"If a money (the most salable good) is easy to create more of, then any rational economic actor would just go out and create more money for herself, diluting the whole supply of it. If an asset has a monetary premium on top of its pure utility value, then it’s strongly incentivizing market participants to try to make more of it, and so only the forms of money that are the most resistant to debasement can withstand this challenge." - Lyn Alden The true rabbit hole of Bitcoin begins at the questio...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 27 min
"Imposing limitations on monetary goods has always required tremendous amounts of time and energy, and trust. And yet, with all our efforts, we still have been unable to fix the supply of any of the modern monetary assets of the world. Someone, somewhere, has always found a way to increase the supply. Whether because of some emergency reason to protect the greater good, or out of sheer greed, or out of complete ignorance, humans have succeeded 100% of the time in debasing the monetary premiums o...
Jul 12, 2022•59 min
"In a world awash in euphemisms and blatant lies, calling something by its proper name is rebellious in itself. Bitcoin is about freedom and self-sovereignty, not about asking for permission. It is about independence and verifiable truth; extreme ownership and responsibility; hope and human rights. The best way to fight bad ideas and bad terminology is with good ideas and good terminology. Thus, we should all make an effort to call things by their proper names, try to understand their inner work...
Jul 07, 2022•54 min
"People hold money to hedge against future uncertainty. This is why it is so crucial for a monetary system to optimize for minimizing its own uncertainty. Bitcoin’s purchasing power is an external quantitative risk that can be insured against, not an internal qualitative uncertainty." - Pierre Rochard Link to the read: https://pierre-rochard.medium.com/the-utility-of-saving-c56f7c170fc1 Check out Pierre on Twitter: twitter.com/bitcoinpierre Dig deeper into these ideas with an excellent piece fro...
Jul 01, 2022•29 min
What if, sitting in the middle of a chaotic monetary environment, increasing capital controls, balkanizing political regimes, a failing petrodollar hegemony, collapsing institutional trust, increased sanctions & weaponized infrastructure, & aggressive, widespread inflation... there sat a global, neutral, decentralized, robust, & incorruptible network to store and transfer value? What would it look like if that network was infiltrating the global monetary order, in a sly round about w...
Jun 30, 2022•1 hr 46 min
I promised, and it's finally here. It's time to get a little perspective, with the price at all time lows, exchanges and lending platforms imploding, a massive crypto deleveraging event, the Fed tightening, and the market heading into deep recession... HOW could you be bullish? Because I'm paying attention. It's time to zoom out, focus our lens past all the noise, take a serious look at the past year in Bitcoin, to get a clearer picture of the cascading dominoes... This will be part 1 of a serie...
Jun 24, 2022•1 hr 35 min
"Coding, mining, infrastructure, and markets are all independent, happening in competing jurisdictions and geopolitical rivals, often done by anonymous or pseudonymous actors, all with different philosophies and goals, but with one uniting motivation: to keep Bitcoin going." - Alex Gladstein Bringing back an article from a year ago from the always fascinating Alex Gladstein. "Can Governments Stop Bitcoin" is a short exploration of the potential attack vectors via government bodies and how Bitcoi...
Jun 21, 2022•1 hr 10 min
"Base money is a liability of the central bank, and it’s used as a reserve asset by commercial banks. Broad money is the liability of commercial banks, and it’s used as a savings asset by the public. Treasuries are liabilities of the federal government, and they’re used as collateral by the central bank and commercial banks. In other words, liabilities are collateralized by other liabilities, all the way down." - Lyn Alden Today we dive into another great piece from Lyn Alden's newsletter on the...
Jun 16, 2022•39 min
With the markets in chaos, with services halting withdraws, & Everyone's a Scammer" by Michael Goldstein, is one of those works. Another piece that stood the test of time made available by the Nakamoto Institute, not to be missed by any serious Bitcoiner out there. Don't forget to check out Goldstein's amazing work and the enormous collection of quintessential Bitcoin writings over at the Nakamoto Institute: https://nakamotoinstitute.org Mentioned in the Guy's Take, check out Marty's Bent on...
Jun 14, 2022•47 min
"Bitcoin is a lifeboat on the sinking fiat ship. Lifeboats on a sinking ship don’t need a marketing department." - Francis P. As New York puts a ban on Bitcoin mining in the state, as the white house decides it's going to come up with "Bitcoin mining policy guidance," it seems like a good time to prepare our response. Cry Harder. Francis Pouliot brings us a fun and short exploration of Brandolini's law, the problem of arguing with idiots, & why Bitcoin isn't changing, no matter how much the ...
Jun 10, 2022•30 min
"The reverse of that process – a so-called “death spiral” – was inevitable. Any time the immeasurably over-levered global fiat monetary system, for whatever reason, experienced one of its periodic external shocks that skyrockets immediate demand for actual US dollar liquidity, UST investors would demand USD liquidity faster than the brittle and fundamentally flawed Terra ecosystem could provide. At some point, one UST would be worth materially less than one USD, further rattling investors and ki...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 33 min
This episode is partly a follow up from Read_628 on reviving a promising renewable energy technology. Partly a discussion of the incredible economic subsidy that Bitcoin mining provides to bridge the Innovation Valley of Death for numerous energy resources. And partly a discussion of how Bitcoin so greatly changes the economics of stranded energy, that it could be the final piece in pushing us into the Third Industrial Revolution. You don't want to miss this conversation with Nathaniel Harmon, o...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 39 min
"A typical Bitcoin mining operation will spend considerable amounts of time, energy and money cooling their ASIC miners with air conditioning or liquid immersion cooling, and these costs eat into profitability. However, the main waste product of OTEC is a nearly-infinite and continuous supply of 5ºC cold water. Not only does OTEC produce free cooling, it provides a level of cooling that almost no one else in the mining industry has access to — enough to overclock mining rigs by 30% to 40%, accor...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 20 min
"Coming off the Bitcoin 2022 conference, you might feel a little down from the high of meeting and spending time with Bitcoiners. I've also found that going to these events leaves you with an additional sense of urgency to do something more, or to become more involved somehow. One way to do that is to participate in Bitcoin projects or work in a Bitcoin job." - Stephan Livera For as many times as I've been asked about how best to get a Bitcoin job, its hard to admit that I have never done an epi...
May 26, 2022•42 min
"When I thought about what is the defining difference between the Bitcoin maximalists and my yuppie elite friends, the surface level distinctions that popped out were political (e.g., libertarianism, Trump support, second-amendment rights, Black Lives Matter). But these stem from a deeper divide: the degree to which a person has trust in the system." - Croesus Today we bring back an oldie but a goodie while Rad, the wife & myself are chillin int he hospital recovering from Rad's journey into...
May 23, 2022•49 min
"Several exchanges in the industry fuel bubbles for a quick buck as well. If something starts to get momentum, including meme coins like DOGE or SHIB that don’t realistically have a substantial future, they promote those coins to their users, which can suck retail investors into buying the bubble top. Plus, a lot of Youtube and TikTok influencers pump small coins, and use their audience as exit liquidity." - Lyn Alden For those of you who may be unaware, there was a recent blow up of a deca-bill...
May 19, 2022•50 min
"This created a ticking time bomb with a very short timer. That money was going to "work" in completely artificial markets that were being driven by pure central planning insanity instead of actual fundamentals. As everyone and their mother who had excess cash was shoveling it into financial and real estate assets, global supply chains were quickly breaking down." - Marty Bent Today we dig into what exactly is going on in the financial markets, why equities are crashing over a tiny increase in t...
May 16, 2022•54 min
So what exactly did I get wrong in Guy's Take #54, and why? Let's dig back into the economic of CTV and transaction commitments, to clear up what I was misunderstanding around unrolling large batch transactions and who pays the cost of doing so. Are the incentives aligned or not? We discuss in today's Guy's Take episode. Here is a link to the article we will be covering soon by Shinobi on the real controversy regarding CTV and its activation method if you want to get a head start: https://bitcoi...
May 12, 2022•51 min
"Despite all of these constraints, the free market finally provided the competition these incumbent banks so desperately needed. Bitcoin and the Lightning Network have arrived to show the world that we finally have the technology available to bring cheap global payments to everyone in the world." - Sam Callahan Today we dig into the absolute mess of differing standards, wall gardens, high fees, jurisdictional conflict, & liability risks that abound in our global financial and payments infras...
May 10, 2022•1 hr
Welcome to Bitcoin! 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 (guyswann.com/fold). Get 20% off with discount code BITCOINAUDIBLE. • Buy Bitcoin automatically and painlessly with SwanBitcoin (swanbitcoin.com/guy) • Keep your Bitcoin keys safe on the secure, open source BitBox02 (guyswann.com/bitbox). Discount code GUY gets yo...
May 09, 2022•14 min
[Caveat - A critical piece of the puzzle I lay out in this episode was something I incorrectly understood, which makes this entire thought experiment moot. I explain further in Guy's Take #55] Today I want to isolate the problem I brought up briefly in the previous CTV episode and expand on how I've been exploring the concept and how it might be a problem to the economics of transaction fees and how it alters the liability of who pays for the cost of the data. I think this relates to issues from...
May 05, 2022•49 min
"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
