Jon Atack returns to the Bitcoin Infinity Show for his second appearance to talk through the Bitcoin Core governance questions raised by Hodlonaut's Capture article series, and why he believes Core's instinct to circle the wagons and shoot the messenger has hurt its public image more than any outside misinformation. He gives his neutral read on the contested BIP-110 soft fork, the renewed pushes to ban Luke Dashjr, the flood of AI-generated BIP spam, and the growing centralization of Core maintainership, arguing that healthy alternative implementations and honest self-custody are what actually strengthen Bitcoin. The conversation closes with a grounded look at living on a Bitcoin standard in El Salvador, from the state of exception to the hardcore ramp-up in KYC and surveillance.
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I just got around to listening to this:
As usual, I find that I like Atack. He is articulate and seems to be humble, the latter being a particularly valuable quality in a person.
This episode is split into two different interviews because of some time constraints on Svanholm's side which broke it up a little, but they still have quite an interesting conversation.
The points I found most interesting were that Atack seems to be considering contributing to an alternate implementation (here's hoping for libbitcoin or hornet node -- I was surprised he mentioned Bitcoin Commons, given the difficulties he describes the BIP repo having with slop. My impression of the Commons project is that it is entirely slop).
Atack covers many of the same points he addressed in his previous interview on the Bitcoin Infinity Show, and there's not too much new ground covered on the filter debate. Atack makes a good point that the argument for and against BIP 110 has many emotional elements and pursuing it only from technical points will inevitably fail to bring everyone along.
I also appreciated Atack's concern about the increase in kyc. At one point he says that he feels like age verification is an attempt to bring back the controls that we saw during covid. I really do agree with this: it feels like the leaders of most western democracies are intent on getting back to the population wide control they exerted during the pandemic. It's very concerning.
This interview probably could have been more concise, but I still found it worth the time.
🔗 Privacy-friendly: https://invidious.f5.si/watch?v=OJh8aJCAWBc