ewhat?

Quantum is just another thing they're throwing at us in order to stall Bitcoin for another 2 years. Imagine, right after we lost over 2 years in a stupid fight about "spam". The attacks are multifaceted.

It's a complete waste of time. There are many "single" things in which Bitcoin depends, like sha256 and other small things no one even considers as potential failure vectors. We can't be fooled into pursuing infinite research paths trying to "protect" Bitcoin from minuscule risks while adoption remains at basically all-time lows. What are the priorities? This is a stalling technique from some higher power trying to distract Bitcoin from its purpose.

I personally believe the 'quantum threat' to Bitcoin has been framed incorrectly... perhaps, the issue isn't advancements in quantum computing, but our absolute dependence on a *single* elliptic curve for protection—a potential single point of failure for the entire system. Tomorrow I sit down with BIP 360 co-author @Ethan_Heilman and @Blockstream Head of Research @n1ckler to discuss alternative signature schemes that could potentially support the network if elliptic curve cryptography is broken — by quantum OR classical threats — and the tradeoffs we'll make as a community when implementing each of these proposed alternatives. FWIW, many quantum skeptics (e.g. @reardencode ?) seem to think this is worth considering... curious to hear if other quantum skeptics think this is a valid reason for research efforts in this area? Let me know in comments + follow for the full discussion tomorrow.

@hodlonaut Bitcoin is not the goal, Bitcoin is a means to an end. If Bitcoin cannot fulfill its purpose then we must try something else. I would really prefer that Bitcoin wasn't so broken since it is much closer to the goal than eCash for now. Thank you for your jornalistic work.

Core has serious issues. That does NOT mean that walking dead shitcoin corpses are suddenly more relevant or valuable. ONLY BITCOIN MATTERS.

@hodlonaut Let me know how you plan to fix the Core capture. Maybe in an year or two some people will begin to see that there is no solution to that besides what I stated above.

Grifters pretending my articles make shitcoins suddenly not shit. There is only Bitcoin.

I don't expect you to understand, but to everybody else reading: Every centralized group of people will be captured like Core was. Drivechain allows ossification (and with that we can have real client diversification) while Bitcoin can continue to evolve and adapt through sidechains.

“The only solution is … to activate drivechain …”. Lolololol This is the falsest false dichotomy in the whole entire history of false dichotomies. It’s a non sequitur of Godzillian proportion. The only way to correct it is for everyone to begin wearing underwear on the outside, inside-out.

@DadGuy1986 I would prefer to have a fallback rather than none. I don't understand why anyone would be against a fallback.

@the_ecash Said absolutely no one who understands Bitcoin, decentralization vs. distributed computing, and human history beyond a few generations. There is no fallback if BTC fails.

The capture of Bitcoin is probably not reversible. The only solution is for miners to activate Drivechain and make Bitcoin Core irrelevant. Or everybody will have to migrate to eCash.

@coinjoined But we totally should trust them that quantum computers are around the corner.

Hard to take NIST seriously after they pushed a kleptoghraphic algorithm that allowed many retail network routers to be backdoored. There's a reason satoshi used secp256k1 and why we hash twice. We shouldn't trust the standards bodies. Keep your tinfoil hats on!

@jamesob @TFTC21 @callebtc Why do we even need mining and blocks anyway? Just put the global money ledger on an enclave and it can create accounts for everybody to manage and send payments happily.

@jamesob @TFTC21 @callebtc What is this party-pooping? Didn't you read that this is "the biggest scaling breakthrough Bitcoin has had in years"? I wonder why no one thought about this before... arxiv.org/abs/1612.07766 (Except they did, and there are dozens of other projects in the same line.)

"You can't access the bitcoin, so you're not a custodian." That single sentence from @callebtc , the creator of the Cashu ecash protocol, just unlocked the biggest scaling breakthrough Bitcoin has had in years. The reason ecash scaling has been limited to small community mints is because running a larger one makes you a money transmitter. Calle's solution: non-custodial Cashu mints running inside hardware enclaves. The bitcoin keys are generated inside the enclave and never leave it. The mint operator literally cannot access them. Even with full admin access to the server, they cannot steal the bitcoin. Remove the custodial barrier and the design space explodes. Public organizations, businesses, community groups can all run mints without taking on custodial liability. The security model is battle-tested. ACINQ already uses the same approach with AWS Nitro Enclaves to protect their massive Lightning node holding hundreds of millions in BTC. The historical lineage is what gets me. In 2004, Hal Finney built RPOW (Reusable Proofs of Work) using IBM's secure cryptographic coprocessor. The server was "more trustworthy than an ordinary bank" because the hardware itself guaranteed the software hadn't been tampered with. Finney's system wasn't tied to an existing currency. Calle's is. Cashu ecash backed by Bitcoin, running in a modern enclave, is RPOW's spiritual successor. Except this time it's built on the hardest money in human history. The honest caveats: this doesn't reduce risk to zero. The biggest practical risk is denial of service. The operator could turn the mint off. But since they can't steal the bitcoin, there's no financial incentive to do so. We're getting closer to having everything we want: privacy, ease of use, and reduced custodial risk, all on Bitcoin rails. Hal Finney's vision, finally realized.

@blockspace @Truthcoin Satoshi is the real genius. The shame is that we allowed "Core" and freak deep State assets like John Newbery corrupt his invention and his reference implementation and turn everything into a weird broken NGU cult. I'm glad @hodlnaut is making the truth available to everybody.

.@Truthcoin thinks his Bitcoin fork "eCash" will be a chaotic, but it won't last forever. "The network will be unusable until blocks are [found] between 30 and 3 minutes." "I think it will work out because Satoshi's design is very good."

Drivechain is the solution. Such that we can make long-term investiments on onchain payment technology that is fast, reliable and non-custodial. Either that or a ShieldedCSV implementation as a decentralized sidechain. Anything is better than the current payment technology based on custodial Lightning. But fragile multisig bridges or modest blocksize increases that won't scale in the long-term can't be the basis of payment technology for the masses.

@bergealex4 @TheBCHPodcast You're still being cynical. You haven't said what you think the problem actually is, or what kind of solution would address it.

Imagine a world where Bitcoin is accepted everywhere.

@bergealex4 @robin_linus @TheBCHPodcast You've been saying that for 8 years.

@robin_linus @TheBCHPodcast The “problem” is that people still prefer to spend fiat. The solutions are to let fiat play its course meanwhile Bitcoin’s financialization will bring volatility down to create products that are more suited for day to day spending.

.@Truthcoin thinks innovative bitcoin ideas should get huge payouts, not get shunned by the maxi crowd. "Right now, if you try to improve bitcoin, you go to @OPNEXT2026 and people write an article that says 'don't break Bitcoin.' But nothing happens. It's really miserable" "We have to change that so that the story more goes, that if you propose an idea for bitcoin that has some merit. . . you'll get millions of dollars."

@moneyball This is necessarily done with custodial Lightning these days, an awful situation and the worst possible way to introduce someone to Bitcoin (yet necessary). Drivechain fixes that and we're going to prove that on ecash.com.

The narrative in bitcoin needs to change from "run a node" to "find ways to receive bitcoin for services provided"

@jamesob This is the same insane logic used against every soft-fork proposal to Bitcoin: "can you prove this soft-fork has no risks? can you prove this soft-fork is the best possible soft-fork we should be doing?"

@jamesob "oh but do you have proof that it won't happen?"

No shed yet (and we've been working on it for 30+ years) but the mag-lev skyscraper is definitely coming soon!

@cryptoquick Bitcoin is not even close to reaching mediocre levels of adoption, blocks are empty, full State capture is under way. Don't you feel the priorities should be on that? What good is it to have more cryptography if no one is using it anyway and it might as well be dead in 5 years?

I think one of the biggest assumptions people are making is that quantum computers are even necessary at all to break 256 bit elliptic curves. Do we need a Hilbert space of unbounded precision or can it be approximated? All cryptography has a half life. Algorithmic agility.

@murchandamus @AchimWar Didn't you see Scott Aaronson's blog post? He said someone he knows told him in a fancy dinner that quantum is coming.

@AchimWar I am not sure climate change is an apt comparison. Data, science consensus, and public sentiment are all pretty clear (except in the USA for some reason). The feasibility, progress, and general viability of quantum computing seems much less clearly established.

I was a bit concerned about quantum for a moment, but the supposed expert quantum doomers demonstrating extreme lack of technical acumen at the top of my feed every time I open Twitter is making it hard to take it serious at all. When you’re in a hole, maybe stop digging?