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In many ways, the fourteenth episode of Magical Crypto Friends is a return to the original purpose of the show: fooling around foolish uses of blockchain and slamming projects with unrealistic promises and poor technical implementations. The first few seconds show the four anthropomorphic animals agreeing ironically that the blockchains should be used for many purposes outside of Bitcoin, and the moment they can no longer keep their straight faces becomes the perfect opportunity to kick off with the introduction of the show.
"Riccardo Fluffy Pony" Spagni in his debate on Twitter with Brendan Eich of Brave, creator of BAT.
The basic attention token, also known as BAT, is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain that serves as a monetary incentive for displaying advertisements on the Brave browser. It was created in late May 2017 and, according to Michael Kern of Crypto Insider, has the ability to reinvent the overturning and transfer of small values on the Internet.
However, Mr. Spagni has publicly expressed a problem with the reward mechanism and the underlying policy. First of all, it claims that ad display bots can be invented to cheat the system and stack on undeserved BAT tokens that have not received the attention of a real human. Secondly, currency exchange requires registration through a KYC / AML procedure, and lack of compliance means that time has been lost and money must be retained by the founders.
Ultimately, the question at stake is "Why is a blockchain needed anyway?". If the inflow and supply are completely centralized and controlled, all this can be made more easily through a good old database. Like the fervent supporter of privacy that is, Fluffy Pony adds that private browsing is erased by the simple fact that KYC registration will associate the data generated with your name. Therefore, there is no way to enjoy the monetary benefits of the BAT token on anonymity.
In addition to the arguments presented, Whale Panda adds that it does not really understand why Coinbase has devoted so much attention to the project by putting it short for future additions and thus allowing customers to exchange their BTC for BAT.
Charlie Lee states that the purpose of BAT was not to be healthy money, but to become an incentive for users to embrace the browser. Nobody would have allowed Brendan Eich to free BTC from his community, so in this regard it made sense to start something that could gain value over time: it has no costs and creates even more clamor and speculation about software.
Samson Mow briefly calls the Lightning network, and from that moment on, the increasingly mature technology that helps the Bitcoin scale for microtransactions becomes the focus of attention. Riccardo Spagni continues with his arguments citing that Lightning's channels between content producers and users / fans make much more sense and are worth more value.
The Blockstream CSO draws attention to the fact that the gaming industry has already created tokens that are distributed in-game for displaying advertisements, except that they are stored more efficiently in a proprietary database.
As a way to bring the theme to the starting point, Riccardo Spagni addresses the problem of BAT apologists who accept the questionable nature of the token just because the quality of the web browser is high. Whale Panda does not agree with this last point and says he did not like Brave, and Mr. Spagni admits he has given up on the browser. Charlie Lee adds a new level to the discussion by saying that the fact that something scammy is supported by the browser detracts from its quality and value.
A comparison is made with the ToR browser that has been around for over a decade and has not resorted to blockchain financial incentives in order to increase adoption. Riccardo Spagni says that the functionality and the model based on Onion's browser functionality is much higher, and so people decide that it's time to stop paying too much attention to the basic attention token.
Bitcoin Cash: ABC vs. Satoshi & # 39; s Vision.
Given the clear and known points of view on the supremacy of BTC that the four anthropomorphic animals share, it is normal that they suffer from any other attempt to replicate the original currency in a more centralized way and even to tease the attempt.
First of all, the jokes are told about the confusing nature of abbreviations: BCHABC and BCHSV, or BAB and BSV? BCHABC has become BAB and is therefore standardized as BCH to have the original leadership. Do BCHSV or BSV have anything to do with Satoshi and his often misunderstood view? It all seems strange because it is.
Given the novelty of this hard fork network that has turned into a devastating hash war on the market, even the exchanges have clearly understood the situation by giving the two projects resulting from the standardized BCH adhesives. Some only list only BCH and imply that it is actually BCHABC, some call it BAB, while others have decided to offer their customers both versions of the coin (but, again, a universal convention concerning abbreviations has yet to be established) .
However, the seriousness of the situation is given by how both projects have become more centralized: in order to protect themselves from attacks, developers have arbitrarily decided to do checkpoint blockchain and remove the zero confirmation function. Fluffy Pony claims that the idea is so serious that Zcash Zooko's founder Wilcox-O & Hearn proposed it. Charlie Lee jokes that at least the proposal has not been put into practice. But Fluffy Pony replies that, according to his research on ZCash's GitHub, the checkpoints have actually been implemented.
Charlie Lee seems worried about the idea and notes that there is a good reason why Satoshi and the Bitcoin developers did not propose to do something similar. It's a simple idea that goes through anyone's mind, but it's bad for the whole idea of decentralization.
Whale Panda adds that the early days of Bitcoin had Satoshi Nakamoto making use of a type of checkpoint system that made sure no unwanted forks occurred. The consensus among detractors is that there is nothing wrong with the idea of checkpoints at the beginning when the network has to grow and the founders must protect their efforts. At the same time, doing it in the middle of the street is a very bad idea that can backfire and compromise the entire decentralization.
Charlie provides a technical explanation of Satoshi's intentions and how important it was for everyone to be on the same blockchain and synchronize without problems in the early days, but after that, only the longest working trial chain should remain relevant for the purpose of decentralization . Samson Mow made it even clearer that anyone who set up checkpoints makes the idea of a blockchain redundant, because you basically have a block producer who has control.
The discussion comes to the starting point to reveal the topic "this can simply be entered into a database": Riccardo Spagni mentions that many Proof of Stake projects perform checkpoints and that they remove any real reason to have a blockchain or pretend that the network is decentralized.
As a way to get back to the basic discussion (no predictable word game), Samson adds that there are BCHABC (or BAB) nodes that have not yet updated the running client version and the existence of centralized and protectionist checkpoints on the network for an attack.
Charlie Lee could not help but underline the irony that a project that pretends to follow Satoshi's vision is eager to centralize the network through the checkpoints. However, Whale Panda reveals that it is not BCHSV (or BSV) that implemented the checkpoints, but BCHABC (BAB). So it's Satoshi's previous vision, not the most recent one. The jokes about the visions keep turning and the bearded moderator decides to change the subject.
The malicious BitPay exploit.
At the end of November an exploit was found in the BitPay Javascript code and its implications are quite shocking: the private keys of the users have been exposed to the potentially malicious intentions of a hacker. In the meantime, the software has been updated to eliminate the malicious code, but there is no clear way to know which funds are in danger of being stolen, so all custodians have been asked to withdraw their cryptocurrencies on another more secure wallet .
Fortunately, according to the ongoing debate between the Magical Crypto Friends, no funds were stolen. Yet you do not know how and when the hacker will hit. Furthermore, there is the problem of other cryptographic portfolios that have been bifurcated by copying data from the BitPay GitHub, as they are likely to encounter the same problem with the same exploit.
Samson Mow states that the Bitcoin.com wallet is also a fork of the BitPay version and, unless a serious security update is implemented, the custodians of the fund could be in danger. The issue at stake revolves around addictions and the quality of development: building a good portfolio should not depend entirely on one source, and Riccardo Spagni also suggests that the source code of Electron is not very secure despite the opinions of others programmers.
Charlie Lee contributes to the debate by saying that having multiple sources also involves constant monitoring of every update that is released, so no change from an addiction can pose a security threat to your product. Fluffy Pony expresses its preference for C ++ on Javascript and NPM when it comes to reliability and security, and the consensus becomes that BitPay has actually used some of the most popular repository choices. Therefore, the attack must have been some kind of social engineering.
In addition to what has been said, Samson states that web portfolios are the most dangerous out there, and projects like Blockchain.info are susceptible to exploits. Mr. Spagni presents the case of the Monero portfolios and the fact that, despite all efforts to preserve security, users often fall for phishing scams.
Mr. Satoshi Lite takes advantage of the situation to make an economic blow on the MyMonero wallet (developed by Riccardo Spagni) and he jokingly mentions that it is always violated. Whale Panda also stops Blockchain.info for not having integrated the SegWit features after 1 and a half years, and the four friends decide to move on to another topic.
OFAC black list of two BTC addresses.
The news of the foreign asset control office in the blacklist of two Iranian BTC addresses went round at the end of November, and everyone seemed to express concern for the government overlapping with a sector that politicians do not really understand . This action has created a potentially dangerous precedent for the whole world, but in technical terms it does not mean much because funds can be transferred without authorization from an address to a newly created one.
This problem, which was also dealt with in an article by Crypto Insider, is more problematic for exchanges. According to Charlie Lee, the fact that cryptographic exchanges will have to verify these blacklisted addresses is extra work and a headache in relation to the governments they regulate. However, Samson adds that exchanges already make lists of bad actors, so this decision by the OFAC does not change the nature of the game, but only makes the issue more governmental.
That's why Whale Panda intervenes and says that he considers the decision as a legitimation for Bitcoin. However, Fluffy Pony emphasizes that the new rules will make people more creative: if laws or regulations decide to block funds received from addresses that 3 or 5 or 10 transactions ago have been associated with a bad actor, they can only do more transactions to make their business seem legitimate in relation to this filter. The pseudonym and unlicensed nature of Bitcoin allows anyone to make transactions without restrictions and the action of creating a new wallet is immediate and free.
The comparison that Samson makes is rather amusing: it is easier to blacklist two atoms in the universe than to perform such measurements on Bitcoin addresses. However, another pertinent point is made by Whale Panda regarding the bad actors who want to spot the reputation of others. If someone on the blacklist wants to drag millions of people with them, all they have to do is send 1 satoshi to each address and automatically compromise all the others through a faulty association. Bitcoin is unlicensed and irreversible, which means that you can also receive coins unexpectedly from people who know your public key.
In the case of Monero, which is more fungible than Bitcoin because of its privacy settings, it is sufficient to transfer your funds into a decentralized exchange and to withdraw them in a new address to be, as Fluffy Pony says, "gold" .
But the problem is deeper than this: what happens if the person with a contaminated address pays a fee to a miner? Is the miner's address also being blacklisted by default from the OFAC? There are many implications involved in this decision and the conversation goes on to the next topic.
CoinShares reports that Bitcoin mining is done with 78% renewable energy.
Whale Panda talks about the "whitepaper" on the extraction of Bitcoins that CoinShares released at the beginning of December 2018, and Samson Mow goes on to say that he is surprised that the percentage of renewable energy is not higher, since the 39; renewable energy is the cheapest to produce.
Belgian bitcoinist Whale Panda makes a syllogism that highlights the fact that being against Bitcoin extraction (which may or may not imply Proof of Stake) means that you are blocking the development of energy power plants renewable.
Samson also goes on to say that there are cases in China and Tibet where people migrate their mining facilities from water wheels to windy mountains, and the consensus among the participants is that the energy that goes into producing Bitcoin would otherwise be wasted.
Community XRP initiative to plant a tree for every 2 XRP tokens.
While the plan is really generous and thoughtful in relation to the maternal nature, the idea behind it is an economic blow for the extraction of Bitcoin: the tree is considered a way to compensate for the damage that these operations Mining entails for the environment.
As soon as he realizes that the asking price is below the $ 1 threshold, Charlie Lee comes across a final burning stating that this basic initiative is the first real case of using XRP. Riccardo Spagni adds that he would like to see a Proof of Tree, Whale Panda transforms the discussion into obscurity by changing the term in Proof of Burn, and then Samson quickly proceeds to satirize the situation by referring to the general stereotype of a Bitcoin maximalist who takes shots at any thing outside of BTC.
The joke about Charlie's case is so much appreciated that his three friends note that Satoshi Lite has not posted anything humorous about Twitter in recent months, despite being fun in their private discussion channel.
Humor on social media and self-censorship.
As Riccardo Spagni says, this really comes from the list of world's first problems. The four friends talk about not expressing all their humor on Twitter because of their responsibility towards the projects they are involved in or the negative feedback they sometimes receive. Even when the comments are sarcastic, they are misunderstood and people take them seriously. And as Charlie Lee says, even adding the signature "/ s" can make some people think that there is sarcasm in pretending to be sarcastic.
The discussion itself is fascinating only because we have an idea of the thoughts of people whose fame and achievement bear many responsibilities.
The simplicity of Blockstream.
In the fall, Blockstream was the most prolific company in terms of issuing Bitcoin tools and projects that aim to spread the adoption and provide the community with the means to create (or BUIDL). Simplicity, which has also been described in an interview with Crypto Insider, aims to be a more robust and accessible bargaining language for blockchain.
Samson begins his speech on the technical characteristics of Simplicity, but as soon as he says that the language was written in "Coq", the rest of the people start a series of surprisingly mature jokes. For example, Riccardo Spagni wants to know if "Coq is difficult". The answer is affirmative, which raises a contagious wave of laughter.
However, the group's lion continues with its description and mentions that simplicity has two main advantages over the solidity of Ethereum: distribution costs are visible in advance and can be easily projected, and the language is less bug and requires less costs of auditing. The language is compatible with the Blockstream elements and will be integrated into Liquid for functionality that the Bitcoin script can not do.
"It's like Solidity if Solidity worked, it's simple and that's why it's called Simplicity" – this is the joint conclusion that Charlie, Whale Panda and Samson come out after a brief exchange.
Charlie Lee is curious to know if the language will be integrated into Bitcoin and the response of his friend Leone is very prudent: this implementation will be performed only after rigorous tests on the Elements platform (which is a fork of Bitcoin) and his first case 39; use to be the federated liquid sidechain. If there is enough demand for the features to be transferred to Bitcoin, then the team will make the necessary efforts to achieve integration.
Then a joke on the soft forks is pushed, and the name of Luke Dashjr is quoted by Charlie Lee as if he were responsible for all the changes.
Question from the public: when will Monero surpass the vision of Bitcoin Satoshi?
Fluffy Pony implies that it does not perform technical analysis (such as Tone Vays) and allows Charlie to speculate on the basis of market capital. Satoshi Lite's comment is rather confident "soon enough".
Question from the public: problems with Lightning routing, in a very simple way.
This idea stems from a comment that Craig S. Wright did on Lightning, only that he said he would reveal the problems he identified by the end of 2019. Charlie Lee jokes that we'll have to wait a year until we find out.
Whale Panda becomes more incisive and asks directly about known issues with Lightning routing. Everyone shrugs and Samson says there are many different ways to do routing and there are many developers who are currently working on Lightning.
The Blockstream CSO denies the discussion by mentioning that Monero has already launched BCHSV on CoinMarketBook.cc, a website that classifies the coins according to the purchasing support criterion.
Then Fluffy Pony adds that on CoinMarketBook, EOS is more valuable than XRP. This reminds others of the aggressive toxicity that some XRP fans show on Twitter through their relentless hashtags and irrationally exuberant arguments towards Bitcoin. They also mentioned the way Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer had to create a script to block all XRP people after receiving a bad negative reaction from the token elimination from AreWeDecentralized.com.
The four friends also joke about the ridiculous claims made by some members of the community, including the creation of XRP before Bitcoin and the Ripple token have something to do with Satoshi. However, it is the Lite version of Satoshi that steals the show with an ironic remark about XRP's support. He is fully aware of the fact that the clip can be cut to be used in another context, yet it accompanies the flow.
Question from the public: how do you rewire the brain of a no-coiner?
Charlie Lee suggests that he would not worry, but Whale Panda is bolder by referring to the case of inflation. Samson returns the subject to the question of taxes and upregulation by implying that international bank transfers may be reason enough to enter Bitcoin.
Riccardo Spagni makes a case about Venezuela and Zimbabwe (thus approaching the subject of hyperinflation). He states that governments can manage the economy so poorly that there are real cases of toilet paper more expensive than banknotes.
The second time, Charlie Lee distinguishes between two types of non-coins: those who have not heard of Bitcoin and those who think it is a scam. In the case of the latter, his approach is not to even bother to change their beliefs. But in the case of the first, the best solution may be to offer some coins to understand how they work.
Samson decides to bring the discussion back to the definition of the term "no-coiner". According to the Whale Panda, a no-coiner is someone who does not own any cryptocurrency. On the contrary, Samson identifies these people as those who think that cryptocurrencies are scams and insist that they have no possession.
Charlie Lee reiterates his relaxed approach that he describes as "Darwinism": sooner or later people will see the value of Bitcoin, so they will not bother to change everyone's mind if they face the opposition. Whale Panda confesses to having a similar approach, since contrary beliefs can be difficult.
Then Satoshi Lite decides to talk about people on Twitter who think Bitcoin is old and stagnant, while some new cryptographic project is considered the next great invention because of some extra features. The one who arrives with the quick answer is Whale Panda, which implies that the trend has been going on for over five years and each new project has claimed to improve some aspects of Bitcoin.
Similarly, Riccardo Spagni says he does not bother to convince people of the usefulness and value of cryptocurrencies.
Question from the public: how do you spend crypto without exposing your total balance and which are the best portfolios?
Fluffy Pony jokes with the feeling of absolute bravado that you get when you pay cash at the till and she can see all the bills in her wallet. But on a serious personal note, he recommends using Monero as a store of value, as a service like XMR.TO can automatically convert the payment into Bitcoin. This is not financial advice, but the best way to make sure that transactions remain private.
Samson Mow says that the best way to maintain privacy with a specific Bitcoin wallet is to use Samourai, Wasabi or Electrum.
Charlie Lee brings the discussion on the issue of fungibility and how Bitcoin deserves more. Just as if I did not go to the supermarket and try to decide which of the 20 banknotes in your wallet should be delivered to the cashier, all BTC coins should be universally accepted while users do not have to worry about thinking about UTXOs.
Again, Samson contributes to the discussion by saying that the Lightning channels have good privacy.
Audience question: how do you separate the facts from the FUD?
"The best way to know is to watch Magical Crypto!", Says Samson Mow enthusiastically. "And all we're talking about is FUD," adds Charlie.
However, Charlie Lee projects the problem on the media system itself and on how each piece of FUD is based on a kind of distorted half truth that is framed in the desired form. It's hard for anyone to really make the distinction, and as soon as information spreads it's even harder to change people's minds.
Riccardo Spagni reports the discussion on Bitcoin and states that unless you are technical enough and actively involved in space, there is no way of knowing if a specific piece of news is real or FUD. In this case, less experienced technicians are aimed at those who appear to be smart on Twitter. And since everyone has some kind of economic interest in this sector, it becomes even more difficult to say what pure advertising is and what the bad truth is.
Samson contributes to the debate by stating that it follows only the current events in the Bitcoin world and it is enough for him. Although 2017 was the year a lot of people put ideas on blockchain and started ICO for various purposes, it is simply healthy to know one's own interest and follow it accordingly.
The last part of the show is dedicated to hardware portfolios, as Whale Panda receives a delivery of three Trezor devices. His friends are joking that his multi-million dollar assets are spread across three multi-sig devices and investigate how he will hide his belongings. Mr. Panda replies that he would dig a hole in the woods and bury an entire encrypted safe.
Then they talk about Home, and Charlie reveals that he has a Lightning knot running on his desk. The inclusion of this pre-Christmas product ends the umpteenth chapter of the life of the four friendly anthropomorphic friends.
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