. The free market will figure this out I'm sure. Yet I don't know enough about all this so I hope more educated people will answer your questions. 🙏🏽 For example I'm not sure if the block space is so low that ordinals or runes need to fill up empty space. Could be true... Could not... I just don't know. I'll take word for now. During the past bear market many people argued this point and said ordinals helped maintain mining fees by filling up block space or something like that. I guess that could make sense. But yet again. I just don't know. As for gambling I think people should do whatever they want. It's their money. And like you said. They will probably lose it all unfortunately. I don't gamble but if it's not my money it's not my problem. It's a free market. As for l2 solutions absolutely. L2's like lightning and liquid or fedimints and all that stuff will most definitely solve third world fee problems. The problem is that it's hard for most people to get their heads around all of this... Your right l2's make it easy. But it ain't easy to learn atm. by the time bitcoiners solved all of this, the fee charges might have already caused a decent of damage to 3rd world people and people living day to day. That's probably the worst of it. I barely started using l2's and I didn't learn it overnight. Imagine someone who has barely learned Bitcoin in El Salvador or Argentina or something. Idk. Again just learning here like everyone else. I didn't know what runes where until recently.

Yes. It is a problem. The notion in the Bitcoin land is that people should HODL bitcoin. Never spend it. If everyone holds bitcoin, who's transacting? Even then fees were $5-$10 before the oridinals craze. Now I have traveled around some third world countries in Asia, South America, Africa and even Eastern Europe. Let me tell you, no one is using the main Bitcoin network for day to day transactions. $5 per transaction is absurd. They are using centralized solutions. Only people from the first world countries were using Bitcoin to transact. Lightning does not scale as well, we all know it. We need better solutions. Keeping the fees down socially by shunning the gamblers is not the solution and infact is a problem as miners will slowly move on. Bitcoin was built on economic incentives, not social.

Yup we agree on the free market deciding what should or shouldn't succeed. 💯✊🏽 I've had Bitcoin core transactions be as low as a few cents last week! If we can have that as well as l2's that'd be pretty cool! All in all. Compared to the problems Bitcoin solves! These are small potatoes but still potatoes! 😂🫡🤙🏽🙏🏽💯✊🏽 #pleb

As for your first point. That's the first time I've had it so well explained. That makes sense! Fees need to be high enough to maintain a delicate balance of mining profitability so as to avoid a cheap 51% takeover!!! Thx for that! Learned something today! Very nice! 💯🙏🏽✊🏽🫡 #pleb

> 1. We need transactions to generate enough revenue for the miners. (Pls tell me if you disagree on this). Else, miners cannot be profitable and will move on to doing other things. Then Bitcoin mining will become a lot cheaper and the price will spiral down with many 51% attacks. Merge PR 29778 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/29778

I see it like this: What is our purpose or objective? We want bitcoin to be the world’s money because when the world adopts a hard money, there will be fewer wars, no inflation stealing people’s retirements, and more long-term thinking. Yes, runes and ordinals create demand for block space, but does that help us further our goal? What are the pros? The extra money paid to miners does incentivize more investment in mining and increase the network hashrate. In theory this provides more security to the network. What are the cons? It seems these fees are encouraging mining pool centralization through back channel payments (“MEVil”). Higher fees are preventing people around the world from using bitcoin as money. Transactions for lower value amounts will be delayed or won’t be feasible. My conclusion I view these “innovations” as a net negative because I don’t believe these new protocols increase bitcoin’s use as money and I don’t see the benefit to growing the hashrate artificially.

I explained a bit about this here. Yes there will be MEV on Bitcoin. Mining pools will accept tips to have your transaction go through vs others. But wasn't it possible before this as well? Say I want to buy a $1B worth of Oil using Bitcoin. The king of UAE says the first Bitcoin transaction to hit his wallet will get the oil. Others will be refunded. If you wanted that oil, you would be willing to pay millions to the mining pools to land your transaction first. Isn't that MEV? Monotonous, anonymous transactions might not lead to MEV on Bitcoin but Bitcoin is a public chain with many known entities. It will lead to MEV one way or the other. nostr:nevent1qqsf0mjqxlrwwql6ss9kyhls3wemdymz7tq2k7nxf22jr8293py27yqppamhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5pzpwe42kl97st2z7kzp59s0k83fvgnwyuaxwjvr4htfyumx2rknpfzqvzqqqqqqyyqc288

Lot's of things. The halving being one of the probably. Also this: nostr:nevent1qqstjkjzxr669h8fqnxrw8ny8cekujrayrpn8klyhp5hz57qfg3ec0qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzpwe42kl97st2z7kzp59s0k83fvgnwyuaxwjvr4htfyumx2rknpfzqvzqqqqqqyellm2d

Bitcoin solves a lot of things, including being a currency for adversaries of nation states like Russians, Iranians, drug lords, and now gamblers. Drugs and gambling as a whole is not Bitcoin's problem to solve. Let us not get distracted. Let us find better solutions for problems at hand. https://twitter.com/rodarmor/status/1781507176848302416 nostr:nevent1qqstjkjzxr669h8fqnxrw8ny8cekujrayrpn8klyhp5hz57qfg3ec0qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzpwe42kl97st2z7kzp59s0k83fvgnwyuaxwjvr4htfyumx2rknpfzqvzqqqqqqyellm2d

Another one: nostr:nevent1qqsyyh33p32s873csqq3s086a4rhsn5v2qv4r8hvynt7e3ac36vtasspr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qgsvx7gw9j65wsxt4s7e4rluwazrup8f27mx3h2f42c9utp698duq7qrqsqqqqqpvzfnql

you see thats where am not really sure how to approach this. because on one hand you dont wanna be dictator who says what people can and cannot do on the protocol. but on the other hand, you have to have some direction and people who fight for that in your protocol, so it doesnt fall into the wrong hands. therefore i understand why putting data instead of purely monetary transactions into bitcoin can be bad for money sovereinghty, but also dont like the idea of someone deciding whats good and what isnt in this supposedly free money network.

This is how Bitcoin is built. Built to enable these things. Something that is not financial for you could be financial for someone else. When SegWit and Taproot were introduced, did the core devs anticipate these problems? Why did they not see this as an attack vector back then? Because it is not. This not an attack on Bitcoin. Runes and Ordinals obey the bitcoin protocol, they do not lead to double spends, 51% attacks, or any of the problems Satoshi built Bitcoin to solve. This is not an attack just because this new usecase leads to higher fees for vanilla Bitcoin transactions. It is a zero sum game that will slow soon. But people will find ways to make this more useful. Ahahaha