Jameson Lopp

KYC Kontrol Your Citizens

Me reviewing the weekly portfolio report.

@TheGuySwann I suspect people are sensitive because they don't like having their time wasted. When audiences get riled up over false / fantastical narratives, it results in them seeking clarification from others as to how worried they should be. I, for one, am tired of fielding BS concerns.

@lopp You mean we’re talking about why we think the soft fork could be disruptive and discussing its trade offs… is inventing fantasy for engagement? Seriously why is everyone so damn sensitive about this? We’re literally moralizing about just having a gd discussion about it?

We have absolutely no idea what kind of chaos is going to ensue if BIP-110 gets pushed through without consensus. If the market sides against the restrictive rules, we are left with a smaller, weaker monetary Bitcoin while the "spam-enabling" version wins all the institutional money. I pulled this clip from my recent chat with Luke de Wolf because it highlights the true stakes of this governance debate. Check it out here or catch the whole of discussion below.

@RobinSeyr I'm assuming you're running latest Knots that enables 110 by default. In early August all of those nodes will fall out of sync with the rest of the network; within a couple days any associated lightning nodes powered by 110 nodes will cease to be able to update their channels.

@lopp I don't, but why?

My Take on BIP-110 & Core vs. Knots Full disclosure: ⇒ I currently run Knots on my main node ⇒ I have 9 miners with a total power of over 1200 TH/s running in the Ocean pool What is the argument really about? ⇒ Should we allow “non-monetary” use cases? ⇒ Can we filter out non-monetary use cases? ⇒ Will BTC die if we don’t act? Or if we act? First of all, my opinions: Bitcoin is Money I hate all non-monetary use cases on BTC. I don’t think they’re part of Bitcoin, and I hope they go away. I don't only HODL I earn & spend a good amount directly in BTC Self Custody. Should we use BTC only for monetary reasons? YESS! Can/Should we enforce that? This is the Question I'm not very sure about for 2 specific reasons: 1.) I worked as a software Dev for 6 Years, so I know that changing a working system always comes with unintended consequences. 2.) Even though I'm technical, I don't think I'm expert enough to fully crasp all the second order effects. I’m leaning towards yes, though. Will BTC die if we don't act? Of if we act? No, but there is a more nuanced better question: ⇒ How much does non-monetary data actually degrade Bitcoin’s main properties, and is that harm large enough to justify the cost and risk of intervening? What’s next? 2 paths forward: Either this resolves and blows over quite soon. (I don’t think that’s very likely.) Or there’s a way bigger fight coming down the line. In both those cases, I’d rather preserve my energy. I’m not enough of an expert. I’m not fully convinced of the solutions. I think there’s a bigger fight coming!

If you're upset about "Bitcoiner infighting" just remember a few simple truths that cause controversy to be inevitable: 1) Bitcoin is for enemies. 2) Bitcoin is a scarce, shared resource over which people compete to use in a variety of ways. 3) x.com/lopp/status/16…

@TheGuySwann I'm hearing that there are so few novel topics to discuss at the moment that we have to contrive fantasy scenarios to get engagement.

@lopp x.com/theguyswann/st…

The dynamics of debate in cyberspace have changed due to how easy it is to DoS an opponent with AI slop. I always preferred asynchronous text based debate because it meant you could spend a lot of time researching and honing arguments, but now in-person debate may be preferable.

6 days left to tell the FCC you object to KYC for phone service! blog.lopp.net/call-to-action…

This analysis of sentiment by sociological cohort from @SullyMichaelvan is pretty interesting and feels roughly accurate to me. I myself have a foot in each camp, but I can confidently state that focusing on the technology makes me the most optimistic because I know nobody can stop me. sentimentsully.substack.com/p/the-fracturi…

Imagine if you could get comprehensive molecular level cancer screening in 60 seconds for like 20 bucks. It looks like that may become reality sooner than we could have hoped! x.com/midjourney/sta…

A technical dive inside our new "Midjourney Scanner"

Bear markets are for building.

NEW: Illinois Governor Pritzker has signed a 0.2% tax on crypto transactions into law including transfers between personal wallets, with the Crypto Council for Innovation calling it "the most punitive digital asset tax in the country."

Here we go again... x.com/Jim_Banks/stat…

@theinstagibbs *chef's kiss* I never even got a message. Clearly, his AI agents are not performing well.

Tomato/tomatoe or whatever since I wouldn't have replied, but he emailed me Marco Falke's questions and I was very confused

Kudos to ChainQuery for resurrecting and enhancing @khannib's "UTXO Repartition" charts that analyze all of the different types of locking scripts currently used to secure BTC. chainquery.com/reports/utxo-r…

@MrHodl @anant_tap Single sig + strong passphrase is effectively a 2-of-2 multisig, which is pretty brittle. Neither single sig + passphrase nor multisig is panacea; as you point out, the devil is in the details as to how each secret can be accessed. blog.casa.io/how-to-protect…

No. Multisig doesn't protect you from the $5 wrench attack. 99% of multisig setups are just as vulnerable as single sig because most people never actually geographically distribute their keys. They aren't flying across oceans to stash seeds in foreign safety deposit boxes. One phone call to family usually does it: "Mom, can you take a picture of that key I left with you?" Multisig is excellent for inheritance planning and shared custody. Defeating physical coercion isn't one of its strengths for most users. Single sig + strong passphrase + decoy wallets is still the only realistic wrench resistance the average person actually has.

Air-gapped signing is not a silver bullet. A single key behind an air gap still loses to a $5 wrench. The gap protects the key from remote extraction. It does nothing about physical coercion, inheritance failure, or a compromised seed backup. Multisig fixes the threat model.