My most controversial bitcoin opinion is Dennis Porter made the best use of the Bitcoin engagement farm by flexing it into state level advocacy that’s led to more state level legislation than dedicated Bitcoin think tanks And most of the influencer hate against him is jealousy / envy. It’s a countersignal. There are people out there engagement farming as much as him and ending up on the wrong side of many bitcoin “issues” du jour

Gotta hang on to the freedom tech

The miner previously famous for announcing they were only going to mine ofac compliant blocks has launched a private txn submission product whose main feature is easily bypassing mempool policy. Pieter Wuille in an interview with optech said “[Out of band payments and private mempools are] our biggest enemy. Among the top contenders of the biggest threats to Bitcoin in the short to medium term” If private mempools become more attractive than the p2p mempool built into core, Bitcoin will have a serious centralization problem. Now imagine the company running that private mempool also has a press release out that they only mine ofac compliant blocks. See where this is going? So much of this conversation has been caught up in jpeg this and censorship that, when in reality this is the real problem. Literally the ofac block company is standing up the service that could actually seriously harm Bitcoin. Knowingly? I don’t know, and honestly I’m sure the core devs had something to say about it, but I’m surprised the social media hornets nest did not. Instead of hearing this very compelling message in support of core’s actions, I’ve been reading all this shit about this core dev actually isn’t very smart and mempool policies are censorship Actually. It is such a missed opportunity to align actual significant efforts to maintain bitcoin’s decentralization and neutrality with the social immune system of the Bitcoin community. I wish I had put it together sooner. Core is supposed to write good code, but there’s this secret other thing that needs to be done, and that’s making sure people run it. I don’t think it’s entirely the Core devs’ jobs, but I think the bit would have helped a lot. Code is law but it’s nothing if no one runs it. I feel like no one wanted to stir the pot? But every core dev is adjacent to a professional pot stirrer. What are the influencers good for if not this? And now, instead of being a little mean to one of the literal worst miners, core has to deal with people questioning whether they’ll even run their code. It’s a shame because I think the threat is real, and the actions are justified. Being a little clearer about the reasons why would do a lot.

David Bailey really did it All the buckling up was worth it 🥹

If I were wanting to make a big impact on bitcoin payments and I was working with big fintech apps with Bitcoin capability. I’d ship Pay to lightning from fiat. Buy / send out in one step (after confirmation of course) - no btc exposure for people who don’t want it - maximal compatibility globally - further shores up the access argument. Big fintechs can make this happen for many users

Ideas are meaningless without execution and the ability to follow through. If you’re only able to copy someone else, you’re always a step behind.