The sirens are screaming and the fires are howling way down in the (bitcoin twitter) valley tonight. An enlightening conversation between Francis Pouliot and Brendan Eich (CEO of Brave.com) has revealed why brave uses its own token (BAT — Basic Attention Token) rather than Bitcoin, and the rationale is frankly insane. Brave is an unnecessary product for users (ublock origin blocks all ads) and simple ‘pay to read’ tools like satoshipay (but using bitcoin) are far superior.

Bitcoin fees won’t always fall. You need to prepare. Imagine you are waiting for a flight with 100 seats. The seats are auctioned with the 100 highest bids buying a seat. The auction opens 10 mins before closing, and previously unsuccessful bids remain active in the next auction. The number of new people showing up per flight ranges from say 10 to 300. You are sitting in the waiting area and can see how many people are already waiting at the gate.

Mining companies earn bitcoin from both the block reward and transaction fees. Currently the block reward is 12.5 BTC and the transaction fees per block = ~0.1 BTC. Though there have been times when the block fees almost exceeded block the reward, it has historically been far lower. Block Reward Per Block [Source] Transaction Fees per Block [Source] Going forwards, the issuance of bitcoin decreases (next halving of the block reward is in ~ 1 Year).

Bitcoin transactions are public, yet regularly ambiguous. Some thoughts. Introduction Lots of smart people are working on sophisticated methods of breaking common heuristics. Here I evaluate the two most basic types of transaction, and suggest some ‘low tech’ methods of further breaking these heuristics. I shall make use of tables like this: IN_X OUT_Y Alice Bob IN_X refers to Transaction Input number X OUT_Y refers to Transaction Output number Y Alice is the owner of IN_X Bob is the owner of OUT_Y Transaction fees are ignored to make it easier to read - assume one of the outputs is reduced slightly in order to provide a transaction fee.

In a free market without regulation ‘calling out scammers’ is ineffective. It takes 100 times more effort to convince someone to avoid a scam than it does to convince someone to fall for one. To worsen the disadvantage, the scammer gets paid whereas educators do not. So what’s the solution? Direct your energy into educating people about bitcoin & improving bitcoin tools. Some people are going to get scammed, you can try and fight this but for the reasons explained above it’s a lost cause.

Coldbit made a bitcoin puzzle which I was fortunate enough to solve first - netting me 1 000 000 sats (or 0.01 BTC). I include details of how I mixed this prize with whirlpool so that you can’t follow my coins! This is the announcement made on twitter: Puzzle announcement Here is a high resolution copy of the image in the tweet: Image provided as part of Puzzle announcement It shows three metal bitcoin seed backups (made by Coldbit) with engraved artwork.

I shall attempt to briefly explain why I think that the game theory of mining will result in regular non-compliant blocks being mined. My hope is that this can put to rest the concerns that a minority compliant group of miners will force the network into a compliant system. If you believe that I have made an error please get in touch and explain where you think I went wrong.

Going Abroad Going abroad temporarily to a place with a different currency can be disorientating. You may struggle judging prices and clumsily convert back to your ‘home’ currency. Living abroad you adapt and start pricing things in the local currency. You stop thinking in terms of your ‘home’ currency. It’s time to make the move to the internet. It’s time to think in bitcoin. Internalise If you always use GPS you will never learn the route.

Inflation Bad. Deflation Good. The IMF just posted a video on twitter which purports to explain; What is inflation? Below is a transcript with my comments. Please link me to useful books / resources as applicable. So you go to the store in New York and you buy a nice chair for $100 You go back the next year and the same chair is for $110 Prices went up, and if there’s a sustained increase in the overall prices of goods and services, thats inflation.

What is lightning? Instant & cheap bitcoin transactions. How can I try lightning? An easy way to try the lightning network. Just visit tippin.me and sign up. Use a bitcoin lightning wallet such as lightning-wallet on android. On iOS there is thin wallet but that is not yet opensource. Follow the instructions in the app you download to create a payment channel and send some satoshis to your tippin.me account.

⚠️ DANGER ⚠️ - Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins Owning bitcoin is knowing a private key which can be used to spend a bitcoin UTXO. If any other person knows this private key, they could spend the UTXO. For this reason, you must keep your private keys secure, and secret. Scams & Frauds Scammers have been attempting to take bitcoin from uneducated users for years. One way to do this is to give an uneducated user a bitcoin wallet for which the scammer knows the private key.

What even is orange pie? This dumb tweet inspired this short article… “The carpenter can’t run out of inches The stadium can’t run out of points The airline can’t run out of FF miles And the USA can’t run out of dollar” - Stephanie Kelton Understanding There is a common belief that the USA can just print as much money as it wants. Ignoring the complex nature in which money is actually created (debt, treasury notes etc) this is true, the USA can print as many dollars as it likes.

You can Listen to the podcast. SL: Why 6102 as your name? Tell us about the executive order and why you chose this 6102: Executive Order 6102 was a presidential directive which forbade the hoarding of gold in the United States - citizens were instructed to deliver their gold to the Federal Reserve within a month of the signing of the order in April 1933. Violating the order carried a punishment of 10 years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both.

This post explains why “surplus” clean energy bitcoin mining is a fallacy. I shall tackle the most generous scenario where clean electricity obtained at zero cost by a wind turbine operator and used for mining. (Note, Zero cost electricity is impossible as there will be operational costs). Let the term ‘Mining Ratio’ refer to the mining income per unit energy divided by the electricity cost per unit energy. The miner aims to mine with the maximum average mining ratio over the lifetime of their hardware in order to maximize profit.

This post explains why “surplus” clean energy bitcoin mining is a fallacy. I shall tackle the most generous scenario where clean electricity obtained at zero cost by a wind turbine operator and used for mining. (Note, Zero cost electricity is impossible as there will be operational costs). Let the term ‘Mining Ratio’ refer to the mining income per unit energy divided by the electricity cost per unit energy. The miner aims to mine with the maximum average mining ratio over the lifetime of their hardware in order to maximize profit.