KariMullinsBBU

bitcoin

Let's hear all your best fun facts, any topic counts!

The best comment as voted by the "top" filter at 9am CT tomorrow gets 10,000 sats.

If you missed our last edition, [here](https://stacker.news/items/276102) are lots of fun facts stackers shared.

Send your best 👇


Fun Fact Friday - Best Fun Fact Gets 10,000 Sats

The Samourai thing has stirred up a lot of attention, so maybe this is a good time to ask something I've been wondering about: is there a a writeup (or set of them) that talks about who knows what you're doing on the internet, in a sophisticated way?

For instance: imagine that the govt really goes bonkers and decides that running a node is illegal.  My ISP surely knows that I run a node, because the traffic patterns of node-running must look very different from other traffic patterns -- the number of incoming connections, the nature and quantity of data propagation, etc.

But what about the rest of the ecosystem?  How does my behavior through my various activities propagate?  Who knows what?  I have a general, uncomfortable feeling that everyone knows everything, in the general if not in the particular -- if I run TOR, non-exit nodes might not know the particular, but they know I'm using TOR, and that itself is a massive signal.

Whenever i see stuff like this talked about it's always very basic.  Is there a source where they explore it in more detail?

Is there a good overview of who on the internet knows what?

Personal_Finance

Visualizing/ranking bitcoin core contributors

AlisonFlemingTBZ

This right here is exactly the thing that social media could be but hasn't figured out how to be, at scale: finding connection, sharing stuff that matters, finding a tribe or founding a tribe, having encounters with people around the world that can mean something.

Hopefully you're proud of the role you're playing in building that.  It's important.

charts

🏆 Top Builder: Final Round Teams Announced

SylviaPughH6Z

There were multiple reasons for us to decide to leave Ethereum.

We were frustrated with the community and the fact that everyone felt the need to create their own token. Not to mention that the jenga tower and the architecture of smart contracts creates a huge attack surface. 

At the same time that this was happening, DLCs were becoming more mature, which meant it was finally possible to create financial contracts directly on Bitcoin. No shitcoins, no tokens, no BS. 

So we asked ourselves, what's going to be around in 20 to 30 years? Ethereum, maybe, maybe not. But Bitcoin definitely is, and we want to build infrastructure for the long term. 

Since then, we've gone Bitcoin-only, and have never looked back. 

We also wrote a blog post regarding this: https://atomic.finance/blog/an-atomic-pivot/

science

Using LNsploit to Steal from LND nodes

HollyNicholsonI65

> A satoshi is the smallest unit for bitcoin, but lightning can transact with even smaller units while channels are open. The amount is rounded down to the nearest satoshi when the channel is closed and broadcast to the blockchain to adhere to bitcoins limit.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/69704

Is Anybody Watching The Same TV Shows Anymore ?

GilbertVargasFEX

The Network State by Balaji is on tap for me this weekend

culture

Weekend Book Recommendations

AnaMichaelWIW

Seems like a very slow day in the Saloon. 
Maybe its time to assemble the Avengers.
https://imgprxy.stacker.news/Kj7Nws332B1wXlwgJ8VrBbhv5jt7SjkDf9MyeyazCXU/rs:fit:600:500:0/g:no/aHR0cHM6Ly9pLmliYi5jby9RUFJNSlgzL256bWsxNW5vaHM1NTEuanBn

Thoughts On The Bitcoin Beginners Territory

KathyGilesSCO

I found out a friend of mine died in a car accident yesterday. Feels bad man. Something something time preference. Hug your loved ones people. 

(The third post in the meta-experiment series of the Broken Money book club, part 5.  Check out the [second](https://stacker.news/items/334042).)

People talk a lot about btc's network effect; but imo, they don't talk enough about what network effects are built out of.  Do network effects accrue by magic, or as a law of nature?

> “Monies tend to have network effects based on salability. The more liquid, widely held, and widely accepted a certain type of money is, the more useful that money becomes to each user, and thus more people want to hold it and accept it. All else being equal, the more conversion points between bitcoin and goods, bitcoin and services, and bitcoin and currencies there are globally, the healthier the Bitcoin network is.” (p. 330)

Here, Lyn's proposing that a money's network effects accrue as a function of what you can do with it -- the kinds of things you can [ground](https://stacker.news/items/274204/r/elvismercury) it in, to use philosophical language.  So what's grounding btc's network effects?

The principal ground, from a price perspective, are the places where you can exchange btc for fiat.  Coinbase gets a ton of hate, but Brian Armstrong [claims](https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1686596515765362688) to have onboarded more people to btc than anyone else, and I expect he's right.  You don't have to like it, but if you bought btc at any point in the last, I dunno, ten years, then you should probably care a lot about having abundant fiat on and off-ramps.  Exchanges are a centralized and fragile type of grounding, but Brian Armstrong is still your huckleberry.

Another expansive source of grounding would be a circular economy, where btc is grounded in all the stuff you can buy with it directly.  The most developed (or perhaps only?) example of this is probably [Bitcoin Beach](https://www.bitcoinbeach.com/)  (EDIT: recent [SN post](https://stacker.news/items/335077) by @TNStacker links to a timely update on BB.).  I'm not sure how circular this economy actually is, as I assume that even in the best case the inhabitants of El Zonte need to buy goods from outside the btc economic zone, at which point they're converting into fiat again.  

This, to me, seems a major issue.  A person in El Zonte who has to spend most of his money buying physical goods from people who don't accept btc has limited ability to absorb btc capacity -- to provide a 'conversion point' for btc into things that people want to buy, as Lyn would say.  

Tie flip side of that issue is an opportunity.  People who already have functional levels of fiat could absorb a lot of excess btc capacity by discounting prices for their services when payment is rendered in btc.  I described [a version of this](https://stacker.news/items/209706/r/elvismercury) a while ago.  White-color workers whose inputs and outputs are informational would be the best candidates.  In this case, btc would be grounded in the the kinds of things an information worker could provide.

Are there are other non-exchange "conversion points" that could be low-hanging fruit to bootstrap btc's network effects?  How could we increase btc's resilience and decentralization by grounding it in more things?