Peter Todd joins us to talk about Bitcoin's technical evolution, discussing terminology like "blockchain" vs "timechain," and revealing flaws in Satoshi's original design. Peter dives deep into mining economics, explaining the risks of block withholding attacks, the problems with activation mechanisms for soft forks, and controversial funding models like demurrage. Despite surviving significant challenges, Bitcoin faces ongoing security concerns as block rewards diminish, requiring creative solutions to ensure mining remains economically viable long-term.
Notes:
- Block withholding attacks remain an unsolved risk
- Mining rewards currently ~0.5% tax on Bitcoin savings
- Bitcoin difficulty algorithm relies on halving events
- Miners have ~24-30% hash power can disrupt network
- Transaction fees alone insufficient for mining economics
- Demurrage could stabilize mining revenue long-term
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Timestamps:
00:00 Start
02:03 Timechain not a good word
04:28 White paper terminology
09:17 Difficulty
11:35 Price vs hashrate
12:53 Block withholding attack
21:08 Arch Network
21:40 Risks of a block withholding attack
26:50 Soft forks
31:01 BIP 8 & BIP 9
34:12 Signaling for soft forks
35:51 Nodes vs miners
38:04 Transaction IDs
43:22 OP_NEXT
44:14 Solving soft fork activation
48:50 Are drivechains dumb?
50:44 Miner centralization
56:54 WTF is demurrage?
1:01:18 Tail emission
1:07:04 ETH mansion
1:09:47 Ordinals
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