Seeking scarcity in a world of abundance, hope from within dark places, truth among liars, freedom from fiat, and responsibility in the midst of nihilism.
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I appreciate you sharing your perspective. Below are my rebuttals, and one agreement.
> "1- If @TwhitNub101 (AlphaMine) was going to be a malicious actor he wouldn't be genuine in working with the community to throttle his hashpower to begin with."
I think it's more accurate to say that if he were purely interested in destroying the chain, he would have already done so. It's clear to me that he is at least *partly* economically motivated. But I think we should be careful in treating him as non-malicious until proven otherwise, and he has given plenty of indication that he is not here for the health of our network. Additionally, I don't think we should assume we know how/when a malicious actor will execute his attack.
> "2- If he's willing to work with the community he doesn't pose an immediate threat and the better mitigation would be to have him increase his pool fees..."
Again, I feel it's too risky given our current state to relax our guard around anyone controlling so much network hash. Him being availed of it is a threat, even if no attack is yet executed. Further, we can't sit and wait for an attack, because then it will be too late to stop him or deploy counter-measures.
> "3- @LukeDashjr has a conflict of interest here as he's trying to stand up a competative[sic] pool so having Luke also be the main judge, jury and executioner of a competative[sic] pool..."
I think this would hold more water as an argument if AlphaMine were using DATUM, which allows miners to choose block templates and enables miner decentralization, which is what Luke's pool is using. Anyone using STRATUM v1 must be considered a threat. DATUM pools are of a different kind, and this is therefore not competitive, as I see it.
> "4- The optics of allowing Luke to unilaterally ban AlphaMine from Discord and also banning voices like myself from the discussion and subsequently finding a method to kick AlphaMine off the network when they haven't actually executed an attack is..."
AlphaMine must be treated as an adversary, given his choice to use STRATUM v1 and the amount of hash he controls. I think *not* banning him simply risks giving a potential enemy the location of all your bases, so-to-speak, and this would be ill-advised.
However, I too am concerned about banning *any* dissident voices, as this sets a precedent, and can lead to witch hunts which quickly get out of control. This is my only agreement with your post, but I think it's a vital one.
We must be trusted to be individually intelligent and wise enough to come to our own conclusions when exposed to information, or we're doomed. If we can't be trusted to make up our own minds, we are left with censorship, discreditation campaigns, and propaganda, none of which lead us to a good place.
Many eyes are on us now, watching and waiting for weaknesses. And they can weaponize paranoia as easily as naivete. We must be careful not to let fear of one drive us into the other.
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None of those buzzwords mean anything without decentralization of the network, which is something Saylor has been doing everything in his power to subvert.
I am a proud Bitcoin Maxi, as defined by @saylor below:
“Bitcoin Maximalism is the conviction that Bitcoin represents a fundamental economic breakthrough: the strongest digital property, the most credible monetary network, and an instrument of economic empowerment for billions of people. It can be grounded in ethics—the defense of property rights—and in utility—the ability to preserve and transfer capital without dependence on an issuer.”
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Direct seizure ala 6102 is not necessary in order to effectively seize or freeze custodial assets. Our government knows the difficulty of getting away with something so brazen today, so instead, they chip away at our property rights a little a time in all sorts of ways. This has already happened in the traditional banking system, because AML laws give wide latitude in terms of interpretation and action. Anything they find "suspicious" is cause for freezing of funds or worse. It's entirely at their discretion. How are Aunt Sally and Uncle Jim going to sue Bank of America and force discovery?
Additionally, many jurisdictions are scrambling to enact punishing escheatment laws. Want to simply hold your crypto for 5 years? Oops, belongs to the state of California now.
Exchanges and brokerages also already make it extremely difficult to transfer crypto assets to private wallets by forcing enormous amounts of KYC friction (which often plain doesn't work at all) and restricting how much you can move at any time and within what timeframes, which they will claim is for your own "safety." I've spent many weeks waiting for permission to move miniscule amounts, and many hours in customer service calls getting my transfer privileges unfrozen. They don't even need to give you a reason, if you ask them why you can't make transfers or access your accounts. Does that sound like something that happens to things you own?
Additionally, there are many temptations to encumber your assets by borrowing against them, which can lock them up indefinitely, or result in liquidation during a flash crash.
If you're rich, you needn't worry as much, because you're in the club, and the typical rules don't apply to you, unless you have the wrong politics. But I've personally been threatened and had accounts or activity frozen by one bank and one brokerage for daring to move what is theoretically my own money in perfectly legal ways to perfectly legal places that they just happened not to like.
Most of what's needed already exists to keep your money locked up so the state can tax and probate it away to nothing, or simply keep you in the fiat cage. They don't need 6102.
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Kratter is critiquing Coinbase here. He's saying that they have millions of XBT but are refusing to release them to their users. Doing so would probably immediately tank the already low price of XBT, so it's unclear how Kratter would benefit from this. The case being made by @LorenHodl doesn't HODL water...
Someone spent years warning people about shitcoins, exchange pumps, and narrative control. Now he’s running the same playbook: gaslight the audience, follow a cult leader, and sell a minority fork as “real Bitcoin.”
He’s calling Coinbase the villain for not listing it. That’s not principle. That’s a bag that needs liquidity.
A listing is not validation. It’s an exit ramp. Plenty of people holding that fork coin are waiting for a “trusted” venue so they can dump it on whoever still believes the sermon.
There is grace and forgiveness. Not for people who keep lying and gaslighting their followers.
Don’t confuse loyalty with truth. Check the incentives.
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ScarcityMan 🍴 BLAKE2b Hardfork retweeted
Big Short investor Steve Eisman says the AI labs know they have no moats and are manufacturing a crisis to get regulation that hands them a duopoly
"I think this is all nonsense."
[ You think it's all nonsense? ]
"All nonsense. I think that there's something else completely going on here. ... What I think is happening is that token maxing is over. The open weight models are taking big market share. I think these companies are very nervous. They realize that there are no moats around their business whatsoever, and they're trying to manufacture a crisis that will create regulation, and that they think they can then manipulate to create the moats, to create the duopoly that they want."
[ Wow. ]
"That's what I think is going on."
"Honestly, I think this whole Terminator thing is garbage. That's for sure."
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ScarcityMan 🍴 BLAKE2b Hardfork retweeted
“I am much more worried about Anthropic than I am worried about AI. These people think the apocalypse is coming… There’s an AI god that’s being born and they are the parents of that god.”—Pedro Domingos, professor emeritus of computer science
The walls are closing in on METR and Antropic
Next week they have a big surprise.
Innovation Council
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Regarding AlphaMine, to answer your question about proof, there are multiple issues in play here.
One is determining who this AlphaMine character is. Irredeemably evil, misunderstood genius, something in the middle?
The other is about what we do to defend ourselves.
I need no proof whatsoever to determine that we need to defend ourselves, as > 50% hash is an existential threat, regardless of the intent or character behind it.
Determining motivations might help in figuring out what sorts of countermeasures will be the most effective in dealing with the issue. Some people are going to respond well social pressure. Others are going to be provoked further by it. Some people are going to respond to economic incentives. Others are going to have different goals. Understanding the person's character/motivation is essential to finding the best avenue in dealing with them. Maybe you don't see the value in that, but I do.
And I'm not interested in a monolithic culture. We all make mistakes, we all need pushback sometimes. What's important is that we provide pathways for people to be redeemed. Paranoia is a great way to destroy the trust from the inside out. And conformity around every issue is a great way to ensure it rots the same way the SHA256 community did.
Short of AM admitting he's hostile, what proof would be sufficient for you?
Brother, we're all busy. Being an early adaptor isn't for the faint of heart. But the least we can do is not repeat the same mistake of giving questionable actors a pass until it's too late.
As far as "stifling dissent," I agree in principle but not in this specific case. DD didn't demonstrate a willingness to learn as much as he platformed a questionable actor without pushback. Because of that, DD also needs to be treated as suspect. (Again, reason = heightened immune response.)
Both of them can redeem themselves simply by acknowledging the distress they're causing AND reforming themselves to act more in line with the principles of bitcoin.
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ScarcityMan 🍴 BLAKE2b Hardfork retweeted
Core supporters are slowly discovering that their Government Friendly KYC Exchanges aren't giving them their property.
You all have an equal amount of Bitcoin on the Blake2b Chain. Demand it, don't let them steal it from you, you all got BCH when it split.
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How might KYC make its way into a centralized, SHA256 bitcoin?
If you have yet to run afoul of KYC, count yourself lucky. It's the worst, most intrusive user experience ever devised. Mind how you cut your hair or shave, or you won't be able to rescue any of your accounts with that selfie. And of course, it is the absolute opposite of privacy and a nail in the coffin of freedom.
So as far as getting it onto bitcoin, the most difficult parts are already in place. You need 1) mining centralization and 2) a tempting target for illegal material.
The mining centralization provides control over which transactions make it into blocks, and ultimately what blocks make it onto the chain (because we've learned that sufficient hash is perfectly willing to overrule the nodes and fork off).
The tempting target for illegal material provides the excuse.
The mining centralization is inherent in the concentration of most of the hash into five pools, where only the two largest are needed for > 50% of total hash.
The tempting target for illegal material is the wide-open OP_RETURN, now effectively unlimited by default policy.
But anti-BIP-110ers kept telling us that the chain is already full of CSAM (never mind how they know this) and that there are already plenty of ways to spam the chain... Except that all of those existing ways, outside of OP_RETURN, are the result of exploits or hacks that entail plausible deniability and lack any official support. OP_RETURN, alone, is impossible to ignore by the network, or anyone, looking to pin responsibility to a sender for its contents since it is exposed without obfuscation or excuse. So even though anti-BIP-110 Core-supporters kept telling us that there wasn't anything special about it, we know differently.
With our tempting target established, we wait. Sooner or later, something that the state, or the Karens, or any reasonable person can't abide, will make it on chain. Remember that "illegal" might include state secrets, doxing with incitements, death threats, libel, etc., not just CSAM. Once this occurs, it provides the excuse to crack down. This might take the form of enormous public backlash and voluntary censorship on behalf of transactions, or just outright legislation targeting bitcoin or other crypto.
There will be voices of opposition, but it will be very difficult to argue against any such action or legislation, as those arguing against will be taking the explicit side of whatever was illegal. Claims in the manner of, "I don't support the thing, but I support the right..." are going to fall on deaf ears when that thing is already illegal, or so morally repugnant that it may as well be.
So either willfully or via legislation, large mining pools will be forced to inspect transactions and either refuse transactions containing the illegal material and/or refuse to build new blocks on top, meaning chain reorgs. With majority hash, the chain reorgs will always succeed in the long run, as nodes will be obliged to accept the chain with the most proof of work.
- But what about miners defecting from large pools?
+ There's not enough hash in the small pools to pose a significant threat. Especially true if we define "small" as any pool small enough to evade regulation.
- What about miners on their own, without using a pool?
+ Same problem. Any single miner large enough to have an impact cannot hide from the state and will be easily regulated or shamed into compliance, or face reorgs.
- What about my solo miner?
+ So low probability that it's safely ignored. Your block can be reorged anyway.
- What about the nodes?
+ What nodes? Your node doesn't matter. And Coinbase has the rest...
So where does the KYC come in? The (lets just call is legislation) calls for ALL addresses making a transaction on the network to do so either through a KYC-regulated entity, or via an address traceable to prior KYC. If you want to move your non-KYC coins, you have to route them through an exchange or KYC waypoint.
Sound extreme? Well, KYC is already in every other regulated financial institution or corporation of any kind and quite a few that aren't financial. The infrastructure is already in place, and the largest exchanges already do this. Additionally, they already use AML legislation to block transactions or freeze/close accounts when they lose track of the coins. See what happens if you buy BTC on Robinhood, transfer to your own wallet, and then move it around a few times, especially through a coinjoin. They're tracking this already. And well, Aunt Sally and Uncle Jim don't want to just block those illegal transactions, they want the state to be able to prosecute those responsible. Distributing CSAM is already illegal, and that's what it means if you spend a coin with CSAM in the OP_RETURN. And even if it weren't illegal, it would be before you can hear the coin drop on the Senate floor.
Besides, do you really want to be part of a network that distributes CSAM, anyway? Only Core-supporters seem to enjoy that sort of thing. And your average Joe ain't one of them.
Sudden change requires power + excuse. All the slow changes have already accumulated. The pieces are already in place. The power exists. The trap is set. All that remains is the excuse.
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Robin Seyr constantly makes unsubstantiated claims, shit talks things he knows nothing about, and can't or won't explain them when asked. Despite this, he has a much bigger reach than most people on X. He can have the benefit of the doubt once he's earned it back.
Robin is curious is all,
He's thinking out loud, picking at people's brains to learn.
He's germanic, I doubt he's low iq. He's quite young, let the man age a bit.
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Bitcoin was created to provide a decentralized monetary network that obviates the need for legislation. If it ever requires it, it has failed utterly.
There’s no sense in sugarcoating it: today’s vote was a major disappointment—and, I believe, a failure of American leadership. The full cost of today’s result may not be known for years to come, but this much is clear: it increases the risk that the standards that global financial markets adhere to in the future will be those of Brussels or Beijing, rather than Washington and New York.
I want to thank @POTUS for the opportunity to work on this important legislation and for the remarkable concessions he was willing to make to give this bill a chance; @DavidSacks for his wise leadership on not only crypto but all frontier tech policy; and all the Senators and their staffs who devoted countless hours to working on this bill, chief among them @SenLummis who deserved much better than this.
Lastly, I also want to thank my colleagues across the administration at Treasury, SEC, and the CFTC. Their partnership helped us find creative solutions to challenging issues throughout this process, and their patience made it possible for us to see it all the way through to a vote.
On that last point: @SECPaulSAtkins and @ChairmanSelig, you’re up!
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ScarcityMan 🍴 BLAKE2b Hardfork retweeted
Statins are safe and effective.
Read what the phrase is standing on.
- Primary prevention: 1 in 104 avoids a heart attack over 5 years. Deaths prevented: 0.
- The other 103 take it for life for nothing.
- Harm in the same 5 years: 1 in 50 develops diabetes, 1 in 10 gets muscle damage.
- Half the people admitted with a heart attack have LDL under 100.
- Keys drew his 1953 line through 6 countries. Data existed for 22. Add them back and the line vanishes.
- France was in the 22, ate butter, and declined to die on schedule.
- The big trials ran a rehearsal first and removed anyone who couldn't tolerate the drug before the count began.
- 2001: Baycol withdrawn after 52 deaths from muscle breakdown. Same class, same mechanism.
- 2012: the FDA adds blood sugar and memory loss to the label, 25 years after patients first reported both.
- The enzyme it blocks also makes CoQ10, and the heart is the most mitochondria-dense muscle you own.
- The over-75s are prescribed it hardest and were excluded from the trials most.
- The trial data sits with one Oxford unit that has refused independent review for a decade.
- 2022: independent researchers got the death records from the biggest PCSK9 trial. Cardiac deaths were higher in the drug arm.
- 8 of the 9 men on the 2004 panel that expanded eligibility by 20 million were paid by statin makers.
- 2023: NICE says a GP may now offer one to anyone below the risk threshold who asks.
One brand alone took $125 billion.
Safe and effective is what they said about the margarine, the cigarette and the opioid.
The people who wrote the guideline sell the drug. The people who hold the data won't show it. The person taking it is the only one in the arrangement who was never paid.
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Indeed I did ask about the reversal, and I appreciate the thorough reply. I appreciated having you as an ally during the BIP-110 saga. You're clearly a highly intelligent person, and we needed all the brain hash we could muster.
However, I'm still seeing dissonance. When you say,
> "[Miners] are all one matrix incentive-driven machine, already captured. Rock on, Bitcoin."
It simultaneously admits that capture has taken place on SHA256 while cheering it on. I don't know how you square this circle in your mind, and this is one of the bits that is confusing me.
If you know and agree that it's a centralized, captured chain, what is there to root for exactly? You can hope for NGU, but that's just vibes. We *know* the value proposition isn't there... So whatever tricks the centralized masters pull, it's all about the greater fool now.
Do you plan to exit after a good pump in price? And in any case, how can you cheer it on in good conscience? My conscience leads me to warn people *not* to invest in this thing or in its treasury derivative-type instruments because it's not like I know exactly who is poised to rug, or when they'll do it. Do you? Every day seems to have a new scandal. CoinKite, Blockstream, Metaplanet, etc.
> "BLAKE2B HARDFORK DOESN'T SOLVE THE MINER DECENTRALIZATION BUG"
Multi-lane has tradeoffs and issues of its own, as I understand it, and may not actually be a sufficient solution. I agree that the decentralization bug is unsolved. It might be unsolvable by proof of work mechanisms, alone. But I think we only discover this by actually running the experiment. As interesting and thought-provoking as a simulation might be, it is only that---a simulation. It cannot model the emerging problems and potential solutions as they occur in real time, nor can we properly simulate social behavior without replicating an entire society and all of its agents in full detail. It is irreducibly complex. I would never allow a simulation to prevent me from taking action with respect to something in which I believe. Life has to be about more than simple accounting and outcomes.
> "Without automatic, two-way replay protection, which is the gold standard for alt-bitcoin forks, there is LITTLE CHANCE that any major credible exchange will list the coin."
With respect to exchanges not listing, this is fiat thinking. Large centralized exchanges do not need to exist at all for bitcoin to be useful. These are mainly for people to offramp into fiat or for those unable or unwilling to take proper self-custody, which does not fit with the purpose of bitcoin.
This is what I mean when I question whether your stance has changed, because you seemed to be a person of principle, with belief in bitcoin's core mission, but now seem only concerned with NGU, fiat, and centralized, KYC exchanges. If there has been no change in attitude, then I mistook your stance for belief and conviction in the principles underlying bitcoin.
You asked what explains my complete reversal. I have NEVER changed my attitude. read below pls:
I supported BIP-110 as a temporary soft fork on Bitcoin. I built bip110.run so people could see the coalition, the census, and how the UASF was supposed to work. In my own words at the time, BIP-110 was Bitcoin minus a SegWit/Taproot data exploit.
“Bip-110 = Bitcoin - (Segwit+Taproot exploit)”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
“Building bip110.run”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
“I built a state machine model of the process (WIP): bip110.run/consensus”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
bip110.run/coalition/
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
That is concern for Bitcoin. It is not a pledge that if miners ignore the UASF, a new hash function inherits the name.
They ignored it. The story I had bought, from Luke, Kratter, and others, was that game theory would force miners to follow nodes. I said that story was wrong, on the record, to the people I had been arguing with.
To @adam3us, the day after the split, quoting his point that economic users control the protocol through the market:
“Adam, on this point, in hindsight, I was wrong, and you were right, imho. The defect in my model was to think that all the miners were independent variables that could flip. Dead wrong. They are all one matrix incentive-driven machine, already captured. Rock on, Bitcoin.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
To @Excellion, same day:
“Samson, on this particular point, In hindsight, I was wrong, and you were right.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
I pointed back at that apology later:
“Unlike others, I took responsibility for poor judgement and being wrong about BIP-110.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
What I admitted was the UASF mechanic. What I did not do was convert that loss into “Blake2b is now Bitcoin.”
The live problem, after 8/8, was miner centralization. A hardfork is a different instrument from a UASF. I said the bar is higher, and that the only justification that would matter is fixing that bug.
“This bar for a hardfork is MUCH HIGHER than for a UASF.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
When Hammond asked if I was joining the fork or staying for NGU, I pointed him at the long posts and restated the claim:
“I care deeply about the miner decentralization bug, and I assert that the hardfork does not solve for it.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
When Dave said changing PoW is how you “fire” miners, I answered as an engineer:
“I view this in terms of software bugs only. Was a bug in Bitcoin that allowed miners to centralize? Yes!! Does the hardfork fix the bug? No!!”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
Then the longer version in that same argument, which is the whole position in one paragraph:
“BIP-110 was a softfork that narrowed/refined consensus. A hardfork is a much bigger deal and needs to justify itself rhetorically as fixing the elephant in the room problem with Bitcoin, which is the ability of miners to centralize under current incentives. It could totally be addressed by a solution such as Digibyte's multi-lane, as I've been a proponent of. To NOT address the issue is to switch one mining cartel (SHA256d) for another (Blake2b) and that simply is unacceptable to most Bitcoiners. For a hardfork to have a legitimacy that grows in a measurable provable way (i.e. hashrate), imo, it would need to do better.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
I did not shrug that. I built bitcoin-hardfork.org and ran the simulations so the claim could be inspected.
“check my work, pls: bitcoin-hardfork.org”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
“try it: bitcoin-hardfork.org, you can pick your parameters”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
“I spent 100+ hours of due diligence on the hard fork, including modeling and simulating possible all worlds outcomes, and my decision and view is built on that diligence.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
The published result, Aug 23, title first:
“BLAKE2B HARDFORK DOESN'T SOLVE THE MINER DECENTRALIZATION BUG”
Then the finding:
“I spent 100+ hours creating many-worlds socioeconomic agent simulations to get realistic about the chances of the hardfork becoming accepted as the true Bitcoin and calculating the terminal hash rate of each possible hardfork. I found one solution that was incredibly promising: multi-lane PoW like Digibyte… Unfortunately the hardfork that is on the table that everyone is following is not viable according to the simulation as I have programmed it… Will it become adopted widely? I say <0.01% chance because it doesn't provably solve the MINER DECENTRALIZATION BUG! It just turns Bitcoin into FOLLOW WHAT THE LEADER SAYS, which is exactly ETHEREUM.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
That is the fork I measured. Not a hypothetical perfect fork. The Blake2b chain people are actually running.
So I did not follow it.
“BIP-110 failed… I followed it on the premise of some valid points about tail risks to the blockchain. but quickly peaced out when the group hardforked and started gaslighting ppl.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
“in light of BIP-110's failure, and me definitely NOT following any hard fork…”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
What I still want fixed on Bitcoin is miner centralization. That is why I talk about DATUM and Ocean, not about taking the XBT ticker.
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
The post you quoted is that same measurement applied to exchanges. You said the fork has replay protection. I said what it has is user opt-in, one-way protection. Automatic two-way replay is the standard that got other alt-bitcoin forks through custody. XBT is the ISO code and the ticker Kraken and BitMEX still use for Bitcoin. Listing Blake2b under that ticker is the affinity problem. Those are reasons a Coinbase compliance officer does not list it as XBT. They are not a new religion about which chain I “really” meant in July.
“Without automatic, two-way replay protection, which is the gold standard for alt-bitcoin forks, there is LITTLE CHANCE that any major credible exchange will list the coin. And ESPECIALLY after Blake2b coin chose $XBT as the ticker… Using it as Blake2b's ticker screams affinity scam and becomes a major compliance issue.”
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
nitter.net/DrStarHeartsong/status…
I ran bip110.run to change rules on Bitcoin. I ran bitcoin-hardfork.org to see whether this fork could earn that name. I published that it does not. That is the documentation.
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Yeah, if you close your eyes and ears, and hold your nose, and stand very still, and don't think... yes it appears to work. On closer inspection, it is a factory for garbage data carried by nodes for free, run by Coinbase, a handful of miners and devs, and most importantly, anyone who cared about these issues is no longer able or willing to do anything about it. Good luck with all that.
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