Update to my drama:

I was able to restore the database so I must have had the right hsm_secret ?  I guess I have to wait now for the node to finish syncing to see if we have the keys to anything...  Or maybe the node is just working?  That would be odd.

My understanding is the sqlite database backup would not restore with the wrong hsm_secret.

Anyway... the CL node might actually SURVIVE this torture.  Not 100% sure about the LND node.  At the same time I still feel like I have a long way to go.  All the TOR addresses look different now, and I have no idea what the node ID(s) is.  As long as I have the keys to force closed channels...

The HARDEST POT to watch boil:

Interesting this FUD shows up, isn't it?  Just a troll I guess?

Good job on both charts... The thing that makes this one have extra merit, in my opinion, is the rest of the market environment.  If stonks keep going down Bitcoin has to show some serious strength just holding THIS line...  and it MIGHT because I bet there is a lot of buying going on right now.

I would rather you be right the first time... but I would also rather we never went this low in the first place.

I imagine they are pretty busy.

You are right... 2018 was more adam/eve, but even in that case it's still a nice 'V' on that Adam...  Plus I said "I want it to be V shaped" not that it always is.  What i REALLY want is to see some volume on whatever shape of recovery we see...

Peter is super wise and insightful.  Particularly when he is not taking jabs at bitcoin maxis.  I get why he is annoyed by them... they are arrogant little pricks most of them.  And his understanding of markets would do them a lot of good.  But they are usually too busy "ok boomering" him to hear him. lol.

I expect this level of the 2017 peak is going to cause a LOT of capitulation, particularly for the class of 2017.  I am surprised we came this low, and I would also be surprised if we go lower... sort of.  It kind of seems like that is in the cards for sure.  I wish i had some cash.  We MAY have seen the main puking... but it does not look like it. :/

Also.. as much as I wanted this to be the bottom... I sure don't think it is acting like it is.  I want it to be V shaped.  It wants to be a dead cat.

The situation we are in is interesting.

1.  The world financial system is being demolished.  On purpose.  The boomers are either locking in their gains or giving them back, depending on their IQ.  What we are currently seeing is the USD is being made the safest place to hold value.  But it is also being massively inflated.  There are no other exit doors in the plan.  Eventually as the noose tightens value will be safe nowhere, and we will have to all fall into the loving arms of the state.  But... Bitcoin.

2.  And yet the world has, for the most part, NOT realized what bitcoin is.  That it is the only exit door out of the system as it crashes.  Some have realized, albeit early enough (too early, sort of) that we are having to go through this.  As people DO realize they will be buying for sure.  But right now BTC is just a tech stock.  And it is still risk.  It's going down with all the other risk ships.

3.  Price will equalize SOMEWHERE.  Because there ARE enough people realizing that Bitcoin is a possible safe haven that as the price drops, the very most enlightened of the herd are going to come trickling in.

We are currently sitting at what I thought was the worse case scenario, and not bouncing...  oh well. 

Thing is, we will...  that old saying about darkest before the dawn?  Seems pretty dark to me.

Right before my hard drive wend south I was experimenting with higher fees...  As I have said a few times I kind of want to just break even.  Though now that is laughable considering it means making a couple hundred million sats...  

But as I was saying, I had jacked the fees up a little.  and oddly, my routing was going up.  I have not yet been able to figure out how it works. Lol.  Not sure I will at this point.  On the other hand, I DO think I will know how both LND and CL can be recovered from backups... we will see.

Lol.  I log in first thing in the morning and post a couple things...

And bam.  NINE PAGES of new shit. 

I look forward to reading it, but it might take a moment.

That said... I feel compelled to mention... and I do not mean it to be condescending.  I know some of you have been here longer than me.  And some of you are just naturally smarter...

But THIS IS THE FUCKING SHIT!

Do you think Bitcoin is going to stop?  Do you think it loses?  That CDBCs stand a fucking chance AGAINST IT?

ok... LET ME JUST TELL YOU THE TRUTH...  OOPS... CAPS IS ON.

(YEAH bOB, i BOUGHT A LITTLE RUM)

One nice bit of info for our CL friends here... if you ever get in trouble this is what the respiblitz devs are suggesting.  I assume if you are using the backup plugin the sequence would be similar.

https://gist.github.com/openoms/3516cd8f393d69d52f858c3d47c9e469

Wow... ETH is getting destroyed.

And XMR is tracking with BTC.  Going UP just a little against BTC.  As far as the altpocalypse goes Monero is fairing better than most.

So... I am actually excited about what is currently happening.

Part of it really sucks.  The world macro environment, war, WEF nonsense, fourth turning, biological war on the west, war in the old USSR, and financial war between China Russia and the west and so on...  

Butt the part that I have been WAITING FOR is the ultimate rug pull on the finance folks that try to do with BTC what they have done with the USD, paper gold etc.  It is the rehypothication that has been talked about for years.  It is exactly how Charlie Munger intended to "take care" of bitcoin from his famous quote a while back.  Tame it, I think he said.

But Bitcoin has novel properties that will cause the people that play this game HUGE LOSSES.  When people start demanding their keys and custodying themselves then the margin calls come in like a nuclear bomb.

People keep comparing this Celcius thing to the Luna one as if they are two separate things.

They are not.

And there are more to come, most likely...  it's going to be really volatile for a while, I think...

Six months ago I'd have written this thought off as looney.

To answer your question, not only this, but this is likely to make it a little worse.  The markets are primed to dump pretty hard today.  Hopefully Bitcoin has front run this a little in it's 24/7 trading cycle.

Hopefully most everyone has figured it out by now, but we are in for a really rough ride as a world, I think.  Bitcoin might be one of the safer harbors in the storm.  

But it is still in the storm.

I am not 100% certain as to the integrity of my CL backups.  I have them.  I have the hsm_secret and a database backup.  But I will need to finish with the LND recovery first.  And that will require the node be brought back up.  Looks like that will be end of the week.



To be honest, I also trust my channel partners (a few of you are right here) and am entirely comfortable with them force closing the channels as they see fit.  I also realize I am vulnerable now, and those partners could decide to broadcast a channel state I may not be able to argue with.  I am hoping they will not.  But honestly my main hope is I can still produce the private keys to the addresses the close transactions will send my funds to.

We will see.

And I see the logic you are saying about the channels being force closed before I try my backup.  I really only have three risks right now.

1.  I have the wrong hsm_secret  (no idea)
2.  The backup script, which runs at shutdown, was not able to do so in a way the completed the database backup. (No way to tell if it is good until I get far enough that it is decrypted by the hsm_secret, I presume)
3.  My channel partners decide to take advantage of me.

Ugh... massive hardware failure.  Two nodes down.  Might need a little advice and moral support for what to do...

Going to try to recover the LND channels first.



LOL.

LND:
Seed words (verified them by checking the zpub with an azeed tool)
Static Channel Backups, including a recent one since the last change

I am assuming with this set of things I will see the blockchain download (gonna take a moment) and then all my channels will attempt to close, and hopefully funds start to make their way back on chain.

CL:
Have seed words, and hsm_secret (99% sure these are the right ones)
Have a very recent lightningd.sqlite3.backup file from right before the drive died.

Just hoping with the above nothing is incorrect, and I am not sure what recovery looks like on this node.

I will do the LND node first... and then the CL node.

If I have channel(s) with you, PLEASE do not force close them yet.  Some folks think if the channel DB is good, and the hsm_secret is right I might be able to bring the CL node back up.  I doubt this, but time will tell...

*sigh*

Me too.  When will I ever learn that coming in here are posting "Guys!! I know it!  We are going over XXXXX soon!"  always causes a dump. 

There is already a lot of scuttlebut about the role of identity in Web5/BTC.  People basically griping that perhaps this will be the mega-super-mondo-utra KYC tool.

What a rug pull on the part of jack, if that is the case...

But if he is above board, and the projects go the right direction... man this is going to show Brian Armstrong what it felt like to be Yahoo.

That's why I saw this is info asymmetry...  I wonder what SQ is gonna do, stonk wise.  This might be where SQ and COIN became the flippening that has been prophesied from old...  Because you know, the PROTOCOL is not being replaced.  But the best company building on it?  I think we might be seeing that torch handed off.

There is a good chance this represents information asymmetry for us, and a few others...

Or as others have said it could be nonsense...  but I have a funny feeling about this.



Oh yeah... could also be a huge corporate bitcoin takeover.

I don;t know.

You missed my point.  That's OK My point was not super clear.  But in the very next line (I think) I mention, with less detail, the existence of issues.

But my point is more about the broad brush than the little issues.  And I agree that details matter (pointing out that Quantum computing theoretically threatens the elliptic curve rather than the SHA algorithm) and appriciate your corrective fine point.

But my point is that I think we are somewhat blind to the magnitude of achievement that Satoshi whoever he/she/they are/were.  Not with the specifics, but with the broad brush.  

One way to say it is by now we would have seen the system taken advantage of in some way had it not been so well thought out.   As rough as Bitcoin was, and as many pain poibnts as still exist.  the more I think about it the less likely it seems to me that some random jamoke could just throw together the replacement for GOLD (and then all money) in a couple months.  I would think there would need to be a lot of testing done even before it got to the point it was before the genesis block.  And sometimes I wonder if a team of folks was indeed behind it... And that LOTS of work was done before the initial release...  I just find it astonishing what Sartoshi managed to do.

I am not sure if your point about cult like stuff had anything to do with my odd post.  But I would agree that is not helpful.  MP was a weirdo.  And similarly the various scammers in crypto have leveraged that kind of stuff for their gain.  I am not terribly comfortable when people talk about Bitcoin as if it were a new religion...