kristapsk

econ

This article was compiled back when I was still shitposting on Reddit. Well, I think it exhibited a fair amount of labour of love because I painstakingly consolidated the information, country by country. Since this was written in July last year, some of the information could have been outdated. I could also have misinterpreted the insights given to me by Redditors. Well, hope I hit the bullseye more often than not.

This is my first post on this territory. Sending some happy sats to @jeff.

I fancy myself a free-spirited person who can uproot myself and forge a life in a new country. That’s why I have a keen interest to collect data regarding the capital gains taxes in various countries. This is to help me make an informed decision should I take the plunge one day.

These facts and figures were compiled as I interacted with people from all over the world. If I wasn’t rigorous enough in my fact check and made certain errors, please let me know so that I can clarify misconceptions.

Vietnam - Crypto is untaxed.

Singapore - Crypto is untaxed.

Indonesia - Tax is 0.1%.

Germany - Tax free if you HODL the asset for one year.

Switzerland - No need to pay any taxes as long as you own the crypto assets for 6 months or longer and the crypto profits do not exceed 50% of your net income.

United Kingdom - Used to be Allowed £12,300profits before one has to pay any tax. However this amount was halved in April 2023, which would again be halved next year. You then pay either 10% or 20% capital gains tax, depending on your income bracket. If your total income is less than £50,270, you will fork out 10% tax. If it exceeds £50,270, a 20% tax will be incurred on you. Fun fact, if you are married, you are allowed to spilt profits between you and your spouse.

Bulgaria - Capital gains tax is 8%.

America - Capital gains tax is 24% for any portfolio under a year. The rate does drop substantially if your crypto is held over a year. You are also not only allowed $41,675 profits before having to pay taxes, but are empowered to offset up to $3k of crypto losses every year.

Also for the United States, geographic arbitrage isn’t a valid option because even if you move to another country, you will not get to benefit from its lower tax rate. This is because you are obligated to pay US rates, or the higher rates of the country you live in and then report that to the US. Only when you give up your American citizenship can you entertain the thought of lower capital gains taxes elsewhere.

Canada - Capital gains tax is 10-25%, depending on the province you come from. The saving grace is that the capital gains are just half of your reported income at your current tax rate. You will also get a personal allowance of $14,398 profits before having to pay any taxes.

Brazil - Citizens get to enjoy tax exemptions for crypto gains if they aren't higher than USD$6.5K per month. Otherwise, a 15% tax applies.

Thailand - Used to have 15% capital gains tax on crypto trading and mining profits. But this law seems to be suspended following public outrage.

Italy - Capital gains tax is 26%.

Sweden - Capital gains tax is 30%.

France - Capital gains tax is 30%. And losses cannot be carried over to offset crypto gains in subsequent years.

Finland - Capital gains tax is 30% below $30k. Beyond $30k, it increases to 34%. Plus, every time you swap one crypto for another crypto, you are obliged to pay a tax. This effectively disincentivises people from swapping their crypto.

India - Capital gains tax is 30% from 1st April 2022. From 1st July 2022, they also got to pay 1% tax on every crypto they trade.

Ireland - Capital gains tax is 33% on all profits after the first €1270.

Spain - Different tax brackets imposed depending on your particular profit margin:

€0-€6000 —>19%

€6000-€50000 —>21%

€50,000-€200,000 —>23%

more than €200,000 —> 26%

Denmark - All crypto gains must be reported for income taxes. An asymmetric taxation system where we have to pay the full amount for any gains and can only deduct like 27% of losses from the gains applies. So, the Danes can actually suffer a huge loss and still have to pay tax.

Australia - You get a 50% discount for your long term capital gains tax. It’s then taxed at your marginal tax rate.



Crypto tax rates across countries

cryotosensei

lightning

Shared [here](https://stacker.news/items/297131/r/south_korea_ln) before by @kr, but worth reminding as they still are going strong.

I did a few sport bets, got paid out correctly.

Got a long term one running on US elections outcome too.

Triible - World's First-Ever Native Lightning Parimutuel Betting Platform

south_korea_ln

privacy

# **The Privacy Pivot**
The world has pivoted, but you're still spinning you can't yet see it! 👀 

![](https://media4.giphy.com/media/GZLf5Njk1KGwU/giphy.gif)

The biggest brands of tomorrow are the ones that have already prioritised privacy above any other trend. And we're not talking about the hypocrites at [Apple Inc](https://www.apple.com/privacy/), who talk a lot about privacy and yet crave more and more involvement in our daily lives. (The same Apple who are wishing for us to strap a dumbbell to our eyeballs). I'm talking about business that actually give a duck 🦆 about their customers. Businesses that are solving _real_ problems for their incredible users. Needing less personal data, not more. Providing more consumer choice, not less. Businesses building things people need, not those that are trying to change what people want. 

## **Profit Will Depend On Privacy**
Data leaks are happening every week, secrets are being revealed, and each and everyone of us is being polluted with popups in front of every page we land on. People and business owners are still going about their days assuming business will remain like this and the way they have been with single-database of failure for the last 20 years. Believing that storing a giant pot of "data gold" on top of some unstable fluffy cloud somewhere is socially acceptable and 'cost-effective' for their business. And that it won't attract the likes of "winnie-the-pooh" or any other party with ulterior motives to come after it.

![pooh-for-privacy](https://m.stacker.news/17810)

## **Cloud Liability**
In the future it may not be "cost-effective" to store your company data in Amazon S3, encrypted or not, because you may have (unlimited) financial liability leaking excessive information, wrongly trusting third parties and manufacturing consent from customers. Or just being unable to control the availability of your services. Unlimited in the sense companies may lose the majority of customers and be targeted with lawsuits calling on them to cease to trade.

If a complete pivot occurs where privacy becomes the human right it is often talked about being, that the world may indeed even seek vengeance and damages for their personal data being made available online. Just like we're seeing with the [number of lawsuits over stalkers](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/apple-airtags-triggered-explosion-of-stalking-reports-nationwide-lawsuit-says/) and concerns as [posted on SN](https://stacker.news/items/158868/r/davidw) over unlawful use of Apple's AirTags. The internet has a habit of knowing where to point the finger. Not at Jeff Bezos in his outer-space bunker, but at founders, CEOs and tech directors alike. Your company's future may depend on it's ability to guarantee user privacy.

## **Rise of Edge Computing**
Many in the tech industry like to refer to the concept of _[Edge Computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_computing)_ as bringing computation closer to the end user. The benefits being to increase latency, security & privacy. Processing will be more and more local, mobile phones, servers and network gateways will perform tasks and provide services on behalf of or to replace the cloud systems we depend upon today.

We are witnessing the continued march of our bandwidth requirements, ever-increasing abundant energy, more and more intense computation (be it gaming, AI or others) as well as more devices connecting to our routers each year. All of that means that the efficiencies of centralised data centers will likely reduce, at least when compared to the share of total usage today. It will be accessible to have enterprise-grade redundancy, both in data and energy, in home servers and devices. It will also be unavoidably more private and secure for businesses. For performance AND privacy.

## **Legal Bubble**
Today, companies are manipulating customers into clicking a button to pretend that they have read a **62 page privacy policy** written by some of the most boring people to walk this planet. People whose job it is to make things completely illegible to the average Joe.

As a society we may have normalised this legal charade, but I'm convinced than ever that this won't continue. In a world where the barriers to creating and running software are reducing by the day, we are witnessing the exponential rise of ~opensource alternatives. People are not going to spend more than 30 seconds to register for a new service in the future. They are not going to read your privacy policy. And they won't need to, not when there is negligible data to collect. And open networks will see to each of us us storing both more local & distributed data.

We live in a legislative bubble right now and things need to get an awful lot more simpler if we want to innovate and make a better world for tomorrow! It may be the Information Age (if you want to call it that) but the less data your business collects in the future, the leaner and more nimble you will be. It's about time we start thinking about how to achieve that goal and still meet the day-to-day business objectives. Technologies like Bitcoin, Lightning, Nostr, Tor and other innovations will likely help us get there.

---------

## `10 Top Startup Tips`
With that in mind, here are a few brainwaves on how to think about privacy tomorrow as a business...

### **1. Differentiate on Privacy not Price**
Build long-term trust and loyalty with your customers by respecting and minimising the amount of data collection. Just because competitors are not doing it, doesn't mean your business shouldn't! Much like people will pay top dollar for foods with fewer ingredients and 'fiat' processing, people are increasingly paying for privacy features.

### **2. Make your Privacy Policy SIMPLE**
Let's avoid lazy legal templates that follow the same structure the European Union have laid out for us. If you can't describe the data you process on one writter piece of A4 paper, you're collecting too much user data. Cut it back so people can read it, even with your terrible handwriting.

### **3. Hook People Without Blind Onboarding**
Don't gate features behind a sign-up wall, asking for their email, name, subscription & blood type. Let people truly experience your product without requiring their details. Think about passwordless and email-less authentication, actively avoid offering them as options. If you want to see people level-up their privacy, make the default option via Lightning or Nostr. Really think whether you need user accounts at all. Why couldn't customers just use throwaway account IDs like [iVPN or MullVad](https://stacker.news/items/385935/r/davidw) have for their products?

### **4. Deliver on your Privacy Promises**
If you say you care about user data... show it to customers, show it to employees, make it part of your brand and your training. Either don't collect certain data in the first place, or establish ways to de-anonymise it. Make data optional until the time that a user's account requires it. Rather than introducing 'umpteen' screens of onboarding.

### **5. Define Privacy as a Company Value**
Make privacy a priority in every department of your company. Recruit people based on their perceptions of privacy and willingness to challenge the status quo. Train people on good data retention, managing customer data like it's a hot potato and on maintaining solid security and backup procedures. Heck introduce a bounty program to cut legal jargon from your websites and services if you need to. If it's a priority, it should be uncomfortable how much you focus on it.

### **6. Challenge Industry Evils**
No one ever complained about having less data collected on them or having less information to populate in their profile. If you wouldn't ask your Gran at dinner table for permission on that data, don't manufacture consent from customers. Remove the likes of Google Tag Manager, Hotjar and other toxic trackers. Stop calling them cookies too - they are trackers!

If you need to gather information on how people use your product, do user testing or ask them in a survey! Don't spy on every visitor that lands on your site, just because you may need it someday.  So much aggregate data is available today that you need not profile and track individual users that visit your site. If someone is scrolling over a particular pixel on your page, lazy load an advert below in the next section. Do not serve a disgusting pop-up.

Treat others how you'd like to be treated. Avoid third parties and lazily integrating the likes of Google Tag Manager & OneTrust, who have ulterior motives. There are better solutions out there, to be built and bought.

### **7. Delete Data After 12 Months**
Automate the deletion of customer records after accounts are left idle. Actually delete data _BEFORE_ a customer requests it. Clear your customer helpdesk emails, that are no longer needed after 6 months. [Coinkite](https://coinkite.com/) for instance does this, without anyone ever having asked them to.

Think you need to retain customer information? Think again. It _may_ be cheaper to advertise to existing customers than new ones, but think about alternative ways of reaching your customers. Stop being lazy. Include a discounted renewal or follow-up purchase in their order confirmation. If your customers truly love your product, they will purchase it off their own backs. They will remember you, when they require access again. Not because you didn't send them a clickbait advert after 18 months of not using it.

### **8. Minimise 3rd Parties**
Measure analytics in the aggregate [like SN](https://plausible.io/stacker.news) and @k00b is doing via Plausible. Strip metadata from photos & assets uploaded. Go without email remarketing firms like SendGrid or Mailchimp. User email addresses are NOT theirs. The only reason companies they exist is because you want to send a simple message every few months. Surely in 2024 you can find other means to achieve that same objective.

If you can't remove a third party, reduce your dependency on monopolistic businesses like Google, Stripe & Mailchimp, utilising smaller payment & email campaign providers wherever possible. Better still, setup your own BTCPayServer or Zaprite account. The custom solutions you dream of are not all as complex to develop as you believe. Everything is up for grabs, with many viable (open-source) alternatives.
 
### **9. Build a Privacy Roadmap**
Start thinking about features that people in the future would value, if a huge shift in sentiment happened around sensitive data over the course of the next 12 months. 

How would customers want you to store their data, how would they want to be communicated about the changes? How would you educate your users on taking the steps to de-anonymise their own accounts? Think of how a completely new set of customers may adopt and pay more for your service when you are solving a problem they have been seeking a private solution for.

Some silly suggestions:
- build in a "Mission Impossible" or "Men In Black" self-destructing animation & sound effects for ephemeral chat messages.
- write bog-standard customer emails in a non-HTML text editor and include typos to be more authentic.
- show the encrypted blobs of data that are being processed by your site each second.
- allow people to dispose of or radically overhaul their identities at the click of a button.
- create a dummy-data version of your product that requires no user sign-up and allows people to 'recruit' celebrities and 'report' politicians.
- allow people to buy lifetime pricing of your products upfront so that you never need to email them again if they wish.
- create an infinite-loop onboarding experience with a single delete account button at the end.
- tell people you reincarnated your lawyer as an AI to make things legible.
- joke with your customers about how you are changing their name because they remind you of your pet chameleon.
Be radically transparent about their privacy and have fun with it in the process.

### **10. Less Compliance. More Defiance.**
Challenge 'loose' regulations with your creative energy. Hire lawyers that remove documentation and legal lingo, rather than adding to the pile of steaming mess 💩.

Adopting a cuck mentality is how we have arrived at this point today, with a less private internet. Businesses need to be active and not simply 'interpreting' regulations in the way that they were specifically drafted to deceive.  The hope was to achieve the outcomes laid-out, not through enforcement but from fear of litigation. So startups should be mindful of achieving their business objectives with processing less, and retaining less KYC information than ever before. Not more. 






The Privacy Pivot - 10 Tips for Startups

davidw

devs

Github instructs you to download [their cli](https://cli.github.com/) to make it this easy but practically everything github does (as it pertains to git stuff) is a syntactic wrapper. I don't want another piece of software on my computer that I have learn and maintain.

Maybe I'm just daft but before this I'd setup remotes for regular contributors to easily checkout their prs:
```bash
git remote ekzyis git@github.com:ekzyis/stacker.news.git
git fetch ekzyis somebranch
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
```

For irregular contributors I'd do a link clicking dance figuring out their remote path and branch and pull it to a local branch. 
```bash
git fetch git@github.com:ekzyis/stacker.news.git somebranch
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
```

After this config it's
```
git fetch pr/321
git checkout pr/321
```

There are probably a million ways to do this, but this is the best one I've found. Do you have PR flow/config you like?

Configure git to checkout github pull requests locally

k00b

charts


Source: http://ecosense.me/ecosense-wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CO2-Emissions.pdf

![IMG_1107.jpeg](https://m.stacker.news/16612)

Historical surface temperature and CO2 concentration

Enemy_of_the_state

DeepDive

This is a multipart DeepDive that will focus on the Liquid Sidechain. It will be released in 3 Parts:

* [Part I](https://stacker.news/items/399400): Overview, Installation, and first Peg-In
* Part II (this): Asset Creation and Configuration
* Part III: Advanced Topics and Peg-out

## Assets

[In Part I](https://stacker.news/items/399400), we successfully Pegged-In our BTC and received L-BTC, now lets use that L-BTC to do some interesting things with Asset Issuance:

Before we jump straight into creating an asset, let us first look at our existing wallet[^1]:

```
$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getwalletinfo

"balance": {"bitcoin": 0.00149155}

$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS dumpassetlabels

{"bitcoin": "6f0279e9ed041c3d710a9f57d0c02928416460c4b722ae3457a11eec381c526d"}
```

So our wallet already has an asset called 'bitcoin' which has an associated UUID of  `6f0279e9ed041c3d710a9f57d0c02928416460c4b722ae3457a11eec381c526d`. Everything in Liquid is an 'Asset' (including L-BTC) and each of these Assets can have different features. 

Looking up this asset label on [https://blockstream.info/liquid/assets](https://blockstream.info/liquid/asset/6f0279e9ed041c3d710a9f57d0c02928416460c4b722ae3457a11eec381c526d) we can see some info about it:

![1-part2-assets.png](https://m.stacker.news/14408)

This shows us the total amount of L-BTC in circulation, additionally we can see how much was Pegged-In, Out, and Burned. Most notably, this confirms that everything is in balance. The Circulating Supply = (PEG_IN - PEG_OUT - BURNED), so no debasement has happened.  

### Issuing our own Asset

Let's issue our own asset, luckily this is pretty straight forward:
```
$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS issueasset 10 0 true
  
{
  "txid": "8a12dd64c43de200cc7addb6c59f67bdbc6481ef1cc8b24253c7c1daba3c4e06",
  "vin": 0,
  "entropy": "3b8ded63f872d53d93b40ea415f3473b50c033a8e9abc1f0e7418e7f16e98dec",
  "asset": "8aa889f0bd16bab7d236ab6f3583481382bf976433360ff240cf22b79181a50f",
  "token": "2eb4da7c84a7b4db2944ead6b05041a5d8d8f4a73cd1413b140b44c4ec42fbdf"
}
```
### Exploring our new Asset

Checking out our wallet we see:
```
$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getwalletinfo

"balance": {"8aa889f0bd16bab7d236ab6f3583481382bf976433360ff240cf22b79181a50f": 10.00000000,
"bitcoin": 0.00140447,}
```

* We can see our wallet has 10 of our assets[^2] (which has a label '8aa889...'), lets checkout what the [Liquid network knows about it](https://blockstream.info/liquid/asset/8aa889f0bd16bab7d236ab6f3583481382bf976433360ff240cf22b79181a50f): 

![2-part2-firstasset.png](https://m.stacker.news/14409)

* So publicly we know the following:
  - It cannot be re-issued (fixed supply token)
  - It has only been issued once
  - However both the *issued amount and the circulating supply* has been hidden from us.

It's nice to have hidden assets, but practically speaking they might not be useful in many situations. For instance, suppose that we wanted users to be able to verify the circulating amounts (i.e. to prevent debasement). 

It is possible to 'unblind' this information to clients, but that would involve distributing an unblinding key to each client. Luckily there is a simple solution: we can issue the asset as unblinded - which will permit this information to be publicly available *without* affecting the security of the actual transactions:

### Issuing a Non-Confidential Asset

* Let's create another asset and this time choose a different option (specifically, lets create this asset unblinded by setting the last value to **false**. This option controls blinded / unblinded behavior):

```
$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS issueasset 10 0 false

{
  "txid": "225f3ed16457467673fd64f3577031b91be370615b3feba53e1cc0b256768944",
  "vin": 0,
  "entropy": "fc4b02ee3892faaef2ddb673d437910ca75ca4d4e5ff4c1cb6ef1e3a4667a942",
  "asset": "41c19a473c71298a28342ccbf6fcbd3042cae8607b3b79d336b4c02e89ba2c66",
  "token": "10178003de4d2141fc318e3a61a7c8e1d43d3842a87fb8fb18fc1c1b09d081cb"
}
```

...and checking again what [the Liquid network knows about it](https://blockstream.info/liquid/asset/41c19a473c71298a28342ccbf6fcbd3042cae8607b3b79d336b4c02e89ba2c66)

![3-part2-secondasset.png](https://m.stacker.news/14410)

* Now we can see the total issued amount / supply[^2]

* Let's try sending 2 of these unblinded assets to another wallet (my Blockstream Green mobile wallet) and see what is visible on the network.
  
```
$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -named -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS sendtoaddress address="VJLKDWB..." amount=2.0 assetlabel="41c19a..."
b1d0592319fc5a6ed4e2ea912ddbc9e630e0a13a083a178f69054129ef589d25
```

* Looking up this transaction on the [block explorer, we see](https://blockstream.info/liquid/tx/b1d0592319fc5a6ed4e2ea912ddbc9e630e0a13a083a178f69054129ef589d25):

![4-part2-tx.png](https://m.stacker.news/14411)

This is interesting: So although the transaction is visible, we can't see what was actually transferred (even though the details of the asset are visible, *it is still hidden inside the transaction*). 

Further, where is my Green Wallet address (ie. VJLKDWB...)? We can see 3 output addresses, presumably these are: Change, Fee, and Recipient...but where the actual Green Wallet address? 

* Let's look up my [Green Wallet address directly in the explorer](https://blockstream.info/liquid/address/VJLKDWB6zezPptnxQu3zAJbNBFqSKER6VWjnnDaVQxsUivQB974qRZWzW9yDa9ziokVquRkuiL6muC1c):

![5-part2-greenaddr.png](https://m.stacker.news/14412)

So now this shows us that the *Confidential Address: VJLKDWB...* corresponds to the *Unconfidential Address: GnDXE5...* Through the magic of one-way hashes, if we know the "Confidential" address we can then derive its public address. However, just by looking at the public blockchain, there is no way to reverse that hash. 

Now, lets look at how things look on the Green mobile wallet:

![6-part2-noassetlabel.png](https://m.stacker.news/14414)

We can see that we've received 200,000,000 'units' of our custom asset. However, notice how there is no label. Whereas, for L-BTC and Tether it shows complete with name and ticker symbol. Showing just the asset UUID is not very user friendly. Let's see if we can remedy. 

# Registering our Asset

The publication of asset metadata info on Liquid works on a `.well-known` system where specific files are published on a webserver that you control. There are a few different steps to accomplish this:

1. Create a new legacy address[^3], get public key for that address.
2. Generate a Contract and Contract Hash using the information we want to appear in the public registry.
3. Create our asset with Contract Hash embedded in it
4. If we ever want to delete the asset from the registry, generate a delete script
5. Generate a `liquid-asset-proof` text file and place in `.well-known` location on domain that matches contract
6. Register (or unregister) the asset via Blockstream web API

Thats a lot of steps, and many are prone to error. Luckily for us there exist a bash script to basically do all of it. [Download the script from Blockstream](https://docs.liquid.net/docs/blockstream-liquid-asset-registry#issuing-with-a-contract-hash)

Save that file as `issue_and_prepare_register.sh` and open with text editor to customize the following values.

```
#NOTE: SET YOUR OWN VALUES HERE, THESE ARE WHAT I USED AS A DEMO

NAME="StackerNewsDemo-1"
TICKER="SND-1"
DOMAIN="coins.b0xxy.net"
ASSET_AMOUNT=10.0
TOKEN_AMOUNT=0
PRECISION=8
COLLECTION=""
alias e1-cli="sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS"
```

With these values set, you can run the script. This script will output 3 files:

* liquid-asset-proof-<ASSET> (put this file in .well-known location of domain you set)
* register_asset_<ASSET>.sh (Bash curl script to submit via Blockstream API)
* delete_asset_<ASSET>.sh (Bash curl script to delete asset from registry)

Take the `liquid-asset-proof-<ASSET>` file and place it in `.well-known` folder in root of domain (or sub-domain in this case). For instance, this will be placed in `https://coins.b0xxy.net/.well-known/liquid-asset-proof-3e62af3c80c56ab6fec3d1e5646637152afebaf2a86ace075bbb7a88702e1fe5` in this case. **Verify that you can actually reach it before proceeding to the next step**.

Then you can run the `register_asset_ASSET.sh` script and you should get a json response back indicating success. 

On my end, the script generated a new asset, [which can be seen here](https://blockstream.info/liquid/asset/3e62af3c80c56ab6fec3d1e5646637152afebaf2a86ace075bbb7a88702e1fe5)

![7-part2-registered.png](https://m.stacker.news/14415)

Looking at this newly created asset asset, we can see:
 * Has an actual Name + Ticker instead of just a UUID 
 * Has decimalization preference set
 * Shows registered website that controls it
 * Has a Contract + Contract Hash associated with it

Now if I send 2 of these to my same Blockstream Green Wallet:

![8-part2-wassetlabel2.png](https://m.stacker.news/14416)

Now it shows up in a much more user-friendly format. The only thing missing is a logo! How can we fix? Blockstream allows you to [upload logos for your assets on their website](https://blockstream.com/amp/asset-issuer/). So after doing that now we have:

![9-part2-wassetlogo.png](https://m.stacker.news/14417)

# Wrap-up and Next Session

In this session we issued assets[^4], looked at their basic features, and registered our own. In the next part in the series, we will delve into even more advanced aspects of Liquid like: Swaps, Contracts, etc. Finally we will discuss pegging-out and the broader use-cases of the technology.


[^1]: The values E_RPCUSER and E_RPCPASS, where environmental variables we set in Part I
[^2]: Like in bitcoin, 1 integer unit is 100,000,000 base units (not sats, but equivalent concept) - So in this case issuing "10" assets is really issuing 1000000000 units (10 x 100,000,000). 
[^3]: Using a legacy address for this task imposes no real implications to your security since its only used to remove assets from the registry. Its possible to do this with a non-legacy address, but more steps are involved and we will need to use other tools rather than what's already built-in to Elements node, so we will just use a legacy address for this.  
[^4]: One feature we neglected to checkout was issuing reissuable assets. If you are interested in seeing how that is done, you can check out the developer documentation here: [https://elementsproject.org/elements-code-tutorial/reissuing-assets](https://elementsproject.org/elements-code-tutorial/reissuing-assets)



DeepDive into Liquid: Part II - Asset Creation and Configuration

freetx

# DeepDive into Liquid: Part I - Overview, Installation, and Peg-In

This is a multipart DeepDive that will focus on the [Liquid Sidechain](https://liquid.net). It will be released in 3 Parts:
* Part I (this): Overview, Installation, and first Peg-In
* Part II: Asset Creation and Configuration
* Part III: Advanced Topics and Peg-out

## Overview ##

Liquid is a federated BTC sidechain (Layer-2). The federation which controls the network are known as 'Functionaries'. Currently, there are 15 such Functionaries[^1] who are geographically dispered to help isolate the network from both physical and regulatory disruption. 

Functionaries do the block signing for the network, which happens in a round-robin style arrangement - and consensus requires 11-of-15 to be available and in agreement.

A unique aspect of this federation is that functioinary membership is dynamic - using a protocol known as *DynaFed* - this allows members to be rotated out/in depending on circumstance. In order to support a large number of signers, the functionaries use a signature scheme known as [ROAST](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/550.pdf) (Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold Signatures). As stated:

    "It guarantees that a quorum of honest signers, e.g., the Liquid functionaries, 
    can always obtain a valid signature even in the presence of disruptive signers 
    when network connections have arbitrarily high latency. Our empirical performance 
    evaluation shows that ROAST scales well to large signer groups, e.g., a 67-of-100 
    setup with the coordinator and signers on different continents. Even with 33 malicious 
    signers that try to block signing attempts (e.g. by sending invalid responses or by not 
    responding at all), the 67 honest signers can successfully produce a signature within 
    a few seconds."

Obviously this along with the inclusion of *DynaFed* (a recent addition to the network), seems to indicate that they plan to increase the total federation functionaries from 15 to more in the future. 

**Functionaries Sign, not Mine**

A key aspect of Liquid is *there is no mining*. The core asset, L-BTC, is only created when BTC pegs-into the network, so unlike Bitcoin, mining is not used to create issuance of new coins. The total amount L-BTC can be verified along with the equivalent amount of BTC, which are held in a public multisig address. This ensures that there is no inflation possible of L-BTC, since it will balance 1:1 with the pegged BTC.

By default, all Liquid transactions use *Confidential Transactions*, so both the type of assets and amounts transacted are hidden, *even to functionaries*. However, Functionaries can still see the from / to addresses involved - they only don't know *what* is being transferred. 

**Liquid Ecosystem and Roles**

Here are some charts showing current ecosystem members and the roles various members can fulfill. In total there are currently 66 Liquid Members (not all Members are Functionaries).

![1-liquid-member-logos.png](https://m.stacker.news/13613)
![2-liquid-roles.png](https://m.stacker.news/13614)

### Assets

Liquid supports Asset Issuance. Any full-node can issue their own Assets (only requirement is to have needed L-BTC to pay for signing fees). These assets fall into the following categories / use-cases:

    * Tokens (e.g. arbitrary token issue, stablecoin, etc)
    * Swaps (e.g. atomic swap of Token A for Token B)
    * Options / Smart Contracts / Covenants (e.g. swap Token A for B if condition ABC is met)
    * Securities (e.g. issue dividends to Token A holders after X time)
    * Restricted Assets (e.g. prohibit holder of Token A from transfer without approval)

### Additional Opcodes

At its core, Liquid is basically "BTC plus special OPCODES less Mining". In order to support the Smart Contracts and Convenants seen above, Liquid reintroduces some safe but disabled opcodes, including string concatenation (CAT), substrings, integer shifts, and several bitwise operations ([see here for more](https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements/blob/master/doc/tapscript_opcodes.md?ref=blog.blockstream.com)).

Additionally a new DETERMINISTICRANDOM operation which produces a random number within a range from a seed. Also included is CHECKSIGFROMSTACK (CSFS) operation, which verifies a signature against a message on the stack, rather than the spending transaction itself.

These new opcodes have several use cases, including convenant-style controls, double-spent protection bonds, lotteries, merkle tree constructions to allow 1-of-N multisig with huge N (thousands), and probabilistic payments.

# Installation of Elements Node

Liquid uses a variation of BTC Core program known as Elements, much of the setup and use are very similar to bitcoin. Please note that Elements **requires a fully functioning bitcoind daemon is available** (it is a sidechain, after all). Thus for this demonstration, I am using my Umbrel since it makes installing Bitcoin and Elements quite simple. 

*If you are intending to run Liquid on a bare-metal setup, please refer to this [getting started guide](https://elementsproject.org/elements-code-tutorial/working-environment) to setup your environment. Setting up a core-bitcoin install is outside the scope of this DeepDive*

### Running Elements on Umbrel
* Meet requirements (1TB disk for BTC / 25GB disk for Liquid / >8GB RAM[^2]) 
* A running and fully-synced Bitcoin 'App'
* Install Elements 'App'

... Go take a several hour break while it downloads ...

* Navigate to Elements 'App' web interface on Umbrel and copy `rpcuser` and `rpcpassword` values

![3-umbrel-elements.png](https://m.stacker.news/13615)
  
* Save the above values as bash variables for use later
  - `$ export E_RPCUSER=elements`
  - `$ export E_RPCPASS=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX`
* You should now be able to issue commands against the elements daemon
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getblockcount`
  
    25846 (It doesn’t matter what the number returned is as long as no error.)
* Create a default wallet
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS createwallet ""`
* Check balance info (should show 0 balance with no errors)
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getwalletinfo`

# First Peg-In
Now let's peg-in some bitcoin in order to receive L-BTC within our Liquid wallet. (*NOTE: There are online services that automate this entire process and make it much simpler. In general services like [Sideswap](https://sideswap.io/peg-in-out/) makke this process much easier*)

* Generate a new peg-in address
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getpeginaddress`
    
      {
       "mainchain_address": "bc1qXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX",
       "claim_script": "001489b0XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
      }

* Save the `claim_script` above in a variable for use later
  - `$ export E_CLAIMSCR="001489b0XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"`
* Send some btc to the `mainchain_address` listed above (I'm sending 150000 sats)
* Copy the BTC transaction ID and save to variable
  - `$ export B_TRANSID="bb1d0903XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"`
* Wait for the confirmation[^4]
* On your BITCOIN node, run the following command
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose bitcoin exec bitcoind bitcoin-cli getrawtransaction $B_TRANSID`
     
     020000000173f50....

* Save that output to bash variable
  - `$ export B_RAWTRANS='020000000173f50....`
* On your BITCOIN node, get output proof
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose bitcoin exec bitcoind bitcoin-cli gettxoutproof '["<transaction_id_paste>"]'`
     
     00406426ea774aff7437de482c73f2ac8......

* Save output proof in bash variable
  - `$ export B_OUTPROOF='00406426ea774aff7437de482c73f2ac8....'`
* Now back on the elements node, we can claim the L-BTC
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS claimpegin $B_RAWTRANS $B_OUTPROOF $E_CLAIMSCR`
* Issue a getwallet info on Elements and you should see an unconfirmed balance
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getwalletinfo`
    
    "unconfirmed_balance": {
      "bitcoin": 0.00149952
     }[^5],

* After 1 confirmations (approx 2 mins) the balance should be confirmed
  - `$ sudo ./scripts/app compose elements exec node elements-cli -rpcuser=$E_RPCUSER -rpcpassword=$E_RPCPASS getwalletinfo`

    "balance": {
    "bitcoin": 0.00149952}[^6]

## Wrap Up and Preview for Part II. 

This was just the basics, in this DeepDive we got our Elements node running and pegged-in our initial BTC balance. 

In Part II is where the fun begins, we will transfer (and see Confidential Transactions in practice), issue Assets, and get the assets in the registry.



[^1]: As of 1-21-2024. There are 66 members who can perform other functions on network, but only Functionaries can sign

[^2]: RAM usage is higher for Liquid than for BTC alone due to Confidential Transactions processing

[^3]: It may be possible to run the `elements-cli` command without installing it separately, however I could not find it in the container. Anyway, the download of elements node is quite small and it communicates via localport on Umbrel, so this works fine.

[^4]: Requires 102 confirmations. Services like sideswap will release after 2 confs for small amounts  

[^5]: Balance less the 48sat transaction fee

[^6]: yes, the label is still called 'bitcoin' but can be changed if that annoys you :)




DeepDive into Liquid: Part I - Overview, Installation, and Peg-In

nostr

(Tutorial) How to implement NOSTR Protocol from scratch with Python (NIP-01)

Rsync25

bitcoin

Bitcoin cookie cutter

oraltosun

tech

Bitmagnet: A self-hosted BitTorrent indexer, DHT crawler, and torrent search

Spending Sunday - What Recent Bitcoin Purchases Have You Made?

I bought a 3d printer today! https://3dprintergobrrr.com/collections/printers/products/ender-3-max

coolcat

Open source bitcoin asic miner project- bitaxeUltra

Gian

Pay with Lightning at 1000+ restaurants in Central Europe using the Qerko_CZ App

Modifying FROST Multisignature Threshold and Signers

utxoclub

Posted on #bitcoin-core-dev IRC channel and https://twitter.com/jonatack/status/1653086583657054217.

An attack on the I2P network is ongoing since a day or so. Bitcoin nodes running using the i2pd router (https://i2pd.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) may not be able to create SAM sessions due to floodfills.  Reverting back to i2pd version 2.42.1 has been reported to be one temporary workaround.  See this open discussion in the i2pd repository for updates on the attack and its mitigation:  https://github.com/PurpleI2P/i2pd/discussions/1918

The Java I2P router seems to be unaffected due to its Sybil analysis and block list function.  I've re-established bitcoind connections with the I2P network by switching from i2pd to the Java I2P router (https://geti2p.net).

For users who switch over:  Unlike i2pd, the SAM application bridge is not enabled by default in the Java I2P Router. SAM must be started manually, or configured to start automatically, in the configure clients page in the router console or in the clients.config file.

Some links for more information about using Bitcoin over I2P:

- https://jonatack.github.io/articles/using-alternative-p2p-networks-with-bitcoin-core
- https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/i2p.md
- https://www.cloudwards.net/i2p-vs-tor/
- https://becomesovran.com/blog/i2p-the-private-layer-of-the-web.html

Ongoing attack on the I2P network--Bitcoin nodes connecting using i2pd affected

jonatack

Hey y'all, earlier this year I began working on a proposal for an encryption protocol which only allows decryption after a set amount of time has elapsed.

A real world use case is for whistleblowers to encrypt and share their documents and findings without the contents/identity being revealed for a set amount of time. The whistleblower will have time to personally prepare before the documents are unlocked to their target, and they can know that no middle man can compromise them by unlocking the documents prematurely. 

It is powered by layer 1 bitcoin transactions, so I figured users here would be interested in learning more. Now, I'm looking for any feedback or potential vulnerabilities I've missed, before attempting any time of implementation.

Check out the [Google doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQe-OF0Lw9lutf6aBeSlVs0G09sSGX3XmBRQG7rkbxRvJeKZ22hH-O1zXU4Cvj8YXfi4r2N31GUc7cG/pub) or download the [pdf from Google drive](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ty6XjgzoP5WOjGbl0U3PCwMJOKtRTTDV/view?usp=sharing).

If you just want to see some code, check out the [Github gist](https://gist.github.com/mothepro/78da7630fa8004e1fb660101beb5f8ce) which generates a part of the bitcoin puzzle transaction.

Cheers,


Trustless Time-Locked encryption powered by bitcoin

mothepro

This guide is dedicated to all my "haters" and followers.
@WeAreAllSatoshi
@gfy
@Modus
@PlebeiusG
@Syturio
... and many others that just want to trash my posts but don't really read my guides.

I want to help the Bitcoin community.
Yes, many will say that I am crazy and insult noobs.
This is "my way" you like it or not, I don't fucking care.

So here I wrote a guide about Bluewallet migration to another LN funding sources, to calm down the noobs that don't know about all the LN aspects and hos to use it.

[Bluewallet - connect to LN funding sources](https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/bluewallet-connect-to-ln-funding)