A brief story from XA brief story from X
It all started when Saylor posted about quantum computers on X:
This started everybody going off on quantum risk again. It doesn't really matter what they were all saying.
Then Adam Back tried to clarify a point about Bitcoin and cryptography.
This was probably unhelpful and a little pedantic. But it inspired ever-rising star Nic Carter to weigh in:
Carter's post got @nvk to join the chat.
Of course, Carter couldn't let this go.
The conversation spirals out from here in many typical and uninteresting ways, but there is this one last bit between nvk and Lopp:
Should we engage in appeasement?Should we engage in appeasement?
Whether you assess the risk posed by cryptographically relevant quantum computers to be high, low, or non-existent, you may still find yourself in the position of wanting to deal with the people who are pushing quantum computer fud.
Let us assume for the moment that we all have pretty clear conviction that quantum computers are not going to pose a threat to bitcoin in the next ten years. Is there value in conciliating the suits (Saylor and Carter and the ETF bros) if they are worked up about quantum fud? Not that we make any changes necessarily, but to make them feel heard, as they say.
Carter has been writing a series of blog posts about the quantum risk on his blog (#1295184), and is clearly invested in the issue. I can easily see a world where people like Saylor or Larry Fink also convince themselves that this is a reason/excuse to change Bitcoin.
How much does it behoove us to make them feel like their concerns are being taken seriously?
...or are they all scammers?...or are they all scammers?
One point that has nettled me is the constant refrain that "the devs" don't take quantum stuff seriously or "flat-out deny" that it's a problem. If you read Optech's 2025 review, there's a whole section on work on quantum resistance that is hardly trivial.
The constant claims by people like Udi and Nic Carter that Bitcoin devs aren't paying attention to quantum feel a little duplicitous to me. Despite this, it may still make sense to take the time to engage in the conversation about quantum for no other reason than to keep them from doing some kind of crazy fork thing on their own.
I appreciated this response by James OBierne
@cryptoquick (Hunter Beast, one of the authors of BIP 360) apparently anticipated Saylor and Carter's fervor and released yesterday updates to BIP 360:
https://github.com/cryptoquick/bips/blob/56be885cc9ba67b047e257df6692ab0c4290b294/bip-0360.mediawiki
There is also a bip360 signet here:
https://signet.bip360.org/
Peak self-importance made me... emotional
😭
😆
It's like he can't help himself.
"distancing myself was the best thing I ever did."
view on x.comI don't like the appeasement frame, since the implication is that the answer is in, that all reasonable people agree on what it is, and the remaining question is whether to throw a sop to the poor dipshits who haven't been enlightened.
Which maybe is how you feel about the matter, given the distinction you're drawing between the "quantum fud people" and "bitcoiners"? If so, I find that both uncharitable and inaccurate.
Hmm, I see what your saying. And I've probably overplayed my "quantum is fud" stance. I don't dismiss it.
I should have done a better job of writing out what I wanted to say.
From reading a fair bit about quantum stuff, my understanding is that most bitcoin developers do take the problem seriously, and there is a lot of work being done to push forward solutions.
By appeasement, I meant should we not ostracize the people like Carter, but rather put up with their breathless chicken little-ing?
As I said to Nic on X, if quantum resistance is the number one thing major capital allocators are concerned about, why don't they hire developers to write the code they want to see in the world? Where are the implementations on signet? Where are the projects he is VCing into existence?
He kept telling me that it was gatekeeping by the core devs, and I find that a ridiculous answer. If core devs really can achieve the level of gatekeeping he is saying, we should be working on that problem rather than qr.
This is an open network. At the very least, nic could back a new qr startup to solve this problem. Where is it?
I'm asking if we should appease people like nic and saylor not because quantum fud is completely made up, but because it may disarm what seems to me to be yet another way of attacking the distributed, decentralized, governance free thing that is Bitcoin.
One more thing:
Once upon a time, the idiom had it that "fud" was an unwarranted and illegitimate attempt to sow dissension by stoking fear, uncertainty, doubt. A kind of psy-op, engaged in by hostile actors.
Contemporary use seems to have flipped, to the extent that anybody pointing out weaknesses, downsides, danger is accused of FUDding. Like doubters of the glorious communist future once were, fud became the mark of people who lack sufficient conviction in the rightness of the cause.
It's funny that this would surface wrt Carter, who I remember making exactly this move around the time I first got into btc, where he was dismissing talk about the mining death spiral as fud, and ridiculing anybody who took it seriously. In my view, a person might think the MDS unlikely in practice, but it's a plausible outcome of the game theory of mining, and therefore a reasonable topic for people to discuss and think about mitigating.
Anyway. I personally would welcome more of what would today be considered fud, but that used to be considered the adversarial thinking the entire project is based on.
Would you welcome the "fud" if it were addressed with a note that you're personally borderline incompetent for not amplifying the message, that you are gatekeeping proposals that haven't been made and that generally, because of your involvement, being "extremely bearish" wrt Bitcoin is warranted?
Perhaps you're right though that "fud" is the wrong word, would you have issues with calling this "trolling"?
Nope.
We're getting too specific to Carter, which wasn't what I was objecting to originally, so I hesitate to comment.
Carter is kind of a douche [1], and I'm not advocating for him, or his behavior in this particular circumstance. I'm advocating for something bigger: the virtue, in general, of people surfacing well-articulated critiques and worries, about this topic or other relevant ones, that might be uncomfortable / upset certain narratives or stakeholders. I think that's been nearly lost in public discourse [2].
You might classify me as "man shaking fist at cloud" and that's not far wrong, I'm afraid.
[1] Note that being a douche doesn't mean he's not smart and that some of his insights and writings haven't been remarkably good and useful to btc. People are not just one thing.
[2] I don't mean to imply it's been lost everywhere; but the "center stage" of btc discussion in the prominent places is a shitshow, imo. But perhaps it has never been otherwise? I wonder if I'm remembering a past that never existed.
I agree. Also: people change.
That's ok, but let's recall that in FOSS, if you're just brainfarting on the bird app and medium and whatever else platform pays you for the ad/subscription revenue your content generates, you're not really contributing.
Instead, the discussion precedes your action, and that's it. Telling devs what to do is lame and is the behavior of entitled little pricks. If you want change, make the change. If you get gatekept to be the forever-outsider, fork the code. It cannot be that something is an existential threat and then all one does is be a Karen about it and complain to the non-existing management.
I think the center stage of protocol development discussions used to be the dev mailing list and is now some mixture between delving and the mailing list. I do agree that it's changed, though in both places it's still relatively open and free of drama when compared to other places. I do think that the fora (bitcointalk and r/bitcoin) and especially twitter have always been a shitshow.
I think Carter actually made the original fud dice:
I don't get the sense that the response to Nic is that he doesn't have sufficient conviction. There are two attitudes I see expressed: 1) quantum threat is being used to push dangerous things on bitcoin and 2) quantum threat is being used to put pressure on bitcoin "governance."
In the context of my post, I am asking whether we should make some effort to appease the people who are actually fudding even when they are actually fudding.
Also I don't really think the definition of fud has changed: it's in the same set of words as terrorist and troll and as such it's always a little bit of rhetoric, it's wordy weapon to dismiss people. I'd wager that every legitimate threat has been called fud over the years, as have many illegitimate threats.
I forgot about that. The irony!
Fair. In that case, my answer is: no. "We" (the royal we) should meet legitimate critiques with well-reasoned responses. If "we" don't find the critique legitimate, there's not much use in responding to it -- it's not going to convince the FUDder, since (by definition) they're engaging in bad faith; and for the audience who may be reading, such engagement countenances the original bad-faith argument.
We appear to disagree on this point: once upon a time, my sense is that one could raise concerns that were viewed as actual concerns to be considered; the response was to consider them and (perhaps) counter them. Now, raising concerns is met with accusations of bad faith; and usually, idiotic personal slander and fourth-grade histrionics. That seems different and (relatively) new. (But, as mentioned elsewhere, perhaps I'm doing what everyone does, and remembering a past that was better than it was.)
That it assuredly true.
Bitcoin developers (as seen at conferences and on the mailing list and on delving) have been considering quantum threats for several years and the larger community has taken them seriously: presidio did a whole conference about quantum. Chaincode released an excellent report on the topic. I don't think the first, or even most common, response to quantum computing has been personal slander or fourth-grade histrionics -- that just comes out eventually.
I will admit that I am more willing to entertain the fourth grade histrionics and personal slander because the little kid in me gets an evil joy out of the irreverence of Bitcoiners. I'm glad we make fun of each other in stupid ways.
In that way, I'm kinda like the little kid henchman in 90s movies who's always hanging around the villain and chuckling at his insults, but who isn't quick witted enough to even beat the doofus villain to the punch. I long for the days of retorts like "I know you are, but what am I?" and butthead.
Thanks, it makes more sense in this context.
My beef, in general, is that when there's complicated and contentious issues afoot, how glorious if people would surface those contentious things, argue about them, and then something would happen in light of that argumentation. People don't have to agree, but there's real information in those divergent perspectives.
What happens in practice is that people already know what they want to believe, they throw ad-hominem attacks, score stupid "points" and make gambits that a 7-year old would recognize (see Adam Back and NVK, in your thread), and that's it. Whoever advocates for something you don't like is a-priori your enemy, who is stupid.
(Not saying you're doing this, just that I'm hypersensitive to it at this point. But it's the revealed truth of human nature, so I should just deal with it.)
This thread may be help to flesh out my point:
https://twiiit.com/kanzure/status/2002391170396180635
I do get the appeasement vibe too, because of the aggressive talk, and the "i talked to physics phds, did you?" trump card shows how shallow the argument is. Where's the writeup from all those physics PhDs? What's next? "battle me on spaces or be a loser forever"?
It's in my observation not so much vs bitcoiners but vs bitcoin protocol devs though. This is of course all the rage because then one can appeal against "Bitcoin Core" once more, which in turn is the favorite pastime for everyone with an agenda. Next, we will get an argument where a dev gets singled out and made publicly responsible for killing a million babies by not agreeing with the urgency of quantum implementations.
I also think that if you read the notes from the Frankfurt core dev meetup then you can easily distill how devs look at the threat, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that committing to something like
Sphincs+has immense consequences for tx throughput.So perhaps all these Physics PhDs that have opinions about bitcoin can be a pal and help figuring out how to do signature compression, instead of us having to take the word of a shitcoiner vc bro only spreading fear, not solutions.
Nic Carter still has thus Trump card, though:
If there is a perfect response to his murmerationing, it's your comment.
https://twiiit.com/dcfmusic/status/1545055164557434901
Eh, can't we straddle the middle ground?
Nic Carter shouldn't say that he talks to physics phds. Bigger question is: Does he talk to physics professors with tenure who work in quantum information science but do not have a role in a commercial quantum computing company?
Are there any such professors?
almost certainly... i just don't know who they are haha. but quantum information / quantum computing has been a real field in physics for a long time... I had one such professor in college way back before it was a commercial venture. i'm sure there are a bunch who aren't involved in the commercial hype
... it's also worth noting that "quantum resistance" is, like qbits, not binary. thefts of old coins will raise a deafaning chorus of canaries as quantum resistence becomes relevant, and I'm guessing that the comparatively tiny amounts stored in newer UTXOs will be ignored in the early stages by anyone deploying quantum attacks.
FUCK'EM. Who really think that QC is a threat to Bitcoin, should sell now all their sats. It is simple as that.
source
https://twiiit.com/salvatoshi/status/2002148427770310810
It would be good to have a game plan. At least a new address type that is quantum resistant. Might weigh heavily on the chain but if people are really scared of a QC at least they have the option to do so and the FUD goes away.
james post falls right in line with this #1289672
Bringing X drama 'round here again? Wouldn't it be better to bring the SN signal to X instead?
You don’t get signal without proof of work. Proof of work is pay to post.
And X doesn’t have pay to post so it’s currently not possible.
Good point. I still like to get the stackers' opinion of a curated selection of things from Twitter.
Makes sense, thanks. Ignore my comment, for me X is just noise delivered at algorithm tempo. Perfect brainwashing tool.
Why is Saylor saying lost coins get frozen?
I think he's claiming that it should be that way (which is bonkers, too)
Supposedly he says more about it in this interview:
view on x.comI didn't watch it though. Gotta keep my never watched a single saylor video streak going...
I guess this will need to be discussed and debated more.
https://twiiit.com/saylor/status/2001773260996784341
https://twiiit.com/saylor/status/2000975070810824816
Alex Berg saying the loud part out loud?
source
I don't know if I go quite as far as Berg, Carter may believe the points he's trying to make. But this coming on the heels of the filter debate being mostly an attack on "the devs."
https://twiiit.com/bergealex4/status/2002048531419570307