I posted some excerpts from this on Nostr, a new social network heavy with Bitcoin-maximalists, and here was a response:
"There is a high amount of motivated reasoning going on here. While some of the points are valid, they seem without respect for issues under active development, and are subject to the same fallacies as those the writer is accusing others of making.
"For instance, saying bitcoin's blockchain is too big ignores things like
-its gotten this big more so as a product of its transactional record, ordinals are new and haven't contributed the bulk of data on chain
-while data storage hasn't scaled as fast as anyone was hoping, the bitcoin blockchain is still a long ways from breaking the 1tb drives that I suspect most people buy for their nodes. We have seen full nodes run on phones, recently. I can personally attest to the reality that data storage is still getting cheaper, so says my 48tb nas; most people only buy a 1tb drive because that's all that's necessary, why would you spend a cent extra on storage when even by current metrics its going to hold out for years to come?
-pruning cuts data storage requirements down heavily, and still provides a cryptographically verifiable record
"Saying 95% of bitcoin is held by exchanges is without citation, and sounds revised up from the last unfounded number of 87%. Almost a million bitcoin has sat in cold storage for over a year now, which should immediately invalidate any claim to this being accurate, as should the fact that exchange holdings are at 5 year lows.
"Saying that lightning is failing ignores that its basically a public alpha, and there are numerous projects in development to improve everything from the GUI to channel rebalancing. Further, comparing it to the existing banking system is an out and out lie, where there is no such thing as justice transactions, the monetary base can be inflated or deflates at will for political reasons, and overall offers zero monetary assurances.
"Saying that bitcoin isn't p2p because people don't operate their own nodes ignores that any single node can broadcast your transaction to the network, your transaction cannot be manipulated in any meaningful way, and verifying that a transaction was mined can be done with a high degree of certainty without a full node by running the checksum against the blockheader and difficulty, which can be automated by an app on your phone.
"Saying that mining is forever lost to the big pools ignores stratum v2 and the fact that pools are made up of individual miners, and were they ever to attack the network they would find themselves without the money to continue operations.
"Saying that transactions can be tracked ignores not only coinjoin wallets like wasabi, not only developments like lightning and cashu, but most importantly that these companies have admitted that this is "an art, not a science", so saying its intelligent and sophisticated, or that bitcoin can be tracked precisely, is misleading at best.
"I'm not for the bitcoin fangirling I see, but the author is clearly motivated to gloss over the details to pump their shitcoin."
The answer shows that I hit the bull's eye with the article. Not a word from the Bitcoin maximalist about the demonstrably false statement spread by Michael Saylor "1BTC = 1 BTC ". BTC is not fungible and not anonymous and therefore useless as a currency. Further discussion is therefore superfluous. Bitcoins that have passed through a mixer will also be recognized and if necessary frozen or not processed further at the mining level. It is not about nitpicking whether 85% or 95% of the Bitcoins are held in custody, it is about the fact that BTC is no longer what Satoshi described in the whitepaper. Blockstream is largely responsible for the crippling of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin as a currency is also no longer improvable. With the ordinals, it is now being converted into a carrier of NFT. Possibly the only remaining meaningful use of the "digital gold" touted by the maximalists. In a free market, competition can only be an advantage. The better product will win the race. Calling EPIC a shitcoin just shows the desperation of some maximalists. I see BTC as clearly inferior compared to EPIC. But if you think you have the better product with BTC, stick with it. At the end of the day facts count and not wishes. Also the call of the Bitcoin maximalists for regulation will not make Bitcoin better but EPIC stronger.
I posted some excerpts from this on Nostr, a new social network heavy with Bitcoin-maximalists, and here was a response:
"There is a high amount of motivated reasoning going on here. While some of the points are valid, they seem without respect for issues under active development, and are subject to the same fallacies as those the writer is accusing others of making.
"For instance, saying bitcoin's blockchain is too big ignores things like
-its gotten this big more so as a product of its transactional record, ordinals are new and haven't contributed the bulk of data on chain
-while data storage hasn't scaled as fast as anyone was hoping, the bitcoin blockchain is still a long ways from breaking the 1tb drives that I suspect most people buy for their nodes. We have seen full nodes run on phones, recently. I can personally attest to the reality that data storage is still getting cheaper, so says my 48tb nas; most people only buy a 1tb drive because that's all that's necessary, why would you spend a cent extra on storage when even by current metrics its going to hold out for years to come?
-pruning cuts data storage requirements down heavily, and still provides a cryptographically verifiable record
"Saying 95% of bitcoin is held by exchanges is without citation, and sounds revised up from the last unfounded number of 87%. Almost a million bitcoin has sat in cold storage for over a year now, which should immediately invalidate any claim to this being accurate, as should the fact that exchange holdings are at 5 year lows.
"Saying that lightning is failing ignores that its basically a public alpha, and there are numerous projects in development to improve everything from the GUI to channel rebalancing. Further, comparing it to the existing banking system is an out and out lie, where there is no such thing as justice transactions, the monetary base can be inflated or deflates at will for political reasons, and overall offers zero monetary assurances.
"Saying that bitcoin isn't p2p because people don't operate their own nodes ignores that any single node can broadcast your transaction to the network, your transaction cannot be manipulated in any meaningful way, and verifying that a transaction was mined can be done with a high degree of certainty without a full node by running the checksum against the blockheader and difficulty, which can be automated by an app on your phone.
"Saying that mining is forever lost to the big pools ignores stratum v2 and the fact that pools are made up of individual miners, and were they ever to attack the network they would find themselves without the money to continue operations.
"Saying that transactions can be tracked ignores not only coinjoin wallets like wasabi, not only developments like lightning and cashu, but most importantly that these companies have admitted that this is "an art, not a science", so saying its intelligent and sophisticated, or that bitcoin can be tracked precisely, is misleading at best.
"I'm not for the bitcoin fangirling I see, but the author is clearly motivated to gloss over the details to pump their shitcoin."
https://highlighter.com/e/note13n5xx6n24r0m4j6snsxjrvgve59fmgv40jn6w5wr8e2gwujt9agspwazk4
The answer shows that I hit the bull's eye with the article. Not a word from the Bitcoin maximalist about the demonstrably false statement spread by Michael Saylor "1BTC = 1 BTC ". BTC is not fungible and not anonymous and therefore useless as a currency. Further discussion is therefore superfluous. Bitcoins that have passed through a mixer will also be recognized and if necessary frozen or not processed further at the mining level. It is not about nitpicking whether 85% or 95% of the Bitcoins are held in custody, it is about the fact that BTC is no longer what Satoshi described in the whitepaper. Blockstream is largely responsible for the crippling of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin as a currency is also no longer improvable. With the ordinals, it is now being converted into a carrier of NFT. Possibly the only remaining meaningful use of the "digital gold" touted by the maximalists. In a free market, competition can only be an advantage. The better product will win the race. Calling EPIC a shitcoin just shows the desperation of some maximalists. I see BTC as clearly inferior compared to EPIC. But if you think you have the better product with BTC, stick with it. At the end of the day facts count and not wishes. Also the call of the Bitcoin maximalists for regulation will not make Bitcoin better but EPIC stronger.