Tela Network

Borges: What's your opinion, StJohn? StJohn Piano: If quantum computing can crack public keys, that means all modern banking systems have a really bad time. People always do the "quantum computing will be the end of Bitcoin" interpretative dance, but seem incapable of making the mental connection to the existing banking system, which also runs on cryptography. Some version of this story has been published regularly since Bitcoin began. A lot of it is clickbait: combine "quantum" and "Bitcoin" for maximum effect, with a side order of "haha Bitcoin is going to break you guys". There's definitely a scenario where quantum computing becomes a problem for Bitcoin. But focusing on Bitcoin here is remarkably shortsighted, because that scenario would be a nuclear wasteland for the rest of the financial and digital infrastructure as well.

Q: All previous attempts to create independent digital currencies were made illegal. Why is Bitcoin still legal ? A: They didn't fail because they were made illegal. They failed because they could be made illegal. Satoshi's emphasis in the abstract of his paper is perfect. He solved the double spend problem, which was the last piece in the puzzle that neither Wei Dai nor Nick Szabo nor a teenage Peter Todd could figure out. Solving it removed the need to trust a centralised third party. Listen to Peter Todd's interview with Peter McCormack on What Bitcoin Did. Peter Todd thought the fundamental problem was limiting the issuance of new currency. But Satoshi realised the real problem was more broad - how do we make it expensive to update the ledger (which includes but is not limited to issuing new currency). He did this using proof of work as a mechanism to update the blockchain. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/amzrmu/in_1998_wei_dai_came_up_with_his_ingenious_idea

is that digital money requires credible history. Satoshi found that: - the central problem of digital money is the double-spending attack - the central requirement for a solution is a trustworthy source of transaction ordering - a timestamp server From these two aspects flow these points in the Bitcoin whitepaper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf - "a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server" - "computational proof of the chronological order of transactions" - "The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes." - "We define an electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures." - "The only way to confirm the absence of a transaction is to be aware of all transactions." - "To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proof-of-work system" - "Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote." - "Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one"

I think the primary inspiration for Bitcoin was Adam Back's Hashcash, not Wei Dai's b-money. 1) Satoshi's email to Wei Dai indicates that he had not previously read the b-money post: "I was very interested to read your b-money page. ... Adam Back (hashcash.org) noticed the similarities and pointed me to your site." 2) The Bitcoin whitepaper cites b-money only as support: "transactions must be publicly announced [1]" 3) The Bitcoin whitepaper cites Hashcash by name: "a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back's Hashcash" 4) The format and style of the Bitcoin whitepaper closely matches the Hashcash paper. In contrast, the b-money post is plaintext. http://www.hashcash.org/papers/hashcash.pdf NB: The Hashcash paper cites b-money. 5) Satoshi's first post cites Hashcash by name: "New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work." https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html

/ If women are disproportionately insecure about their youth and beauty, men are disproportionately insecure about their ability to be economically productive, because most men realize early on in their life that who they are deep down - their fears, their interest, their dreams, and all the other deeper aspects of their character - will come second to being a tool for others. Men need to be a tool that provides some degree of value for other people in basically all situations. It doesn't necessarily have to be economic in nature, but it _does_ have to have some sort of impact. Because the worst type of man is not necessarily an evil man, nor is it a hateful man. In this life, the worst type of man is a man who never learned how to be a useful tool for others. / https://substack.com/inbox/post/189931070

Yes. More: "War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free." - Heraclitus "The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other." - Walter Bagehot "Tyrants of all kinds (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that it will appear as a preparation and stepladder to themselves." - Nietzche "Bein' a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it. There is only three things you need to remember, which are, viz: one obey orders two give it to the enemy good and hard three don't die. Got that? Right! You're nearly there! Well done! I propose to assist you in the execution of all three! You are my little lads and I will look after you! In the meantime, you got duties!" - Sergeant Jackrum, Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett

Friday, August 22, 2008 4:38 PM 1) Satoshi Nakamoto to Wei Dai "I was very interested to read your b-money page. I'm getting ready to release a paper that expands on your ideas into a complete working system." 2013-04-18 2) Adam Back posted to the BitcoinTalk forums a self-introduction mentioning that "I believe it was me who got Wei Dai's b-money reference added to Satoshi's bitcoin paper when he emailed me about hashcash back in 2008" "the actual bitcoin mining is basically my hashcash invention..." 3) bitcoin.org was registered on 2008-08-18. 4) b-money: http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt 5) b-money was announced on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998. https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/11/msg00941.html 6) Adam Back's commentary on b-money: https://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1998/12/msg00203.html Source: Wei Dai/Satoshi Nakamoto 2009 Bitcoin emails https://gwern.net/doc/bitcoin/2008-nakamoto

This seems related... / Waluigi is the ultimate example of the individual shaped by the signifier. Waluigi is a man seen only in mirror images; lost in a hall of mirrors he is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. You start with Mario - the wholesome all Italian plumbing superman, you reflect him to create Luigi - the same thing but slightly less. You invert Mario to create Wario - Mario turned septic and libertarian - then you reflect the inversion in the reflection: you create a being who can only exist in reference to others. Waluigi is the true nowhere man, without the other characters he reflects, inverts and parodies he has no reason to exist. Waluigi's identity only comes from what and who he isn't - without a wider frame of reference he is nothing. He is not his own man. In a world where our identities are shaped by our warped relationships to brands and commerce we are all Waluigi. / https://theemptypage.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/critical-perspectives-on-waluigi

Bitcoin is the first modern monetary system that is outside of the political control of any state. In the pre-modern era (earlier than the French Revolution), gold (and to some extent silver) was above the state. If the state issued too much currency, its value would visibly decrease relative to gold. However, tech advancement caused gold to become too difficult to protect on a small scale. Gold centralized into a few major locations inside states. It became impossible for an individual to escape the effect of money printing. Inflation is effectively another tax. (It also destroys the measuring stick that we use for value, and therefore for business.) For most young people, a house is out of reach. This was one of the only remaining ways to escape (somewhat, and badly) the debasement of inflation. For the next 15-30 years, despite the scams / fear / uncertainty / doubt, I think that Bitcoin will remain the most achievable method available to a young person to save for the future.

/ The God of Norway is the God of Genesis 1-2, the spirit that moves over the face of the deep before anything has been separated or named, before light had been divided from the darkness or the waters above from the waters below. It’s the God that precedes language. It’s the God who exists in the formless void, in the silence before the first command, who is not happy or unkind but simply terrifyingly there and everywhere. Sitting on that ridge in Lofoten with the Norwegian Sea stretched beyond you in every direction, grey and endless and alive with a power that has nothing to do with you, you understand why the world’s ancient first instinct was not to worship this God but to survive his wrath. The separation of the waters in Genesis is not a creation story but a survival one. Someone had to put a boundary between the sea and the sky so human beings could exist in that small little space between them. / https://minutes.substack.com/p/reflections-on-norway