Marc Briggs

Voice actor
#Bitcoin
Nostr: #npub1tn9wat952jjw885j59vp75gva0w2snx4257t04nepvzlfuzsufzsjsnexm

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@hawkeye7776 @LawrenceLepard He mentioned that he was buying for a group of people. So the per person cost was perhaps not unreasonable.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@GandalfDollar @IntCyberDigest If my title is clean, I've paid taxes on it, and so on, your attempt to steal it from me will not go smoothly. #guaranteed

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@PerianneDC This is inaccurate. Physical energy and proof of work do the protecting. Not "Bitcoin's encryption," whatever that is.

[Alex 👽 @AlexesNakamoto]

America’s Got Talent: Bitcoin Edition.

[Luke de Wolf @lukedewolf]

Ordinals was and is an availability attack on Bitcoin. Their proliferation degraded the system for monetary users.

I'm glad to see their failure. I still worry about another frenzy in the future, though.

[Beautyon @Beautyon_]

The problem here is the mischaracterizing and overestimating of the Bitcoin Cult.

Even in the Bitcoin Cult context, accounts like "MrHodl" are not significant or influential in the big "rest of the world" picture where bitcoin is destined to thrive.

It really doesn't matter what "Mr. Hodl" has to say about anything; nothing he claims or says can or will change the direction of bitcoin. That's a fact.

Shinobi, who is a provably extremely intelligent, very well versed and knowledgeable person has more influence than "Mr. Hodl", and has risen from scintillating "phone it in appearances" on YouTube Bitcoin shows where he wiped the floor with big blocker anti-Bitcoiners to gaining a seat on Bitcoin Magazine's staff.

By dint of this, he has bigger reach; this is unarguable. His manner on X however, as a matter of effective persuasion, completely destroys his "arguments", on top of the fallacious, teenage, "Pics or it didn't happen" discourse that no one takes seriously.

Adam Back is the most powerful of the three, with a reputation spanning decades, a history of very sound ideas, a company actually offering real and useful services to Bitcoin users rather than skulking in the shadows as an rutardid "anon".

Everyone took him seriously because he was clearly a very serious, logical, philosophically aligned genius level thinker, and major and effective contributor to the Bitcoin business ecosystem with Blockstream's products, tools and services. Those are "Bona Fides" by any rational measure. No argument against him can be mounted in these areas.

That's why people are so shocked by his profound change in particular, because through being effective, he actually mattered.

The corruption of Bitcoin means less to Shinobi and "Mr. Hodl", who are not as invested in every way like Adam Back is. If Bitcoin vanished tomorrow, what would "Mr. Hodl" lose? Nothing. He's just an anon on X. Shinobi loses his writing gig at Bitcoin Magazine. Neither employ anyone, serve anyone with tools. Nothing of value to others is lost.

On the other hand, Adam Back loses the the culmination of a life-times work in a field where he is an expert to the level where he is cited in the venerated "White Paper". He has more to lose than any intemperate autist or silly 4Channish weather-vane turning Backstreet Boys fangirl level Anon.

The fact of the matter is that Bitcoin is bigger than all of these people; even Adam Back.

This is not controversial. The telephone as an idea was bigger than Edison. After Edison died, and his Patents expired, telephone networks grew and spanned and changed the entire world. Adam Back is not Satoshi; his company is one of many that are building on Bitcoin, all of which are owned by people who will eventually fade away. And Bitcoin will grow to engulf the entire world...right?

The noise you hear on X is not bitcoin. The people you worship are not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is much bigger than what is said on X, and infinitely bigger than the miniscule and fleeting reputations of Bitcoin Cult members who switch off their brains when they go to conferences and pack halls to the rafters to hear the High Priest of Bitcoin whine on stage to a pounding music intro.

No matter what happens, bitcoin will survive all of these people, and it will continue to do what it does one way or another. Hopefully it is one way. The weakest part of the ecosystem are the brain dead men and women who don't know why bitcoin was written, and the brain dead men and women who know why it was written but who are pulling up the ladder and the brain dead men and women who think Bitcoin is a threat of some kind. If these people did not exist, bitcoin could continue indefinitely. But you don't live in that world.

You should therefore be prepared to believe that you will be smeared, attacked, and harassed by people you made the mistake of venerating if you try to exit the Cult. Hodlnaut, because he was counted amongst the victims of Craig "Faketoshi" Wright was on the surface, a deep Cult "Made Man" at a minimum. That he has broken ranks in such an effective and serious way, using his assumed high level cult member status to destroy the priesthood is the greatest of blasphemies. Hodlnaut and Adam Back were in the same Hight Court being attacked by Faketoshi. Hodlnaut has the credibility as a wrongly perceived insider, by mere association, to detonate Bitcoin Core from the inside.

That's why they hate him so much. He broke ranks.

None of these people attacking Hodlnaut (or very few of them) are actually interested in the truth or in Bitcoin; it's just another grift, gig and club to be in. The low level cult members who are too timid or dumb or anti-social to do what Adam Back has done move from one position to another because that's where their maximum value is; they have nothing actionable to offer, nothing to buy or use; its just hot air, swearing, positioning, and lazer eyes.

The cult tenets of "don't trust, verify" and decentralization mantras were nothing more than sentiments provided to the Cult from the priest class as symbols and coordinating messages to get plebs in line, mobilize them into an army and control them. The Cult Priesthood don't believe any of it; if they did, they would not be reacting the way they've reacted to BIP110 Hodlnaut and Luke's client. They would never have done or supported "Use Cases" or pollution on Layer 1, or anything that caused what has happened to happen.

Of course they don't care about "don't trust, verify" and decentralization. Everyone can see this now, and it may explain why they're so furious; they can't use the religious texts they've been using to enlist and control and manipulate users. They've been disempowered. It's over for them.

That they're retreating to intemperate bursts of schoolboy profanity laced anger, ridiculous Appeals to Authority, Ad Hominem and other fallacious arguments, shaming, smears....and a point blank refusal to engage with the shocking revelations of the articles shows they're completely destroyed and haven't got a leg to stand on. It's really over for them.

What's more interesting is that they believe that railing against Hodlnaut's exposé will discredit his work, make it go away or diminish its impact. Haven't they heard of the Streisand Effect? The more furiously they explode against him the more people read the articles and share them, just like this:

https://t.co/HIFEeaCT9V

And they can't all be doing this because they're "compromised" and being "Blackmailed because Epstein". They're doing this because they believe in it; they believe in "use cases" and want Bitcoin to be polluted on Layer 1. That's beyond dispute. They want the corrupt management of Bitcoin Core and the Reference Client to continue unchallenged. All of this is a logical conclusion.

Once again. The current generation of Bitcoiners, Bitcoin users, Bitcoin businesses and everyone tangential to it is not eternal; new people will come to it with (unfortunately) "their own ideas" and they will try to corrupt it.

Whether they succeed or not is up to the people who run the nodes and who are aligned with bitcoin's ends, unlike the Three Stooges Hodlnaut references. Bitcoin's central flaw is that it requires a large number of aligned people for it to run in a protected state. In 2026, this is harder than ever to put in place, because you're dealing with mentally ill people who don't even believe that there can be truth at all.

Still, does this mean you should give up and "go back to fiat". Obviously not. What you should do is begin to behave in a rational manner; stop being and acting like a cult member and imitating other people.

You are going to get burned again and again by your heroes; so, don't have any. Be in Bitcoin for it's purpose, not the "culture". The culture is toxic and a dead end...but if you like death then...

Rock on, and perish with it!

[Unamuno 📜 @UnamunoAgain]

Hiroyuki Sanada dijo una vez: "Hay quienes desean una piscina en su casa, mientras que aquellos que la tienen apenas la usan. Quienes han perdido a un ser querido lo extrañan profundamente, mientras que otros que los tienen cerca a menudo se quejan de ellos. Quien no tiene pareja la anhela, pero quien la tiene, a veces no la valora. El que pasa hambre daría todo por un plato de comida, mientras que quien tiene de sobra se queja del sabor. El que no tiene coche lo sueña, mientras que quien lo tiene siempre busca uno mejor. La clave está en ser agradecido, en detenerse a mirar lo que poseemos y comprender que, en algún lugar, alguien daría todo por lo que tú ya tienes y no aprecias".

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy You seem to be stuck on your 7 tps prejudice. The Lightning network alone destroyed that misprision years ago.

It's time to come to terms with the reality that Bitcoin will outlive us both & will create a better world as soon as enough of us stop inexplicably resisting it.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy You presented nothing but generalities, so your objection is laughable. You seem to assume that in a world of digital capital and triple-entry accounting, people will continue to consent to being mercilessly stolen from as if they still lived in a previous analog-capital century.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy You haven't presented any persuasive reasons. Your detestation of bitcoin is misplaced. Time to reexamine. Please don't resign yourself to a permanent big-bank-kleptocratic future that need not be tolerated.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy Here is a great, prescient 2 1/2 minute speech by a British MEP from 12 years ago. Fractional reserve banking is not moral enough to win in the long term in a future in which digital capital necessarily exists. https://t.co/cn0KcZSwPW

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy I'm way up with my bitcoin, even today. So don't worry about me.

When it finally dawns on enough people how much bankers have stolen from them, they will revolt, trust me, & btc is maturing enough to help them do so. It might take 25 years, but revolt is baked in the cake now.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy The heyday of fractional reserve banking is in the process of passing. In a post 20th century future too many people will realize they neither want nor need it. Anyway, far too many bitcoin-focused companies already incorporate Proof of Reserves, as their customers insist on it.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@Kaspatzis @fixingmoneybtc @BitcoinRachy The whole world can in fact build on bitcoin payments. I don't know if anyone has ever advised you of this, but layer 2 and layer 3 solutions to bitcoin payment processing are already and will continue to be fully functional for worldwide commerce.

[Marc Briggs @MarcBriggs]

@SimplyBitcoin I don't at all like or appreciate his word "frightened" here. Bitcoin is a commodity of a type never before seen in human history, with numerous unique qualities that remain unmatched by any other commodity. Full stop.

[Alex Gladstein 🌋 ⚡ @gladstein]

@chamath @saylor https://t.co/a95Wd2wFpn

[hodlonaut #BIP-110 @hodlonaut]

1/
In May 2019 a prominent Bitcoin Core developer called Matt Corallo posted a Twitter thread calling for DEI recruitment into Bitcoin development.

The same month, John Newbery hired a new co-organiser for Chaincode Labs' developer residency.

[hodlonaut #BIP-110 @hodlonaut]

By repeatedly adjusting default mempool policy to match what miners will accept anyway (large OP_RETURN uncapped because “they’ll just mine it via bypasses like Libre Relay, or direct APIs”), we are implicitly conceding that miner greed + economic incentives are the ultimate rule-setter, not node-enforced principles.

Meaning a (cleverly hidden) capitulation of Bitcoin as a decentralized project.

You could say that the “CENSORSHIP!” argument from Core and their supporters on the concept of nodes filtering is a roundabout way of critizing decentralization itself.

Nodes were always supposed to be the sovereign check, they decide what they accapt and relay.

When we keep loosening policy to align with whatever is the current grift “use case”, and by extension what is short term profitable for miners, it trains the entire ecosystem to treat restrictive node behavior as pointless theater.

Over time this hollows out node sovereignty: running a full node becomes more about passively observing the chain that miners + L2s + data-spammers have already decided on, rather than actively enforcing a monetary-first standard.

As a cuck bonus it also leads to higher resource costs for every honest node (bandwidth, RAM, storage) à fewer independent verifiers in practice

Decentralization starts looking like a performance act. Miners produce the blocks, a handful of relays and L2 sequencers steer the flow, and nodes just… validate after the fact.

It’s not a hard-fork capitulation (consensus rules haven’t changed), but it is a cultural, philosophical and operational one. The most profound capitulation in practice.

The philosophy flips from “Bitcoin should resist non-monetary garbage even if it costs us some short-term fee revenue” to “whatever pays miners gets standardized because resistance is futile.”

Once you accept “miners will do it anyway” as the justification for policy, you’ve already handed the character of Bitcoin over to the highest bidder. Nodes stop being the immune system and start becoming just a polite audience.

The OP_RETURN uncap looks a lot like another quiet step toward a two-tier network (miners + insiders set the tone, everyone else just watches. Keep doing this and running a node risks becoming a branding exercise instead of the actual source and guarantee of Bitcoin’s decentralization.

[hodlonaut #BIP-110 @hodlonaut]

I've spent the last month looking closely at how Bitcoin Core and the network around it has operated the last years.

A blatant cultural and philosophical shift.

Shocking arrogance and contempt for dissent on display around the OP_RETURN uncap. Opposition was reframed as "harassment", "drama" and "brigading". Consensus was simply declared, in the face of massive controversy and opposition.

Bitcoin is imo clearly drifting towards “anything goes if there is a use case out there” relativism.

Bitcoin is supposed to be money. That's the mission. Separating money and state. Not being a data layer adapting to the needs of venture-backed projects.

Staying neutral while Bitcoin drifts in this direction isn't something I can justify anymore. It feels urgent that something is done to counter it.