Hi all. I'm Abubakar, a Nigerian programmer, Bitcoin Core contributor (Zero-1729 on Github), and CEO & CTO at Recursive Capital. I, along with a few other Bitcoiners, launched Qala—a program designed to train the next generation of African Bitcoin and Lightning developers.
I also serve as a board member of ₿trust, where I focus on growing the Bitcoin development ecosystem in Africa.
AMA!
183 sats \ 1 reply \ @F 11 Aug 2022
Hi thanks for doing this AMA. I've always wondered how does the bitcoin code look? Is it pretty / ugly - simple / complex?
What do you think about the threats of intense regulation to the bitcoin space?
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The bitcoin code base is fairly organized and structured, especially compared to other projects in the open source space. It also has way better documentation.
Regarding the aesthetics, I'd say it's more pleasing, with some parts looking better than others, lol.
Regarding regulation, it's mostly a case of them catching up and us bringing them along to make it easier for average folks to freely use Bitcoin as they so wish. It'll continue to get really bad before it becomes great.
Countries that can get good BTC reg would enjoy the benefits of allowing Bitcoin to flourish and would be a more convincing argument for others to follow.
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Nice to meet you!
(Moved this question from your bio, because I saw you posted this AMA)
I was looking through your medium articles.
What do you think of the MVRV Z-Score indicator? It seems pretty similar to the Rising Bottom Ratio.
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Hi, thanks for reading through my medium, I hope you found the pieces useful.
Regarding the MVRV Z-score, I haven't looked through it before now. It certainly does look like it expresses similar info to my RBR.
The main difference lies in the info both take into account, the RBR is also purely empirical. The whole point is that RBR is a basic ratio of the previous halving period's bottom price and the current price to give a more historical context to the current price from past information (i.e., the previous halving period).
It will only be a meaningful metric so long as the hypothesis holds true.
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Thanks!
What was your initial interest in describing this phenomena (RBR)?
Do you do any automated trading, etc?
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I do not and have never traded.
While writing the Recursive Capital Bitcoin Thesis in 2019, I was looking through different theories of the Bitcoin price, then after digging the hypothesis was born, after spending some time analyzing the prices (especially bottoms) across different halving cycles.
It became apparent that some information could be deduced from that. The metric has only been used in the Recursive Bitcoin dashboard (https://btc.rcrsv.xyz). Not sure if others have put to other use.
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Are there any books that have meaningfully changed your view of the world?
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There are quite a lot, but I'd say "on the shortness of life" by Seneca sticks with me to date.
It was a potent hit of wisdom at a time when I needed it the most.
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What should most of us know about Nigeria that we don't?
I'm super ignorant of Nigerian cuisine. What's your favorite Nigerian food?
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Hmm, I'd say maybe the fact that it a lot safer than people think, and also that we use comedy on a daily to cope with our problems in the country and personally.
Regarding cuisines, it would have to be Nigerian Jollof. Snack wise, I'd say Kilishi (aka beaf jerky).
For those who want something heavy, in Nigeria we have a class of food we refer to as 'swallow'. They get the job done.
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If you could instantly turn one person in Africa into a Bitcoiner, who would you pick?
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Can't name a specific person, but more high-profile folks & devs will continue to get involved in the space as we grow out, and they start to see the attendant benefits Bitcoin brings to the continent.
However, if I were to describe a person, I would say someone very dedicated and hardworking—preferably anonymous—whose sole motivation is to make the world a better place by working to bring Bitcoin to the Billions.
If I were being cheeky, I'd say we need more Bitcoiners in government positions across the board.
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I like that answer.
If you speak with devs who then decide not to get involved with Bitcoin, what are their typical objections like?
Are there any common criticisms of Bitcoin or consistent reasons for not participating?
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Their typical responses are (I'll paraphrase):
  • They don't see it having a bright future like Eth or some other project.
  • They feel tooling isn't as readily available to build cool projects.
  • They think Bitcoin is only about the asset, no smart contracting or interesting things can be built on it.
  • I can't build on a planet killer (due to PoW).
  • There is no clear path for me to become a Bitcoin/LN dev (something Qala is solving).
  • Some feel it is a scam (a small minority).
So I'd say I get several consistent responses when engaging with devs, usually falling into one of the many above.
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Abubakar is in the house Normal guy, just like Gauss He writes code fast, like a mouse Hide ya kids, hide ya spouse
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P2P trading is very actively used in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, due to bank restrictions by the central banks.
But there's still very little in-person F2F (face-to-face) P2P trading.
What would help make it so this becomes a more common occurrence, or are there reasons it should not (or will not) become a more common practice?
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... necessary to maintain a resilient on-and-off ramp infrastructure for Bitcoin to continue succeeding in increasingly difficult jurisdictions.
Everything being built is useless if Bitcoin cannot operate in hostile working conditions, whether its network or regulation related.
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Lol, I hit ctrl-enter or something after just the first three words, as I was still typing the question. But it worked -- great reply!! I've edited my question.
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No worries, I was excited to answer, lol.
F2F will only flourish in areas of high levels of distrust and tight networks of trust. The main thing is, that the whole point of BTC is to eliminate the requirement of trust to exchange value. However, certain transactions, specifically those outside the Bitcoin network like on-and-of ramping, sometimes require a degree of trust between the parties that necessitate physical mutual transfer attestation.
We'll likely see more and more folks moving to products and services that are smooth UX-wise and eliminate or reduce that counterparty risk. However, in places where F2F is traditionally ubiquitous, they may have high levels of that.
In general, you don't want adoption to be conditional on requiring F2F on either end of transacting as that won't scale beyond micro-communities within geographical boundaries, i.e. villages, small cities, towns, etc.
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But isn't every mobile money agent providing a similar service (i.e., cash-in / cash-out, F2F)? Wouldn't bitcoin be eventually be able to be considered as being just an alternative to telecom-based mobile money, with a similar ability to easily convert to and from cash?
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Yes, as I said, where F2F already works great Bitcoin would be plugged in to replace whatever medium was previously used to exchange value. I think Bitcoin would certainly be an alternative but would still be used over mobile-money infrastructure, specifically via USSD codes in places where this makes up the core infrastructure for transacting.
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What's are the biggest challenges facing bitcoin development and adoption in Africa?
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The primary one is definitely education, a lot of folks are either misinformed about Bitcoin or simply do not know about it. On a related note, a lot of Bitcoin material is language locked (i.e. English only), which locks out a significant portion of the population.
Another challenge is infrastructure related, this spans from electricity issues all the way to Internet connectivity. However, mining will play a huge role in solving the former and the later mesh network and other related internet Infrastructure.
I'd also say there are still few pathways for devs to get from zero to hero, and products and services, while having made great strides, are not at a stage where folks use Bitcoin without knowing it.
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What motivated you to start working on Bitcoin Core? What are you optimistic about in terms of the future of Bitcoin/Lightning and the world?
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Back in 2019, I honestly just wanted to challenge myself and contribute to the network I was benefiting from. All the PRs and reviews ever since have been the result of realizing we need to ensure the codebase is in good shape, always.
I am optimistic that as more structure and decoupling are introduced in projects like core, it'll become much more manageable to review code, make protocol changes, and build atop Bitcoin. I am also optimistic that necessary changes to the underlying protocol would be made to give more power to layers higher up the stack, such as LN, to improve how the network operates at a protocol level.
Another good thing is with more grant programs, especially ones with mentors, it'll be a lot easier for devs to get onboarded into the space and freely contribute without worrying about their financial circumstances or having to divide their focus working multiple jobs.
This also extends into the Bitcoin startup ecosystem, I am glad to see, outside of Recursive, Ten31, Ego Death Cap, and others, an increasing number of Bitcoin VCs are coming up, which helps with strengthening the signal in the space as more sound projects get funded. It'll also encourage others to build viable companies and not have to worry about pleasing Web3/crypto funds by integrating additional projects outside Bitcoin/LN.
Beyond that, I'd say my biggest concern is if we get to a stage where soft forks are considered a no-no, that will introduce a level of complexity that would further complicate and potentially negatively affect overall development.
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Thanks for taking the time to do this AMA! I'm curious, what excites you most about Taro?
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The prospect of having those who use stablecoins to benefit from staying the Bitcoin ecosystem, especially LN and no longer need to touch more fragile systems outside Bitcoin.
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Zero-1729
Are you into Balaji's 1729?
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When I signed up for Github it was really the Taxicab (aka Ramanujan's) number that was the reason for including 1729, it's such an interesting number.
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What's the most surprising thing you've learned running Qala?
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Oh, I'd say there are many more developers interested in getting involved with Bitcoin.
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What's something you believe about bitcoin that few bitcoiners agree with you on?
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haha, good question.
To achieve the level of adoption everyone is talking about, we need to ensure gov reg is conducive enough for Bitcoin to flourish; otherwise, it'll remain a tool that very few folks can use.
Engaging with regulators to achieve this isn't welcome around "F*** the government Bitcoiners," lol.
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Thanks for doing this AMA.
I'm curious how you feel about defi slowly being developed into Bitcoin (we see the beginning with Taro).
For example, if certain op codes are safe and enable more generalized defi apps, is that something you think would be good for the Bitcoin ecosystem and community?
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My pleasure!
I'd be cautious to prognosticate on what the future landscape would look like in that regard, or the potential unintended consequences.
However, so long as no fragility is introduced at the base layer to enable all the fancy DeFi stuff, and all the risky play happens at much higher layers then it's all good—assuming users are made aware of the risks involved.
With Taro there may be some shitcoin attempts but I'd expect you'd only see traction with an asset that has the most utility and not a scam.
In general, allowing that flexibility and programability is a plus for building novel and interesting products and services which is good, but only if it doesn't come at the cost of harming the base layer, if it does then it will be 1000% horrible for the entire ecosystem and community.
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does Nigeria planning any regulations on crypto? and is it good regulating crypto?
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Regarding upcoming reg, our hope is it'll be positive given, a lot us stockholders here are working to ensure we bring regulators up to speed on the many benefits of letting Bitcoin flourish.
As for regulating Bitcoin in general, it doesn't affect Bitcoin at all, however, it does affect whether regular folks can access it, which is why we need it to be good reg.
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.