The bell is ringing.
Last time around, I called the 2022 dip slightly too soon when bitcoin was at twenty thousand, then called it again, more firmly and with greater confidence, when it was at sixteen thousand, which was dead on accurate.
The current dip is sixty thousand or so. I may have called it a little too late, bitcoin was recently at fifty eight thousand, and is now at sixty two thousand, though I think it likely to briefly fall below fifty six thousand, in which case I will have again called the dip slightly too soon — but also likely to never see sixty two thousand again, in which case I will have called the dip slightly late. If you buy now, you might regret it, but you will not regret it for very long.
From dip to dip that is dollars falling by a factor of nearly four relative to bitcoin
From the 2017 peak to the 2021 peak, about the same.
The next peak will likely be some time in 2025, though my crystal ball is looking somewhat cloudy. If Trump takes action to restore the usefulness of the dollar as an international currency, could be rather slower. Bitcoin is still in its infancy, with software that makes actually useful still in a horrifyingly crude state, but being worked on. Likely four fold again.
I saw Sparrow Wallet upgraded to version 2 recently, is that still your recommended desktop wallet?
I have not investigated, and not upgraded. Major changes tend to be enemy action. Just have not looked into it, though I should have.
Is it possible to build the crypto, free and soverign therefore, version of stripe? Its hard enough running a business, no one wants to limit their customers to people that have crypto and want to use it. Especially no one wants the added complexity of managing a strange new money, so two problems.
I understand in the long run you’ll have this all as programmatic finance of some sort, but for now the vast majority of people just don’t use crypto except maybe as a casino. You can probably solve the fractured ecosystem problem — Alice wants to pay in GayCoin, Bob wants to be paid in Bitcoin, the checkout interface just converts the payment through some working decentralized exchange and settles when the Bitcoin reaches Bob. Perhaps even have a Bank DAO thing in the middle that eats the risk in exchange for scale, so merchants can fully ignore the problem — but the fiat/crypto problem looks very sticky to me. Looks as if only solvable by exchanges until crypto becomes normalized.
It looks like crypto is rather early on the adoption curve when it comes to small payments. Could be very rough on SovCorps that will have a terrible time managing any amount of fiat. They will have the choice of only serving crypto powerusers, or accepting the cuck harness imposed by orgs like coinbase.
Apples sells iphones to make more users of the apple app store app. Infrastructure building.
If you had an interface that can present people with their choice of clearing houses offering exchange rates between different financial instruments that – crucially – can’t be interfered with on the interface level by hostile actors, that’s already 99% of the problem done there and you hardly even need your own cryptocurrency done right at that point; though your own cryptocurrency done right would be a natural extension of the things you’d need to do for such a thing, and perhaps intimately entangled with it as well.
The problem is most people buy things online with either credit cards or some electronic banking scheme, of which each country has its own. You cannot achieve both sovereignty and access to this customer base, which is going to include the customers you need when first starting. You cannot really get away from this problem unless you’re selling to the technically savvy, which can be a rather hard crowd to sell to. It cuts off a lot of markets for the sort of simple slopware that is easy and quick to put out, and therefore a good target for a business venture using an all too interesting and potentially very complicated finance and management backend.
I would rather enjoy it if the soon to be flood of AI slopware generating images, parsing emails, making dumb meme videos and so forth, could be powered by burgeoning sovcorp frameworks. Look at something like openrouter.ai, theyve cleverly put themselves between customers and sellers by having a single point where you plug money in. Would be better if openrouter was a sovcorp, so if one of the apps happens to become too interesting, it would take more than a friendly email to shut down.
Supose you are buying oil from Russia. Can’t pay in US$, hard to get rubles.
There is already quite a lot oil being paid for with Bitcoin.
Suppose you are an entrepot in Aghanistan, the crossroads of Asia. No formal banking system. You are using Halawa, but dealing with countries not well connected to the Halawa system.
> If I’m selling bits/network access, well my only customers are crypto users now, aren’t they?
A whole of businesses in the domain name and hosting business take bitcoin.
Russia , Afghanistan are the exception not the rule.
You can buy from china , Arab gulf , Africa in US$ and that more than enough.
It will be another thing if/when china move in Taiwan.
Russia is no small exception.
And you can buy from China from big well connected businesses, and small businesses that sell through a big well connected intermediary, but buying from a Chinese small business in fiat dollars is hard and rapidly getting harder. Increasingly, they are turning to bitcoin for international sales.
El Salvador, a country in which US fiat dollars are street cash, went Bitcoin in substantial part because it is hard to move those street dollars between El Salvador and the rest of the world.
A lot of countries, including some surprising ones, have quietly set up internal parallel payments systems in the past ten years. Without decoupling from the dollar, they are ready to move on if such a decoupling comes with minimum disruption.
It is the minimal disruption that I doubt. Observe Russian efforts to set up an alternative to the dollar system. Not off to a good start.
The fundamental problem with a debt based finance system is that you have to trust the bankers, and no one trusts the bankers.
The fundamental reason the world keeps going to a debt based financed system is that it funds the state. A crisis comes, the state urgently needs funding, institutes a debt based finance system.
But the debt based system relies on a tradition of honesty and good conduct by bankers, which tradition was slowly built up over time in a hard money based system where it was possible for a bank to just go bust, and the penalties for going bust were dire. During a period of debt based finance, that tradition fades away.
International finance likely to be disrupted, businesses likely to be disrupted on some level, but even in some quite “poor” countries the US can now no longer simply switch off daily payments (or force them back to cash) for the general public. Russia has obviously had problems, but its Mir system means that its internal economy has kept spinning, and even thriving. SWIFT, Visa, etc. not the power they once were, even if they are still a power.
Soft money is a problem everywhere. Russia, though separate, is still a soft money fiat economy. So is China. If other countries are pushed out of the “world system” they are also likely to remain soft money fiat systems for a time.
A government can ensure its soft money is used internally, and make transactions go smoothly enough. International transactions are more difficult. Again I point to the example of El Salvador.
El Salvador gets a lot of remittances from abroad, overseas workers sending money home to their families. And even though El Salvador is in the dollar system, and dollars are street cash in El Salvador, sending dollars to El Salvador was problem, and Bitcoin a better solution.
Transmitting money over distance, even whithin a single country, is apt to become difficult due to banks being disfunctional. And moral decline is rendering banks less and less functional, in some countries more than others.
Visa and mastercard work great, but getting permission to receive, rather than pay, visa payments is difficult, and the recipients catch no end of grief.
Visa and Mastercard are easy for payers within the Global American Empire, not so easy for payees. And for both payers and payees outside the Global American Empire, or on the periphery of empire, considerably harder.
I’m thinking from the standpoint of someone running a SovCorp.
I highly doubt people moving large or small amounts of oil will be the first adopters. It will first be small easy to conceptualize businesses first, and import things will be built later based on their success or failure; just as BTC was first used to buy pizza.
>A whole of businesses in the domain name and hosting business take bitcoin
So if I’m running a sovcorp, I now have this problem where I can ONLY accept crypto, or I can open the can of worms that is having a real bank account that is associated to the sovcorp, and deal with the very long list of problems that will cause.
I can think of many easy to spin up test case businesses that would be happy to be a sovcorp, if not for the fact you are dependent on your customers being crypto native. Would like to address this problem if at all possible.
Indeed you do. So the first use case for Sovcorps is managing conversion between one crypto currency and another.
To serve the nation state corporations and private individuals that need to use crypto currency for international transactions, we need level one bitcoin, liquid, which is a level two bitcoin, the various snark based level two bitcoin currencies that bitcoinOS and the Grail bridge makes possible, liquid lightning (which exists, but is unusable), tether, and tether lightning (which does not yet exist, but should).
And we need dexes and sovcorps to manage conversions between these different forms of currency.
What we are seeing serving this need are Daos, which go through an elaborate pretence of not being unlicensed limited liability publicly traded corporations built on a blockchain to avoid being charged with evading the Howey test. A sovcorp is just a Dao with less pretending.
For international transactions, not so sticky. On the periphery of empire, and outside empire, turning dollars in the inner empire banking system into money you can use in the outer empire and beyond the empire and vice versa is quite hard and getting harder, and a lot of businesses are using crypto currency to avoid this problem.
So who are my customers? I’m having trouble imagining how this works in a sovcorp framework.
The simplest thing to sell on the internet is bits, usually bits that come out of a server you control access to. If physical goods, sovcorp seems unreasonably dangerous to deal with, with little benefit. So the first sovcorps should probably be some software or network service, right?
If I’m selling physical goods in a way underserved by regular corps and finance, well there’s probably a reason they’re underserved. Making a sovcorp now increases the number of people that could potentially get everyone into trouble.
If I’m selling bits/network access, well my only customers are crypto users now, aren’t they? So now my potential customer base is way smaller, and being very online likely to have incredibly high standards for a digital good. So why should I bother? Because the product is cut out of the fiat world? Very serious limitation on use cases.
Ideally, you have some friendly jurisdiction so that some company can stand up a fiat payment endpoint for the normies, that pays out to your sovcorp vault address. On the payment webpage offer a discount for crypto payments, maybe a fence sitting customer will switch after they like your product.
Bitcoin is complete fucking garbage.
It can’t even handle 100M people trying to transact
and use it once per year, it has no privacy, and people
know it sucks balls like that so they’re refusing to
push it past $85000. I’m so sorry you dumbfucks
bought it at $0.10, Bitcoin is dying and you’re
gonna get REKT, SELL NOW 😉
I called the dip at US$62000. Last time I checked, US$87000. I previously called the dip when it was US$16000, and since I called, it has always been higher than US$16000. I later called the dip at US$62000, and since I called, always been higher than US$62000. I expect the price in US fiat to eventually go to infinity, because I expect US fiat to go to zero. A more meaningful measure is the cost of a house in bitcoin, which has been falling and will continue to fall.
Level two bitcoin is a solution for the transaction limit. Lightning, Liquid, and the Grail Bridge.
Respectfully to all Anons,
“Level two” is not a solution to the transaction rate limit (sub-7tps, lol), because even if as L2’s gain hundred-Millions of users, there is always a very substantial percentage fraction of those L2 users, tx’s, and use cases that absolutely MUST settle up to the L1. There is no paradigm in which L2’s can ever paper over those requirements for L1 settlement that that percentage of L2 users need. Thus demand for L1 must and WILL rise with any growth of L2, and thus you WILL see a prohibitively exponential rise in L1 tx costs as a result, continuing to price more and more users out. There is simply no way around the mathematical fact of this natural background demand rate ratio for L1:L2. Other than to launch an L1 that can handle more L1 tps, or to make BTC’s L1 handle more L1 tps before the competition does. 5000L1tps is a good minimum baseline research target requirement for a new competing L1 launch. The only reason you’re not seeing L1 tx fees explode, is nobody is really using BTC L1 yet, and nobody is really using L2’s yet, and central authority tradworld proxies/ETFs are daily aggregating and shuffling around Oracle database entries for clients and trades and payments and settlement instead of doing real L1 tx. And apart from their desire to takeover and centralize BTC to further enslave the masses, this is why you see banks now screaming to custody and proxy BTC via their stablecoins. IMO, if you don’t have L1 tps, you don’t have a real coin. Good luck to all 🙂
That is a big problem with lightning, because lightning only reduces the number of level one transactions by a hundred or so at most. But it is not a big problem with Liquid, and it will be no problem at all with the Grail Bridge. Transactions between Liquid and level one are few, large, and infrequent, because only done by a few big players, and at scale, transactions between level one and Grail will be fewer and larger.
It is not appropriate to believe that today’s BTC L1 tech, or for that matter any deployed L1 tech, is where it needs to be, nor anywhere near what it could be… Further, any coin’s tx protocols can always be updated while preserving relative UTXO balances.
It is not appropriate for the faction of BTC to continue blanket total rejection of any “L1 speedups” whatsoever. This sort of head-in-sandish, and or partisan refusal to even consider or evaluate… reeks of ulterior motive regarding their simultaneous bleatshilling and proffering of L2’s, especially given some of their lack of functionality, lack of privacy, and of their centralization aspects, in particular some of their not-exactly-disinterested realworld physical corporations that effectively control them.
IMO, I don’t think the L1 tech research curve and branches are anywhere near done being discovered, let alone beginning to be deployed. Nor do I think today’s L2 tech/deployments represent a solid paradigm that anyone should be banking on or cementing or lawfaring in place for decades… way too complex and fragile and subject to supercedement and thus entrapment and collapse of value.
When real TPS?
When real Privacy?
When AnCapistan?
Everything depends on achieving real TPS.
There is today’s BTC, it does not have real TPS.
And, we must conclude that we have yet to truly understand, design, and deploy, what a real “P2P Electronic Cash System” will end up being.
I wager that in 100 years, that future will not include what today’s BTC L1 and L2’s are shilling, that those will have long since been migrated and traded away for a real system.
Whether that real system is a “new” L1, or that today’s BTC is forced to undergo such massive changes to integrate it in order to avoid becoming obsolete, such that it is no longer recognizable as such, is immaterial.
Now please excuse yourselves so that you can go update your fiat denominated spreadsheets with this weeks ridiculous crypto gains 🙂
Is appropriate. Bitcoin is Bitcoin because it is Bitcoin, just as gold is gold because it is gold. L1 speedups cannot change the scaling problem, and they can take away the magic that Bitcoin is the one real crypto currency.
Speeding up level one is only useful if one can speed it up tens of thousands of times. Lesser speedups do not solve the problem, and can break the magic.
Nova can speed stuff up to millions of transactions per second, but so far a Nova based blockchain is only a gleam in the eye of developers.
Nova could be introduced into level one Bitcoin in the same way the Hogex was introduced into litecoin. And I hope it will be, but it will be a lot easier to introduce it into level two Grail Bridge.
Clarity: I don’t care about any supposedly monetary L1 that has anything else as a goal other than being a private cash money for the world. If an L1 does something more than that before then, ok, that’s for them. But if an L1 does that at the *expense* of what is needed to be a private cash money, when there is not yet a maximised private cash money… then no, that bling is not an acceptable resource tradeoff.
Well then, you should go with Litecoin, because it is private (if you use mweb addresses), and transactions are cheaper and considerably faster. But the trouble with Litecoin is that it is being inexorably crushed by Metcalfe’s law. If I want to transact with a far away business, and both of us hodl so the transaction is easy, Bitcoin. Everyone uses Bitcoin to transact, because everyone else is using Bitcoin to transact. As a result, Bitcoin inexorably rises relative to Litecoin.
But Litecoin does not scale either. What does scale is the level two Grail Bridge, which is still a work in progress. The Grail bridge can support privacy. Whether it will support privacy remains to be seen.
> L1 speedups cannot change the scaling problem, and they can take away the magic that Bitcoin is the one real crypto currency
Magic is an illusion and a trap, so is Bitcoin.
But yes, if it discovers more L1 speed, it will become closer to being designated a real crypto currency.
A currency, other than being useful at least “currently”, is only a currency if a relevant mass can use it. A Billion+ more users can use Gold and Cash, because they are currencies, BTC is not, not least because if they try to use it as a currency, it will price them out. And if they don’t get out before then, it will forever trap their UTXO behind the rising fee wall.
Yes, Litecoin at least has some type of privacy, but it is also bound by severe tps limitations.
As is anything that uses an ever-growing non-discardable “blockchain” that relies upon unknowable future advancements in storage and processing tech such that users can afford and use it the way the shills demand they do… by keeping and verifying andusing their own copy.
The “Grail Bridge” “BitVM” etc, are all ultimately bound up starved out and priced out by the same tps and settlement problems as the above L2’s are. Are you going to get 100’s millions to billion users using GB without blowing out L1 tps… no.
Will have to look at Nova.
Disgusting that 95+% of bitcoin crypto twitter refuses to even acknowledge or discuss the severe limiting fact of sub-7tps.
And continuing to build Metcalf dependency upon BTC’s 7tps is going to be a problem.
If someone riddles me a 5ktps L1 coin, then I’ll consider thinking about beginning to endorse that coin with caveats.
Or show a reduction ratio of say 2B users needs down to 7tps, and I’ll consider endorsing that “Layer 2” widget.
Sorry but I’m just not willing to accept the Kool-Aid that the BTC crowd has been trying to sell. Their tps math ignores the need for settlement and its ratios, and is thus their L1 tps is simply nowhere even remotely close to near where it needs to be to support the Billion+ users they claim to be able to support with the “layers” they’re shilling. Their Current Lies and Claims as to the Future are simply unethical, and only to do one thing, pump up the BTC price.
Can you believe these BTC fucks have been trying to sell African tribes on BTC. Even trying to roll one of their latest vaporware fad idea Fedimints and other layers of shit on them. You know the last GAE pedofag that tried to sell their snakeoil on those poor Africans… Bill Gates and his WHO and his AIDS and COVID and COVAX and DPT and Food.
It’s all ok though, the cold hard reality of tps ratio re usage needs for settlement, thus blowing out fees, will hit them soon enough, and this time the fee pressure won’t go away like it did in 2017-2018.
Should be fun to watch 😉
Lightning can be priced out by high transaction fees, but it still allows enormously more than seven transactions per second. Vastly more than any current blockchain.
The seven transactions per second limit means that it is impossible for a large proportion of the word’s population to have their own lightning wallet. The majority would have merely custodial lightning wallets, and only substantial businesses would have a true lightning wallet. So lightning is, as you say, not a solution, merely postpones the crisis. But it can postpone the crisis for long enough for us to implement other solutions.
The Grail Bridge does not suffer from this problem. If the cost of an L1 transaction rises to the level of chartering an oil tanker, it will continue to work fine and continue to be able to sustain a million transactions per second. It will continue to sustain millions of transactions per second, while only doing one transaction or so per day at level one moving Bitcoin between level one, and Grail level two.
Good Ser,
If you are claiming that “Grail Bridge” allows 1B Afrikanes and 1B Hindoos and 1B Muzlimes and 1B Chines and 1B Christians to transact at will and apace at around at minimum 5tx per month, P2P freely across the any-to-any network and ledger, to anyone, offline, in 10 minutes, with privacy, fully distributed, with no central authorities, uncensorable, self-custody, and trivial fee… then verily, I shall BOW DOWN UBER LOW to this thing, and shall forever GRANT to you freehold title over the nominal sum of 1.00000001 BTC merely for having brought this new Invention to my attention.
Until then I must also wager large piles of Wheat Fish Gold and Young Marriagiable Women that whoever is out there shilling this thing are failing to caveat everything above that makes for a real money.
For one, someone should make a public git wiki survey and comparison table containing the actual mathematic capacities, usage semantics, restrictions, caveats, and impacts, of all these supposed solution Layers and Inventions. That way all these shills selling snakeoil can be exposed, such that we may then begin to embark on a REAL competition, unburdened by what has come before, to divine a much more capable of such REAL crypto money L1, FIRST, anew, before filling in any of its then remaining deficiencies with subsequent layers.
While we are always getting closer to the moment of Invention, we must first admit that we are still, today, not in presence of it, but alas, remain randomly far away from it.
Just because one particular L1 network is accumulating Metcalf upon its own deficiencies today, DOES NOT mean that we should EVER give up on the Invention needed to cure them.
Spanking all the intentional and or ignorant denier-of-tps-fact price-pumpers, and the centralized product-shilling profiteers of faux tps out there, who are claiming that their BTC-L1+L2’s are something that they are not…… by dropping a new and REAL L1 on their ass, whether forked or not… will be a glorious day 😉
That day is coming.
Make it, be there for it, reap its benefits 🙂
It is not that the Grail Bridge does this thing, but that it allows blockchains that can do this thing to have level two Bitcoin on them. It is a bridge between Bitcoin and snark based blockchains. The blockchains that can do this thing do not exist, but they are on the drawing board. https://reaction.la/security/manifesto/scalability.html
Well if we have “blockchains that can do this thing” (aka: be real money) then why the fuck do we need to “[bridge and put level two Bitcoin on them]”. Just launch them as the L1 itself, and exit the now legacy BTC for them instead (either via direct exchange, or fork turnstyle). So either we don’t have such a thing yet, which is my position, or we do and people are playing some type of games…
One answer is that there’s a bunch of $Millys and $Billys, that got wealthy early off BTC, who have now gone corrupt against the future continued development of REAL cryptocurrency, because in their view, any fork of BTC, or any new L1, that does not include their UTXO’s as wholly dominant wealth positions on that new REAL crypto, puts their wealth at risk, either by forcing them to physically trade out of BTC and into the new L1, or by having a diminishment ratio put upon them and their old UTXO’s by the new fork/L1’s coinbase import of them.
Proof of this is what BTC $M’s and $B’s do you still see out publicly advocating for development and use of actual privacy cryptocurrency… zero. At best they are cowering behind the custodied SoV-song wealth shield, while trying to play the long game. Well, history is going to remember how those former “Libertarians” and “AnCaps” shut the fuck up for decades to save their own wealth. Come on, at least drop one good sentence on a podcast to show you’ve not totally cucked yourselves out of the cypherpunk manifesto. Sure, some of them are quietly funding dev teams, or lobbying (for what), but at least drop some hints.
Real punks don’t give a shit about those games, because they will be on the fair-launch of whatever REAL L1 does end up becoming best and running as a currency for the next 100+ years, thus taking over and freeing the world.
Alternative question: Does anyone really think BTC, in the form and “layers” that it has around it today, will actually be recognizable as the one running 100 years from now, let alone be the #1 that everyone is using as the world’s default “Privacy-Enabled P2P Electronic Cash System” ???
Fuck no. Either a new L1 will be launched that kills BTC, or BTC will be forced to gut itself and import what that competing L1 is doing in order to save its own ass by mooting the upcomer. Either way, “BTC” will have been so massively modified that today’s “NO-CHANGES TO THE L1 PROTOCOL EVER” MAXI SHILLS that are LYING about what Bitcoin can actually do today (“Just keep a TAB”, etc …), will have to eat their own shit and die.
This lying is a tactic to discourage and starve independent paths of novel development. PsyOp 101, since millenia… habit of preserve your own regime regardless of how truly weak it is, and how good it would be to just give up and jump on the next train.
Clarity: “5tx” above means that each of 5B people can do 5tx/month (arbitrary definition of a minimum txrate at which a currency becomes useful to people in their lives.)
Since this BLOG has duly noted that the survival DNA present in the human genome will soon react to ensure that women will naturally become coverture again, and thus have no need to be part of the transacting populace… that “5B” number is a little high 😉
Metcalf’s law and the network affect. See my reply to Anon. You cannot replace Bitcoin merely by being a better Bitcoin. Litecoin is already a better Bitcoin, and it will continue to fall relative to Bitcoin.
No one is ever going to get rich by airdrops and mining this time around. “Fair” distributions are now a scam. Anyone promising that is a scammer.
> You cannot replace Bitcoin merely by being a better Bitcoin.
I disagree.
Among other things, today’s Bitcoin (BTC) has been, and still is being, purposefully prevented from becoming a better “Bitcoin”. And the rollout of bad L2’s on it are a similar faction meant to hamper both “BTC” and “Bitcoin”.
I assert that Metcalf, regardless of whatever early thing had first enjoyed Metcalf, has clearly been repeatedly dethroned and replaced by better Inventions that came later… (feet, horses, bicycles, cars, planes) (voice, print and postal, telegram, telephone, cellphone, internet) (wool wood and sun, hydro, wind, coal, oil, solar, nuclear) (goods, wampum, gold, fiat, BTC, a better L1)… and will continue to be. BTC, as the “first”, is like any other “first”, wholly subject to generational improvement and new Invention.
So in order to save space on this blog for more usual fare…
Let us reconvene in 5 and 10 years…
Say some plausibly competing L1’s become known around say 5yr, let us comment on that, and afford each other opportunity to double our wagers, and if one becomes known to be eating BTC’s Metcalf by 10yr… you deliver me at 10yr as many young marriageable inclined and virgin daughters as 1 BTC will endear today, from among the white christian type in whatever lands, which, given whatever land, is still today surely at minimum 1 of pleasant countenance and disposition. Any extra maidens from the change for our bretheren peers. If nothing is beginning to eat BTC’s Metcalf by 10y, I send to you 1 BTC, which by then would surely endear to you far more then than my 1 BTC would to me today 😉
Metcalfe’s law. First mover advantage. Litecoin is a better Bitcoin, and it is falling relative to Bitcoin and will continue to fall.
You cannot launch a new currency directly competing with Bitcoin, and any attempt to do so becomes a scam, even if it is a better Bitcoin than Bitcoin in every way.
There is a niche for privacy currencies, but Monero is in that niche, and you cannot launch a new privacy currency directly competing with Monero, and any attempt to do so turns into a scam, even if it is a better privacy currency in every way. Each new crypto currency has to have its own niche, like filecoin, doing something that other currencies cannot do.
> Metcalfe’s law. First mover advantage. Litecoin is a better Bitcoin, and it is falling relative to Bitcoin and will continue to fall.
I could indeed see good merit in your proposed appraisal that LTC is a better BTC, but other then hypothesizing on the now stagnated-L1-BTC’s eventual loss, I make no call yet on any given tech or coin to eventually surpass it.
First never lasts, the Nature of Universe.
King Metcalf always gets dethroned when four things coincide…
1) The incumbent becomes intolerable; or subject to Invention
2) A new entrant demonstrates its ability to overtake
3) The incumbent does nothing to appease, nor ultimately to adopt
4) People recognize 1 and 2 as such, and become tired of 3
The sheer numbers of denialist Maxi’s out there lying and covering for BTC’s inadequacies (show me 5 CT BTC Maxi’s that speak the cold hard facts of raw L1 p2p tps limitations, and of privacy, in public… they don’t exist, lol)… tells me that by 5 years something new will likely be in dev, or have launched its own L1, or be ready to fork BTC off into its own L1… such that it’ll then be as reasonable a bet to sink 1 BTC into it as it was to mail off a $100 bill for BTC from 2010 through 2012.
The rule for taking over from an incumbent is:
1: you are better than him in his core market and service.
2. There is a niche that the incumbent does not serve, or does not adequately serve.
3 The niche is big enough to get critical mass.
The niche that rhocoin is targeting is to link the transaction metadata to the transaction. To be a privacy social app, in which one can privately communicate about politics, social life and transactions, so that the wallet links the payment to messages and relationships about the payment. Eg “I will provide you with this good or service for this payment”. Recipient clicks on pay button, and the message is linked the funds spent one parties wallet, and funds received in the other party’s wallet. Also, reputations and offers, to do what amazon, ebay, and silk road does, but without a central authority that can be shut down the way silk road was shut down.
But the low hanging fruit is to enable dexes, for which we need bridges. Every dex needs its own payment mechanism and private communication system, and every dex tries to make a profit, so what a dex needs is basically a special case of this niche.
“Calling” that unless Trump names pro-Crypto SEC and Treasury heads this week, and mentions Free Ross… that wayyy too much premature leverage, greed, and noob hands… will collapse causing BTC price to correct markedly until at least Jan 20.
Regardless, big loads have been spent already and…
$100k is such a fucking utterly massive wall of hidden sell regimes that will either be
– slowly fought over a very very long time
– blasted to bits in the most impressively glorious fully leverage’d fin-military and spokesmeme’d crypto-political assault charge humanity has ever deployed against one target ever in history… that blast could easily reach 150/250/500/1000k altitude before settling out
– so completely devoid of sellers that its passing won’t even make the news, other than a parade of whales and HODLers saying “What?, me sell?, nothing to see here, move along, lulz”
I have a long record of accurately predicting the price of Bitcoin. Which I predicted on October the eleventh would start to rise, and rise, and rise, for a long time to come, never to return to the price it was on October the eleventh. There will be peaks and dips, but each major peak much higher than the previous major peak, and each major dip much higher than the previous major dip. And each dip higher than when I last called the dip. Further, Bitcoin is stabilising and will continue to stabilise. The peaks will be less peaky, the dips less dippy. The rise will continue, more slowly than before, but steadier than before. This was all expected and intended from the beginning.
The miner concentration was an unplanned disaster that exposes Bitcoin to huge danger. So is blockchain analysis. But everything else is going as Satoshi envisaged. Not as fast as envisaged, but fast enough.
Monero pioneered new technology to solve both problems. Their solution to blockchain analysis has very bad consequences for scaling. Their solution to miner concentration is way better than Bitcoin, but not good enough. Litecoin introduced a way better solution to blockchain analysis. It is not snarks, but it uses the cryptographic methods of which snarks are a particular form. But snarks, properly used (and the Ethereum ecosystem is using them wrongly) can provide a good solution to both scaling and blockchain analysis. I have a plan to properly use them to solve the miner concentration problem, but my plan is so far kind of half assed.
It is wished upon all competitors, including your Rhocoin, great progress in their endeavours, and a fine and fair launch, and to the best among them be distributed the 9000 wins 🙂
The launch absolutely will not be fair. “Fair” launches turn into scams, and recent successful nonscam coins, for example Rune, have made not the slightest effort to be “fair”.
(Rune the dex is not to be confused with Runes on the Bitcoin chain, which enabled a massive, disruptive, and destructive scam.)
Doug Casey On Trump’s Second Term: What It Means For America And Investors
https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-trumps-second-term-what-it-means-for-america-and-investors/
International Man: What are your overall thoughts on Trump’s second term?
How do you expect it to differ from his first term?
Doug Casey: Thank heavens Kamala lost. If she’d won, the Jacobins would have cemented their hold on the country, and it would have been “game over.” We would have seen an acceleration of cultural decline, vastly higher taxes and regulations, and a serious push to shut down free speech.
It feels like morning in America again. But unfortunately, morning only lasts six hours…
https://x.com/pastorcoin/status/1853491246582387164
Episode 0.00000023 of the Bible and Bitcoin Podcast is LIVE!
There was no reading of Bible in this pod, nor is Jesus
barely mentioned, nor as the Christ. The guest is a Palestinian
and big apologist for Islam who calls the Quran “God’s Scriptures”
and who could not admit and even say the phrase “Old Testament”
instead he called them “Old books”.
“Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. — Matt25:28”
“How dark the gold has become, How the pure gold has changed! — Lam4:1”
I suspect that many so-called Christian Palestinians are actually Muslim Palestinians practicing the usual tactics. The reason I suspect that is that many actual, legit, verified Christian Palestinians are not nearly as hostile to Zionism as their supposed “defenders” online claim they are. In my experience, while some Christian Palestinians rather dislike Israel, others will openly and proudly brag about serving in the IDF and killing terrorists. So I have reason to believe that quite a lot of those who claim to be Christian Palestinians are actually Muslim Palestinians trying to gaslight the West into being pro-Jihad.
Why Roger Ver Deserves A Presidential Pardon
https://brownstone.org/articles/why-roger-ver-deserves-a-presidential-pardon/
https://x.com/freerogerver
https://t.me/+7j2qbUGhE5llMjQx
https://www.reddit.com/r/freeroger/s/L1uuhsgZp5
https://www.youtube.com/@FreeRogerVer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccj16qYlxVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ07sM5w_Dk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEEg747LZDg
https://hijackingbitcoin.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Hijacking-Bitcoin-Hidden-History-BTC/dp/B0CXWBCWDR
Full pasta below, because important…
Authored by Aaron Day via The Brownstone Institute
The US government is attempting to imprison Roger Ver for 109 years for the crime of following his lawyers’ advice.
His case represents an unprecedented attack on attorney-client privilege that threatens everyone who relies on professional counsel.
Today, Ver sits silenced in Spain, unable to defend himself publicly, while prosecutors use his own lawyers’ records against him—records that show his meticulous attempts to follow the law. This isn’t just about cryptocurrency; it’s about whether any American can safely consult legal counsel without fear of prosecution.
If this precedent stands, seeking professional advice could become evidence of criminality. Business owners, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens who rely on lawyers and accountants will all be at risk. The time to act is now, before this dangerous precedent becomes permanent.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an entrepreneur with an unwavering belief: state control over money isn’t just wrong—it’s a weapon. It fuels violence, breeds poverty, and crushes individual freedom. You’ve seen the wreckage it leaves behind and know that there has to be a better way.
You know this because you’ve experienced the state’s brutality firsthand.
At just 22, you were imprisoned for ten months in federal prison. Your supposed crime? Selling firecrackers on eBay’s then-legal Guns & Ammo section without a license. But the real reason, as Roger tells it, was speaking truth to power—declaring that taxation is theft and wars are mass murder.
In prison, you experienced psychological torture that haunts you to this day. A guard planted a weapon on you as a “joke,” threatening you with additional years in prison until you broke down in tears. You witnessed the theatrical deception when inspectors visited—seeing how the system maintains its façade of legitimacy while grinding down human dignity behind closed doors. In Roger’s own words from his emotional testimony:
“That man just purely tortured me for his own amusement…when he sees that enough tears are coming down my face and that I’m crying enough, he pats me on the shoulder and says ‘Relax, I’m just kidding with you.’”
Then, in 2010, you discover Bitcoin—a revolutionary concept. A form of money that can’t be manipulated by any government, any central bank. Digital cash for the people. Your mind races with the possibilities. For the first time in history, money could flow freely across borders, free from the control of states that use it to fuel wars, or impoverish entire nations. You see what many do not: Bitcoin could be the key to spreading freedom and prosperity to every corner of the earth.
You dive in, headfirst. You’re not just a believer—you become the first merchant to accept Bitcoin, the first investor in Bitcoin-related companies. Your relentless advocacy earns you the title “Bitcoin Jesus.” You invest in decentralized companies with one mission: to free the world from the shackles of centralized control.
But the US—the land of the free—begins to look less and less like the place you want it to be. So, you make the difficult choice to legally expatriate. Despite the murky regulations surrounding this new currency, you hire the best attorneys and accountants to ensure every penny of tax is paid. Your conscience is clear.
A decade passes. Then, without warning, they come for you—not just for you, but for your lawyers too. You find yourself arrested and thrown in a Spanish prison—the same prison where fellow libertarian John McAfee mysteriously died. You don’t speak the language. You’re cut off from everything you know. After months of legal battles, you’re finally out on bond, but the situation is bleak. Six months pass, and you still have no clarity, no answers.
Now, in a cruel echo of his past persecution for speaking truth to power, Roger finds himself essentially gagged. He cannot speak out about his case or the broader implications of his prosecution for fear that his words might be used against him in court—or worse, lead to the revocation of his bail and his return to the same Spanish prison where McAfee met his end. The silencing of Bitcoin Jesus isn’t just about one man’s freedom—it’s about whether any of us will be free to challenge the financial status quo.
Roger Ver: Where Natural Law Meets Human Impact
When people ask me what I believe in, the answer is simple: natural law. Not the academic theory of natural rights, but the living, breathing reality that we can make the world better through right thought and right action. That by aligning our behavior with universal principles of non-aggression, voluntary cooperation, and genuine care for human flourishing, we can create the conditions for freedom to thrive.
In all my years studying and advocating for these principles, I’ve never encountered anyone who embodies them more completely than Roger Ver. While others talk about freedom in the abstract, Roger has dedicated his life to manifesting it in reality.
A Legacy of Impact
I first encountered Roger’s work in 2012 at a Free State Project event called Liberty Forum, where he introduced many of us—including several who are now prominent voices in the crypto industry—to Bitcoin for the first time. In the decade since, I’ve watched him consistently stay ahead of the curve, identifying and supporting technologies that offer real alternatives to centralized control.
But Roger’s impact extends far beyond cryptocurrency. He has invested his heart and resources into more than 40 companies that are transforming the world for the better. From groundbreaking medical technologies making diagnostics accessible to underserved communities, to biotech innovations advancing personalized medicine, to projects reimagining governance itself—Roger’s work touches on every aspect of human freedom and flourishing.
The Hidden Champion of Truth
This weekend, I had the honor of participating in Brownstone Institute’s annual conference in Pittsburgh. For two intense days, I witnessed something remarkable: a gathering of some of the world’s most courageous voices in the fight for human liberty and scientific truth.
The accomplishments of Brownstone over just three years are staggering. When voices of reason were being systematically silenced during the pandemic, Brownstone emerged as a sanctuary for truth-tellers. They’ve fought lockdowns and mandates not just in the public sphere but in the courts. They’ve exposed the machinery of censorship, revealing how government agencies collude with tech companies to suppress dissent. Their research team dismantled flawed pandemic risk assessments and exposed how organizations like the WHO and the G20 manipulated outbreak data to justify massive new funding through REPPARE. Most recently (with my addition as a Fellow), they’ve been at the forefront of warning about the dangers of CBDCs and the weaponization of the financial system against dissenters.
But Brownstone’s story begins with a profound act of moral courage. Jeffrey Tucker, witnessing the collapse of scientific discourse and basic human rights during the pandemic, created Brownstone from a place of deep caring—caring about truth, about humanity, and about protecting those who dare to speak out. He wanted to create a haven for dissidents like myself and many other Brownstone Fellows who faced cancellation, professional destruction, and worse simply for doing what was right: speaking the truth.
What few people know—what I didn’t even know until after becoming a Brownstone Fellow—is that none of this would have been possible without Roger Ver. As Brownstone’s founding donor and board member, Roger’s support was crucial in getting this beacon of truth off the ground. In typical Roger fashion, he never sought recognition for this role. While others might have used such support for publicity, Roger quietly helped build an institution that has become one of the most important voices for freedom and scientific integrity in our time.
This is characteristic of how Roger operates. Behind nearly every major initiative promoting human freedom and fighting against authoritarian control, you’ll often find Roger’s quiet support. From Bitcoin adoption in the developing world to fighting against CBDCs, from supporting victims of state persecution to funding research that challenges official narratives—Roger has been there, usually without acknowledgement or acclaim.
Now, in a cruel irony, while Brownstone continues its vital work exposing government overreach and defending individual liberty, one of its key founders sits silenced in Spain, facing persecution from the very systems of state control he helped others fight against. The same commitment to truth and freedom that led Roger to support Brownstone now has him fighting for his own liberty.
The parallel is stark and troubling: just as Brownstone fights to prevent the financial system from being weaponized against dissenters through CBDCs, its own founding donor faces the weaponization of tax law against him. Just as Brownstone works to expose the machinery of state persecution, Roger faces that machinery firsthand.
Natural Law in Action
What makes Roger unique is his understanding that natural law isn’t just a philosophy—it’s a blueprint for action. Rather than just describe Roger’s passion, I encourage you to watch him speak in his own words. In this powerful video, you’ll see Roger’s raw emotion and genuine care as he explains why decentralized money must be accessible to everyone, not just the elite.
When he declares that “Bitcoin is for everybody…regardless of how much money they have or where they were born,” it’s not just rhetoric—it’s backed by decades of concrete action. You can hear the urgency in his voice when he explains:
“More babies are dying in countries around the world because they have less economic freedom…people are literally dying because of this. I’m not exaggerating; this is a life and death matter around the world.”
Beyond Cryptocurrency to Human Freedom
Roger’s vision extends far beyond financial technology. His work in medical accessibility, internet decentralization, and biotech innovation shows his understanding that freedom requires a holistic approach. When he breaks down discussing government monetary control, we see someone who deeply understands the human cost of centralized power:
“I apologize for crying but it just disgusts me from my core when I see government people murdering people around the world…it’s not just theoretical; these are real people with real lives.”
The Price of Principles
Now Roger faces persecution precisely because he’s been so effective at putting these principles into practice. The charges against him aren’t just an attack on one man—they’re an attack on everyone who believes in building voluntary systems outside state control.
The Roger Ver Timeline
Constitutional Crisis: Robert Barnes Exposes the Ver Persecution
Constitutional lawyer Robert Barnes recently delivered a chilling analysis that should terrify every American who relies on professional advice: The government isn’t just prosecuting Roger Ver—they’re attempting to criminalize the very act of following legal counsel.
The Unprecedented Attack on Attorney-Client Privilege
“This isn’t just about Bitcoin or taxes,” Barnes explains in his detailed analysis. “They’re establishing that they can put you in prison and create new tax policy through criminal law enforcement against individuals, even when you’ve followed expert advice to the letter.”
Consider the timeline that Barnes lays bare:
2014: Ver faces the challenge of valuing Bitcoin for his exit tax
The largest Bitcoin exchange (Mt. Gox) had just collapsed
No clear valuation guidelines existed
The IRS itself admitted they couldn’t determine how to classify Bitcoin
Even basic questions about cryptocurrency taxation remained unanswered
Ver’s Response: Exactly what any prudent person would do
Hired top-tier attorneys
Consulted leading accountants
Documented every step of compliance
Followed expert guidance meticulously
The Government’s Shocking Response
Then comes what Barnes calls “the most disturbing breach of attorney-client privilege I’ve seen:”
Raided Ver’s lawyers’ offices
Seized privileged communications
Found extensive evidence of Ver trying to follow the law
Is now using that evidence of compliance as proof of criminality
“You read the quotes from his lawyer,” Barnes reveals, “and this is the evidence of someone trying to comply with the law, not someone trying to not comply with the law.”
What This Means for Every American
Barnes outlines four immediate threats to anyone who relies on professional advice:
Small Business Owners
Your consultations with tax attorneys can be seized
Your compliance efforts become evidence against you
Even following advice perfectly offers no protection
International Business
Complex regulations require expert guidance
That guidance can later be used to prosecute you
No “safe harbor” even when following professional advice
Tech Entrepreneurs
Evolving regulations demand constant legal consultation
Today’s compliance could become tomorrow’s crime
No way to prove good faith without creating “evidence”
Individual Taxpayers
Cannot safely seek professional guidance
Cannot trust attorney-client privilege
Cannot document compliance efforts without risk
The Constitutional Crisis
Barnes identifies three fundamental rights under attack:
Attorney-Client Privilege
Once sacred, now routinely violated
Communications with counsel used as evidence
No safe way to seek legal advice
Due Process
Retroactive criminalization of legal conduct
No clear standards for compliance
Good faith efforts used as evidence of guilt
Right to Counsel
Following legal advice becomes criminal
Creating compliance records becomes dangerous
Professional guidance offers no protection
The Dangerous Precedent
“If this stands,” Barnes warns, “we’ve entered a world where:
Seeking legal advice becomes evidence of guilt
Following professional guidance provides no protection
Documenting compliance efforts creates prosecution evidence
Perfect compliance offers no safety from prosecution.”
Watch Barnes’s complete analysis to understand why this case represents a Constitutional crisis that threatens every American and business that relies on professional advice. As he concludes: “When the government can breach attorney-client privilege, find evidence of compliance, and still pursue prosecution, we’ve moved beyond the realm of law enforcement into territory our Founders feared most: a system where no one is safe.”
The implications are clear: If they can do this to Roger Ver—a man who actively sought to comply with the law—they can do it to anyone. The time to act is now, before this precedent becomes permanent.
Two Dreams, One Persecution: Why Trump Must Resurrect Bitcoin Jesus
There are moments in history when parallel lives intersect to reveal profound truths about power, persecution, and the price of challenging the status quo. Donald Trump and Roger Ver’s stories are such a moment.
The American Dream Under Siege
Both men exemplify the quintessential American success story. Trump transformed New York’s skyline through sheer force of will and vision. Ver saw the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin when it was merely computer code and helped build it into a global force for freedom. Both men didn’t just succeed—they dared to reimagine what success could mean.
But in today’s America, such audacious success comes with a target on your back.
The Playbook of Persecution
The parallels between their persecutions are not just striking—they’re identical:
The Weaponization of Attorney-Client Privilege
Trump watched in horror as federal agents raided his lawyer Michael Cohen’s office, seizing privileged communications
Ver’s attorneys faced the same violation, with prosecutors seizing private legal consultations showing his meticulous efforts to follow the law
The Tax Weapon
Trump endures endless audits and investigations, with rules twisted to create crimes from normal business practices
Ver faces prosecution for following expert advice on Bitcoin taxation during a time when even the IRS admitted they didn’t know how to classify cryptocurrency
The Criminalization of Success
Trump’s business empire became evidence of alleged criminality
Ver’s pioneering work in cryptocurrency transformed into supposed proof of wrongdoing
The Breach of Sacred Rights
Both men have watched as fundamental legal protections crumbled:
Their attorneys raided
Their private communications seized
Their attempts to follow the law transformed into evidence against them
Why Trump Must Act
Mr. President, you alone understand the machinery of state persecution that’s been unleashed against Roger Ver. You alone have the power to end it. Here’s why pardoning Ver would be a masterpiece of justice:
It Breaks the Deep State’s Weapon
Shows that weaponizing justice against innovators will no longer be tolerated
Demonstrates that following legal advice won’t be criminalized
It Restores American Innovation
Declares America open for blockchain business
Signals that challenging financial orthodoxy isn’t a crime
It Reaffirms Sacred Rights
Restores the sanctity of attorney-client privilege
Proves that seeking legal counsel is a right, not evidence of guilt
It Sends a Global Message
America still rewards dreamers
Innovation will be protected, not persecuted
The Power of Parallel Justice
Mr. President, you’ve felt the sting of politically motivated prosecution. You’ve watched as attorney-client privilege was shredded. You’ve seen how success can be twisted into evidence of criminality. You alone can turn this moment of parallel persecution into parallel justice.
By pardoning Roger Ver, you won’t just be freeing one man—you’ll be declaring that America still stands for the dreamers, the builders, the innovators who dare to imagine a freer world. You’ll be showing that when the deep state tries to crucify a visionary, America’s highest office still stands for justice.
The symmetry is perfect: The man persecuted for challenging real estate orthodoxy can save the man persecuted for challenging financial orthodoxy. The businessman who became president can restore justice to the entrepreneur who became Bitcoin Jesus.
Mr. President, on Day One, write your name in the history books. Show that America still believes in dreams, in innovation, and in the sacred right to challenge power without fear of persecution.
Pardon Roger Ver. Resurrect Bitcoin Jesus. Let freedom ring.
Defend Freedom: Why Every American Must Stand With Roger Ver
The President holds the power to take a decisive stand, but ultimately, this fight calls on all of us. Roger’s battle isn’t just his own—it’s a rallying cry for anyone who values the right to question authority, seek counsel, and live free from unjust persecution.
This moment demands a response from each of us. Here’s how you can join the movement to defend freedom and stand up for Roger Ver’s rights, along with our own.
The Open Letter
We, the undersigned, call on the US government to end the unjust prosecution of Roger Ver, a pioneer in cryptocurrency and advocate for economic freedom. This isn’t just about Roger—it’s about protecting innovation, defending liberty, and ensuring that following legal advice doesn’t become a crime.
Take Action Now
Sign the Open Letter
Visit Freerogernow.org to join supporters who have already taken a stand. Your signature helps show the strength of our movement to:
End this retaliatory action
Allow Roger to continue contributing to a free and open financial future
Protect the right to legal counsel
Share Your Story
Tell the President why you support pardoning Roger Ver:
How has Roger’s work impacted you?
Why does attorney-client privilege matter to you?
What does this case mean for American innovation?
Spread the Word
Share across your networks using #FreeRoger:
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
LinkedIn
Telegram
Stay Informed
Sign up for “Freedom for Roger: Updates & Actions” at Freerogernow.org to:
Get the latest case developments
Learn about new ways to help
Join coordinated actions
The Stakes Are Clear
As Hijacking Bitcoin reveals, this case emerged just as Roger exposed how powerful groups undermined Bitcoin’s original vision. The timing is no coincidence—this prosecution represents an alarming misuse of power aimed at suppressing innovation and dissent.
Together, we can make our voices heard and help secure justice for Roger Ver. But we must act now, before this dangerous precedent becomes permanent.
Join the Movement
Visit FreeRoger.org today to:
Sign the open letter
Share your story
Stay updated on the campaign
Stand with Roger
Because tomorrow, the person facing persecution for following legal advice could be you.
#FreeRoger
Free Roger Ver !!!
https://www.freerogernow.org/
One of the few who contributed MASSIVELY to getting cryptocurrency spread out across the world… a true OG by every measure.
People don’t understand what will happen when a notable exchange goes notably dry of BTC for sale.
Regardless, BTC in its current form won’t ever be the currency that services the transaction needs of 1B+ people. That’s sad. But never fear, a servicable fork or new L1 will come into public recognition before long 🙂
Nuts.
Level One Bitcoin transactions have maxxed out and Lightning Bitcoin is strained due to Level one maxxing out, but Liquid Bitcoin has plenty of room to for more transactions and is only being lightly used, and Grail Bridge makes possible Level Two Bitcoin layers that can serve the transaction needs of billions of people.
So is that how you’re calling things now, that it’ll still be “Bitcoin”, but after/through all sorts of forks and layers from what we have now?
No forks, just more layer twos. We already have more layer twos than you can shake a stick at, though only two of them are important and successful: Lightning and Liquid, both of which can support far more transactions than level one, though they still fall short of what will be required.
The Grail Bridge will make possible level twos that employ polynomial commitment technology, such as snarks and Litecoin’s hogex. This opens the possibility of unlimited scaling, plus better than Monero privacy. Using succinct proofs, we can accomplish scaling by just not putting transactions on the public broadcast channel in the first place.
> No forks
“Lightning”… oopsie, yeah they in fact forked BTC to support that shit.
> though they still fall short of what will be required.
Yet another admission.
“Blockstream’s Liquid” sounds like bog-standard corporate controlled censorware and spyware and lock-your-funds ware and premine/tax and …, just like XRP and countless other shit.
Any protocol change is by definition a fork. And the market demand for REAL TPS will force “Bitcoin” to fork protocol again to support it.
But the BTC people can’t do that because they’ve publicly committed themselves forswearing off any changes to BTC… so the glorious part is that now after at least 8 years of Maxi-Ops all swearing that BTC as it stands today is perfect… well they’re going to have to eat their own dicks in public. You CANNOT spend years refusing, then capitulate a protocol change, AND get to retain moral ground over the name “Bitcoin”, precisely because you just spent 8 years pigeonholing yourself that “Bitcoin” is hard defined as the “BTC” protocol as represented by the refclient as it stood during your 8++ years of blowharding as to what “Bitcoin” is.
Face it, the “Bitcoin” development and cpunk cryptocurrency culture ethos all got hijacked. By Blockstream, AXA, CIA, Govts, Corps, miners who didn’t want to have to retool, wealthy bagholders who didn’t want to risk their early bags to REAL COMPETITION, and many other entities and persons, now including Wall Street and Politicians.
And finally, as everyone predicted if nothing was done to increase tps, the fees proved to have exploded to prohibitive heights. Thus then the fraud of Lightning was sold by the agents to the ignorant sheep as the “just keep a tab”, no change in usage semantics, solver of all problems. As was the fraud of Banks now happily screaming for Custody.
When that big L1+L2 lie proved fail, the Maxi-Ops and censors changed into their final demonic narrative form… that “Bitcoin” was not meant to be a “P2P Electronic Cash System” for the world… NOOOOOO, it’s really just “Permanent store of value”, and that “developing Bitcoin” really means a bunch of shit companies racing to see who can “build on” “Central Custody Solutions” and “Corner and Control the market (MAGA)” of Bitcoin the fastest, and that you’re not supposed to ever transact, and that you really want to go through KYC and authorities and middlemen and pay agents and tax agents when you do.
Now you’ve got all sorts of L2 “layers” that don’t do shit, and are still hard bound by the L1 txrate limit.
Go ahead, try and put even just 500M users transacting once a week on today’s BTC+L2’s… that’s at minimum 825tps… I got news for you, it ain’t happening. The real world has real world needs for real settlement and finality. So even if you give those 500M and their 825tps an absurdly generous settlement:float ratio of 1:100, today’s BTC L1 will choke and price them out as the ratio has already slammed into it.
BTC protocol was designed for onchain, it has no knowledge of, and cant transfer actual value on/off chain. Anything you bolt on to it is thus fake and a kludge. And any change to BTC protocol you make to fix it, cannot, by your own Maxi stance, be called “Bitcoin” anymore.
Nor can anyone’s bolt-on Snark tech be called “Bitcoin” either, expressly because they are not transacting in “Bitcoin” anymore, they are off in LayerLand using some faux representation, lockup, token, or… some design that doesn’t really need external “BTC” anymore and should really just be promoted into being its own L1 complete with single refclient package that doesn’t rely on any other network maintained by anyone else.
BTC’s protocol as it stands today, is done. That BTC will face a new L1 tech, which will either kill that BTC outright, or will force that BTC’s UTXO’s to steal and integrate the tech of that new L1 in order to survive. Either way, all of its current fact-denying Metcalf-spewing Maxi’s and Dev’s will have been sent off to the compost heap of history… and only if the UTXO’s survive the turnstyle will that new tech package have any claim to the name “Bitcoin”.
Go read this book…
https://hijackingbitcoin.com/
My claims and wager stand regarding what’s going to happen re today’s BTC L1. Check back starting in 5 years. I know you won’t accept, because you know it’s coming, and you will lose the wager.
SHOW ME your LN/LQ/whatever/”uses today’s BTC L1″ nonsense does 5ktps, P2P, offline, uncensorable, privacy or any fees being low enough for users to mix routinely, and fits in 100TB storage or less forever, I’ll even grant you 1:100 settlement ratio… then we’ll have a coin worth talking about further.
Until then, I endorse NO coin or coin tech at all, I only say… bring one 🙂
BTC did not fork to support lightning, nor is there any need to fork to support Grail Bridge, nor any need to change the protocol.
Lightning network can handle a million transactions per second, but the problem is that if you have five hundred million users, you will wind up with only a few of them being first class citizens, and the rest of them being second class citizens. Nearly all of them will wind up using something like the Alby Bitcoin wallet. Most users wind up using something like Alby anyway, because channel management is hard. So they wind up using Alby’s channels, which means they do not really have full control of their own Bitcoin. Bitcoin layer one cannot handle five hundred million channels.
If we wind up with a billion users using wallets analogous to Alby, not a problem handling that many transactions or that many users. But then we are recapitulating the problems that resulted from gold transactions being mediated by banks. The difference between Alby and a real lightning wallet is the difference between a gold denominated bank account, and actual gold.
Lightning network cannot handle that many users except by excessive centralisation, after the style of Alby and Liquid, but a correctly designed layer two based on polynomial commits and succinct proofs of knowledge should have no problem with hundreds of trillons of users each doing many transactions every day, each as a full citizen with full privacy. The Grail Bridge is being created to support layers that employ polynomial commits and succinct proofs of knowledge, with no changes to the Bitcoin protocol required.
> No forks
> BTC did not fork to support lightning
It is a lie to state that LN, which requires SegWit which was in fact a fork of BTC, can operate using only the protocol of BTC that existed prior to the Aug2017 SegWit fork.
BTC was forked to support the Lightning crowd, and also to enable various other experiments in shitware, both then, and as has been rolled on top since then, sucking up tx space now… all of which has thus far proven to in fact be actually unscalable, and thus, both ultimately a further weight on BTC’s underlying unscalability, and a trap.
To be generous and kind, I was quoting other people’s claims of 7tps avg. BTC’s realworld transaction rate is not 7tps, it’s actually 30% worse and has maxed out at 5tps avg.
The 10 MegaMarts in my region alone run that at 6pm, lol 🙂
Liars are expected… they are freaked out that they will have to eat massive losses trading out of their bags into another competing coin… either because the market doesn’t exist, or it’s KYC’d and taxed to hell, or their own incompetence, timing, and choice of coins to exit into will be wrong. So they continue propping up Kings with no Clothes, but the Fat Lady gets them in the end.
Good luck getting your LN/LQ scam to settle 500M users tabs on today’s BTC L1 at any price, within 5 years you’ll be priced out with them just like dust is, leading to another massive protocol war, which today’s BTC will again lose, this time for good.
Segwit was a workaround to expand the the one megabyte block limit. I have seen people claiming it was done to enable lightning, without explanation or evidence, but I can see no way in which it was needed to enable lightning.
Please explain how it enables lightning, putting you on moderation till I see an explanation. I am inclined to believe you are completely ignorant about crypto currency, and are bitter because the Bitcoin Cash scams failed. I doubt you know what a lightning node is or what a lightning channel is.
Bitcoin Cash was a scam because they made the same complaints about Bitcoin as you are using, but in fact they had no solution to these problems, and absolutely not the slightest interest in actually solving these problems. They just wanted to knock over the Bitcoin applecart in the hope of grabbing a few apples. None of the people involved in the Bitcoin Cash scam had any understanding of, nor any competence in, crypto currency. They were just ignorant idiots who figured bitcoin was a scam, and they could scam other people in the same way they thought bitcoin was scamming. They never had any real interest in crypto currency.
People who are aware of the scaling problems, understand them, and are attempting to do something about them, are all, without any exception that I am aware of, Bitcoin maxis. Conversely, the Bitcoin Cash people were all, without exception that I know of, ignorant scammers, who thought Bitcoin was a scam, and hoped to launch a similar scam.
The big tell was their ignorance and lack of interest in the technologies that they were talking about. Show me you know something about lightning.
[*deleted*]
Not an explanation of the claim that segwit was needed to enable lightning,
Not evidence that you know anything about cryptocurrency.
I’ve been thinking a lot about SovCorps again recently. Wanted to iron out the minimum necessary qualities for such a thing, before moving on to the simplest feasible realization utilizing current tools.
– Joint controlled treasury; without this its just a bunch of people sharing messages.
– Joint shares; obvious.
– Secure communication chain; can’t run this on Discord for obvious reasons.
– Internal transations/decisions should be disclosable but otherwise private by default
Other qualities seem like nice to haves, these are the essentials.
Looking at this, looks like you can realize this now with minimal elbow grease. Have participants run Fedimint nodes amongst themselves, this solves joint treasury and privacy of transactions. Use RGB or even colored coins for shares. Have people run a mastodon server or something like radicle for communication. You can probably bundle everything together with radicle and have it run with a single cli call.
Am I missing some important detail? This seems eminently achievable with some fiddling around over a weekend or two. Harder problem looks like finding some niche worth exploiting, then finding people to build with.
That anonymous shit will never work. There will be literal self-contained self-powering self-improving AI egregores roaming the electronic landscape in the next 5 years (at the outset). Human organizations are based on reputation and reputation is based on stable identity. I can “anonymously” infect you with my ideas but I can’t organize with you without dropping the mask. Give it up. Go do something in the real.
You’re not even taking your own conclusions to the logical endpoint.
If AI is running the company, doesn’t matter, the point is founding the thing and getting your shares in first in that case. You’re also assuming some weird state where this sovcorp is not facing the world with a brand? You have a public face, and the internal communications are run privately like anything else. Meeting in person and founding these is not excluded by any means, the point is having the ability to manage a corporation without needing a court system to adjudicate disputes. Everything else to do with it is up to the participants. It’s general purpose coordination technology.
If that stable identity is a public key, and only one person knows the secret key, (Zooko name system), problem solved.
Suffice it to say that neither crypto nerds nor crypto scammers have even deigned to try to make cryptocurrency practically usable for normal people in literally 15 years so I’m going to have to save your asses from yourselves just so I don’t get locked in the CBDC cage with the rest of you. When you see something that finally works, YOU’RE WELCOME.
Nostr identity works, Alby wallet, widely used on nostr, is usable by normies.
So we see a whole pile of people with untraceable identities, most of them normies, on nostr sending money to each other. Some of this money, quite a bit of it, is untraceable.
Of course, that untraceable identity A sent money to untraceable identity B on nostr is traceable by design. But where identity A got the money from, and what identity B did with it is not necessarily traceable. Though if they are normies, it might be and probably is.
Jim, you know I like you.
I consider myself fairly tech-savvy. I once installed Arch Linux, I can pass a FizzBuzz with flying colors, and I pay a small bit of attention to the latest in crypto fads.
I have literally never heard of Nostr and its Wikipedia URL is a link to GitHub.
Spare me, I beg you.
There have been millions of transactions in nostr
How many billions of dollars settled? By whom? And what transaction sizes?
We don’t know whom. That is the point.
Nostr provides an environment intended to make for small transactions easy and convenient. There have been millions of transactions, though not easy to know how much or how many, since there is no central database. If you going to move a 0.1BTC around, you probably would not do it through nostr. So a gigantic number of transactions, far more than level one bitcoin could ever handle, but probably not a gigantic amount of money.
But whatever it has been, it is big enough to make the enemy afraid.
OK, so we’re slowly (too slowly) getting closer to a workable solution but we’re not there yet. Fine.
You’re saying this like wikipedia is some authority you trust, and the mysterious lack of information is a signal there is no information, rather than curators being interested in supressing signal.
You need to read Wikipedia for what it is not saying, the way Russians read “Pravda”. And what is not saying reveals that the enemy is afraid of Nostr and lightning.
Update the Wikipedia page and let me know if it gets reverted.
You know perfectly well it would get reverted. Which shows the enemy is afraid.
Any sensitive page will be reverted within seconds.
The tagline on nostr.com is “(Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays)”.
I rest my case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU
To get started on nostr, follow the instructions, store your secret key in Keepass and in your nostr browser extension, follow someone like npub15879mltlln6k8jy32k6xvagmtqx3zhsndchcey8gjyectwldk88sq5kv0n, put a small amount of lightning in the wallet in your browser extension, or write some valuable content and people will probably send you some lightning.
The great flaw in nostr is that because of its completely decentralised nature, does not have an algorithm to find relevant content and promote it to the user. This could be, and should be, done at the relay level, but it is not done.
If anyone wants to wast their time confirming the glaringly obvious, stick these getting started instructions on Wikipedia. The enemy is afraid.
Your Youtube link is irrelevant, and long, long, long out of date. Please don’t clog up this blog with worthless link noise.
I have no idea if it will be reverted but I’d like to find out. If you have an account or an IP that isn’t banned from editing go ahead and let’s see what happens.
Doubting it would be insta reverted is absurd and I cannot believe you are honestly doubting it. If you genuinely doubt it, you fix the article and see what happens. Why should anyone else waste their time?
Twitter (or a Twitter clone) is not the right medium for crypto payments. Sorry. And most people do not buy things from or do business with unknown actors online.
Known actors operate under a business name. If they operated under a cryptographically secured pseudonym, as with Nostr, Silk Road, and Bittorent, no normie would notice the difference. For the correct implementation of a Zooko name system, totally unimplemented in Bittorrent, and implemented in a half assed manner in Nostr and Silk Road, see the docs
“Doubting it would be insta reverted is absurd and I cannot believe you are honestly doubting it. If you genuinely doubt it, you fix the article and see what happens. Why should anyone else waste their time?”
It isn’t my project and I didn’t even know it existed and cock.li isn’t permitting new signups right now. It’s just a link. Why wouldn’t they let you change it to the more “official” link?
Oh come on!
You edit the Wikipedia links. Get your own IP address on the white racist terrorist watch list. I cannot believe we are having this argument.
Known actors operate under a business name that can be sued. And if they lose they are forced to pay up. And if they don’t pay up their physical assets are seized and sold off. If I can’t sue you into oblivion if you fuck me over why should I buy your product?
Oh come on! I buy stuff over the internet every day. Buy a lot of scam products. Is anyone suing those people? Usually you cannot find the actual scammer. If he scamming on Amazon, he usually purchased the user name and login of an existing amazon supplier, and thus the original supplier’s reputation and product reviews, and might as well have a cryptographically secured user name. The government could track him through the Amazon.com payment system, but is too corrupt and incompetent to bother. There are lots of blatant scams, for example one terabyte thumbdrives advertised for thirty five dollars. And if you did sue them, would cost several hundred thousand dollars, probably closer to a million these days, and you would get awarded thirty five dollars.
I am reminded of the argument I regularly have about killing adulterous wives and their lovers. Early in Green River killer’s career, he abducted a whore in front of her pimp. The pimp followed his car, lost it, but subsequently found it in front of the killer’s house. He knocked on the door, recognised the man that opened the door, and then, instead of killing him on the spot and searching the house, reported the killer to police. Lazy moron. His whore might well have been still alive though somewhat damaged at that point. Subsequently, one of the killer’s victims escaped with the killer’s driving license, and went to police. Idiot. What did she expect the police to do? We have long been in a condition of anarcho tyranny. No one is going to be unduly troubled by diminished tyranny.
The police are bureaucratically required to go through the motions of suppressing crime, and sometimes, often, these bureaucratic motions result in them sweeping up criminals, but they only do what is bureaucratically required. Anything that requires initiative, they rapidly learn that initiative gets punished as racist and sexist. If you stay out of the way of these bureaucratic patterns, you will not be bothered unless something puts you on their radar as racist and sexist. Such as editing a Wikedpedia link.
I buy stuff over Amazon and if it sucks Amazon will give me a refund no questions asked. Why do people buy from Amazon? There are two reasons: incredibly fast free (as in you’ve already paid) shipping and what amounts to insurance (purchase protection). And if you buy elsewhere than Amazon you can usually do a chargeback no questions asked. Because of this I’m never in any danger of actual loss on any low-ticket consumer item.
But what about any significant purchase or business dealing? Then you start running into the same problems that the banking system runs into (and solves).
Police can suck my dick. I would press the button to disapparate every police department everywhere given the chance.
They solve it by the same mechanisms as the Silk Road solved it. Reputation.
And I cannot believe that all these people selling fake thumbdrives have to refund the money. Ebay and Amazon, like Silk Road, are primarily reputation systems, not enforcement systems. Actual enforcement over the internet would require an extraordinary enforcement system, which would only be used to enforce the state religion, not law abiding behaviour over the internet.
If you buy a fake product over Ebay, you have to go through the dispute resolution mechanism. Which, if your counterparty swiftly vanishes, does not result in your money being refunded. Not familiar with the Amazon dispute resolution mechanism, but there is no shortage of obviously fake products on Amazon, which is widely reputed to be even worse than Ebay. Temu actually does refund your money, and while it often has shoddy products, and knock offs of branded products, does not have entirely fake products. Brand knock offs are sold on Temu with a slight variation of the original brand name, not as the original brand. Temu, unlike Amazon and Ebay, does not have a reputation system. It has, instead, a reputation.
When last I glanced at fakes on Amazon, the number of obvious fake products was such that a policy of no questions asked refunds would not be viable. Possibly they have taken action to clean up their act, or possibly you are confabulating, the way you are confabulating about Wikipedia. Edit the url you say!
Amazon.com sells stuff directly under its own reputation, and I can well believe in no questions asked refunds. It also sells stuff under an Ebay like reputation system, and if you could get a no questions asked refund on these products, the reputation system would redundant, as it would be on Temu.
Possibly the cost of shipping back and forth is outweighed by the 1/n odds the buyer is too lazy to claim his refund. I’ve never had a problem returning on their platform, but the prices have inflated so much it makes more sense to risk dodgy crap elsewhere anyway.
The existence of reputation systems on Ebay and Amazon indicates that the public relies primarily on reputation systems. Temu does not have a reputation system, and has a reputation instead.
I buy stuff directly over the internet from obscure little known companies, without going through Amazon, etc, and reputation works.
I am already operating as if in a purely reputational system with no enforcement, and so are most normies.
I don’t know what you’re buying on Amazon but I buy a few things a month with effectively no due diligence whatsoever and what shows up is always as expected. Fidelis is right about inflated prices but it still often makes sense under $40 or so because the price of shipping is already rolled into Prime items. For instance the other day I bought some food items that I could have bought directly from the store’s website. On Amazon each item’s price was $20 with 2-day “free” shipping as compared to the store’s website’s $15. But shipping on the store’s website was 5-7 days and cost $15 regardless of order quantity. The choice was simple: all hail Beff Jezos.
Bitcoin cannot scale because [*deleted for grotesque ignorance of how Bitcoin, and crypto currency in general, works, and particularly and especially grotesque incomprehension of the scaling problem.*]
That Bitcoin cannot scale to the required size has been known from the beginning, and it has hit its scaling limits long ago. The solution was also proposed long ago: Level two bitcoin, the first of which is lightning, which is right now handling enormously more transaction than bitcoin level one can handle.
A subsequent, partially centralised and rather corporate scaling solution was Liquid, which on the other hand incorporates lots of excellent technology vastly superior to Bitcoin.
A better, more advanced and decentralised solution, the Grail Bridge, is currently under development, though I would not call it fully baked and ready to roll just yet. The grail bridge is a bridge from Bitcoin level one to advanced crypto currencies based on polynomial commits, rather than regular hashes, and snarks, rather than massively duplicated checks against double spending. This technology is scalable to trillions of users and billions of transactions per second.
Lightning is working right now, and handling enormously more transactions than Bitcoin can handle right now, though it is hitting problems because of the scaling problems at level one. The advanced currencies that grail might bridge to are only a gleam in the eye of developers. At present, grail is a bridge to nowhere.
[*Deleted for not attempting to pass the shill test described in the moderation policy*]
Ukraine plans to legalize cryptocurrency by early 2025, aligning with the EU’s MiCA regulations. However, tax exemptions will not be included, and profits will be taxed when converted to fiat currency. This move follows significant crypto adoption in Ukraine, with $106.1 billion in inflows from July 2023 to June 2024, driven by economic instability and war. The draft law, developed with the IMF and National Bank, aims to legitimize the booming crypto sector and support economic rebuilding post-war.
[*deleted for gross disconnection from reality*]
Take the shill test. Your comments will then come through unmolested. Anyone can pass the shill test described in the moderation policy and get white listed, regardless of their political beliefs and what they want to talk about.
There is no censorship on this blog, just spam prevention.
People in the Ukraine are buying Crypto currency because of a high likelihood that they may have to flee the country in their underwear.
[*deleted because no one cares about Jack Dorsey, who is just one more shill of the deep state, and gets no traction*]
Looks like BTC has basically won the L1 game so hard no one is going to replace them until they somehow fuck the network with some update.
Everything pretending to be a currency is going to have all value sucked into BTC, like a star ripped apart as it nears a black hole.
The next stage is scaling and feature set. The L2. I expect the L2 network(s) to function by providing scale while taking some cut to keep the servers running. I expect many many L2s, distributed along a power law, where the small handful of very large networks will own 95+% of the total exchange volume.
The next stage after this is utility beyond swapping BTC between addresses. Currently exchanges are nothing but casinos, it’s pointless. ETH, SOL, XRP, LTC, XMR, etc they’re all useless as anything besides a carrier for increasing BTC exchange bandwidth. What the fuck am I going to want to swap BTC and anything else with, if I’m just going to lose money? It only makes sense if the fees are cheap enough to make it worth my time to use as a medium. Not getting into memecoins, may as well get into speculation on video game currencies, at least I can use the video game money in the virtual world.
So, need to divine what makes the best L2 — is it feature set (privacy, contracts, etc.)? Is it sheer bandwidth? Is it branding and first mover effects? — then either invest or build based on this. I don’t pretend to know what makes the best L2, I can speculate only on the features I want, not the features that the market will end up preferring. Someone else, please, tell me what the market wants here.
Anyway, once L2s mature, then we get proper exchanges. We are going to exchange the wrapped BTC of the L2s and the shares of the L2 networks themselves. I am going to call this L3, as this is a sort of meta feature that depends on L2s existing in a useful and coherent state in order to have any utility.
Now, what I am really interested in, DAOs (SovCorps). The L2s and L3s in their quest to engineer the best protocols are going to be the wet market for the best way to make a coherent and scalable DAO. Everything else far better served by existing structures or too hamstrung by the experimental nature of managing an emergent digital contract system.
Until states capitulate like they have with BTC, DAOs are stuck in extremely abstract digital spaces. Yes in theory you can organize engineers and such and keep the product logistics all in the DAO space, but states like to tax physical things moving around and engineers by and large prefer not to end up like Dredd Pirate Rogers or the poor guys that got years of lawfare thrown at them for making a privacy contract system. There’s just not enough potential energy there to cross the gap where it’s lucrative enough for the risk to be worth it. Not yet.
So the fist DAOs will emerge from L2s, will essentially be the L2s themselves. The second wave of successful and useful DAOs will be the L3 exchanges that emerge once the L2s find some stabiity. The third wave of DAOs, and my confidence on this prediction is low but not so low it isn’t worth mentioning, is going to provide services of these categories:
– social media networks; particularly experimental social media utilizing the latest in “””AI””” aka digested noisy internet information
– Related to above, “””AI””” slop APIs serving everything from cheap midjourney stuff, highly specialized and curated knowledge based LLMs (law, medicine, dogshit classification, you name it)
– Finally, any and all SaaS will eventually become a DAO, as well as most code projects that are currently open source.
In preparation for their entry into the physical world with logistics, design, engineering, actual factories, those more “cloud-native” DAOs will mature and propagate. Physical world is hard, bits are easier, and when you’re dealing with experimental contract ecosystems, you first want to prove it out with the low hanging fruit. Finally, people will start preparing to organize the real deal, and I expect them to emerge in these categories before vertically integrating downward into physical reality and expanding scope.
(Apologies for the incoming shill swarm because BTC mentioned on the sideroll again)
The future belongs to crypto currencies based on recursive snarks.
Recursive snarks (if implemented correctly, as they seldom are) inherently allow sharding the reliable broadcast channel and thus allow unlimited transactions per second. To transition, Bitcoin needs the Grail Bridge, or some equivalent, to allow bitcoins to be moved from the mainchain to such a level two shard or shards, and back again, while the mainchain continues to operate the way it always has, by dangerously centralised proof of work by big miners who are locatable, shutdownable, taxable, regulatable, lawfareable, and censorable.
Recursive snarks also allow a variety of interesting alternatives to proof of work. At present the main alternatives to proof of work that don’t use snarks are “staking”, which in theory sounds like a good idea, but in practice always turns the currency into an unofficially officially regulated bank, and proof of IP address (but the government and Harvard have a large supply of IP addresses) Avalanche consensus appears to be equivalent to Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus, which always seems to result in a centralised currency and an officially unofficial bank, though no end of people have announced clever equivalents which they claim get around this problem. I have heard that one before, though I have not looked into Avalanche to see if they have indeed cleverly got around the problem. So far all very clever consensus mechanisms that are Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant equivalent have wound up quietly slipping in centralisation through the back door.
zk-snarks enable a lot of actually useful alternatives to proof of work, and recursive snarks considerably more and better alternatives. The first such actually useful alternative of which I am aware is Filecoin’s proof of upness, which is based on zk-snarks. Filecoin’s proof is excessively costly, it is a really costly proof of work that also proves upness, but the principle is sound. We can do better, due to recent improvements in zk-snarks, zk-starks and recursive concise proofs of polynomial commits..
Then, in the event the Bitcoin mainchain gets censored the way Ethereum is censored, we fork to a shard that uses a consensus mechanism less subject to centralised authority.
For your L1 you want leaderless asynchronous and something that has not yet been coined into a simple term, that I’ll call “entropy” here to move the discussion along.
Leaderless, because otherwise you can simply break the network by spamming the leaders in sequence.
Asynchronous, because needs to be robust to physical world failures in very bad edge case scenarios.
“Entropy” because you need a consensus history that is not trivially simulated. Proof of work is the only protocol I’ve seen that fulfills this. Does “proof of uptime” require consensus to prove/verify at any step? Could you theoretically forge a false “proof of uptime” for some arbitrary slice of network if an eclipse attack was carried out (splinternet)?
>zks
Yes the winning L2 is undoubtedly going to be the ones to bundle the many features enabled by new tech in the most coherent and market serviceable way. Not sure what this is actually going to look like in practice. Using ZK for scaling comes with privacy by default, in that not sharing data is inherently more scalable than sharing it. A lovely blessing. What’s in question is the flow between user, L2 and L1. Who makes the snark, who proves it, what is it proving, who bundles the proofs, and who proves the bundle? No one really knows, and a lot of very smart people are working on it. Barring sudden collapse, seems foregone that we get ZK based L2, but the actual structure of this ZK L2 protocol I have very little insight on.
To beat spamming, we need a protocol replacement for TCP such that one can have extremely long lived connections, and routinely does have extremely long lived connections, and when the host is under attack, it becomes impossible to form new connections, because every packet from an unfamiliar IP address and port is unceremoniously dropped, and every packet from a familiar address has to have the right key, or is dropped after a very brief decryption.
We also need leaders to potentially appear unpredictably and randomly, as they do in Bitcoin proof of work, so they cannot be spammed in advance. If everything is going well, it is more efficient if the leader is known in advance, but if leaders keep being knocked out, this should devolve into unpredictable and random leadership as in Bitcoin.
L1 needs to prioritize security and physical distribution above everything else. So long as you provide a total ordering and the L2s can stuff their hashes in, bandwidth and latency doesn’t matter much. I want my L1 to survive a nuclear war and several nation state actors attacking at once. BTC doesn’t quite fit the bill, but it’s here to stay, and is far better than everything else out there, so whatever.
Rather have it be so lightweight you can run at least the core light client verification on chips printed out in a garage, and communication capable through old radio parts welded onto a Frankenstein PCB. Again, not BTC, but BTC once more most suits this.
So IP can carry over, but TCP-IP can’t? Just checking.
TCP-IP is excessively vulnerable to distributed denial of service attack. It was designed for a more friendly, trusting, and trustworthy internet.
Oddly, you have been able to mention Bitcoin without the usual horde of scammers and shills promptly spamming this blog.
Could it be that Bitcoin spammers are also run by the FBI or similar? I have not seen them since the FBI director announced his resignation.
The Bitcoin spammers complain about the various grievous faults of Bitcoin, which is true, and that Bitcoin Maxis are rather too keen on existing financial institutions taking a role in Bitcoin, which is also true. And then vilify Bitcoin, Bitcoin Maxis, and Satoshi himself as tools of the deep state, and predict that Bitcoin will go to zero, which is absurd.