"It is imperative that elected officials in the United States recognize that bitcoin, and the innovation of Proof of Work, is the most important financial, economic, and accounting innovation in the history of humanity." - Bitcoin Mining Council Today we read & discuss a thorough and well argued response to the unfortunate nonsense in the Huffman letter to the EPA written by 22 elected politicians. With numerous old, tired claims that are easily debunked with any search for real data or fact...
May 04, 2022•56 min
Everybody take a deep breath! Right now all the drama on Twitter and the Bitcoin community is all about CTV. What is it? Is this an attack on Bitcoin? Is it going to destroy Bitcoin fungibility? Are we firing the devs again? Well luckily I've been digging around through things the past 3-4 days and can at least give you an introduction on the idea and begin our journey to figuring out if this a new benefit or risk. There happens to be a lot of FUD both for and against the CTV/BIP119 proposal in ...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 22 min
"One issue with Bitcoin’s privacy, the ability to receive funds without giving up valuable information, is addressed with 'silent payments.'" - Shinobi Today we dive back into privacy with payment codes, BIP47, how exactly it works, and then the recent proposal from Somsen on "silent payments" that takes this even a step further to limit the data load on the chain itself. Some really fun tricks here that help give much needed privacy to those who need it most. Listen to find out more. Link to th...
Apr 28, 2022•48 min
"Even if you knew this was complete and utter bullshit, and that being an agent and not a principal ethically and legally precludes you from pretending your politics is your job, can you imagine, dearest of readers, your absolute priority at all times being to appear minimally different to all your competitors and hence to mimic whatever stupid bullshit they are spouting, regardless of whether even a single such spouter is making one iota of sense? You’ve just imagined ESG." - Allen Farrington D...
Apr 26, 2022•1 hr 5 min
"You’re a thirsty bitch. You like to gargle Peter’s balls." - DeaterBob This is happening and there is nothing I can do about it at this point. Enjoy. You can earn Bitcoin by Donating Plasma in a new pilot program. I've put the details for you at the link below: guyswann.com/blood For the best products and services to get you started in Bitcoin, our sponsors are literally a handful of those that I use most in this space: • Get Bitcoin rewards on literally everything you buy with the Fold Card (g...
Apr 21, 2022•48 min
"Bitcoin miners are unique because of how fast, transparent, and flexible their response can be to pricing fluctuations. Riot’s Whinstone mining farm in Texas is a perfect example of miners powering down during tight conditions in ERCOT. During winter storms in February 2022, the site powered down 99% of its operations to reduce load. This flexibility made headlines. Now imagine if ERCOT has visibility of every miner over 10 MW that’s connected to the transmission network. The price at which the...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 17 min
"There are still many extensions to build out in the protocol and areas with unsolved scaling issues. In general, the Lightning protocol itself still has a long way to go in terms of solving existing issues and becoming robust and scalable enough to serve as a global transactional network on top of Bitcoin." - Shinobi Following up some of the incredible announcements and discussions at Bitcoin2022, Shinobi breaks down what is happening in the major Lightning implementations, the directions they ...
Apr 19, 2022•51 min
"Taro enables bitcoin to serve as a protocol of value by allowing app developers to integrate assets alongside BTC in apps both on-chain and over Lightning. This expands the reach of Lightning Network as a whole, bringing more users to the network who will drive more volume and liquidity in bitcoin, and allowing people to easily transfer fiat for bitcoin in their apps. More network volume means more routing fees for node operators, who will see the benefits of a multi-asset Lightning Network wit...
Apr 14, 2022•56 min
LNpay, LNURL, LNauth, streaming sats, Bolt12, the past and future of Lightning. We dig into tons of great stuff around Lightning and discuss Keysend Maximalism with my good friend and the creator of LNpay, Bootstrap Bandit. We are getting back into it after the Bitcoin2022 conference, and you don't want to miss it. So stay tuned, much more on the way! Dont forget to follow Bootstrap on Twitter, and explore the incredibly useful tools and services built over at LNpay.co. You can earn Bitcoin by D...
Apr 11, 2022•2 hr 4 min
"Besides the advantage of near-instant payments, there can be privacy improvements to Lightning as well. Unfortunately, there are scenarios where Lightning is not great for privacy. I’d like to unearth some of these. Not as FUD about the network, but to keep people as informed as possible so they may privately use Lightning. Everything in this article is public knowledge and known to the industry to some degree. This is my attempt at aggregating the topic of Lightning privacy from a higher level...
Mar 31, 2022•1 hr 31 min
This episode is because the previous read by Steve Barbour deserved a Guy's Take. Before we change topics to privacy in the episode coming later this week, "The State vs Bitcoin" deserves a solid shake down. A Guy's Take episode on Read 615. Link to the original article by Steve Barbour: https://sgbarbour.medium.com/the-state-vs-bitcoin-dbc044f23ea6 You can earn Bitcoin by Donating Plasma in a new pilot program. I've put the details for you at the link below: guyswann.com/blood Check out the Fou...
Mar 30, 2022•1 hr 29 min
"As with freedom and oppression, Bitcoin and State money may exist in a perpetual tug of war between ideals. Where State money relies on compulsory participation, Bitcoin offers completely voluntary entry and exit and thus represents the antithesis of State money. In this essay I will explore the mechanisms in which Bitcoin may resist State attack." - SGBarbour Today we explore the feasibility and the correcting mechanisms in the Bitcoin system for resisting sustained censorship of the network. ...
Mar 26, 2022•55 min
"Much more to say. This is just a starting point, but I'm interested in Bitcoin for its potential to reorient civilization to an existence rooted in truth. If adoption comes at the cost of that, all the NGU euphoria means nothing and most of what gives Bitcoin value will be lost." - SovrynMindset Michael brings us an excellent thread on the attack vectors likely to come in the not-too-distant future as we have clearly entered the "then they fight you" stage. Now is not the time to rest on our la...
Mar 23, 2022•47 min
"...This purpose flounders, however, if their own evangelists and the community at large fails to lay the groundwork and impetus to push ever deeper. As a community, we fail when, in chasing the mainstream, we lose sight of the original spirit in which Bitcoin was created and bootstrapped." - Ariel Deschapell To kick off adversarial week, we are covering a great piece that brings us back down to earth so we can see where we are, the reality of our situation, & the true challenges that lay be...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 18 min
"On a medium-term basis, it is time to back up the John Deere excavator and scoop up as much gold and Bitcoin as you can afford. This is it, the start of a monetary regime change. Nothing lasts forever, and the days of Petro / Eurodollar supremacy are over. The phase shift will be chaotic, it will be volatile, it will morph, but it will 100% be MASSIVELY inflationary in fiat currency terms. There is no government, ever, that resisted the temptation to print money in order to pay its bills and pl...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 54 min
"Thus, given enough time and popularity, every movie, every song, and every document will be available to the general public for free. The nature of information does not allow for another outcome. Hence the saying: information wants to be free. Although trying to create something that can't exist—information that can't be copied—is paradoxical in itself, this isn't what I mean by the DRM paradox. What I mean is something more hilarious. It is again psychological, not technical in nature. The par...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 7 min
"In sum, the U.S. government has shown that — through the GFC, repo spike crisis in 2019 and pandemic crisis in 2020 — it is willing to do anything to keep interest rates down: start an experimental QE program to buy long-dated treasuries and subprime mortgages; nationalize the repo markets; and even nationalize the corporate debt markets." - Alex Gladstein Today we conclude Alex Gladstein's incredible new article on the invisible costs of war, and how our monetary policy disconnects the unbelie...
Mar 15, 2022•1 hr 21 min
"As detailed in Saifedean Ammous’s “The Fiat Standard,” in November 1914 the British government “issued the first war bond, aiming to raise 350 million pounds from private investors at an interest rate of 4.1% and a maturity of ten years. Surprisingly, the bond issue was undersubscribed, and the British public purchased less than a third of the targeted sum. To avoid publicizing this failure, the Bank of England granted funds to its chief cashier and his deputy to purchase the bonds under their ...
Mar 11, 2022•1 hr 15 min
"Aspiring Republican politicians and conservative opinionators love talking in darkened tones about the malevolence of elites. And yet, for all the fingers wagged and pixels rendered, conservatives have largely ignored the most economically significant way in which elites actually _have_ rigged the game in their favor. The widening gap between elites and the rest of us comes down in large part to the highly abnormal way in which the United States has defined money for the last 50 years." - Avik ...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr
"If having 12 words in your head is illegal, something is terribly wrong with the law. If the police storm your building because you are finding or creating a random number in the privacy of your own home, something is terribly wrong with the police. If the peaceful exchange of messages is seen as dangerous or immoral by society, something is terribly wrong with society. If speaking or knowing numbers becomes a criminal act, I don’t want to be a law-abiding citizen in the first place." - Dergigi...
Mar 01, 2022•54 min
"Only liquid, flowing capital generates a return. Unlike a bank account, capital on Lightning is productive when it is mobile, not at rest. That’s why flow is so essential. The more capital flows, the more liquid it is, the more incremental returns it generates." - Roy Sheinfeld Roy Sheinfeld of Breez Technology does some of the best conceptualizing of the Lightning network, its direction, & its challenges. He brings us another article today attempting to reconceptualize Lightning around the...
Feb 24, 2022•49 min
"People tend to favor proposals that would benefit themselves and reject proposals that, at their own expense, would benefit others. If you were wealthy, you’d probably reject calls for higher taxes and more welfare programs. If you were poor, you’d probably call for higher taxes and more welfare programs. I don’t just mean that the currently wealthy tend to endorse proposals thought to benefit the wealthy and that the currently poor tend to endorse proposals thought to benefit the poor. I mean ...
Feb 23, 2022•57 min
"Now what's that saying again. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. It's starting to smell like that. Just because Bitcoin's most virtuous argument was presented – in if not bad-faith then in fig-leaf-faith – by get-rich-quick boosters, doesn't mean it isn't true! Enter the trucker protests in Canada. In just three weeks of honking, blocked streets and bridges, bouncy castles and flag waving, this peaceful protest movement managed to provoke the most shockingly author...
Feb 22, 2022•51 min
"The U.S. and its allies are now effectively backed into a series of corners. Can the U.S. attempt to ban Bitcoin and its transactions? It can try, but will fail. China has already tried to do so, multiple times, and the same goes for India. Not to mention, the U.S. now has a multitude of politicians advocating for Bitcoin adoption, like U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis and state governors showing political support for the asset and network." - Mike Hobart Bitcoin has suddenly and aggressively entere...
Feb 18, 2022•38 min
"By taking away their printing presses, Bitcoin stops the creeping totalitarianism that weaponizes our own blood, sweat and tears against us. It stops governments’ escalating ability to control all person-to-person exchange, their efforts to build a financial panopticon of Big Brother control. And, finally, by getting governments out of the business of manipulating money, Bitcoin brings us a world without permanent crisis, without the boom- bust business cycles, without the inflation that ravage...
Feb 14, 2022•52 min
“Bitcoin as a superior monetary good is more valuable than a better payment network . This leads us to another point as to why we believe bitcoin should be considered primarily as a monetary good rather than a payment network. The fact the market has shown a preference towards bitcoin, which is slower as a payment system compared to other digital assets and blockchains, signals the market currently values a highly secure and decentralized store of value rather than another payment network. As we...
Feb 11, 2022•2 hr 22 min
"That is not to say that Bitcoin will lead us to a pacifist utopia in which any attempt at violence suffers metaphysical intervention by the spirit of Satoshi. That money can grant power is clear enough as there will always be a clearing price for violent thuggery. But what will distinguish a Bitcoin standard is that power will not grant money." - Allen Farrington Today we dig into another great piece from The Bitcoin Times Ed 4. What are the characteristics of Bitcoin, that truly make the separ...
Feb 08, 2022•55 min
Today we have an incredible chat as a followup to the recent piece Read_596 - Bitcoin is a Pioneer Species. We have author Brandon Quittem joining us today to dive deeper into the concept he lays out in the article, further into the consequences of what it means for energy production, and ultimately, where our species is likely to spread out and inhabit on the planet with such a powerful new set of incentives. You can either read or listen to the article at the links below, and don't forget to c...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 24 min
“And finally, given its asymmetric return distribution I believe It is more risky to have zero exposure to bitcoin than it is to have a 5% portfolio weight. If you are not long bitcoin, you are irresponsibly short. Don’t overthink this. Lower your time preference. Bitcoin is the purest form of monetary energy and is portfolio insurance for all fixed-income investors.” - Greg Foss Concluding today with some insane bullishness on price evaluations & a model for Bitcoin attempting to account fo...
Feb 02, 2022•59 min
“General Motors, Ford, AT&T and GE have cumulative debt that is larger than the entire HY market. Downgrades of any one of these names likely imply a downgrade of the others. The forced selling would rock the HY market, which would start a domino effect and a negative feedback loop that would reach to all credit and equity markets globally. Pretty scary stuff. Follow inefficient investment guidelines, win stupid prizes.” - Greg Foss Today we hit Parts 1 & 2 of Greg Foss’s incredible 4 pa...
Feb 01, 2022•1 hr 33 min
