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Major Developments in LND 0.7

Today we dive into the recent Lightning Labs Blog post on the incredible improvements in the 0.7-beta release. Followed with a fun discussion on the major developments and what it will mean for the UX, reliability, and further improvements of the Lightning ecosystem. If you need you Lightning Fix, this is where you’ll find it.

Don’t forget to follow the blog and Twitter handles to stay up on what the Lightning Labs team is building! Development is happening at a lightning fast pace and the team is straight fire!

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Bitcoin is a Human Right

Finishing this week out with a short but wonderful introductory article by Nik Bhatia. Bitcoin is a money, a game, a land grab, works like email, and ultimately, Bitcoin is a human right. My discussion afterward may have gotten a little out of hand with a 40 minute follow-up to a 5 minute article. But when a good article sparks great ideas, sometimes its just hard to stop. ;)

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Investing in Bitcoin

Today we read yet another great piece by @hasufl and @suzhu available on uncommoncore.co on the core value offered by Bitcoin as a system and the high level trends in macroeconomics and technology that could lead to enormous future demand for just such an asset.

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Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption is a Necessity

… And one of the greatest natural subsidies for renewable energy we could’ve asked for.

Today we hit a piece by Daniel Wingen. A thorough breakdown of the essence of mining, the necessity of its energy expenditure, the incentives for efficiency and renewable sources, and the unbelievable cost that is being rescued from wasteful alternatives. Not only is Bitcoin’s energy consumption not a problem, it could be exactly what we need for a brighter future.

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Letting a Million Channels Bloom

The Lightning Network does, in fact, have scaling problems of its own. When the network grows to millions of channels we obviously won’t be able to run it on a Raspberry Pi. Don’t tell Rusty Russell or Joe Netti that, because they’ll just build their own network and do it. Another major milestone in Lightning development, the release of the Million Channels Project!

Today we are reading & discussing, from the Blockstream blog, “Letting a Million Channels Bloom.”

Check out the official post for the network data, charts and optimization benchmarks. Follow the blog and developers involved to stay up on the incredible work they are doing to bring Lightning to the world.

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Statechains, Sending Keys Not Coins

If you’ve heard of statechains but couldn’t understand how they worked, who better to break it down than Aaron Van Wirdum & Bitcoin Magazine? Today we get to read Aaron’s piece on the recently conceptualized “Statechains” from the mind of Ruben Somsen. An entirely different way to think of exchanging Bitcoin, by handing keys to the receiver, rather than sending coins.

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Keynesian Errors on Time and Demand

What if there was a single, fundamental flaw in Keynesian economic theory that could shed light on the major imbalances and debts that have resulted from our monetary system? Does “spending” and consumption of resources truly make us wealthier? Ben Kaufman lays out the argument for how “Time” is the missing piece in the failed Keynesian puzzle.

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BetterHash, Decentralizing Bitcoin Mining with new Hashing Protocols

What if we already had a solution to one of the biggest threats to the Bitcoin network, but simply weren’t implementing it? Today we read another great piece by StopAndDecrypt breaking down the numerous vulnerabilities of centralized mining pools, that simply wouldn’t exist, with the implementation of a TheBlueMatt’s new hashing protocol, BetterHash.

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Bit Gold

There were many precursors to the Bitcoin system, but IMO, none came as close to correctly defining the problem, and solving the key issues of trust as Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold concept. Reading another great piece made available by the Nakamoto Institute, we read and discuss the incredible prescience of Szabo through one of Bitcoin’s forefathers, Bit Gold.

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More Immutable than Stone

We start today’s show reading a short Twitter thread by @simonlutz21 which sparks a fun discussion about the presence of Proof-of-Work in nature, the awesome utility of immutability, and the power of Bitcoin’s inalterable ledger.

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