Current list of tutorials I'd like to get to. What would you most like to see? What's missing?

The blocksize war wasn't so much about the blocksize (or, even, scaling Bitcoin). It was really about who controls the consensus rules and how we upgrade the protocol.

For context, a bunch of startups raised tons of money between 2013 and 2016 based on ridiculous user sign-up projections and then we had a long and painful bear market and they were looking for scapegoats (the developpers that were "throttling the network") to justify the lack of growth. I am thinking here specifically of Coinbase, Bitpay and Blockchain.info.

The vibe I got is that they thought of Bitcoin itself as a corporation, that they were the equivalent of Bitcoin's board of directors because they represented the interest of VC investors, and thus they were entitled to decision making power over the network.

I don't doubt that a few people were genuine about scaling p2p e-cash (e.g. Roger Ver) but I suspect what really motivated them is that they believed control of the Bitcoin network would be an asset to their business interests, and lack of control was being used as an excuse to why their interests weren't being satisfied.

There was also a bunch of developers that I believe may have been afraid of losing their relevance (Gavin and Garzik specifically). Regardless of their intentions or psychology, it seemed clear to me that the consortium of vc-backed startups (particularly Bitpay, Coinbase, blockchain(.)info and Roger) had picked a team of developers they thought they could control and wanted to appoint them as a technical management team whicn would execute their strategy, and these guys were willing to step up for that role.

I was physically in the room when the CEO of Blockchain.info (with the very obvious support of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) announced that Bitcoin Core devs were being fired and would be replaced. This was after a couple days of failed discussions with other industry people. This was the moment when I realized what was really going on.

And finally, you had a Bitcoin mining giant (Bitmain) controlling both asic production and mining pools with a vested interest in promoting the idea that Bitcoin was a democracy and the way to vote was to buy hashing power. The main ideology being pushed here was that a formal governance mechanism of the protocol needed to be established and that hashrate was the only objective measure of who makes decisions.

The underlying big blocker ideology was that the chaos of spontaneous consensus of nodes is unpredictable, flimsy, bad for business. The absence of a formal governance process was seen as the root cause of the issue.

These companies really believed they could control the protocol, and controlling development of the protocol was seen as a very valuable asset to your company. I imagine they thought of themselves as the founders of a new consortium that would solidify itself into a permanent institution. The business interests would pay developers and set the goals, and the mining interests would ratify their decisions with hash power voting. That was their plan.

This became blatantly obvious when Bitmain used its refusal to activate segwit as leverage to get what it wanted (a blocksize increase and recognition of its hashpower as a vote mecanism) even though Bitmain iself acknowledged it was not really opposed segwit.

It was classic traditional politics: I'll give you segwit if you give me something in return.

This is the language the VC suits, investors and tech startup people understand and they were very happy to "negotiate" and find "consensus".

This eventually materialized into the New York Agreement, negotiated literally as a backroom deal during theConsensuss shitcoin conference. I was there and I refused to attend.

This (private) meeting consecrated the alliance of startups/investors and bitcoin mining interests in their appointment of a technical management committee. If you think this sounds like Jekyll Island, you're not alone.

They packaged segwit with a blocksize increase (Segwit2x) and decided to force a hard fork as a condition to "allow" us to have Segwit.

We know the rest of the story: we ended up activating anyway via UASF (or more precisely, the miners activated Segwit after they New York Agreement signatories became scared UASF would lead to a chain split which they were going to lose). And the blocksize increase was also abandoned shortly after when they realized their hard fork would cause a chain split and that they would not be able to claim that their new shitcoin is the real bitcoin.

All these people were subsequently were very pissed off they couldn't control the network, which they thought they were entitled to. Some ragequit, others created a bunch of shitcoins out of spite, Roger went on to spearhead BCH as the real Bitcoin, all these fools realized they might as well make some money off of it, everyone went all-in on the shitcoin casinos after that. The "small blockers" eventually went on to evolve into the Bitcoin Maximalists and cypherpunks that today tell you to run your own node and own your own keys.

JUST IN‼️ #Bitcoin  could hit $200,000 in 2024 if ETFs are approved - Standard Chartered

Great resource

I think I will never be prepared enough

Gm sir, its the only way! Nothing else matters!

What are the best services to point new nostriches to in order for them to discover quality accounts to follow?

Still plenty of time.

If you have friends that believe it is okay for big government and big tech to collude in the name of “protecting” you from free speech……And then censor voices it doesn’t agree with, it may be worth asking how that works for the citizens of countries like North Korea.

If they understand that, it may encourage them to be part of the solution.

#Bitcoin

#Nostr

"I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic—it has no conscience." - John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down

The eu “seems more free than America”? In what sense, you just mean bitcoin use? No I strongly disagree, it’s been largely impossible to do basic things with bitcoin in many countries, and now the new AML rules coming down the pipe seem much worse than what the us has contemplated, and more importantly are often predicated on misunderstanding the technology rather than understanding it and regulating just the parts that aren’t liked.