Opinion

A Kamala Presidency Could Be Just as Bullish for Bitcoin

Published

2 months ago

October 21, 2024

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Yes, I know, you’re here to let the hate flow.

You’ve bought all the rhetoric. Donald Trump likes crypto. He is embracing DeFi. He has his own shoes, and coins. He’s going to fire Gary! Like Polymarket in October, you think Trump is boo-llish.

Unfortunately, you’ve bought a lot of another kind of bull.

To unpack this, we have to understand what the Crypto 4 Trump initiative really is – and that’s an alliance of largely public U.S.-based mining firms and exchanges that have come together to spend aggressively to end their mistreatment.

They are tired of being sued and harassed, and otherwise chased out of America. As well, they have every reason to be.

But alas, the industry Bitcoin is not. This was the same argument made to justify the Fork Wars, and let’s just say for summation, that this ended terribly. If U.S. miners are forced elsewhere, mining will continue elsewhere, and decentralizing the hashrate, as we saw in the case of China’s mining ban, is quite simply: Good For Bitcoin™.

Sure, ASIC manufacturing may remain consolidated in a few international firms. Maybe it will take even longer to rebuild. But other countries will take advantage, and the Bitcoin network will carry on. Bitcoin may be our best opportunity to topple all of the current superpowers, and to empower the developing world. If that means leaving the U.S. behind, so be it.

Now let’s address the donkey in the room. A Kamala presidency will mean more enforcement of U.S. securities laws, not a referendum that allows millions of alts to proliferate.

A Trump victory almost certainly ensures only one outcome for our industry, and that is that the SEC gets defanged, and that means “coins beyond Bitcoin” will get a “level playing field.”

By contrast, continued enforcement of the SEC’s securities laws on the industry will rightfully make clear the difference between Bitcoin, which was distributed via proof-of-work (the only known way to circumvent securities sales), and all of the many centralized variants.

Simply put: It’s “crypto assets” that require a regulatory framework to survive, not Bitcoin, which is sufficiently decentralized.

Forcing the crypto industry’s builders to abide by these laws will doubtless benefit developers seeking to extend these capabilities to Bitcoin, the only major crypto with regulatory clarity. Are we actually going to argue that encouraging millions of developers to put their technology on Bitcoin (as opposed to Ethereum or Solana) would be a bad thing?

If there is a coherent thread to Bitcoin maximalism, it’s the assertion that everything outside of Bitcoin is either 1) a scam or 2) can be built on top of its blockchain. A continued crackdown on crypto will push the market to more thoroughly investigate the second point.

Undoubtedly, it would also boost Microstrategy’s stock, MSTR, as it would remain one of the few widely accessible plays to get legitimate beta on Bitcoin.

Sure, maybe the taxes from your Bitcoin gains will be higher, maybe spending will continue to be penalized. But anon, I thought you were HODLing anyway?

So, remind me, of all the supposed pro-Bitcoin policies of a Trump presidency, what is it that you expect to get, other than state-sanctioned degeneracy and block propagation in the heartland?

If you’re a single issue Bitcoin voter, shouldn’t that mean voting for an option that makes Bitcoin more decentralized, and less reliant on U.S. government policy?

Allow me to reintroduce you to Madame President Harris, a bullish choice for Bitcoin.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Blockchain

Most Layer 2 solutions are still struggling with scalability

Published

42 minutes ago

December 23, 2024

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Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.

Since pivoting to a layer 2-centric approach, the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem has relied heavily on L2 solutions to scale. However, these solutions are struggling to compete effectively, especially under pressure from alternatives like Solana (SOL). During the recent meme coin craze, Solana attracted much of the activity due to its advantages: low fees, high transaction speed, and user-friendliness.

To understand the challenges, it’s essential to examine why L2 solutions have not demonstrated the scalability and cost advantages that were widely anticipated.

Why meme projects favor Solana over Ethereum L2s

Meme projects have significantly contributed to the recent surge in market activity. These projects favor Solana for several reasons beyond user-friendliness:

Low fees: Solana’s low transaction costs make it ideal for fee-sensitive applications like memecoins.
High speed: Solana’s multithreaded architecture enables high throughput, ensuring seamless user experiences.
Better developer experience: Solana’s tools and ecosystem are optimized for ease of use, attracting developers and projects.

Why is scalability important?

Scalability is fundamentally measured by the number of transactions a blockchain can process. A highly scalable blockchain can handle more TXs while offering lower fees, making it crucial for widespread adoption and maintaining a seamless user experience.

This is especially important for grassroots projects like meme coins, many of which are short-lived and highly fee-sensitive. Without scalability, these projects cannot thrive, and users will migrate to platforms that offer better efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Why Ethereum L2s aren’t up to the challenge

Architectural limitations of Ethereum. Ethereum has long faced scalability issues, and L2 rollups are its primary solution to these problems. L2s operate as independent blockchains that process transactions off-chain while posting transaction results and proofs back to Ethereum’s mainnet. They inherit Ethereum’s security, making them a promising scaling approach.

However, Ethereum’s original design poses inherent challenges. Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, has admitted that “Ethereum was never designed for scalability.” One of the key limitations is the lack of multithreading in the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EVM, which processes transactions, is strictly single-threaded, meaning it can handle only one transaction at a time. In contrast, Solana’s multithreaded architecture allows it to process multiple transactions simultaneously, significantly increasing throughput.

L2s inheriting Ethereum’s limitations. Virtually all L2 solutions inherit Ethereum’s single-threaded EVM design, which results in low efficiency. For instance, Arbitrum: With a targeted gas limit of 7 million per second and each coin transfer costing 21,000 gas, Arbitrum can handle about 333 simple transactions per second. More complex smart contract calls consume even more gas, significantly reducing capacity. Optimism: With a gas limit of 5 million per block and a block time of 2 seconds, Optimism can handle only about 119 simple transfers per second. Gas-intensive operations further reduce this capacity.

Unstable fees. Another major issue with Ethereum and its L2 solutions is unstable fees during periods of high network activity. For applications relying on low and stable fees, this is a critical drawback. Projects like meme coins are especially fee-sensitive, making Ethereum-based L2s less attractive.

Lack of interoperability between L2s. The scalability argument for having multiple L2s only holds if contracts on different L2s can interact freely. However, rollups are essentially independent blockchains, and accessing data from one rollup to another is as challenging as cross-chain communication. This lack of interoperability significantly limits the potential of L2 scalability.

What can L2s do to further scale?

Embed features to enhance interoperability. Ethereum L1 needs to do more to support interoperability among L2s. For example, the recent ERC-7786: Cross-Chain Messaging Gateway is a step in the right direction. While it doesn’t fully resolve the interoperability issue, it simplifies communication between L2s and L1, laying the groundwork for further improvements.

Architectural updates: Diverge from the existing L1 design. To compete with multithreaded blockchains like Solana, L2s must break free from Ethereum’s single-threaded EVM design and adopt parallel execution. This may require a complete overhaul of the EVM, but the potential scalability gains make it a worthwhile endeavor.

Future milestones

Ethereum’s L2 solutions face significant challenges in delivering the scalability and cost-effectiveness that applications like meme coins demand. To stay competitive, the ecosystem must address fundamental architectural limitations, enhance interoperability, and embrace innovations in blockchain design. Only by doing so can Ethereum L2s achieve the scalability needed to support widespread adoption and fend off competition from emerging blockchains like Solana.

Laurent Zhang

Laurent Zhang is the president and founder of Arcology Network, a revolutionizing Ethereum layer-2 solution with the first-ever EVM-equivalent, multithreaded rollup—offering unparalleled performance and efficiency for developers building the next generation of decentralized applications. With an executive leadership and innovation background, Laurent holds a degree from Oxford Brookes University. Laurent’s professional journey includes over a decade of experience in science, research, engineering, and leadership roles. After graduating in 2005, he joined MKS Instruments as an Algorithm Engineer. From 2010 to 2012, he worked as a research engineer at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, followed by a position as a research scientist at Baker Hughes from 2012 to 2014. He then served as vice president of engineering at Quikflo Health between 2016 and 2018. Since 2017, Laurent has been the president of Arcology Network, being a visionary of a future where blockchain technology reaches its full potential, offering unmatched scalability, efficiency, and innovation.

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21 Million

No, BlackRock Can't Change Bitcoin

Published

2 days ago

December 21, 2024

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Recently, BlackRock released an educational video explaining Bitcoin, which I thought was great—it’s amazing to see Bitcoin being discussed on such a massive platform. But, of course, Bitcoin X (Twitter) had a meltdown over one specific line in the video: “There is no guarantee that Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap will not be changed.”

HealthRnager from Natural News claimed, “Bitcoin has become far too centralized, and now the wrong people largely control its algorithms. They are TELLING you in advance what they plan to do.”

Now, let me be clear: this is total nonsense. The controversy is overhyped, and the idea that BlackRock would—or even could—change bitcoin’s supply is laughable. The statement in their video is technically true, but it’s just a legal disclaimer. It doesn’t mean BlackRock is plotting to inflate bitcoin’s supply. And even if they were, they don’t have the power to pull it off.

Bitcoin’s 21 million cap is fundamental—it’s not up for debate. The entire Bitcoin ecosystem—miners, developers, and nodes—operates on this core principle. Without it, Bitcoin wouldn’t be Bitcoin. And while BlackRock is a financial giant and holds over 500,000 Bitcoin for its ETF, its influence over Bitcoin is practically nonexistent.

Bitcoin is a proof-of-work (PoW) system, not a proof-of-stake (PoS) system. It doesn’t matter how much bitcoin BlackRock owns; economic nodes hold the real power.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. Say BlackRock tries to propose a protocol change to increase bitcoin’s supply. What happens? The vast network of nodes would simply reject it. Bitcoin’s history proves this. Remember Roger Ver and the Bitcoin Cash fork? He had significant influence and holdings, yet his version of bitcoin became irrelevant because the majority of economic actors didn’t follow him.

If Bitcoin could be controlled by a single entity like BlackRock, it would’ve failed a long time ago. The U.S. government, with its endless money printer, could easily acquire 10% of the supply if that’s all it took to control Bitcoin. But that’s not how Bitcoin works. Its decentralized nature ensures no single entity—no matter how powerful—can dictate its terms.

So, stop worrying about BlackRock “changing” Bitcoin. Their influence has hard limits. Even if they tried to push developers to change the protocol, nodes would reject it. Bitcoin’s decentralization is its greatest strength, and no one—not BlackRock, not Michael Saylor—can change that.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Opinion

It’s Time to Admit It – There Are Only 2.1 Quadrillion Bitcoins

Published

2 days ago

December 21, 2024

admin

If the above statement offends you, you might not have read the Bitcoin source code.

Follow Rizzo on X.
https&colon;//x&period;com/pete&lowbar;rizzo&lowbar;/

Of course, I’m sure you’ve heard that there are 21 million bitcoin – and this is true, the Bitcoin protocol allows for only “21 million bitcoin” to be created, yet these larger denominations can be subdivided into 100 million sub-units each.

Call them whatever you want, there are only 2.1 quadrillion monetary units in the protocol.

This dollars and cents differential has long been the subject of debate – in the time of Satoshi, Bitcoin’s creator, the dual conventions, Bitcoin having both a bulk denomination, and a smaller unit, was not much of a concern. There were questions about whether the software would work at all, and bitcoin were so worthless, selling them in bulk was the only rational option.

Rehashing this debate is BIP 21Q, a proposal to the Bitcoin users authored by John Carvalho, founder of Synonym, creator of the Pubky social media platform, and a tenured contributor whose work dates back to the days of the influential Bitcoin-assets collective.

In short, the BIP proposes that network actors – the various wallets and exchanges – change how Bitcoin denominations are displayed, with the smallest unit of the protocol renamed “bitcoins,” as opposed to “satoshis,” as they have been commonly called.

Here are the specifics of the BIP:

Redefinition of the Unit:

Internally, the smallest indivisible unit remains unchanged.
Historically, 1 BTC = 100,000,000 base units. Under this proposal, “1 bitcoin” equals that smallest unit.
What was previously referred to as “1 BTC” now corresponds to 100 million bitcoins under the new definition.

Terminology:

The informal terms “satoshi” or “sat” are deprecated.
All references, interfaces, and documentation SHOULD refer to the base integer unit simply as “bitcoin.”

Display and Formatting:

Applications SHOULD present values as whole integers without decimals.
Example:

Old display: 0.00010000 BTC
New display: 10000 BTC (or ₿10000)

Unsurprisingly, the debate around the BIP has been hostile. For one, it’s not a technical BIP, though this is not a requirement of the BIP process. Suffice to say, it’s perhaps the most general BIP that has been proposed under the BIP process to date, as it mainly deals with market conventions and user onboarding logic, not any changes to the software rules.

However, I have to say, I find the proposal compelling. Nik Hoffman, our News Editor, does not, preferring to stick to the market affirmative.

Yet, I think the proposal raises relevant questions: why should new users be forced to compute their Bitcoin balances using only decimals? Surely this has the adverse side effect of making commerce difficult – it’s simply antithetical to how people think and act today.

Also, in terms of savings, at an $100,000 BTC price, it isn’t exactly compelling to think you could be spending a whole year earning 1 BTC, though that may be.

Indeed, there have been various debates for all kinds of units – mBTC, uBTC – that play around with the dollars and cents convention, but Carvalho here is wisely skipping to the end, preferring just to rip the band-aid off. $1 would buy 1,000 bitcoins under his proposal.

What’s to like here, and I argued this during a Lugano debate on the topic in 2023, is that it keeps both the larger BTC denomination and the smaller unit, now bitcoins. They are both important, and serve different functions.

My argument then was that having a larger denomination like BTC (100 million bitcoins) is important. If there was no “BTC unit,” the press and financial media would be faced to reckon that “1 bitcoin” is still worth less than 1 cent.

How much mainstream coverage and interest do we think there would be? I’d bet not very much.

In this way, BIP 21Q is a best-of-both-worlds approach.

The financial world, press, and media can continue championing the meteoric rise in value of “BTC,” while everyday users can get rid of decimals and complex calculations, trading the only real Bitcoin unit guaranteed to exist in perpetuity.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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