Subtitle: I am more worried about privacy than crypto crime.
Molly White is notoriously not a fan of crypto or Bitcoin (and like most nocoiners, uses the former term). I've always found her a compelling writer and thinker regardless of where my opinions differ from hers. In many ways, this long essay is the mirror of this post from @siggy47, but instead of a Bitcoin advocate like Lyn bemoaning the lack of privacy urgency, it's a BTC critic the same issue on her "side" of things. It's a good, deep essay (complete with twelve footnotes and some references). Here's her intro:
Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers and operators of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixing service, has been sentenced to 64 months (over five years) in prison in the Netherlands. The service he helped to create enabled criminals to launder billions of dollars in illicit funds connected to massive hacks perpetrated by sophisticated cybercrime groups, ransomware operations that have decimated businesses, and pig butchering schemes that have ruined people. As someone who rails against the abuses by the cryptocurrency industry, why then am I so worried about his conviction, and about the parallel case in the United States against two Tornado Cash co-founders?
Some who know me as a cryptocurrency critic may find these opinions surprising coming from me. But if you are surprised, I have failed. And I think I have, because I think some of you will be.
I run a Lightning node, it went offline while I was away for 24h. "Lost" 20.000.000 sats of inbound liquidity ( 4 channels closed on me)
AMA so I can vent.
k00b in 2021:
https://m.stacker.news/35744
Respect!
Started a 21-day challenge in which I aimed to learn something new about Bitcoin or interact with its ecosystem every day. I would also record my progress on Stacker News.
Day 5 - Created a discussion post on Stacker News and was surprised to receive 1800+ sats. Never expected for it to garner so much attention. Decided to withdraw 1000 sats to my wallet and spend the rest on zapping others, since I kinda feel rich!
When making grand claims about European providerism, and putting citation numbers, i was expecting some literature to support these claims. But no.
The author seems to base his impressions of Europe on some past experience where he was living in a closed little bubble. Many of my European friends work for promising start ups, incidentally leveraging the field the author seems to know so much about, namely machine learning. Based on my little bubble experience, Europe is leading the way on many technological fronts.
Bringing us back to the need for objective studies to support grand claims~~
Love this one.
Current state of tech is enough to support so much adoption that hasn't happened yet. I wish more energy was put into leveraging what we have tech-wise to increase usage instead of going crazy with expanding the base layer.
I have thought about how to do atomic payments to multiple parties at once over Lightning so much... thanks for laying out the problem space like this and theorizing a potential way Bolt12 could help do it. It's a really interesting idea.
What I struggle with when it comes to all these approaches is -- and this is coming from the perspective that the reason we need atomic split payments is so there is no custodial element when trying to pay multiple recipients simultaneously -- every participant still needs a stable, funded Lightning node for the payment to work at all. I think right now it is still way too difficult for most people to run their own node. And until that hurdle is cleared, non-custodial split payments don't gain most end users very much if those payments are ending up on a node they don't control anyway.
I'll have to read more into the blinded paths pattern in Bolt12. If anything it could serve as a good enough solution in the near future while nodes become easier to run over the longer term.
No, Bitcoin's success is not inevitable.
But --more importantly-- imagine if it WERE inevitable. Well, then: things will go pretty well for us! There's no point in discussing anything on Stacker News. We've already won. Nothing can screw us up, apparently. So just kick back and relax! In particular, you should kick back and relax, and NOT worry about the naysayers who think that Bitcoin's success is in jeopardy. ... Therefore, whether you think Bitcoin's success is inevitable or not, you should behave as though it isn't. Or you should just kind of do nothing, or go for a walk. Or take up the violin.
Humans are prone to overconfidence. Consider the famous Fall of Rome and also the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic. Personally, my favorite example is Star Wars Episode 1 -- if you watch behind-the-scenes footage, you see that people are afraid to contradict the great George Lucas, even though his ideas are terrible. During 2017 I noticed the same thing, particularly with taproot and Bech32 which were absolutely horrendous ideas that everyone in the community was terrified of speaking out against.
I am also fan of documentaries where people accidentally find themselves in cults, such as "behind the curve" which is about flat-earthers. They sincerely believe that flat earth will be taught alongside globe earth "any day now".
I can give you some hard examples, in fact, of the success faltering. One is the Lightning Network itself, which has become a sacred cow. It is possible to improve the LN over time, but only if experts are allowed to discuss problems -- so that we can work together to solve them. But that is exactly what is not happening (in my opinion). The brave souls working on LN have tried to discuss the "limitations" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjFjK-f9ts0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnG5H62I7Ko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCWTTY1eDoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EocWax43QgQ . I have many LN dev friends who complain to me in private how difficult it is to accomplish this very task -- believe me or not as you will. One is an ultra-famous LN dev who actually was disinvited from a Bitcoin conference because he wanted to speak "honestly" about LN. This is debt that must be repaid with interest.
The best way to ensure Bitcoin's success is --sorry to say-- my own idea of Bip300. If the underlying blockchain software can compete fairly --without the stigma of a new coin; nor the need to traverse the political L1 dev "process"-- then we would see more innovation and less politics. Devs would compete for users. We would have had BIP 118 and 119 on a drivechain many years ago, probably 2019 at least. Which would mean eltoo and ARK would probably already be in widespread use today. In fact we would probably already be moving on to the next thing. Instead, we have to wait for the bikeshedding around covenants to stop -- that is probably 3 years away. Big mistake, and all for no benefit.
A new subdomain for SNL guys...
https://zap.stream/p/npub1hedhcq93v5c226w8gfece5lxkf6zldvrgygw9ppmyq3msggvl6rst8kmxw
As a reminder to folks, here you can change your default tip: https://stacker.news/settings
22,000 sats in 30 mins for this post, very much deserved. I love seeing stuff like this.
Does this mean we can't ask "wen stratum v2?" anymore?
Waiting for the mastermind @Undisciplined to post about it.
https://fountain.fm/episode/yUcHYrQqR5ovs66xIrsM
"lets ride surplus robot war dogs up aztec pyramids with grandma this weekend!"
Day 84 of snailposting everyday 'til BTC hits $100k.
__@_'-'
Indeed. Great to see a bitcoin only VC (Ten31) lead the round.
How long did you know about the Lightning network before you took the plunge? Did you re-purpose an old computer, or did you buy a dedicated piece of hardware (Rasberry Pi, etc)?
The fact that it can be extended with new functionality, like lightning tipping, badges, realtime ephemeral chat, typing notifications, likes/reactions. retweets, etc. there are all different note types on the network. There is so much yet to explore in terms of what nostr could do for the decentralized web.
@pillar with the Operation Saylor Episode series
Get something graphene OS compatible
https://grapheneos.org/releases
Get F-droid
https://f-droid.org/packages/
Learn how to install .apk files from the releases page of github repos
https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium/releases/tag/v0.13.8-beta -> Update from releases page
Video about F-droid to get you hyped about it lel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FfWz1NRQJQ
We only have the experimental ad to give people more sats. We aren't profiting from it. We aren't doing it to sell you. We are doing it to pay you.
My express goal with ads is for them to benefit stackers. I'm not interested in running a product that funds itself with ads and I'm in control and that's not changing anytime soon. I'd rather shut SN down than sacrifice stackers in any way, especially sacrificing them for advertisers.
Two years ago today I posted my bio with a puzzle that lead to an ln.cash link. @frostdragon solved it and they got a 10,000k sats reward!
El Salvador is going to see an army of Bitcoin-literate kids enter the economy in a few more years.
Great to see.
My nocoiner friends asking if I'm rich.
Started a 21-day challenge in which I aimed to learn something new about Bitcoin or interact with its ecosystem every day. I would also record my progress on Stacker News.
Day 9 - Gathered various suggestions on how parents can raise BTC-proud children. One idea about having BTC stickers all over the place stuck in my mind. Then I had a brainwave. WhatsApp just introduced a feature in which we could leverage AI to create stickers in our chats. Why don’t I create some BTC stickers to naturally assimilate into the Bitcoin Standard?
https://i.ibb.co/M2dN42X/Screenshot-20221024-164217.jpg
Critical thinking and the ability to have a measured / considered debate.
More. Of. This. Please.
This is the true spirit of the bitcoin community.
We need critical thinking and opposing viewpoints. The echo chamber is real. The blind spots are real.
Guys - bitcoin is going to face off against **The Most Powerful Government / Military In The World ™ **. That’s unprecedented. That’s not going to be pretty.
AND
As bitcoin is adopted, hacking is going to be increasingly incentivized. If everyone has a hot wallet, then a successful hack or phish is an instant irreversible monetary reward. That’s unprecedented. That’s not going to be pretty.
If bitcoin wins, it’s not going to go well for A LOT OF PEOPLE.
There’s serious potential if not certainty for mass social unrest.
It’s possible to be a bitcoin sheep. Don’t be.
Stacker News and Nostr complement each other beautifully.
While Nostr has the quick wits, opinions, pictures, hints of boobs or deep thoughts from people around the world, Stacker News has the value sorted recent events and news creating a base for "current knowledge worth knowing". Even better, the knowledge is "peer-criticized" in the comments. The combination of the two then creates a virtuous cycle with clearly aligned incentives.
From Nostr posts you may find interesting links worth posting on SN and from SN posts you may gain the knowledge to show off your smarts on Nostr. In both directions you get paid for doing the "desirable", you get to voluntarily pay for things you like and you are forced to pay for doing things that are "undesirable".
Isn't this beautiful?
(also posted on nostr)