BAT out of Hell 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. Read more →

Bitcoin Fee Explosion 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. Read more →

Bitcoin Mining Trends 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). Read more →

Bitcoin tx Ambiguity 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. Read more →

Build & Refine 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. Read more →

Get The Fiat Out 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. Read more →

Lightning Network Intro 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. Read more →

Not Your Keys ⚠️ 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. Read more →

Slice The Pie 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. Read more →

SLP178 Podcast 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. Read more →