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Output descriptors provide a simple and effective solution to the problem of recovering keys from an extended public or private key in a Bitcoin wallet. With output descriptors, users can easily recover their bitcoins and previous transaction history by describing the derivation path and range of keys with the UTXOs and transactions. By using output descriptors, users can import their receiving and change scriptPubKeys during a wallet import, making it easier to recover their Bitcoin wallet. With the support of output descriptors and miniscript in Bitcoin Core, users can enjoy a more efficient and secure Bitcoin wallet experience.

For a fourth year running, regular Bitcoin Core contributors received a survey to surface priorities and ensure that people feel that they can contribute effectively. This blog post is a summary of the results in a format similar to last year’s survey.

Multisig solutions are not new to bitcoin. The concept was first pioneered and formalized into the standard Bitcoin protocol as early as 2012 but only started getting traction in 2014 after the shutdown of the Silk Road and the collapse of the bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox. The two adverse events urged developers to promote a better way to obtain maximum security against hacks and confiscation by authorities. If you get past the inconvenience of setting up a multisig wallet and the technical learning required, multisig can help you achieve greater peace of mind with your bitcoin by adding an extra layer of security to your holdings.

RGB and Taro are two new protocols that enable token issuance on Bitcoin, and are therefore expected to bring stablecoin transactions on Lightning. RGB, with its ambitions as a smart-contracting layer on top of Bitcoin (i.e., not just for tokens), has a robust on-chain protocol to execute off-chain state transitions. Careful design has resulted in superior privacy, on-chain scalability and versatility, at the cost of conceptual complexity. On the other hand, Taro seems to be more focused on off-chain use, such as on the Lightning Network, specifying methods for multi-hop payments and token exchange. However, among the practical shortcuts Taro has taken in favor of conceptual simplicity is its neglect to standardize at least one basic building block of its on-chain protocol.

Bitcoin introduced a cryptographic peer-to-peer version of money that allows online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Many recent studies evaluated and criticised Bitcoin’s energy consumption through its Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism without evaluating its efficiency compared to classical electronic payment system. Based on physics, information science and economics, the paper computes and compares the energy consumption and define what is the energy efficiency of both the current monetary payment system and Bitcoin cryptopayment system. The paper demonstrates that Bitcoin consumes at least 28 times less energy and can run today with 60 times less energy than the classical system. At a single transaction level and with total volumes accounted for, Bitcoin produces equivalent energy efficiency rates or better. When Bitcoin Lightning is compared to Instant Payment scheme, Bitcoin gains exponentially in scalability and efficiency, proving to be millions of times more energy efficient per transaction than Instant Payments.

BOLT, which stands for "Basis of Lightning Technology", refers to a set of technical specifications or protocols that define the rules and procedures for how the Lightning Network should operate. BOLT was first introduced in 2017 by a group of developers working on the Lightning Network, and since then, it has undergone several updates and revisions. The protocols are open source and available to anyone who wants to use or develop Lightning-related applications and services. There are several layers to BOLT, each of which defines a specific set of rules and protocols. Overall, BOLT provides a comprehensive specification for the Lightning Network, allowing different implementations to interoperate with each other seamlessly.

While Secure Elements sound like a fantastic place to store something like a Seed Phrase, they’re also closed source, proprietary chips that cannot be openly verified due to NDAs the manufacturers force everyone to sign. So if you want your Hardware Wallet to be entirely FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), you can’t use them. Many of the top Hardware Wallets out there all use the same STM32 microcontroller, which becomes a problem because now you have the vast majority of Hardware Wallets all using the same product from the same manufacture: STMicroelectronics.

Nostr is a revolutionary protocol for social media because it provides a decentralized, monetizable, incentive-aligned, market-driven, and open-source platform for social interaction. Nostr has the potential to create a new era of social media that prioritizes user sovereignty and free market competition.

The only Bitcoin spending conditions in widespread use today are simple single-sigs and simple multisigs, even though Bitcoin Script, the language used to encode spending conditions in Bitcoin transactions, is much more powerful than that. The reason for this is that Bitcoin Script, while appearing to be a simple stack-based language on the surface, is actually very difficult to use in practice. For every new spending condition a developer might want to create, a lot of time has to be spent making sure it is correct and sound under all circumstances, which can be hard to reason about.

Bitcoin is an open-source project that is permissionless, meaning anyone can join the network and become part of the network. While Running a bitcoin node can help secure the network for all users, ensure faster transactions, and contribute to a decentralised economy that exists without a centralized server, it does require some operational and security practices. This article is essential if you plan on running a node or run one and want to ensure you’re plugging some of the possible gaps for an attack.

BIP-300, which enables a feature called Drivechains on the Bitcoin network. Normally, one would hope that the author of a BIP is not very central or relevant to whether or not it gets attention, but as Sztorc seems to be the major voice continuing to push for Drivechain after being essentially rejected or ignored on the forums and mailing list, it might be worth knowing this brief background & motivation. Sztorc is no intellectual slouch, and he's very open about his conviction that the success of Bitcoin is fully dependent on its adoption of Drivechain. Drivechains fundamentally change the transaction validation mechanism from “all spends must provide cryptographic proofs” to “some spends do not require cryptographic proofs”. It fundamentally changes the ability to attack the network from “the attacker must acquire 51% of the hash rate” to “the attacker must propose a transaction and fight out ownership in meatspace”. It fundamentally changes attack response from “move hash away from the bad actor” (e.g., out of a pool, or by adding more honest hash) to “convince all the miners or nodes to do a UASF in favor of one party over another”.

It's great to see Bitcoiners joining Nostr, the decentralized social network. This is a good, short post from ConsentOnChain blog that all Nostriches should read.

Behavioral economics has long been cited to describe our “irrational tendencies” as consumers and investors. Rich extends that discussion specifically to Bitcoin because, let’s face it, when it comes to crypto in general and Bitcoin specifically, the influence of emotions, biases, heuristics and social pressure in shaping our preferences, beliefs and behaviors is profound… and fascinating.

Over the past decade the crypto asset ecosystem has exploded in size and complexity. While the overwhelming majority of projects are arguably scams or simply shitty ideas, one in a hundred does manage to innovate and find product market fit. Bitcoin maximalism has evolved as a result, but it has also become more complex as schisms have appeared. Bitcoin is inherently counterculture. It is an adversarial environment. We should not expect that everyone will get along. Bitcoin is for enemies. Bitcoin maximalism itself is neither good nor bad; it was born as a rational pushback to flawed narratives used to perpetuate scams and poorly architected projects. What we’ve witnessed over the past decade is an evolution and fracturing of folks who hold maximalist views. Some have chosen more nuanced paths while others have remained absolutists. Bitcoin maximalism is neither dead nor is it dying. It is alive and well, though perhaps it’s suffering from an identity crisis as a result of some folks trying to make it a more exclusive subculture.

When you broaden your perspective of bitcoin from a currency and payment system to that of a secure historical ledger, it becomes clear that these properties, in conjunction with each other, can enable powerful applications. Some of bitcoin’s properties are difficult to describe comprehensively. While permissionlessness (anyone can use the system without asking permission or fear of being censored) and transparency (anyone can audit the ledger) are straightforward, trustlessness and immutability are more complex. With a strongly anchored blockchain to use as a foundation, an ecosystem of many chains can develop. As such, bitcoin can be the “one chain to rule them all“ while simultaneously fostering a diverse array of blockchains. If you need a strong proof of your service’s data integrity, don’t choose second best – anchor to the most trustworthy chain.

This article details why the incumbent global financial system is irreversibly broken, how it got to this point, and what the world will look like coming out the other side of the present crisis. It uses the frameworks presented in Ray Dalio’s Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises along with author's own analysis to contextualize the global economic landscape, and details how the emergence of bitcoin as a global monetary asset will serve as a release valve.

It's easy to see how early adopters of real estate on some forbidding frontier earned their wealth, even if it was only by being early and willing to risk ruin. We also have little trouble celebrating early investors in Amazon or Google or Apple for their foresight and daring to bet on a bold vision of the future. And yet, many people seem unwilling or unable to grant the same recognition to early Bitcoin adopters. When it comes to Bitcoin, the broader public is quick to label early adopters as somehow lucky for the riches they didn’t seem to earn. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you think Bitcoin’s wealth distribution is fair or not. All that really matters is whether you decide to secure some acreage for the benefit of your family and its future generations, as Juan Camarillo did.

In the United States, the banking system as a whole has $22.9 trillion in assets and $20.7 trillion in liabilities. The problem, of course, is that their assets are riskier and less liquid than their liabilities, and so they face both liquidity risks and solvency risks if things aren’t managed well, or if they face external shocks that are larger than they can deal with. The majority of bank liabilities are deposits for individuals and businesses, and these deposits currently total $17.6 trillion. That’s what you and I consider to be our “money”. They offer very low interest rates, especially for checking and savings accounts. Banks currently have just $3 trillion in cash to back up their $17.6 trillion in deposits. The majority of this cash is just a ledger entry with the U.S. Federal Reserve, and so it is not tangible. Somewhere around $100 billion of it ($0.1 trillion) is held by banks in the form of actual physical banknotes in vaults and ATMs. So, the $17.6 trillion in deposits are backed up by just $3 trillion in cash, of which perhaps $0.1 trillion is physical cash. The rest is backed up by less liquid securities and loans. Regulators want banks to be reasonably safe, but not “too safe”. They want all banks to be leveraged bond funds to a certain degree, and won’t allow safer ones to exist.

Open commerce requires the transfer of both information and value. Therefore, both open monetary networks and open information networks (and their actual usage rather than merely their existence) matter for the study of economics, geopolitics, and various long-range investment outcomes. In general, any jurisdiction that is attractive in the sense that people and capital want to come to it, and information can be shared freely within it and with the rest of the world, should welcome such technologies. Open monetary and information networks, especially if their usage spreads around the world in ways that are hard to prevent, enable and accelerate more value flowing into these freer jurisdictions from elsewhere. Borders become less relevant from an economic point of view. On the other hand, any jurisdiction that is unattractive in the sense that people and capital want to escape it, and information is restricted within it and with the rest of the world in order to protect the rulers, should fear such technologies. Open monetary and information networks create more leaks of capital and information into and out of their jurisdictions, empowering their people, or forcing more expenditure by their rulers to increase the existing restrictions to maintain their isolation.

One of the more misunderstood topics in the world is banks. How they work, how they succeed, and how they fail are all things that are typically described with some mix of factual accuracy, factual inaccuracy, deliberate obfuscation, and straight up confusion so profound it is neither correct nor incorrect, but rather so incoherent it seems like it originated from another dimension. To that end, in light of the current Silvergate situation, I am going to endeavor to do three things with this post: 1. Describe a deliberately oversimplified model of how a bank works 2. Describe how banks typically fail, in light of this model 3. Apply points one and two to the current situation at Silvergate

As Powell and the Federal Reserve are emboldened to tighten policy into a global slowdown, with the dollar strengthening to new highs on a weekly basis and energy prices skyrocketing around the world, we view it as increasingly likely that something breaks in a massive way over the next six months. Six months may even be too generous of a timeline. Given the Fed plans to begin quantitative tightening next month, reducing its balance sheet to the tune of $95 billion per month, we expect something under the surface will crack in financial markets. With this being said, we think what “breaks” is liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market, as a soaring dollar, skyrocketing energy prices and subsequently contracting global productivity lead to a sell-off in dollar-denominated assets. There still is a massive implicit short dollar position around the world (USD-denominated debt). We still have yet to see the blow-off top short squeeze in the USD. In that environment only two places are safe, volatility (as an asset class) and dollars. Everything else sells. Bitcoin won't be insulated, nothing will. When that time comes, the Fed will be forced to print into an inflation spike. This is when bitcoin comes back with a vengeance.

Bitcoin mining is currently one of the most competitive and fragmented industries in the world. Our Porter’s Five Forces analysis indicates that the bitcoin mining industry will remain ultra-competitive and fragmented. The industry has exceptionally low barriers to entry, meaning there will be a constant flow of new entrants into the sector. The low barriers to entry are great for decentralization but put pressure on the profit potential of existing players. The ultra-competitive nature of bitcoin mining has two implications. Firstly, the industry will likely stay decentralized, and secondly, only the lowest-cost operators will survive and thrive over the long term.

While bitcoin’s usefulness as a store of value and medium of exchange is becoming more widely appreciated, those choosing to adopt it tend to cluster into stages. These stages are: Learn, Insure, Save, Allocate, Commit, and Endure

“Bitcoin” encompasses two related but distinct concepts. First, individual bitcoins (lowercase b) are units of (fiat) digital currency. Second, the Bitcoin protocol (uppercase B) governs the decentralized network through which thousands of computers across the globe maintain a “public ledger”—known as the blockchain—that keeps a fully transparent record of every authenticated transfer of bitcoins from the moment the system became operational in early 2009. In short, Bitcoin encompasses both (1) an unbacked digital currency and (2) a decentralized online payment system. Whether Bitcoin becomes a bona fide money is still an open empirical question, but at this point—since Bitcoin is already a medium of exchange—Mises’s regression theorem doesn’t have any bearing on the outcome.​

Transcript of the 24 Risks of Equities with Michael Saylor from the Bitcoin Layer Podcast. Michael covers the following risks: #1: Governance Risk #2: Operational Risk #3: Strategic Risk #4: Financial Risk #5: Competitive Risk #6: Technology Risk #7: Political Risk #8: Facilities Risk #9: Regulatory Risk #10: Employee Risk #11: Vendor Risk #12: Customer Risk #13: Reputational Risk #14: War Risk #15: Currency Risk #16: Tax Risk #17: Weather Risk #18: Customs Risk #19: Legal Risk #20: Tort Risk #21: Patent Risk #22: Health Risk #23: Lifecycle Risk #24: Dilution Risk

Nostr is for developers. It’s an open-source project for builders that serves as a broadcast platform and content hub aggregate. From the architecture alone, we can start to differentiate it from Twitter or any other existing platform. This protocol is newly, actively developed — so while it tugs at the root of topics like free speech and privacy, the tech itself is in its nascent stages. Nostr aims to decentralize private communications and data while allowing us to interact in new ways. For all of those reasons, we should learn about it — perhaps in the same way some of us should have learned about Meta products before dishing our credentials.

On one side of this, a sharp and persistent increase in the broad money supply is the biggest quantifiable correlate with price inflation. On the other side, sharp changes in the supply of goods and services (e.g. a major boom or a major loss in productive capacity) also significantly affect price inflation. We can see this with long-term charts of several different developed countries as examples. These charts show the five-year rolling cumulative amount of broad money supply growth and consumer price index growth. Areas where money supply growth greatly exceeded changes to consumer price index were generally due to some sort of productivity boom. combination of high debt, high interest rates on that debt, aging demographics, geopolitical tensions, and tight energy supplies are likely to result in ongoing waves of inflation. For periods where we generally get inflation under control, it will likely be due to global demand suppression and economic stagnation, rather than what we actually want: global disinflationary growth.

Computation is competition. While the quantum computing threat is not something we expect to be worth worrying about for many years, it is better to be proactive rather than wait for it to come for us. Security is the science of staying ahead. The very act of wealth preservation is comprised of staving off the many attempts to steal it.

Abstract: In this piece we explore why Dapps are typically built on Ethereum rather than Bitcoin, which takes us all the way back to March 2014. We examine a debate about whether and how a Dapp protocol called Counterparty should use Bitcoin’s blockchain. This was sometimes called “The OP_Return Wars”. We explain the history of OP_Return usage and sidechains in Bitcoin. We conclude by arguing, whether one likes it or not, that it was the culture in the Bitcoin development community in 2014 and the negative view of using Bitcoin transaction data for alternative use cases, which played a major role in pushing developers of these Dapps onto alternative systems like Ethereum, along with other factors.

Exasperated with a conversation, I asked my friend directly, "What do you think the probability is that Bitcoin hits $1M per coin?" My friend replied without hesitation, "0.001%." I laughed and said I put it at 80%. We had a conversation about my friend's skepticism, and I wondered if there was some information asymmetry, or if it was self-motivated beliefs. My friend group is full of people like this, highly intelligent and successful, yet resistant to Bitcoin. I've found it to be a topic of fascinated frustration. I believe that my friends are resistant to Bitcoin because of their trust in the current system, and see Bitcoin as a radical departure from it. In contrast, I see Bitcoin as a necessary response to the flaws in the current system and a trust-minimized store of value.

Many speculate that Bitcoin’s security will lapse with the end of the mining subsidy. But other factors will continue to incentivize miners. Two prominent and likely factors are: (1) Higher transaction fees due to base layer settlement activity for higher layers which in turn is the result of increased adoption and (2) Bitcoin miners can act as an auxiliary tool for other business practices, an example being the highly-overlooked development in the mainstream involving the Bitcoin miners’ incentive to pursue stranded, wasted or excess energy.

After years of learning, I now devote a fair amount of my time trying to help others understand bitcoin better. While many people have referred to me as a “bitcoin expert,” I still consider myself a student – I have yet to determine how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Some thoughts on FTX... Subprime meets Enron meets Madoff - on steroids thanks to altcoins... A recipe for disaster... Framing the conversation: Key challenges for Bitcoin... Potential negative impacts of the FTX collapse... Ultimately, the impact is very positive... Is regulation the answer?

The IMF and World Bank do not seek to fix poverty, but only to enrich creditor nations. Could Bitcoin create a better global economic system for the developing world?

I selected these quotes from this amazing book by Saifedean AMMOUS. They offer only a glimpse of the richness of the book that is an absolute must read.

Sam Bankman-Fried is a con man and fraudster of historic proportions. But you might not learn that from the New York Times, CoinDesk's Chief Insights Columnist David Z. Morris writes.

Bitcoin is a dangerous place. There is an endless list of hacks, scams, and thefts. Bitcoin promises a network with distributed trust. You know why? Because other bitcoiners exist.