"A reality check on the limitations of Lightning Network, and what that means in terms of its long term viability. No, it's not doomed, but it probably won't be used the way you expected it to be."

~ Shinobi

What has happened to lightning? With fees skyrocketing thanks to Ordinals bloating blockspace, tons of payments over lightning are no longer viable, or become entirely trusted. How did we not see this coming and what new issues have arisen as Lightning has matured? Does this spell the end of lightning, or is there more to this story? Find out in today's excellent piece at Bitcoin Magazine from Shinobi.

Check out the original article at Bitcoin Magazine Lightning is Doomed! (Link: https://tinyurl.com/4n54kkms)

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"The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy."

~ Thomas Sowell

The free market works because economic decisions are made by people who have skin in the game. When you spend $100 you have earned, you understand the cost. It was your sweat the created the gain, and no one can understand that cost better than you when you go to spend it. Genuine value information, and real trade offs inform the price in the market. Money is simply a reflection of the resources it is allocating. It is nothing more than a ledger system for allocating resources across time. But when someone can cheat the ledger. When the money can be counterfeited at will. It pours a torrent of noise into the economic signal. The free market is essentially destroyed. Because the allocation of your decisions, of everyone's value judgements being signaled in the market, is overrun by trillions in counterfeit. With no skin in the game, with no thought, without understanding the value that went into it, or having to pay for the cost of their errors. It is a system of economic fraud and disinformation. But the problem isn't merely an economic one. The fiat system, has another, more sinister consequence. One that is tied to the very nature of the human spirit. It's time for a Guy's Take episode.

Link to other great works and episodes referenced in the show

Guy's Take - Bitcoin Audible - Guy's Take #36 - Walking Tall (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3bevnhpx)

Audible Audiobook - Broken Money by Lyn Alden (Link: https://tinyurl.com/2p874rjm)

Audible Audiobook -⁠ Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (Link: https://a.co/d/63IJQNz)

GG NO RE podcast - Fountain (Link: https://tinyurl.com/mrmjjpuj)

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“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

~ Anne Frank

Nodeless is dead. Long live Nodeless. Unfortunately the Nodeless payment service has had to shut down, but for anyone who needs to get in touch for any issues then feel free to contact me or UTXO. Nodeless is also open source, so if you wish to setup an instance for yourself, the project is available on github:

https://github.com/nodeless-io/nodeless-monolith

Follow UTXO on Nostr for surely other great things to come:

npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8

"Clients applying this reasoning should remember that, in bitcoin, no one is too big to fail. There is no government or money printer capable of restoring lost coins, so there are no bailouts. Trusting a single company, no matter their qualifications, to protect your bitcoin creates significant counterparty risk."

~ Dhruv Bansal

We come at you with another read today, this one on the maturation and new developments in the collaborative custody industry. Today we are used to thinking of Bitcoin security as either left with a custodian, or kept in personal cold storage, while I think the future will look back on this as the immature beginnings of one of the most vibrant markets in bitcoin finance. Most of the world will exist in the middle, with shared and distributed custody providers, eliminating single points of failure in markets across the globe... and it all begins, with a network of keys...

Check out the original article at Bitcoin needs a network of keys. (Link: https://tinyurl.com/yahv5k3r)

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“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”

~ Richard P. Feynman

If you are looking to maximize your productivity, to use the Ai tools available in a way that genuinely gives you that 5x improvement of your capabilities, this is the episode for you. These are the 5 ways I am currently using Ai more than any other to maximize my output.

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"A recent anonymous proposal specifies a system using timelocked Bitcoin transactions and chaumian ecash mints to create an economic incentive for BitTorrent users to seed files."

~ Shinobi

Bittorrent was one of the most important protocols in the world during its day, but it always had one striking drawback, for any content that wasn't very popular, availability was always a problem. Even more so today as the network has found itself a smaller and more fringe part of internet culture. What if there was a way to incentivize seeders to return? To bring the P2P protocol back into its element?

An anonymous proposal called Durabit, seeks to marry bitcoin, ecash, and bittorrent, to potentially breathe new life into the old P2P system. Listen to today's episode to learn more.

Check out the original article at DURABIT: INCENTIVIZING TORRENT SEEDING WITH BITCOIN (Link: https://tinyurl.com/5drhn83u)

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"The universe, our physical universe, has that property that makes it possible for an individual or a group of individuals to reliably, automatically, even without knowing, encipher something, so that all the resources and all the political will of the strongest superpower on earth may not decipher it. And the paths of encipherment between people can mesh together to create regions free from the coercive force of the outer state. Free from mass interception. Free from state control."

~ Julian Assange

"The difference between the Linden Dollar, World of Warcraft Gold, Fortnite V-Bucks, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar is in scale, not in nature. While V-Bucks are created and controlled by Epic Games (the company that created Fortnite), the U.S. dollar is created and controlled by the Fed. One impacts millions of people, the other billions. The mechanism that keeps these monies in check--the rules of the game, if you will - is the same in both cases: central decree."

~ DerGigi

For those who are new to the show, there are so many phenomenal pieces we have covered that deserve to be heard. One of those that gave the most approachable arguments for understanding the difference between the multitude of *virtual* monies we experience in the digital age, and Bitcoin, the first truly *digital* money, was absolutely, Gigi's incredible piece, "Bitcoin is Digital Scarcity."

If you haven't heard or read this one, stop what you are doing, and turn this on.

Check out the original article at Bitcoin Is Digital Scarcity | dergigi.com (Link: https://tinyurl.com/bdv8p5n4)

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Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence." —

~ Henry David Thoreau

The election of Javier Milei is unlikely the be the next El Salvador, but I don't think it needs to be in order to be significant. There is something deeper going on for Javier to win on the message he is sending. And I think it shows the signs of a shifting tide, and Bitcoin is the island that's coming into view.

References made in the episode for further reading:

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"The only way of determining how a conscious actor values one thing above another, is by observing how they act."

~ Knut Svanholm

"The recurring cycle of economic booms followed by inevitable busts has remained a puzzle for generations of observers. While mainstream Keynesian and monetarist theories propose monetary interventions to smooth these fluctuations, the Austrian School offers a compelling and alternative perspective"

~ Michael Matulef

The bust will not be escaped. We cannot print our way out of it, we cannot cover it up with more artificial interest rate controls. We have drunken ourselves into an economic and financial stuper for far too long, we have avoided the hangover with another massive bender decade after decade - so long that we've lost sight entirely of the purpose of investment, the culture of sustainable capital, and the very reason for frugality and sustainable savings. The crash will hurt, but its the *solution*, not the problem.

Find out why in today's excellent article by first time author on Bitcoin Audible, Michael Matulef: The Inevitable Bust: Why Economic Booms Contain the Seeds of Their Own Destruction | Mises Wire. (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3zsw982z)

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"We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”

~ George Eliot

"Our first instinct when interacting with a Large Language Model should not be “wow these things must be really smart or really creative or really understanding”. Our first instinct should be “I’ve probably asked it to do something that it has seen bits and pieces of before”. That might mean it is still really useful, even if it isn’t “thinking really hard” or “doing some really sophisticated reasoning”. We don’t have to use anthropomorphization to understand what it is doing to provide us a response."

~ Mark Riedl 

Today we dive into a great piece from Mark Riedl attempting to demystify ChatGPT and large language models. Are they thinking? do they understand reason? Can we even understand what is happening inside these intelligent machines or have we created something we cannot control?

What if the truth is far simpler, and actually easy to understand? And we can cut through all the hype, fear, and confusion, to get at the heart of what this technology really is, and what an incredible tool it can be.

Don't miss this incredible piece.

Check out the original article - and drop tons of applause - at A Very Gentle Introduction to Large Language Models without the Hype | by Mark Riedl | Medium (Link: https://tinyurl.com/2wm4nmeu)

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