We’re excited to welcome @niftynei, Founder of Bitcoin++ for an AMA!
For those who aren't familiar, Bitcoin++ is a global technical event series exploring the cutting edge of Bitcoin development. We're hosting 8 events on 5 continents this year, and we're also building out a newsroom to cover the latest on the cutting edge of Bitcoin.
Go ask @niftynei all your best questions!
CLINK by @justin_shocknet
https://clinkme.dev
there's something to the fact that lots of devs are excited about using nostr as a communication transport
despite the fact that lightning already includes a communication transport?
seems to be that there's not enough people that know or understand how to build on top of lightning; or maybe running lightning clients is so much more work than a nostr client?
not sure exactly but seems like there's a lesson in here that would be worth figuring out.
Separation of concerns
Browser deliverability
Privacy/hostile network resilience (regular SSL traffic)
Performance and reliability (onions bad)
Identity de-coupled from the payments protocol makes for better social integration and HA across disparate Lightning nodes
Nostr is just json and websockets, seems there are not enough lightning devs that know how to build on top of json and websockets, may be a lesson there
Maybe is time for you to hang out more on SN and nostr and not so much in the "dev community".
"nostr is built using tools i'm familiar with" probably is the explanation for why most devs craft solutions with it.
how to get more devs who are familiar with byte-level protocols? maybe the answer is vibecoding
Nostr is built using tools the web has made ubiquitous
Why there are Lightning devs that don't want Lightning to be the money of the web? Maybe the answer is NGO salaries
Hey @niftynei, love the events. My question about what are your past experience with events before the bitcoin conferences. I think the events are a big success because everyone comes to meet in person to meet together. But before bitcoin confs, what other communities were you a part of where you learned how to do that? Who did you see organizing people in person and hacking irl that led you to be the trailblazer for that in this space. What other irl confs and hacker spaces were you a part of?
good question. I was a very involved member of AIESEC in college, and went to work-abroad through them twice to Brazil.
while in Brazil, I got added to the Organizing Committee of their national conference and lived in a hotel in Sao Paulo for two weeks getting ready for it. I got to see what an international organization was like, and how conference planning happened while a sophomore in college. (also incidentally the two weeks i flipped to fluent in Portuguese, pretty cool experience tbh)
having that experience of traveling internationally and seeing how conferences build community really informs a lot of how bitcoin++ works, in some regards. AIESEC had a saying that was something along the lines of "global community, local reality" which i definitely think applies to every btc++ event that we run.
I also used to hang out at hacker spaces in Houston right after college while teaching myself Android, and went to Hacker School (aka Recurse Center) in 2012 as one of their earliest batches. so definitely have a strong connection to communal hacker spaces. i'd love to get a new hacker space going in Austin -- stay tuned for more updates on this front ;)
Thanks for all the great questions! Hope to see some of you at a @btcpp event at some point this year
or poasting to the mailing list, or submitting PRs that help move the world forward, or building a business that accepts bitcoin for payments.
bitcoin wins because it's full of passionate people who are working to make open money work and scale -- and it's cool to be able to see the network of people doing that through the events and newsletters and deep dives we're curating at @btcpp :D
go check out our upcoming events ->
Can you share the story of how Bitcoin++ first started?
When did you first decide to expand to a global audience?
Are you asking yourself questions? 😂
i wish i was that cool. the btc++ team is pretty decent sized these days, so no i'm not asking myself questions :)
🥲
sure! i started bitcoin++ in the summer of 2022 in Austin. there were a bunch of reasons for starting it.
i had been running Base58, my non-profit education school for learning protocol development for a year at that point, and saw a need for a way to connect the talent coming in through the projects and businesses in the space. also thought it'd be a cool way to start building relationships with companies that were hiring, as a way to get them familiar with what we were doing at Base58 and the caliber of students that were coming out of the program.
my co-founder at the time was @stakamoto and together we pulled together a great crew of speakers, found a venue in Austin, and recruited the @PlebLab to run a two day hackathon after the two day conference.
i had the idea in March; we ran the event in June, the same week as Consensus. It was a lot of fun, and during the event I started talking to Car from PlebLab about re-running the event, except in Mexico City that December.
so i hopped on a plane the next week and flew down to CDMX for the first time by myself. I went to every hotel in the hipster neighborhood until I found a spot that seemed great, and found a local partner who helped us get the contract + connect with the hotel for the event.
So we were international basically immediately after the first event. And have been running events a few times a year, in different places around the globe since then!
Every event since then has come out of a conversation with a local or person who's passionate about having the conference come to their city/locale. These days I get pitches from communities all over the globe to come run an event there.
We're planning 8 events for 2026 -- and have turned down a bunch more opportunities. We're actually already sketching out plans for 2027 so if you're interested in having an event in your city reach out...
For the audience, can you give 3 reasons why a LN channel will force close?
btw, you should be more active on SN Lightning territory https://stacker.news/~lightning where people ask serious questions about LN
(sorry, I am not interested in what food you eat or what book you read. I think this AMA is more interesting if people would ask you questions about LN)
this question is also known as a "resume check" one, a challenge often put out to verify the bonafides of someone in an industry or space
they're often asked of outsiders or minorities as a way to prove themselves 'worthy' of participation or respect from others who have self-nominated themselves to be gatekeepers of said space.
No. Is a serious and valid question asked multiple times in that territory. And I only wanted to hear the answer from somebody that work in this matter.
If you do not want to answer fine.
If you want me to ask about what food you like, fine: do you like pizza or sushi?
What's the number one thing most bitcoiners are wrong about?
the inevitability of bitcoin. currency becomes valuable both from scarcity but also from who's plowing their cashflows into acquiring it.
more successful business owners and founders should be bitcoiners, who are transacting with each other using bitcoin as well as stacking their gains in the currency
If everything goes as planned, what is nifty doing in five years?
hanging out at a flagship bitcoin++ with all my family and friends from around the globe; celebrating that we've hit the tens of thousand of attendees to bitcoin++, all of whom are excited to be building the future of bitcoin
When are we getting a Bitcoin++ event on a boat?
been joking about doing a cruise to Antarctica as a "cold storage" edition sometime in 2027. we'll see if i come through on this.
if anyone wants to help plan, hit me up. i need to find a tour operator and pick some dates and start selling it if we're actually going to make 2027 work... might be 2028 at this point but uhh yeah. that's the plan.
bitcoin++ cold storage edition: it's a boat accident waiting to happen
What's your favorite meal in Austin?
ok so I just went to Franklin's barbeque last weekend (despite having been living a block away when it opened back in 2008 or whatever...). definitely at top. honestly any BBQ spot in town is pretty good. im a native texan, i love brisket.
also been loving the old school TexMex plates over at Cisco's which is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall place off east 6th, east of downtown. it's nothing special but they do crispy tacos and enchiladas for decent prices and have incredibly great spicy salsa.
Chuy's over off Barton Springs Road is also a favorite.
What's your favorite meal in the world?
tossup between mom's gumbo and grandma's homemade flour tortillas tbh
Arkade or Spark or Citrea - which do you think will have more daily users by this time next year?
i've been really impressed at how well Spark managed to get distribution of their protocol from existing wallets and projects. that's a really important first step for getting users.
citrea could pull ahead if they convince enough of the L2 eth ecosystem to move over though -- and it could happen. the eth ecosystem really seems like it's at a bit of a crossroads at the moment.
one not-bitcoin payment protocol i'm keeping my eye on in terms of distribution footprint is the new stablecoin project being pioneered by the paradigm team: Tempo one. a lot of 'big' eth names have recently moved over there. bitcoin has its work cut out for it in terms of adoption from existing platforms and rails, meanwhile the 'stablecoin' army is growing (imo).
How long until you do a Bitcoin++ event in space?
let me make some calls; we could probably have something launched by 2040 ;)
What areas of bitcoin do you think need more attention by devs/builders?
i dont think there's enough developers who really understand the nuances of how bitcoin protocols work -- there's a lot of "low hanging fruit" (imo) that lives at taking the protocols that have already been developed, or adding/extending existing ones all the way up to the user layer.
part of this seems to be communication and discoverability issue.
Do you think that we will see blocks signalling for CTV this year?
i'm not sure what the future of CTV is. I'm a fan of the TXHASH proposal as a more composable version of CTV but haven't been keeping up with where the current state of developer mindshare is.
any miner signaling will require an activation client tho. not sure who's working on that.
honestly, i think something like Simplicity, which launched on Liquid's mainnet last year, is a more exciting proposal for writing more expressive contracts for bitcoin than CTV which is more limited. not sure how that's coming along tho.
What is the last thing you bought with sats?
does paying back a friend for dinner count?
looking through my history i bought some drinks at Saturn in Austin in early January.
What do you think is the most under appreciated topic in Bitcoin?
how cool lightning is :)
Hi Nifty,
What's the hardest part about organizing BTCpp events? Any tricks for overcoming the challenge?
the hardest part is staying on top of all the communications required. working on trying to automate more communications and build out calendars internally so we can more consistently send out signal and news about what we're up to.
also bringing in more people to help has been huge. bitcoin++ is the first time i've ever had to manage other people and i'm consistently finding that communication is the biggest key to success for coordination and alignment lol
what limit should OP_return be?
whatever you set your configuration to in your node's settings?? i'm running the defaults but i'm also still on v29 because i haven't gotten around to updating my node in a minute.
Bitcoin++ is hosting a Villian edition event in April for all the most controversial ideas in Bitcoin.
What are your most controversial Bitcoin ideas?
we should activate simplicity this year
love what you doing. Not just a bitcoin legend, but genius too. Would love to go btc++ taipei next time if it happens when im in taiwan. But is it suitable for also non-technical people?
Do you sign autographs?
Why in-person events rather than virtual gatherings?
Are there any big benefits that can only come from in-person communication?
i was a frequent speaker and participant on the Android technical conference circuit before I got into bitcoin development. i had so much fun going to conferences and giving talks. i made friends that arguably are the reason i work in bitcoin now.
bitcoin++ is meant to replicate that experience for bitcoin development.
as for why "no virtual" i've been to one or two virtual conferences but i've never found them to be particularly worth my attention or time. maybe i'm doing it wrong. we could do a virtual event, but my interest and passion isn't there for it.
As founder of 'a global technical event series exploring the cutting edge of Bitcoin development.' why can't you attach a LN wallet so that you can zap sats P2P while here on this platform?
https://m.stacker.news/130212
Along the same lines do you think there is often too much Big Talk and not enough verifiable Walk from Bitcoin commentators?
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