Lol, I have to zap myself 100 sats to share this episode :-)

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Bitcoin, Explained — The Technical Side of Bitcoin • Episode 99: Bitcoin Core 30 • Listen on Fountain

Aaron and Sjors discuss what's new in Bitcoin Core v30This episode’s sponsor: CoinKite, maker of the COLDCARD.Aaron’s Nostr: ⁠npub1art8cs66ff...

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Removals after removal are my favorite type of removal. And I have a PR on top of this that removes even more :-) #MakeBitcoinCoreMaintainableAgain View quoted note →

There seems to be genuine confusion about how open source works. In particular some people believe that Bitcoin Core developers have a fiduciary duty, either towards them personally or towards some general notion of the Bitcoin network. They are surprised that I and some others respond to this rather aggressively. Remember that this is the argument Craig Wright tried to make. He failed, but not after millions of dollars were burnt on defending these developers. And not after several quit because of the stress. Don't go down this path. To put it as a catchy phrase: open source means you can do whatever you want with the code, not with the people who write it. Open source lets you fork code, and modify it to your liking. That's pretty much what I do every day, which isn't to say that I don't also try to make sure other people like it. I get paid in Bitcoin and OpenSats keeps their whole treasury in it, so the idea that I want destroy potential future income is rather retarded. Part of CSW's demands was that Bitcoin Core wrote specific (confiscation) code for him. Eventually he just hired people to write it for him, as one should, but somehow that still wasn't enough for him. I get a very similar vibe from people who run Knots but yet don't find that enough. Should we worry about a new round of lawsuits?

Someone, probably a US based catholic young male, subscribed my email to a bunch of lists in order to spam me. I can't be bothered to trace the IP they used for this. But Luke, control your herd.

> this will be my last comment on this topic Well, that aged like a Higgs boson... Bitcoin Explained episode 98 coming soon(tm). View quoted note →

Excellent take by me! :-) The fact that many Bitcoin Core developers are paid by someone, when that someone is NOT YOU, does not make YOU a customer that gets to demand things. You need to hire developers directly if you want to work on your behalf. View quoted note →

People seem to be confused about the fact that although Bitcoin Core is open source software, the bitcoin/bitcoin Github repository is a private space, not a public square. As a private space it has rules. Very few, and there's not much enforcement, but they're there. And those rules are not decided by users (in fact, ultimately Microsoft controls the domain). People are free to fork the code and create an alternative space to work on that code. There they can have whatever rules they want. You can make it completely private. The MIT license is very permissive, you don't even have to share the resulting code. You could also allow anyone to comment and sell viagra pills. Up to you! Such code forks are not ideal though. It could create confusion around where to download the "real" Bitcoin Core. Slightly different codebases make things difficult to audit. When implementations diverge too much, it will make future soft forks hard to coordinate. But if contributors to Bitcoin Core can't get any work done when doing so in public, they'll have to find another way to get work done. So as a user, you should not be happy when brigading happens on the repo. Those are precious developer days being wasted, in which actual bugs are not being fixed - or even introduced because tired developers make mistakes. Even if you disagree with a specific change, you have an interest in that being communicated in a non-disruptive manner. View quoted note →

And now for something ... completely different:

Roger Ver 'calm and politely' calling out Bitcoin Core censorship, even of people who've been around since the early days. He calls out their conflicts of interest and corruption, their deviation from the original version of Bitcoin... And they always go off on these super technical tangents. And they're mean on camera. "Won't even answer a single question". Install Bitcoin ABC, now! (yes, it's still actively maintained) P.S. wow people were young back then

I don't mean to diss OP here, but free market analogies have often misguided people. Sometimes you need good engineering. It really is what led to Bitcoin Cash. But that doesn't mean blindly trusting engineers. You should find out if they really know what they're doing. How to find out? That's a hard problem, i.e. they can't all get on a person phone call with you, some have an abrasive communication style, sometimes a problem seems very simple but take a lot of curriculum knowledge to grok. You can't just trust them either when they say "it's complicated", because that what charlatans would say too. View quoted note →

@Minibits can you add a threshold amount setting below which: 1. You don't send a push notification 2. You don't show the transaction 3. You do collect the zap(s), either in the background or the next online session #spam #zapvertising

This seemed worth clarifying, so I did the thing where I ask a question and answer it myself: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/126208/4948

> It is about time that we stop tolerating nonsense and come back to a place where most of us value (proof of) work, ideas, and selflessness instead of overblown emotional reactions, unbacked wild claims and adhesion to various cults. Anyway, in the unlikely event I can restrain myself, this will be my last comment on this topic.

Antoine Poinsot

On relay policy and recent OP_RETURN drama

Relaxing restrictions on OP_RETURN is fine. Bitcoiners need to stop being so gullible.

But yes, we need to nice to @Luke Dashjr and his aggressive cult. View quoted note →

Dutch hipster bank #Bunq just added support for buying and selling crypto in collaboration with Kraken. There seems to be no way to withdraw coins, which not even their FAQ seems worth mentioning. It says something about the "crypto" market in general that any company thinks they get away with that.

bunq Crypto | bunq Help

Buy, sell, and swap a wide range of cryptocurrencies directly in the bunq app. Build your portfolio with a personal crypto wallet.

My first impression of Bitcoin Core, during the blocksize wars, was also that of arrogance. It's an unfortunate side-effect of people losing patience when having to re-explain something a hundred times. Time they're not spending on writing code, and energy they're losing to remain motivated to write code. The project is run by volunteers who do not have time, and should not waste time, for maintaining useless functionality. Having people in the project that are (somewhat) comfortable in delivering such bad news is extremely important. I've been on the receiving end of that too internally. You do not want Bitcoin Core to be a please-everyone kind of project. That's a recipe for unmaintainable code and really bad bugs down the line. View quoted note →