No he just texted me though... he just pulled up and parked.  He'll be in in just a moment...

Well you just put a bullseye on the one real solution for this problem.

I think you are likely right about this concerning yesterday's action.

You are absolutely correct.  That would be wise and probably support one's mental health.



Not I.

I am seeing some data that contradicts this.  Like the fact the Bitcoin ETFs pulled in over 1.2Billion in the first 30 minutes of trading.  This is nothing like the futures launch.  At least not yet.  I suppose if the inflow stops there it could cool down?

And:

https://twitter.com/JoeConsorti/status/1745527450358989212

If I was a trader I'd like to think I would sell a little today.  Might put some of that into a leveraged hedge though in case I was wrong more quickly than I could recover from.  That said, I am not a trader.

There are a few of us no ones out there...

At a glance it seems like it would work as a sort of shorthand for a keysend payment.  But if I understand it correctly it would only really receive a payment to a specific channel?  That could be somewhat limiting unless you had a channel with giant liquidity on the partner side.

Obviously he could be lying, and even if not... things could change.  But Mr. Saylor seems to think the only reason for selling anything is to aquire more bitcoin.

NAC is actually a bit of a wonder substance really.  Emergency departments keep it on hand to counteract liver poisoning (like from Tylenol).  And it can help if you drink a little too much too to protect the liver.  Anyway... many supplements are snake oil.  Not this one.  It also likely has some benefit for people exposed (one way or the other) to the spike protein of C-19.

No... it does not seem like a typical post from a good Christian... though orthodox Christianity would say there is no such thing as a "good Christian".  Rather a fallen, broken, sinful man accepted by God through grace made available by the sacrifice of Him whose birth we celebrate here at roughly the winter solstice.    A sort of subtle point, but also central to the faith that many celebrate a bit extra this time of year.   One cannot be a good Christian anymore than one can dig themselves out of a hole.

But it is that grace that produces evidence of itself when that broken person turns away from his pride to God:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

To those of you who do not believe, I thank you for tolerating those of us who do... during our celebration.  And I invite you, if you are curious about the Christian faith in someone you know, to PM me.  And no, I am not going to try to convert you.  But I am glad to answer questions as far as I can.

And for those of you celebrating with me around this time I would offer these words written by a prophet nearly a millennia before the birth of Yeshua of Nazareth.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Merry Christmas to you all.

This is exactly one of the futures I see.  It is the side effect of the ETF that could even delay Bitcoin.  If the ETF ends up controlling a large enough percentage of the finite asset then Blackrock (or whomever) can manipulate it more easily.  But I think it will be impossible for anyone to sustain that sort of control as it will cost them too much to do it.

It is interesting that in the west this is the likely pathway for many to store their wealth in "Bitcoin" while Africans, for example, are using lightning wallets to carry out actual daily business.

The solution to this is for as many of us who are lucky enough to understand Bitcoin can hold it ourselves.  Then Blackrock will only be able to control a certain portion of the asset, and therefore will not be able to corner the market or dilute it with paper.

This is also why I am rooting for distributed custodial solutions to also emerge.  The ETF model is very pure.  They hold the Bitcoin, you hold a share.  But hopefully we see options in which more holder sovereignty exists.  Federated models.  Covenants etc.

Pretty exciting.  Seems to me each time we have seen the big news though the market sells.  That classic strategy?

I suppose we could see some sort of mini blow off.

Unless...  Nah.  never mind.

Merry Christmas though!

Well put.

The way I am digesting this is we MUST see multiple ways to hold/use bitcoin...


The bitcoin ETFs will be ways to hold bitcoin in a highly trustful and possibly "fractional reserve" sort of way.

It is entirely inevitable. 

BEACUSE Bitcoin is available to everyone to use in whatever way they want as long as it fits the consensus rules.

So:

It WILL be used by terrorists. (Name your fav... they use it)
It WILL be used for people who want freedom (Canadian truckers)
It WILL be used by the unsavory (sex workers)
It WILL be used by those breaking the law (darknet)
It WILL be used by the powerful (Blackrock)

And by the same fundamental power it will be used by US (you and I).  The people still yearning to be free.

And freedom technologies will continue to evolve to use it for "all the right reasons" that YOU care about.  (Lightning, NOSTR, Liquid, Cashu, and on and on...)

What a fucking amazing time to be alive.

I do not actually CARE who you are.  As long as you are playing that sort of game.

Maybe you are someone I respect or at least used to... dunno.

You're and than.  And you are wrong. I understand the functionality quite well.


You are 100% WRONG.  You are exposing a deep misunderstand of how lightning works.

When I open a channel to JJG's node both MY node, and HIS enter into a transaction. In my original example I send ALL the sats but we BOTH hold keys to the HTLC (Hashed timelock contract).  Under normal circumstances we both keep records of the transactions inside that channel.  These are the IOUs you refer to.  But to disprove your point that I would own the keys and the bitcoin on the blockchain let's consider a hypothetical.  Let's say I open that channel, and I die, and my node burns up in a fire.  All the value is mine in that channel, and if JJG decided to force close the channel all the value would go to an address that I alone hold the private key for (though I am now dead... I do not like this story a lot).

BUT!  And if you want to point to something more like a flaw in the LN then you could start here.

If JJG KNEW I was dead and my node was unrecoverable then he could broadcast the FC while claiming the sats in that channel all belonged to him.  And unless a watchtower got involved his node would execute what it is designed to do which would be to send all the sats in the channel to an address only he controls.

So your assertion that the sats were "mine on the blockchain" is just wrong.  We both share the channel and have rights and recourse to recover the correct amount of sats to our respective addresses, and even if none were his there are ways he could simply take them all.

Perhaps you will reject my above proof that you are wrong, but even if you did not I am sure you are salivating and ready to point to the above and say "Aha!  See?  the LN sucks and people can steal from each other".

Here's the crazy thing.  You call me a fanatic promoting a sham.  But I am not.  I think the lightning network is overly convoluted, and has some serious problems.  In fact, I do not personally believe that the LN will be the final way Bitcoin is transacted between parties with low fees.

The lightning network is not suited for average individuals.  One must be fairly technical to use it, or use a compromise solution like WoS.  But I have said for a long time that technology will find a way.

And today... three years later after that post,  I think I have a better view on how that is unfolding.

And I am sorry to disappoint you but the lightning network will remain an integral part of it.

Frankly (lol) I think the lightning network is just one or two steps too convoluted for it to be the final stop on the bus of cheap transactions.  Yes it CAN work, and it does.  Quite well, in fact.  But things like the necessity of having a node ONLINE to receive payments and the fact it is a hot wallet on the internet mean that average Joe might not be able to really handle the responsibility of using it for payments in a non-custodial fashion.

But the fact remains that the LN is a trust minimized cryptographic method for multiple entities to move value.  And it has been battle tested and hardened now for 4+ years.

What I see happening at this point is the LN is becoming an intermediate step at first, and then a POWERFUL tool as it matures for transmitting value.

Strike is a perfect example of a use case that the designers of it saw WAAAAY before the rest of us.  And before you start flailing and talking about custodial blah blah I would encourage you to stop thinking in black and white and only one level ahead.  Strike uses the LN to facilitate the movement of money all over the globe for as close to free as you can possibly get.  Strike is not a lightning wallet, or a LSP or any other level one thing.  Strike is a centralized business that is taking advantage of the LN to be able to move significant value anywhere an in practice instantly.  They are a money transmitter.  and instead of going through the old ways of doing that they are bypassing all the trouble by using the LN.

Strike is NOT LN.  It is NOT decentralized.  It is NOT a lot of things we bitcoinners hold as central.  It is a business.  A business that uses the lightning network to bypass ENORMOUS amounts of friction that exists in the traditional rails of finance.  And at it's heart it uses BITCOIN to do this.

It would be a good use of terminology to call Strike a "layer three" technology.  And just because strike is a centralized "layer three" does not mean all of them will have to be.

We are going to see the following over the next Bitcoin Epoch:

Multiple decentralized, trust minimized methods for moving value emerging.

--Chaumian mints in things like e-cash and cashu and the like.
--Multiple implementations of the Elements code base like Liquid.
----These will become interoperable with each other on some level.
----They will also use the LN and implementation of the LN on their own layers to do settlement and interoperability.

Then you have other sidechain, drivechains, and more emerging as we sit here arguing over one of the core technologies that will make it all work.

And of course, technology only dreamed of may emerge that obsoletes many of the above rails INCLUDING the LN while retaining or even improving the trust models and decentralization.

AI may even find a place in all this.  I could see it working to improve lightning insofar as channel balancing and functions like watchtowers for example.

Franky you are still stuck on level one.

Bitcoin at the base of all these technologies is absolutely essential.  It IS the killer app.  It IS the part of all this we could not do ANY of it without.  And it MUST remain maximally decentralized and minimally trust based.  And all the tech we build on top of it can make as many tradeoffs as we could dream of.

The lightning network trades complexity, and the need to be online for a way to provide INSTANT and IRREVERSIBLE settlement of satoshis.

Stop fighting it, you fool.

TOTALLY agree with him on the metrics of the impact on price.  And definitely have concerns about ideology and philosophy, but I have made those clear.

It's liable to be the big one, lol.  It's hard for me to even imagine "sell the news" though I suppose it could happen.

Ignored this spammer...

This is incorrect.

Lightning channels are a smart contract between two entities.

If JJG and I both run lightning nodes and I open a channel to him in the traditional way where all the liquidity in the channel starts on my side, then we BOTH own that channel until it is closed.  And I have given incoming liquidity to JJG.  And when someone makes a payment to him and it uses our channel then some of that value is distributed to his side.  At the same time in the background one of MY channels gained that same liquidity (plus a fee).

So in this example I have not changed my total balance (aside from the teeny fee) but just shifted it around a little cryptographically.

JJG on the other hand has GAINED BTC while the sender has reduced his own total balance.

THAT is all Breez is doing.

You phone runs a full node (Neutrino).  And when Breeze opens the channel to you eventually when you settle whatever balance moved over to you ends up on a BTC address you control.

Of course the bitcoin in THAT channel is not yours right away.  Not until someone makes a payment!

It's simple franky.  I do not know why you can't see it.

Unhurt.