Oddbean new post about | logout

Notes by bitcoinpierre | export

 I agree there are good arguments to avoid getting into debt, I just don’t think “I have to persuade the lender to buy bitcoin instead of lending fiat” is a good argument. 
 At the University of Wyoming’s Blockchain Stampede conference we did a deep dive on the value of Bitcoin, the role of mining, and how it balances electricity grids. 

Thank you Matthew Skrlac for the invitation to speak and for organizing a great conference! https://image.nostr.build/c727c37f02ea7a02743e33b6e8c86b96efa4f5de17532d8e4648d694e8dc01c3.jpg  
 “Free” was something I pushed for at Kraken, it simplifies for users, abuse can be detected, and routing fee revenue is greater than cost. nostr:note1cftkjsu2g9mpu90wzn57m4etht7y96vfs0awq2ttcunvpymdckaspjpqe5 
 Very hard to find a clear confirmation from Kraken, but from their obtuse communication it indeed... 
 I don’t have any insider info, but it seems like they had to outsource deposit/withdrawal functionality to a third-party due to regulations, and it seems like that third-party happens to not support Lightning. I don’t know if the lack of support is for regulatory reasons or just not a business priority. 
 I have no concrete knowledge but that seems to be implied based on public information 
 Ok, censor a transaction 
 You said it’s not censorship resistant, can you point to a txid that is currently being censored? 
 The metaphor is incorrect, because if a txid is censored, it just sits there in the mempool. Bitcoin is not destroyed, it’s not over, the transactor can simply CPFP/RBF until greedy miners defect. 
 Censorship resistance is a dynamic, anti-fragile process, not a static feature. If there is censorship, people will pay higher fees to overcome it. 
 I’m not good at price predictions 😂.

Game theory seems to be that censors won’t bother because the fee to overcome would be relatively low. 
 Might just take longer to accumulate censored transactions in the mempool 
 There’s a lot of hypothetical problems to be solved 
 Transactions being censored is a hypothetical problem. 

Mining can’t be monopolized, it’s the most competitive industry in the world.

Anyone can fabricate arbitrary centralization metrics and declare a hypothetical of theoretical censorship-resistance, for example 100% of hashrate is on planet Earth. 
 If you’re right they’ll get attacked, and if I’m right they will decentralize in response to that attack. That’s what I mean by anti-fragility of censorship resistance.

You’re welcome to pour resources into pre-emptively tilting at windmills, but I have to pushback when someone claims that Bitcoin is not censorship resistant when they have no censored transactions as evidence. 
 Your claim was “Until further notice, Bitcoin is NOT censorship resistant.” I think you’ve appropriately backed off that claim to a more nuanced “there’s a risk of Bitcoin maybe not being censorship resistant in the future” 
 Today I recorded a podcast episode with @stephanlivera - be sure to subscribe and give it a listen when it comes out!

We discussed a wide range of topics: savings technology, Lightning, government strategic reserves, and life philosophy 

https://stephanlivera.com 
 I still remember when I first saw a Max Keiser clip in 2011, he was talking about silver and JPM. 

I never would have guessed that a decade later we would be together at the inauguration gala of El Salvador’s President. Hugely grateful for Max’s energy and humor, a hero of bitcoin! https://image.nostr.build/a27a5748fe24075223833b384a95510de22b29345874ab796ffa62bb9026d625.jpg