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612 sats \ 10 replies \ @k00b 25 Aug \ on: Sunday Survey: Do you want covenants? bitcoin
I want more self-custody and most bitcoiners probably want some end result too rather than a specific proposal.
I respect people wanting to prevent scammy bitcoin usage, but any new script feature is going to allow new scams whether they are known beforehand or not. I’d prefer the debate focus on:
- Miner incentives
- Node running incentives
- Improving bitcoin as money
- specifically MoE because most people don’t save and SoV is largely solved
Scammers are going to scam regardless. The best fight we can wage against scammers is making bitcoin better money so honest participation on bitcoin starves scammy usage.
I would like to see more education around bitcoin, what it is and what it's for. More noderunning, more selfcustody, and especially more plebs mining, for example with bitaxes at home getting paid out over bolt12/LN addresses.
And better regulation/reforms around spending bitcoin and not having to pay capital gains taxes. I think a large reason why places to spend bitcoin are so rare... is the ridiculous tax requirements. If i buy a coffee over lightning it's silly to think i need to calculate my capital gains taxes, I wouldn't even know how to do that honestly for 2.99 or whatever. I would love places to spend bitcoin and support small businesses... but there just aren't many yet.
My understanding of covenants is limited... however if covenants don't really address the above why should we want them? To 'scale self custody'? People can self custody now and fees are low.
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If there isn't hope of self custody scaling, it's a waste of everyone's time to learn how to do it. If fees don't increase, bitcoin's security model fails. If fees do increase or if they are merely volatile, self custody needs to scale.
Aside from fees, self-custody should be as easy as we can make it. Part of the purported benefit of some of these upgrades is making self-custody easier.
There's a bit of a chicken and egg problem with self-custody. A worthwhile thought experiment: if on-chain fees were forever low, and we all were promised on-chain UX for any size tx forever, would bitcoin's usage as a MoE increase? If it would, then it's probably worth considering scaling. If MoE wouldn't increase, then you're right, bitcoin has other problems we should solve first.
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In my opinion the lack of bitcoin usage with regards to MoE... currently isn't due to fees. Or even user experience... it's due to lack of education and restrictions regarding taxes.
It's pretty easy to spend via bitrefill, or btcpayserver and imo hotwallets are really easy to spend from. Take phoenix for example. Splice in or out funds, get inbound liquidity, get a cheap lightning channel opened, send and receive to stacker news... all this is pretty easy stuff. And that's just lightning. On-chain is really easy too... and large transactions can still be made for what less than 50 cents. It's not the UI holding bitcoin back it's education.
If fees go up sustainably... it's due to economic usage not jpegs which are temporary, and in that world on-chain transactions would be relatively rare, only to open lightning channels or for large transactions (buying a house or a car or maybe plane ticket) and everything else is lightning. I think that world could happen 'today'... it just doesn't due to education and taxes.
I listened to most of the republican and democrat political conventions in the united states and there were talks of 'freedom' over and over again... but zero mentions of Bitcoin (Real freedom) and that needs to change.
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It's pretty easy to spend via bitrefill, or btcpayserver and imo hotwallets are really easy to spend from. Take phoenix for example. Splice in or out funds, get inbound liquidity, get a cheap lightning channel opened, send and receive to stacker news... all this is pretty easy stuff. And that's just lightning. On-chain is really easy too... and large transactions can still be made for what less than 50 cents. It's not the UI holding bitcoin back it's education.
fwiw I couldn't get my dad to figure this stuff out easily. It would probably be a month of work for us both. Some share of that is generic education though.
Do you have theory for us not educating people better? I wonder if it's because we aren't certain what we teach will survive a high fee environment. Maybe that's why everyone is teaching people how to use ecash when fees are low?
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If i had to teach a newperson... it would be the phoenix model - open channels when fees are low, use the LSP and spend. Then when the utxo is big enough (at least a few hundred dollars) move it to cold storage like a jade or maybe a hotwallet depending on the amount/time frame.
Then to fill up a lightning channel... move funds on lightning from your exchange to the lightning channel directly. No fee (practically) and it's instant. TaDa you have plenty of sats to spend without touching on chain. I believe this basically could be done today... but instead some people are a little lazy and stupid and so that's why they aren't doing it already.
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Phoenix's model is the best to date, I agree. It remains to be seen if it's sustainable though or if it can be replicated such that phoenix's LSP isn't effectively a single, centralized sidechain.
some people are a little lazy and stupid and so that's why they aren't doing it already
Is this what education changes?
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I think education helps. +1 to phoenix and it looks like (although I haven't used their LSP) that zeus is doing the same thing.
There are those that believe... that the US fiscal situation over the next 10 years will have the greatest impact. 34 -> 50
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Scammers are going to scam regardless
That's like leaving your front door open because you live in a rough neighborhood
making bitcoin better money
False premise that presupposes that Bitcoin's monetary properties are malleable, and that even if they were, the forks do more good than harm.
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I'd love to read your point of view on this without having an unproductive argument where we are misunderstanding and mischaracterizing each other repeatedly.
Have you written about bitcoin's lack of malleable monetary properties and how forks do more harm than good somewhere?
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Interesting prompt I'll sandbag for a video series I've been marinading on
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