663: The 99.8% Rescue

Boost just because it’s Wednesday!

Screw it! I’m blowing the whole boost budget on TWIB this week. Another newbie corner idea: what’s the difference between the different address/wallet types? I still use some “legacy” wallet addresses but some things I’ve read seem to suggest changing that. I find it confusing. From what I can tell there’s wrapped segwit, native segwit (which may or may not be the same as bech32, idk), and taproot. I found an article about switching to taproot on stacker news. It mentions that the others are more expensive and will continue getting more expensive over time, but I’d love to know why that is and if there’s ever a reason to choose one of the other options or if taproot really is the best, etc.

Finished the episode and feeling the need to send in extra value after that boost segment. I wanted to boost about newbie corner anyway. I would love a holiday special episode that goes over some of the logic behind your setup. What I wanted to ask you about, that I think could go with a holiday special, has to do with cold storage. I have a new cold card mk4 that I want to move my cold storage to, but I can’t decide how I want to balance backups and security. I’d be interested to hear how your thoughts change when thinking about individuals protecting their wealth as well as small business. Preferably, I’d like something that my wife could handle if me and the hardware wallet were to suddenly vanish. If something terrible like a house fire happened, and I didn’t make it, she could not access our money, the way it’s set up right now.

Hi Chris, I just started the episode but I forgot to boost last week so I wanted to fire some value back your way.

Just noticed I received errors on earlier boosts. I’ll boost extra later. No biggie.

On a different note, my nix-Bitcoin node is working out great! I love how intense the security defaults are. I even have it routing through a tiny linode! That was a challenge all by itself but we got there. Is the JB server Jupiter01? I enabled tor and stuff but kept getting connection errors when I tried to open a channel. I’m trying to do my part and provide some of that sweet sweet liquidity.

For some reason River’s KYC rejected me and wouldn’t let me try again for 30 days. I ended up just going with Swan and never tried again. I’ve never had a KYC issue with any other company, before or since, but I’d really rather be a River customer than a Swan customer right now.

Chris, your timing is hilarious. Despite nearly constant reminders from my wife, I put off dealing with old retirement accounts for TWO YEARS, and finally got around to it last week. I decided open 401k and Roth IRA accounts with Swan Bitcoin. I use Swan to DCA, so it was convenient, and it allowed me to put this money in Bitcoin without taking a big tax hit. I’d heard some of the drama, but didn’t think much of it until hearing this episode. I agree with your analysis though, all these little turd nuggets are adding up, and it’s starting to smell like a full-blown shitstorm. As I type this boost, I’m looking at two checks made out to a Ripple-owned crypto bank, per Swan’s instructions. I have to admit, I’m starting to have second thoughts.

Hi Chris, I really appreciate everything you do and the work you put into the show. I hope this value makes it a little more worth it for you. TWiB is one of the best bitcoin shows on the internet! Let’s get these numbers up, boys!

I don't see any reason why btc couldn't stay under the cost of mining a coin for quite a while. The miners with reserves would keep going, and the small ones wouldn't make it. But my prediction is that it doesn't stay below $60k for long, exactly because this idea is widespread and people will start buying again if it does

I might be biased, considering I’ve “nix-ified” nearly every device in the house, but I’ll add a big +1 to nix-bitcoin. It’s been rock solid for me. I deployed it in a NixOS container a couple years ago, and I just did another major version update on it a couple nights ago. The update went super smooth, no issues. After a quick reboot, everything was back up, including the lightning channel with your node. Nix-Bitcoin is awesome!

Great show as usual! Thanks for the value! Even if Bitcoin is flat for another quarter or two, TONS of great work has been happening. It just gives us plebs more time to DCA at these super low prices!

Hey Chris! Great show! Regarding the age vs gold standard stuff, I more or less agree with you, I just see it a little differently. Instead of time since 1971, I think of it as “time spent on a fiat system”: They blow up 100% of the time, so the longer one goes, the more messed up and prone to failure it is. Going off the gold standard allowed for more creative ways to keep the charade going. Also, consider the incentives of fiat. It basically incentivizes everyone to buy up all the resources as quickly as possible. The longer you hodl dollars, the less you get when you spend. Of course people are going to buy up and hoard all the scarce assets they can, it makes for better money than the money! We live in a clown world, I swear. 🤡 Keep the excellent Bitcoin content coming! I loved the bonus ep! I’d happily pay for bonus conent again. ❤️

Happy episode 100! I hope the show keeps being worth you making it, because I sure appreciate listening to it. Banger of an episode 99 too 👍

Awesome song!

Excellent episode, as usual! I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about BTC loans. I believe it’s going to be a massive market. I need one myself, actually. Last year, I had some cash set aside to buy a car and went to some dealerships, but right before I pulled the trigger, Uncle Sam hit my wife and I with a massive tax bill. It was our first full year living and working in WA, and I guess my wife wasn’t paying enough in taxes out of her paycheck. Wiped out my whole car fund. Luckily, I was listening to TWIB, and stacking sats. So, it didn’t hurt as bad as it could have, but now I need one of those BTC loans. I am highly interested in the subject either way, so thanks for covering these important topics!

PSA: There is NO mobile Sparrow wallet. If you see a mobile wallet with Sparrow branding it is a SCAM! Thanks for the value. Stay safe out there.

First time boosting in to TwiB! I am a total bitcoin newbie and really enjoy your breakdown of the macro news. You've convinced me to start stacking those SATs, thanks for that! I am considering noding up, and was about to go Knots to balance out the network. But all this BIP 444 business has convinced me to go core 30 with tweaked settings. Will report back once I get it up and running!

Just food for thought. I do wonder what the eventual effects might be for bitcoin, hopefully positive!

Welcome back for the new year! Whilst I prefer the shows not focused on US-internal politics, I know there'll be some of that, it's only natural for a US based show. If we're talking about the US Fed, though ... what do you think about the NY Fed holding 7000 tonnes of gold on behalf of foreign governments ? After invading Venezuela, the US might be able to steal its bitcoin reserves, or maybe not. The gold in NY is much easier to steal. If I wanted a sovereign reserve, I know where I'd look!

Love the track! Nice pick, Chris. Filoxera: love it

I managed to avoid getting any funds stolen, but I still regenerated a bunch of wallets, and not just the CC, as a result of all this. Thanks to the inspiration from LUP, I decided to build an offline NixOS ISO with sparrow, and a custom script I wrote to generate seed phrases, using /dev/urandom. It worked like a charm, and I can be quite sure no one else creates wallets like I do. 😂 Thanks for the value!

This seems a very accurate description of btc to me, and also one which depends on two things: btc being hard money, and btc being usable as money for trade.

Trying to keep it short: Money used for Money-Commodity-Money trades is capital. This is how an industrialist uses money. Contrast this to the Commodity-Money-Commodity use of money by say a poor farmer.

It's interesting that you ask if Saylor is downplaying btc as an asset, when the clip you played has him describing it as capital. In classical political economy, capital is a specific role played by hard money.

Love the bonus content! It was great seeing you guys at Linuxfest! Have a good LUP today!!

I connected Fountain to nostr with my own relay and all that and took the opportunity to change my name to better reflect who I am as a person. :P Before, I was boosting as ByteBandit. The name change seems to have changed my 100k boost to Anonymous, so I figured I’d boost back in with my new name. I’ll also send you a message on matrix as proof. In the last episode, you mentioned nix-Bitcoin, which I have been experimenting with for a while. I would love to see what you’ve got going on, if you’re able to share that config. If not, no worries. Either way, hit me some mac&cheese, please. ;)

I'd bet Saylor's selling btc is because of whatever Galaxy Brain thing I don't understand that separates what he's doing from a Ponzi scheme. But if it's not that, maybe it's simple? Buy low sell high, and he's betting against a hot bitcoin summer?

Thanks for the good coverage of what's going on in btc core. This is the sort of episode I appreciate with the show

Chris just wanted to say thank you for your candor in your Nextcloud journey. Good or bad we love it all. Please keep us posted as you make your way to the rock solid setup. I'd like to build something for my folks that I can get them access to via Tailscale as a Google Drive replacement (primarily for storage). I want something I can setup automatic security updates on and just check in on periodically, but not have to work on frequently to support. Thanks for the great show guys!

I'm with Brent's brother for naming the van. How great would it be when it crossing the border for its name to change from something gratuitously rude, to confusingly French ? Allez Jean-Claude !

Hey guys, I'm curious. I've heard you both mention using Claude as an AI Copilot. What helped draw you to this over others?

I loved the ZFS permissions live troubleshooting session at the start of the episode. Great addition guys! Thanks for a great show and Happy New Year!

Hi Alex and Chris! Happy New Year to you and the crew! I have a Docker on ZFS question for you: - On recent builds do you run the Overlay2 driver or the ZFS driver? - Or do you run a different file system for containers? Thanks for the great show and all your hard work!

Neal you are one of the smartest guys I know. Well actually I don't know you, but I've learned a ton from your guest appearances to this great show. Thanks for continuing to drop in and share your expertise. It is always appreciated!

I've been enjoying the balance of the show recently, keep up the good work!

Not really enjoying the extended US politics arc of the show. I'll be tuning out for the near future, and will check in again after the US has calmed down a bit. Thanks for the first year of the show, which got me back into bitcoin.

Nice song!