"Nothing in the ordinal logic requires inscriptions to be linked to the “first” sat. So why is it the first sat of the first output? Why not the second sat of the first output? Why not the last, or one of the other hundreds, thousands, or millions of other satoshis which were also present in that same transaction? The answer is, well, because we are _pretending_ that it is so. In other words, we say a sat is inscribed _by fiat_." ~ Southern Hands You may have heard many claims of the...

The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.” ~ Ayn Rand Today we are going to turn some concepts on their head. I hope that this challenges many to reflect not on their judgements, but to reflect on *the internal values that push us toward those judgements.* What if our thinking is twisted by a deeply internalized, but absurdly...

"Many people insist that governments aren't involved in censorship, but they are. And now, a whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance." ~ Michael Shellenberger From time we time we get a lucky glimpse into the mindset and tactics of the counterfeit class. Exposing their crimes and systems of manipulation. Today we uncover more, thanks to the help of an anonymous, brave...

"A reality check on the limitations of Lightning Network, and what that means in terms of its long term viability. No, it's not doomed, but it probably won't be used the way you expected it to be." ~ Shinobi What has happened to lightning? With fees skyrocketing thanks to Ordinals bloating blockspace, tons of payments over lightning are no longer viable, or become entirely trusted. How did we not see this coming and what new issues have arisen as Lightning has matured? Does this spell the...

The free market works because economic decisions are made by people who have skin in the game. When you spend $100 you have earned, you understand the cost. It was your sweat the created the gain, and no one can understand that cost better than you when you go to spend it. Genuine value information, and real trade offs inform the price in the market. Money is simply a reflection of the resources it is allocating. It is nothing more than a ledger system for allocating resources across time....

Nodeless is dead. Long live Nodeless. Unfortunately the Nodeless payment service has had to shut down, but for anyone who needs to get in touch for any issues then feel free to contact me or UTXO. Nodeless is also open source, so if you wish to setup an instance for yourself, the project is available on github: https://github.com/nodeless-io/nodeless-monolith Follow UTXO on Nostr for surely other great things to come: npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8 ---...

"Clients applying this reasoning should remember that, in bitcoin, no one is too big to fail. There is no government or money printer capable of restoring lost coins, so there are no bailouts. Trusting a single company, no matter their qualifications, to protect your bitcoin creates significant counterparty risk." ~ Dhruv Bansal We come at you with another read today, this one on the maturation and new developments in the collaborative custody industry. Today we are used to thinking of...

"A recent anonymous proposal specifies a system using timelocked Bitcoin transactions and chaumian ecash mints to create an economic incentive for BitTorrent users to seed files." ~ Shinobi Bittorrent was one of the most important protocols in the world during its day, but it always had one striking drawback, for any content that wasn't very popular, availability was always a problem. Even more so today as the network has found itself a smaller and more fringe part of internet culture....

"The difference between the Linden Dollar, World of Warcraft Gold, Fortnite V-Bucks, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar is in scale, not in nature. While V-Bucks are created and controlled by Epic Games (the company that created Fortnite), the U.S. dollar is created and controlled by the Fed. One impacts millions of people, the other billions. The mechanism that keeps these monies in check--the rules of the game, if you will - is the same in both cases: central decree." ~ DerGigi For those who...

The election of Javier Milei is unlikely the be the next El Salvador, but I don't think it needs to be in order to be significant. There is something deeper going on for Javier to win on the message he is sending. And I think it shows the signs of a shifting tide, and Bitcoin is the island that's coming into view. References made in the episode for further reading: Find the many books and products recommended on this show at prodcast.io (Link:...

"The recurring cycle of economic booms followed by inevitable busts has remained a puzzle for generations of observers. While mainstream Keynesian and monetarist theories propose monetary interventions to smooth these fluctuations, the Austrian School offers a compelling and alternative perspective" ~ Michael Matulef The bust will not be escaped. We cannot print our way out of it, we cannot cover it up with more artificial interest rate controls. We have drunken ourselves into an economic...

"Ultimately, my goal with Coinos is to make Bitcoin a super simple user interface for "normies" to be able to come on and not have to understand how things are working under the hood... Just get on the website, make your account and you're good to go." - Adam Today we bring on the team from Coinos on the developing merchant market, how to build tools and services in an uncertain regulatory environment, and how to onboard your local market into the Bitcoin ecosystem easily and for their...

Is Bitcoin destined to become another fiat system? Where we end up in a world where the dominant instrument isn't Bitcoin at all, but just more IOUs? Where Bitcoin substitutes replace real Bitcoin? Does it not just become another fiat system, or are there fundamental incentives and technological trends that prevent this and push us ever closer to total sovereignty? With smaller and smaller communities and institutions able to organize and exit in an independent way... where a Bitcoin world...

"Unique to the emergent Bitcoin financial system is the application of cryptography to fundamental financial functions. Novel technologies exist, are being built, and have been theorized that will enable previously unseen functionalities, robustness, and, ultimately, competition amongst Bitcoin financial intermediaries. Key to these novelties is the characteristic of peer-to-peer (“P2P”) exchange; that Bitcoin financial intermediaries will surely exist as commercial options, but that newly...

LIGHTNING IS DEAD! Did you hear about the new exploit discovered that may be the "nail in the coffin" of the broken and defeated Lightning network? I bet you did, but did anyone you heard it from actually know how it worked?... Probably not. That's what we dive into today, trying to make sense of the new Lightning exploit, how it works, the risk, and whether or not the sky is falling. Find out in today's Guy's Take episode. A shout out to Shinobi, Matt Corallo, John Carvalho, and numerous...

"We have no interest in causing confusion, mistakes, or deception. That sounds more like a job for those responsible for telling the market they wouldn’t raise rates after a massive monetary expansion, and then went on to raise them faster than at any time in U.S. financial history." — Mark Goodwin Today we have a very entertaining development thanks to the fools at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Bitcoin Magazine is being threatened with a lawsuit over t-shirts they are selling that...

It's often said that Bitcoin is too limited, that you can't build anything interesting on top of the Bitcoin chain... what if that was not only true, but that there were no limits? What if literally anything you could write into code, any program, app, game, theoretically even an entire operating system could be constructed such that its valid execution determined the ownership of Bitcoin? What if there were no limits, and you could build everything on Bitcoin? Today we dive into BitVM with...

It's often said that Bitcoin is too limited, that you can't build anything interesting on top of the Bitcoin chain... what if that was not only true, but that there were no limits? What if literally anything you could write into code, any program, app, game, theoretically even an entire operating system could be constructed such that its valid execution determined the ownership of Bitcoin? What if there were no limits, and you could build everything on Bitcoin? Today we dive into BitVM with...

"Will Bitcoin adoption improve the monetary policy behaviors of the Federal Reserve? I submit that it won’t. I do not see the incentive for the Federal Reserve to give into anyone or anything, let alone Bitcoin. Be honest, Bitcoin is surely not big enough to be a threat to the U.S. dollar. The United States is far more concerned with U.S. dollar dominance being threatened by, say, the Chinese yuan. Bitcoin on its own has not destabilized anything." — George Kaloudis Will the Federal...

"Timeout Trees is a very concrete and specific proposal for a channel factory design that actually attempts to address the real issues of use and implementation instead of a half-defined and vague concept. That is massive progress in terms of addressing Lightning's long-term scaling limitations." — Shinobi Today we dive into a cool proposal that takes advantage of covenants to build the first, practical implementation of a "lightning factory," or in other words, a way to create hundreds,...

We are diving back into the Bitcoin basics series today! Now that we understand how bitcoin works, what is important, how to stay safe, and how to use it, it's time to answer the most basic question for getting started... How do I get some Bitcoin!? Let's dive in with Bitcoin Basics episode 008. Wallets: getalby.com | Phoenix Wallet Nostr: primal.net Buy Bitcoin: Sign Up to Buy & Sell Bitcoin | River SwanBitcoin Strike FoldApp CashApp Other episodes: Basics_06 A...

"After four years of work, James O'Beirne's assumeutxo option to allow instant UTXO set bootstrapping for your Bitcoin node is merged into Bitcoin Core." — Shinobi There has always been a gap between the sovereignty, privacy, and security of software, and the usability of it. But thanks to an enormous amount of work and brilliant developers, day by day that gap is getting smaller. Where the most secure tools, the most robust node setups, the non-custodial options, are getting easier, faster,...

"There used to be tradeoffs between Lightning and fiat: UX vs. sovereignty; UX vs. speed; UX vs. cost; off-the-shelf fiat payment widgets vs. coding a node into an app. With the Breez SDK, Lightning beats fiat across the board. It’s faster to implement (as Ross says, “It’s like one or two API calls to set up a node, one to send a payment and one to receive payment”), cheaper to use, legally less complicated (check your jurisdiction), more private, and the UX is on par with fiat for the...

"It requires no consensus changes to Bitcoin at all. The trick is lifting all of that logic off-chain and being able to challenge a few steps of the computation on-chain if the other party asserts a dishonest outcome. In short, BitVM will bring arbitrary Turing-complete computation, in an enforceable way, to bitcoin itself – today." What if you could enforce the ownership of Bitcoin, with literally any code you could think of writing? That may just be possible, today, without any changes or...