What should bitcoin be? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

3416 sats \ 53 comments \ @k00b 2 Jun bitcoin

Saylor's recent WBD interview brought the question to a head. In the interview, last cycle's bitcoin jesus pits scalable self-sovereignty against bitcoin as a store of value. This dichotomy was presumed to be false after the blocksize wars, we'll have small blocks and layer 2's, but when Saylor put it on the banner of ossification, he brought it back. Absent a BitVM-like breakthrough giving us more script expressivity without a consensus upgrade, ossification means the UTXO set can't scale. There will be plenty of bitcoin for everyone, but no room on the blockchain to establish everyone's ownership of it, nor a layer 2 allowing us to share UTXOs.

Saylor seems content with his kind and their instruments, corporations, ETFs, and governments, as the only true owners of bitcoin. Most of us will own no bitcoin and be happy or, in other words, bitcoin's benefit to institutions will trickle down. Saylor was evasive in his interview, afraid to tempt the romans, careful to not create a sound clip of him sacrificing the cyberhornets that made him a billionaire in the hopes they'll help make him a trillionaire next. Yes, if bitcoin succeeds as he wants, most of us will only ever own paper bitcoin, tokens in a de facto worldwide bitcoin-backed CBDC, but at least it's better than a fiat CBDC, right? Let the Saylor Moon rise, stand down, and don't worry, the poors can get rich and free as we allow them.

Saylor also brought news that bitcoin development is no longer a commons and charitable organizations funding development are only a good idea to commies. The free market, Saylor as its spokesperson, will do whatever menial development work is left to be done. All that bitcoin for corporations needs now is better sales, yacht-sun-soaked hallucinations producing better podcast metaphors and AI image prompts. Mission accomplished.

I respect Saylor a lot. He's all balls - smart and brave with a long, verifiable history of being so. It's just a shame to see him make the mistake of talking down to bitcoiners like this, thinking he understands it best because he's asked to speak on it the most, but it was inevitable I guess. It has to be hard to earn billions of dollars, and taste a trillion more, only to learn you don't have any control over what could make you a greater king.

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121 sats \ 2 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 3 Jun

The free market, Saylor as its spokesperson, will do whatever menial development work is left to be done.

In light of the Bitmain scandal: (providing crippled miners to everyone but themselves) and at the same time controlling +50% mining pool and 90% of ASIC market share, a good place for Saylor to put some of that development money would be to reduce the very concerning cornering of this aspect of the market that Bitmain has achieved. Surprising that this has not come up at all with Saylor as far as I know. He appears to want to freeze Bitcoin exactly where it is and do nothing in order to preserve his +1% of the total float. He seems blissfully unaware of the threat to the system Bitmain poses.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kilianbuhn 3 Jun

How realistic is it tho that Bitmain becomes hostile? Are we talking about a real risk here or is it just a theoretical thought experiment? 🤔

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 3 Jun

Way. WAY beyond thought experiment. Read up on this post to get the details.

201 sats \ 1 reply \ @softglitter2d 2 Jun

Let's face some facts before we jump to my response:

Michael Saylor is 100% pure balls. What he did and his responses trough Microstrategy's first bear market was something to observe and learn
I think¹ Michael Saylor has the best intentions and want to see bitcoin to grow, like everyone else in the community

Some bitcoin facts

Doing development and working at Core itself happens to be something voluntary and it's challenging according to developers itself.
Bitcoin Core needs all the help people can provide.

Now,

Bitcoin is the internet of money and with that, we as a community have a responsability and we're accountable for what's happening there. I'm not saying we should just pretend we don't care something and ignore it. Saylor is offering his view and that's the way I took his opinions, which too many influencers/podcasters pretends that he has some kind of direct hit to actions taken in Bitcoin ecosystem.

Now, although I get his idea to developers and try to fund them in order to work at Core itself, that's not how open money works. Actually, I'm not against Microstrategy to put some fund to developers. That won't change the fact that make changes in the most hard money protocol that have been seen is hard hard way more difficult than most people think. This was my conclusion after I listened WBD with Gloria Zhao. And I finish quoting Jona's thread:

Adding more developers have huge upside potential and little risks… regardless of who is funding them.

In the end of the day, what would happen if some corporations wants to take bitcoin and make some..agreements between them to modify something?²

I know, it may sound a little naive from me ↩
Blocksize Wars Part II? That would be fun, Bitcoin Saylor Vision, the new BSV ↩

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 2 Jun

Saylor is offering his view and that's the way I took his opinions

Fair! I think his opinion, at base, is worth discussing. He's just being super sneaky about it like he lost his humility.

If he just said: "I have a lot at stake and I'm afraid of bitcoin changing, so I won't fund protocol development and I urge all my friends to not fund it as well. I believe changing bitcoin threatens me, my company, my shareholders, and other bitcoiners. I know this is contrary to the way some people think about the protocol, but I'm open to feedback and having my mind changed." I don't think saying that would matter much, it'd be honest, and many would agree with him.

Instead he talks about aeronautical engineering as if introducing OP_CAT is like building a plane with its wings upside down.

101 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 3 Jun

I half-listened to this podcast while doing other stuff, but I didn't take away the hard-line stance you seemed to have. Now I feel like I should listen to it again to see.

FWIW, my takeaway from half-listening: btc's principal job is to do what it's already doing, at the scale it's already doing it, constrained by the general tech / abstractions already available. Fucking with this risks everything, and everything should not be lightly risked. ETFs funding development will not be no-strings-attached and amounts to moral hazard.

We'll see if that holds up to a second listen.

129 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 3 Jun

I might be guilty of letting it send me into an unjustified rage. He didn’t admit a hard line, but I sensed he was disguising it even though I listened to it assuming he was misunderstood and would swiftly clear things up. According to Odell he’s threatening people behind the scenes, trying to stop them from funding devs.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @SatsMate 2 Jun

I am very hopeful we see a future where every single person on earth will have the ability to open and create their own lightning channel (even if they can't run their own node).

In the end, it is up to us to find solutions that will enhance the UI/UX for normies to be self-sovereign.

The Bitkey isn't perfect for example, but it is a product that is a strong step in the right direction. Now how can we get a Bitkey at scale for no more than $30 a pop (for those in the third world).

It is important to take a step back, and understand the next phase may be about thinking if my grandma/grandpa can't use this product sovereignly, maybe it isn't a great product. Just by 2 sats

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 3 Jun

I am very hopeful we see a future where every single person on earth will have the ability to open and create their own lightning channel (even if they can't run their own node).

I am going to pick this apart a bit because we are incredibly far from realistically attaining or even requiring this level of scale. What are the minimum requirements for opening a Lightning channel? I would say that would include:

Literacy. Global average is 87%. (Developed countries: 99%, sub Saharan Africa like Mali and S. Sudan: 31-35%)
Access to the Internet: 66.2% of global pop.
A smartphone: 59.8%
Money. We can argue that people earning less than $10 a day have concerns that outstrip the need for opening a Lightning channel. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs puts a Lightning Channel below Food, potable water, shelter, clothing, and so on. 71% of people earn less than $10 per day. 15% live on less than $2 per day.

The bottom line is that no form of money will ever reach "every single person on earth". I have read that India alone has > 100 million rural subsistence farmers who will never touch money of any form in their entire impoverished lives. They do barter, but if their crops fail, they starve.

The level of poverty in the world has radically improved, but remains far more extreme than I think many realize. I have yet to see how Bitcoin fixes this.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @kilianbuhn 3 Jun

a future where every single person on earth will have the ability to open and create their own lightning channel (even if they can't run their own node).

An own channel would also be a lot of onchain transactions. We wouldn't be able to scale that yet...

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 2 Jun

I felt a lot better after listening to Parker Lewis on WBD today. Saylor scared me because I couldn't help but think all that btc gave him the ability to call the shots. It doesn't.

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate 2 Jun

Thankfully it isn't proof of stake or he could. I hope with all that Bitcoin, eventually a decent amount of it is contributed to Geyser and other education/grassroots adoption efforts.

I'm for high end living - but we are at the dawn of significant worldwide adoption and we need more donations to those building, and focusing on education/community outreach.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 2 Jun

I'm still onboard for the peer to peer digital cash vision.

It's pretty incredible that Bitcoin exists and works and has gotten sturdy enough to support all the various uses that exist today. And it makes sense that we proceed with caution, lest we destroy this wonderful thing.

But, it's too common a story that those who hold on too tightly to the thing they love end up strangling it.

Luckily for us, bitcoin is an open, permissionless, voluntary system, a lot like a language. Languages are incredible because nobody has to ask to use them in a novel way or even to change them. The changes catch on and we understand each other or they don't. And the dictionary people are only ever playing catchup to the living, breathing thing.

I hope we don't shut our minds to new words and ways of using them entering into Bitcoin. We just have to avoid the stupid ones like how everyone says "Let me be clear" now.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 2 Jun

I'm still onboard for the peer to peer digital cash vision.

Me too. But it's probably not worth risking SoV for MoE. I do think it's worth risking SoV for few so bitcoin can be SoV for all though.

Luckily for us, bitcoin is an open, permissionless, voluntary system, a lot like a language.

I love the language metaphor. It's a pretty pure thought transmission protocol and it does have some kind of rough consensus to it, and a strong consensus/structure at the genetic base layer (assuming Chomsky is right).

We just have to avoid the stupid ones like how everyone says "Let me be clear" now.

lol

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @SatsMate 2 Jun

I see the direction leaning much more heavily into the SoV version of P2P cash, but I see tremendous adoption happening from a payments standpoint once we see tax-free transactions in the U.S. Nobody wants to figure out and split hairs on small-dollar tx cap gains.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 2 Jun

Do you think it is feasible for the base layer to be accessible to everyone without introducing some potentially catastrophic risk to the protocol?

I am yet to be compelled this is the case. I am not pro ossification but I am also not pro turning Bitcon into ethereum where we try everything that insiders/developers think is a good idea. Maybe something like Bit-VM helps with this where it can act as a testing ground for ideas.

77 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 2 Jun

Do you think it is feasible for the base layer to be accessible to everyone without introducing some potentially catastrophic risk to the protocol?

Yes. IMO most of the risk is in altering miner incentives in a bad way. Those are already fragile/failing so extra care needs to be taken with them.

I am not pro ossification but I am also not pro turning Bitcon into Ethereum

No serious proposal would intentionally do this, but we wouldn't want to do it accidentally either.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for any specific proposal. I don't know enough to be confident in any of them. But, I do think we need bitcoin to be more than an asset for institutions and I do think bitcoin development has serious incentive problems.

101 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 2 Jun

Agree with you. On one hand bitcoin performing the function gold did on the gold standard keeping fiat and governments in check seems like a reasonable outcome but on the other hand with bitcoin having solved the portability, verifiability, divisibility issues that keep gold from being more than it is, it would be disappointing if Bitcoin's eventual form is simply digital gold.

131 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 2 Jun

Beyond that, I fear bitcoin can't stay decentralized when custody is centralized, abstracted away, and only institutions have a reason to run nodes.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 2 Jun

That's fair.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @hasherstacker 2 Jun

Compliance is a wrong equation. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It has nothing to do with sovereignty. It's exactly what keeps people slaves, without realising it.

47 sats \ 7 replies \ @justin_shocknet 2 Jun

He's a realist and absolutely right

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Jun

Which of @k00b's attributions to Saylor do you think are absolutely right? All of them?

108 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3 Jun

The general sentiment that everything is downstream of SoV and that's a sacred product-market-fit not to be taken for granted

He butchered a lot of metaphors, but nailed one... I too have long compared the script kiddies demanding moar "expressivity" to communists, it's a similar mind virus that turns virtue into destruction

Core development should be considered suspicious by default, some funding is disclosed, but even more is not

Where I disagree is his concession of institutional-only use and generally being anti-MoE, my math says we only need 1.5~ billion lightning channels at most to achieve it and there's no technical road blocks to getting there ... My money is where my mouth is on this one as evidenced by my projects

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Jun

Thanks, that's helpful context.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Lumor 3 Jun

3000 tx per 10 minutes 300010624365=157.68 million transactions per year

So the average channel will exist for a decade?

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3 Jun

a batch open of 50 channels takes ~2k vbytes

a day has 144k vbytes

so we could open 3m channels a day or 1 billion channels per year

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lumor 3 Jun

(Woah my math was so butchered by Markdown. 😅)

Your math makes me optimistic.

That's 50x batch open with one input and 50 outputs I guess. So people/organizations would pay fiat(?) to a bitcoin holding entity in order to participate in a batch..

One aggravating factor for very long-lived and very active channels is state storage in current LN penalty.

There also has to be plenty of on-chain room for channel closures. Cooperative closes could involve batching of many inputs to a custodian who pays out IOUs of some kind on the other side. Force closures are incompatible with batching.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 3 Jun

my vision approximately is that a node puts an order in with a peer in a nostr-based marketplace where reputation can be factor

A service fee goes to the coordinating peer who adds you to a round, rounds execute based on any number of preferences

So nodes willing to wait days for a channel may get them nearly free as they're subsidized by larger and high time preference ones

Most nodes will only ever have private low-moderate volume channels so they should last easily as long as a car or any other major household appliance

As for closures there's always "room", at what price is the question... undoubtedly closures will cost more than opens but that's also optimal from an incentives perspective

If people are going to accept some trust with shitcoins and federated hoaxes, queuing for a batch channel open is a no-brainer

73 sats \ 2 replies \ @TNStacker 2 Jun

Bitcoin should be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Those who chose institutions get what they deserve.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate 2 Jun

I wonder if there will ever be an institutional fork? In the end, bitcoin is made up of the individuals behind it, and if it is forked it will be nothing but a pseudonymous cbdc.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 2 Jun

How many 💩🪙 forks are there already?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 4 Jun

I do not see Saylor as a reference, model or someone to follow, for me he does not have the characteristics of the sovereign individual and on the contrary I think that he is just a character placed there to make noise.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheWildHustle 3 Jun

If there are 8 billion people on the planet

How many of them will own a UTXO?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiracDelta 2 Jun

A thing can never be anything other than itself. You may run all you like, but you will never be a gazelle. You are human. Bitcoin is Bitcoin, nothing more, and nothing less.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing -- drink deep or drink not of the pierian spring.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

ODELL vs. Saylor this week.

64 sats \ 3 replies \ @didiplaywell 2 Jun

Using the Paradox of Bitcoin Adoption as a baseline, I totally understand Saylor's stance, for his solution to the paradox is to understand bitcoin as the new gold and use it as such. Thus, in his proposition, he is just replicating the gold standard, although safer due to controlled scarcity and more robust private control (the gold standard suffered from a "50/50" shared control with the state). It totally makes sense, and it's a robust approach to the paradox. He has positioned himself thus to be the new Morgan behind the new US monetary system he envisions will ensue. Thankfully, no one has sole control on what bitcoin will be, thus the different solutions to the paradox will evolve organically. My answer to the paradox envisions bitcoin as universal currency and personal property, will share the basics of it soon (for I need you to test it).

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

Bitcoin is a tool. Depends how you use it. Once engaged, or measured, it changes states. Think quantum.

13 sats \ 1 reply \ @didiplaywell 2 Jun

We agree. The debate starts when we think of a same use, and thus how to achieve it. In this case, solving the paradox on adoption.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

Cold storage vs. Node storage

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @ca 2 Jun

Peer to peer electronic cash

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

p2p b2b v4v

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @MANI 2 Jun

The race for Bitcoin is increasingly influenced by institutional investors and the introduction of Bitcoin ETFs. Institutions like banks, hedge funds, and corporations are investing in Bitcoin, lending it legitimacy and driving demand. Bitcoin ETFs allow investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin without directly holding it, making it more accessible to traditional investors. This institutional influence can stabilize and increase Bitcoin's market value, but it also brings regulatory scrutiny and potential centralization risks. The growing interest and competition among financial institutions underscore Bitcoin's evolving role from a niche digital asset to a mainstream financial instrument.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

The ETFs will help us pay our major bills over the lightning network

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 3 Jun

NGU is the biggest driver of incentives, so this direction was probably inevitable. Who has the most economic power decides where things go.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 3 Jun

I feel like he is trying the best with what he can do. Of course he isnt a philanthropist, he wants to make money, too. He saw bitcoin as a way to do that before everyone else.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @smartwin 3 Jun

Great writing

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 3 Jun

I respect Saylor a lot. He's all balls - smart and brave with a long, verifiable history of being so. It's just a shame to see him make the mistake of talking down to bitcoiners like this.

I don't respect Saylor for anything. He's all ball with plastic wrapped on them. I'm not surprised because I believed that he would be shit talking one day like this.

What I despise him for that he is just another street smart hypocrite who wants to profit out of everything anyhow.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @lnmarkets 2 Jun

F Saylor

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

Saylor basically compared the Bitcoin base code to nuclear launch codes and only "credentialed", "responsible" citizens should have access.

48 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 2 Jun

He said a lot of dumb crap in that podcast all to avoid either

admitting what he really thinks
trying to justify the half-baked ideas he's shared in private

I hope it's (2) tbh. He said reasonable things in the podcast too.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @pdm_btc 2 Jun

ODELL already responded. Saylor will be back this week is my bet. I agree he did say some reasonable things

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 3 Jun

Where was the response?

Some bitcoin facts

Now,

Footnotes