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"Run Knots" they say. "Save Bitcoin" they say. "Bitcoin is money" they say.
OK... so are those people saying "Bitcoin is Money" using it as such? My guess is roughly 1/2 of the transactions of late are "monetary" as opposed to 'data carrying' or designed to primarily carry data...
So who is to blame?

"Bitcoin is Money" yes. And that means that all the world's monetary demand can and will outbid a random JPEG right?
Transactors in the US, Europe, Japan, South America etc are competing to get "on chain" right? To spend and use Bitcoin correct?
Well... after those capital gains are paid on every individual coffee, or Nostr Zap, all the merchants know how to "accept Bitcoin", governments agree that "it's money" it is being adopted...
People will then be tripping over themselves to "spend Bitcoin" right?
After all there are no onerous "capital gains" taxes to keep track of for every Cup of Coffee right?
Because the Knots/Core debate is addressing this... -> ???

OH but Core will BLOW OPEN THE SPAM FILTERS! Plebs (who are the "monetary maximalist" people!) will need to upgrade their Storage!!! Gigabytes and Gigabytes!
Except for the fact that op_return is 4x as expensive as Witness, and "more op_return" objectively means smaller blocks... which are easier and cheaper to store...
OK so maybe not.
But the SPAM will 'outbid the MONETARY transactions!!!'
Except for the fact that the going 'fee' is 1 sat/vbyte... and at historical lows.

So RUN KNOTS!!!!!!
Or at least limit the 'spam' in op_return to 40 bytes. THAT will keep the IBD (initial block download) easy and quick PLUS reduce UTXO set growth!!!
Those JPEGS are whats BLOWING UP the UTXO set!!
Except this isn't a JPEG it's 4 lines of json
{ "p": "brc-20", "op": "mint", "tick": "BTCBTC", "amt": "10000000" }
that takes up 58 bytes... that COULD FIT IN A STANDARD OP_RETURN???? (~80 bytes)
OK THEN we'll limit the acceptable minimum fee rate to 1 sat/vbyte! That will SHOW THOSE SPAMMERS blowing up the UTXO set!!!
Except when they (the spammers) consolidate their dust UTXOs at lower fee rates?? Maybe the low fee rates help the spammers consolidate??? πŸ€”
But that's an INSCRIPTION SPAM Transaction!!! The spammers never consolidate their op_return/memecoin/runecoin transactions!!!
Oh.

Well this is about Protecting the Chain!!! We can't have it be used for anything illegal!!! OK well... at least anything illegal in one contiguous op_return!!!
The Jury will OBVIOUSLY understand that this: ("questionable" picture/file/thing that's an "inscription")
Isn't the same as THIS: (short op_return)
or THIS: (LONGER op_return!)
or THIS: (bare multisig/fake public key!)
There's no reason to worry, the government is OUR FRIENDS!
And there's NO WAY these people will get it wrong!!!
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury my client only stored the pornography as discontiguous data disguised as program code!!! My client is innocent of the charges against him/her!!! The data was discontiguous my client is innocent!!!"
After all, since 2009 Bitcoiners have understood that the government is here to help! They NEVER go after people using Bitcoin as money!!!!

In summary, Knots doesn't make any sense to me.
Arbitrary data stored in op_return will reduce the size of blocks, fees are already at historically record lows, the greatest threat to IBD (initial block download) is UTXO-set bloat, largely associated with memecoins which require way less than the 80 bytes already allowed in op_return and widely adopted/relayed...
Every cup of coffee, every 10 cent NOSTR zap that isn't reported for "capital gains taxes" is technically a crime and is illegal... for which the government could prosecute almost anyone should Bitcoin be used "as money."
And if you leave the whole thing up to a jury to differentiate between "arbitrary data" in Witness/Tapscript and "arbitrary data" in op_return simply for running a Bitcoin node...
You and your attorney in court are fucked you are done.
The government can apparently make up, change the rules, issue Executive Orders and target anyone they want at any time for basically anything.
But if Bitcoiners "play by the rules" (whatever those are) and apparently not use Bitcoin as money (most aren't?) then everything will be fine?
Running Knots isn't a solution sorry, it doesn't make any sense to me.
1280 sats \ 8 replies \ @fourrules 18h
Prominent knots advocates are not making these arguments. These are your specially constructed arguments designed as a canvas for your rationalisation. Classic straw manning.
Don't bother trying to bait me into a debate, you can early find the real arguments for knots on Reddit, YouTube, and here on SN if you're engaging in good faith.
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I run Core version 27
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 16h
Smart stacker
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I can't be bothered with updating
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"there are arguments .. somewhere can't link to them, I don't respond to bad faith comments"
LOL
these are exactly the arguments for knots.
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Nobody is arguing that 56b of JSON is the problem here.
There are arguments for knots but this post is polluting the discourse so there's no point in continuing the discussion here by posting links. The good faith discussion is happening elsewhere.
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I honestly, in all sincerity and good faith, haven't read any arguments that are convincing for Knots. I don't like spam and if I could I would wave a magic wand and make it go away.
It is impossible. A much greater concern is the lack of demand for blockspace that in and of itself has to sustain Bitcoin long-term... and mitigate low-value transactions.
[This is not me]
Also
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @fourrules 5h
CSAM is not the same as tax evasion. There is such a concept in law called malum prohibitum and malum in se.
Malum in se refers to actions that are inherently evil or morally wrong in themselves, such as murder or arson, while malum prohibitum describes actions that are illegal only because a law prohibits them, not because they are inherently immoral, like jaywalking or certain regulatory violations. The key difference is whether the wrongful nature of the act is intrinsic and universally understood (malum in se) or created by a specific statute for public policy reasons (malum prohibitum).
Child abuse is bad in itself and everyone knows this, but people don't particularly care about regulatory misdemeanours, so even if the government can go after you (unless the number of people to go after is too high, we're not talking about Al Capone here) they are not going to be able to whip the electorate into a fever of moral indignation because you didn't pay CGT on the bitcoin you used to buy coffee.
But CSAM embedded in the transaction and relayed directly in full by nodes is an entirely different matter. The transaction itself and data storage are the criminal acts, they are not neutral vehicles for potentially criminal activities. Its the difference between passing money from one person to another but inadvertently helping someone to pay someone else to commit murder, and passing a banknote with a message in plain text that the receiver should murder someone.
The illegal and immoral content is on your machine, the medium of exchange is no longer neutral.
56 bites of JSON is simply not the same thing as 56kb of CSAM. Bad people who want to use a medium to transmit 56kb of CSAM will always outbid ordinary transactions, even of far higher value, because propagating that content is intentionally extremely difficult to do.
This is not what this argument is about:
{
"p": "brc-20",
"op": "mint",
"tick": "BTCBTC",
"amt": "10000000"
}
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Why do you care about demand for block space? Bitcoin works great as money on L2. I want L1 as compact as possible on my SSD. But miners will centralize more without fee income? Stratum v2 is to fix that.
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131 sats \ 4 replies \ @DarthCoin 10h
Every cup of coffee, every 10 cent NOSTR zap that isn't reported for "capital gains taxes" is technically a crime and is illegal... for which the government could prosecute almost anyone should Bitcoin be used "as money."
LOL you have no idea what are you talking.
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Why then is there so little on-chain activity?
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Your lack of Bitcoin knowledge is disturbing!
LN is THE payment network of Bitcoin. Onchain is only for final settlement (open/close LN channels).
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I understand that... but shouldn't there regardless be more on-chain activity to manage the Lightning channels?
Do you think the fees will be ~1 sat/vb in 15-20 years?
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Why do you need more onchain activity if you have goid healthy LN channels? Onchain is a free market, anything is possible.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @000w2 10h
You said it yourself...
So who is to blame?
the fact that op_return is 4x as expensive as Witness
But there is no reflection as to why witness data is ΒΌ the price, and whether or not making it so was a mistake.
IMO it clearly was a mistake in hindsight. All the arguing about mempool filters seems to be anger boiling over that there has been no admission that this was a mistake from core devs.
Also, with fees at 0, 16 years in, it's hard to argue we needed the witness discount to increase the block size.
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My understanding is that the 'witness discount' made it cheaper to batch transactions... to include consolidating UTXOs/change or cheaper for exchanges to batch transactions to many different users (which they do all the time).
So it was 'more efficient' to pay to many... or consolidate UTXOs and an improvement from legacy addresses (This is just what I have read I am not an expert).
Also, with fees at 0, 16 years in, it's hard to argue we needed the witness discount to increase the block size.
Block size is a very tricky thing. A few years ago it was "wow we need scaling" now it's common to see a tumbleweed/half empty blocks. I don't understand it honestly.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @000w2 9h
Exactly, it was meant to reduce utxo set bloat by making utxo consolidation cheaper. But I think we can all agree at this point, it has had the complete opposite effect in practice. The net result has been more utxo bloat due to all the jpeg spam.
If blocks were still 1mb (i.e. no witness discount), and the jpegers were paying 4x the cost to fairly compete with monetary transactions, I think a lot of the spam never would have happened.
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39 sats \ 0 replies \ @BITC0IN 17h
knots derangement syndrome
many such cases
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15 sats \ 2 replies \ @anon 17h
OK... so are those people saying "Bitcoin is Money" using it as such?
You realize Lightning exists... right?
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This
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Have to still open Lightning channels. Logically if those channel were being used we would see it and we don't. I haven't found any normies who even know what Lightning is.
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I have paid no attention to this whole Knots vs Core debate that's happening. The thing that concerns me the most is either side claiming that bitcoin will be in danger if this or that side succeeds. Bitcoin is unstoppable. The banks are the ones in danger and probably the ones stoking this debate.
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @fiatbad 6h
The banks are the ones in danger and probably the ones stoking this debate.
Naw, they already accomplished what they wanted during the Blocksize War. Now, they ain't worried a bit.
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What do you mean???
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250 sats \ 4 replies \ @fiatbad 6h
Eh... I said that in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.
Banks/governments are worried about Bitcoin being used as money. But they are not worried about it being "digital gold". If it doesn't threaten their money-printing monopoly, then they don't care.
So, they made sure it would remain "an investment", not a currency. Roger Ver attempts to lay it all out in his book here:
But his book is full of misunderstandings, conjectures, non sequiturs, and conspiracy theories. I don't think he even knows exactly how Bitcoin was "hijacked". But I agree with him that it probably was....
I just can't put my finger on how. But I can see the signs that it did happen:
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 1h
Conspiracy theories from Ver aren't required to explain this phenomenon.
Welcome to "mass adoption".
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatbad 6m
Eh.... I hang out with a ton of intelligent "Bitcoiners" who really understand this from a multidisciplinary vantage point. They are Bitcoiners.
They are usually the first ones to tell me,
  • "Store of value comes first, medium of exchanges will come much later."
  • "Spend the weak currency first, hold the hard money."
  • "I don't want to have to pay a capital gains tax every time I buy a cup of coffee!"
At meetups/conferences, their conversation centers around fiat-minded macro-economics and fiat price catalysts for Bitcoin. Few are interested in building new Bitcoin circular economies or escaping the fiat system in a meaningful way.
Even here on SN, my rants about this topic are usually viewed as annoying and whiny.
Where are the Bitcoiners?
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Out here spending... wondering where the hell is everyone???
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Lighting actually works... really well. I don't know why more people aren't using it, and using it transactionally in lots of places.
I have bought burgers and shakes, some wine, books, a gift card... stuff like that and everything was instantaneous and cheap.
Meanwhile the mempool is full of... 1 sat/vbyte apathy. I don't get it. If it's 'so great' and 'such money' 'so powerful' then...
People should be tripping over themselves to spend it and use it right?
I don't know where Ver gets his "transactions are too expensive, too slow" explanation. Blockchains don't scale and so layering is required which is what lightning does.
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"The banks are in danger..." Bitcoin is an improvement on money. It is an improvement if people know about it, have a reasonable understanding of how to use it and then go use it.
IMO Bitcoin's challenges are educational, cultural, and behavioral not whether we have one autist's filters or another.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @senf 15h
every 10 cent NOSTR zap that isn't reported for "capital gains taxes" is technically a crime and is illegal...
The IRS allows you to round to the nearest dollar, so that can round down to $0.
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How wonderful. So i can zap 1.49$ in sats and round down to 1$/900 sats.
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Bitcoin doesn't make sense to you.
You haven't shown any screenshot, source code, documentation of Bitcoin Knots.
Don't you conflate Bitcoin Knots with Bitcoin?
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God bless you I wish you the best. But you guys will end up forking the chain... intentionally or otherwise. And I honestly hope it works out in the end.
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Thank you and God bless you too. There is the link to Bitcoin Knots: https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/releases/tag/v29.1.knots20250903
Give it a try and let us know what you think.
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Core vs knot I think both have advantages in their own way....
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