Vlad on Nostr: Gm, my girlfriend made me carrot cake with banana and nuts. Plus hot chocolate! Now ...
Gm, my girlfriend made me carrot cake with banana and nuts. Plus hot chocolate!
Now let me tell you about my latest nightmare:
Governments had already caught up with how Bitcoin works. They knew how to regulate it in ways that fundamentally destroy the value proposition of uncensorable internet money.
Thankfully, Bitcoin devs had a few aces up their sleeve: a bunch of OP codes which enable new use cases, plus some really solid privacy proposals. Enough to keep the governments in the dark for a few more years, until more advanced cryptography gets discovered.
The problem, however, was the culture of the average bitcoiner who surrendered his freedoms for fiat gains. Here’s what a Bitcoin maxi told me:
“Just use Monero if you want freedom, you shitcoiner! Don’t touch my money layer, who knows what will happen?!”, they would say.
Developers would kindly point out to irrefutable facts: OP_CAT already exists on Bitcoin Cash for years, MWEB is already available on Litecoin mainnet. If you think you can do something evil to destroy the value proposition of these networks, why don’t you do it?
“I’m not touching shitcoin tech, keep your impure proposals away from my sacred money!”
Yeah but did you know that SegWit was first tested on Groestlcoin, Litecoin & Viacoin? Charlie Lee even set up a $1 million bounty in a LTC SegWit address to disprove the FUD that anyone can steal your coins if you activate SegWit. Afterwards, everyone understood that SegWit is safe and it got activated on Bitcoin!
Also, Lightning network was first tested on Litecoin’s mainnet. At the time, it was too reckless for ACINQ & Lightning Labs to deploy their software on Bitcoin, so they experimented with Litecoin for a few months. Everything came home to Bitcoin after it was proven safe.
“REEEEEEE shitcoiner, just use testnet”
Yeah, but there are no incentives on a testnet. It’s great for verifying if a piece of code runs correctly, but there’s no bounty for anyone who might want to break the software or steal coins from a buggy implementation. Also, the newbies don’t use the testnet and sometimes their feedback is extremely valuable in improving the features & performance.
“REEEEEEEE shitcoiner, I will tag your podcast sponsors to call them out for supporting such blasphemous opinions. I will also make up stories about you and make sure you get banned from speaking such nonsense on conference stages”
Alright, but if you don’t want any new very well tested and incentivized to be exploited OP codes to get added to Bitcoin, then you can still activate BIP300 and enable the free market to create trust-minimized sidechains which support mining.
“The only soft forks that we should have are the ones which fix the Lightning network, everything else is a shitcoin!”
Yeah but you can’t rely on a single solution for scaling. Competition is healthy and it would be bad if we switched to government-custodians.
“You have the Liquid sidechain if you want more blockchains for scaling!”
Yeah but that one has a single point of failure, and has a security model which relies on geopolitics rather than cryptography or computer science. It’s centralized, and L-BTC is arguably worse than private BTC on a Zcash drivechain.
“I refuse to engage with such a dishonest person. Read the Bitcoin Standard again and make sure you pray to the altars of Swan & Blockstream every morning. They are the only ones who have any answers about anything”
Yeah, but Blockstream’s head of research endorses OP_CAT. Liquid also enabled it.
“REEEEEEEE, BLOCKED!”
Now let me tell you about my latest nightmare:
Governments had already caught up with how Bitcoin works. They knew how to regulate it in ways that fundamentally destroy the value proposition of uncensorable internet money.
Thankfully, Bitcoin devs had a few aces up their sleeve: a bunch of OP codes which enable new use cases, plus some really solid privacy proposals. Enough to keep the governments in the dark for a few more years, until more advanced cryptography gets discovered.
The problem, however, was the culture of the average bitcoiner who surrendered his freedoms for fiat gains. Here’s what a Bitcoin maxi told me:
“Just use Monero if you want freedom, you shitcoiner! Don’t touch my money layer, who knows what will happen?!”, they would say.
Developers would kindly point out to irrefutable facts: OP_CAT already exists on Bitcoin Cash for years, MWEB is already available on Litecoin mainnet. If you think you can do something evil to destroy the value proposition of these networks, why don’t you do it?
“I’m not touching shitcoin tech, keep your impure proposals away from my sacred money!”
Yeah but did you know that SegWit was first tested on Groestlcoin, Litecoin & Viacoin? Charlie Lee even set up a $1 million bounty in a LTC SegWit address to disprove the FUD that anyone can steal your coins if you activate SegWit. Afterwards, everyone understood that SegWit is safe and it got activated on Bitcoin!
Also, Lightning network was first tested on Litecoin’s mainnet. At the time, it was too reckless for ACINQ & Lightning Labs to deploy their software on Bitcoin, so they experimented with Litecoin for a few months. Everything came home to Bitcoin after it was proven safe.
“REEEEEEE shitcoiner, just use testnet”
Yeah, but there are no incentives on a testnet. It’s great for verifying if a piece of code runs correctly, but there’s no bounty for anyone who might want to break the software or steal coins from a buggy implementation. Also, the newbies don’t use the testnet and sometimes their feedback is extremely valuable in improving the features & performance.
“REEEEEEEE shitcoiner, I will tag your podcast sponsors to call them out for supporting such blasphemous opinions. I will also make up stories about you and make sure you get banned from speaking such nonsense on conference stages”
Alright, but if you don’t want any new very well tested and incentivized to be exploited OP codes to get added to Bitcoin, then you can still activate BIP300 and enable the free market to create trust-minimized sidechains which support mining.
“The only soft forks that we should have are the ones which fix the Lightning network, everything else is a shitcoin!”
Yeah but you can’t rely on a single solution for scaling. Competition is healthy and it would be bad if we switched to government-custodians.
“You have the Liquid sidechain if you want more blockchains for scaling!”
Yeah but that one has a single point of failure, and has a security model which relies on geopolitics rather than cryptography or computer science. It’s centralized, and L-BTC is arguably worse than private BTC on a Zcash drivechain.
“I refuse to engage with such a dishonest person. Read the Bitcoin Standard again and make sure you pray to the altars of Swan & Blockstream every morning. They are the only ones who have any answers about anything”
Yeah, but Blockstream’s head of research endorses OP_CAT. Liquid also enabled it.
“REEEEEEEE, BLOCKED!”