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DORION MODE


NOVEMBER 1, 2021


THE BITCOIN ADDRESS AS A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE

Filed under: Bitcoin — Robinson Dorion @ 00:15

As Bitcoin continues its unyielding march toward global domination, disrupting
all forms of socialism down to the Wormatiense roots, more and more of the
burdensome exigences of the two cent class just wants to join the party. Being
what they are, they either don't want to actually change and adapt themselves in
response to the evolutionary pressure Bitcoin is imposing or they're simply too
poor to do so. They really only want the fiat gainz of the booty Bitcoin reaps
in the war of attrition it's waging. Furthermore, they want to pretend that not
only will the gainz make them rich, but that transactions shall be free or at
least cheap enough to support their misrepresentations of reality. They prefer
to hallucinate Bitcoin is some better form of democracy, that no matter how
small their majority is, what matters is head count rather than money.

Today, I'm finding these ill-conceived notions manifest most obviously when it
comes to the question of what is a valid Bitcoin address. For the uninitiated,
Bitcoin addresses are called Pay to Public Key Hash (P2PKH) and start with a 1.
One type of fake Bitcoin address to date is called Pay to Script Hash (P2SH).
P2SH started as just multi-signature and then had Segregated Witness (Segwit,
aka Jim Crow) functionality bolted on, these addresses start with a 3. The other
type of fake Bitcoin address is called Bech32, which are only used for segtwit
and start with a bc1. Before we delve into the details, let's detour a bit into
my own learning process so you can see how and why I've come to this position.

People failing to grok Bitcoin is by no means something that's new. After all,
it's a convergence of many complex fields, from money to politics to computers
to cryptography and more. Change is costly and mediocre people, being resource
optimizing organisms just as normal people, surely would prefer to get paid for
changing as little as possible about themselves, if only it were feasible.
Indeed, Bitcoin being a better PayPal/Our Democracy were prevalent well before I
started learning about it in 2012 and going in full time in 2014. Admittedly, I
held these notions too for a while, though I didn't realize it at first. I met
the Coinapult bros in 2013, listened to several of the "Let's Talk Bitcoin"
podcasts from that era, followed links from /r/Bitcoin believing I was
researching, etc. While Coinapult was trying to do market making and arbitrage
on play exchanges and payment processing for merchants and that's where the
money was in their model(i), the prime focus of 2014 was not improving the
trading nor getting more merchants really, but instead, spurred by a combination
of Wall Street investors wanting to see users over profits and the socialist,
being an engineer tendencies of the "CEO" Ira Miller, the management formed some
cheap slogan about lowering barriers to entry to improve access and yada yada
yada about crushing payment obstacles, i.e. the opposite of strategic
superiority. This manifested in the majority of the company's payroll being
malinvested into the development of a webwallet and falsely claiming Bitcoins
could be sent by email and SMS. The other branch of the malinvestment was in
office space(ii). Nevertheless, being an energetic, but n00b 24 year old, I
poured myself into the job and drank the Kool-Aid for a while, until about
December 2014.

I don't remember exactly when, but the fundamental cause of me starting to puke
up that Kool-Aid and realize my notions were ill-conceived was the blocksize
war. Bitcoin, while nevertheless the biggest thing going on in computing at the
time(iii), was a lot smaller then and the socialist media coverage Sybil attack
was a lot weaker or at least a lot less verbose. Thus, signals from the font
slipped through and I had the smarts to investigate, reading first lots(iv) from
Trilema, Contravex, Loper-OS, the Forum logs(v), Qntra and later Ossasepia, The
Whet, etc. Mircea Popescu was the first and most informed to oppose Gavin
Andresen's bid to hardfork the Bitcoin protocol(vi). While the technical issues
were interesting, they were very much over my head at first until I started
spending more time talking with Jacob Welsh and feeding off his explanations to
support my own reading. What I understood better, or at least had better sense
for, were the political tensions.

Before I dive into the political, I'll note that the technical tensions come
down to the security of the blockchain, one measurement of which is Bitcoin node
count. Nailing down a number is a harder task than the casual observer might
expect. A primary factor in the difficulty is the fact that pretty much all
modern hardware has been backdoored. While you may have heard a lot of noise in
recent years about the dangers of running Huawai network hardware, the fact is,
Intel has been backdooring its chips since about 2008 with the Management
Engine. This means for the network to maintain security and actual
decentralization, it's imperative that older hardware can keep up with the data
processing requirements and the verification of cryptographic signatures is not
cheap compared to other tasks one might make a computer do. This is a major
issue scalability sheep overlook and a likely reason influence agents push the
myth that blockchains can safely scale on extant hardware. If everyone's on
newer hardware, you increase the odds 3 letter agencies have a backdoor to the
network. Read that again. By January 2015, I recall having dinner with Ashe and
telling him I was coming around to the idea of the importance of adapting the
world as it is to Bitcoin rather than adapting Bitcoin to the extant world.
That, if I had to choose between the two, I would rather live in a world were I
was too broke to send Bitcoin transactions, but where Bitcoin was strong and
secure than experience the short-term gratification of being able to send
Bitcoin whenever I pleased on a chain that is weakened and in the long-term
easier for its enemies to subvert. The other option is to want to be able to
spend Bitcoin such that you make yourself rich enough to have a miner include
your transactions in a block. That was a fundamental realization for me and
certainly instructed by Bitcoin's Declaration of Sovereignty.

On the political side, the aspect that stood out to me the most was how hard
Gavin Andresen was pushing the change for the sake of "mass adoption", i.e. the
perceived interests of extant no coiners, with little to no regard for the
security of the blockchain, i.e. the needs and interests of the extant owners
and miners and their ability to maintain full nodes. He was pushing a risky
change to a perceived future problem and meanwhile ignoring legitimate questions
from informed and powerful stakeholders(vii). The two conversations best
demonstrating Gavin's pigheadedness are one with davout and another in the
forum, the latter of which Gavin seemingly and conveniently for him avoided MP's
presence and which included pointed comments such as :

> ben_vulpes in any event, gavinandresen, there'll be no more forks from you.
> you blew it back in the day, and you lost the initiative on this one months
> ago.

What did this mean, how did he blow it back in the day ?(viii) Well, thankfully,
Mr. Popescu(ix) took the time to write it out, start with these, Bitcoind : not
quite ready for prime time ; In re Bitcoin Devs are idiots ; And Gavin moves on
to the dark side. The Bitcoin project is officially hijacked ; Bitcoin was
written by the retarded, part II ; The sins of the group of posers behind the so
called "Bitcoin Foundation". Once you've groked those, move on to the meta
considerations, e.g. USGavin, the lolcow. Fast forward to April 2015, the scam
bitcoin foundation runs out of coin to pay half to Gavin and half to USG and
what does he do ? Gavin goes to MIT to be handled by an adviser to Hussein
Bahamas, need one say more to understand which side he was on ? Fast forward to
2017 after a whole lot of dicking around, BitCHcoin Cash hardforked from Bitcoin
and was promptly sunk in the market, just like MP said it would be. As far as I
see, the Power Rangers absolutely would've hardforked Bitcoin if they thought
they could have gotten away with it, case in point :

> asciilifeform: $up luke-jr
> deedbot: luke-jr voiced for 30 minutes.
> asciilifeform: what brings you here luke-jr ?
> luke-jr: so we're discussing whether we can get consensus for a hardfork with
> the community here
> luke-jr: is there any possibility of that, or is it just impossible?
> asciilifeform: luke-jr: what's in your hardfork ?
> luke-jr: asciilifeform: not sure yet; ideally, only things that everyone
> thinks are acceptable (including people here)
> asciilifeform: well nobody can answer this mega-question until the concretes
> are given, neh ?
> luke-jr: (unreasonable people demand we support 2 MB old transactions)
> asciilifeform: normally folks going hard-forking have some specific idea of
> why...
> luke-jr: asciilifeform: to show the industry that a hardfork and consensus is
> a possible thing
> mircea_popescu: luke-jr do your reading.(x)
> mircea_popescu: also, please don't refer to tmsr as "a community". it is not
> "a community", it is your liege.
> shinohai makes popcorn
> luke-jr: asciilifeform: things I'd like to see in it would be merged mining,
> additional inputs to the generation transaction, and maybe fix block
> withholding
> mircea_popescu: $down luke-jr

The blocksize war exposed me both the the hierarchy within Bitcoin and attacks
against it I had not considered. It caused me to humble myself and do a lot less
talking and a lot more reading. Through that reading, one comes to realize that
the blocksize was not the first attack on Bitcoin, which brings us to Bitcoin
addresses. While the fake Bitcoin ala BitCHcoin Cash was brought to it's knees
immediately(xi), why haven't fake addresses been exposed in the market for what
they are ? Unlike BitCHcoin Cash, which was implemented as a hardfork, P2SH and
Segtwit were implemented as softforks. For the unaware, a hardfork loosens the
protocol rules and requires all nodes to modify their code while a softfork
tightens the rules and only requires a high enough percentage of the hashing
power to accept the tighter rule set. Due to how these addresses and transaction
types were implemented, nodes that only enforce the protocol rules as Satoshi
left them(xii) see and treat these transactions as "anyone can spend". The
explanation from the JWRD log :

> dorion: http://fixpoint.welshcomputing.com/2021/jwrd-logs-for-Apr-2021/#1834
> -- jfw, no rush, but when you get a chance, would you mind teasing out the
> details a bit, i.e. how p2sh has always and necessarily been anyone can spend
> ? I see reading BIP 16 there is an attack explained, which seems to be
> narrowly classified as a 1 confirmation attack. narrow in the sense
> sourcerer: 2021-04-27 21:50:09 (#jwrd) jfw: addresses beginning with "3" have
> always worked on the basis of "anyone can spend", this being required for
> transactions spending them to make it into the actual Bitcoin network at all.
> I'd conjecture that a notion that "multisig" is somehow safer comes about
> because the "ANYONECANSPEND" term itself apparently
> dorion: that it doesn't consider the majority of the hashing power unwinding
> the softfork and collecting the booty.
> jfw: well I did at the time but perhaps it got lost amid the parallel thread?
> http://fixpoint.welshcomputing.com/2021/jwrd-logs-for-Apr-2021/#1848 ,
> http://fixpoint.welshcomputing.com/2021/jwrd-logs-for-Apr-2021/#1855
> sourcerer: 2021-04-28 19:00:01 (#jwrd) jfw: 3-addresses, also known as "pay to
> script hash" or p2sh, were introduced by Gavin in 2012, in the linked BIP16
> and related; in his own words : "Old implementations will validate that the
> {serialize script}'s hash value matches when they validate blocks created by
> software that fully support this BIP, but will do no other validation."
> sourcerer: 2021-04-28 19:10:25 (#jwrd) jfw: so to expand a bit re 3-addresses,
> all a non-gavinist node requires to accept a transaction spending away the
> coins in them, is any string that hashes to that address (after some other
> minor encoding transformations) - which is kindly provided by the "owner" of
> the coins when they broadcast their own unconfirmed transaction.
> jfw: this can be seen in the transaction template: OP_HASH160
> [20-byte-hash-value] OP_EQUAL
> jfw: this is the so-called "script" of bitcoin, basically like pushing buttons
> on a calculator and seeing if it comes up true or false to decide whether the
> transaction is valid.
> jfw: the "buttons" however include stack operations and signature verification
> rather than just arithmetic.
> jfw: but it evaluates left-to-right, after concatenating the "signature"
> script in the spending input with the "pubkey" script in the output being
> spent. So the complete script will look like:
> jfw: ...signatures... [serialized script] OP_HASH160 [20-byte-hash-value]
> OP_EQUAL
> jfw: the [] there mean an implicit PUSH of a byte string.
> jfw: so when you get to the OP_HASH160, first the sigs and serialized (quoted)
> script have been pushed onto the stack. OP_HASH160 pops the first thing off
> the top, i.e. the quoted script, and hashes it.
> jfw: pushing the result back onto the stack.
> jfw: then the 20-byte (160-bit) target hash is pushed, and OP_EQUAL compares
> the top two things on the stack.
> jfw: if they're equal, the script has returned true. no checking of signatures
> has been done.
> jfw: the bip16 fork was that the core workings of the script machinery were
> twisted such that it will then additionally look inside that serialized script
> for further conditions (I haven't studied exactly how).
> jfw: dorion: so from the technical perspective, it's an ugly and totally
> pointless hack. the stated purpose at the time was to push multisig harder by
> lubing it up to make it fit easier into existing software and/or human
> protocols. then there's the political angle - might want to check the early
> threads leading to the TRB project though that could be a long dig.
> dorion: jfw, thanks for laying it out. yeah, I had primarily focused on the
> political angle so far, but wanted to round it out with a better understanding
> of the technical.
> jfw: I'm recalling something about 0.5.3 being the red line in the sand,
> unless I'm mixing my deserts.
> dorion: right, that was the furthest back they found they could go without
> breaking compatibility at the time (2014).

While multi-sig softfork wasn't directly described as anyone can spend by the
Power Rangers, segtwit was from the beginning, as quoted in the forum log :

> asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=16-12-2015#1345071 << how
> the fuck is the 'segregated' nonsense ~not~ a hardfork ?
> assbot: Logged on 16-12-2015 23:08:47; BingoBoingo: Ghost talk
> https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org/msg03049.html
> punkman: someone figured out it can be a "softfork", just don't send witness
> part to old nodez!
> BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: "softfork" uses "anyone can spend" non-sense
> BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: "soft" literally in the sense old nodes verify
> blocks and absolutely not a thing else.
> punkman: and that someone was Luke-Jr
> punkman: just ftr
> punkman: "This seemed like a hard problem. I personally dismissed this as a
> solution for a long time as something non-viable, until Luke-Jr discovered
> that it's possible to do this as a soft-fork. What we're going to do is
> inputs, we just deprecate the signature field inside of inputs. It's going to
> be an empty string from now on. Obviously, an empty signature is not going to
> be able to spend an
> punkman: actual output that requires a signature. Instead, the outputs do not
> push these scripts that we required to be satisfied, they would be
> encapsulated, it would be pushed as a piece of data. This allows us to, this
> effectively to every node, and every node not using this system, it's an
> ANYONECANSPEND. It's just an output that pushes data on the stack, the output
> doesn't do anything else.
> punkman: It's ANYONECANSPEND. In a soft-fork, we can add a new rule that
> restricts what's valid. We can add a rule like, whenever we see, we could say
> it's a new type of script that is able to instead of updating its inputs from
> the signature field, it takes it from the witness instead. The witness becomes
> a third part of the transaction in addition to the inputs and outputs of a
> transaction. For
> punkman: now it would only contain a signature."
> asciilifeform: if 'ANYONECANSPEND', what exactly prevents an uncastrated node
> from... spending it ?
> punkman: asciilifeform: it will only look like one
> trinque: lets drown this motherfucker in complexity then carve our names into
> the corpse. I'm told this is what glory is.

The quote punkman references above is from Peter Wuille during a presentation in
Hong Kong (full text), the one that got him a reward put on his head for
attempting to import state into Bitcoin.

> > They don't describe what the transaction is doing.
> 
> The attempt to import meaning and state into Bitcoin is the true attack vector
> here, and particularly pernicious.

Have a read or re-read of the MPEx tech stuff and Integration is bad for Bitcoin
entry points on for why importing state into Bitcoin is an attack.

So, we've established incontrovertibly that the lever exists to drain both
multisig and segtwit addresses ; all that it'll take is for miners to unwind the
USG inspired rules and revert to the protocol as Satoshi left it and as those
who have done their reading continue to maintain and enforce. This is sure to be
a bloody unwinding, especially considering many fiat companies posing as Bitcoin
companies, e.g. exchanges, use faux addresses, despite a history of tears. You
may wish to hold the belief that it wouldn't be in the miner's interest to take
coins from 3 and bc1 addresses because it'd result in Bitcoin being branded a
scam by outsiders and that even the majority of people claiming to own Bitcoin
wouldn't like it. It'd crush all that news you've falsely identified as
"positive"/"bullish" of El Salvador Mali using Bitcoin if the fraud were exposed
that they're actually not using Bitcoin, but the Segtwit powered Lightning
Netwerk on "their" Apple/Alphabet(xiii) tvphones as they queue in the fast food
line. People are free to hold whatever beliefs they manage to swallow and/or
conceive, but just because they're free to hold them, doesn't mean they're
immune from having their beliefs smashed and dashed against the reality of the
immutable machine and its actual owners.

As far as miner incentives, it's important to recognize that miners are looters
and they will defect from Bitcoin at some point in the future and turn their
gear toward starting a new Bitcoin as part of the natural phase transition. If
there is loot to be had on the current chain because poor, lazy, idiots were too
"busy" spinning in their Dunning-Kruger ways to sort out who is who and what is
what, it seems to me like a rational step would be to loot that pile first and
butcher the idiots who shouldn't have touched Bitcoin with their unwashed hands
to begin with prior to starting a new Bitcoin. Furthermore, just because some
group of miners were socially engineered into tightening the rules at some point
in the past doesn't mean that those same people will be around in the future or
even that they won't change their ways. In any case, miners will follow
whichever chain is most profitable. When the multisig and segtwit forks are
unwound, those holding with addresses starting with 1 will have coins on both
chains while those using addresses starting with 3 or bc1 will only have coins
on the chain with weaker key security. The profitability and future of any chain
is determined ultimately by who has the money. As the block reward continues to
diminish and as value grows in addresses with weaker security, incentives
increase for miners to retreat to the more secure rules and in doing so collect
a tax on idiocy. Whether you believe miners shouldn't or wouldn't doesn't factor
into the equation, the world runs on can and must after all.

As far as fiat exchanges go, indeed a large swath have built their castles made
of sand on top of technology pushed by USG agents and will be proper fucked,
which will likely be very confusing for the "average person". The pantsuit press
is sure to claim Bitcoin was hacked or broken(xiv) or a scam and you might even
think such an unwinding would be "bad for Bitcoin", but guess what, MP was
writing back in 2012 the fiat exchanges are part of the Obsequious party and of
only temporary relevance and in March 2014 the price signal is unreliable and
Bitcoin may be headed for the mystical phase completely detached from relation
to fiat currency(xv).

So wut do ? Well, there's really no amount of research you can do to give you a
definitive answer, at some point, you're going to have to trust. While Bitcoin
is a system designed to operate peer to peer, without the need for trusted third
parties, there is nevertheless trust in the system(xvi) ; this trust most
notably manifests when in comes to the code that you're running to handle your
money. This tension is a reason why V was created :

> V-genesis allows an agent to reconstruct a complete Bitcoin tree, verify its
> correctness, and manage his investment of trust at all junctures so that he is
> never required to implicitly trust either an unknown code author, or a code
> snippet of unknown provenance.
> 
> There remains after today no alternative manner to deploy Bitcoin software, or
> indeed any software that is not a toy intended to be used by children playing,
> outside of this paradigm. May the switchover be bloody and painful in all the
> right places.

So then, when it comes to "your" Bitcoin, whose words are you going to trust ?

Are you gong to trust the fungible tools of the failing USG Empire ala Gavin,
Luke-Jr, Greg Maxwell, et cetera ? Those who believed in Bitcoin so much they
were giving it away at 5 BTC a pop ; they who tried shaping free speech in the
nascent forum(xvii) ; propped up scams like Butterfly Labs and Mt. Gox ; tried
blacklisting Satoshi Dice addresses in the Gentoo distribution of bitcoind
(archived) ; introduced a coin inflation bug into their code(xviii) and
impredictability into the currency ?

Or the man making money on Lehman calls in 2008 ; the one who killed several
early scams ; who had his PR educate tardstalk for years ; who nipped an early
rally in the bud, before Bitcoin was ready ; who warned of and sank Mt. Gox ;
who tore the face off the "code is law" pretense ; who pointed out the sad state
of Bitcoin code... really we're only up to twenty sixteen and skipped several
other wins he scored for BTC beyond and in between, e.g. enforcing Bitcoin as a
sovereign. Really, go read Trilema's Bitcoin category or start with Diana
Coman's review of it at least and then realize evergreen and useful gems such as
the Airgapping guide aren't even under the Bitcoin category.

A caveat you might wish raise is, 2021 marks the year Mircea Popescu died, and
thus, Bitcoin is severed from his embodied power and influence. It's true his
death is the greatest loss for Bitcoin and the free world generally ; his words
and coin, being as vast and profound as they are, were still the effect and
indeed smaller than the man who was the cause, the prime mover. It's a loss than
can't be quantified, for how do you quantify the irreplaceable ? You might wish
to believe he was a central point of failure, though I'd counter with references
to him being a central point of sense, an authority. That being said, for all
the intense verbosity Mircea Popescu manifested, it very well could be that he
was the more talkative of the Organization's harvesters and those with weight in
Bitcoin who've not made their names known will just show. So, the price signal
became unreliable, then S.MPOE went private, then the WoT went not-public and
the oracle turned his attention to the private sphere with TMSR's closure and
now Trilema, while it remains up, will no longer be updated. Just as he
"somehow" foretold, Bitcoin, the change the consumers are revolting against, has
become much more vague and intangible.

To tie this off, what can you practically do to strengthen your grip strength
and thus grasp on the Bitcoin you claim to hold ? 1) only use addresses that
start with 1 ; 2) use a strong source of entropy for key generation and
transaction signing ; 3) implement an airgapped set up ; 4) learn to manage your
investment of trust in the code you're running ; 5) run node(s) that do not
enforce the Power Ranger's attacks and instead maintain the protocol as Satoshi
left it ; 6) drop whatever "Bitcoin sources" you've been consuming and read
Trilema as the points sink in again and again, 7) ask yourself if you're smart,
stupid or a barn animal and 8) if you want a guide to help you speed up the
process of strengthening your grip, come talk to us at JWRD.

 1.  Though, poor risk management and failure to heed the signals flowing from
     the font, despite sitting at the table where it was decided, did lead to
     quite the painful Goxxxing. [^]
 2.  I estimate the amount of budget burned on air conditioning alone in 2014
     was easily greater than 21 BTC, because yes, despite growing up in and
     being acclimated to frigid fucking cold winters, I was wearing a sweater a
     good chunk of the time seated in Panama's hot humidity. [^]
 3.  A lead that has only grown in the interim. [^]
 4.  Even 6 years later, I don't reckon I've read any of them in there entirety,
     though I've read several of the articles several times. [^]
 5.  Which, at the time, were published at bitcoin-assets.com, which has since
     been taken down and Trilema serves as the canonical log. [^]
 6.  If you read far enough about the risks of the blocksize increase, you're
     bound to find discussions about perhaps an even greater risk to chain
     security, coinbase fragmentation. Here's a 2015 convo and here's a 2019
     article. [^]
 7.  Back before the plan/panic/scamdemic induced shortages, fragility of the
     computer supply chain was well understood, an example of which was the 2011
     flooding in Southeast Asia inducing shortages of Hard Drive Disks. I know
     read this in the logs, but didn't manage to track down the link. Here's a
     link from the news. [^]
 8.  As I aim to show in this article, if you've not studied in detail the
     history of Bitcoin and you don't know the who's who, you really haven't
     done anything to understand it at all. [^]
 9.  And his PR, Hannah Wiggins. [^]
 10. The tippy tip of the iceberg on the reading that comes to my mind is The
     necessary prerequisite for any change to the Bitcoin protocol. [^]
 11. I sold most of mine at 20 bitcents. [^]
 12. E.g. JWRD's vtree of bitcoind, which uses many patches originally published
     by the now defunct Bitcoin Foundation. [^]
 13. Seriously, mobile phones might be the worst place to expose a private key,
     apart from posting directly to your myspace/facegram/instabook/whataverse
     platform account. These devices are meant to share information with the
     outside world and are designed from hardware, software and user experience
     perspective such that the manufacturer can modify the code on the machine
     at will, i.e. exercise ownership over it. What, you think the lies Sillycon
     Valley companies spew to support their political preferences are limited to
     presidential elections ? You think socialist driven and printing press
     supported tech companies are not opposed to the politics of Bitcoin ? Get
     real. Anyone that doesn't have or isn't willing to acquire an actual
     computer they can dedicate to Bitcoin is not a good fit for Bitcoin. There
     are of course other considerations, but if all the someone you're talking
     to has is a tvphone, move on. [^]
 14. You recall when Mt. Gox falsely claimed they were a victim of transaction
     maleability ? [^]
 15. Don't overlook that footnote v in the S.MPOE results, "This specifically
     includes any name you've heard so far. Excepting me, nobody with any weight
     that is actually involved in Bitcoin has to date made their name known.".
     Do you think that's actually changed in the interim, or did the strong
     hands only get stronger ? [^]
 16. As there is trust at the very root of finance. [^]
 17. And then of course retcon history years later. [^]
 18. And of course when it was discovered they recommended "upgrading". There
     wasn't a, "we fucked up bad yet again, perhaps we should shit down and shut
     up or maybe even take a long walk off a short bridge. No, instead it was,
     "you should now 'upgrade' and take all our other shit code, i.e. the TV
     raft 'solution'". [^]




9 COMMENTS »

 1. Did you get what he meant about the attempt to import meaning & state into
    Bitcoin? I haven't really got into the historical dirt on XML and HTML
    though I imagine the Naggum trove would be a good entry point.
    
    Comment by Jacob Welsh — November 2, 2021 @ 21:03

 2. [...] under: #jwrd logs, Logs — Jacob Welsh @ 00:37 Day changed to
    2021-11-01 [00:37] dorion:
    http://dorion-mode.com/2021/11/the-bitcoin-address-as-a-sign-of-intelligence/
    [14:14] dorion:
    http://fixpoint.welshcomputing.com/2021/jwrd-logs-for-Oct-2021/#2996 -- I
    managed [...]
    
    Pingback by #jwrd Logs for Nov 2021 « Fixpoint — November 10, 2021 @ 00:07

 3. [...] A wide-ranging examination of actual versus subverted types of Bitcoin
    addresses and related topics. [...]
    
    Pingback by Gales Bitcoin Wallet (re)release « Fixpoint — December 3, 2021 @
    08:54

 4. @Jacob Welsh
    
    > Did you get what he meant about the attempt to import meaning & state into
    > Bitcoin?
    
    Not 100% sure, but let's start by approaching it from the other angle where
    he says, "Bitcoin is powerful and valuable for being fragmentary, not for
    being unitary." How is it fragmentary ? Each owner has to get his signature
    included in a block to spend a transaction, so fragmentary to the private
    key level.
    
    The block scarcity enforced by the blocksize war allowed nodes to be
    deployed on a wider array of hardware and in a wider array of settings, e.g.
    don't have to have a server in a data center to sync with the tip.
    
    Then, at a higher level, and perhaps not relevant to this thread, but worth
    mentioning, there's the fragmentary nature of code management in the
    V-model, i.e. whose patches do I include in my bitcoind build.
    
    On the Segtwit side, the key security is weakened and integral data of
    transactions, i.e. the signatures, is removed from the blockchain and
    maintained God only knows where, i.e. certainly full nodes don't know about
    them since they're no longer included in blocks. All for what ? Because
    proper Bitcoin is too expensive for some ? I.e. the attack by cheapening via
    supermarket :
    
    > how this works, for the record : at time t0 you have a bunch of small
    > stores catering to their specific clients, in complex and fragmented
    > demographics. As a result of this very fragmentation, total satisfaction
    > aggregated over the various groups is significant. At t1 a "supermarket"
    > shows up, and while it caters to absolutely nobody, it does offer cheaper
    > alternatives for ~some fraction~ of everyone's purchase. Over a slow
    > (adjustably slow -- by the supermarket) grind from t1 to an eventual t2,
    > the original small stores lose enough of their business to Satan so as to
    > no longer make economic sense, and consequently they are closed. Once
    > sufficient small shops are closed, Satan can finally move undisturbed to
    > its programme of "total national transformation", turning the once vibrant
    > scene of 1960s New York into the sad absence you can perceive today, from
    > Greenwich village to Hell's Kitchen. That'd be t3, where you currently
    > live.
    > 
    > That's how socialism always works, in all fields, because that's what
    > socialism fundamentally is : ruin and destruction of everything right,
    > good, proper and worth living for.
    
    So, with segtwit, they allegedly cheapen transactions with the anti-Bitcoin
    proposition some set of transactions exist outside the blockchain, i.e.
    there's meaning outside the blockchain. This cheapening is alleged because
    segtwit aren't the same as proper Bitcoin transactions and the cost of
    running power ranger spawned software isn't free either.
    
    Comment by Robinson Dorion — December 15, 2021 @ 20:11

 5. I think you got in there to the core of how the ruin works but possibly the
    answer doesn't quite scratch the itch of the question as stated because it
    doesn't identify clearly the exact wedge attempted via importing meaning and
    state.
    
    Bitcoin transactions are simply statements of coin movement from one address
    to another ("this amount of coins moves from this address to that address").
    Similar to any other statements anywhere else, Bitcoin transactions don't
    contain any implicit meaning by themselves - the meaning (if any) flows from
    a relevant source of authority. In the case of Bitcoin, that source of
    authority is the network of nodes: the meaning of a transaction is directly
    given by and strictly dependent on it being part of the longest chain.
    Hence, "there is meaning in the blockchain" but this is all there is and it
    tends to give the chills because it's indeed a very harsh, cold and
    unforgiving assignment of meaning, being as it is a Maths verdict and
    nothing else: make your statement to the network, await delivery of the
    verdict on its meaning and then... live (or die, as you prefer) with it as
    received, for it won't change in the slightest, whether you like it or not,
    whether you "agree" with it or not and in either case, there isn't at any
    time anywhere or anyone to appeal to.
    
    Confronted with the above, all proponents of "improvements" in the vein of
    "transactions without signatures" simply aim to subvert, basically chipping
    away as much as possible from the very core of what Bitcoin is, while
    maintaining (and riding) the name. So there will be attempts to import
    (inject might be a better way to describe it) meaning and state in
    transactions trying to effectively bypass or at least reduce the authority
    of the network itself as unique source of meaning for transactions and the
    direct control of each individual signature over the coins at relevant
    addresses. Hence you get "coloured coins" as if coins could be in various
    states and should for some reason be processed differently. Hence you get
    "transactions without signatures" trying to export some authority to the
    "witnesses" as if something outside the blockchain could ever have authority
    on Bitcoin transactions or as if the meaning of a transaction was in the
    statement itself and unrelated to whether the signature is accepted by the
    network or not. Basically all soft forks can be described simply as an
    attempt to inject state and pretend meaning: let's add this or that
    situation in which all of a sudden the original rules don't have to be
    applied anymore but the rules *we came up with* should apply instead because
    reasons.
    
    All such subversion attempts are done, of course, in the name of "making it
    better for everyone" despite there being plenty of voices against such
    "better" and despite history showing amply and repeatedly how it's exactly
    the "everyone" that ends up all the worse when falling for it. But the
    reckoning always comes with some delay and while the disruption is being
    subverted instead of put to use, the appearances are always rosy and there's
    less effort required to go with it than against it anyway so the "everyone"
    will flock to the supermarket today and then complain of hardship a couple
    of years down the line when "who could have predicted" such a thing and
    "what else is there to do anyway" etc.
    
    Comment by Diana Coman — December 17, 2021 @ 10:34

 6. Thank you for the detailed explanation.
    
    It makes sense that the forks are a reaction to the cold Bitcoin reality
    that, "he who has the money to spend, may spend for any reason ~whatsoever~,
    he who doesn't have the money to spend, may not, full stop."
    
    Then in the short-term, after duping the miners, they feel they get to
    parade around claiming they've made it "safer" (multi-sig) and "more
    inclusive" (segwit), eschewing all along that, no, they didn't actually get
    the nodes to accept their nonsense.
    
    When the day of reckoning does come, they'll claim Bitcoin "was hacked",
    must "upgrade" and take all our other nonsense as per footnote 18.
    
    Comment by Robinson Dorion — December 17, 2021 @ 14:17

 7. > it tends to give the chills because it's indeed a very harsh, cold and
    > unforgiving assignment of meaning, being as it is a Maths verdict and
    > nothing else
    
    Fwiw, I never found it any more cold or chilling than, say, gravity and
    momentum. If it's a force of nature then respect it and maybe learn to
    harness it -- or don't, but then don't go blaming the force for the
    predictable results.
    
    Unfortunately bitcoin isn't fully mathy that way, what with mining cartels;
    and that the soft forks have held thus far is to my eye the most direct and
    obvious proof that at least one big one exists. Whether because "duped" or
    "enemy" is perhaps not yet clear, though I'd think at the very least the
    larger pool operators ought to have known better.
    
    > Hence you get "transactions without signatures" trying to export some
    > authority to the "witnesses" as if something outside the blockchain could
    > ever have authority on Bitcoin transactions
    
    This sheds light on why it got popular besides the seemingly not that
    compelling "slightly cheaper transactions", as well as the embrace of the
    seemingly arcane and unsexy brand name. "It sets the stage to make things
    more like the squishy fiat legal system that we think we're accustomed to
    (for want of actual experience with it) and flatters our desire that the
    world run on woulds, coulds and shoulds."
    
    > When the day of reckoning does come, they'll claim Bitcoin "was hacked"
    
    This sounds like the best case scenario, e.g. someone busting the mining
    cartel and collecting the booty; the alternative "reckoning" is more the
    slow grind from a hard world of steel and stone structures to a soft one of
    mud huts, and by the time the crowd notices its poverty the decay is so far
    advanced that few will manage to connect it to the earlier causes.
    
    Comment by Jacob Welsh — December 20, 2021 @ 02:39

 8. [...] agenda to subvert Bitcoin. He says he stopped pushing for the "Segwit
    2x" hardfork after Luke-Jr's Segwit softfork attack was accepted by miners.
    One would think, after all the attacks he took from Luke-Jr, any code [...]
    
    Pingback by So where does Peter Schiff get it twisted wrt to money generally
    and Bitcoin in particular ? « Dorion Mode — December 23, 2021 @ 16:55

 9. [...] the address is always the number "1".(ix) All other purported address
    schemes are being pushed by known scammers and their victims(x) and carry
    catastrophic risk, so mind your step, will yee [...]
    
    Pingback by The ownership of Bitcoin : custody, transactions and dispute
    resolution. « Dorion Mode — April 4, 2023 @ 21:13

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