<unnamed>

Public Key

npub10lrzse62vddqwsscqcmjurmhtxh545zf6q7ez9q25ddlc7p7saeqems9ug

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8l33gva9xxks8ggvqvdewpam4nt626pyaq0v3zs92xklu0qlgwuspzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgkrhugr

Publishing to

relay.primal.net

Last Notes

2026-08-02 22:09:09 UTC

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That’s just plain wrong, and that advice could cost people money.
Coldcard and others use FOSS crypto code from Trezor - that Trezor code has been thoroughly reviewed.
Also, Ledger has a security lab that’s always trying to hack Trezor devices - so Trezor is very well reviewed.
Coinkite has a handful of employees - that’s not enough people to have any sort of credible in-house security review, so vulnerabilities will be discovered after the hack - just like this one was. Coinkite also alienated security researchers so they don’t bother looking at Coldcard anymore.
This vulnerability in Coldcard was an unacceptable rookie mistake with a #define statement that should have been caught by in-house code review before shipping the code - they have lost all credibility.
Read the after-the-hack security analysis from Block:
https://engineering.block.xyz/blog/predictable-rng-fallback-and-32-bit-reseed-in-coldcard-firmware

2026-08-02 21:53:04 UTC

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Agree about the back room dealers being untrustworthy. Also stay away from anyone with a goddamn discount code. It’s infuriating to see clueless influencers shilling shitty wallets at the moment.
I’d say lean towards knowledgeable plebs in your local (face-to-face) Bitcoin community because some of the unlikeable people also offer bad advice. Jamison Lopp for example.

2026-08-02 20:10:36 UTC

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Bottom line for me is I think this rookie mistake with a #define statement should have been found in a code review before the code was shipped, so I simply won’t trust Coinkite again and my Coldcard is now a decorative momento of this horrific period in Bitcoin.
Someone reported that the new firmware worked ok the first few times before bricking their MK4 as they were creating new wallets. I can’t confirm if that is true though.
Also saw Luke claiming the new firmware still had problems - can’t confirm that either.
https://engineering.block.xyz/blog/predictable-rng-fallback-and-32-bit-reseed-in-coldcard-firmware

2026-08-02 14:01:46 UTC

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NVK has always been super arrogant. Probably didn’t want anyone talking poorly about Coldcard.
Even this time around NVK initially did not accept that Coldcard had a vulnerability and blamed the user for uploading their own weak seed phrase. Then he said it was limited to MK3, and only in the face of research by Block did NVK finally accept that ALL Coldcards have weaker entropy than they should.
NVK also lied about deleting customer data after 90 days to protect people from wrench attacks. He just sent emails to people who bought Coldcards 5 years ago.
My Coldcard is purely a paper weight now. I’ll never trust Coinkite or NVK again.

2026-08-02 12:36:24 UTC

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Wow! A valid (non-spam) use case for Slipstream. Maybe there is some hope for Marathon.

2026-08-02 03:28:52 UTC

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https://trezor.io/trezor-safe-7-bitcoin-only

2026-08-02 02:50:00 UTC

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Us humans think we can pick things randomly but it turns out that we’re not random enough. Definitely not random enough for creating a secure Bitcoin wallet.
https://www.randomnumbergen.com/blog/why-humans-are-bad-at-picking-random-numbers

2026-08-02 02:06:19 UTC

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My tin foil hat is too weak to see that conspiracy. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a conspiracy - just that it fooled me if it was.

2026-08-02 00:40:02 UTC

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It’s not ok to give Coinkite a free pass on this. When a company sells a product that is not fit for purpose, there should be consequences for the company.

2026-08-01 23:43:44 UTC

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If you can spare 10 minutes, I urge you to read the BIP. It’s simple to understand and that’s all you need to agree/disagree with.
None of the personal attacks are relevant. None of the slippery slope stuff is relevant. Running BIP-110 doesn’t mean you need to run whatever Luke suggests in the future.
The rule changes are simple. They close the OP_RETURN spam vector (that always existed but Core v30 made more easily accessible and normalized), limit how much arbitrary data can be stored in some scripts as a minor disruption to spammers and more importantly a clear message to their VC backers that spam will not be tolerated.
It’s a small step in the right direction, and it needs as much support as possible over the coming week to ensure it succeeds. Switching to Knots+BIP-110 only takes a few minutes and no initial block download is necessary because it uses your Core nodes existing block chain data.
https://bip110.org/

2026-08-01 04:46:01 UTC

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They are susceptible but apparently not as much as the MK3. Still prudent to carefully move to a more secure wallet.
https://blog.coinkite.com/coldcard-mk3-seed-generation-warning/

2026-07-31 22:46:47 UTC

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He was smug and arrogant, but I suspect he was making plenty of money from the company and wouldn’t destroy the company to rug only the people running an old version of his hardware. If it was deliberate, I’d expect he would have rugged everyone.
Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - or in this case, hubris and arrogance.

2026-07-31 22:40:00 UTC

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A computer runs software that does things in a predictable (deterministic) way. It can run an algorithm that generates numbers that look random (called pseudo-random numbers) and are good enough for something like a video game but aren’t really random enough to secure money.
Most computers also have dedicated hardware that measures small physical characteristics like heat, power draw, light (e.g. camera), keystrokes, physical movement etc… they use that to produce truly random numbers, but the catch is that the truly random numbers take a long time to produce, so the truly random numbers are only used for things that are really important like cryptography or wallets.
The Coldcard bug meant they were using the not very random numbers produced by predictable software instead of the truly random numbers from the hardware.

2026-07-31 20:53:53 UTC

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I use primal on IOS and it only supports KYC wallets last time I checked. Can’t be bothered changing to get a few bucks worth of zaps. I’ll think about adding a picture.

2026-07-31 20:48:26 UTC

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Yeah - dice rolls for the win.

2026-07-31 09:06:07 UTC

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It looks like they didn’t test a code change to ensure it still had sufficient entropy (randomness), and since generating a wallet based on randomness is one of the most important things a hardware wallet does, that’s a pretty bad bug to introduce.
Their design also seems less secure than for example Trezor that combines multiple sources of randomness from hardware and software in a way that if one source failed to be as random as it should be, the overall result would still have enough randomness.

2026-07-31 08:47:40 UTC

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Mechanic said he knows someone who had an MK4 drained today.
I would assume it’s possible they might have moved a seed that was generated on MK3 to MK4, but it’s also possible that MK4’s low entropy is within reach of the amount of compute that’s being thrown at this attack.
Safest bet is to carefully move funds from any Coldcard to a new known high entropy wallet (and Coldcards new firmware claims to fix the entropy bug on MK4/5/Q, so it might be possible to reuse some devices if you still want to trust Coinkite).

2026-07-31 06:03:13 UTC

For anyone worried by the Coldcard vulnerability today and wondering how Trezor generates a seed, here’s there explanation:
https://trezor.io/guides/trezor-devices/trezor-fundamentals/what-is-entropy-and-how-does-trezor-generate-your-wallet

2026-07-31 03:10:12 UTC

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Yeah - it’s very interesting to watch this closely.
I wasn’t running a node or really paying attention during the block size wars.
At the time it sounded reasonable to me to increase the block size for scalability reasons (the idea of an L2 payment layer like Lightning sounded too complex compared to increasing block size) - but it didn’t seem reasonable to keep algorithmically increasing block size, so I was not really a fan of either option.
Perhaps the people sitting this one out are similar to how I was back then - not thrilled about any of the available options?

2026-07-30 21:20:45 UTC

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I think a block size decrease, eliminating Segwit discount, and scaling back taproot are more likely now than ever before because Core v30 vs. BIP-110 has woken up a lot of Bitcoiners to these problems.
BIP-110 is worth running because if it succeeds, it fixes the OP_RETURN spam vector that v30 made easier (it already existed but was rarely exploited because the network didn’t accept it by “default” until v30).

2026-07-30 21:14:08 UTC

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I rarely watch Bitcoin content on YouTube, but I watched a few midwit youtubers gaslighting BIP-110 last night - to try to understand their perspective.
It was so disappointing to watch, but the comment section really inspired me because 95% of comments were from BIP-110 supporters who I’ve never seen on NOSTR. There’s a real movement behind BIP-110 and almost no opposition by real Bitcoiners.
All the captured podcasters are shrieking into the void at this point. I think us average pleb Bitcoin node runners have a solid chance to get Bitcoin back on track as money because if the monetary maximalist Bitcoiners leave Bitcoin, then whats left behind is a far less valuable chain. Any miner that takes a minute to think about that should take the 0.01% revenue hit from lost spam fees to avoid the uncertainty of disrespecting the monetary maximalist Bitcoiners who are the backbone of Bitcoin.

2026-07-29 20:49:29 UTC

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I’m gonna run whatever node Fauci tells me to run if he stops pleading the fifth long enough to let us know where the science stands on this topic.

2026-07-29 20:37:18 UTC

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You’re not alone. Many people make similar choices - with a range of different vices. I think it’s often to escape the pressures of the fiat world and after doing that for years it becomes a habit that carries on even after leaving the fiat world and moving to their “sanctuary”. I used to have a couple of beers on the train home at the end of the week to unwind. Many people on that train were doing the same. Other people choose different vices. You’re not alone. Self improvement is a constant process that never ends in my opinion.

2026-07-29 20:23:53 UTC

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I’m tired too. Hang in there for another couple of weeks!
So many refuse to take 10 minutes to read BIP-110 and see there’s nothing scary there for Bitcoin as money. They will, however, spend hours parroting misinformation and making jokes about the people supporting BIP-110.

2026-07-29 04:29:13 UTC

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Glad you have read the BIP. What part of it did you disagree with?

2026-07-27 23:59:40 UTC

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Welcome new node runner! Is it reasonable to assume it’s a BIP-110 node?

2026-07-27 23:26:45 UTC

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Another amazing Vlog Dave. You’re the new HODL of NOSTR in my opinion. Complex topic - not sure that I have anything to add. I think you’re right that it’s a fine line between a ritual and an addiction.

2026-07-27 05:32:04 UTC

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Here are the brands he recommends: https://www.willapproved.com/

2026-07-27 05:19:39 UTC

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Will Prowse hates them: https://youtu.be/1xlvM2fpFGM

2026-07-27 05:06:24 UTC

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Yeah - the idea that Bitcoin needs STRC to be money is nuts and shows you how Saylor has taken things too far with his financial engineering. Bitcoin already is money - people buy your wine with sats.

2026-07-27 05:01:46 UTC

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The white paper called it a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system”. That’s never been what Saylor was about. He saw it as a “store of value” hedge against fiat money printing, which it is. Then, because he is incredibly smart and one of the first to realize the opportunity, he wrapped it in a Wall Street friendly way and pumped MSTR sky-high. Now he’s gone way out in front of his skis with STRC, and he’s feeling the pain.
If he ever buys your wine himself (not an assistant) and pays with sats, then you will know he’s truly using it as “money” which is a medium of exchange AND a store of value.

2026-07-27 04:43:26 UTC

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💯

2026-07-27 04:41:39 UTC

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Yep - well said. It’s just a small cautious step in the right direction.

2026-07-27 04:40:16 UTC

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That’s a very insightful plebs take!

2026-07-27 04:25:07 UTC

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Do what your bride wants, and try to contain the costs.
We considered eloping and paying for a small group of family/friends to join us. Ended up doing the traditional (more expensive) wedding. Both of us definitely wish we had spent less money, and there’s a little bit of regret that we didn’t elope with just those closest to us for a more intimate option and spending less money.

2026-07-27 04:12:39 UTC

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Ben - you should stop listening to the influencers who need to go to the Bitcoin conference every year to grow their number of followers. It’s run by David Bailey who invested in a LOT of spamming companies. That means influencers need to sit this one out or attack BIP-110. If they support BIP-110 they might not get on stage in Nashville next year.
Arbitrary data is harmful for node operators. It doesn’t matter if it is because they worry about legal, ethical, moral, or resource concerns - that’s their personal decision. As node operators decide not to run nodes anymore, nodes gradually get centralized like mining pools and miners already have and Bitcoin will be easier to capture.
When you send an on-chain payment transaction that typically uses less than 300 bytes (you can verify this by opening your Bitcoin wallet and clicking the link to see one of your transactions in the mempool). Even opening or closing a lightning channel that uses multisig and time locks is typically less than 600 bytes.
On chain payments and lightning channels account for almost all financial use cases in Bitcoin.
So… that begs the obvious question of who needs 100,000 bytes of OP_RETURN data for a monetary use case?
Enshrining the 83 bytes OP_RETURN limits from before Core v30 in consensus rules so even if node filters get bypassed by miners, those transactions are still invalid is the main thing BIP-110 achieves. It also causes minor disruption to ordinals and limits how much data can be embedded in some scripts.
Perhaps most importantly, it signals to VCs that spam is not welcome so they should reconsider before investing in spammers.
Take 10 minutes to read the BIP. There’s going to be nothing there that you disagree with. That will get you to start questioning what your heros have told you about the BIP.
https://bip110.org/

2026-07-27 03:33:11 UTC

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Who said that?

2026-07-27 03:09:15 UTC

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Excellent way to frame it.
A typical peer-to-peer on-chain payment transaction is typically less than 300 bytes. Even opening or closing a lightning channel typically only needs less than 600 bytes. Those are probably at least 95% of all financial use cases.
Who is using 100,000 bytes in OP_RETURN for a financial transaction?

2026-07-27 02:21:04 UTC

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Very cool man cave. Thanks for sharing!

2026-07-27 02:01:03 UTC

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Would you trust a battery supplier who multiplied 51.2v x 100Ah and got 2560wh as the answer?

2026-07-27 01:46:36 UTC

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Wow - that’s awesome. Still need a lot more, but great to see.
Currently 5.56% over the past 12 hours.
https://bip110.org/monitor?window=72#recent-signaling

2026-07-27 01:40:53 UTC

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Your Friends & Neighbors is one of my recent favorites.

2026-07-27 01:39:47 UTC

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I watched the first couple of seasons, then stopped. Is season 3 any good?

2026-07-27 01:33:31 UTC

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Not gonna dox the location but just to the left (not in your image) there is a small building with a tiny museum inside.

2026-07-27 01:27:10 UTC

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Just saw your banner image and recognized where it is. Beautiful spot! There can’t be many folks on NOSTR who have been there.

2026-07-27 00:14:09 UTC

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For people who care about staying squeaky clean on their taxes, there is a solution. I use Strike to make lightning payments from my USD balance. No capital gain event for me. Fully KYCd and tracked, but no taxable event.

2026-07-27 00:10:39 UTC

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Your problem about not enough use as money is legitimate.
That doesn’t mean spam is not also a problem.
We should fix both problems.
Folks are working on improving spending - look at what Square recently did to accept payments at many small businesses.
Spam is disincentivizing node running and driving centralization. BIP-110 is a very small cautious step in the right direction to mitigate spam. We will need to keep doing more periodically, but it’s a start.

2026-07-26 23:57:26 UTC

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I’m pro BIP-110, but to be fair, Core v30 changed node filters not consensus rules. It was already possible to store that arbitrary data in transactions via Slipstream and Libre Relay that bypass the nodes - Core v30 just made it easier by getting Core nodes to relay spam to miners by default.
The upside of Core v30 is it woke a lot of us up and we’re now pushing to tighten consensus rules via BIP-110 so some spam attacks will be more difficult.

2026-07-26 23:45:09 UTC

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💯 - there are no credible arguments against BIP-110 that I’ve heard, and believe me I’ve tried to find them.
It’s a minimal low risk change to consensus rules that sends a message to VCs that spam is not welcome. It’s only a minor disruption for ordinals but does reduce the amount of data that’s allowed in OP_RETURN to the levels Core node filters allowed before v30 and reduces the amount of data (i.e. spam) that can be embedded by some scripts. It’s a small step in the right direction and we will need to do more soft forks periodically to cautiously mitigate spam.

2026-07-26 23:19:43 UTC

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True - limiting how a UTXO can be spent feels a little too CDBC-like for me.

2026-07-26 20:29:45 UTC

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I still don’t understand the game theory and why you’re so confident the UASF approach works.
Is there a good summary of the rationale somewhere that I can read? I’ve heard mechanic explain it a few times, but I still don’t quite get it.
There’s a saying in trading that “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”. Why can’t miners, exchanges, and economically dominant nodes like those run by wallet providers also be irrational and not take the path of least resistance with the soft fork for BIP-110? Surely after several hours, the game theory is over and nobody’s going to disrupt them by signaling BIP-110 and have enough hash rate to re-org the chain and take back block rewards they thought they already earned (but were waiting 100 blocks to spend).

2026-07-26 20:05:55 UTC

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“They can code all they want, just like anyone else -- it's an open GitHub.”
Sure - but it won’t get merged or shipped as part of the popular Core implementation. Just look at Luke’s contributions to mitigate ordinals.

2026-07-26 20:02:50 UTC

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The use case seems clear “enforce how a UTXO can be spent”.
I can see how that’s appealing to vaults, inheritance planning, etc… and how it can enhance security in the sense that if someone steals your private keys they can still only spend the UTXO in a predefined way. It just doesn’t seem very important to me.

2026-07-26 19:52:19 UTC

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The vast majority of node runners run whatever slop Core ships and they don’t change the configuration. That means Core devs do have a lot of influence over Bitcoin.
Sure, a lot of people stayed on older versions of Core and didn’t upgrade to v30+, but almost 20% of the network did upgrade to v30+. That’s comparable to the roughly 20% that decided to run Knots.

2026-07-26 05:41:46 UTC

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Good point though - after running a few AI queries, I think a lot of this table is total garbage.

2026-07-26 05:37:37 UTC

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Depends on your prompts to AI. Here’s my AIs answer about the “virgin birth” stories.
In comparative religion, “virgin birth” often gets used loosely to mean a birth that is miraculous, divinely caused, and not the result of ordinary human sexuality. Under that wider definition, Horus, Krishna, and the Buddha can all be placed in the same category because each is born through supernatural intervention and is marked out as extraordinary from the start.
Horus
The pro-virgin-birth argument for Horus usually says that Isis conceives Horus through divine means after Osiris’ death, so the birth is not a normal human conception. In this reading, the point is not biological virginity in a strict sense, but that Horus is generated by sacred power rather than ordinary sex. That is why popular comparative myth arguments often label the story a virgin-birth myth.
Krishna
For Krishna, the argument is that Devaki’s pregnancy is so overwhelmed by divine action, prophecy, and miraculous circumstance that it functions like a virgin-birth narrative even if the tradition does not always use that exact term. Krishna is not portrayed as an ordinary child; his coming is cosmic, protected, and preordained. So the story can be framed as a miraculous conception story that serves the same mythic role as a virgin birth.
Buddha
The Buddha’s birth is the easiest to describe in this broader way, because the tradition presents his arrival as supernatural and set apart from ordinary human reproduction. Queen Maya’s dream, the extraordinary signs, and the sacred nature of the event all support the claim that this is a virgin-birth style narrative in symbolic terms. The emphasis is on a holy, transcendent origin, not on a mundane family birth.

2026-07-26 04:43:05 UTC

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It’s the paper gold and futures markets that goldbugs claim is used to manipulate the gold price, and the same is happening with paper bitcoin - that’s the connection.

2026-07-26 04:40:54 UTC

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And let’s not forget all the paper bitcoin that enables price manipulation by large players in the market. It’s the exchanges, ETFs and Treasury companies creating the paper bitcoin and offering leverage and loans against Bitcoin. Savvy traders use that paper bitcoin to whipsaw prices and force people out of leveraged trades and bitcoin loans.

2026-07-26 04:32:01 UTC

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What we are seeing is a multi-faceted attempt to control Bitcoin by large corporations and shitcoiners.
David Bailey invests in many spammers and controls the Bitcoin media - podcasters can’t criticize spam if they want to be invited back to the Bitcoin conference where they will increase their audience and progress their career.
A handful of people fund most core development, and they seem to be funding mainly young developers who have little to no skin in the game because they’re too young to own much Bitcoin. They also want to build non-monetary users cases on top of Bitcoin. There’s even a “bitcoin development philosophy” book from Chaincode labs that’s required reading for grant recipients to ensure developers think about Bitcoin the way their funders do.
The shitcoiners/suitcoiners/stablecoiners are the ones with influence over politicians and will shape the regulatory landscape in their favor.
Mining is already highly centralized with the top 3 mining pools having over 50% of the hash rate.
Node software is too centralized with Core owning about 80% of the market. For now the number of nodes is still large and decentralized, but that’s going to change as smaller node runners leave due to ethical/legal/cost issues related to running a node.
So if this trend continues, then a closed door agreement between a few people will be sufficient to drive Bitcoins direction. If the vocal minority of monetary maximalist BIP-110 node runners that are almost 20% of the network (albeit probably not the most economically significant nodes) can’t have an impact, then Bitcoin is doomed.

2026-07-26 03:43:44 UTC

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I think it was a couple of days for me. I thought your cellular internet would take much longer. Perhaps my limitation was CPU speed rather than network speed and your Start 9 server has a lot more CPU speed than my Raspberry Pi.

2026-07-26 03:38:10 UTC

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I don’t really care what people choose to eat. I have friends who are vegan and other friends who are hunters.
I’ve met so many carnivore Bitcoiners that I now just assume someone’s carnivore if they’re a bitcoiner.
If anything, Bitcoiners should be pescatarian or vegan because we claim to trust but verify, and do proof of work, and all the most credible data suggests that pescatarian is probably the healthiest diet and vegan is the second healthiest and most ethical (as long as you supplement for b12 that’s lacking in a vegan diet).
It’s also a lot easier to be sovereign if your food is vegetables you grow for yourself from heirloom seeds you collect from your own crops each year instead of food that needs a whole supply chain to support it.

2026-07-25 21:57:58 UTC

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💯 agree with you. I practice yoga almost every day and it’s great for the mind and body. Hatha, Yin, Vinyasa Flow, hot yoga - they’re all amazing in different ways.
Your approach to life is probably expanding a lot of Bitcoiners perspectives. A hard core Bitcoiner who mines with solar in the desert, runs BIP-110, did ayahuasca and then instantly quit the rat-race to wander the desert, while occasionally doing a bit of electrical work in the fiat mines, and loves yoga is wild.
If your next video is about how you went from Carnivore to Vegan, there will be some minds blown. 😂

2026-07-25 04:36:41 UTC

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Every pool and every miner has their own block templates, so it’s a fools errand to increase prediction accuracy for what will be mined in a block beyond a basic level. That means fee prediction accuracy has its limits, and that’s ok.
Welcoming spam to get a minor improvement in fee prediction was always a bad trade off and, after reading Hodlonaut’s articles on Core being compromised, I now suspect that may not even be the real reason why Core pushed through that controversial change.
The specific answer to your question is “through centralization”.

2026-07-25 04:24:08 UTC

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Derek, I hope you saw right through that propaganda from Core. It can be summarized as “In this family, we believe that all data is created equal”, which is obviously incorrect.
A basic on chain financial transaction only needs a couple of hundred bytes of data (look at any of your own transactions on mempool.space to confirm this), and transaction size is mainly driven by how many UTXO inputs and outputs there are. Even opening and closing a lightning channel which is more sophisticated and uses multisig and time locks only needs about 500 bytes.
There are currently no credible financial use cases that require the massive transactions that consensus rules allow.
https://mempool.space/tx/7bace5fdeb3ee4b3c27aa39865d32f9c0a8dd8c1b6888543025e998ff4604d2f?mode=details&showDetails=true

2026-07-25 04:08:24 UTC

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Core made the wrong choice and was too stubborn (or too compromised) to admit the mistake and roll it back.
They decided that because Libre Relay and Slipstream allowed spammers to bypass node filtering policy, that they would loosen policy by default so the average node was a better reflection of what would actually get mined. They also hoped that Citrea would put all their data in pruneable OP_RETURN instead of obfuscating and embedding it like spammers do.
Instead, they should have pushed for tighter consensus rules that would make Libre Relay and Slipstream irrelevant because those spam transactions would be invalid. This is the path BIP-110 is taking us down.
Also, Citrea did not change their implementation and continued with their approach to embedding their data like spammers, so Core was wrong about that too.

2026-07-25 03:54:49 UTC

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What are the reasons why you’re against BIP-110? I read the BIP and agree with the changes - in fact I don’t think BIP-110 goes far enough, but it’s a small low risk first step in the right direction to restore Bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash. Are your concerns about slippery slopes or Luke’s motivations or something else?

2026-07-25 03:45:38 UTC

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There’s a difference between obscene graffiti in a library vs. a section in the library where the obscene material is accepted and allowed.
That’s the difference between spammers misusing the blockchain to hack data in and Core v30 normalizing that via unconstrained OP_RETURN in node filters so it’s no longer considered misuse. Prior to v30, spammers needed to bypass nodes via Slipstream or Libre Relay because those transactions were not relayed by 99.99% of nodes.

2026-07-25 03:30:28 UTC

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Define “legitimate” transaction? Some of these were not “legitimate” before Taproot activated in Nov 2021 and then unleashed a wave of ordinals spam on the blockchain.
We already have precedents for the protocol changing - that’s how SegWit and Taproot activated.
BIP-110 is not about “censorship” - it’s a very low risk minimal step towards refocusing Bitcoin on its core mission as peer-to-peer electronic cash. That’s why it doesn’t magically end all spam. It’s consciously a small, simple low risk change.
Don’t fall for the hype about slippery slopes and Lukes personal preferences for what is moral. Take 10 minutes to read the actual BIP-110 and you will probably agree with everything it does. Later on if you don’t like future BIPs from Luke if he tries to censor gambling transactions or whatever he personally dislikes, don’t run those BIPs if you don’t agree with them.
https://bip110.org/

2026-07-25 03:15:04 UTC

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I think you misunderstand how mining works. Miners already censor transactions based on how they build their blocks from templates that only consider transactions that the miners nodes are configured to keep in their local mempool. E.g. excluding OFAC lists of addresses.
BIP-110 doesn’t change that. All it does is prevent miners from including some types of transactions that are clearly spam, by node runners choosing to tighten the consensus rules.
https://ir.mara.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1239/marathon-digital-holdings-becomes-the-first-north-american-enterprise-miner-to-produce-fully-aml-and-ofac-compliant-bitcoin

2026-07-25 03:05:34 UTC

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I agree we need more significant changes than BIP-110 makes. Removing Segwit discount seems like a no-brainer. Rolling back more of Taproot to limit the maximum amount of data per transaction also seems obvious. Not sure what the impact would be of completely eliminating Taproot, so I need to learn more about Taproot before joining you on that point. I’ll probably get there eventually… Not quite sure why you want to reduce the block size. If we eliminate most non-financial uses, won’t the block size adjust naturally if there aren’t enough financial transactions to fill a block? I’m not against small OP_RETURNs if they help people to build future layer 2s, or even do things on chain like open timestamps that are high value with low impact on the blockchain.

2026-07-25 02:47:38 UTC

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Another great vlog. Thanks!

2026-07-25 02:32:52 UTC

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How did you do the initial block download on your Start 9 server so quickly?

2026-07-25 00:08:28 UTC

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The Instigators

2026-07-24 23:59:43 UTC

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Thanks for all the work you’ve been doing to promote BIP-110.

2026-07-24 23:41:20 UTC

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$200 to avoid an hour in NYC traffic and get there in about 10 minutes - totally worth it!

2026-07-24 15:51:50 UTC

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I love the BIP-110 simulator. It shows the tiny amount of fees that miners would lose by adopting BIP-110.
BIP-110 reduces fees by typically much less than $100 block as of the current block signaling period. That’s $100 compared to a block reward of 3.125 BTC, which is about $200,000).
That’s a rounding error of 0.05% There’s no credible economic reason for miners to reject BIP-110.

2026-07-24 04:03:44 UTC

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Oh, they know how this shit works - that’s why they are buying the outcomes they want.

2026-07-24 02:25:19 UTC

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Blame the banksters who priced the stock and gave pre-IPO prices to their best clients. Elon is a flawed person in many ways but he is pushing humanity forward.

2026-07-24 02:20:42 UTC

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Doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Gold bugs have complained about this for a long time.

2026-07-24 02:16:42 UTC

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_in_comparative_mythology
https://blossom.primal.net/7f6ae8a6a43390a3517f431fd8f58f73792fe6d5cbbda5b9f44f5119ef8851ba.jpg

2026-07-24 01:50:56 UTC

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I’m with you brother. Freeeeeeedooooom! Burn this shitcoiner/suitcoiner shit to the ground.

2026-07-23 21:10:07 UTC

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But but but Wizards gotta eat!

2026-07-23 05:04:40 UTC

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Yes - you are correct. For monetary uses, less data is better, and simple monetary uses require very little data: a couple of UTXOs on the input side, and a couple on the output side is sufficient for the vast majority of on chain financial transactions.
Lightning requires some more complex functionality, but even that typically only needs roughly 500 bytes in a transaction to open or close a channel.
BIP-110 reduces the amount of data that can be embedded in some scripts. I wish it went much further, but doing things slowly and carefully minimizes the risk of unintended consequences.
https://voltage.cloud/blog/what-do-open-channel-transactions-look-like-on-chain

2026-07-23 04:34:01 UTC

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We get to decide.
Someone had a chart showing there’s two dominant groups in Bitcoin today. One group are monetary maximalists and the others are shitcoiners.
We have different and incompatible goals, so need to separate. The problem for shitcoiners is they need the monetary maximalists as the base layer of legitimacy or their house of cards falls apart. Maximalists however don’t need shitcoiners.
I hope BIP-110 succeeds so we start gradually and carefully tightening rules to refocus on monetary use cases over time, forcing shitcoiners out to somewhere else - like Ethereum where they are welcome.

2026-07-23 01:38:01 UTC

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Haha - I remember the pain of printer drivers when I ran Linux many years ago. Hopefully it’s much better these days.

2026-07-23 01:05:47 UTC

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It’s not supposed to stop all spam. To do that is impossible. It’s a message to VCs that despite what Core signaled with v30, spam is not welcome, and will be mitigated, so stop funding spammers.
As you point out, it’s only a minor disruption for ordinals, but it also closes the very simple to exploit spam vector via OP_RETURN, and reduces the size of spam data possible in certain Taproot scripts.
We need to take more steps periodically and carefully to make spamming so inconvenient that most spammers leave Bitcoin. Doing that all at once would be too high risk, so BIP-110 is a small, cautious, step in the right direction. We need to keep working together to restore the focus of Bitcoin as money.

2026-07-22 22:08:56 UTC

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Thanks for all the work you’ve done to get BIP-110 this far.
I hope it succeeds, so we can all focus on future improvements to further reduce spam and support monetary use cases.

2026-07-22 22:03:15 UTC

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No blame for Core in any of this?
It’s all just one man’s fault?
Core controlled the most dominant node software (and still do) and instead of doing any of the things you mentioned, they decided to ignore spam for years and then make spamming socially acceptable with v30, prompting many node runners to start running Knots and eventually BIP-110.

2026-07-22 21:09:21 UTC

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Congrats on the Start 9 server. Very nice piece of kit!
Too expensive for me though. I use a Raspberry Pi 5 16GB RAM with a 2TB internal SSD and that was much cheaper and powerful enough to run a node. Also very low power draw - something like 10-15w on average if I recall correctly.

2026-07-22 03:07:42 UTC

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As long as Lightning and basic on-chain transactions work, that covers 90%+ of monetary use cases. Add in coinjoin, multisig and time locks and you probably cover 99%+. Bottom line is that we could tighten consensus rules far more than BIP-110 does and still not affect monetary uses.

2026-07-22 02:46:44 UTC

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Read the sign.
https://blossom.primal.net/2330840f5502f8531a01a3cba06a4022125c9003dec570588e829571bf4ec541.jpg

2026-07-22 02:05:22 UTC

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Bravo! Many good points there.
Most importantly - there’s nothing being offered on the anti-BIP-110 side of the argument about the financial applications that BIP-110 would disrupt. So I can only assume it’s about making Bitcoin more like Ethereum with BRC-20 tokens, ordinals, etc… so VCs like David Bailey and Jameson Lopp can make more money.
I also think Bailey’s control of the largest Bitcoin conference silences criticism of spam from most influencers because they want to be invited back to speak at the conference and grow their audiences.
Completely agree with you that more restrictive is not always better - we need to find a sweet spot over time that tightens consensus enough to make spamming so painful that most spammers go elsewhere, while still allowing financial use cases.
BIP-110 is not a silver bullet. It’s a clear message to VCs that spam is not welcome, and a first step in the right direction towards tighter consensus rules.

2026-07-22 00:51:03 UTC

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Since Monero, Lightning, Tor and non-kyc exchanges like Boltz exist, I don’t understand why people are still tainting their transactions via coinjoin and hoping that never comes back to bite them. Look how that worked out for Roman Sterlingov. Smaller, “standard” transactions can arguably provide better privacy IMHO.

2026-07-21 22:36:01 UTC

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Yeah - my car can’t fly, and my boat can’t drive on the road - must be censorship. Couldn’t be that I’m using the wrong tool for the job.

2026-07-21 22:33:02 UTC

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Satoshis message in the genesis block was < 80 bytes.

2026-07-21 22:32:13 UTC

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You can write a message using 83 bytes in OP_RETURN. You know like “this is for dinner” or “ Happy Birthday Alice, Love Bob”.

2026-07-21 05:10:31 UTC

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🎯

2026-07-21 04:42:16 UTC

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Think about it like a toddler. Freddy (spammer) gives Jimmy (miner) a piece of candy for permission to punch Bobby (node runner) in the face. That game doesn’t go well for Bobby, so he leaves the game. That’s how spam causes node centralization, and the eventual capture of Bitcoin.

2026-07-21 04:36:40 UTC

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🎯

2026-07-21 04:34:08 UTC

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Yep - let’s BIP-110 now to send a message and mitigate a little bit, then get started on the Segwit discount issue next. Doing nothing is still a decision- it’s a decision that makes spammers feel welcome. “We should not let perfect be the enemy of the good”.