1M sats on offer 👀👀👀 View quoted note →

Big week ahead, kicking off with a brand new domain and website for all of our freedom tech at

Foundation

Foundation – Passport Prime

Take command of your digital life with Passport Prime, the world’s first Human Authority Hardware device.

🥳 Check it out and let me know what you love/hate/would change on the new site! Good suggestions might just get some sats/piconeros sent their way (zaps make things damn easy) 😉 View quoted note →

Favorite Nostr client just got way better 🧡 View quoted note →

Been secretly enjoying RBF and the new address and amount formats for what feels like an eternity 😅 Now it’s live for all you lovely Envoy users out there on all platforms 🫡 View quoted note →

There is no second best when it comes to a full LN node in your pocket 🔥 View quoted note →

Who do I need to follow here? My “Latest” feed is a bit dead a lot of the time. Help me fix it 🫂

CANNOT WAIT to do my first in-person workshop teaching Bitcoin self-custody from scratch alongside @QnA. If you're in NYC, get your tickets ASAP before it's full! View quoted note →

Stop trying to use dice-rolled seeds unless you're an expert ❌ Just had yet another person (hard to count the total now) reach out about a low-entropy seed they generated and were allowed to import into a certain hardware wallet. A lot of the blame for these lost funds falls on influencers who shill users on overly-complex security setups without properly explaining the massive risks and tradeoffs associated for the average user. What happened: Less than 10min after funds were sent to what they thought was secure storage, they were swept to an attackers address. They used <10 dice rolls, meaning the private key had <25bits of entropy when the minimum for strong security is 50 dice rolls (128 bits of entropy). Wallets should not allow a user to import a seed that they know is completely insecure. Staying safe: As I have said many times, if you don't know the ins and outs of dice rolls, entropy, verification of the resulting seed offline, etc. please do not use dice rolls alone for seed generation. 99.99999% of users are better off allowing good, multi-source, open-source random number generation like we do on Passport. To date I have heard of zero compromised seeds that were generated using on-board RNG due to entropy issues, while there are countless examples of users losing funds due to improper dice rolls. Stay safe out there, folks.

Bringing back #Bitcoin #SkepticismSundays 😎 One of the things that showed me the intellectual honesty of the Monero community and helped to force the community to stay grounded in reality and always laser focused on their core ethos was their weekly "Skepticism Sunday" Reddit threads. These threads allowed the community to come together, ask hard and skeptical questions about the design of Monero, the privacy provided, the economic approach, and much more. In my time in Bitcoin I've never seen anything similar, but the nuanced and high-signal crowd on Nostr seems like a perfect fit to fire things up and see how it goes. The goal of this thread (which I'll post weekly on Sunday's) is for discussing the uncertainties, shortcomings, and concerns some may have about Bitcoin. Things like what makes it difficult for you to use Bitcoin, what pain-points you have, etc. NOT the positive aspects of it. Discussing things with a critical thinking approach and level-headed discussion helps us learn where Bitcoin and its community can improve and go from there. P.S. -- I try to take a break from social media on Sundays so I will follow up and reply whwre I can tomorrow!

If we can't have honest, divergent opinions about the state of Nostr without people being abject assholes about it, then my bearishness will 100% prove true. Being able to openly discuss issues with each other without purely strawman, insulting replies is vital to the success of any project like this, even more so because its success relies on social networks. Read through the replies to this and enjoy a healthy response to criticism 😅 View quoted note →

It’s official, I’m on #TeamNerdMiner ⛏️ Had to pick one of these up and support the amazing work of @bitmaker Absolutely love the educational aspects of this, and a great way to play with @Public_Pool_BTC more as well. Can buy your own here, great way to support the amazing dev behind the NerdMiner project!

Bitronics

NerdMiner Crystal Edition

We are celebrating reaching 78KH/s on the NerdMiner! That's why we created the Crystal edition. The NerdMiner Crystal edition is a limited edition ...

# Taproot didn’t cause Ordinals ❌ I've seen the view that "Taproot caused/enabled Ordinals" commonly mentioned across Twitter, and it's one that can be extremely harmful. Many in the space would love to further ossify (prevent change) in Bitcoin and use Ordinals "spam" as the reason for doing so, but I'd argue that that would be the worst possible outcome from this situation. This needs a lengthy explanation to properly grasp what's at play here, though, so let's get into the fun details. ## Arbitrary data in Bitcoin has always been possible Something most people don't understand is that a system like Bitcoin is built for data storage, it's just intended for monetary data. This design made it possible from day one to include arbitrary (arbitrary) data into the blockchain, either through methods like OP_RETURN (a good place for storing arbitrary data as it can be easily pruned) or in tweaked pubkeys (a bad place for storing arbitrary data, as it cannot be pruned). Some examples of this: - Satoshi inscribed a newspaper headline in the genesis block coinbase (

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

- Luke Dash Jr. used his pool to inscribe Bible texts and prayers in 2011 in the coinbase (

Eligius miners aware of prayers in block headers?

Eligius miners aware of prayers in block headers?

- Someone added the entire Bitcoin whitepaper to the UTXO set in 2013 (

Bitcoin Stack Exchange

How is the whitepaper decoded from the blockchain (Tx with ~1000x m of n multisig outputs)

The whitepaper is apparently encoded at 54e48e5f5c656b26c3bca14a8c95aa583d07ebe84dde3b7dd4a78f4e4186e713, which is an m of n multisig Tx with 947 o...

All of these happened before both SegWit and Taproot, and there are many more cases of this type of data storage on Bitcoin. ## But I thought Taproot enabled this? Unfortunately, there is a common misunderstanding (thanks for the troll name [@TaprootWizards](https://twitter.com/TaprootWizards) 😅) that Taproot enabled this type of data storage, thus opening the way for Ordinals "spam." In reality, this type of arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin has always been possible, but was made much cheaper to do with the introduction of SegWit in 2017. SegWit was a major upgrade and bug fix for Bitcoin that enabled the Lightning network to be built and included a 3MB "witness" data allowance within each block w/ reduced fees for data to incentivize spending UTXOs (therefore making them prunable). More on SegWit in a fantastic post from [@River](https://twitter.com/River) here: <https://river.com/learn/what-is-segwit/> This incentivized portion of each transaction (called "witness" data) is intended for things like Bitcoin scripts, but can be used to store any data as long as it's done the "right" way. Specifically, Ordinals store them in an "envelope" between two opcodes, allowing the data to count as witness data and get the discount. This storage method was possible before SegWit, but now saves on fees in comparison to pre-SegWit usage. While this of course was not the intent of SegWit, it underlines the simple fact that if someone wants to store arbitrary data in a blockchain, they will find ways to do it. ## Does that make SegWit bad? If your first reaction is then to want to raise a pitchfork and campaign for no more changes in Bitcoin, remember this -- without the SegWit soft-fork there would be no Lightning network, no discount for users consolidating UTXOs, and instead users would be incentivized to create more un-prunable UTXOs as it's cheaper to create than to consume UTXOs w/o SegWit. Additionally, Ordinals being stored in witness data allows those who run a node to easily prune them and not store them in RAM, unlike any method that leverages pubkey tweaking or other types of stenography to include arbitrary data on-chain. This means that the actual impact of Ordinals on those who run a node is drastically minimized versus other arbitrary data storage methods. ## If we didn't have SegWit, Ordinals would all use the UTXO set It's extremely like that if we had never included the SegWit soft-fork into Bitcoin that the Ordinals craze would still have happened, and along with it a drastically worse outcome for the blockchain. In this alternate reality, Ordinals (and all similar NFTs) would likely be inscribed directly into the UTXO set, similar to how Stamps function today. Some within the Bitcoin community have been asking for a removal of the SegWit witness data discount to force Ordinals to pay the same fees as all other users per byte. Unfortunately, this would have two extremely detrimental side-effects: it would disincentivize healthy UTXO management (consolidating UTXOs vs creating new ones) and incentivize Ordinals to be put in the UTXO set directly. While putting the data into the UTXO set does cost those creating these NFTs drastically more, it also means that those running a Bitcoin node cannot prune the data, no matter what. Bitcoin relies on nodes being able to retain the entire UTXO set in order to verify transactions properly and prevent double-spends, and any data within that UTXO set must be kept in perpetuity. That would be drastically worse for those running a Bitcoin node, and makes the Ordinals in SegWit witness data pale in comparison when it comes to negative impact on Bitcoin nodes. ## So what can we do about it? The solution to reducing the cost of using Bitcoin is not censoring Ordinals (something that isn't even technologically possible, BTW), but rather is finally building solutions to Bitcoin's long-term scaling. Ordinals have highlighted something most of us knew would happen -- base-layer fees would become untenably high, as they have to for Bitcoin to be secure long-term. In order for the average person to use Bitcoin, we need powerful scaling solutions like layer twos, and unfortunately Lightning in it's current form isn't the final solution. Lightning relies on every channel-owner (and thus user when done in a non-custodial manner) being able to settle back on-chain to resolve disputes, something that isn't economically feasible in a realistic fee environment. ## The solution? Covenants Enter covenants, an improvement to Bitcoin that has been a long-time in the making and is finally picking up the steam it deserves in the space. Covenants enable both improvements to Lightning that make it drastically more scalable, and new layer two networks to be built that have different (often better) trade-offs compared to Lightning. As this post is already getting a bit too long I won't dive into the details of covenants, but instead ask you to spend a few minutes going through this fantastic set of resources on covenants to better understand what they enable: <https://covenants.info> Have questions? **ASK THEM!** The best way for the broader Bitcoin "rough consensus" layer to work is for more people to step up, learn, and ask questions as they go.

No clue how @npub1qtvl2em0llpnnllffhat8zltugwwz97x79gfmxfz4qk52n6zpk3qq87dze can sell itself on a platform of "transparency" and "bringing censorship-resistance back to Bitcoin" when this is how they approach things. Can't think of a more disappointing Bitcoin launch in recent memory. Maybe community pushback will make them rethink their approach, but I can't sit by and watch this unfold without calling out this BS.

They call it "spam filtering," I call it censorship. Confirmed that @npub1qtvl2em0llpnnllffhat8zltugwwz97x79gfmxfz4qk52n6zpk3qq87dze is filtering Inscriptions as "spam" today, with no recourse for miners until Stratumv2 is live "over the next year".

So, uh, hate to break it to all those cheering for @npub1qtvl2em0llpnnllffhat8zltugwwz97x79gfmxfz4qk52n6zpk3qq87dze so far but it seems they’re already censoring transactions intentionally… Details here:

X (formerly Twitter)

checksum0 (@checksum0) on X

The new preachers of transparency in mining @ocean_mining have been caught with their pants down hiding several things. I have been monitoring th...

How it started: How it’s going:

Did Bitcoin mining change forever yesterday 🤔 Hey @OceanSlim l, @npub1lh273a4wpkup00stw8dzqjvvrqrfdrv2v3v4t8pynuezlfe5vjnsnaa9nk, and @npub1wnlu28xrq9gv77dkevck6ws4euej4v568rlvn66gf2c428tdrptqq3n3wr, I watched the announcement yesterday but came away with a lot of unanswered questions that I'll detail below. I would legitimately love to hear the answers to these if at all possible! How is Ocean non-custodial for the average miner? On the stream it was mentioned that payout thresholds are 0.0108 BTC (but @Bitcoin Mechanic was unsure), a number that would take a pleb miner with an S9 ~470d to reach. Until he reaches that payout point, all of his mined sats seem to be entirely custodied by Ocean. How does Ocean decentralize mining today? I was so excited by the teases and pre-announcements for Ocean as it sounded like exactly what I wanted in a Bitcoin pool. Unfortunately, it sounds like all of the decentralization possible is yet to be release, including StratumV2 and any ability for miners to submit block templates themselves. Did I miss anything that makes Ocean more decentralized than other pools today? Why is Ocean not open source? If Ocean is as revolutionary and decentralizing as it's being made out to be, wouldn't the best thing for Bitcoin be that all pools switch over time to the same mode? If so, why isn't Ocean open-sourcing any of it's protocol or code? In the announcement it seemed that @Bitcoin Mechanic was bragging that no competitor would be able to "reproduce" their lead dev's code, thus keeping their competitive edge. There was no mention to my knowledge of open source, but it's possible I missed it! What guarantee do miners have that you won't censor transactions? As miners cannot submit their own block templates right now and the source is not open code, miners have to rely on manually checking a visual block template on your site to find censorship. @Luke Dashjr has a history of censoring what he viewed as "spam," and there was a lot of time spent in the conference talking about how bad Ordinals are and how bad pools are that mine them. What guarantees or promises do miners have that you won't censor transactions you don't like? How will Ocean handle regulatory pressure to enact KYC? In the event that regulators of the Feds come knocking and want you to implement KYC (as seems to be the case with other pools), what will you do? What will Ocean's fee model be after the 0% period? There was a lot of talk about how most pools subsidize larger miners and charge exhorbitant fees to smaller miners during the conference. One thing that wasn't ever mentioned was what Ocean's fee policy will be after the 2mo 0% fee period. Could you explain how the fee model will work? Conclusion That's enough questions for now, I think, but I look forward to getting answers to these! We have a desperate need for decentralized mining in Bitcoin and a massive gap today. I look forward to hearing back 🙂

Haven’t updated my relay list in a while, what are some quality relays I should be using these days?

DIY hackable” and only “source available” 🥲 So what dev in their right mind will write and publish code/firmware for this locked behind a restrictive, source-available license? Do they expect someone else to make actual FOSS firmware? Someone explain this paradox to me. “Make it anything you want, you just can’t sell or monetize it in any way, ever” I just… how is any of this in the spirit of Bitcoin or even simply encouraging proper innovation and a flourishing of ideas. Pretty sure this is where Coinkite realizes the “find out” part of fucking around with restrictive, “source available” licenses instead of doing the right thing and actually leaning into freedom tech.

People should be terrified that Ledger can claim for marketing how much crypto their users collectively have 🙈 Is your Bitcoin part of their 20% figure? If so, get it out now. 👇

Unfortunately, there has been a concerted effort by big tech to destroy the feasibility of privacy-preserving front-ends and open-source clients recently, including YouTube, X, and Reddit. All three have taken steps that destroyed Invidious, Nitter, and Teddit usability. As such I've simply taken down my instances of all three as they have been unusable for some time and have no realistic workarounds for public instances at this time. If that changes I will put them all back up, but for now it's just not possible to run public instances of any. It's *extremely* sad to see the hard work of the contributors of these three projects destroyed by the flick of a switch by big tech companies, but is yet another reminder to stop relying on big tech and start taking social media and media itself into your own hands. For a YouTube alternative, consider PeerTube. For an X alternative, congrats, you're already on Nostr 👋 For a Reddit alternative, I honestly don't have a recommendation outside of some Lemmy and forum usage. Note that both Nitter and Invidious are working hard on workarounds and fixes, but Teddit seems to be completely dead due to API monetization of Reddit. I'll try to keep updates on Nitter and Invidious status if workarounds that are feasible show up. If you do still want to use YouTube, I highly recommend FreeTube as an open-source desktop client:

GitHub

GitHub - FreeTubeApp/FreeTube: An Open Source YouTube app for privacy

An Open Source YouTube app for privacy. Contribute to FreeTubeApp/FreeTube development by creating an account on GitHub.

I don't touch YouTube without it since Invidious went down. You can easily import your subscriptions from YouTube and other clients like NewPipe here:

FreeTube Docs

Importing your Subscriptions

The Official Documents website for FreeTube, the Open Source YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux built around privacy.

If you're on Android you should be using NewPipe, absolutely amazing FOSS client that blocks ads, allows downloads, etc.: newpipe.net Tips if you do need to use X on the go for some reason: 1. Use a VPN 2. Use a good browser with ad/cookie blocking 3. Use the progressive web app (simple add to home screen from Safari/Brave/etc) instead of the "proper" app Not really any other options, sadly, but that prevents the majority of tracking!