ericyakes on Nostr: How is #bitcoin going to scale? The same way all other monetary systems have Except ...

How is #bitcoin  going to scale?

The same way all other monetary systems have

Except that this time we have cryptography on our side

will it be trustless?

barring a 0 to 1 innovation - no

all scaling solutions are optimizing for fundamental tradeoffs

but we will be able to remove a lot of "mal-trust" in the same way we will remove "mal-investment"

everyday we trust people to provide services for us

By doing so we can specialize in various trades

In economics the people we trust for goods and services are referred to as agents

Trusting agents in other trades and giving ourselves time to specialize in our own trades is the greatest enabler of economic wealth since the dawn of man and largely what separated homo sapiens from our common ancestors

so trust is like really really good

but only when our interests are aligned with agents

when there is a conflict of interest things always end up bad

because money is the most desirable good, financial history is littered with conflicts of interests between agents and those trusting them

So we have this agency problem with money

and fiat money is the epitome of it whereby the agents of the system privatize profits and socialize losses

Now #bitcoin  needs to scale it's own financial system and we're encountering similar problems of legacy systems

But now we have cryptography - which changes quite a lot actually

Just as #bitcoin  used cryptography and properly aligned incentives to reduce trust in base layer money...a similar approach can be used to reduce trust in scaling layers

#bitcoin  is not a perfectly trustless system

When you trust that #bitcoin  will not change it's not just math and software but also properly incentives you trust

Try arguing against #bitcoin  FUD without discussing how perfect the systems incentives are aligned

Incentive alignment is innovation and it was one of the key innovations that separated #bitcoin  from it's predecessors

This is a critical point when it comes to scaling

Banking systems were the scaling mechanism for gold enabled by the printing press

these systems worked well when they were free from government interference but it didn't take long for government to learn how to control them and create conflicts of interest

If you want more detail check this out: yakes.io/bitcoin-bankin…Banking systems were the scaling mechanism for gold enabled by the printing press

these systems worked well when they were free from government interference but it didn't take long for government to learn how to control them and create conflicts of interest

If you want more detail check this out: https://yakes.io/bitcoin-banking-systems-full-reserve-vs-free-banking/

I believe #bitcoin  will follow the same pattern of history but resist centralized control

This is because the #bitcoin  will be able to leverage unique properties of a digitally native system such as:

- The internet: moving information instantly

- software: automating functionality that removes unnecessary agency

- P2P competition: for the first time in modern history you can exit the financial system and participate in a P2P online economy

- Unilateral exit: some protocols will allow for trustless exit of the system into P2P systems

- Cryptography: having the option to conceal information and identity of economic behavior

- information transparency: service providers and centralized interference will much more challenging to go undetected


No banking system in history has had any of these properties

I believe their combined result will be a system so efficient, dynamic, private, & transparent that it can't be captured or controlled

These unique properties will align incentives in a way that history has not seen


Many are focused on trustless/trust-minimized systems and that is great and I hope they proliferate

but 0 to 1 innovations may be necessary for these systems to be competitive with trusted systems

that's why I think trust optimization should be a priority as well


I believe eCash systems such as fedimint and CashuBTC will play a large role in this because:

1) they can optimize trusted custodians for various use cases

2) they use eCash which doesn't have a blockchain


eCash has all the benefits of cash in a wallet as well as a paypal account

no blockchain means scalability is limited to the latency of the internet or federation

but you have to trust in a mint that creates it for you - like a bank - when you send it #bitcoin 

Why wouldn't the eCash mint rug me?

Great question. This is a perfect example of using cryptography and incentive alignment to take a banking function and optimize it's trust nature

.@callebtc theorized this specific scheme w/ origins from the Scrit project

gist.github.com/callebtc/ed522…

By setting an expiration date on eCash issued by a mint we can effectively automate bank runs

This creates a probabilistically certain outcome of catching a cheating mint WHILE STILL allowing users to remain private

that is innovation


Just as #bitcoin  pushed the marginal cost of verifying money to near zero

This eCash scheme can push the marginal cost of automating bank runs to near zero

which changes the incentives of everything

They create a probabilistically certain outcome that a cheating mint will eventually get caught

They reduce the cost of implementing bank solvency verification to near zero

That means these methods can be cheaply and easily implemented in eCash wallet software

And that means we’ve created incentives aligned against pursuing fractional reserves


This isn't a perfect technological solution but it is one that aligns incentives

and it is from these types of solutions that I expect much of #bitcoin  scaling will occur

Self-custody for all monetary use cases is a serious consideration - but shared custody may be

But creating a system with incentives aligned to resist any form of centralized capture is likely

This story will be trustless and trusted but most importantly - trust optimized

Here's the detail behind a lot of this: https://yakes.io/banks-without-bankers/