James O'Beirne
@jamesob
Followers
11,936
Following
903
Media
769
Statuses
8,915
delusions of adequacy / PGP: 0x25F27A38A47AD566
Joined March 2008
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Francia
• 602472 Tweets
Macron
• 470876 Tweets
#HouseOfTheDragon
• 405407 Tweets
Rhaenys
• 195109 Tweets
メディア
• 190604 Tweets
#GranHermano
• 188936 Tweets
Bautista
• 141126 Tweets
Emma
• 140490 Tweets
#loveislandusa
• 105000 Tweets
#NXTHeatwave
• 95024 Tweets
#HOTD
• 93387 Tweets
TBNW
• 84143 Tweets
Aegon
• 71938 Tweets
Vhagar
• 68960 Tweets
Serena
• 53798 Tweets
Daemon
• 45577 Tweets
Jana
• 44587 Tweets
Uruguayo
• 41957 Tweets
Marcos
• 39868 Tweets
Dudu
• 39062 Tweets
FURIA ES LEYENDA
• 37632 Tweets
Kenny
• 37508 Tweets
Ethan
• 36226 Tweets
Sunfyre
• 28937 Tweets
Bowman
• 22677 Tweets
Kordell
• 20578 Tweets
Criston Cole
• 19398 Tweets
Kaylor
• 16021 Tweets
Devers
• 15059 Tweets
Jace
• 13628 Tweets
Daia
• 13018 Tweets
Kendall
• 10641 Tweets
I've been watching markets compulsively for the last few years, and it's obvious that we're headed for some very strange times. I've been meaning to write about this - and how Bitcoin ties in - for a while, but finally got around to it this weekend.
51
300
868
So what do you call the position where
- you realize that the monetary system is broken and fixing the money is basically most important thing in civilization
- you realize blockchains are extremely experimental and bitcoin is the most conservative and safe design
(1/n)
54
103
608
In 1971, a house cost 2.5x your yearly salary. What's that number now? 10x, 15x?
Why has this changed? Haven't materials gotten cheaper, technology better?
Could it be that gov't manipulation of price of money has caused huge asset inflation => wealth gap?
40
174
533
Getting increasingly worried about the dev funding situation in Bitcoin right now. A few (really talented) Core devs are losing funding pretty soon; there apparently isn't money enough to go around.
It'd be really nice to see more Bitcoin businesses step up. This could get bad.
94
83
493
I made ~$37,000 trading in traditional markets in 2020. Some fancy derivatives trades. Real smart guy stuff. Given what I put at risk, that's about a 37% return for the year.
Know what I would've made if I had just kept my Bitcoin? About 10x that.
Who's smart now?
16
28
455
I have bizarrely elaborate home infrastructure; I self-host music streaming, DNS servers, monitoring applications, bitcoind nodes, a network isolated security system, routers, highly redundant ZFS NAS servers, file syncing, LLM models, YouTube archiving. All of this is accessible
117
21
477
Here's a copy of the note about Bitcoin I'm sending out to friends and family this season. This leans pretty heavily on "number go up," but that's what gets most people thinking.
48
95
448
I've just published a paper with a new proposal for how to construct vaults in Bitcoin, OP_VAULT. I think vaults are maybe the single most impactful change we could make to Bitcoin to help derisk custody at any scale.
57
91
459
This is the most bullish thing I've seen for Bitcoin all year
25
53
393
I would never tell someone who is actually poor to have fun staying poor.
I will absolutely tell pontificating Dunning-Krugerized macro celebrities to have fun staying poor.
12
26
300
I really like "have fun staying poor" as a meme because it has a spiritual and intellectual interpretation that is perhaps more profound than the obvious financial one.
16
46
308
Transported anywhere on earth instantaneously
Carried anywhere physically undetected
Can't be censored
Can't be diluted
Can't be confiscated
It sounds like a device out of Arthurian myth, but it's here
You can use it
You can understand it
You can work on it
7
53
290
I'm really excited for the release of NYDIG's Bitcoin Task Bounties program. This is a new and unique part of the funding ecosystem for Bitcoin, in part because it suggests entrypoints for devs that want to get involved.
43
62
292
There two things I'd like to do before biting the dust:
1. Raise a family
2. Help implement a monetary system that can't be debased or confiscated by bureaucrats
6
14
273
Man I'll never forget the feeling of dumping BCH for BTC on some shady exchange at the first possible opportunity. Probably the only form of genuine alchemy I'll ever experience.
14
4
264
Some news: I'm leaving NYC to move to Tokyo. Still working on Bitcoin (that goes without saying), just doing so at
@dglab_official
instead of
@ChaincodeLabs
.
30
8
270
I'm back working on opensource Bitcoin software full-time and I'm starting to shake the tree for funding. These are my priorities. (hint: the theme is stability)
14
52
248
- actively put yourself out there
- don't assume you're unqualified
- be honest and work hard
cool things will happen!
9
28
263
Bitcoin is a lot easier to sell than gold. Which is why you shouldn't.
4
21
255
Hi. I'm asking for money from you to keep working on Bitcoin Core. Here's a thread about it.
17
85
243
Huge red flag - Rust's serialization library serde, which is basically its stdlib for JSON, ships with a precompiled binary for which there is no alternative.
The maintainer mysteriously refuses to offer an alternative despite the fact that there is no technical reason shipping
18
23
262
Most people think that the innovation of America was representative democracy, or having a vote. That's a red herring.
America's unique feature is the explicit limitations put on government, especially as outlined in the Bill of Rights, which we're steadily reverting.
5
40
234
I've outsmarted myself out of a lot of Bitcoin. Don't try to be clever!
Use Bitcoin like a savings account, and treat USD as working capital. Sell if you need to buy something worthwhile (mortgage, school, etc.), but otherwise just let it be.
10
14
236
I've proposed draft changes for a softfork that encompasses BIP-118, BIP-119, and BIP-345. This might not be the route that we ultimately go, but having a tangible possibility on the table is important for progressing the technical discussion.
25
66
226
Market sending a clear signal on just how worried it is about Lagarde's ability to regulate Bitcoin
5
19
229
Bitcoin pulled libertarianism out of the realm of LARP, and I'm happy for it every day.
11
15
214
Hi -
@NYDIG_BTC
is hiring people who have chops with Bitcoin, Lightning, or applied cryptography. Get in touch if you're interested or know someone who is.
7
58
212
Did you ever think we'd be governed by USSR apologists?
All I’m saying is if we can’t stop a literal Soviet apparatchik becoming our top bank regulator we don’t deserve those freedoms anyway
43
112
1K
11
22
208
You're going to be a terminal user once I get through with you
I'm in the process of auditing electrum and specter-desktop for personal use, but I'm tempted to write a wallet that (i) has completely self-contained (and minimal) dependencies aside from libsecp256k1 and core, and (ii) can use GPG (ie yubikeys) to encrypt on-disk wallets.
8
2
121
15
23
212
After watching Bitcoin awhile, it's clear that some of the most serious threats will be businesses trying to shape the protocol to serve their own ends at the expense of long-term security, e.g. Segwit2x and Coinbase's UTXO snafu.
Wouldn't have been my first guess.
6
34
192
Broke: paying $44 for halibut in an airport terminal
Woke: walking around at all times with multiple tins of $3 sardines in olive oil like a total psycho
22
6
192
I've said it before and I'll probably say it many more times: the 2020s will be a continued (and unfortunate) wealth transfer from those who do not hold financial assets to those who do.
10
41
188
Last Friday I started the process of selling most of my gold.
Had to call someone on the phone, haggle over price, then go buy packing materials. Had to print out shipping labels, double box the stuff (label on each box), and then drive it to the UPS store.
18
23
191
What makes Bitcoin special - i.e. trustless, unconfiscatable, borderless - is that it's 100% digital.
As soon as you try to make it a token for a physical asset (gold, cars, houses, ...), you now need a legal system to enforce the redeemability of the token. Trustless no more.
8
30
192
In hindsight it's going to look so obvious: how the $*@# did we take on so much debt as a society and expect to get away unscathed?
14
16
186
An excerpt from the original Lightning Network paper that succinctly describes why scaling needs to happen off-chain. Volume at Visa's scale would create 400 terabytes of txn data per year.
12
61
185
.
@LynAldenContact
's latest article is maybe the most lucid, complete description of our (very unusual) monetary system that I've read. Lords of Finance was good, but this is way more concise.
5
18
188
Everything I'm reading about this policy response is just making me want to hate-buy Bitcoin. Even despite a strong conviction that BTC's going to be sold off along with every other liquid asset in the coming weeks.
18
11
184
It wasn't obvious that the combination of a new virus and the dissolution of an oil cartel would bring markets to their knees.
It *was* obvious that overleveraged corporates with historically high P/Es pumped up by unnaturally low rates can't tolerate the unexpected.
3
38
189
*checks Twitter, sees people complaining about Bitcoin maximalism*
*goes back to reviewing PRs*
5
6
179
Call your grandparents!
Way better use of 15 minutes than browsing this website.
14
4
171
Have you been thinking about taking the plunge into full time opensource Bitcoin development? There is (industry-competitive) funding available!
If you're a good engineer with interest, send me a DM and I'll be happy to talk.
21
66
172
Your blockchain isn't real unless you can sync it on this
5
9
160
A big congrats to Sjors Provoost (
@provoost
) for receiving well-deserved long term support from
@OpenSats
. Between sponsoring
@MarcoFalke
,
@josibake
, and now Sjors, I'm really proud of what OpenSats is doing to stabilize work on Core.
10
30
167
So I was thinking. Obvious we need to split up the country, right? Big problem is: who takes the national debt?
Well, leftists like MMT which says that debt "isn't actually a problem." So they should have no issue taking it while other side reboots w/hard money. Problem solved!
20
13
151
Man is there anyone left who makes a decent browser and isn't actively trying to censor the internet?
This week we saw the culmination of a four-year disinformation campaign orchestrated by the President. We have to acknowledge how the internet was misused to get here.
And we have to change it.
5K
427
1K
34
14
151
The OP_VAULT proposal has been assigned BIP number 345 🎉
20
33
153
I've created and written up a demo of a simple vault implementation using OP_CTV. I think this design has the potential to make custody at any scale much less nerve-wracking.
20
46
153
Really interesting point made at the conference by
@TheBlueMatt
about lightning that hadn't occurred to me: HTLCs for amounts below the prevailing L1 feerate are not trustless, since you're paying as much in fees to deter theft as the value of the transfer itself.
Does this mean
44
15
147
If twitter winds up being the de facto message bus for debating technical bitcoin stuff, we're not gonna have a good time.
Twitter
- doesn't support content archiving/export,
- encourages optimizing for dunks, likes, soundbites,
- unpredictably bans people, and
- is full of low
27
13
154
anyway when you find out what that position is called, let me know and I'll put it in my bio
(5/5)
40
4
155
I wrote another brief update on Bitcoin to send out to friends and family in the same style as the one I sent on Nov 30 of last year. Feel free to read and reuse.
12
28
149
Buying Uber credits over the
#LightningNetwork
on
@bitrefill
using the Joule browser extension (), no personal data required. WebLN + Joule is a great UX; nice work,
@juscamarena
@wbobeirne
!
3
55
147
Best thing I've bought all year is a printer. So good to be able to get away from a screen and read something work-related on paper.
19
0
148
Not buying any Bitcoin until either stocks get hammered (at which point I expect BTC to fall) OR we pass $9k (i.e. I'm totally wrong and it's ripping in my face). Will update thread if this changes.
23
7
143
US Bitcoiners, start thinking ahead: consider firearms training and starting the (usually months long) process to get a conceal-carry permit. You need to be able to defend yourself. It's the only real counter to $5 wrenches.
18
6
137
Alright so where is El Salvadore but with cold weather and firearm ownership?
58
4
145
Putting assets on a blockchain that aren't endogenous to the chain itself doesn't work, because if possession isn't 10/10ths of the law you're just backing up to a traditional judicial system.
Bitcoin is the only thing that a blockchain fundamentally makes sense for.
Seth Green developed a whole show around his bored ape, because by owning the NFT he owned the right to that character. Then someone stole it.
Now Seth doesn’t own the IP to the character in his show anymore
290
490
4K
20
22
141
Using a router supplied by your ISP is probably facilitating state access to your home network.
Using a router you bought in a store is probably facilitating state access to your home network.
At least make it harder on them.
9
26
135
Great first-time contributions to Bitcoin Core:
- reviewing PRs by building/testing locally,
- adding test coverage, and
- best thing: finding bugs, whether conceptual or in code
Common, well-intended, but often not well-received:
- refactoring,
- reviewing PRs with only nits
2
34
137
Dear Californians emigrating to Texas,
Congratulations! Enjoy the breakfast tacos. Remember to have the humility to leave any state-destroying leftist politics in their right place: smoldering in the wreckage from whence you came.
10
4
126
- you see that the risk-adjusted innovation that bitcoin has delivered is far ahead of anything else
- you only want to devote your time to a system that will plausibly yield a censorship-resistant digital money with a supply schedule that can't be controlled by humans
(4/n)
5
2
131
- you don't think altcoins are inherently immoral, but you do think it's sad that 98% of those involved lack the technical wherewithal to realize how unsafe and speculative they are
- you realize that research on other coins, though destined for failure, can benefit bitcoin
(2/n)
3
4
125
Massive, massive respect for those who remain polite and patient with people on the internet, even under a barrage of insults. It's really hard, but heroic! Gives me hope every time I see it.
5
10
129
Building on a post
@ajtowns
wrote back in June, I've put together some thoughts on how bitcoin might scale to a lot of users, and the implications on consensus design.
22
40
128
During the past few weeks, the OP_VAULT proposal has evolved, largely thanks to work from
@theinstagibbs
and
@ajtowns
. The design is now simpler and more composable with other parts of Bitcoin, both current and future.
8
37
122
When you buy, use, work on Bitcoin, you are implicitly saying:
"no one should be able to tell me who I can or can't send money to," and "no one should be able to redistribute money that I have saved."
If this doesn't sound right, check your premises.
4
27
114
"Nice business ya got there. Be a real... shame if something happened to it."
> This is the type of letter executives at
@stripe
,
@Mastercard
and
@visa
(former
@Libra_
members) have received.
> Many executives may have chosen not to experiment and innovate in order to avoid regulatory pressure!Sad!
> America can do better!
> Source:
90
277
600
3
13
114
I'm in the process of auditing electrum and specter-desktop for personal use, but I'm tempted to write a wallet that (i) has completely self-contained (and minimal) dependencies aside from libsecp256k1 and core, and (ii) can use GPG (ie yubikeys) to encrypt on-disk wallets.
8
2
121
"Developing Bitcoin is not a race. If we have to, waiting 42 months ensures we're not setting a negative precedent."
-
@TheBlueMatt
3
27
118
I will uncritically buy this narrative (even though it's probably just lucky timing)
7
15
118
Don't make the mistake I made. Don't sell your coin. Over the next five years, you will not beat Bitcoin.
2
6
115
It isn't possible for every millionaire to own a single Bitcoin. If they bought up the whole supply, each could own at most 0.45 BTC.
6
8
109
Not gonna stop repeating this one:
big proposals in Bitcoin should be accompanied with a working prototype
19
5
116