I received a few requests to write an article or record a podcast on BIP110, but frankly I don’t see the point right now. Until someone is willing to put their money (no one has taken on @Rob Hamilton ’s fork futures offer) or hash power (not even Ocean is signaling support) where their mouth is, it’s little more than a DOS-attack on our attention and time.

The Knots crowd has become toxic enough that I do in fact hope they fork off. I’ll happily sell my BIP110 coins back to them—assuming there will be enough blocks on this chain for these transactions to confirm—and they can go their Bcash way.

Bitcoin is now trading lower than when “pro-crypto president” (read: shitcoin scammer) Trump was elected. Some seriously thought getting him in office would speedrun us to hyperbitcoinization. Instead we got a temporary price pump and perhaps significant brand damage for anyone not in the MAGA cult.

X drives people nuts.

I visited “Bitcoin Jungle” (Uvita, CR) a few days this week. Normally when I go to circular economy projects (Arnhem, Rovereto, El Zonte…) I link up with the organizer(s) and seek out the locations where I can pay with bitcoin, but this time I decided to run the experiment a bit differently: I just went to wherever I felt like going and then asked if they accepted BTC. Out of about a dozen places I visited… 1 accepted bitcoin. (S/O to The Fistcuff Pub!) 1 had a Bitcoin Jungle sticker but didn’t actually take bitcoin payments. (Whale Tail Brewery) 1 did not accept bitcoin but seemed genuinely interested and would look into it. (Coffee Bear) Out of the other ~10, about half just said no, and the other half clearly didn’t even know what bitcoin was. So is this a bad result? Frankly, it’s roughly what I would have expected. I’ve long believed that spurring bitcoin adoption by convincing merchants is an uphill battle. You might get a few boutique shops and bars to participate, and then they find it’s kind of a pain to teach all their personnel how to use wallets just for maybe a handful of bitcoiners that show up once in a while. I do like these projects, and if you _do_ seek out the bitcoin accepting spots you can probably go a long way without touching fiat for a few days— yet we also shouldn’t overstate the success or impact of such local initiatives. I suspect it might just be a bit too early for this still… but if we do want to create hotspots with truly widespread adoption, what would that require? I’d say: - Instant fiat conversion is probably a must. - Printable QR codes (BOLT12/Silent Payments) to make it easier for merchants to keep accepting BTC even if sparsely used. - Ideally there’d be a source of “fresh” BTC that’s brought into the economy, whether that’s from local miners, or expats that get paid in bitcoin, or Bitcoin tourists, or… - Ability to pay tax in BTC would be great but probably a long-shot in most places. - What else?..

Andreas Antonopoulos on “spam” transactions (in 2016):

Matthew Kratter (@Matthew Kratter) will talk shit about Bitcoin Core devs and other bitcoiners from behind his monitor reading out pre-written scripts all day long, but he does not even have the balls to come on a podcast and defend his position. View quoted note →

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