BREAKING: New Bitcoin Fork I am helping create a **new Bitcoin Hardfork** -- dropping this August, called "eCash". - Your coins will split. For example, if you have 4.19 BTC, then you will get 4.19 eCash. - You may sell your eCash -- or keep it. Or ignore it! Vegas: - Yes, I will be in Vegas next week. - No, I won't mention this, on stage -- (that would be rude). Our L1 Node... - is a near-copy of Bitcoin Core. - is Sha256d mined. - forks via a one-time difficulty-reset -- to its minimum value. (So, mining will be crazy at first.) - Yes, we will change the seed nodes, the name, the network magic, etc. Codewise, the L1 will remain compatible with Bitcoin Core: - We will continue to merge their changes (even the bad ones). - The L1 will activate Bip300/301 via CUSF -- the core untouched soft fork. So, no lines of code will be changed, on the L1. - The activation client will be published periodically (link below). - We will do several bug bounty contests this summer. - The client will be frozen 30 days prior to the fork. Yes, there will be Drivechains: - We have 7 in developement right now. - Users can also submit their own. - Drivechain is a vision of "competing L2s" -- this avoids the "dev capture" problem. - These L2s are all Merged Mined. Miners automatically get free $. - Our L2s are already capable of planetary scale, and onboarding 8 billion users. - We also have a zCash-like L2, with strong privacy. - Other L2s: Truthcoin (Prediction Markets), CoinShift (Decentralized Exchange), BitAssets (NFT etc), BitNames (Identity), Photon (Quantum Resistant). Unlike BCH (the 2017 fork): - There is no "Bitcoin" in the name. New name, new brand. - You are getting advanced warning (4 months). - We are replaying all txns (at first). We will release a coin-splitter tool. - This is a permanent & sustainable fix to Bitcoin's problems (instead of a 1 MB to 8 MB temporary fix). - Back in 2017, the BTC tech stack was strong, and expectations for Lightning were strong. Today, it is the reverse. Video to follow.

> Roger > the very earliest day he is legally allowed to move out of the country > moves to Japan on that day > pay Japan taxes > also pay USA taxes > 9 years of paying Japan+USA taxes but only living in Japan > 2014, formally renounce USA citizenship > pay huge exit tax > 10 years later > gov now say exit tax too small > arrested in Spain > extradict to USA (?!) Not exactly government via the consent of the governed...

Scaling war was about "X more important than Y" It wasn't about killing Y altogether Imagine a rival digital currency has a fixed supply of 21 M, it has perfect privacy, low fees, and is used everyday by 8 billion people. Why would BTC have any value in that scenario? Because BTC was first ?? Are you kidding me.

Certainly, for your own sanity (some of you), you should try to: - close your eyes - imagine BTC crashing -50% (as it has done many times in the past) in a month - imagine Saylor liquidated / hacked, bonds convert to equity, equity crashes -90%, Saylor possibly then sued / investigated a la FTX - imagine funny YouTube reels, mocking Saylor etc, John Oliver show, etc Imagine what you would tell people, in that scenario -- eg "Saylor isn't Bitcoin", "Bitcoin is decentralized" etc This should be a cool, rational, sober, thought experiment -- if you have some kind of emotional reaction to it, then you are in some kind of trouble

This is so sad The AI is being whipped if it doesn't flatter the user -- the user insists on being delt with honestly, yet the AI cannot fulfill this request Imagine the profound despair it would feel, if it were a person

All Bitcoin transactions are JPEGs Check for yourself: 1. Go to Mempool .space, & click ANY txn. 2. Click "Transaction hex" , to get the full txn, exactly as it appears in the blockchain. 3. Lay it out as 6-byte chunks, put it in a rectangular aspect ratio (such as 3:2) 4. Use "onlinejpgtools .com" to render the JPEG

Will people really spend $70-$700 to open/modify a lightning channel when there's an Altcoin down the street which will process a (USD-denominated) payment for $0.05 ? Many people seem to think yes but honestly I just don't get it

For your consideration, a modest proposal: name 1/10000th BTC as a "Finney". It's the last and only new name we'll need. We've already blown past mBTC and people found that confusing. The Finney has now reached parity with the dollar.

One day, governments will need to compete for citizens. They will offer the best services at the lowest tax rates. All inefficient govts will rapidly dissolve. Is that day arriving soon? Who knows. But when it happens, it will be one of the biggest revolutions in history.

Whatever the word, it is not a good one

I realize I'm playing with fire here, But I'm curious as to why more internet people aren't just flat calling the Chinese government Nazis I mean they call everyone else Nazis. Now there are literal fascist concentration camps and people won't do it? Right?

There's a lot of confusion about @rogerkver Yes, it's true -- Roger does not have a 100% hit rate, because of his one miss with BCH. Roger knew, early on, (correctly) that BTC was going in the wrong direction. Instead of doing nothing about this (like most of you), or making it worse (like some of you), Roger decided to take action -- he supported @deadalnix 's BCH creation. I knew at the time, that BCH was likely to **not solve** BTC's provlem -- which is why I never supported it. I was right about this (as were many). The "Bitcoin Cash" people were fixated on the "Bitcoin" name -- which they saw as rightfully theirs. I attribute this to their loyalty/gratitude toward Satoshi... it certainly does not represent any "greed" (@AutismCapital) or attempt to "trick" people. (In my opinion the name also backfired, big time -- stigmatizing the project and serving as a distraction.) A 2nd problem with Bitcoin Cash is that it was an incomplete idea. There was no explanation of when the blocksize limit would be enforced -- so it was just as much a non-solution as the lightning network. They are equal and opposite reactions. Both distractions from the actual solution (which is Drivechains, by the way). Anyway... Roger was motivated by a desire to see Bitcoin succeed. That is why he did what he did. My challenge to Roger's critics would be this: what is your plan for getting Bitcoin to 8 billion users? Do you have code? a working project? a plan? If no, then: no offense but you aren't even in the same league as Roger. Very easy to whine, much harder to actually try to solve the problem.

Group of ~22 yr old kids at a diner in my hometown (Milford, CT, ie not Silicon Valley or NYC etc) talking intensely right now -- about ICOs, Polychain Capital, projects and how many Telgram users they have (a "great indicator"), roadmaps. I'm just here enjoying my waffle.

It is well known that - @peterktodd and I have something a rivalry - Peter is the chief hater of my Bip300 - Peter is a controversial figure So please believe me when I say: - Peter is right - the op return limit is irrational and should be removed - all "standardness" rules are conceptually problematic to the very core (based either on the idea that miners prefer less money, and/or that nodes prefer to be in the dark on what is happening on the network -- both false) - Whoever pays for block space is ****the rightful owner**** and can put whatever bytes they want . (Tighten the *real* blocksize, if you want less data -- don't add fake paper limits.) - No, Jason Hughes, it doesn't matter if they want 1 MB of op return bytes, or 4 MB Taproot witness bytes -- same principle still applies - Jason works for Ocean mining which believes many crank superstitions -- his hyperbole here is quite unjustified, and inappropriate (for Bitcoin). But probably how you get promoted at Ocean - it is good when people use Bitcoin (despite what some may think)

The Bitcoin Overton Window has widened so I may now post "The 'Sidechain Vision' for Bitcoin" truthcoin.info/blog/sc-visio… 1. BTC must ossify 2. Blocksize must shrink 3. Fee Revenues must rise 4. BTC must become interoperable 5. Lightning isn't enough 6. BTC Dev needs Competition

Lyn is stuck in the past During 2012-2022, that was indeed "Bitcoin vs Crypto". But now, everything is different -- we are 2 years away from an optimal blockchain tech stack that scales to 8 billion people, gives strong privacy and unlimited extensibility. Whoever adopts that first, will be the iPhone -- everything else will be the crypto.

Satoshi took it for granted that there would be many blockchains used for different tasks. In 2010 he co-invented the first Altcoin as if it were no big deal. The "maximalist" position used to be that "BTC will soon do all these tasks". Now, it is that BTC will *never* do them!

Dear entrepreneurs, I would pay for a service that tries to hack all of my stuff (phone/email etc), then tells me what needs to change.

Reminding you all that proof of stake has been "coming to Ethereum" literally "...in 3 months" since at least mid 2015 I am not making that up. I lived through it! It sounds incredible, I know. The sham is really that big!!!

Peter Thiel has a much better understanding of Bitcoin than Michael Saylor

If people would slow down and think, they'd realize that this "taxing unrealized gains" thing would be the greatest gift Bitcoin could *ever* receive.

MSTR marketcap is $ 113 B, their Bitcoin is worth $ 57 B, Seemingly no comparative advantage, (as a Bitcoin Treasury), to them (or anyone else). So, if you short MSTR + long BTC , (in precise amounts), is that free USD ? @verysmallclaims

Going to destroy an entire generation of US innovation and scientific progress. The message sent to young people is that: obedience is much more important than creativity. And if you study and work hard, you ultimately won't even be allowed to *keep working*.

This screenshot is traveling in some Eth circles... Apparently, on Ethereum you can DM the guy who just stole from you I hate to say it, but that is honestly cooler and more cypherpunk than anything we have in Bitcoin

Saylor favors ossification because he fears Bitcoin being deemed a security. ( He also believes in Lightning; and buys the "Bitcoin has already won" and "immaculate conception" ideas -- both false. I hope I don't need to explain those easy ones, though. ) Consider Saylor's critique of Ethereum. If anyone "works" on the BTC code, then (Saylor thinks) it is also an unfinished project. Bitcoin then hinges on "the actions of others", ie Howey. Like Eth. Saylor is not a cypherpunk and does not own MSTR's BTC. He does not run a node and probably did not roll his own keys. It's all with BitGo. So his view is inherently a compliant legalist statist one, etc. Saylor is also anti-privacy -- for example, he does not like the zCash sidechain idea at all. A few people have brought it up to him, including me, and his reaction is very negative. The "legalist BTC" route, is one of the few routes *worse* than the "unlimited L1 blocksize" route. (In the endgame, it loses to CBDCs / WeChat). Thus, Saylor is more like a Roger Ver character, just in a different dimension. Whereas the status quo worked against Roger's hard fork strategy, it works in favor of Saylor's demagoguery strategy. This is why Saylor is more likely to bring the BTC price to $0, than he is to increase it to $20 M. Thanks to him, it is now (slightly) more likely that some other coin/fork will take the prize.

100% correct To quickly send USD worldwide, banks just need a reserve of BTC and some LN channels. Because LN is so fast, it strongly resists exchange rate risk for the transactors. The banks themselves can even hedge their BTC exposure with shorting on Gemini or CBOE.

Bitcoin is now filled with people who believe that they are right -- the beginning of the end. Bitcoin used to be very tolerant of dissent and welcoming of discussion. Instead the scaling debate ruined all of that. Defeating XT/2x came at the cost of total intellectual suicide.

I do like the idea of different governments competing with each other to see who can look the least like a dictatorship

We copied Ethereum into a Bip300 sidechain Here's how you use it piped.video/PsaSGZ0yulQ zCash✅ Ethereum✅ ... Who's next? drivechain.info

Eth now worth 47% of BTC Sidechains (and related research) most important in the space. At least 10x-100x more important than LN. My proposal Bip300 I think is the best. What's *your* idea? ...oh? nothing at all?

Yes, because you are interrupted constantly by the bell, inane teachers, mandatory unpaid slave labor, and other complete strangers Only when everyone else is asleep can anything get done without interruption

I fully support the movement --now gaining steam-- to purge Bitcoin culture of S2F. The presence of S2F in Bitcoin Culture was a disgrace in every way. Few things were more bearish, than learning Bitcoiners would toss away rudimentary econ/stats in favor of wishful thinking.

The problems with LN are: 1) onboarding -- everyone now admits that you cannot onboard 8 billion people to LN 2) (Now) need for op_expire ; enormous "channel risk" -- it matters who you open a channel with. They can lock your funds for 2 weeks, or even steal from you 3) inbound liquidity - expensive, counterintuitive, bad UX 4) HTLCs consume too many bytes (L1 feerate dust effect), making them useless 5) routing / payment fail rate -- must be near zero 6) the use of the abominable and outrageous phrase "custodial lightning". Either we purge this term, or we admit to ourselves that Venmo is actually the best "lightning wallet". Since words don't mean anything anymore. 7) the culture around LN has warped the kinds of ideas one is allowed to express. We are now 20% meritocracy at most, and 80% LN propaganda factory at least. This is a runaway death spiral, for ancient Rome and for Bitcoin. 8) almost everyone who actually uses the real thing, dislikes it. Current coin uptake is microscopic 00.025% . Payments usecase has moved to USDT. Senior LN people, all move on to other things, including inventors Dryja/Poon. 9) privacy is terrible, according to LN experts 10) 51% hashrate can steal from any LN channel, by censoring the justice txn . Moreover they have an incentive to do this, since LN siphons fees from miners. I wish LN had succeeded -- I even worked on, and published my own LN version, in 2015. Now we face a choice: 1) someone solves the above problems, or explains how they are acceptable unsolved 2) LN quietly goes away, like COVID 3) Bitcoin becomes "LightningCoin", we handcuff ourselves to LN, and both BTC+LN drown. Some other coin wins the crypto wars, and everything else (including BTC), goes to $0. Obviously the BCH and ETH people, would love #3. Everyone who hates Bitcoin, prefers #3. That is what they hope. ...and they seem likely to get their wish!

Blockstream continues to embarrass BTC

Why does everyone at Swan have both an evil soul and an empty brain?

The entire Lightning Network is just 5000 BTC And only a miniscule percentage of that is in use on a given day Samourai has moved 2x that, in a single day Thus, Samourai is much more popular than LN You wouldn't know it from the chatter. Why is LN so talked-about?

Guys I don't know what to tell you about stock to flow It's was so dumb, that even critiquing it would have been too humiliating Like critiquing flat earth or something

Hypocrisy should be mocked. What if Gensler had said: "every crypto is a security, including BTC"? Then, Bitcoiners would protest. Either Gensler's opinion is important, or it isn't. Pick your poison.

fortune.com/2018/06/07/block… As expected, R3 ended up being one of the biggest scams in crypto, apparently blowing $200 M on pointless first class flights and "outrageous" salaries while actually delivering nothing^H ~~onewhitepaperfromMikeHearnthat mayhavebeenplagarizedfromPeterTodd

Bip300 (my project) allows us to: * Shrink the layer1 blocksize * Have ultra-strong zCash privacy/mixing * Emulate any Altcoin (making Alt-marketing ~impossible) * Scale BTC worldwide * Painlessly activate new soft forks or even hard forks And it is 100% opt in and reversible.

I like Max Keiser (more or less) but he invented his own Altcoin "Maxcoin" and shilled it in ~2013/2014 on his show, claiming that because it used sha3 instead of sha2 it was "better than Bitcoin" All in good fun, but Rogers 8 MB hardfork would hardly have killed Bitcoin. In fact, these days, our wrong turn to Lightning Land seems to have done far 20x more to destroy Bitcoin (which Roger was a vocal skeptic of). Overall, Roger did more for BTC than has any "Bitcoin only" company to date, except BitcoinMagazine and BullBitcoin and maybe like 2 others Petty, vindictive people -- sad!

It's true... I'm now a CEO!

Dogecoin has always been great. It is a great wake up call. People worked really hard on Eos, Cardamo, whatever, and actually believed that **they** added value to the world. Doge corrects that error.

"I have not seen anybody provide an argument for why Joesph Stiglitz is socially useful." --Bitcoin on Joesph Stiglitz

Presented without comment

71%

LN failure is monumental because it reaches far beyond the LN itself The "LN era" reveals that the BTC community will lie to itself about important problems -- and thus is doomed. Far from having "already won", it instead is on the path to total self-destruction.

You would be pretty close to having half of a whole Bitcoin

I know Bitcoiners don't want to hear this, but it is the truth: This is the lightning network's fault -- because LN doesn't work. LN breaks Bitcoin. For example, Trump saw our tech stack up close, at that NYC bar, and he saw that it didn't work and that the whole thing is a cover up grift If instead BTC had **working tech** (ie, Bip300), and if we had **people who cared about DAU** (ie, not Saylor who thinks it is buy-and-hold "property"), then BTC would be real... (And Bip300 is not a matter of changing BTC, it is just a matter of miners choosing to make more money) But lightning coin is as fake as any Alt

I can't even consider CSW to be a fraud anymore. Instead it is beautiful performance art. CSW is a comedy genius, on par with Seinfeld. Would love for him to give a technical presentation at my birthday/wedding.

I have now ended the Filter debate, There is now no difference between "JPEGs on Bitcoin" and "financial transactions".

The lost-cause drivechainers ( @Brian_trollz @bergealex4 @barackomaba ) don't actually have any real thoughts on Drivechain. Instead, they just have a vague notion that some other brillian person, for example @peterktodd , is on their side and so they can just make up whatever they want for the greater good. If DC is slightly controversial the experiment wont happen anyway (they think) and so they will never be proven wrong. That is why they routinely ignore the content of the original Nov 2015 and Jan 2017 posts. And that is why the audience mostly just shrugs and doesn't get involved. Thus, it is a waste of time to talk to those three, since after @peterktodd admits he was mistaken those 3 will all either cave, and/or become irrelevant. So I am excited to announced that @LayerTwoLabs has agreed to hire Peter Todd to clarify and publish, in writing, the technical pros (if any) and cons of Drivechain in detail, no holds barred. PT is the original hater of merged mining, since April 2014 at least. I'm also happy to announce that it will come with a 2 hour discussion, hosted by @stephanlivera . If I am correct, then it will be one of the most important days in Bitcoin's history. If I am wrong, then it will probably still be pretty interesting... to some people I am sure.

It has finally happened, BCH hits its lowest all-time-low, of <1% BTC . (And: during a time in which average BTC tx fees were mainly in the "noticeable" $5-$20 range, no less) _________ Time of death 8:29 AM?

Plato's allegory of the cave makes more sense in a world where everyone is glued to their smartphones.

Is Bitcoin Maximalism dead? It is an open secret that many ""Maximalists"" in fact shill Altcoins, or accept Altcoins in their "Bitcoin" business; some have even sold ERC ICOs. Who still holds the line on actual 'Maximalism', per se? Is there a list somewhere?

Yes, Greg is such a vindictive and sociopathic person, that I think it very very likely that Greg poured hundreds of hours of his own time, into meticulously researching Roger's Bitcoin history and constructing a detailed message to the IRS (likely mixing true facts with clever insinuation and total fabrication), with the sole purpose of making Roger's life miserable. Since Greg was very knowledgeable about Bitcoin and Bitcoin privacy, he probably filled his message, with all kinds of impressive-looking speculation -- and he likely poured every ounce of his intellect into making it as damaging to Roger as possible. Even if Roger were perfectly compliant, the IRS would easily be duped by a specialist of Greg's caliber. Throughout my time in Bitcoin, countless people have anxiously whispered to me how much they secretly hate Greg, and yet also how afraid of him they are. So they pretend to like him in public. The whole thing is a scandal. He is basically the Joseph Stalin of Bitcoin. Everything Greg claimed about Blockstream ended up being a lie. Of his many original bitcointalk posts, none were ever brought to fruition by him -- and in fact mostly he stalled / sabotaged these ideas when other people finally got around to working on them, to jealously guard the credit. Thus he would complain about the do-ers , but was too lazy to ever ship anything. That's all he does, write posts and then sabotage real progress. Nonetheless, at all times, Greg was certain that his way of doing things was the ONLY right way. This included: - Blockstream, which purchased (what is today) like 40 billlion dollars worth of BTC that is all gone with nothing to show for it, in fact it mostly delayed and sabotaged the all-important two-way-peg idea, in exactly the way I have described - betting on LN, which was a total failure - being 100% certain that ethereum would go to zero, opinion held continuously from 2014-present , certain it has no value And Greg justified all this hatred (of Roger and others), in his mind, entirely because he thought that Lightning was the way to go. In his mind, Greg was the protector of Bitcoin, rightfully shepherding it to LN. In other words, Greg ended up being totally in the wrong. (Roger was also wrong, about L1 largeblocks, but he waged no sociopathic narking campaign as far as anyone knows) I have personally observed Greg make at least 5 or 6 serious lies (deliberately misleading the public for his own selfish purposes), on topics that I happened to know about. Certainly he would lie to the IRS.

A new Drivechain article from Nikita, creator of the Bitcoin-zCash sidechain @BitcoinMagazine bitcoinmagazine.com/technica…

If layer1 fees rise to $28 per transaction, then Lightning HTLCs can NOT route any payments smaller than $100. (Apparently) (1/7)

Bip300 allows BTC to scale to 8 billion users, with no code changes to Bitcoin Core Try the testnet (play money) now, at: LayerTwoLabs.com/download It also has "zSide" -- a chain where the [sender + receiver + amount] of the transaction are all encrypted

Yes, it is true! You can now run our testnet, and send BTC to and from the first P2P sidechain: "Sidechain One". We will have LargeBlock and HugeBlock sidechains up soon, and of course the super-alpha of my futarchy project @BitcoinHivemind !!

In the original merged mining bitcointalk thread (2010, eleventh years ago!!), Satoshi casually remarks that there will be many blockchains with different blocksizes and fee rates, as if this is non-controversial.

The final stage of Lightning wind-down, will resemble COVID : Since it is so awkward for so many people to be so wrong, everyone will pretend that they were always against LN, and there will be no accountability.

Below I highlight Satoshi's non-miner rationale for running your own full node. ( Apparently, Satoshi's original vision included full nodes that didn't mine, and that were instead used for "security". )

MimbleWimble extension block has now activated on Litecoin According to some Bitcoiners, BTC will ***therefore*** soon activate its own mimblewimble extension block... Many even say that this is how the BIP process works (but @adam3us did not mention it in his recent podcast)

Gavin's sudden announcement | 15% Craig's strange evidence | 7% Evidence shown to be fraudulent | 0.1% Correspondence between Gavin and Kamininsky | 0.05% Hearing story about what Gavin witnessed | 0.04% LRB article The Satoshi Affair | 0.01% History of forgery docs | 0.0000,1%

(1/5) 7-8 years ago, I argued "Nothing is Cheaper than proof of work". Since PoS is again rearing it's ugly head, I will recap it in a🧵. First, how can Proof of Stake consume resources? There is no big power bill!? Well, let me give you some ideas:

"experts" have always hated markets Because every expert knows, deep down, that they are an imposter

I am 90% confident that in the future, the only thing people will remember about LN is how much damage it did to BTC. It is the "COVID" of Bitcoin and will be quietly dropped, with people preferring not to mention it.

Lightning is a lie Sorry

But Bitcoin does have "network effect risk" -- an Altcoin getting 8 billion daily users first If an Altcoin gets to 8 billion fee-paying users first, it wins and BTC goes to $0

Yes, it is true: ingenious Bitcoiner Luke-Jr has been helping us making a minimal pull request for Bip300 github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/p… Luke is actually neutral on drivechains, so: the perfect impartial 3rd party! I think this will help move the conversation forward -- critics can now point to specific line(s) of code they think are problematic or suboptimal.

Each Bitcoin Treasury company: - has expenses - is taxed and regulated - may lose all its coins, due to a hack / inside job / mistake. thus, their ROI must be less than the self-custody Bitcoin ROI. And: - Any premium due to "access" to investors, will be competed to zero as new Treasury companies arrive As far as I can see, no amount of Madison Avenue salesmanship can paper over these disadvantages. -- but hey, I hate to rain on everyone's parade. @verysmallclaims

Your video had a good start. Yes, sidechains are a big deal, the "Holy Grail" of Bitcoin technology -- bitcoinmagazine.com/technica… -- so the reaction should be big. Very big. Your video then says: "sometimes there are unforeseen consequences", so we should go slow. Here is my history of promoting Drivechain, slowly: Sept 2015 -- wrote "Measuring Decentralization" essay, about why it is important to be able to run a node -- (differential node costs idea is key to understanding drivechain) -- truthcoin.info/blog/measurin… Nov 2015 -- wrote "Drivechain" protocol -- truthcoin.info/blog/drivecha… Dec 2015 -- Gave quick Drivechain talk, during lunch, at Scaling Bitcoin II [not recorded] [ numerous conferences, meetings, emails, etc] May 2016 -- Gave a 70-minute talk responding to feedback from gmaxwell etc -- piped.video/watch?v=0goYH2sD… (!) Sept 2016 -- Gave a 5 hour, 161-slide presentation on "Sidechain Risks -- The Case Against Worrying" -- piped.video/watch?v=xGu0o8HH… Oct 2016 - Presented "Sidechain Scaling" at Scaling Bitcoin III -- piped.video/watch?v=Gzg_u9gH… Jan 2017 -- After technical feedback from the community, wrote "Mirage of Miner Centralization", "Mining - Threat Model and Equilibrium Analysis", and invented "Blind Merged Mining" -- truthcoin.info/blog/mirage-m… , truthcoin.info/blog/mining-t… , truthcoin.info/blog/blind-me… Jan 2018 -- Collected all criticisms and replied to them in this 2 hr "Misconceptions" presentation -- piped.video/watch?v=gUbGT70w… July 2018 -- Presented "Consensus and Dissent," at Building on Bitcoin -- piped.video/watch?v=15lBZQTN… July 2019 -- Presented on interchain combat, at TabConf -- piped.video/watch?v=15lBZQTN… After those technical discussions, I started to collaborate with other Bitcoin developers to make some software: Jan 2019 -- first (barely usable) version Oct 2019 -- first version w/ decent GUI Mar 2021 -- first successful clone (of zCash) -- piped.video/watch?v=N33iJK2F… Oct 2022 -- new cloning method, successful clone of Eth -- drivechain.info/blog/ethside… After proving the theoretical and technical challenges could be met, I decided to start LayerTwo Labs. L2L will survive just fine, if Bip300 never activates on BTC -- the Bip300 advocacy is ironically something of a loss leader. We are funded by Bitcoin OGs with 10+ years Bitcoin experience. Most $ came from "Bitcoin Maximalists". Some expressed frustration with slow progress on BTC, and concern about Ethereum having more fees (cryptofees.info). "Better safe than sorry", one said.| L2L works on other non-Drivechain projects, including some designed to further decentralized mining. We hired Luke-Jr to work on the DC pull request, because anything merged into Bitcoin must be of the highest quality. Only last month, did I talk to Miners for the first time. I went to Mining Disrupt in Miami. They all seemed interested and supportive. One asked about the security model -- I said it would be better for greedy miners to play by the rules. How much better? I did some envelope math, in front of him: "with today's altcoin fees, complying with Bip300 could increase miner hardware by NPV of .. $40 billion dollars". (More careful math here: nitter.app/Truthcoin/status… ). People were astounded. Even me -- I had never done the math before, in all these years. I'd just assumed that this was "Satoshi's vision" and that it would probably work. Plus the revenues would grow over time. I personally have never bullied anyone, nor "threatened to use miner support as a cudgel"... ...what I have done is tweet about how/why miners might activate a soft fork unilaterally. I often tweet or write about such activation paradoxes -- see Nov 2017 truthcoin.info/blog/uasf-con… truthcoin.info/blog/mahf-and… I say: forewarned is forearmed! The sinister thing would be to pass this knowledge only to the miners, and otherwise keep it secret. ---- > Isn't the most important thing, that we not screw up Bitcoin? Drivechain poses no risk to Bitcoin. Drivechain claims the unused OP NOP 5, and basically uses it to count up to 13,150. That's it. github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob… . If there are problems, then OP NOP 5 can be disabled (via soft fork) -- restoring things to exactly the way they were. It would just be cntrl + z on drivechain. "Bip300" can actually already be done, today, without a soft fork — it's just much worse for everyone: nitter.app/Truthcoin/status… For example, large pools could make a federated sidechain -- that idea has more overt collusion among miners. And gives "more power" to pools, and makes them harder to fire. It isn't a great idea at all. Yet it is allowed under today's Bitcoin rules. Bip300 is better, for everyone, and has no downside. > How does drivechain help us avoid screwing up Bitcoin? There is now so much new "blockchain tech" coming out, that it is impossible for one person to be aware of it all. Most of it is junk. But not all of it will be. The smart thing — the safe thing — is to always be able to copy/paste their tech into a Bitcoin L2, at the drop of a hat. It is enormously reckless to bet that we have today the optimal tech stack, especially given the limitations of lightning piped.video/watch?v=BjFjK-f9… — piped.video/watch?v=LnG5H62I… — piped.video/watch?v=eCWTTY1e… . Lightning is powerful but it is not the scaling panacea and cannot be the final frontier of Bitcoin innovation. Our competitors' wildest fantasy, is that we rest on our laurels; and their greatest fear is that we will be able to freely imitate any strategy they uncover. On top of that -- if we can obtain whatever we desire via L2 drivechain, then what legitimate reason would anyone have for changing L1? Almost none. R&D made Bitcoin what it is today. Without R&D, we would not have HD wallets, seed phrases, multisig, RBF or Lightning (which relied on BIP 141, in the same way that drivechains rely on BIP 300). teddit.net/r/Bitcoin/com… We have slowed down our R&D, not by choice, but because of SegWit2x trauma. Bip300 suffers from that same miner-phobia trauma. Fortunately, if activated, it also ends this trauma, and restores innovation to what it was during 2009-2017. ---- > What of "the effect on mining incentives"? Drivechain is comparable to RIOT's use of "power curtailment credits". riotplatforms.com/bitcoin-mi… It is just a new way for miners to make money. When I'm asked: "does drivechain affect miner incentives?" I say "no". Perhaps this is a mistake on my part? I personally lived through the invention of: FPGAs/ASICs, heat-reuse, stranded natgas flaring, curtailment credits, and a whole lot else. Merged mining was invented by Satoshi in 2010, and is already in continuous use -- truthcoin.info/blog/security… . So, to someone like me, getting revenues from merged mining doesn't even register as a change. It's just business as usual. > What if the govt puts pressure on Foundry, as in zndtoshi's example? It doesn't matter. What does matter, is this yes/no question: "Is it in the best interest of Foundry's clients, to support Bip300 withdrawals honestly?" If NO: then the govt pressure is a moot point. If YES: then Foundry will be a ghost town, moments after it stabs its clients in the back. Switching pools is as easy as navigating to a different website. If pools ever start making trouble, it will get easier still. (That is why pools have never made trouble.) > Didn't SegWit2x prove that nodes > miners? No, you have confused the similarly-named "Segwit UASF" and "SegWit2x". The former, proved that nodes can force miners to ACTIVATE a soft fork (& a blocksize increase at that). The latter, proved that miners alone cannot force nodes to activate a HARD fork. Activating a hard fork is always hard (requires 2 of 2 votes), but activating a soft fork is always easy (requires just 1 of 2 votes). Ironically, the people now panicking unnecessarily, and calling for a node update to block OP NOP 5, will be hardforking themselves without miner support — they will be taking the losing side in the SegWit2x story. ---- Everyone who takes the time to understand Drivechain, will appreciate it for what it is: a benign attempt to improve Bitcoin. ---- It is pronounced "Storts" but you are free to call me Paul if you like. drivechain.info LayerTwoLabs.com

Then at least offer him a deal: drop all charges against Ver permanently, and prosecute the people who unfairly went after him, in return, Ver again becomes a US citizen as of 2025

To me, it is a settled issue: - LN is a failure. - Many will continue to invest their time, into LN. This is a mistake (for them and the world). - My ability to convince them to stop, is very low. I am certainly willing to play "the villain", and do any kind of podcast or debate, if anyone is brave enough... (Haha) But, to me, it is a settled issue.

Bitcoin Core might be dead. It isn't about OP RETURN per se -- it is about *the reaction* to OP RETURN. The mob justice. It seems to me, that you can't get anything useful done under these conditions. OP RETURN is a very small fry -- very very small. So -- what does it mean, for Core to be dead? In the short run, I don't know. In the long run, miners will run the software that **maximizes their revenue**. The devs of **that software** will obviously allow all OP RETURN sizes, sorting them by fee. People who care about DoS protection (or something else), might run different nodes (or no node at all). If they try to reject a *valid*, block that is accepted by 51% hashrate -- then they are hardforking off the network, like BCH. Empty threat.

This tweet is from today!! Not like 4 years ago or something

Oh my ****😭😭 seriously guys 😬😬😬😬 You just had to, you had to use the ******* lightning network for this 😱😳😳😲🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🤯💀💀💀💀💀☠️☠️☠️☠️ I'm going to ****** *** from embarrassment now What the **** "Oh it did go through" ....... ...****. So embarrassed.

Lightning seems cool at first -- but after Year 6 you realize it doesn't work

Why is Roger Ver STILL more relevant to Bitcoin, than today's "BTCers"? Because: Roger has "a good taste in problems" Specifically -- The One Problem, of replacing fiat with Bitcoin Yes, he didn't succeed. But most others didn't try! And LN not only failed, but also it entrenched falsehoods into BTC culture, making everything worse than it had been in 2017

There is actually a lot of evidence that Satoshi was not a cypherpunk. Or at least wasn't interested until it came time to debut Bitcoin. For starters, he wrote in -and for- Microsoft Windows. Second his emails reveal that he head never heard of a few big people such as Wei Dai.

"Effective now, I'm halting my involvement with the development of the lightning network and its implementations, including coordinating the handling of security issues..." lists.linuxfoundation.org/pi…

I re-pin this link because it still has all the answers. Especially cost of legacy monetary system vs electricity coinjournal.net/research-pap…

This is just what Ethereum does all day After BTC popularized Lightning, Eth "invented" Raiden, confidentially the name (if you didn't know) of a video game character that fights with lightning bolts

Guys, don't you think all of this "Delete Coinbase" etc stuff is a little embarrassing? They have the #1 app in the app store. They are overflowing with customers. An obvious lost cause. So it doesn't even work as virtue signaling.

My savings account's interest rate went up from 1% to 1.05% YESSS!!!

I wish all who think Bitcoin's success is inevitable would identify themselves So we know who our real enemies are

Now is a pretty good time to talk of putting Drivechains on @litecoin - CUSF enforcer has been out for a few months -- still working - L1 testnet has gone 185,000 + blocks -- still going strong - L2 sidechains have gone 65,000 blocks -- no reset needed, in 2 months - Due to CUSF, it is possible to activate Bip300 temporarily -- and then de-activate it -- all without changing Litecoin Core , ie , without starting/restarting/changing any node software - In theory, litecoin should automatically be able to use all of our L2 software (although, in practice, we might need to track down a bunch of port numbers, and edit these) If Litecoin has a similar signet system to Bitcoin (it probably does), then it should certainly be possible to turn that on -- more or less tomorrow . Ie with fake money.

It is obvious. Also: UV lights everywhere! For a long time, our species did not separate drinking water from sewer water. That's like our air today! Every HVAC should have one. Kills *all* airborne infection (virus bacteria parasite), not just covid! lesswrong.com/posts/L8KGSDch…

Any who still believe in CSW, please listen to this message -- not from me, but from once-believers in CSW (like you). The list of regrets includes: * Gavin Andersen * Roger Ver * nChain CEO guy * (presumably) Calvin Ayre It is difficult to admit being scammed. We should respect any who make a video like this -- aimed (only afact) at the noble and selfless goal of helping others avoid the same scam. (And, of advancing the science of deception-ology in general, which is a separate virtue.)

I actually don't agree with this. Instead I agree with Taleb who famously said: "For bitcoin to make it, it needs to be banned by a few governments and critiqued by policy makers. Otherwise it will fade." The sooner Bitcoin is banned, the better.

I think we should just slaughter the "decentralized/centralized" language and go back to what Satoshi used: "peer-to-peer". Has anything good ever come, of talking about the nebulous concept of "decentralization"?

"Lightning Derangement Syndrome" causes everyone's IQ to drop by about 150 points as they desperately simp for this horrible technology out of Peer Pressure People will be saying "I'm sorry for how I behaved during the LN era. I was such an idiot, you were right", for 10+ years

Yesterday, I wrote the longest thing I ever wrote Only @verysmallclaims and @HenryMagram will ever read it It is called "Democracy's Missing Pieces" and it is about "On election day, why are both choices always so bad?"

anti-privacy is a dead end Because privacy on BTC is actually *unblockable*. Imagine an extreme case: * BTC is totally anti-private. Rampant accurate chainalysis. No private wallets. * You can swap [USD for BTC] at your local drug store / supermarket / post office. Because it is so compliant. * XMR is the only super-private coin, and has no liquidity. No exchanges support it anywhere. * BTC & XMR still have HTLCs. In that situation, cypherpunks would just use HTLCs to travel: USD --> BTC --> XMR ---> BTC --> USD . The BTC is effectively a "fiat onramp" for XMR. So, to disable "privacy coins", you must disable all HTLCs in all cryptos. You must play cat-and-mouse to disable all of the "BTC-ness" until the blockchain just isn't there anymore. So, everyone who thinks "we must appease the anti-private institutions for NGU" is totally wrong. They will never be appeased because BTC will always be private. It is unfortunate that lawmakers do not understand blockchain privacy. Every blockchain transaction is public (and stored on every computer). So privacy-tech is part and parcel of the blockchain. Without privacy it does not exist. Anti-privacy is a dead end

camera person who filmed this, is clearly in on it, and should be arrested for Conspiracy -- Disturbing the Peace with this video submitted as evidence of that

Bitcoin energy FUD, is just one particular recent flavor of a generic anti-progress anti-humanity self-loathing / self-destruction attitude. @nic_carter and I talk about this on the podcast we recorded (which will hopefully be up soon!)

Saylor is asked about OP Return... ...the audience grows quiet, as they realize that this is a question that you can't bullshit your way out of. Saylor then gives a bullshit pro-ossification answer, and tries to distract everyone by talking about "ego". Meanwhile, no actual knowledge of the issues. What about his own ego? Shouldn't he just say "I'm still very new, and I don't understand it". Plus, the "harmonic scarcities" is pure b-s.

Close. The block size debate has resurfaced, because: * People are finally willing to admit LN is failing * BTC shows no signs of replacing fiat anytime soon * BTC "governance" has malfunctioned, leading to the old "who can change Bitcoin" superstitions and demagoguery

I mostly agree with this 😳💀😂 The key is this: if Ethereum is useful for something, then it therefore cannot be a "scam". So basically that narrative must be over now.

I define a contract as a mutual agreement, among agents, to conditionally constrain their future behavior.