jimmysong

Bitcoin Expert
Open-Source Coder
Follow me to learn #BTC

Author of 5 Bitcoin books

Fiat Ruins Everything: https://fiatruinseverything.com

PGP: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C D70C FAA6 17E3 2

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npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

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nprofile1qqs8k0mcqd6sw3h524qn5gslszt9am9knmes3uh268dgnnpv3yfwj6qpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmqpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcj0s4hp

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nostr.bitcoiner.social

nostr.oxtr.dev

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npub10vlhsqm4qar0g42p8g3plqyktmktd8hnprew45w638xzezgja95qapsp42

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Last Notes

2025-07-31 12:46:01 GMT

Call me crazy, but I'd rather have explicit taxes than inflation. And if the whole tariff thing has taught us anything, it's that the inflation tax is way way way worse than any of these explicit taxes.

2025-07-25 00:26:46 GMT

Bitcoin, not bank accounts.
Nostr, not social media.
First principles, not propaganda.

2025-07-19 01:53:35 GMT

It's easy enough to identify scams. Hard to know when they'll fall.

2025-07-13 00:55:09 GMT

Financial advisors have a hard pivot ahead of them. They have to acknowledge that Bitcoin is valuable, but have to excuse their denigration of it the past 15 years.

2025-07-12 02:20:39 GMT

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I'm going to disagree here. My wife is one. Each of my children as well.
#nevent1q…0u3x

2025-07-11 03:13:52 GMT

The rent-seeker's inevitable end is laziness

2025-07-08 11:32:50 GMT

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Thoughtful and worth reading.
I'll disagree with one thing, though. The apathy that most people have about their health, sovereignty, attention, security and so on are all bought with fiat money, and once that goes away, I don't think the economics work nearly as well as they do today.
Not everybody will take the orange or purple pill, of course, but enough will when the subsidization gets lower.
#nevent1q…d9d0

2025-07-07 22:30:23 GMT

Your sexual desires are biological imperatives to have children. Abstracting or rationalizing that away is a denial of your humanity.

2025-07-07 02:39:01 GMT

I'll believe Elon's turn towards Bitcoin when he puts his money where his mouth is.

2025-07-06 10:14:32 GMT

What's your go-to relaxation thing that doesn't involve a screen?

2025-07-01 08:50:23 GMT

GM, nothing ruins like subsidization.

2025-06-30 11:40:46 GMT

Bitcoin humbles the entitled elites.
So don't become one.

2025-06-29 14:00:42 GMT

Unpopular opinion: pseudonymity is too restrictive to be useful for most people

2025-06-29 09:38:04 GMT

Unpopular opinion: there are too many limits to pseudonymity to make it viable.

2025-06-28 08:51:23 GMT

GM, children are the best motive for low time preference thinking.

2025-06-23 11:43:31 GMT

I want to. generate some images using ChatGPT 4o and don't want to do the whole subscription thing. How can I pay for it on a per-use basis and use lightning to pay for it? Is there such a thing?

2025-06-22 15:41:09 GMT

The biggest risk to Bitcoin is fixing crap that ain't broken.

2025-06-21 10:03:34 GMT

Debugging Prinal

2025-06-20 16:48:19 GMT

The loneliest booth
https://blossom.primal.net/8fe0c9c25df57ecf83177f830c1344bb6416d638166bb28593bfefe136be9a2f.jpg

2025-06-19 18:04:58 GMT

Ted Cruz is embarrassing

2025-06-16 20:22:20 GMT

Shill me some fun things to do in Prague

2025-06-13 05:38:37 GMT

Modern war is a giant rent-seeking operation.

2025-06-12 14:20:12 GMT

I love traveling. Borders suck, tho.

2025-06-11 12:51:37 GMT

GM, shill me some places to go in Lisbon. (Zaps for the best suggestions)

2025-06-10 22:31:22 GMT

The Bitcoin Dev mailing list has lots of middle school in-group, out-group dynamics right now.

2025-06-09 14:09:52 GMT

In retrospect, it was obvious the letter they signed was justification to merge a clearly controversial PR. It's not obvious what the second and third order effects will be, but I guarantee this will not play out the way that the signers of the letter think it will.
Happy to eat my words and say that I was wrong if a year from now if there isn't a significant growth (>100%) in large OP_RETURN outputs (>160 bytes).
I challenge any signer of the letter to provide a similar metric to measure whether what they're doing works and under what conditions they'd be willing to admit they were wrong.

2025-06-08 13:42:14 GMT

GM, at what age do you think it's reasonable for someone to start drinking coffee?

2025-06-06 21:12:13 GMT

GM, that's not hunger you're feeling.

2025-06-05 14:37:32 GMT

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Kinda tempted to buy some ad space on YouTube with this video.
#nevent1q…977k

2025-06-04 15:41:51 GMT

GM, you'd be more bullish if you studied Austrian economics.

2025-06-01 21:30:42 GMT

An obvious pattern I've seen for many years now:
1. Complain about toxic maximalists
2. Launch an altcoin/Sell out reputation
1 almost always precedes 2 and usually follows 2 as well.

2025-06-01 13:59:05 GMT

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이 사진/밈이 무슨 뜻인지 누가 설명해줄 수 있나요?
#nevent1q…s76a

2025-05-30 15:17:57 GMT

노스터에 한국인들이 더 많아요.
여긴 뭐 때문에 오셨어요?

2025-05-30 04:41:53 GMT

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To be fair, you also can defend yourself pretty well, which obviates a lot of the need for security. Perhaps the lesson here is to learn some grappling to have this kind of self confidence.

2025-05-29 19:34:17 GMT

Reminder: If it's free, you're the product.

2025-05-29 13:57:22 GMT

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Honestly, a tale as old as "Bitcoin" conferences have been in existence.
Altcoiners, VCs and bankers are turds in the Bitcoin punch bowl and neuter the Bitcoin energy. The impotent, fake, political vibe is what those people have been giving off since the early days of "Blockchain, not Bitcoin" and "here's our whitepaper."
The suitcoiners will come and go. Cypherpunks will be around long after they're done with their grifting.
#nevent1q…vayr

2025-05-28 15:56:09 GMT

The natural end of hedonism is narcissism.
I pray that Bitcoiners do not meet this fate.

2025-05-26 21:46:39 GMT

First Murph ever. 1 hr, no vest.

2025-05-24 14:53:00 GMT

GM, I'm invited to a bunch of graduation parties for my friends' kids. I'm giving them all Bitcoin and telling them to hold it until they graduate.

2025-05-23 13:12:39 GMT

GM, block 900,000 is less than two weeks away.

2025-05-22 20:25:47 GMT

Meat-za for Pizza Day
https://blossom.primal.net/5a77b6e7765147e49977e8a09d0438c4cd64f11f8b40ef3ab2c419e5b0ed15d5.jpg

2025-05-22 18:07:51 GMT

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There's no way to prove anything, but they're trying with various heuristics.
https://blossom.primal.net/bde883dcf40a7678ae67846a69356433156ee6bff934999969b96e6627ff1443.png

2025-05-22 13:21:25 GMT

GM, we're already learning that identifying nodes is as important as identifying transactions in the Relay War.

2025-05-21 23:27:31 GMT

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For married men, it opens up a kid slot.
#nevent1q…x8c4

2025-05-21 13:58:57 GMT

GM. If you're comparing yourself to the average, you're doing it wrong.

2025-05-20 17:36:16 GMT

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> What's your goal that makes you opposed to spam, rather than being willing to merely ignore it? Or what's the success condition that would let you happily move on from this issue?
My goal is to make Bitcoin a monetary network and not anything else. I'm convinced this PR has a good chance of going in, so I'll move on from this issue regardless. I will make some predictions, though, and show the receipts when something like this comes up again.
If the removal of the datacarriersize default PR goes through in the next release of Bitcoin Core:
* There will be at least 100x more OP_RETURN outputs greater than 83 total bytes in 2026 than 2024.
* The cost of those transactions will generally be cheaper with respect to the median block fee than they were.
* There will be at least 30% more hashrate mining OP_RETURN outputs greater than 83 total bytes in 2026 than 2024.

2025-05-20 17:25:28 GMT

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> "You can reduce spam by discouraging it" is a question of incentives, not one of fundamentals. I don't think we've finished the fundamental debate that you wanted yet.
I thought you agreed that Bitcoin is a monetary network (prioritizing Bitcoin transfers and not anything else like database entries) and that this is your priority. We're discussing now the downstream consequences of that, no? Are we not agreed on the fundamentals? I thought you agreed pretty quickly, perhaps to get to the downstream stuff faster.
> Do you agree that core devs in general are trying to make bitcon work as a monetary network with a similar/compatible definitively to yours? That is, that we are actually on the same side here, even if we have different thoughts on how best to achieve that goal?
I have no idea what individual motivations might be and I reject this framing that I have to agree first that "everyone has good intentions" or some such. I'm not in their heads, so I don't know. You've told me that Bitcoin the monetary network is the priority, so I'm asking questions to check. Verify, don't trust. This demand to accept the conclusion about intent before the verification is completely backwards. You've asked this several times as if it's some critical part of your reasoning, but for me, this question is to get an in-built advantage in the argument by forcing me to assume best intentions. If that's not the intention, then why are you asking such a question? Why should people assume that *every* core developer is committed to making Bitcoin the best monetary network that it can be given that it's a large number of individuals with lots of different beliefs, lots of different funding sources and lots of different backgrounds?
> Do you accept that reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes "spam"? Both in thinking things you think aren't spam actually are, and in thinking stuff you think is spam is fine?
At the very edges, sure. But that's a very bad framing of the issue. Do you really think there's any controversy about a dickbutt jpeg being monetary or not? Or memecoins? Or NFTs? Or messages like the ones we're seeing that are non-standard OP_RETURNs right now? Because those are the things going into the chain.
> Do you accept that bitcoin is not your network, to rule as you wish, but that rule changes require near unanimous consent, even from the reasonable people who disagree with you, and potentially even from people doing the spamming?
The node I run is mine. And that part of the network, I definitely should be able to rule as I wish. What the rest of the network does, I accept that I have little to no say in.
> Are you trying to ban spamming from bitcoin entirely?
Ideally, that would be great, but I recognize the technical reality that it's probably not possible (at least without a really restrictive soft fork or something similar). Do you agree that reducing spam, but not completely eliminating them, is desirable? And that increasing spam is undesirable?
> Are you merely trying to discourage spammers? Are you aware that that might have no effect, or the opposite ("how dare you tell me what to do, I'll do it to spite you")?
The word "merely" is a very bad framing given that the discouragement has largely worked. There were very few non-standard OP_RETURNs before this PR was created (30 out of 7M+ in the first 16 weeks of 2025). Are you suggesting that this PR will have no effect? That you won't get a lot more >83 byte OP_RETURNs in 2026 than, say 2024? I suppose that the PR might not have any effect, but I don't think there's any evidence for that. Could people do the opposite and spite Bitcoiners? Perhaps. But they have to spend their Bitcoin to do so, so it's not unlimited. They've been spiteful already (Stamps) and have largely stopped, presumably because it became uneconomical to do so.
> Do you believe that going into technical details on this topic, to work out how best to make bitcoin sustainable as a monetary network in the long term is a valuable thing to do, or is that just a way for experts to attempt to close down the discussion and exclude non-experts?
Again, the technical details here are pretty straightforward (remove standardness checks on OP_RETURN), so I'm unimpressed by more explaining of something that people clearly understand. What I've seen is that the technical details part has been used as a way to deny all the people who disagree a voice in the discussion, particularly around the economic incentives. And when people complain, we get even longer explanations, not about the economic incentives, but about the history of OP_RETURN or some such. It's almost like a DoS attack on the people that disagree.
> I notice you're gong straight back to personal attacks ("would you rather people question your competence rather than your intent") and justifying it with fairly specific thoughts about current approaches, rather than sticking with the fundamental principles you claimed to want to discuss.
I should have phrased this better. It wasn't meant to be a personal attack, but a response to this demand that I accept the intent of the developers. If I accept the premise that all the developers for this PR prioritize the monetary network AND have concluded that the PR does not prioritize the monetary network, the conclusion is exactly that, the developers for this PR are incompetent. As I've stated above, I don't accept that first premise and I'm open to having the second premise changed. I have worked with people like you and know you to be competent. Brilliant, even.

2025-05-20 02:59:51 GMT

Meh, Boomers are bad, but the previous generations that brought two world wars and central banks all over the world were worse.

2025-05-19 20:15:34 GMT

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> I realise it's not pleasant to put something you hate (data spam) and something you like (other people using bitcoin as a MoE) into the same category, but as far as technical impact on your node's operation, they really are fundamentally the same, affecting your node in the same way, subject to the same global limits, impacting the same global marketplace in the same way (ie the blockspace fee market), having the same solution (move the substance off chain so you're mostly not subject to the limits or fees; eg via lightning).
I agree with everything until that last clause. You can reduce spam by discouraging it. That's what we've been doing with non-standard OP_RETURNs and non-standard scripts and below-dust-limit outputs, which you don't have to do with legitimate transactions. I actually really like your analysis and the commonality in reducing on-chain transactions is some sort of layer two which settles at layer 1. That's a useful insight.
Where I think the reasoning goes wrong is that spammers don't have the same goal as you, to reduce their on-chain footprint and use off-chain protocols to make things efficient. The spammers specifically *want* to spam the chain and have been shown to be malicious in that regard, purposefully trolling Bitcoiners (like the stamps protocol, for example). So in a sense, thinking about making their protocols efficient is a waste of time. I really don't think they're interested because they could do the same stuff for way cheaper on almost every altcoin.
> Ceasing to forbid/discourage something isn't the same as encouraging it, and the continued implication that this is all about devs wanting to encourage spam continues to be unappreciated, unfair and incorrect.
That is the end effect, though, isn't it? Whatever your intentions may be, the end result is that more spam comes onto the network. Or maybe you'll deny this, in which case, we'll devolve into discussions about what might happen. But ultimately, I'm not inside your head and can't determine what your intentions are, I can only judge the practical effect this has. You said that you're prioritizing Bitcoin as a monetary network. The PR deprioritizes Bitcoin as a monetary network and your response seems to be that your intentions aren't to do that. OK, I guess? Would you rather have people question your competence instead of intent? Because the result is as clear as day that we'll see more spam and not less as a result of the PR. And when people like me say that, we get a lot of anger, insults and eventually, speculations about boogeymen that will do something worse if we don't agree to this PR.

2025-05-19 19:24:48 GMT

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> I do have mixed feelings about people doing NFTs and memecoins: 50% that they're idiots, 50% that they're not worth thinking about.
It's you that said that NFTs and memecoins are not worth thinking about. I was arguing that you should think about them. I wasn't pretending anything, just responding to something you said.
I also didn't get the UTXO set data from you, I got it from this report, which I included in the newsletter I put out earlier today: https://research.mempool.space/utxo-set-report/
We're in agreement that the UTXO set shouldn't be filled with unspendable outputs, though maybe there's something to be discussed with respect to what the tradeoff between UTXO set bloat vs prunable bloat is. If we get 100 bytes of prunable data instead of 1 33-byte ScriptPubKey UTXO, is that a good trade-off? How about 1000? or 1MB?
Because the Citrea people seem to be claiming that they only need 160 bytes and it should be very rare: https://x.com/robin_linus/status/1919091672941477965. Is 500 bytes a year in UTXO bloat worth 1 GB of prunable data bloat?
What is the correct tradeoff? Do you have a range you're comfortable with?

2025-05-19 03:10:28 GMT

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If Bitcoin is a monetary network and that's your priority, then NFTs and Memecoins are definitely worth thinking about, given that those things are now a significant chunk of the UTXO set. Somewhere in the 40% range are under 1000 sats and using Taproot, from what I've read so they have real effect on users' ability to run nodes. Shouldn't decreasing them or economically discouraging them be a priority? The attitude I've seen from many core devs is that of "we can't stop them entirely, so what's the point of trying?"
> If bitcoin's going to go anywhere, it can't be something where some select individuals can exercise outsize control over the network as a whole based on their personal dislikes. If you're in a position to stop people from spamming, governments are in a position to stop people funding opposition parties.
You're right that the analogy I gave is off, but I disagree with this.
Certainly if it was a small number of people that could veto transactions, yes, that would be terrible (though with enough KYC mining pools, this will be the case). But what we're talking about are relay standardness rules that virtually every node on the network already runs *being removed*. That's not a small number of people, that's almost everyone! And as others have pointed out, they can *still* get their transactions in if they're willing to use other means to get to miners who will mine these non-standard transactions. We're not talking about a small number of people censoring transactions they don't like, we're talking about most of the network *not relaying* transactions they don't like. They're not the same thing.
Nobody should be forced to relay transactions that they think are spam. It is not your bandwidth. Nor should anyone be forced to not relay transactions that they think are legitimate. The choice should be up to the node runner. The PR that got closed, and the current PR that's open both aim to remove this choice now, the next release or eventually.
> The issue with a global public ledger is that **every** entry in it other than those relating to your personal coins is fundamentally spam as far as you're concerned.
I get your broader point that we have blocksize limits that prevent data that people don't care about from getting out of hand. But what you have here is a very strange definition of spam.
I care about the part of the ledger that I have, yes. But I also care about the total number of Bitcoin as its absolute scarcity is a hugely important part of the value proposition. So yes, even transactions that I'm not directly party to actually do concern me because I want to be assured that the number of all Bitcoins is what I expect it to be. In other words, a continuous audit of the entire ledger has value to the individual holder.
Spam wastes the resources of my node and block space on non-monetary transactions making this continuous audit more expensive. So spam is not just "transactions that I'm not directly party to," but non-monetary transactions that bloat the resources required to audit the ledger. As I said, I understand the spam is limited by the blocksize limit, which is great. But it's still spam and making the distinction between monetary transactions and spam would mean monetary transactions cost less while spam costs more, which means we get more of the former and less of the latter. And conversely, removing the distinction, which is what removing the relay filter would do, would mean monetary transactions cost more while spam costs less. That would be prioritizing spam.
In other words, a monetary network should prioritize monetary transactions.

2025-05-18 12:50:35 GMT

I wasn't a filterer until a week ago when I started looking at the data. But now I think nodes should have the option of using them much more than they are.

2025-05-17 17:20:22 GMT

Nostr is the real world computer.

2025-05-17 01:10:39 GMT

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OK, great! Let's start with a definition of monetary network. I think Bitcoin is for transferring Bitcoin and not for storing data, or anything else. I'm guessing your definition of monetary network differs given this response (suggesting that graffiti people are using Bitcoin as legitimately as the Bitcoin transferrers). Can you clarify? https://blossom.primal.net/dec950fd7949a76f86c7f596b6c0056b67c2a50ff54656107262872ce3ae24f9.png

2025-05-16 20:08:30 GMT

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> The entire point of bitcoin is to be a monetary network, and this change is a deliberate step forward in achieving that goal.
Then this is definitely where we disagree. I don't think anyone is claiming to know your values better than you, what people like me are claiming is that this change doesn't achieve what you think it does. And when we say that, we're told that we don't understand the technical reasoning. The technical change is pretty simple. The economic reasoning is what is lacking, but it's couched in this technical language of "you don't get to comment if you're not a developer" (from last week) to "let me tell you my view as a developer" (from this week). Like I said, it's better than before, but it's really not any sort of dialogue if you implicitly dismiss the critique as coming from unknowledgeable plebs.

2025-05-16 14:55:31 GMT

GM, part of learning how to think from first principles is killing your heroes.

2025-05-15 03:02:31 GMT

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I suppose it's possible, but it's reflective of the "users that disagree with us don't know anything" attitude from the proponents of this change.
If we were having a real, serious conversation, it would be not be at this level, it would be about what we think Bitcoin really is. Is it a monetary network or is it something more? Do spammers have as much right to Bitcoin block space as monetary people? (I think you said opined on that in a reply to something I said on X a week back)
I think that's the conversation that we should be having not this "let me explain this to you the 10th time so that you'll agree to this proposal you think is bad." It honestly comes off as a bit patronizing, which, to be fair is a lot better than the utter disdain from a week ago, but it's still not ideal.

2025-05-14 20:26:47 GMT

The strategy of the day seems to be, "Let's explain harder."
What if the people that disagree with you already understand? Maybe it's not a matter of explaining, but genuine fundamental disagreement?

2025-05-14 13:20:03 GMT

GM, every bull market, somebody prominent goes bankrupt. I haven't seen one yet.

2025-05-13 15:57:43 GMT

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https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq7el0qph2p6x7325zw3zr7qfvhhvk600xz8jatga4zwv9jy396tgqythwumn8ghj7cnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qpq7zmyfucz5pg9r75vd2gv39afm33g2pvszkn5v4sya2xw394w8avsclcqte

2025-05-13 15:55:00 GMT

Update:
There have been 11700 transactions since block 894289 that have had OP_RETURN size > 83. This is way more than the 30 from the first 4 months and it's probably because of @oomahq
's challenge to make the non-standard OP_RETURNs more than 50% of the total OP_RETURNs.
Running the numbers on these, here are the fee rates that they paid compared to the median fee rate.
On average the 11700 transactions paid 191% more than the median fee rates of the blocks in which they were included. Or put another way, these transactions paid a bit less than triple the median fee rate.
1336 paid less than the median fee rate
2197 paid between the median and 50% more than the median fee rate
3516 paid between 1.5x-2.5x the median fee rate
1554 paid between 2.5x-3.5x the median fee rate
3094 paid more than the 3.5x the median fee rate
1064 were mined by F2Pool
10636 were mined by MARA Pool
You can look at all the transactions in the spreadsheet I put together: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19c7xOw-8UasQQkyU0EjJo_CuJRLjyu3Z84IrZPpePxI/edit?usp=sharing

2025-05-13 02:39:54 GMT

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https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq7el0qph2p6x7325zw3zr7qfvhhvk600xz8jatga4zwv9jy396tgqythwumn8ghj7cnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qpqhx60jwrs5pfyjhw834esuw7s0d4xha96e5vutr3sh7kfx0n0fhxqhy7fut

2025-05-13 02:39:26 GMT

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4e5f0ab0d00175759890d21b50b7bfe3cac3befd6a249d25c33fe995b6d30f46
52c1447dd35fc00fe93436d88450636cc3190fd73fa78f2d63dcbbb32d287d20
f73ddc415627c8705d130037335ecf751a3ecaea6536c3eb530c6540f795ae3f
a79118c823c63b27a02119aa73279c2e284cdd572b85ee53366f776542dfa9a4
7776c1ffd8747a5ee6199974e473709607f8fab009c58fffc8a1d30b49f6a691

2025-05-13 02:38:59 GMT

Just did a little sleuthing on the OP_RETURN > 83 bytes from @oomahq
's post (https://x.com/oomahq/status/1916793928025596338).
There were 30 such transactions in the ~4 month period:
8 had reasonable fees (< 2x the median for the block)
11 had around double fees
7 had around triple fees
4 had 5x-8x fees
9 were mined by F2Pool (10-11%)
21 were mined by Mara (6-7%)
So in general, the OP_RETURN filter means the non-standard transactions were on average paying a good deal more than normal transactions to get into a block. And since only about 18% of the hashing power seems to mine them, they had to wait 5-6x longer to confirm.
If the point of filters is to make spamming cumbersome and costly, I'd say that they're doing their job. TX IDs in the first comment so you can look for yourself.
https://blossom.primal.net/d3e7390ee6a1acf0ad82a3b4a2fa89d6299e835bf9563f6e93fb0b2790a923f4.png

2025-05-12 20:45:07 GMT

- reply

I don't think double the regular fee is marginal. And delaying non-standard transactions means that the fees for the non-standard transactions goes up. Again, creating more disincentive. I don't understand how that would "average out." Enough delayed non-standard transactions mean more competition for the same block space creating more fee pressure.
https://blossom.primal.net/712d170ee74720dcba14765628593ce5ab971b4ce914c31eda05bad1d9ab6d38.png

2025-05-12 15:54:27 GMT

Right now non-standard transactions compete for block space only within mining pools that allow out-of-band payments, which naturally makes them less reliable and more expensive. This makes non-standard transactions economically disincentivized compared to standard transactions.
So filters don't "work" in the sense that they prevent all spam. But they work in the sense that they disincentivize them.

2025-05-12 02:21:21 GMT

Cat and mouse games sound futile, until you realize that you catch a lot of the mice.

2025-05-11 14:55:53 GMT

Spam is not some esoteric difficult-to-define thing. It's about as dumb as the "what is a woman" argument and has the same energy.

2025-05-10 19:02:30 GMT

If you're worried about the OP_RETURN controversy, don't stress. BItcoin will not just be fine, but controversies like this resolve with a huge price bump.

2025-05-09 13:13:11 GMT

GM, you make better decisions if you're married and have kids.

2025-05-08 15:22:42 GMT

What made me suspicious before about the OP_RETURN debate was how the proposal removed the datacarriersize option.
What makes me suspicious now is the dismissive, arrogant framing.

2025-05-06 18:47:15 GMT

A lot of idealistic coders think that by explaining the technical reasoning, they can get people on their side of the argument.
I get why. In technical circles, there really is often one best practice and you can arrive at consensus through explaining the nuances of the issue, though that happens far less often than is believed.
But this current argument really isn't a technical one. It's a social, monetary and economic one and no amount of technical nuance-splaining is going to get consensus. I applaud the effort, but the higher level question that we're all really fighting about is this:
What is Bitcoin?
Is it money? Or is it money and ...?

2025-05-06 17:06:20 GMT

You know what I'm not hearing about this debate?
How price is going to crash because of it.

2025-05-05 22:40:35 GMT

For me, the bigger question around this OP_RETURN debate is getting rid of the datacarriersize option (one proposal gets rid of it now, another deprecates it for getting rid of it in the future).
The Core devs are underestimating just how many people construct their own block templates given the popularity of devices like the BitAxe. Given many such miners are principled and won't mine spam transactions, that option is a very important one to have for their own mempool.

2025-05-05 16:07:53 GMT

- reply

I would say that it's more fiat Christianity (as in Christianity where fiat values have taken over) than boomer Christianity, but I'm mostly in agreement.

2025-05-05 15:04:52 GMT

Free issue for first Monday of the month!
JP's downfall, Instilling Wonder, Bronies, Shiloh, Belief Systems, Data Carrier Size Drama, BIP30 Consensus Bug, Penalizing LN Griefers, Crypto Vibe Shift, NK Remote Workers, AZ Strategic Reserve and more!
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2025-05-04 17:06:28 GMT

Once AI gets good enough, we'll all be running exactly the software we want with exactly the patches we want that have passed the exact unit and integration tests that we want. Let a thousand clients bloom.

2025-05-03 18:54:50 GMT

There is such a thing as social consensus and moral standards. Just because you can do something does not mean you should. And just because someone can do something does not mean you throw up your hands and say you can't do anything.
Social pressure is effective. And the moral high ground matters.

2025-05-02 15:31:07 GMT

GM, I'd like to see a Core fork managed via Nostr and not GitHub. Who's with me?
h/t @nprofile…x7wj

2025-05-01 15:02:14 GMT

GM, drama is great for Bitcoin.

2025-04-30 19:36:32 GMT

It takes a particularly vicious and nihilistic jerk to claim there's a vulnerability in a FOSS project and doesn't disclose it in any way.

2025-04-29 16:06:46 GMT

GM, pressure to perform is a privilege that only competent people get.

2025-04-29 02:23:44 GMT

Code has a smell.
Politics has a smell.
If you don't have a good nose, you're going to get ruined.

2025-04-28 15:08:52 GMT

For free subscribers: Boomers' Legacy, Kind Authoritarianism, Gaslightenment, Becoming What You Signal, Clueless Solutions, Rational Trigonometry and more!
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #446
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2025-04-27 14:47:09 GMT

- reply

Better sleep
Faster workout recovery
More energy
Clearer skin
Retaining more of what I learn

2025-04-27 14:33:19 GMT

GM, not drinking is a superpower.

2025-04-26 15:35:33 GMT

GM, I got all my powerlifting PRs after the age of 40.

2025-04-25 15:40:12 GMT

- reply

In other words, happiness is not linear
#nevent1q…h8uj

2025-04-24 15:31:07 GMT

It must really suck to be an altcoin bagholder, but imagine being a crypto VC back in 2017, backing stupid projects instead of just buying Bitcoin.

2025-04-23 17:32:20 GMT

Nostr, like Bitcoin, is not for the marginal user. Good thing, too, because the marginal user wants everything done for them, doesn't care about self-sovereignty, privacy or rights and hates anything that requires more than 1 click.
There's a baptism to get into these things, and it requires you to level up your game.

2025-04-22 20:10:08 GMT

The new narrative is to copy everything that Bitcoin does because none of the other "use-cases" turned out to have any utility.
I call that progress.

2025-04-22 15:22:22 GMT

GM, I'm learning how to do the boxer step jump rope, and it's a lot harder than it looks!

2025-04-21 19:08:30 GMT

I'm reading papers about rational trigonometry and not basing math on set theory, rejecting infinite sets and real numbers using Cauchy's category of converging sequences and my mind is blown.
It's like I'm reading the Austrian Economics of the Math world.

2025-04-21 14:58:37 GMT

For free subscribers: Midwit Gatekeepers, Zero Sum Population, Elite Distrust, Groundless Doubt, Activation Energy Hacks and more!
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#Bitcoin Tech Talk #445
https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-445

2025-04-20 12:54:53 GMT

He is risen!

2025-04-19 13:12:32 GMT

Uncomfortable Truth: Everyone in tech kisses the rings of the VCs because they have the money, even Bitcoiners.

2025-04-18 18:33:49 GMT

My death He died.

2025-04-17 14:27:34 GMT

GM, realized last night that the current year is a square (45 x 45 = 2025)

2025-04-16 16:45:55 GMT

GM, in an attention economy, you get valued for your audience, not your ideas.

2025-04-15 18:25:40 GMT

OpenAI will buy BlueSky and make it even more cringy and fake.