Dont forget the USD is the real shitshow. Stealing from everyone forever.

Long 48 hours of redoing some private key generation, dice rolls, remembering set ups, triple checking, testing back ups. Silver lining: was mostly ready. Sparrow fire. Good practice doing this. Also, wife, fully engaged, asking tons of questions.

The focus on Fed rate is pure noise. Short-term rates mean nothing. Real rate is determined by the market (=10+yr bond sales). When appetite is low for US 10y they MUST raise the rate to attract more suckers (=buyers). When market tells them _no thanks_, they will just buy debt themselves = yield curve control = fiscal dominance = ponzi Opt out.

BIP 110 contentious debate is a nothing-burger compared to what could be coming...... Wait til governments and large corporations are disagreeing about bitcoin + censoring each other. It will always be work/physical energy that resolves conflict. Gold was a physical, bearer asset. I have the Gold, I make the rules until someone takes it from me. In Bitcoin real physical energy also resolves the conflict. Economic nodes. Hashers. Out-of-bound transactions: real work, in the real world. The way to transact in a future hostile world will be: run an economic node, build blk-templates yourself, harness energy, hash. Always without permission. Always with real work.

The Historical Reason Electrum Servers Exist When the Electrum wallet was created in 2011, Bitcoin Core could not serve light clients. The Electrum protocol was invented specifically to decouple the wallet from the node: Bitcoin Core stays in charge of consensus and the P2P network. Electrum Server traverses Core’s data and builds a fast, queryable address database. Electrum Wallet (or Sparrow, BlueWallet, etc.) connects to the server and downloads only the tiny slice of data relevant to the user’s keys. This architecture let phones and laptops run wallets without downloading 600 GB of blockchain. The Modern Alternative (Block Filters) There is a newer way to achieve a similar goal without trusting a specific Electrum server: BIP 158 compact block filters (client-side filtering / Neutrino). Bitcoin Core can build a filter index (blockfilterindex=1). Instead of asking a server “what is my history?”, the light client downloads a small, compressed filter for each block and checks if any of its addresses might appear in that block. If the filter matches, the client fetches the full block (or relevant transaction) from the node. This is more private (the server doesn’t learn your addresses) but still requires more bandwidth and CPU on the client than the Electrum protocol. Because compact block filters are relatively heavy for small devices, the Electrum protocol remains the dominant method for desktop and mobile wallets. Bottom Line You need both: Core’s RPC to run the node, validate the chain, and broadcast transactions. An Electrum server to let light wallets query the chain by address quickly. One provides the raw truth; the other provides a fast lookup layer on top of it.

What percent of self custody maxis do you think lost their stack?

The Historical Reason Electrum Servers Exist When the Electrum wallet was created in 2011, Bitcoin Core could not serve light clients. The Electrum protocol was invented specifically to decouple the wallet from the node: Bitcoin Core stays in charge of consensus and the P2P network. Electrum Server traverses Core’s data and builds a fast, queryable address database. Electrum Wallet (or Sparrow, BlueWallet, etc.) connects to the server and downloads only the tiny slice of data relevant to the user’s keys. This architecture let phones and laptops run wallets without downloading 600 GB of blockchain. The Modern Alternative (Block Filters) There is a newer way to achieve a similar goal without trusting a specific Electrum server: BIP 158 compact block filters (client-side filtering / Neutrino). Bitcoin Core can build a filter index (blockfilterindex=1). Instead of asking a server “what is my history?”, the light client downloads a small, compressed filter for each block and checks if any of its addresses might appear in that block. If the filter matches, the client fetches the full block (or relevant transaction) from the node. This is more private (the server doesn’t learn your addresses) but still requires more bandwidth and CPU on the client than the Electrum protocol. Because compact block filters are relatively heavy for small devices, the Electrum protocol remains the dominant method for desktop and mobile wallets. Bottom Line You need both: Core’s RPC to run the node, validate the chain, and broadcast transactions. An Electrum server to let light wallets query the chain by address quickly. One provides the raw truth; the other provides a fast lookup layer on top of it.

Reasonable. Only needs to be a relatively small slice that takes the self-custody route. Important that the path exists and isnt fraught with complexity or uncertainty. To keep the custodians honest, we always have to have the option of taking the asset, and holding it. We now have more time. This setback will reverberate for years..... stay the course. Stay humble. Stack. Take personal responsibilty

Silver lining to this CC hack/gate/fiasco: there is much work to do to make self custody easier + secure for the common man. But is must be done. Bitcoin definitely fails if some cant self custody. It actually doesnt need to be that many, just some with the option to if the custodians f-around. Enough to keep them honest. IMO this will scare the normies, as it should and keep it underground for longer. We have a lot more time to build and learn. LFG

Maple AI: A server exposes an RPC (Remote Procedure Call) interface so other programs can talk to it programmatically. Think of it as the server’s control panel: instead of a human clicking buttons, another piece of software sends a command and gets a response. Here is why that is necessary, especially for something like a Bitcoin node. 1. The Daemon Is Headless Servers like bitcoind run in the background with no window, menu, or buttons. RPC is the only way to ask it questions or give it orders while it is running. Without RPC, the process would just sit there peer-to-peer syncing blocks, and you would have no way to query balances, send transactions, or check sync status. 2. Separation of Concerns The node’s main job is to validate blocks and stay in sync with the P2P network. Wallet logic, user interfaces, and business applications are built on top of the node, not inside it. RPC lets those external tools live in separate processes—or even on separate machines—while still commanding the node. Examples of what uses RPC: bitcoin-cli (the built-in command-line tool is just an RPC client) Wallets (Sparrow, Specter, BlueWallet, Electrum servers) Lightning nodes (LND, Core Lightning need to query on-chain state and broadcast transactions) Payment processors (BTCPay Server asks the node to verify payments) Scripts and bots (automated sweeping, balance checks, alerts) 3. The Two Ports Do Different Things Bitcoin Core listens on two separate networks: Port 8333 (P2P): Speaks the Bitcoin peer protocol. This is node-to-node traffic—gossiping blocks and transactions across the internet. Port 8332 (RPC): Speaks JSON-RPC. This is client-to-node traffic—your applications asking your node for private data or actions. If you only had the P2P port, you could relay blocks, but you could never ask your own node “what is my wallet balance?” or “send this transaction.” RPC is the query and control layer. 4. Service Integration In a stack like Start9, the Bitcoin node is one container and the other services (indexers, Lightning, explorers) are separate containers. They communicate via RPC. The indexer does not need to know how to validate blocks; it just asks Bitcoin Core via RPC for block data and transaction details. Why RPC Is Locked Down Because RPC is so powerful—it can move funds, dump private keys (in legacy wallet setups), and shut down the node—it is localhost-only by default and requires a username/password or cookie file. Opening RPC to the internet without a proxy, VPN, or Tor tunnel is dangerous, which is why setups like Start9 wrap it behind reverse proxies and authentication layers. In short: RPC turns a silent background process into a programmable server. Without it, the node could talk to the Bitcoin network, but nothing else could talk to the node.

With **5%** of the hash rate: - Average block time ≈ **200 minutes** (10 ÷ 0.05) - 100 blocks × 200 minutes = **20,000 minutes** - That’s about **333 hours**, or roughly **13.9 days** (almost **2 weeks**) So at 5% hash rate, you’d be waiting almost **two weeks** just to reach the 100-block coinbase maturity. And under standard Bitcoin difficulty rules, the first difficulty adjustment at 2,016 blocks would take nearly **9 months** to reach.

2019–2024 — BIP 324 and Opportunistic Encryption The breakthrough came with BIP 324 (originally drafted by Schnelli in 2019, later revived and expanded by Dhruv Mehta, Tim Ruffing, and Pieter Wuille). What it does: It introduces a “v2” transport protocol that uses unauthenticated, opportunistic encryption over clearnet. Why it matters: It uses ElligatorSwift encoding to make the entire byte stream—including the handshake—indistinguishable from random noise. Passive surveillance can no longer identify Bitcoin traffic just by looking at packet headers. Timeline: Merged into Bitcoin Core in 2023 (v26.0) and enabled by default in v27.0 (2024). For the first time in Bitcoin’s history, the majority of clearnet P2P traffic is encrypted.

Left 1000 sats on a seed generated from CCQ single sig, no dice, fairly long pass phrase. Made pct key about 1 month ago.... sats still there

Bitcoin would be _easy_ to spend if I aquired the coin at say $100. Sure spend 0.001 now and then. Purchased at $105k, not so much.

Sparrow Wallet is 🔥

this works in part as spending from lightning is private, correct?

RNG-hack f-n sucks. Many did (nearly) everything right - took way more personal responsibility than 99% of people and got screwed. F those who spend their time stealing people's time/energy. Go hack a shitcoin exchange or an suitcoin instituon - why target the few plebs trying to do it right. The only way bitcoin wins is if some are willing to self custody and the option/path to do so exists. There is obviously a lot of work to do to ossify the self custody path. Lets get to work.

agree with both, actually bullish.... also a sign that those who self custody are actually not that many: the few ride-or-dies are panickin appropriately, while the suit-coiners/ETFer are just meh

what about >100 with "regular" board game dice?