Replying to Avatar Jeff Booth

I’m writing this because I keep getting asked to comment on Saylor/Saif video even though my position hasn’t changed.

The natural state of the free market is deflation which means all prices fall forever in Bitcoin (assuming it stays decentralized and secure)

Free market economies are more productive meaning faster deflation (or real wealth gains by falling prices)

That system is incompatible with an inflationary monetary system meaning one of those systems must fail.

Either:

1) A system based on truth, hope, and abundance for all 8 billion people on the planet driven by a free market economy and all prices fall relative to bitcoin forever. This means Bitcoin is used as a medium of exchange and freedom tech spreads to the world through lightning, Liquid, Fedimint, Cashu, etc.

OR

2) A control system. An extractive rent seeking system that is NOT the free market (similar to the one we have had for 5000 years that resets every 100 or so years through war) continues to centralize by having you believe price of bitcoin is going up in fiat which makes the surveillance state stronger. This eventually centralizes Bitcoin - custodians, media, regulation (funded from the same manipulation of money) where it is attacked from layer 2. (Similar to gold)

While these ideas may “seem” compatible in the short term because you want Bitcoin to go up in fiat. What it really means is that you are giving your energy and strength to the system centralizing the world by converting Bitcoin to Fiat….to then measure prices.

Quite simply - If Bitcoin is only a store of value, it fails as a store of value.

Ps - It won’t fail. #1 is inevitable in time because too many (and more each day) have seen behind the curtain and are determined to build path #1.

Many of you here - the people that inspire me every day. You make a difference with every word, thought and action.

Almost did that in all caps per nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx because it’s so important.

Referring to # 1 above…..There is no second best.

btc is being attacked on two fronts from outside and from within. satoshi's white paper spoke of nothing more than a medium of exchange. the store of value was never mentioned. it is arguable therefore the value is the medium of exchange.

crisis of confidence - small blocks, big blocks.

small blocks allow millions of nodes to run domestically. they also protect against 'dod' attack of the network. in the early days this was necessary. today with millions of users, less so.

big blocks allow for more and faster transactions. btc is scaleable. it always has been. spv made that possible, it is still possible today. the small blocks were only a precaution in the early days. so why do we still have small blocks?

small blocks make it easier for everyone to store a full node. given the full node is less than a tb, this is really not a something we should be worried about. most businesses run 40tb servers+. btc could expand the block size and still maintain 100s of thousands of nodes. so why keep blocks small? who wins?

in the short term those setting fees. in the long term, nobody. btc will fail to be of any value unless it is returned to being a medium of exchange. it is only an asset if it has value to people. if the network only handles the monster payments, what value is it to you and i?

dollar go up is completely the wrong thinking.

use btc to avoid fraud, corruption and dystopian rule. return to a free market and peace. the value in that is instant.

if you are in business or starting out price in btc. sell, buy borrow lend .... in btc and create the world you want for you and yours.

lets also open the discussion around block size again and stop the censorship from within. this way we win on both fronts. we leave fiat behind and move on with the world's best money.

GM 🙃

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It’s not about how many nodes can be run; it’s that anyone can run a node without, as you say, 40TB servers.

thanks for the reply brett.

it was my thinking too. lately with fees rising rapidly and miners cherry picking transactions, it is a question at the back of my mind, what happens when the rest of the world gets on btc. how long and how much a transaction? privacy is great but functionality has to be considered as well.

increasing block size increases speed of processing. it also introduces other issues eg: what is is allowed to be included in block...

cost of technology is ever decreasing is a 40tb hdd really a stretch 10 years from now? that allows network to scale over 40.

thoughts?

GM 🙃

Firstly, I’m not an expert by any stretch. I’m just speculating…

I ask myself, can the entire population use Bitcoin? Given 21 quadrillion satoshi and 8 billion people, that is about 2.6 million satoshi per person on Earth. However we know that there are only around 1.5 quadrillion satoshi to be mined and if we are ridiculously generous and say 1 billion people already use bitcoin, that leaves around 250k satoshi per person. And that is assuming no more accumulation by people who already have bitcoin. Basically I think that there is no possible way everyone can use bitcoin without major changes to the protocol including both blocksize and total units, the latter being a complete non-starter. And if bitcoin is going to change and not be for everyone, then I don’t think it’s worth making that change at all.

GN 🫡

I use my node for instant entrance onto the blockchain. It's a slice of comfortable heaven.

The size of the block doesn't seem like the issue. It seems like layer 1 taking an average of 10 minutes per block to confirm and 60 minutes for 6 confirmation to ensure immutability is a bigger concern. Why don't the big blockers ever explain how BTC can be a Medium of Exchange (MoE) when it takes much longer than a fiat credit card approval we are used to when exchanging. Lightning and a myriad of other options mentioned by nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe do offer a comparable user experience. My focus is on creating the Unit of Account (UoA) to support the MoE so that bitcoin can become have all monetary properties as the geniuses that are working on layer 2 have great solutions for us.

when btc started it would appear the 10 minute wait was acceptable. if there are any that used btc in this time it would be great to know what the experience was like. pros and cons.

today's corruption of currency and the financial tools, makes 10 mins seem like a small price to pay for the freedom. the downside are the fees to do small transactions, which reduces the feasibility of using btc for minor transactions. yes there are some great l2 solutions. are we reinventing the wheel though?

if btc was unlimited transactions from the start and only installed small blocks for protection of the early network, would it be reckless to consider expanding the scope of operations to match the network scale?

the danger is ossification or stagnation. if nobody uses the network for anything other than huge payments, it is no longer the people's money. can l2s be locked out of the network? eg: can lightning be switched off/disconnected?

thank you for your response. it is all extremely helpful in understanding.

good fortunes with your ventures.

GM 🙃

Thank you for sharing additional insights on this. As a relatively new bitcoiner, it is helpful to me to get more perspective. I have set up two lightning nodes myself to better understand the technology and use cases and don't think it could be locked out of the base layer. The reason is that to open a channel, I simply do an on-chain transactions from my wallet to a new multi-sig wallet with the party on the other end of my channel. How would a decentralized Bticoin network prevent somebody from submitting a valid onchain transaction to open a channel?

Once opened, I can freely transaction via the Ligthning protocol using that channel until such time as either my channel partner or I want to close the channel which is another onchain transaction to settle the amount of bitcoin each of us has on our side of the chnanel.  If the channel closing transactions is valid onchain, I don't think anybody would prevent it from being added to a block.

Except perhaps miners who could figure out a 51% attack but if that happened we have bigger problems than whether L2 is working or not.