This should get things rolling. How about Pete Rizzo on WBD? Did you watch that episode?
Yeah. I had it playing in the background while I was working, so I was only half paying attention.
On monetary vs. platform maximalism: I think I agree with Rizzo in that it could be beneficial to soak up some of the "use cases" of alt-coins (i.e. gambling) if only to encourage additional revenue and investment into the space. It's complicated, though. For example if we see MEV begin to emerge in Bitcoin as a result of ordinals / inscriptions then this could impact mining decentralization. One also calls into question the value of VC investment if it's directed mostly towards enabling crappy forms of gambling.
On trojan horse adoption: Agnostic. I think Bitcoin is doing fine and its main selling point will continue to be hard money.
On collateral damage & scaling: Here is my extra spicy take... People are not mad at ordinals, they are mad that fees are high and that Lightning doesn't work so well in such an environment. I think Rizzo raised this point, to which I agree. Many influencers have spent the last several years evangelizing Lightning as the second coming of Christ without really understanding it, so of course now they are responding to ordinals with all these deranged takes. I'm sorry you cannot onboard people in Africa or whatever, but frankly Lightning isn't an adequate solution to this problem with or without ordinals.
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Wow! Excellent analysis right here at the bar. Do you think MEV will lead to centralization regardless if all these ETF driven volume and price predictions are accurate?
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I am not sure how it could play out. Seems like nobody can predict anything that happens in this space, lol
But we DO know that MEV is a big problem on platforms such as Ethereum which have active markets for NFTs, altcoins, etc. While Ethereum has a number of other compounding centralizing pressures which simply aren't applicable to Bitcoin (LSDs, staking rewards), I think it would be reckless to dismiss MEV as a threat.
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What did you think of it?
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More or less similar to you, though I thought Rizzo was a little callous about the fee ramifications, and I think that's what annoyed Peter too more than his arguments. Both he and you are right about lightning's shortcomings which have been exposed in a glaring way lately, but I think bottom up adoption is critical and shouldn't be dismissed so easily.
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