Are you a real Bitcoiner?

Sunday, September 18, 2022

It’s well known that you are only a real Bitcoiner if you are a carnivore, eat red meat at least three times a week but never consume seed oils, lift heavy weights, are straight, white, unvaccinated, believe in the Christian god, got into Bitcoin before 2015, are a maximalist, stack sats regularly, and own at least 6.15 BTC and two or more guns with plenty of ammunition.

Obviously, that’s not the case. Anyone claiming this is a self-proclaimed gatekeeper that hasn’t understood Bitcoin. There are no gates in Bitcoin. On the technical side, anyone can join the Bitcoin network, and the other peers don’t care what you bench, if or which god you believe in, and how much bitcoin you own. On the social side, it’s similar - your dietary preferences, religion, political affiliation, skin color, when you got interested in Bitcoin, and your sexual orientation doesn’t matter.

Bitcoin is for everyone. A Bitcoiner is someone interested in Bitcoin and bitcoin as a tool, money, or technology. Someone who understood that Bitcoin is open for everyone, even for people you don’t like. Everything else doesn’t matter. Bitcoin doesn’t care. You are probably not a Bitcoiner if you don’t get this. You are probably not a Bitcoiner if you tell others they are not a real Bitcoiner because they like something you don’t like.

If you consume only vegan products and are interested in Bitcoin or bitcoin, you are probably a vegan Bitcoiner. Or, if you only eat meat, you are probably a carnivore Bitcoiner. But don’t generalize and assume all Bitcoiners must be vegan or, in the latter case, carnivores. Similarly, you can be a Christian Bitcoiner, a gun-owner Bitcoiner, or an LGQBT Bitcoiner. Being a Bitcoiner doesn’t depend on your other preferences and life decisions.

Thanks @skyler_fs on twitter for the fitting, and provocative header image.

All text and images in this work are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Creative Commons License

Next

Image for 2022 Review and 2023 Outlook
January 17, 2023

2022 Review and 2023 Outlook

In this post, I revisit my plans and projects for 2022, and give an outlook for 2023. I plan to continue my current Bitcoin network monitoring efforts in 2023. I briefly touch on potentially tight open-source developer funding in 2023.

Previous

Image for Extracting the Private Key from Schnorr Signatures that reuse a Nonce
January 17, 2022

Extracting the Private Key from Schnorr Signatures that reuse a Nonce

Elliott (aka @robot__dreams) posted a Bitcoin-flavored cryptography challenge on Twitter. The goal is to extract the private key from two Schnorr signatures that reuse a nonce. I’ve recently reviewed and merged Kalle Rosenbaum’s cross-post of his Schnorr Basics post to bitcoin-dev.blog. His post shows, for example, why nonce reuse leaks the private key. The challenge was the perfect opportunity for me to apply the theory the blog post explains. This post is a write-up of how I solved the challenge.