This leftist is doing what Bitcoiners have been doing for ages. Gotta love the Keynesian Brainwashing that makes him think this will hurt Trump.
https://m.primal.net/Mags.png
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #423
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-423
The big divide in the US is between merit and rent-seeking. For rent-seekers, toeing the ideological line is extremely important. For merit-seekers it's doing/being/creating the best. In a sense, I'm surprised this battle came so early because this battle is Bitcoin vs. Fiat in a nutshell.
Results are not linear, at least for most things. You put in 3 years into rock climbing and improve a lot. Then you put 3 more in and improve very little. Then you put in another year and you find yourself doing things you didn't dream of doing.
We like linearity. It's put in this much effort, get these predictable outcomes. Put in a little more effort, get a little better outcomes. What dirves us crazy is putting in a lot of effort and not seeing results. It's discouraging if not devastating.
But the world is non-linear and the curve of effort and time vs results is maddeningly unpredictable, so we make artificial linear outcomes. This is why jobs are so popular. They don't require specific outcomes, but pay based on time put in. And why entrepreneurialism is so scary, the results are non-linear.
This desire for predictability is at the heart of why people tolerate fiat money. Central banks promise some level of normalcy in return for continuous theft. Sadly, all that volatility just gets built up until it explodes some place as hyperinflation, war or worse.
So embrace non-linearity. If you're on here in a sense you already have. Bitcoin price is very non-linear and so is post engagement. But embrace it more. Because the wins are worth it and because it's more in alignment with reality.
The fiat system produces a lot of fragile people because they're so used to artificial stability.
Try holding Bitcoin and you'll learn to weather some storms.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #422
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-422
The credibility of the legacy media is in the toilet. Disinformation and Sybil attacks of various kinds are still going.
The solution is to add prices, the best and most practical information you can get from the market.
Nostr and Bitcoin get us there.
The normie liberal culture is in huge decline, as can be seen in the insanity of the two-tiered justice system, hookup culture, safe spaces and the like.
But there are pockets of different cultures out there like church which are a lot more healthy. Survival will soon mean getting into those cultures and not staying in the mainstream death culture.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #420
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-420
The presidency that everyone in obsessed about us the centralized power point that everyone in competing for.
Decentralization in superior. In might wake some time, but the rest of society will come around to this idea.
The host difficult moral stands to wake are when everyone else disagrees, on worse when they think you are unkind in holding your stance. Bet such are the demands of morality that expediency of seeing someone be happy in not enough to swap your judgement.
If you're wanting to support the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, here is your chance. These are descendants of some of the first followers of Christ that still live in Bethlehem and they make nativity sets and jewelry made from the olive wood that grows in the area. Unfortunately, they're not exactly tech savvy and you need to contact them personally, but message me if you'd like to purchase them. Also, thanks to my friend Fadi, I've convinced them to take Bitcoin.
Many of the people in this Christian community have been suffering a lot the past few years due to the collapse of tourism, especially around Christmas. They're also a minority in a largely Muslim area which make their faith that much more remarkable. Please support them if you can!
https://m.primal.net/LocI.jpghttps://m.primal.net/LocJ.jpghttps://m.primal.net/LocL.jpg
It's crazy how many restrictions we accept on real estate. Not only zoning laws, but property taxes, eminent domain, even condo associations. I'm not sure it's even possible to get truly unencumbered property.
This is why Bitcoin will beat real estate as a store of value.
The arguments against ossification are almost entirely around new stuff that devs want to build.
If that's the priority, why don't you build it on Liquid or Lightning or some other place that's not the base layer? Liquid in particular has a very similar system as L1 and on testnet, they have Simplicity enabled, which should get you pretty much any primitive you want that's not Turing complete. If your idea is so great, why don't you show the benefits of your idea by building elsewhere? Your argument for why you want a soft fork would be a lot better received if you showed evidence that the thing you want to build actually has a robust market.
If the reason why you won't build on another layer is that it's too cumbersome or difficult, then I have zero sympathy for your plight.
Understand that not everyone values freedom.
For a lot of people freedom can be stifling. This is because there's an inbuilt assumption that given freedom, you have to make optimal choices to make that freedom worthwhile and in that space of decisions making is a deep anxiety, one that blames you for any bad choices you make.
We were promised sidechains would destroy altcoins. Instead, it looks like altcoins are going to use the same tech to extract Bitcoin to their centralized ecosystems. Clearly aiming at multicoiners with promises of "trustlessness."
A lot of multicoiners are going to get rugged out of their Bitcoin this cycle.
In case you are not aware, every big company is a bank. They have to play financial games with whatever money they get and if there's any time gap between when they receive the money and when they have to deliver the good or service, they invest the money in the meantime to get some yield. If their customers can't pay right away, then they partner with banks who loan money which prints more money.
Such is the way of fiat.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #421
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-421
On Ossification
=============
*These were my prepared opening remarks on the Ossification Debate I had with @lopp at the Lugano Plan B Forum. It is published here for posterity.*
Thank you to Plan B, the city of Lugano and everyone here for this opportunity to speak about this very important topic. It's an honor to be here and I hope to do my side justice.
Since the beginning people have had two predominant and wrong views of Bitcoin. The first is economic, that Bitcoin is not money for one reason or another. This error is usually made by economists and their followers, some even of the Austrian school. They reject Bitcoin because it does not fit their conception of what money is supposed be. Bitcoin obviously is money, and the 15 years of history disproves their theories so we don't need to refute this error here.
The second is that of Bitcoin primarily being a technology. This error is usually made by technologists because the innovations that they've seen in their lifetime are generally technical in nature. They are the proverbial hammer wielder thinking everything is a nail. Like other technologies they've seen, say mobile phones or apps, they think that it's a race to build new features and to win is to beat the competition through changes.
But this is a serious error and indeed is the main argument given by altcoiners and their ignorant investors thinking that a better mousetrap is what will win. 13 years of altcoin history also dispels this myth. Faster block times, different proof-of-work algorithms, more expressive but more buggy smart contract languages, alternative consensus systems, and much more have been tried but none of these features have gained much long-term traction let alone threaten to dethrone Bitcoin. More features are not what make money better.
To illustrate, go through this thought experiment with me. Imagine that the Federal Reserve added technology features into the dollar, for example, faster settlement times, expressive smart contracts, and even privacy, would those features make it better than Bitcoin? Would you switch to it? Obviously not because they can and do change the monetary policy all the time. In other words, features are not what make Bitcoin better. Bitcoin is better money, not just better technology.
Bitcoin is money first and technology second and it neither needs centralized management nor new features for adoption. Indeed, it's better for money to *not* change. The reason why the classical gold standard worked so well was because gold didn't change. In fact the properties of gold are such that it's fairly hard to change it, either at a macro level, where its supply expands at around 2% per year, or at the micro level where it's non-reactive and extremely durable. Money that doesn't change is better because people who own it can plan more effectively for the future. Nobody likes a game where the rules keep changing, particularly if it's designed to pick winners and losers.
This principle that money is better when it doesn't change is the basis of my stance in this debate. We want money to be predictable, so that when the unpredictable happens, we can use the slack afforded by our savings to get us out of unpleasant situations. So my bias toward ossification is derived from this principle. Bitcoin's value proposition is that it is sound money and sound money works best when its properties are known and predictable.
That's not to say that I don't want anything to change or be built. Just do them on other layers. It's for this reason that I don't like the word ossification. Ossification is a weird word to be using because the mental picture you get is of a fossil, something old, worn and no longer living. I think a better picture is that of a house foundation. We are building a whole new monetary system, and for that it's important to have a trustworthy and stable foundation to build on. And indeed, that's how I view the layer 1 of the Bitcoin protocol. It's the monetary foundation. You can build other things on top like Lightning, eCash, Sidechains, Ark, Statechains and the rest. The foundation underneath all of these layers must be stable and predictable for those innovations to mature.
We don't want to be changing the foundation because at this point millions of people are depending on it. The threshold for changing a house's foundation should be fairly high because it is a very difficult process and you may be damaging things built on top. Similarly, Bitcoin's foundation needs to be set so that other layers can have a chance to be built, to mature and to refine.
That said, I will concede that there are some really cool things from a technological perspective that you can build if you add a new OP code, for example. But that's not enough for me. It's not enough for a feature to be interesting, I need to see why a feature is *imminent* and *necessary*. If some critical cryptographic primitive is broken, that would necessitate change because the compromise of the system is imminent and presumably there are no other ways to fix the problem. To further my analogy, such an event would be like a destabilizing crack in the house's foundation, and though it's an invasive and difficult task, a destabilizing crack would justify repairs. But as I said, that's a massive cost to the entire ecosystem and should only be considered in a situation where there's grave danger to the entire system.
What is not enough is something that's necessary but not imminent. For example, we will need something to take care of the timestamp block header problem, but that's not until 2106. We don't have to solve that problem right now. What's also not enough is something imminent but not necessary. Some regulation that bans exchanges from sending to certain addresses may be imminent, but unnecessary. For me, imminent and necessary are the criteria.
In conclusion, what I view as important are Bitcoin's properties as money and the bar for change at this point, given how much value the network has, is pretty high. And I get the developer's perspective. They want new toys to play with, new primitives to work with. But the design space of Bitcoin hasn't been close to explored yet with features we already have. Between Segwit and Taproot, we have a crazy array of possibilities, as is being shown through BitVM, Ark and FROST. Changing things to satisfy the developers is the wrong motive, just as changing things to satisfy the Bitcoin businesses during the blocksize wars of 2017 was the wrong motive. Our priority should be Bitcoin as money. Not Bitcoin as art gallery, or decentralized exchange or digital archive.
I mentioned earlier that the error of many people that approach Bitcoin from an economics angle is to dismiss Bitcoin because of loyalty to an economic belief. Such an attitude comes from not just wrong economic beliefs, but also technical ignorance. I would implore you to not make the opposite error, which is to dismiss the economic and monetary reality of Bitcoin in favor of perceived technical benefits.
Bitcoin belongs to the community of people that own Bitcoin, not the economists and not the technologists. It is this community, you in this audience that Bitcoin belongs to and it is your needs are what Bitcoin need to serve. Setting a firm foundation is the path to doing exactly that.
A large number of normies like sticking their heads in the sand. They don't think of their beliefs as that, of course, but the anxiety they have from the contradictions of conventional wisdom, show that they are, indeed, ignoring the obvious dangers.
Everyone who is really good at something is a giant nerd. Tarantino watches every film 7-8 times to get everything out of it. Penn and Teller have read and know the tricks of nearly every obscure magician. Every great boxer has studied old films of other boxers and their training methods. Greatness always builds on a foundation of knowledge and crucially stays humble enough to keep learning.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #419
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-419
Tariffs are economically non-sensical in a sound money economy. But in a fiat economy with the world's reserve currency, it's about the only way to spur genuine domestic manufacturing.
Capitalism or a free market economy is the natural state of things. It is the default, not an upheaval of a different order. It is every other system, Communism, Socialism, Corporatism, etc which are forced modifications to the natural order.
There's a world of difference between believing something because you think it's true and believing something because you *want* it to be true. Unfortunately, the dominant post modern philosophy does not make this distinction.
I believe that Bitcoin and Nostr will win, not because I want them to, though I do, but because I see the incentives.
The etymology of the word educate has its roots in Latin with "ducit" which means to lead. The idea of education, then is to lead young people. But where are they being led?
Every community has a culture, and every culture has different rules around status.
The problem is when these cultures are centrally managed instead of emerging naturally.
You need decentralized systems for that.
Every politician promises to clean up the mess in Washington. The problem is they can't because the money created the mess and the money ain't getting fixed.
There are people that feel entitled to your stuff, and sadly they are egged on by politicians who want to gain power.
Nostr and Bitcoin are how we can put this mentality where it belongs: in the trash.
The fearful stay well within the Overton window.
The rebellious play at the edges.
The courageous go where their knowledge and understanding takes them, which these days is well outside.
Hilarious thing I just read.
There was a position during the Tudor Period called the "grooms of the stool" whose job was to wipe the king's backside after #2. Why would someone want such a disgusting position? To be close to power, of course.
Lots of fiat and altcoin rent-seekers who wipe metaphorical crap for a chance at influence.
Fiat money is deeply nihilistic. At core, it's the idea that you can create value from nothing, and by extension, meaning from nothing. In a subtle way it concedes the metaphysical ground, that nothing is the default state, hence trivializing anything and everything. Denial of reality is its inevitable end.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #417
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-417
Centralized restrictions are never used purely for good. It may start out that way, but the longer such institutions exist, the more corrupt they get, until they get reformed, and the cycle repeats.
Decentralized institutions generally improve over time as the markets punish the bad.
This is why Nostr and Bitcoin will win.
I talked to @willcole and started started on a series where we'll try to make a product. We talked in part 1 about strategy, the different concerns you should have at this stage of idea development and what you want to have produced by the end of it. We did this with an idea I had for being a Bitcoin bank for my friends and family.
https://rumble.com/v5gluor-bitcoin-fixes-this-128-building-a-product-part-1-with-will-cole.html
The most enjoyable conversations are ones when you are giving shape to an idea to solve a problem. And if you have the right kind of conversation partners, you go to a place where none of you could have gotten alone.
That's my takeaway from Global Bitcoin Summit 2024
Sketch of a protocol I discussed with @jb55 for proving storage of a file.
before uploading, select 32 random bytes from the file, store their indices and the sha256 hash. do this 1000 more times (select 32 different random byes, calc sha256).
upload the file to the server. every day, ask for the hash of the 32 bytes at the indices stored from the server. if it matches transfer some sats. if not the server no longer has the file. you can check for 1000 days.
Just heard from Marco (a Bitcoiner) in Lebanon via video about the situation there. What struck me was his optimism.
In the midst of hyperinflation and war, Bitcoin offers hope.
You can if you use FROST. You can be the dealer and send keys that need to sign to each server. 3-of-3 is possible, but you can also do arbitrary k-of-n.
The main deception of authorities in general and regulators in particular is that gatekeeping is a net benefit. It sounds reasonable, for example for certain goods and services to have to go through some examination before being brought on the market, particularly if it has some potential for harm.
And at first, that may even work, and certain dangerous goods and services not brought to market as a result of the gatekeeping. But as regulion ages, not only does gatekeeping keep out dangerous goods and services, but also new and innovative goods and services. This is due in part to the capture by the incumbents that have influence over the gatekeeping, but also due to the burden that increases as the bureaucracy around the gatekeeping grows. Indeed, the incumbents often collude with regulators to make it so that nothing can get through the gatekeeping except the incumbents, often getting carve outs for "legacy" institutions that got past the gatekeepers when the requirements were much more lax.
Gatekeeping ultimately then makes everything static and becomes a giant rent-seeking operation, where payment to the rent-seekers become licensees who refuse to issue new licenses. Competition slowly disappears, through mergers, bankruptcies and so on until there's only a few players, who, being critical to the economy as the only providers, get bailouts when they are in trouble.
Such has been the fate of many different industries where a few giant companies dominate. Industries as diverse as Banking, Airlines, Health Care, and Food Production all operate in something like a pseudo fascist manner. Note that I use fascist here in the original definition, where companies are essentially directed by the government.
Gatekeeping, in other words, is the first step toward tyranny and it should be opposed on philosophical grounds.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #416
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-416
Are there any Nostr clients that don't have such a present bias? I'd like to see older posts that have been popular and continue to get engagement as that's probably the most evergreen content.
Wisdom > hot takes.
Plausible deniability is the worst form of defoecting blame. The fact that so many people use it as a license to screw others seems to be a fiat consequence.
Diversity is needed in fiction. It's hard to tell a story when every character has the same PoV. But it need not be the gender/race/sexual orientation diversity that's constantly pushed. At least for me, the far more interesting diversity is one of morals, belief and goals. The best stories at least in my opinion, have some moral dilemma at the crux and you can't get that without some conflict.
Anyway, I'd love to read stories you publish, Lyn.
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #415
https://open.substack.com/pub/jimmysong/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-415
Inflation is resisted by every actor as much as possible. That is, sticky prices are a real thing and preserving the status quo a big part of contracts and planning. So prices are held down as much as possible, through scale, debasement, shortages and the like. But even after all that when the prices go up, politicians typically demand even more concessions, accusing goods and service providers of greed.
It's such rank hypocrisy given that it's the politicians greed which creates the inflation in the first place.
50 basis points is honestly not very much. But you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cuts behind it.
Current central banker dilemma is between recession and inflation, but they pivoted from fighting inflation a little too late to stave off recession.
I'm still seriously offended by the lockdowns, the ban on all sorts of innocuous activities and the complete destruction of civil liberties.
And no, I won't let this go.
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