Socratic Seminar 8

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Announcements

• RSVP to the meetup!
• Join our telegram group
• Apply for a Bitcoin job
• Chatham House Rules
• Respect people's privacy
• Interaction and asking questions are encouraged

Hawaii Digital Currency Bills

• HB2108
  • Establishes a program for the licensure, regulation, and oversight of special purpose digital currency companies
  • Extends operations of companies in the digital currency innovation lab pilot program under certain circumstances
  • Appropriates funds out of the compliance resolution fund to implement the program
• SB2695
  • Establishes a Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Task Force
• SB2696
  • Allows the Director of Finance to authorize any state agency to enter into virtual currency payment agreements with persons or virtual currency issuers to provide the acceptance of convertible virtual currency as a means of payment
  • Allows any state agency that enters into a virtual currency agreement with a person or virtual currency issuer as authorized by the Director of Finance to accept convertible virtual currency
• HB2287 / SB2697
  • Excludes the electronic transfer of virtual currency through virtual currency companies and cryptocurrency companies from the Money Transmitters Act
• SB2698
  • Prohibits any encumbrance on the right to own, possess, and use any medium of exchange

Geopolitics

• Federal Reserve published paper on CBDC
• Federal Reserve bans its officials from trading bitcoin, stocks, bonds
• FBI forms new enforcement division
• Trucker convoy in Ottawa to protest COVID mandates
  • Trudeau vows to freeze anti-mandate protesters' bank accounts
  • Bitcoin fundraiser for Ottawa freedom convoy raises over 22 bitcoin (~$1M)
  • Trucker receiving $8k worth of BTC from donations on livestream
  • "Okay So Your Bank Account Is Frozen" Starter Pack
  • Canada ends emergency powers invoked against trucker protests (2/23)
• Russia invades Ukraine
  • ~$4M in Bitcoin donated to Ukraine military support groups
  • Ukrainian allies target Russia with sanctions and possible ban from SWIFT international payment network
• Russia shares plan to regulate Bitcoin & crypto
  • Russia and geopolitical game theory

Technology

• Distribution of address types by count/value
  • P2PKH outputs make up 23% of the count, but 72% of the value
• AOPP drama
  • Guy's Take #51: AOPP & the Travel Rule
• Jack Dorsey's Cash App integrates Bitcoin's Lightning Network
• Debate over BOLT12 Support in LND
  • Learn about BOLT12 - Offers: Lightning's Native Experience, Everywhere
• LNURLVend
  • Offline Lightning Network vending machine
• Bitcoin Design Guide V2 launches with focus on Lightning

Mining

• ASIC competitors coming to market
  • SEC filing by one of Intel's partners has revealed both the pricing and performance of Intel's second-gen Bonanza Mine (BMZ2) Bitcoin miners
• Solo mining with Blockstream Satellite

Optional Topics

Depending on time/interest

• Synonym releases first iteration of SlashPay after Lightning Hackday Istanbul 2022
  • Method of abstracting all Bitcoin payment negotiation processes, features, options, communication, and server endpoints to occur outside of the nodes and without limiting a payment to any single format
• Teleport: a CoinSwap implementation alpha release, provides invisible private transactions
• RoboSats is a P2P market built on the Lightning Network to privately exchange bitcoin for national currencies
  • Uses lightning hold invoices to minimize custody and trust requirements
• DOJ recovers 94K BTC (~$3.6B) stolen from 2016 Bitfinex hack
• Proof of Reserves (Kraken)
• BIP 322 PR
  • A standard for interoperable signed messages based on the Bitcoin Script format, either for proving fund availability, or committing to a message as the intended recipient of funds sent to the invoice address.
• Bitcoin Address Reuse Statistics
• Limitations Of RBF Policy And How To Improve
• Thoughts on Fee Bumping
• Original Fee Sponsorship Proposal
• Threshold Sigs with Musig + Merkle Trees