Atone

Honestly, I worry the horrible way this was handled only hurts the prospects of future protocol upgrades, including ones that could address the very things they were concerned about. The irrational way BIP-110 was carried out is itself an attack on bitcoin.

Luke has always been nuts. I had a positive opinion of Mechanic and Kratter going into this, though. The concern that started all of this seems reasonable. But as things progressed they seemed to completely lose the plot. It's weird to see guys who really should know better follow a literal flat-Earther off the proverbial cliff. One only needs to read what Luke and co are posting on twitter to realize how far off the rails this whole thing has gone.

The back to back WBD episodes with Shinobi and Mechanic were interesting because both sides sound completely reasonable while making the other side sound unreasonable. I don't know where I stand on OP_RETURN but I guess more people on Knots is good for decentralization. Thanks for the balanced coverage, Chris!

I'm fine with nonmonetary transactions if they want to pay for the blockspace. They'll get priced out of the base chain eventually anyway. But I do worry about what Kratter and Mechanic are currently arguing, that this means we'll all have to store and relay arbitrary 100kb files, including illicit / evil stuff. I fear we could be putting node runners at risk for very little benefit.

The greater fool theory kills me. Someone decides to store value by hanging on to something with good monetary properties. Over time, he does better than someone holding onto something with worse monetary properties. Other people follow suit and the good money obtains a monetary premium and goes up in value. This doesn't require anybody to be fooled about the nature of the money. It would be foolish to not adopt the better money.

I don't understand what Jack is on about wih debasing the dollar against Bitcoin and not against housing and eggs. Surely you don't get to choose. Stablecoin liquidity into Bitcoin doesn't get locked into a box. The person you just bought Bitcoin from now has dollars with which to bid up housing and eggs. Debasement is debasement. What am I missing?

I was a Coldcard proponent and I have been humbled. Fortunately, dice rolls saved my bacon. I still moved off the device until the dust settles, as I'm not sure I can even trust it just as a signing device after this. But I think my big takeaway is that I'm a dice roll maxi now.

"Microstrategy but with ETH" sounds like a hilariously bad idea. Like something you would suggest as a joke.

I saw Saif take some flak for saying that, but he's right. If your business model relies on bitcoin never dumping again, you're gonna have a bad time.

"That can change quickly" aged well. Great rip.

Nothing stops this boost.

I've heard some rumblings about the R36S and Max in the Love2D community. It would be very cool to see the R36 gain a little traction as a target platform for amateur game developers.

I think the gold comparison is an important one. Gold is the closest thing in tradfi to Bitcoin. It is real, hard money. Before Bitcoin, serious sound money advocates basically had to be for gold. It's where we'd still be if Satoshi hadn't come along. Of course, Bitcoin is a massive technological improvement over the yellow rock, but I don't think it's a disservice to Bitcoin to draw comparisons to the most successful hard money in history.

I think the unfortunate part of the El Salvador news isn't so much the changes themselves as it is the fact that it's the IMF twisting their arm into making the changes. The IMF is a predatory institution designed to exploit countries like El Salvador. I recommend people read Hidden Repression by Alex Gladstein to learn about how the IMF operates. The book even has a nice Bitcoin angle at the end!