Alright, let's do this. I'm (der)Gigi. AMA - Ask Me Anything! \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Alright, let's do this. I'm (der)Gigi. AMA - Ask Me Anything!

100.5k sats \ 21 boost \ 76 comments \ @dergigi 24 Oct 2021 bitcoin

Yo! What's up everyone! Love the platform that @k00b has built, and some people were asking me to do an AMA on Stacker News, so here we are.

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35 sats \ 1 reply \ @anonporridge 24 Oct 2021

What's your best argument for why bitcoin WILL fail?

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

To quote the Friar: "It will succeed because it must."

Failure is not an option, because the alternative is the Chinese model of totalitarian control and surveillance. That being said, there are always unknown unknowns so nothing is ever 100% certain.

My biggest concern is that Bitcoin will be co-opted just like the internet was. This is why education is so important. Run your own node. Hold your own keys. Be self-sovereign. Take responsibility. Educate others.

24 sats \ 2 replies \ @02fbb304fe 24 Oct 2021 freebie

You're about to fight all four Teletubbies at once. What's the best strategy?

Big fan of your, BTW.

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Great question.

I'll throw Dipsy head-first into Tinky Winky, aiming for the heart. The spear on Dipsy's head will hopefully take out the purple motherfucker, which is important, since Tinky Winky is the biggest one.

I think I can take out Laa-Laa in a 1on1, but I'll have to be quick since Po is still around. Once Laa-Laa is down, I'll disable Po by pulling his head back and sticking his two feet through his ring on the top. He won't be able to bother me anymore once he's a sad little pretzel.

If Dipsy is still able to move after the initial throw, I'll Liu-Kang his ass with a solid flying kick, and that should be the end of it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @02fbb304fe 29 Oct 2021 freebie

That would work. Thanks Gigi and stay awesome!

23 sats \ 1 reply \ @OnyynMuk 24 Oct 2021

How should we be thinking about projects like Stacks and things built on it - do you buy into L2/3/X tokens secured by Bitcoin, or just keep stacking sats underneath them?

4 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

I think one has to differentiate between higher layers and tokens that might exist on these layers.

I believe that most things do not require a new monetary unit, i.e. most things can be built with sats (or millisats) as your base.

The problem with doing other assets "on a blockchain" is that you can't enforce it. Bitcoin can only do enforcement in the world of sats, and this enforcement is absolute. If you tokenize a house or a stock certificate and the house burns down or the company goes bankrupt, the information system - doesn't matter if it's a "block chain" or a higher layer - can not know about it without human input, i.e. an Oracle. Oracles are central points of failure and always will be.

People will issue and use Liquid assets and other such things, no doubt about it. Mainly because it reduces friction and offers an interoperable and open standard, I think. However, I think it's mostly noise.

The real innovation is a new monetary asset - sats - that exist in this weird close-loop system called Bitcoin. I'm stacking that, nothing else.

That being said, higher layers such as Lightning or what the guys over at Impervious AI are building is super exciting.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @snow 24 Oct 2021

What is a contrarian view you hold on the market outlook from now until the next halving?

Likewise for technological developments during this time period.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Contrarian depends on the crowd. I don't think we'll have a supercycle before 2029, for example. That's contrarian for the supercycle crowd.

I also think that we could go to $1M per coin this cycle with an insanely stupid blow-off top.

In general, my view in price aligns with Hass McCook's: the Auto-DCA army sets the floor. It's the "religious" folks that will buy at any price.

35 sats \ 3 replies \ @nout 24 Oct 2021

What are your favorite books? Which ones would you recommend to others? Danke.

13 sats \ 2 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

I have a list of bitcoin-related books that I update from time to time.

Outside of Bitcoin, I think my first "favorite" book was Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. It's very hard to pick favorites. I've read hundreds of books and liked most of them, since I try to be picky in what I read. I read mostly non-fiction.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman is close to my heart. As is GEB by Hofstadter. I have fond memories of Ender's Game and Flowers for Algernon. Many books changed my few on things profoundly. Pirsig's work, for example. And Peterson of course.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Oh, and in terms of recommendations: I would recommend to fall in love with reading.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @nout 24 Oct 2021

Sweet! I had the same first favorite book - Feynman was so inspiring, wholesome and eye opening. I'll check the other ones too and I'll update my to-read list :)

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 24 Oct 2021

Since now you have seen how much money can be earned on Stacker News, are you going to quit any other jobs and be a fulltime Stacker News AMA boss? :)

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

Ha! I'll consider it! :D

13 sats \ 1 reply \ @anonporridge 24 Oct 2021

Do you think sidechains via BIP 300 is an important development for bitcoin?

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

Depends on what you mean by "important." I think Bitcoin is pretty much fine as it is and will be insanely important just by virtue of staying alive and growing.

I think BIP 300 is a neat idea, but I don't think that we need to "crush the alts" since they'll crush themselves given enough time. How to do experimentation on bitcoin and bring new features into bitcoin is an interesting problem. I'm not sure if what Paul proposes is the ultimate solution or not, mostly because I didn't spend enough time yet to make up my mind.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @jack 26 Oct 2021

In your opinion what are the best three crypto mobile apps?

12 sats \ 1 reply \ @MiningHope 24 Oct 2021 freebie

When and how did you start writing for an audience? How do you recommend to get started?

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

I wrote something about memes and politics in 2017. My first "real" writing was in 2018 on Bitcoin's Energy Consumption.

In regards to getting started: there is no secret. Just start. You will get better over time. The hardest thing is being disciplined. Sit down and write every day. It's hard, and it's a long process, at least for me.

But: I would highly recommend it. Nothing will sharpen your thinking, your arguments, and your understanding like writing does. I assume it is because you really have to think things through.

Want to write? Start. Now.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @MajorMajor 27 Oct 2021 freebie

Hey GigiDer, first of all thank you for sharing your knowledge and passion you have made a huge impact on my life! My question is in regard to the "conspiracy theory" that Bitcoin was created in a similar way that the Tor project came to be. People in positions of power realised that the current system is going to fall and they wanted to create an alternative which could grow organically for other individuals, companies and nations to eventually adopt freely over time. Hypothetically if the US created Bitcoin (of course it would be a small group of insiders only) and mined the first blocks (Satoshis bitcoin) then let it grow organically. Now when the world becomes hyperbitcoinised they can just come out and say: "Hey we have access to these keys", and thus would once again be the most powerful nation in the world. The world would once again be on a sound money standard and the global power structure would "stay the same". This is of course a very superficial summary of the main idea but I suppose you understand what I'm getting at. What is your opinion of this hypothesis?

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @MajorMajor 27 Oct 2021 freebie

Just wanted to try out login with lightning, this is freaking amazing!

24 sats \ 0 replies \ @jimmysong 25 Oct 2021 freebie

This is fun. What would happen to your accounts if you ever had the misfortune of being doxxed?

16 sats \ 7 replies \ @MichaelRihani 24 Oct 2021 freebie

If you could wave a wand and magically have one new, consumer facing bitcoin feature/product/service, what would it be?

114 sats \ 2 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Small magic wand: A non-custodial wallet that has native NFC support for all popular payment terminals of the world and works on all smartphones. Go to any store, tap your phone on the payment thingy, done. (You paid in sats on lightning, obviously.)

Big magic wand: A platform like WeChat, but bitcoin-native and respecting your privacy. No tracking, you can use it to log in everywhere, you own all your data, have DIDs anchored in bitcoin, permissionless and uncensorable chat and video and audio and image protocols, file hosting, streaming data and money, etc.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @erickuhn19 24 Oct 2021 freebie

did:ion + id hubs !

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @mf 24 Oct 2021

Yes! I have the same dream. A wallet that does payments through NFC alone would already be amazing. One that does the NFC through the traditional payment terminals, would be extra saucy.

1 sat \ 3 replies \ @hashdawg 24 Oct 2021 freebie

Friend of mine wants easier to use cold storage. He’s super paranoid and hasn’t bought yet

14 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 24 Oct 2021

How many people know your real identity? Given the recent Jonas departure, I’m wondering how air tight nyms are long term.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

I have extremely close friends in Bitcoin and my worlds kind of merged, so there are some people that know my identity. I'm definitely not an air-tight nym, and never intended to be. I just want to show that you can be a nym and I think everyone should take steps to increase their privacy, or at least reduce their online footprint.

4 sats \ 3 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 24 Oct 2021

Thanks again for doing this. 🙏🏼 What did you think of Jordan Peterson questions around Bitcoin compared to other people you talked with it about.

1016 sats \ 2 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

He was quicker than anyone else to put the puzzle pieces together. It was quite remarkable. He asked very deep questions pretty much immediatly, since he understood the consequences (assuming that our premises are correct).

His questions were really good, I wish I would've done a better job answering some. I share his concerns in regards to "building something that we can't stop", for example. Also the "tower of Babel" problem, to put it in his lingo.

13 sats \ 1 reply \ @anonporridge 24 Oct 2021

"Building something we can't stop" is one of my nightmare scenarios for bitcoin. Imagine we're all wrong about what it is, and bitcoin becomes some kind of monetary black hole/grey goo that sucks up all productive activity until nothing else matters except computing sha256. Kind of like the runaway paper clip maximization AI.

Is bitcoin the great filter? If it is, could we stop it even if we all wanted to?

I could see a sci fi story where bitcoin is a kind of "psychic bomb" that alien civilizations use to collapse primitive, but growing civilizations. Once they develop the internet, they can push the information out anonymously until it reaches escape velocity with the natives.

I say all this as a major bitcoin maxi.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 24 Oct 2021

sounds scifi

3 sats \ 1 boost \ 2 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 24 Oct 2021

Do you have any features you would like to see on SN?

34 sats \ 1 reply \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

People love badges. I really like what LightningNetwork.plus did in that regard:

I guess @k00b could rake in a lot of donations with just a "generous" badge alone.

I'm a huge fan of the Value 4 Value model. I'd love to see features that mainly revolve around that (which is what SN already is, basically).

Some more-or-less crazy ideas:

Support for "medium-style" posts. Think: Y'alls, but instead of paywalls encourage v4v. I think the only paywalls that make sense are "crowdwalls", i.e. cumulative paywalls. If a certain threshold is hit, it's free for everyone.
This could work for image posts as well. Think: Satoshi's Place, but instead of drawing, you reveal the image "pixel by pixel" for everyone.
Integrate v4v streaming for podcasts and clips directly into the platform. Stream sats directly from your SN wallet.

Not sure if all of it makes sense. Most things I'm thinking about are probably more in the fun proof-of-concept category.

With all that said, I think SN is already amazing and it doesn't really lack anything. The most important thing is stickiness and getting quality people. Most other things are window dressing. We'll see how everything evolves.

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 25 Oct 2021

These are great ideas! While little novelties, they'll help us attract more usage

3 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 24 Oct 2021

I’m sure you’ve covered this elsewhere, but what’s your Bitcoin origin story?

128 sats \ 1 boost \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Pretty much like everyone's origin story: heard about it early (2012?), thought it was stupid, heard about it again (2013), dismissed it again, heard about it again (2014), decided to tip my toes in and take a closer look (2015). After tipping my toes in it took me 2-3 years to grasp what's going on, which is why I wanted to write about it. I hope that others don't have to make all the mistakes I made (I made all the mistakes).

If you want to hear more details, I spoke about it quite a bit in my earlier interviews.

3 sats \ 3 replies \ @erickuhn19 24 Oct 2021 freebie

How do you use PGP? Signer/verifier/encrypted messaging etc. Frequency?

2 sats \ 2 replies \ @gmd 24 Oct 2021

How's life as a pseudonymous personality? Ever feel pressured to come out? Do close friends know who you are?

Edit: seeing this was asked before so i will just observe we're nearing 69420 sats tipped and bow out :P

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

Ever feel pressured to come out?

Sometimes. It was hard (and felt weird) to not show my face to JBP, for example, since he was (and still is) such an important person in my life.

It would also be nice to have a "proper" name sometimes, since people will not tend to cite you or mention you in "serious" conversations if you are a nym. I didn't pick my nym carefully, so if I'd do it again, I'd go with a "Firstname Lastname" style nym.

But it could be worse, it could be poopfeast420 instead of dergigi.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @anonporridge 24 Oct 2021

Not Gigi, but I for one have a love/hate relationship with my Reddit nyms. I've had some damn amazing jokes and comments, and even original memes that have made it to the top of r/all.

But I can't personally cash in on my internet fame without de-anonymizing myself. And I won't do that because I often post thoughts and opinions that could be socially dangerous to attach to my real world identity.

2 sats \ 2 replies \ @relc 24 Oct 2021

Hello Gigi. We like einundzwanzig podcast. The question would be: When was your first bitcoin tx?

105 sats \ 1 reply \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Nice try, IRS.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @relc 24 Oct 2021

So roughly between 0 and 706485. Cheers.

2 sats \ 4 replies \ @falsefaucet 24 Oct 2021

everyone is going technical, but i need to know.

best bitcoin meme?

40 sats \ 3 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Hard to beat this image:

There are so many good videos nowadays, it's hard to just pick one. But Interstellar Saylor has to be my favorite of the last couple of months.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @falsefaucet 24 Oct 2021

yeah, i should have said favorite instead of best. thanks for doing this again.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

My pleasure. And: I have a soft spot for savage memes.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ThrillerX_ 24 Oct 2021

based af

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @Yo_I_got_Strike 24 Oct 2021

Thoughts on the future of Lightning and the importance it is for the future of bitcoin adoption to the other 7 billion?

266 sats \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 24 Oct 2021

Very bright future, very important. MPP will be big. Better automation around channel mgmt and autopilots will be important too. More abstractions will come.

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @1MBlocks 24 Oct 2021 freebie

How many bitcoins do you have?

-IRS

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @futurepaul 24 Oct 2021 freebie

How expensive would a sustained attack on Bitcoin be in your opinion? Paul Sztorc's numbers (~20 mil a month) sound really low to me: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/security-budget-ii-mm/

2 sats \ 1 reply \ @pbandsunblock 24 Oct 2021 freebie

What is the best way to receive bitcoin for a real estate sale?

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @0391398253 25 Oct 2021

are you satoshi?

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @dergigi OP 25 Oct 2021

We are all Satoshi.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @g4ala 25 Oct 2021

Given that the purchasing power of the USD is falling, at an ever increasing rate, do you think (as I do) that we (the BTC community as a whole, that is) need to be thinking about how to 'value' BTC, moving forward? It seems to me that the $$ price is becoming more and more irrelevant.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @User21952 10 Nov 2021 freebie

Given there are price-insensitive buyers of bitcoin, why do holders accept market price instead of asking?

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @hashdawg 24 Oct 2021 freebie

Just finished 21 lessons last night. Great job very concise. I recommended to friends. Do you tell people you meet about bitcoin or just wait. How do you bring it up ? I usually keep to myself but looking to want to orange people especially at work

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @alpacachino 5 Oct 2022

How did you end up picking your nym (der)Gigi?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @spraveenitpro 24 Oct 2021

I am in Canada and can't afford real estate like all average Canadians, fortunately have been stacking for a while. What do you think is the best way to arrange like $400,000 cad without selling the coins.