110 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 20h \ parent \ on: Chase Oliver, the new US Libertarian Presidential candidate libertarian
Although ideologically I align very much with Libertarians, I find that they are afflicted with "should" instead of "does".
Meaning, they get wound up in viewing the world as it "should be" and ignore the reality of how the world really is.....this causes them to basically waste their life supporting people like this....
Donald Trump is an ego-maniac clown....and yes he loves low interest from federal reserve....however he (a) is generally antiwar, (b) is pro-bitcoin, (c) and isn't using rhetoric that targets me.....thus that triangulates to my probable support.
I'm also interested in lots of things RFK says and I haven't written him off yet. There are just a few things of trust I have with him that I can't quite articulate or pin down. But in theory he says many things that I agree with (except his climate change stuff).
So as someone who is not familiar with exactly how pools operate: Do you get a "little something extra" when its your miner that finds the block? Or do you still just get your pro-rata share of hashrate?
I'm not sure I buy the premise. What does "we need to fund devs" actually mean?
I mean, aren't most devs already working for large Bitcoin companies? Do we do that for anything else? Do we specifically try to write blank checks to fund "HTTP devs"?
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, how would that even work? An ETF writes a check monthly to github committers? How? Pro-rata based on Lines of Code?
Or does it mean that all devs would work for same company and ETF pays them?
"Funding devs" sounds like a nice thing to say/do, but I think most people who say it don't actually ponder the specifics for more than 10 secs to see its fraught with uncertainty.
I'm not sure how compatible both of those goals are.
Yeah, same. I think trying to introduce any privacy features on L1 is a mistake. Monero has the classic problem: confidential transactions + confidential balances means that its hard/impossible to audit supply. This rules out Monero from ever being considered for multi-decade storage.
The best outcome is to improve privacy on L2 - whether thats LN or something else - and keep L1 as is regarding privacy/transparency.
As an aside, using something like AQUA allows you to break chain analysis, since you can peg-in to Liquid from BTC, then pay a LN invoice from Liquid, so its very difficult to associate the flows.
Pretty good article.
Summary:
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Saylor is not a fan of providing unlimited, "blank check" funding. Rather wants specific, per issue funding.
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Saylor highlights that Privacy vs Transparency are intertwined and too much privacy would negatively impact its market cap since it would cause less transparency
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Saylor may be tied to intelligence community and may be interested in adding Bitcoin Analytic features to his existing BI software.
I actually agree with his points on 1 and 2. I know that "funding devs" is a feel good thing to support, but it can be a slippery slope. If you start funding devs, he who writes the check will be able to influence development.
More functionality allows for more scams to infest the system and if people get rugged by malicious addresses (i.e. addresses could look fine, you even can spend from them but one day, boom, money is gone because some script path was activated)
I think you instinct is correct and this is exactly one of the reasons I argue against most proposals: Covenants, et al will just turn into shitcoin factories in ways that we can't see right now
Further, these will also exacerbate scaling issues.
I think calling Bitcoin scaling problems hypothetical is living in denial of reality.
Well....right now 10 sat/vb transactions are clearing. What "scaling" issues actually exist at this moment? Is LN not usable for small transactions?
You may be saying "yes, its fine at the moment, but how can we onboard the world onchain". And yes that would be correct but it technically is a hypothetical problem.
I'm not sure (a) the world will arrive en masse and/or (b) that they will demand to be on-chain.
I think the likely state of on-boarding the next 3B users will be: Fiat -> CEX (SQL Database) -> LN. In which case I think we already have that covered?
I started doing yoga in 2010 (Bikram). For many years I went 5 times per week. Since 2020 I no longer go to a class, but do yoga in my house 3 times per week.
I can say the following: The newbie thinks about yoga as "stretching" (I'm not meaning that insulting to you, I thought that for 5 or 6 years). In reality, the best way to conceptualize yoga is "compression". You are not "stretching your hamstrings"....you are "compressing your stomach / intestines"
I had a good yoga teacher who was unconventional and taught me lots of things. One of the things he would frequently dwell on is that your body, muscles, and organs are sponges. By doing yoga you are wringing out the blood from those sponges and allowing them to fill with fresh blood.
Imagine I gave you a dirty dish rag and said: The rules are you must clean this rag, but can only use the rag itself to clean it....no external equipment. Well, the simplest way would be to fill the rag with water/soap and then "wring it out". That is what you are doing to your organs with yoga.
Fun fact: Bikram (who was unfortunately #metooed) was a carnivore. This used to shock and dismay much of his upscale vegan suburban wife clients. He used to say: "Eat like a cow, look like a cow. Eat like a Tiger, look like a Tiger"
Yes, at the time I knew him I was a "lapsed" catholic.
Since that time I've re-read the bible a few times. Turns out Jesus was baptized by John The Baptist in the Jordan River.
The strange history is that he was born a Muslim, who converted to Christianity when he met his wife (she was Lebanese). During his conversion he started studying Christianity / Rome / etc. This led him becoming fascinated with authentic pizza....
what do you think are the odds that a great (complementary) scaling solution is hiding in plain sight.
Its something I think about often. I do think - if severely pressed with no hope of a soft-fork - someone would come up with some novel way to scale BTC with the already provided OPCODEs.
Controversial Hot Take:
I think a deeper truth is that scaling doesn't really matter and we can probably make do as is for a long long time.
Simple fact is: People don't want to spend their Bitcoin. You can see this again and again....there was just a "El Salvador Report" on front page where it was mentioned that most of the shops that had "we take bitcoin" signs have now stopped taking it.
This is not because of some technical problem with Bitcoin...certainly not a scaling issue....its because there is no demand for it. If there were people lined up out the door trying to buy BigMacs with BTC, they would accept it....but there isn't.
Greshams Law is a real thing. People would prefer to spend their shitcoins (USD) and hold onto their gold (BTC).
Probably is true. In a related note....a former neighbor of mine was from Jordan. We became sociable and would have occasional BBQs etc.
One day his wife was complaining that her sewing machine was broken. It just so happen that a few weeks earlier I saw a sign in town advertising "sewing machine repair" (it stuck in my mind since its sort of a niche shop to have).
I mentioned this to her and he was blown away. He mentioned that only in America could you find such specialization. In Jordan, you could find some handyman that might be able to fix it, but no one would go to the lengths to specialize in something as narrow as "sewing machine repair".
Bitcoin won't fix the moral system through its incentive structure as some claim
Technically I agree with you. BTC, in of itself, is not a magic bullet.
HOWEVER, lots and lots of immorality stems directly from the fiat system - specifically because of its fiat nature.
Lets take OnlyFans girls since you mention Breedlove. Obviously its just a form of prostitution and counter to most "strong women" claims, I don't think any woman really wants to whore herself out -- whether or not its just online.
They are doing that primarily because of the broken economy, lack of meaningful opportunities, and inability to be in a committed single-earner marriage (ie. man works, woman stays home).
Humans have a tremendous capacity for self-delusion and rationalization....and whether they consciously realize it or not...I'm willing to bet most cam girls wouldn't do it if they could live a upper-middle class lifestyle as a homemaker.
Americans very strongly believe they are what they do
It seems to me that is fairly universal? I mean I get it that you could point to some tribe in the jungle to disprove it, but I mean among world economies it seems like a universal concept.
Does an italian surgeon not view his life thru that same lens? A russian banker? A japanese nuclear scientist?
Yes, case in point: My kids.
They were raised using Macs / iPads. My oldest is now in college and I gave him my "old" laptop (2019 era) to take with him. I told him he could reformat to Windows if he wanted or just try Linux since it was already configured.
He's never used Linux before and has been using for the past year, completing online assignments for school, etc. He was using Chrome anyway on the family Mac, so from his perspective there has been little change....
In fact I think the change to Windows would've been a more jarring change than to Gnome/Linux.
From 1994 until 2004 I exclusively used Linux. In 2004 I transitioned to Mac for my desktop (keeping linux on servers) due to its superior UI/UX.
In 2015, I saw the writing on the wall, Mac was becoming increasingly difficult to use. More and more aspects were being "locked down". Simultaneously I could see that Linux was reaching a parity of sorts in UI/UX.
For the last 10 years I've been happily back on Linux (Fedora), and I actually do think we are reaching the point where Linux could become a mainstream option for many. These days, 90% of "apps" are web-based, thus most people really only need a stable base OS and then use a complaint standards browser for 90% of task.