Bitcoin Audible

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[Caveat - A critical piece of the puzzle I lay out in this episode was something I incorrectly understood, which makes this entire thought experiment moot. I explain further in Guy's Take #55] Today I want to isolate the problem I brought up briefly in the previous CTV episode and expand on how I've been exploring the concept and how it might be a problem to the economics of transaction fees and h...

"It is imperative that elected officials in the United States recognize that bitcoin, and the innovation of Proof of Work, is the most important financial, economic, and accounting innovation in the history of humanity." - Bitcoin Mining Council Today we read & discuss a thorough and well argued response to the unfortunate nonsense in the Huffman letter to the EPA written by 22 elected politicians...

Everybody take a deep breath! Right now all the drama on Twitter and the Bitcoin community is all about CTV. What is it? Is this an attack on Bitcoin? Is it going to destroy Bitcoin fungibility? Are we firing the devs again? Well luckily I've been digging around through things the past 3-4 days and can at least give you an introduction on the idea and begin our journey to figuring out if this a ne...

"One issue with Bitcoin’s privacy, the ability to receive funds without giving up valuable information, is addressed with 'silent payments.'" - Shinobi Today we dive back into privacy with payment codes, BIP47, how exactly it works, and then the recent proposal from Somsen on "silent payments" that takes this even a step further to limit the data load on the chain itself. Some really fun tricks he...

"Even if you knew this was complete and utter bullshit, and that being an agent and not a principal ethically and legally precludes you from pretending your politics is your job, can you imagine, dearest of readers, your absolute priority at all times being to appear minimally different to all your competitors and hence to mimic whatever stupid bullshit they are spouting, regardless of whether eve...

"You’re a thirsty bitch. You like to gargle Peter’s balls." - DeaterBob This is happening and there is nothing I can do about it at this point. Enjoy. You can earn Bitcoin by Donating Plasma in a new pilot program. I've put the details for you at the link below: guyswann.com/blood For the best products and services to get you started in Bitcoin, our sponsors are literally a handful of those that...

"Bitcoin miners are unique because of how fast, transparent, and flexible their response can be to pricing fluctuations. Riot’s Whinstone mining farm in Texas is a perfect example of miners powering down during tight conditions in ERCOT. During winter storms in February 2022, the site powered down 99% of its operations to reduce load. This flexibility made headlines. Now imagine if ERCOT has visib...

"There are still many extensions to build out in the protocol and areas with unsolved scaling issues. In general, the Lightning protocol itself still has a long way to go in terms of solving existing issues and becoming robust and scalable enough to serve as a global transactional network on top of Bitcoin." - Shinobi Following up some of the incredible announcements and discussions at Bitcoin2022...

"Taro enables bitcoin to serve as a protocol of value by allowing app developers to integrate assets alongside BTC in apps both on-chain and over Lightning. This expands the reach of Lightning Network as a whole, bringing more users to the network who will drive more volume and liquidity in bitcoin, and allowing people to easily transfer fiat for bitcoin in their apps. More network volume means mo...

LNpay, LNURL, LNauth, streaming sats, Bolt12, the past and future of Lightning. We dig into tons of great stuff around Lightning and discuss Keysend Maximalism with my good friend and the creator of LNpay, Bootstrap Bandit. We are getting back into it after the Bitcoin2022 conference, and you don't want to miss it. So stay tuned, much more on the way! Dont forget to follow Bootstrap on Twitter, an...

"Besides the advantage of near-instant payments, there can be privacy improvements to Lightning as well. Unfortunately, there are scenarios where Lightning is not great for privacy. I’d like to unearth some of these. Not as FUD about the network, but to keep people as informed as possible so they may privately use Lightning. Everything in this article is public knowledge and known to the industry...

This episode is because the previous read by Steve Barbour deserved a Guy's Take. Before we change topics to privacy in the episode coming later this week, "The State vs Bitcoin" deserves a solid shake down. A Guy's Take episode on Read 615. Link to the original article by Steve Barbour: https://sgbarbour.medium.com/the-state-vs-bitcoin-dbc044f23ea6 You can earn Bitcoin by Donating Plasma in a new...

"As with freedom and oppression, Bitcoin and State money may exist in a perpetual tug of war between ideals. Where State money relies on compulsory participation, Bitcoin offers completely voluntary entry and exit and thus represents the antithesis of State money. In this essay I will explore the mechanisms in which Bitcoin may resist State attack." - SGBarbour Today we explore the feasibility and...

"Much more to say. This is just a starting point, but I'm interested in Bitcoin for its potential to reorient civilization to an existence rooted in truth. If adoption comes at the cost of that, all the NGU euphoria means nothing and most of what gives Bitcoin value will be lost." - SovrynMindset Michael brings us an excellent thread on the attack vectors likely to come in the not-too-distant futu...

"…This purpose flounders, however, if their own evangelists and the community at large fails to lay the groundwork and impetus to push ever deeper. As a community, we fail when, in chasing the mainstream, we lose sight of the original spirit in which Bitcoin was created and bootstrapped." - Ariel Deschapell To kick off adversarial week, we are covering a great piece that brings us back down to ear...

"On a medium-term basis, it is time to back up the John Deere excavator and scoop up as much gold and Bitcoin as you can afford. This is it, the start of a monetary regime change. Nothing lasts forever, and the days of Petro / Eurodollar supremacy are over. The phase shift will be chaotic, it will be volatile, it will morph, but it will 100% be MASSIVELY inflationary in fiat currency terms. There...

"Thus, given enough time and popularity, every movie, every song, and every document will be available to the general public for free. The nature of information does not allow for another outcome. Hence the saying: information wants to be free. Although trying to create something that can't exist—information that can't be copied—is paradoxical in itself, this isn't what I mean by the DRM paradox....

"In sum, the U.S. government has shown that — through the GFC, repo spike crisis in 2019 and pandemic crisis in 2020 — it is willing to do anything to keep interest rates down: start an experimental QE program to buy long-dated treasuries and subprime mortgages; nationalize the repo markets; and even nationalize the corporate debt markets." - Alex Gladstein Today we conclude Alex Gladstein's incre...

"As detailed in Saifedean Ammous’s “The Fiat Standard,” in November 1914 the British government “issued the first war bond, aiming to raise 350 million pounds from private investors at an interest rate of 4.1% and a maturity of ten years. Surprisingly, the bond issue was undersubscribed, and the British public purchased less than a third of the targeted sum. To avoid publicizing this failure, the...

"Aspiring Republican politicians and conservative opinionators love talking in darkened tones about the malevolence of elites. And yet, for all the fingers wagged and pixels rendered, conservatives have largely ignored the most economically significant way in which elites actually _have_ rigged the game in their favor. The widening gap between elites and the rest of us comes down in large part to...

"If having 12 words in your head is illegal, something is terribly wrong with the law. If the police storm your building because you are finding or creating a random number in the privacy of your own home, something is terribly wrong with the police. If the peaceful exchange of messages is seen as dangerous or immoral by society, something is terribly wrong with society. If speaking or knowing num...

"Only liquid, flowing capital generates a return. Unlike a bank account, capital on Lightning is productive when it is mobile, not at rest. That’s why flow is so essential. The more capital flows, the more liquid it is, the more incremental returns it generates." - Roy Sheinfeld Roy Sheinfeld of Breez Technology does some of the best conceptualizing of the Lightning network, its direction, & its c...

"People tend to favor proposals that would benefit themselves and reject proposals that, at their own expense, would benefit others. If you were wealthy, you’d probably reject calls for higher taxes and more welfare programs. If you were poor, you’d probably call for higher taxes and more welfare programs. I don’t just mean that the currently wealthy tend to endorse proposals thought to benefit th...

"Now what's that saying again. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. It's starting to smell like that. Just because Bitcoin's most virtuous argument was presented – in if not bad-faith then in fig-leaf-faith – by get-rich-quick boosters, doesn't mean it isn't true! Enter the trucker protests in Canada. In just three weeks of honking, blocked streets and bridges, bouncy c...