Jan 31, 2022
Veteran Bitcoin commentator and inventor of Drivechains Paul Sztorc joins the show to talk Bitcoin's sustainability and the role of merged mined side chains. In this episode:
- Why Paul is the ‘Steely Dan’ of Bitcoin
- Revisiting ‘Measuring decentralization’
- Revisiting Paul’s argument on Proof of Stake being veiled PoW
- Why you should roll your own statistics
- Concentration of power in miners and mining pools
- Is PoW worthless if it isn’t challenged?
- How Bitcoin energy FUD is based on neo-malthusianism
- The Julian Simon / Paul Ehrlich wager
- Why none of our resources are finite
- How climate change diplomacy is neo-colonial
- Why and when innovation happens
- Why Paul is a critic of Bitcoin development culture
- Paul’s critique of Stock to Flow
- Why Bitcoin culture is static
- Why Bitcoin needs more satire
- Bitcoin fees are 80-100x less than those of Ethereum
- Why BTC fees are not sustainably high
- Why Bitcoin fees and security budget need to grow over time
- Can you just wait for more confirmations if security spend declines
- Are fees destined to be effectively 0 through the creation of more blockspace?
- The history of Drivechains /BIP300
- Does merge mining make it more expensive to run a node?
- Do we know how to upgrade Bitcoin Core today?
- The relevance of sidechains and merge mining to Bitcoin today
- Was Satoshi into altcoins?
- Would more sidechain development have inhibited the growth of Ethereum?
- Does BIP300 solve the problem of the Bitcoin security budget?
- Why you can’t reduce blockspace to increase security budget?
- Update on Drivechains
Content mentioned in this episode:
- Truthcoin, Security Budget in the Long Run
- Truthcoin, Security Budget II, Low Fees, and Merged Mining
- Truthcoin, Measuring Decentralization
- Truthcoin, Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work
- All about Drivechains/ Bip300/301
Sponsor notes:
- Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Learn more at fireblocks.com