David A. Harding

The hardest Optech newsletters to write are those where we summarize unresolved disagreements, e.g. for or against CTV+CSFS. When everyone ends up in agreement, at least mostly, we can skip describing any arguments and jump to the conclusion. But when there's no resolution, we have to get into the details, try not to miss anything important, and be careful not to summarize in a way that misstates someone's key argument or attributes to them an opinion that they don't actually hold. On top off that, there are arguments that seem weak to me but which probably warrant describing in case I'm missing something. All that extra work is important but it's not my favorite. Also, it makes for long and hard to read newsletters, so sorry about that for next week.

Controlling your own key on Bitcoin comes with significant costs, from the cost to create a UTXO, to the eventual cost to spend it, to the potentially high cost of losing your key and the money associated with it. On nostr, controlling your own key has basically zero cost. It's one of my favorite things about nostr. If widespread control of personal keys can be made to work here, there's hope for widespread control of personal keys on Bitcoin. But if nostr fails, then I think it weakens the standard case for Bitcoin. That may sound negative, but I think it's great to be able to test individual properties of Bitcoin separately from the heavy confounding factor of it being money.

I fucking hate dealing with banks. Most days if you ask me why I work on Bitcoin, I'll probably say something about eliminating the temptation for the state to print money, with all of its disastrous effects. But every time I have to deal with a bank and must grovel to use my own fucking money, I feel the urge to hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. On days like today my work writing about Bitcoin technology is fueled entirely by rage and spite.

What's the best non-custodial Lightning wallet for Android for a U.S.-based user? I love Phoenix but they withdrew from the U.S. and it's time for me to move on.

Each morning when I check nostr, there's plenty of content in my timeline but it's almost all low-key stuff. It's not boring, but it's also not exciting. I love it.