Aaron van Wirdum
@AaronvanW
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Author of The Genesis Book | Editor-in-chief at @BitcoinMagazine | Nostr: #npub1art8cs66ffvnqns5zs5qa9fwlctmusj5lj38j94lv0ulw0j54wjqhpm0w5
Joined October 2013
Exactly one year ago I published The Genesis Book. Today, it's the highest rated Bitcoin book on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. Really proud of that!. Thank you so much to anyone who bought, read and/or rated it!! 🙏🙏🙏
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Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no. But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional!
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My friend @mikegermano from New York sent me $100 using Western Union, but after a $8 fee only $92 was left in San Salvador today :(. To get it, I had to give them my passport (which they copied), phone number, email address and signature. I could keep my kidney this time 🙂. 1/3
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Don't understand what Taproot lock-in means and at this point you're too afraid to ask?. Here's a thread with all my Taproot and Taproot activation articles so far 👇.
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The Walmart in San Salvador did not accept bitcoin for my Pepsi Light. Have fun staying poor, Walmart.
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Wow. Mario and his wife received north of $1000 worth of bitcoin through the #iceshaverchallange 🧊. That's about three times the average monthly salary in El Zonte. They have reinvested part of the money in a fryer and a coolbox, so they can now also sell fries and beverages.
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Chivo ATM ate my bitcoin today. No cash in return, no receipt, no response from customer service. I'll get by without the $40, but it's probably safe to assume that this also happens to Salvadorans who aren't on Twitter. Not good at all @chivowallet @nayibbukele @AthenaBitcoin.
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Amsterdam Airport Schiphol installs Bitcoin ATM as part of a six-month pilot. In statement: "With the Bitcoin ATM we hope to serve travellers by letting them easily exchange 'local' euros for 'global' bitcoin or ether."
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Also today, @esiattorney sent $20 in bitcoin plus $0.22 in fees to a Chivo ATM, which I withdrew a few minutes later as a $20 bill. The Chivo ATM needed only my phone number. @esiattorney didn't need to know anything about me. Thread and video: 3/3.
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Taproot, an idea first proposed by Greg Maxwell that's now being realized by several of the most prolific Bitcoin Core devs, can hide complex smart contracts in normal transactions, offering efficiency and privacy. My attempt at explaining how this works:
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Today I'm open sourcing my research project on the prehistory of Bitcoin. Read, share, and make suggestions! 👇.
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Adam Back was a hodler two decades before it was cool 🤓. (From the Cypherpunks mailing list, 1996:
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Today marks the release of Bitcoin Core 22.0. Here's what's new.
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This week I learned about "Bitcoin valley" Rovereto: an Italian village (<40k inhabitants) with dozens of bitcoin-accepting shops/restaurants/etc. (several keep the BTC), a brick and mortar bitcoin exchange, and even its own dev community. Thanks for hosting us @inbitcoin!
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Was Hal Finney the first Bitcoin maximalist?. The "flippening" cheerleaders and "next Bitcoin" altcoin peddlers still seem to have trouble grasping this point.
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Donald Trump broke his campaign promise to free Ross Ulbricht on day one of his presidency. Let's hope he follows through in the next couple of days after all.
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The Genesis Files: With Bit Gold, Nick Szabo Was Inches Away From Inventing Bitcoin
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Oops. Looks like bitcoin dot com's Lead Writer @jamieCrypto forgot to switch to his shill account there, which explains why he's referring to himself in the third person. (He's deleted the tweet by now.). "Bitcoin Cash" is centralized sock puppetry.
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Whoever took this deserves to win the World Press Photo of the Year imho
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"In five years most of these blockchain projects will have gone nowhere, especially the enterprise ones.". The sheriff is taking no prisoners on the main stage of #Consensus2018 today.
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Just made it back from the pro forma hearing on the necessity of continuing the pre-trial detention of Tornado Cash developer Alexy Pertsev. This wasn't the actual court case yet, but the public prosecutor did offer slightly more insights on why he was indicted, exactly.
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Interesting: twenty years ago, as he reviewed Wei Dai's b-money proposal on the Cypherpunks mailing list, @adam3us predicted several of the biggest problems facing Bitcoin today.
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Cypherpunks generally assumed that digital cash would have to be built on top of regular banks, like Chaum's eCash was. But in 1997, one month after proposing his Hashcash postage system, a 26-year old @adam3us had a different idea: "just set up an entirely disconnected system".
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"Cypherpunks write code", wrote Eric Hughes in 1993. It became the Cypherpunk rally cry. But by 1996, Hughes came to believe that code alone does not cut it. To realize Cypherpunk ideals like anonymous transactions, "some measure of toleration in society" is necessary, he wrote.
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Update: This issue was resolved over DM; I got my $40 out of the machine.
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Cypherpunk cofounder Tim May in 1992 predicting a Trudeaudian future. Or, why electronic cash was needed in the fist place.
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'Ethereum community leaders such as developer Andre Cronje have since called on users to “Stay away from doing txs [transactions] for awhile,” and to “Go for a walk outside, we all need it.”'. It's a good thing Ethereum is not used for anything important.
DEVELOPING: Ethereum is experiencing a chain split due a number of network validators, also called nodes, failing to upgrade their software. @christine_dkim and @Blockanalia report.
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The latest Bitcoin Core release is out today. A selection and explanation of some of the more notable changes:.
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I was actually lucky today; there was no queue. When I visited Western Union yesterday*, I waited in line for over an hour. *We tried to do the transfer yesterday but it failed (for reasons unrelated to Western Union) so I had to go back today. 2/3
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Monero Just Hard Forked — and It Resulted in Four New Projects
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So the underlying issue is NOT that Bitfinex/Tether was printing money, that was FUD. It's that it had to resort to questionable fiat payment processors. This has been a problem for Bitcoin companies since forever, eg TradeHill. (It also shows why permissionless finance matters.).
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Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos, but I did make a courtroom sketch. #COPAvWright
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SNICKER, a proposal by Adam Gibson (waxwing), would let Bitcoin users mix their coins without interaction: there'd be no need for them to coordinate or even be online at the same time. My latest for @BitcoinMagazine:.
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TL;DR, IIUC:. -The May 15 BCH hard fork made unspendable coins spendable again, allowing miners to claim them. -When an unknown miner claimed these coins, the & pools coordinated 51%-attack, to return coins to original owners. 🤯🤦♂️.
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Looks like Amazon made it official :). Ngl this is awesome to see.
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In 1996, Hal Finney (who would of course be the first Bitcoin user after Satoshi) explained on the cypherpunk mailinglist why he believed digital money is like cash. 1) Anonymous.2) Untraceable.3) Bearer instrument. (Not mentioned: low transaction fees.).
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Mario is more than grateful, and humbled by your generosity. I explained it wasn't me, but the Bitcoin community who gifted him the sats, but he wouldn't let me leave without a gift, so I accepted this coconut on behalf of all of you. Thanks Bitcoin Twitter, you are amazing! 🥥
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Samson Mow talking about the Bitcoin law, Bitcoin City and Volcano bonds on Salvadoran television.
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For the past ten years, Bitcoin was a wild speculative asset. Looking at what's going on in the world, it looks comparatively normal to me now.
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Hal Finney was the first person besides Satoshi to contribute to Bitcoin, and the first recipient of a transaction. Even before Bitcoin, Finney had launched a digital cash project of his own. In this 5th (and final) part of the Genesis Files series: RPOW.
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New @BitcoinMagazine cover story (by me): Bitcoin as a Privacycoin: This Tech is Making Bitcoin More Private #bitcoin.
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It is.
"Privacy is a human right". It's not.
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In 2011, Room 77 was the first bar in the world to start accepting bitcoin payments. In the years after, it became the best clubhouse the community ever had. Unfortunately, the bar closed in 2020, but I'm leaving one Genesis Book here for a lucky finder.
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Listened to @saylor on @stephanlivera's pod. It's 3 months old, but sheds some light on the ARK funding story. TL;DW: Saylor strongly believes in *OSSIFICATION NOW*. From that POV, protocol development is a liability. Some quotes (and thoughts) below👇.
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First bitcoin exchange to accept Lightning deposits. 👏 @Vaultoro
Vaultoro’s Bitcoin-to-Gold Exchange Implements Lightning Network Payments #bitcoin #gold #LightningNetwork #blockchain #fintech @Vaultoro
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Hey @McDonalds, I'd like to return the favor to @m__btc and buy a Big Mac in The Netherlands for him from El Salvador. Please add a bitcoin option to your payment terminals in Dutch restaurants? cc. @McDonaldsNL.
Yesterday, @esiattorney transferred $20 to me in San Salvador at almost no cost. But really, why should we convert to $ at all?. New experiment. Does anyone on Twitter want to buy me a Big Mac?. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are. You just need a Lightning wallet.
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0/6.
2022 predictions on #Bitcoin:. •Will reach $100k.•2 more countries will adopt it as legal tender.•Will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year.•Bitcoin City will commence construction.•Volcano bonds will be oversubscribed.•Huge surprise at @TheBitcoinConf.
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In light of this month's Bitcoin Magazine cover story on new and upcoming privacy features for Bitcoin, I'll be comparing some of the privacy features offered by different "privacycoins". In this first part: Dash. (TL;DR: Do not use.).
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The phrase "and then they fight you" has been overused to the point of fatigue in this space. But this really is it.
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I think @gladstein's gave one of the best "Why Bitcoin?" talks I have seen so far. #MCC2019 .
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Bitcoin only. You understand I'll have to get used to our new direction!. Moving forward, I'm afraid you'll all have to get by without my series on permissioned enterprise blockchains and ICO top 10s. May even have to shelve that five-part Dentacoin explainer I'd been working on.
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.@acinq_co raises $8M. CEO Pierre-Marie Padiou: “People need a better user experience when they use Lightning. But that’s only possible if real improvements are made on the protocol level, which takes time. With this funding, we’ll now be here for years.".
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The first electronic cash system wasn't Bitcoin, it was Ecash (by Chaum). This 1994 @WIRED piece by @StevenLevy makes it abundantly clear that "cash" referred to privacy & anonymity. Cost of transacting, speed and easy of use were afterthoughts, at best.
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@WhalePanda Satoshi will also be out of luck if he tries to join the SegWit2x mailing list.
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Ironically, the only people who still claim that it's all about hash power -- Bitcoin Cash SVers -- are now on the side of the split with the least hash power. of the side of the split with the least hash power. #Hashwar.
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Bitcoin Maximalism and currency competition are not antithetical. Bitcoin Maximalists predict that Bitcoin wins the currency competition.
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ICYMI bitcoin fungibility is under attack.
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Just like in the white paper.
Bitcoin ABC 0.18.5 has been released! . This release adds deep reorg protection to ensure that transactions are immutable after 10 confirmations. This safeguard helps users, businesses, and exchanges stay secure and free from disruption.
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Details of One of Bitcoin’s Nastiest Bugs Yet
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Awesome, The Genesis Book is now a top 10 book in the "Digital Currencies" category on Amazon :). A big thank you to everyone who bought it! 🚀🙏✊.
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There was some debate over whether Craig Wright would show up at all today. He did. #COPAvWright
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With Taproot getting ready for deployment, the next question is how to activate this and future soft forks. I put together an overview of (some of) the proposals so far.
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They givin' out free stickers ya'll!
It has nothing to do with that. But bitcoiners will never be ready for this discussion. 🤭. BTW I've got a sticker for you. "No al bitcoin"
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Second part of my "Battle of the Privacycoins" miniseries: Why #Monero Is Hard to Beat (and Hard to Scale)
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The proof of keys initiative actually just taught exchanges how big of a fraction they must keep in reserve to be on the safe side.
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"I have sold all my coins.".- Mike Hearn, January 14, 2016.
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More protests against the Bitcoin law in San Salvador today.
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To recap (and to pin to my profile), I wrote 6 privacy stories this September:. Bitcoin: Dash: Monero: Verge: Zcash: Mimblewimble:
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When @nopara73 told US border patrol he was attending a Bitcoin conference he was detained at the airport for 12 hours. When I tell US border patrol I'm attending a Bitcoin conference they just ask me which shitcoins to buy. This has now happened twice.
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The Genesis Files: If Bitcoin Had a First Draft, Wei Dai’s B-Money Was It
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Bitcoin is now officially legal tender in El Salvador. Join @gladstein @romanmartinezc @Bitcoinbeach and myself to discuss this milestone on Twitter Spaces. Starting in about 25 minutes.
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Btw @BranBTC told Floyd motherfucking Mayweather that he wasn't going on stage wearing an Ethereum shirt and he had to change. That's what running #bitcoin2021 like a boss looks like.
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After Craig Wright's defeat in UK court last week, @orionwl_ is considering a return to Bitcoin development :).
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It seems Maxwell figured out why @JihanWu opposes SegWit: he's secretly mining with incompatible, patented hardware:
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How about giving back bitcoin dot com?.
Congratulations to @Bitcoin_ABC on your new chain. We wish you well. Now that you no longer represent #BCH, please give back to relevant representatives of the #BitcoinCash ecosystem. This would be the admirable thing to do. Thanks 🍻.
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