Hi there!

Twenty five years ago today I (as Mark Anthony) was married to Cleopatra by Elvis in Las Vegas.

Still going strong.

It's that Gell-Mann amnesia effect again. Even when red-pilled on some things, many people believe what they are told on other things. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Any idea why the number of GB patent applications filed by nChain would suddenly fall from an average of around 70 per year to only 3 so far in 2024?

During oral proceedings at the EPO this week, the other side's attorneys made a couple of assertions. I have my own views but I'm not an expert in this field and would like to see what others think.

The first assertion was that all transactions in Bitcoin inevitably contain an unlocking script.

The second was that Ethereum doesn't have locking and unlocking scripts.

These turned out to be irrelevant to the validity of the patent we were discussing (which got revoked anyway), but made me wonder whether the other side knew what they were talking about.

Agreed. Looking forward to our next steak dinner!

By the way, I still find it quite astonishing that the little device sat next to my computer here is doing this calculation many billions of times every second.

Normally in my work as a patent attorney, when I see a hugely long and specific claim 1 like this I will immediately wonder what idiot wrote that. In some cases, however, claiming an invention in such specific terms is absolutely what is required. In this case, claim 1 of US patent 6,829,355 defines what became known as SHA256, which will be well know to many here at least. There is only really one way of doing it, and that way became a widespread standard, so that's what the claim specified. The patent remained valid and in force up until the point it finally expired on 5 June 2023. The general principle of claiming the invention as broadly as possible, while mostly correct, does therefore have exceptions.

Now open a few lightning channels and add a Bitaxe.

I was very surprised how easy it was to set up the Bitaxe. I've had my Umbrel running for ages but thought adding a miner (it's only a toy really, no chance of actually mining any blocks) would be too complicated. Turns out all you have to do is plug it in and point it in the right direction. I then added the Public Pool app to my Umbrel and pointed it there instead of the default, and it works fine.

I have taken Mr Wright's ramblings seriously for once and have now become not just an irrelevant full node operator (with a Lightning node able to zap micropayments here, but Wright always seems to dismiss that) but I am now a miner too, thanks to a combination of Umbrel and Bitaxe. Currently mining with a hash rate of 618.2 GH/s!

Don’t know, but that’s another million sats off the market.

Here I am being interviewed for the 4th time by Gavin about all things Faketoshi. nostr:npub1cn4t4cd78nm900qc2hhqte5aa8c9njm6qkfzw95tszufwcwtcnsq7g3vle kindly let me borrow his closet for the occasion. https://youtu.be/tBcJIsL7yDM?si=AgsINy5Bb3ZjhPIq

GM all. I’m being interviewed by Gavin again later today, for the 4th time. Anything I should mention? Maybe I should just admit we’ve lost and Craig is Satoshi?

You haven’t been to a proper pub yet then.

Arthur van Pelt and Mark Hunter must think I have something interesting to say because they invited me for the second time on the Dr Bitcoin podcast to talk about Craig Wright's patenting activities in Europe. Here's the latest episode, where I ramble at length about the oppositions Arthur and I have filed and what I think nChain are actually trying to do. Please give it a listen on Patreon, otherwise you will need to wait a little while before it appears on other platforms.

If you want to help us out on the oppositions we have filed or help us file more, all contributions are welcome.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/david-pearce-82862633