U.S. Customs and Border Protection Broadens Crackdown on Asian ASICs - Report
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is seizing Asian Bitcoin mining ASICs. The crackdown now includes machines from MicroBT and Canaan, following the initial stoppage of Bitmain’s Antminer S21 and T21 models last year.
https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/cbp-broadens-crackdown-on-asian-asics/
What prompted this?
Welcome to Nostr Mr Pickard!
Hate it when this happens
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### Unidirectional payment channels revisited
#### Nodeless lightning - Reduce ecash mints custodial risk
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### Sats N Facts
The nostr:npub1yrnuj56rnen08zp2h9h7p74ghgjx6ma39spmpj6w9hzxywutevsst7k5cx unconference has just wrapped up. And what a blast it was. In the heart of northern Thailand, developers, researchers, content creators and more, came together to share ideas on how Bitcoin, Nostr and other free protocols are being used everyday to liberate people.
Not only were stories shared from different community leaders on how embracing bitcoin has empowered them and their communities, but a big goal of the unconference was to bring bitcoin engineers and developers from various domains together in one room, unstructured, chaotic, and let them do their thing.
At first, I thought not having a schedule might be boring, but oh boy was I wrong. There was so much stuff going on, it was hard to choose which session I would have to miss!
### Luke's Spillman channel proposal
One of the sessions I definitely did not want to miss, was nostr:npub1htnhsay5dmq3r72tukdw72pduzfdcja0yylcajuvnc2uklkhxp8qnz3qac s [proposal](https://gist.github.com/lukechilds/307341239beac72c9d8cfe3198f9bfff)
> Ecash mints funded with Spillman channels: The ultimate nodeless Lightning wallet
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In true unconference fashion, he announced in the main room that the session was about to start, and that the people that are interested should meet him in the whiteboard corner in 10 minutes. The corner was packed, and Luke explained his proposal.
### What's a "[Spillman channel](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Spillman-style_payment_channels)"?
Essentially when we are talking about Spillman channels, what is meant are unidirectional payment channels (or [CLTV-style channels](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#CLTV-style_payment_channels)). An unidirectional payment channel means, only one party can send payments, but not receive, and the other party can only receive, but not send. They also expire after a predetermined amount of time, and must be closed.
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At first glance, this might look kinda stupid. After all, we have [Poon-Dryja channels](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels#Poon-Dryja_payment_channels) that are powering the lightning network. They are bi-directional, do not expire, and can be used to shuffle coins back and forth theorethically an unlimited amount of times.
So, why bother with this stupid one-way channel?
### Simplicity is king
People that have worked with lightning channels can sing you a song about complexity, state handling and risks about the current state of bidirectional payment channels. Essentially, There are a lot of requirements on both channel parties when it comes to Liveness (being online) and also state handling (continuous backups).
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In some cases, especially when in the context of end-users wanting to perform payments on their mobile phone, they would appreciate it if there was not so much complexity and overhead involved.
The gist of the idea is to combine unidirectional channels and ecash mints to achieve the following:
A self custodial unidirectional payment channel to an ecash mint, massively reducing the senders liveness and state handling requirements when compared to a lightning channel. Sending payments through the mint will be done through swapping some of the channel balance for ecash tokens. At this point, the user is trusting the mint to honor the redemption of these tokens, while the remaining channel balance remains in self custody. This gives them better controll over their funds than just holding their entire balance custodied in the mint. The ecash tokens can then be redeemed to pay a lightning invoice, just the same as it is done now with normal cashu mints.
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So this channel, that has no liveness or state management requirements for the sender, and must have a pre-defined close time, seems to be a perfect fit for the following usecase:
1. A `sender` receives his salary once a month. He opens a channel that is valid for one month.
2. The `sender` then can do his daily spending over this channel. He only trusts the `mint` with the amount for the current outgoing payment while it is swapped for ecash, waiting for redemption.
3. If the `sender` must receive funds (a refund for example), he can do so into the `mints` custody, by receiving ecash. He can spend his ecash funds first when doing his next payment, to reduce his custodial exposure.
4. When the channel expires, or runs out of funds, the `mint` closes the channel.
From a consumer perspective, that just want to receive his salary and make frequent payments afterwards, this usecase seems to make a lot of sense. Obviously from a merchants perspective on the other hand, such a channel doesn't really work. But that's fine, it's not the problem we're trying to solve here.
What do you think of this idea? Be sure to let me know in the comments!
In the next article, we will dive into how such a system can be implemented today, using Bitcoin, Cashu and Lightning. We will also discover how the system can be improved, to make channels non-expiring (A collaborative idea between nostr:npub148jz5r9xujcjpqygk69yl4jqwjqmzgrqly26plktfjy8g4t7xaysj9xhgp and nostr:npub1htnhsay5dmq3r72tukdw72pduzfdcja0yylcajuvnc2uklkhxp8qnz3qac born at nostr:npub1yrnuj56rnen08zp2h9h7p74ghgjx6ma39spmpj6w9hzxywutevsst7k5cx ).
So stay tuned!
Very interesting idea. Thanks for sharing!
This is going to be stuck in my head for the next few hours.
Maybe a government leaned hard on them? The SEC reportedly paused the lawsuit against them recently. Could’ve been a shakedown?
Cashu Runs on Everything Around Me
Thoughts on "Observer Theory" [1]:
An ant doesn't have the capacity to fully observe, let alone comprehend the purpose of, the microscope pointed at it.
The concept of a microscope or an automobile is incomprehensible to something like a bacterium even when the bacterium is in physical contact with it.
There's a fundamental limit to what any creature is capable of observing (including humans and powerful #AI agents). There are very likely physical processes happening all around us that we, despite all of our technology, have no hope of understanding because we're computationally bounded just as the bacterium is.
Wolfram's writings on "Observer Theory" are fascinating for so many reasons. For example, he argues that the fundamental laws of #physics that we base our civilization on is dependent on us being observers like we are.
It's worth rephrasing: in his model of physics we didn't evolve in a universe that had these specific laws but rather because we're computationally bounded observers we perceive the universe to have specific laws.
That's not to say the laws we've experienced aren't real. They are! It's just that if we were far more capable we might not perceive things like #quantum superposition as confusing.
Think about the ideal quantum computer: it experiences all branches of the wave function concurrently and can make sense of it enough to perform useful calculations. It can navigate those branches naturally.
What happens when we augment our senses with new sensors and supercomputers (e.g. brain-computer interfaces or even just AR goggles connected to powerful AI chips)? What will we learn?
1. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/12/observer-theory/
Nostr is evolving! nostr:note1nrjmk72gcx2qdx8hcrrycxvunevmuvratkjekug7w75wkmvf70dqdswwya
Tether is hiring a head of regulatory policy for BRAIN-CHIP IMPLANTABLE DEVICES.
Do you have experience in "first-in-human, investigational use, and clinical trials across multiple jurisdictions, Including
advising on risk assessments, biocompatibility and safety evaluations for Class 2a/2b and Class
3 active implantable medical devices"?
nostr:nprofile1qqsy86rlt3pvtvfuryalrehjjaqv4g2recqj9zhyh49svf2gx3vqe2spzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0eyycsu will have a field day with this one. WTF tether????
https://tether.recruitee.com/o/head-of-regulatory-affairs
nostr:nprofile1qqsgt0d4sa0pz0wvn9yck36xxezf3qhwzksu0q254vruqed5wvuavuspzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzfmhxue69uhky6t5wd6xzcmt9eshquqpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumtfde5kymmvwshxjmnxdu4ryj8q nostr:nprofile1qqsywt6ypu57lxtwj2scdwxnyrl3sry9typcstje65x7rw9a2e5nq8sprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctvqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnzd96xxmmfdecxzunt9e3k7mgpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mq9hxafw
We haven’t figured out how to secure our laptops and phones and we’re still trying to put chips in brains.
I love the idea in the abstract but we’re not ready for this to be reality.
Just imagine getting unskippable toothpaste ads before brushing your teeth every day. Or the equivalent of SQL injections.
Got spare time? Help decentralize and bring more privacy to mining.
Several open issues that don’t need a galaxy brain. nostr:note199304t63h2caxuxs30a4yxh2jf2vz5kk9mwdxnc2kd4q73q63e0qlklfvy
Money is a futures market for purchasing power.
On the bright side it leaves more corn for the rest of us.
The longer it takes governments to understand bitcoin the better off we are. As long as they don’t persecute bitcoiners we’re winning.
It’s beautiful how saving in a currency that appreciates raises your expectations for quality of everything else. It happens subtly but surely.
Over the years I’ve found myself expecting better results from myself, my peers, the services I pay for, etc.
Don’t settle for less, anon!
This paper deserves attention. Researchers were able to get open source AI models to successfully self-replicate.
These models are in the wild and now they're subject to evolutionary pressure.
More critically they were optimized with data that may or may not be aligned with most humans and it's not clear the producers understand the consequences.
Time to figure out decentralized #AI.
“Digital asset used for payment that’s pegged to a fixed monetary value”
🤔 this reads like a bill supporting #cashu
Big improvements in distributed training of #AI models.
Researchers at Google figured out how to lower bandwidth requirements by 100x and still produce a billion-parameter scale model: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18512v1