5 sats \ 1 reply \ @jack 4 Dec 2023 \ on: What does it mean to be a Bitcoin maximalist ? bitcoin
Vitalik's article was published on April Fool's Day
The bar has been a great time the two times I've gone. I might have encountered those dynamics there in this example but the people themselves were fun to talk to besides this. And I've had other great (albeit non-crypto non-tech) conversations there. Pubkey Bar 85 Washington Pl check it out
I have had some real dialogue about value/utility with people in other situations, my viewpoint has shifted based on these conversations, and I'm sure if I spent more time in the community I would find more of this. My point is that I've seen this kind of "true believer" dynamic more in crypto than any other domain I've been in. I've also met some of the most talented software engineers in the space.
The danger in this practice, I believe, is that you stifle curiosity. You assume that you know where value comes from.
This particular part hits close to home. When I'm at crypto meetups or events or just talking to crypto-pilled folks, if I lead conversation into what the Value of bitcoin is (ie what leads to its current USD price), I can sense people souring like I'm not a "true believer" and that makes me an outsider, even if I'm excited about the tech.
For example I was at that bitcoin bar near washington square park in new york recently. A bunch of crypto guys that worked for a bitcoin company that did something with L2 contacts (Stacks I think?) were there. We were having a good chat, I'm asking them questions. But I asked one of the guys something like "what are people using bitcoin for nowadays?," an honest question about what the typical use cases for bitcoin are in 2023. Like what is the purpose of the transactions they do, what are people using it for in their experience, who will be using their tools, or generally what is bitcoin being used for from what they can tell looking at the chain, etc.
The vibe shifted and they didn't give me a good answer. Someone said something about how it was used for NFTs a lot, but nobody really had an answer. It seemed like I was making them uncomfortable by asking questions around business cases for L2 contracts or generally what use-cases bitcoin had in their professional experience. Or maybe I was just reading the situation wrong.
Moreso than a lot of other industries and meetups I've had experience with, asking hard questions about bitcoin/crypto (specifically around Value and Utility) elicits a chilling reaction.
For a people that work for bitcoin-specific companies and organizations it makes sense since a certain kind of faith is what's keeping you employed and doing business, but there's just so much blind trust and religious attitude that stifle curiosity and more realistic discussions.
What were the hardest technical difficulties to overcome in developing a lightning/btc application compared to conventional web 1/2 apps?
I might be late to the party -- but I've always enjoyed getting your newsletters in my inbox. You're a rational and systemic writer with a direct voice, and I take inspiration from your writing style and methods as I start my career.
I have a few questions if you see them and have time to answer:
- When you talk about being bullish on lightning growth in developing markets based on local volatility, what sources or specific cases are you seeing that leads you to make that claim?
- Can you imagine realistic situations where investing long in total-market US and global index funds (ala bogleheads) not yield regular long-term (8-20y) returns or be more risky than smaller indexes like the S&P 500 or Russel 3000?
- What newsletters or periodic writers do you enjoy outside of investing/finance?
I'd recommend others to keep crypto as a small part of their portfolio, especially if you have dependents or near-term spending goals. But power to anyone with the balls to keep a lot of their net worth in btc and I hope you get rich with it.
Personally I've never seen btc or crypto as an investment instrument, and def not a store of value since its utility hasn't been broadly realized in the last 10 years. The 30d rolling average of estimated transaction value in usd; and unique addresses has not seen significant and steady growth imo -- it looks like most transactions are for speculation instead utility gained from the blockchain.
But overall I see it as a promising means of exchange and think that specifically the lightning network can change how people programmatically transfer currency especially for microtransactions and payments for *aaS. But my guess is that most of btcs value is from speculation -- everyday investors are buying it to get rich not for its utility. And these investors are driving the current price. It's hard to know if it's overvalued even at $22k, $10k, etc but either way its usd value won't change its promising technical utility.
Because it's what @koob told me to download :)
shadowstats is wrong according to their own numbers over the past two decades. If they were accurate since 2002, the dollar would have decreased in value much more dramatically (around 6% a year vs the official CPI around 2%). It's probably true that the CPI is understated but shadowstats is a provably worse methodology than the official CPI estimates.
This is how I felt in mexico. If I had lost my atm card I would have enough sats in my wallet to get by for a bit
I'd lean towards
$jobs. But for the future, here are some ideas that I think may help with the site's growth:$btcirl- places that the digital world of bitcoin intersects with the physical world. Like coinbase providing physical locations to cash out crypto, where you can buy a beer with bitcoin, or how bitcoin is tangibly being used in El Salvador. Ultimately could become a type of advertising for businesses that sell goods and services for sats$meetup- a platform for SN members to find each other irl$classifieds- communicating exchanges of goods/services for sats
Would it be a worthwhile feature to create a button on a user's profile page for someone else to send/gift sats to their wallet? Or are you looking for the sat flow to be based on upvoting posts/comments?
Uploading regardless of duplicates since this is the primary source -- it goes into much more detail than the other two (paywalled) articles.
Currency as a protocol or data structure that exists in the same world as code and applications.
Especially with lightning transactions, you can treat money like a value in a redis cache but it's on a consensus layer that exists beyond your application and not a third-party service that could be shut down or have its prices/api changed.
For example if I have some program that generates some GAN image based on parameters sent by a user, my application could create an invoice that would need to be fulfilled for the user to get a result. If you aren't using bitcoin, you need to go through something like stripe or paypal and need to consider certain regulations, apis, and user payment friction. But if the application logic is just "server generates invoice > user pays invoice and POSTs parameters > server computes > server sends results" this can happen entirely without needing to pay some payment SaaS or considering what country someone is in or what currency they have or payment providers they have access to.
Another example could be a community minecraft server. You could set up your server hosting provider to get payments via generated invoices from a bitcoin address. When the address has less money than the monthly payment, it could broadcast a message to users that the server will shut down X days unless the address gets enough funds. Players can send money to the address until it reaches the quota. Especially with more normie-friendly apps like Cashapp allowing bitcoin/lightning transactions, it's becoming more and more user-friendly. This can all be programmed in some java plugin on the server and the server operator doesn't really need to consider payments since the users are using the service and should be paying for it.
Things obviously get more complicated if you have enterprise SLAs, if you are a business with strict GAAP and tax requirements, do business with many actors in b2b or high-regulatory environment, have users in countries where crypto is outlawed.... but I think bitcoin/lightning shines with small internet utilities like bots, web services, or game servers.