Replying to Avatar Guy Swann

For everyone getting on me about the OP_RETURN stuff:

I’m 100% open to being wrong, I was wrong about CTV and how I thought it could be maliciously used, but I’ve also only heard a handful of the exact same arguments about this issue for years and have been very clear why I don’t think they are sufficient and why I believe some of them are not even relevant.

• “Filters for what goes into the chain are censorship,” this is false and filtering what can be done on chain is literally how and why Bitcoin works in every way that it works. This completely begs the question about what is spam and what is an exploit, which is the whole debate.

• “You can get around it” isn’t relevant either, as standards make a difference, which is exactly why the discussion is around changing the standards. Same as someone can jump over my fence, but that doesn’t mean having one vs not being allowed to build one has no effect at all.

• “Your node doesn’t do anything,” Is the same argument I was told during the blocksize war. I’m aware it doesn’t alter the entirety of the network and it’s just my node, so don’t tell me like you’ve discovered some new information, but it is still *my* node and someone proposing to remove my control over what I should or should not accept and propagate isn’t why I run a node. I use my node to mine and wish to build my own templates. Explain how putting Bitcoins use as money ahead of as a place to store jpegs is bad. I don’t care how ineffective you think it is, but why is it bad for Bitcoin?

• “Just run Knots.” Correct, I will be now. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about changes being made to core, and when feedback is asked for I’ll give you my honest opinion. If that bothers someone then being part of a decentralized protocol is probably not the best path for them. All anyone has done since I got into bitcoin was argue. That’s how decentralization works.

• “They paid a fee and it’s valid.” See point 1. Every bug and malicious transaction and spam in the past was always valid and paid the proper fee. Again, completely begs the question as to what is spam and what the highest purpose of Bitcoin is.

This is a conversation about the purpose of Bitcoin, and yes that’s subjective, but that doesn’t mean it’s arbitrary or it doesn’t matter. Convince me that allowing random data in unrestrained sizes will make Bitcoin better money, or the technical argument doesn’t matter, imo. Technical conversations matter only after we decide what is *worth* building technical solutions for and what the purpose of any technical change is… so again, it begs the question and comes back to the same old disagreement.

This is how I see it and I don’t see how this is at all an unreasonable perspective. Just my 2 sats

I agree with a lot here, thank you! I think Bitcoins problem is that it has remained abstract for 16 years. This creates the illusion that development and purpose is inherently subjective; it’s not. Bitcoin is not abstract, it’s measured by energy; quantify it.

We have no objective definition of Bitcoin (yet) and this leaves us purely in the realm of abstraction and opinion. If my thesis and proof of what Bitcoin is at the physical level (the quantum computer) is correct; how would this change our discussion and understanding of the protocol, especially immutable data hosting? How can we even develop and propose protocol changes responsibly without this knowledge? Do we actually understand what a peer to peer electronic cash system is?

Ultimately if Bitcoin is defined physically (it is), every single person operating on bitcoin, building/developing on bitcoin and running their business on bitcoin is going to have to grapple with this new understanding. Our entire design theory on protocol development inherently changes to a new fundamental truth; beneath the illusion of fiat prices lies the anchor to joules.

I truly think nobody understands bitcoin (including myself) and therefore we should not change the protocol until we do. If Bitcoin is the quantum computer, everything changes and we’ve all been wrong for 16 years. We cannot develop responsibly without consensus on base layer fundamentals.

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