Strangely, I was just thinking how infrequently I’m getting sick these days, compared to others. Must be climate change.

#blessed

Awesome album!

V’Ger’s younger sibling

Hashrate dropping but apparently miners not selling. ASICs in transit to cheaper locales?

https://bitbo.news/hashrate-downtrend/

I’ve been thinking recently about how the AI boom could be helping to decentralize bitcoin mining.

Companies are buying up all the power in western countries for AI data centers. I haven’t seen any recent stats, but I’m expecting that this is encouraging bitcoin mining to move and find lower cost power elsewhere.

Bitcoin’s incentives could be playing out in front of our eyes.

Another insightful podcast on the scaling debate. Highly recommended. Link below.

Interesting to hear Vijay’s explanation on how frequent changes to bitcoin’s protocol undermines trust in its “unchangeable” monetary properties. I hadn’t considered this before, but it makes sense. He argued for conservatism very well.

I thought Brandon represented the “Big Scripters” 😜 well too. He focused the debate on how these proposed technologies promote bitcoin’s decentralization — which, of course, is the North Star for many of us (me included).

He argued that without these new scripting capabilities, fewer people will hold their own UTXO and therefore bitcoin will be more centralized. In the future, large custodians will be the key economic nodes and may control bitcoin and their interests may not align with ours.

Brandon recognized that his concerns are in the distant dystopian future, perhaps even after a wonderful “gilded age” for bitcoin.

Brandon argued that we need to do something now. He doesn’t know whether the proposed scripting capabilities will actually fix the potential problem but he hopes they will be helpful.

Brandon recognized that the proposal could have unknown risks but he was largely dismissive, believing that it’s probably safe.

Why now? Why the rush? Brandon left it unsaid, but I had the impression there may be a sense of urgency amongst the Big Scripters. Perhaps because they believe bitcoin will be harder to change in the future - ie, it’s now or never. Perhaps some believe that they will lose control to folks like Saylor, who represent the whales and large financial custodians of the future. If these large financial nodes control bitcoin, then the devs may believe that they will lose the power to make changes later.

I remain unconvinced. Here’s why:

Firstly, I believe we have to reject any proposals that solve potential problems that don’t yet exist, even if plausible. We don’t know what will happen in the future, nor whether the issue will be solved later without making protocol changes.

Even the best of us are just humans and not magical infallible wizards. We can never completely predict that a change will not create even bigger problems. We can’t take risks for potential problems that may never happen or which might be fixed in some other way.

Changes to the protocol should be a last resort. Bitcoin is our hope for the future. We’ve been given an incredible gift. We can’t mess it up. Future generations are counting on us.

Secondly, I believe our ability to accurately predict risk is related to our inability to accurately predict the future.

For example, I don’t recall ANY community discussions pre-Segwit / Taproot anticipating that we would be soon syncing our nodes slowly over Tor with 4 MB blocks filled with spam. It was all a big surprise to the community, wasn’t it?

Why was the block size increased? Why was there a discount given disproportionately to spammers? Why was the risk overlooked? Why hasn’t there been a post-mortem? So many questions.

I’ve realized we can’t blame the devs. We, the plebs, need to take responsibility. We allowed the devs to make complex changes to the protocol relatively quickly and we blessed it by upgrading our nodes. We trusted but didn’t verify. Lesson relearned. We can’t do this again.

Lastly, the power to change bitcoin should be held by the nodes and not the devs. Maybe it will be harder to change bitcoin in the future. That’s a feature of bitcoin, not a bug.

Devs, if you’re in a hurry, please check your time preference. I keep thinking that bitcoin could be like one of those cathedrals which took hundreds of years to build and which stand for millennia.

We should take our time to get this right. Even if it takes 10 more years of research and debate, that’s nothing in the grand timeline. In the meantime we should fix bugs, make it easier to run nodes, improve network privacy, and improve community communication.

nostr:npub1r8l06leee9kjlam0slmky7h8j9zme9ca32erypgqtyu6t2gnhshs3jx5dk Thank you for the great recent content. Love the debate format! 🙏

https://stephanlivera.com/episode/583/

No, actually…

I point out that he has a myopic view by only considering the impact on CPU cycles and memory usage when the risks are far broader.

I point out that he says he doesn’t care because there are already things bad people can do so he doesn’t worry about adding more.

I point out his dangerous design philosophy is suitable for a low risk startup and not for the system that manages the world’s money and our hope for the future.

Didn’t get those points? Maybe I used too many big words. Next time I’ll consider doing a comic strip or meme series.

Haven’t seen that yet

And I collected the amount via a L2? I think I understand what you’re saying. I’ll think about it.

There must be a few core devs who are pushing back on the crazy stuff behind the scenes. Otherwise we could have seen forks for covenants or other stuff already. 🤷‍♂️

I’m wondering if there will be a way for proof of reserves to solve this. There might be a way to know say how much ecash has been issued and how much BTC is held in reserve.

I still don’t understand the answer to this question:

“What prevents people from having their own UTXO now? There are more bitcoin addresses than stars in the universe.“

That’s probably true. I’ll bet Rusty and his family have a small percentage of net worth in bitcoin.

It makes sense that the greater the percentage, the more conservative you likely are.

People should probably not be core devs if they don’t have meaningful skin in the game. Hard to prove this though.

Lesson learned?

You didn’t address any of my points. I have no issue with what Rusty did think about. My issue is with what he didn’t think about.

You seem to believe that Rusty is a smart guy who works hard and makes good presentations. No debate there. I just say he thinks of bitcoin like an open source project and doesn’t recognize the importance of it. He has a myopic view, lacks wisdom and is therefore dangerous.

I’m not sure these approaches help. It’s like trying to plug a dyke with your fingers. Eventually the water comes in. Any efforts can merely delay the inevitable and risk negative effects like the inscriptions spam.

Fees are going to increase. Trying to delay the reckoning so that we can buy coffee on L1 for a short time longer seems pointless to me. Why not recognize the inevitable and build for that future instead?

I see it in a similar way except that larger transactions will be prioritized meaning that small transactions might wait even longer than 22 years.

I view bitcoin as a replacement for FedWire. Exchanges, ecash federations, countries and whales will use L1. Everyone else will use L2s etc.

What prevents people from having their own UTXO now? There are more bitcoin addresses than stars in the universe.

It seems to me that the limitation is not UTXO addresses but rather transaction fees to receive some sats.