How To Steal Bitcoin: Enshitcoinification

So, I've been doing some research for the past few days for the next articles in my "How To Steal Bitcoin" series & I accidentally stumbled across a really odd sequence of events that took what I had previously written & made it real in a VERY visceral way. I felt this experience needed to be shared (and in starting to write it, I realized that it was actually a whole article in & of itself), so here it is.

I was checking some mining pool data over on blockchain.com & realized that the chart showed that Foundry had gone completely dark on Sep.11.2024.

IMMEDIATELY my conspiracy brain was like, "WTF?!" so I shot over to mempool.space to verify if it was true & I had somehow missed that happening, or if Blockchain just had some stale input data.

After actually finding the most recent block that Foundry had mined (only a few minutes earlier than when I checked), I let out a sigh of relief & went to take the tinfoil hat off.

However, I actually looked at the block & I noticed that it had a TON of OP_RETURN transactions in it. Curiosity got the better of me, so I randomly clicked one of them & immediately saw that the OP_RETURN just said "Runestone".

Now, I've heard about #Runes, #Ordinals, #TaprootWizards & all that other #BRC20 bullshit, but I never bothered to look into any of it because I understand that it's just shitcoining on #Bitcoin (which I don't approve of). However, the #BTC address correlated with that transaction looked unlike any address I had EVER seen in my entire time in the space; like, a WILDLY suspicious address (bc1pfeessrawgf).

Tinfoil hat back on.

I Ctrl+clicked the address (as you do when you're researching & wanna tabmaxx to keep everything in context). All of a sudden… ABSOLUTELY MAYHEM broke loose.

My computer started firing off loud audible alarms like I was in a fucking submarine that just got torpedoed; it actually startled me enough to make me jump in my seat. For a split-second I thought, "DID I JUST GET FUCKING HACKED BRO?". I couldn't find the source of the noise, but then I noticed the little sound icon on one of my browser tabs; it was the same tab that I just opened with the weirdly stumpy address. My initial startled reaction subsided & all of a sudden it clicked in my brain… these are transaction alerts. The address was firing off a transaction every ~1 second, which was why there was a nonstop barrage of alert noises coming out of my speakers (I had forgotten to turn them down after watching a research video an hour earlier).

I glanced over at the incoming transactions. ALL dust amounts with the exact same "Runestone" OP_RETURN (occasionally with "ordi" or "THTH" sprinkled in).

Then I looked at the transaction count on the address.

ALMOST TWO MILLION FUCKING TRANSACTIONS. From what I can tell, this one wallet is literally just sending sats to itself all day long, 24/7, to make transaction records for a shitcoin.

So then I got to thinking: how long do we REALLY have until this shit ACTUALLY starts degrading the network? Not in a consistent, creeping, annoying sort of way, but in a catosprophic, end-of-an-era way where once we cross a certain threshold, things will NEVER be the same again.

TWO FUCKING YEARS.

At that time, 1TB drives will no longer be able to store the entire blockchain. On that day within a very small timeframe, hundreds (if not thousands) of nodes all over the globe will simultaneously disappear from the network (many of which will not return); it will be an event reminiscent of the hashrate cliff that the China mining ban created, except it won't recover anywhere near as quickly. It won't be a matter of moving hardware, it will be a matter of people being PERMANENTLY priced out of being able to run a node.

Whether it's because the user can't afford to buy another drive, or because an unattended setup hits a brick wall without the operator realizing it, this WILL happen & the network will be PERMANENTLY weakened by it in an instant.

The way I see it… if we don't find a way to reduce the footprint of the blockchain, we are simply stealing from the already borrowed time that we have & accelerating the countdown to our own demise.

Drives were supposed to get cheaper over time, but as we've all witnessed recently… due to supply shocks, exponential #AI compute/storage demand & other emerging phenomenon, the cost of the tech stack that Bitcoin relies on is NOT falling.

We are really on the precipice of something VERY dangerous if we don't all ditch our collective fucking hubris & work together to try to arrive at REAL solutions to the problems that we all know exist. Anyone opposing this is NOT our friend; they are the enemy.

The #Knots devs implementing #BIP110 was an obvious attempt at addressing this exact issue, but the marketing & execution were absolute shit. Now the people who actually supported an extremely GOOD concept are fucking off to make another shitcoin. We are losing their experience, we are losing their coding ability & we are also losing a reference software that gave us CHOICE over what we chose to broadcast. We CANNOT afford this kind of entropy & division in the network or we have already lost.

The #Core devs are clearly not responsible custodians because they ripped the doors off the hinges & allowed people to walk all over our house with filthy, muddy boots.

NEITHER route is correct or positive for us all.

The powers that be are laughing hysterically at us right now; they can just wait us out until we tear each other apart from the inside; like they ALWAYS do.

We need to refuse to fall for it this time. We need to move decisively (and in concert; as a cohesive unit) if we stand a single chance of keeping this thing for ourselves & away from complete capture; we cannot fuck up the ONE good thing we have left. If we take this gift away from future generations through arrogance or complacency, then we are no better than those who fucked up everything in the first place (which caused the necessity for Bitcoin to be invented in the first place).

We need a return to fundamentals. We all need to study & brush up on EXACTLY what SATOSHI originally architected; we need to stop acting like Bitcoin needs fixing, updating & upgrading. Outside of ACTUAL existential bugs, everything we add to the chain has a permanent cost that the entire species will have to bear the burden of FOREVER.

We are NOT smarter than this invention. We do NOT have better ideas on how to improve a perfect scientific equation governed by the laws of physics; if you change any properties of a circle, it simply become a shittier wheel. We should NOT be trying to reinvent a perfect machine; the closer we stay to the original design, the better off humanity will be for it. If your brain is telling you that you can make it better, then you are a myopic, selfish piece of shit, have zero grasp of the multiple-order effects of drift & don't actually understand the meaning of the mantra "Stay humble & stack sats".

If we fuck this up, we DO NOT get another chance at it because Pandora's Box has already been opened & we can't reboot this.

If you want a very real reminder of how urgent this all is, go visit the wallet address & observe the extraneous noise that is drowning out the signal in our communal feed.

Just make sure you turn your volume down first. 🤙

https://mempool.space/address/bc1pfeessrawgf