EP117 - Park Bench vs. Swing Set: The High Wing-Low Wing Showdown

I think you misunderstood the fire movement. They're not trying to get a 25x return. They're trying to reduce their spending so that having a nest egg that is 25x their annual spending is easier. And then live a lifestyle that allows them to withdraw 1/25th (4%) every year. The growth they need to sustain that is to merely match inflation. They don't need 25x to do that.

Also, "Bitcoin is already an index of human incentive" is the most insightful thing I've heard in a while. I'm shamelessly stealing that.

As a PNRI, not all of us are stuck in the fiat mindset. I personally am as all in on Bitcoin as I can be until I actually retire. It's my long term savings. It's my checking. My paycheck goes directly into Bitcoin. We are not beholden to our generational ideas. And it is each of our responsibility to question our assumptions. Which has fed my orange pill.

I am running BIP110. And you made an argument against it that made me reconsider. The argument was that BIP110 changes Bitcoin because it allows a minority to force their opinion on the majority. After thinking about it, I do not come to the same conclusion. I don’t think that BIP110 changes anything with respect to this risk. And opposing BIP110 doesn't mitigate that risk. This is a feature of Nakamoto consensus that exists today and will continue to exist regardless of which way BIP110 is resolved. If this risk didn’t already exist today, BIP110 couldn’t leverage it. There are two ways (that I’m aware of) to reject BIP110: 1. Almost all miners refuse to mine BIP110 blocks 2. Those opposing BIP110 exercise a URSF: user rejected soft fork. This effectively splits the chain. If BIP110 is rejected, those will remain the only ways to reject a different minority driven soft fork in Bitcoin. Heck if BIP110 becomes the only type of blocks that miners mine, those will also remain the only ways to reject a different minority driven soft fork in Bitcoin. So opposing BIP110 doesn't mitigate the risk that a minority can control the direction in Bitcoin. That will continue to exist regardless of which side wins. So I’m going to continue to run BIP110 because I think it does mitigate some significant risks for Bitcoin. But I’m willing to have my mind changed. BTW Intransigent minorities are a feature of complex systems not just Bitcoin. Taleb wrote about them in his book Skin in the Game. Here's the relevant chapter discussing it: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dic…

Boost!!

Boost!

Hey Chris, I'm not sure which part of what Saif said that you disagree with, but 100% of it is correct. The miners ARE service providers to Bitcoin. They can't change Bitcoin rules. If they try to produce a block that violates the rules, the nodes will reject it. So what is the risk of a 51% attack? It's not changing Bitcoin's rules. It's an attack that happens within the rules. In particular: double spending. Someone with 51% of the hashrate could attempt to respend bitcoin that's already been spent in a prior block, by directing all of that hashrate to producing a longer chain and negating an already produced block. But that is still incredibly hard to do. Suppose the transaction that is being targeted for a double spend is in the current top of chain. To double spend, the attackers have to produce 2 blocks before the honest miners produce one. Those two blocks will become the longest chain and the previous block will be abandoned. If they fail to produce 2 blocks before the honest miners produce 1, now the task becomes harder for the attackers. They have to produce 3 blocks before the honest miners produce 1. And here's the thing: it would be absolutely transparent any time a pool operator succeeded. Because someone who received Bitcoin that was mined into a block would pipe up about having their bitcoin stolen from them. A successful double spend would be huge news. Pool operators may control what template to mine, but they don't actually control hashrate. The individual members of the pool control the hashrate. As soon as a pool operator pulled off a double spend 51% attack, almost all of the invidivuals who provide hash power to that pool would abandon the attacking pool. That attack cost them money. Pool operators have the sword of damocles hanging over their head. There is certain power that they technically have, but as soon as they try to exercise it, they lose that power. I think mining centralization is a risk. And I like what ocean is doing. But I…

When I use a hardware wallet, I have my private keys on that wallet. I don't have them on a mobile wallet. So I don't understand what you mean by trusting a mobile wallet when it's paired to a hardware wallet. As far as supporting the show, I didn't even know you existed until you showed up in fountain. And I immediately trusted the fact that it was users sending in their support as an indication that this was a quality podcast way more than fiat marketing. Thanks for not blasting my ear holes with fiat mindset ads.

If 2222 is a row of ducks, then I think this is an "all wheel drive" aka a 4x4. For stats: I like the idea of you tagging your podcasts with the blockheight. Maybe also include the last 4-6 digits of the block hash as a way timestamp your episode to the timechain. Honestly though I don't know what tangible benefit this provides other than being kinda cool. Is Bitcoin part of my retirement plan? Of course! Saving money is part of my retirement plan. Why wouldn't that include an undebasable money?

Re video, it's great when there are visuals that help convey information. But as soon as people do that the audio version suffers and I tend to switch to the video version only. Is there some way to stream sats while watching the link to the video feed?

Let me do a little invalid and socially unacceptable boosting to a podcast I like. Sorry that you have to be the recipient of such antisocial behavior.

Meant to say filtering. Dyac.

I don't think keeping transactions with op_return > 80 bytes is censorship. In exactly the same way that I don't think letting minors create more than 21 million Bitcoin is censorship. Calling both of those censorship is demagoguery.

Boost

Your episodes keep getting better and better. This is a topic that I wrestle with as a Christ follower and a Bitcoin maxi. You took it much deeper than my personal wrestling had gone. Thank you!

Boosting because I don't want ads.

Bitcoin as a store of value is solving an immediate need for those who see it. Bitcoin as a medium of exchange isn't. Using it for MoE is fine. But it's not going to reach scale until that function is needed at scale. I don't think we're there yet.

Twitter was neutral? Elon made X partisan? That's the most revisionist history thing I've heard in a while. I remember Twitter removing posts and deplatforming anyone who tried to reference the NY post story about the hunter Biden laptop. That's what @Rabble thinks is neutrality? I'll take community notes any day over that crap. Has @Rabble read the Twitter files?

Awesome rip!

1 Thes 5:16-18 Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

,..=,*

This is an overly terse follow-up from my previous cut off boost. Whichever way BIP110 is eventually resolved, the risk of a minority forcing their opinion on Bitcoin doesn’t change. Consider: that risk exists today. It’s what BIP110 is trying to exploit. The opposition to BIP110 is to not change anything. If nothing changes then that risk still has to exist. Meanwhile I continue to run BIP110 because I think it does mitigate some risks to Bitcoin (although not that one). We can quibble about how big those risks are. I said earlier that this is a function of Nakamoto consensus. It’s actually a function of complex systems. Taleb wrote about this in his book Skin in the Game. Here's the relevant chapter discussing it: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dic…

Re: a soft fork, I have posted a question on Matthew Kratter's videos: if we only have 20% of node runners switching to knots why do you think we have sufficient consensus to force the miners to mine the soft fork blocks?

Really great conversation!

"or core v30" earned a boost.

"Learning is discovering that you're wrong on a regular basis" Very succinct and useful phrase.

Really great episode. I kindly request more like this, where the topic is about how one might help convince my skeptical church leadership to save on Bitcoin. This is particularly relevant to me as I've been saving my tithe in Bitcoin on their behalf for a few years now. (With their blessing.) But I don't want to give it to them yet because their policy is to immediately turn it into USD. So any advice or discussion on how to get them to change their mind/policy is very much appreciated.

I'm posting this below the 2000 sat limit because I don't need you to read it on the pod but I know you read all of these and wanted to give a different perspective As a pilot, there are some outcomes that are so catastrophic that we build in lots and lots of mitigations so that we don’t EVER encounter them. An example is fuel. Running out of fuel increases the likelihood of a crash to nearly 100%. Meanwhile the actual incidence of fuel related crashes in commercial aviation is very close to 0. The fact that the incidence is close to 0 doesn’t mean we can safely remove fuel reserve requirements, or proper fuel planning processes. This is how I see the SPAM debate. There are some outcomes (e.g. illegal data in the chain) that are so bad that, even if we haven’t seen it yet, we have to build as many mitigations as possible. If the US government can prosecute the samourai developers despite Section 230, it’s hard to imagine that node operators that knowingly host illegal data would also be immune from prosecution as a way to attack Bitcoin. So we have to build in multiple layers of mitigation to prevent that catastrophe. With Core deciding to open up OP_RETURN to 100k bytes, they’ve taken away one of those mitigations. For me personally, best case scenario: OP_RETURN goes back to 83 bytes and the inscriptions bug gets fixed. Barring that, what is the next best mitigation in order to prevent the catastrophic result of illegal data on the chain? Certainly a soft fork is a far worse option. But it might be the next best option. Still I’d much rather that core come to their senses. If not, that more people run knots - or some other bitcoins that allows for filtering OP_RETURN. Only after both of those fail, would I like to see a soft fork. Because we can’t tolerate the catastrophic result of illegal data on chain.

Personally I'm focused on decentralization of nodes. Anything that diminishes node sovereignty is a departure from Bitcoin. This seems to me what core is doing.

"Fractional reserve is just banking" this seems like it translates to: If you need someone else to hold your Bitcoin for you, you risk rehypothication. Doesn't bitcoins qualities allow me to not need an external bank?

I am past the point of caring about the Bitcoin vs shitcoin debate. And bcash and faketoshicash are shitcoins. Roger Ver and Steve Patterson are welcome to them. We all get Bitcoin at the price we deserve. If stubbornness prevents Roger and Steve from getting it now, that's is a problem for them not me.