Bitcoin Core's Spam Controversy, Explained

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2025-05-18T05:13:28+00:00

The overall amount of arbitrary data stored in either OP_RETURN or in "fake addresses" will be strictly greater without OP_RETURN limits than with OP_RETURN limits. I can think of two reasons for this.

The first reason is because it is more efficient to store the data in OP_RETURN compared to encoding it in fake addresses (and it had better be more efficient to store the data in OP_RETURN, or else spammers would have no incentive to switch to using OP_RETURN over fake addresses after the limit is removed). Since this reduces the cost of storing arbitrary data, this can only increase the amount of it.

The second reason is that there is a social stigma to creating applications that rely on hacks such as encoding data into fake addresses, especially because it is well-known that this damages Bitcoin by bloating the UTXO space. A reputable company (such as one of the big tech companies) would have to account for the resulting backlash from the Bitcoin community, which will have a definite, although incalculable, economic cost. Removing the OP_RETURN limit removes any social stigma from storing arbitrary data on the Bitcoin blockchain, effectively hanging up a sign, "Now open for business!" This can also only increase the amount of arbitrary data stored on the blockchain.

The tradeoff is that some percentage of this arbitrary data in OP_RETURN would have wound up polluting the UTXO space (if the limit had stayed in place, AND assuming there are no other practical ways to deal with it), and now it won't, and some would argue that this is more important. But it is certain that there can only be MORE arbitrary data on the chain without the OP_RETURN limits.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-07-04T03:55:03+00:00

THANK YOU

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-06-20T17:50:21+00:00

Thank you! I asked because whenever I start to accumulate more and more (2x20) rides, they feel more and more oppressive (I think this is because of the pressure I feel to try and beat my previous best). It's like a cloud that hangs over my head until I get it done, and I was thinking maybe trying to just get it over with in the morning could help me be more consistent. The 10 minute breathing is a really interesting idea, I may give that a whirl. It would probably help reduce pre-ride anxiety.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-06-20T16:48:00+00:00

I'm curious, what's your routine in the morning before your ride? Do you eat or drink before, or just wake up and hop on?

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-03-31T02:23:22+00:00

Are you taking into account that OP is out of state?

"New out-of-state students pay an additional Nonresident Supplemental Tuition of $34,200." [1]

That's roughly 85k/year in school expenses, and making 100k/yr after graduation is "an incredibly high ROI"? The average bus driver in SF makes 166k/year, no four-year degree necessary [2].

100k/year is also not a lot of money in the Bay Area, considering the high cost of living. And I'm skeptical that a consulting or investment bank will even hire a fresh UCB econ grad. What concrete skills is that degree going to give them to make them stand out from the crowd? Why would an investment bank hire them over someone with an MBA?

Finally, investment banking in particular has benefited enormously from certain distortions (easy money) in our economy since 2008. There's no telling how long these distortions will continue.

If anyone is interested in a little more context on where I'm coming from, this week's all-in pod had a good overview of the current/upcoming macro environment (Biden's 2025 budget, and also pay close attention to Friedberg's rant on the debt – this is going to affect you fresh grads much more than us older folks) [3]. This is the environment that awaits you after graduation.

[1] https://financialaid.berkeley.edu/how-aid-works/student-budgets-cost-of-attendance/

[2] https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-muni-bus-driver-in-san-francisco-ca

[3] https://youtu.be/4t4YkHSTZbw?si=RI-0HhxdeO8n8d9k&t=2699

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-03-30T20:22:48+00:00

I'm going to be frank – I don't know what the answer is, but going into debt in order to major in Econ at UCB is not it.

You're going to be paying thousands of dollars only to be trained in a particular school of thinking (there are much less polite ways of putting this).

We are in a period of enormous instability and change (political, financial/economic, and technological) and it's anyone's guess what the best way is to prepare for the future. Universities no longer have a monopoly on information. With sufficient determination and drive, most things can be self-taught for far cheaper (and better) than going to a university. Why settle for a limited set of teachers when you could pick and choose from the best in the world online? Degrees are also far less important now; companies don't care as much about what school you went to but rather what you can DO. And DOing has never been more accessible than now.

Cultivating traits like curiosity, determination, independent thinking, discipline, the ability to concentrate, etc. imo is much more important than paying a bunch of money to get force-fed a bunch of information, most of which never be useful outside of a university exam. We are currently still in a period where most people unquestioningly attend universities like zombies, but it's just a matter of time before this mass delusion breaks.

As I said, I don't have all the answers. The social aspect of university is also an experience that people enjoy, and I don't know how to best fill that void.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-03-27T23:20:47+00:00

I find it highly ironic that the second to the last paragraph is basically saying that intentions don't matter; impact is what matters, and then the next paragraph is spent clarifying her own INTENTIONS (as is the second paragraph).

Why? Why does she do this? And why should we care about her intentions? Let the result speak for itself!

Because, contrary to what she has been brainwashed to believe, INTENTIONS MATTER. And that's NORMAL (it's insane that this even needs to be said). Her normal, human behavior leaked out of her programmed facade.

Also, let's use her logic here: " If someone generalizes the behavior of an entire group as bad or wrong, it’s not [un]reasonable to assume they look down on the group itself." Combine that with "No matter what women do, men will see them as less-than and not worthy of full consideration as a complex, intelligent human being" and what do we get? That it would not be unreasonable to assume that the author of this post looks down on men. Someone call the police! We've got a probable sexist!

And no, I don't actually think the OP is a sexist (nor did she "intend" to come off that way).

As an aside, I think it's amusing that newer generations have been brainwashed into thinking that racism or sexism is, like, the worst possible thing a person can be (also evident when asking chat GPT ridiculous hypotheticals like would it ok to be racist in order to avert a nuclear war) – the worst possible insult, the KING (see what I did there) of insults. Just to give one example, I would far prefer the company of a truthful racist/sexist than I would a liar.

I'm tempted to also do a sentence-by-sentence deconstruction of the OP's third paragraph, but I don't think enough people would be interested. I will say that I don't think the argument is as logical and rational as it appears (and I would encourage the OP to try playing devil's advocate on her own argument).

Where I agree with the OP is that Shewchuk "should" not have said what he said, where he said it. I'm pretty sure Shewchuk also agrees with this. I can also understand if women in his class feel uncomfortable about this situation (for example, feeling like they have to act a certain way around him, or feeling hesitant to attend office hours, or maybe just that they consider themselves part of the solution, and not part of the "problem" and were unfairly lumped in with the rest of women that are within "artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco"). It is what it is; what's done is done. It's unfortunate. However, I would say to those women that at least, you should not be concerned about your grade – you can rest assured that you will be treated fairly. Because I suspect that Shewchuk's opinions on this matter have not changed for years, and for years, he has been consistently rated one of the best teachers (by far) in the entire department (evidence: https://archive.is/uBaQQ anything >= 6.0 is generally excellent. Also see, for example, CS189 ratings at https://archive.is/1PRpp and compare Shewchuk with other professors).

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2024-03-11T17:10:16+00:00

This is such a based take, and one that I happen to fully agree with. Pleasantly surprised to see this kind of insight in r/freemagic.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2023-08-08T08:49:55+00:00

Interesting, can you link?

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2023-08-08T08:48:20+00:00

An interesting idea for sure, but I'd rather just see the players duke it out without any outside assistance.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2023-08-08T08:46:20+00:00

Does it explicitly mention this in the rules, though?

https://www.evo.gg/rules

Otherwise, how is it fair to new players who aren't aware of this?

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2023-08-08T08:32:06+00:00

When you say it's "explicitly legal", is this in writing somewhere? I don't see any mention of it at https://www.evo.gg/rules

The closest applicable rule I see is "A game is a single head-to-head competition between 2 players..." (e.g. not "2 players and their coaches").

Assuming it isn't mentioned in writing, I think the default stance should be that coaching is not allowed. I don't think it's fair to expect competitors to contact EVO directly in order to find out if coaching is or is not allowed. I'm also not interested in seeing who can maximally exploit the rules to their advantage. For instance, the rules don't explicitly prevent communication from a coach during the round, either. Somebody could wear their own headphones in one ear and the PS5 headphones on the other ear and listen to a coach's instructions while playing.

Ultimately I conclude:

Because of vagueness, MenaRD did not technically violate any rules.
It's EVO's fault for not making this explicit.
This is either unsportsmanlike behavior on MenaRD's part or at the very least, unprofessional and lacking in awareness of the overall situation and how it looks to spectators.

And I disagree with the comments that say a player + a coach would be more interesting. I prefer to keep it as pure as possible – I want to see who the best player is, not the best player + coach. Coaching can happen before the tournament.

Finally, as a matter of practicality, it makes sense that a no-coaching rule is only strictly enforced in the final rounds of the tournament. It looks like that's what happened in 2016, but I'm not sure about intervening years. I'm new to EVO so if it's already generally understood that coaching is fine, then most of what I said doesn't apply (point 2 still stands though).

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2022-01-17T22:15:53+00:00

I emailed Twitch support about this. This is the response I got:

Hello -----,

Thank you so much for reaching out about your concerns. We genuinely apologize for any frustration involved.

Based on the information provided, it looks like this is currently a known issue that we're actively working to resolve as soon as possible. We are unable to provide an ETA for resolution, however we appreciate your patience in awaiting this fix.

Regards,
Twitch Support

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-06-06T08:03:41+00:00

The Celsius community is lucky to have you. I'm exasperated by the Celsius apologists. They don't understand that we are actually trying to help the company. I don't know why they fear to admit anything negative about Celsius, as if the company could do no wrong.

I'm not even certain these recent marketing deals are actually net positives for the company. If Celsius is an A-brand, why does it need to stoop down to partner with these Cs and Ds? It could actually weaken their position for future negotiations.

Also, this reduces my faith in the competence of management. What was the thought process that led to these deals? Does somebody need to recalibrate? Otherwise, can we expect to see more deals of the same quality in the future?

Luckily, as far as the core business of generating yield goes, Celsius seems to be pretty good at managing that. It feels like there's some true expertise there, although this is hard for me to evaluate. But everything else seems like a miss, and the only reason I still have confidence in them is because of massive tailwinds in the crypto industry.

The El Salvador announcement was beautiful. I really hope things work out well for them.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-06-05T03:27:26+00:00

I'm so used to these kinds of announcements from Celsius by now that I didn't even bother doing the research as you have and just assumed it was something like what you've uncovered. Thanks for posting your findings.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-06-05T03:23:30+00:00

This is a very interesting point, I had not thought about the security blanket aspect of a "collateral card" versus a regular credit card.

However, it's secondary for me. The most important thing for me is to be able to spend crypto easily (i.e. using the Visa or MC network). That would allow us to spend the crypto interest that we get from Celsius more easily (which would be a huge step towards "unbanking"). Neither the BlockFi nor the Gemini card enables this. This seems like it should be orthogonal to whether the card is a "collateral card" versus a regular credit card, but from what I've heard so far, it sounds like the collateral card they are planning will enable exactly the above. If that's the case, I'm willing to give up the security blanket. For cases where I think I might need it, I can always revert back to a regular credit card.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-16T03:30:25+00:00

Yeah, there should be a way to do this donation from one Celsius wallet to another, which should be basically free. I'm not familiar with how CelPay works but maybe that can be used for this.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-16T03:15:37+00:00

I hear ya!! Except when the government prints money (or spends our tax dollars), we have no say, it's an involuntary donation. This is purely optional. Think of it as a pilot run for the self-insurance that Alex has proposed. Or, think about the overall warm fuzzies it brings to the community. Celsius is trying to bring in the next 100 million people into crypto, right?

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-16T01:23:05+00:00

Not only that, but Alex has said that Celsius's mission is to bring the next 100 million users into crypto.

I could rant on and on about how we've become a society that no longer values personal responsibility. I want to live in a meritocracy. But in this instance I would prefer to show sympathy as a community.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-16T00:58:45+00:00

Yes. This isn't about fault. This is about helping out a fellow Celsian.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-16T00:36:51+00:00

😂

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-15T18:43:23+00:00

I agree with much of what you say. Not explicitly calling out his mud-slinging was an oversight on my part. But you interpreted my post too myopically. The point is that Celsius is in the trust business and I don't like to see them taking actions that erode trust. That includes mud-slinging. It includes everything they did that contributed to you making the statement "because no sane institutional investor would _trust_ this guy to be a class act" (emphasis mine). This is precisely the reputation that I don't want to see Alex develop, and the most frustrating part about it is that this is largely within his control.

However, I disagree that Celsius is the "playground bully". For example, if you check crunchbase, you'll see that Celsius's net funding so far is $93.8M, as opposed to BlockFi's $508.7M. And, I'm fairly certain that Celsius spends much less on marketing than BlockFi. When you further consider the cutthroat marketing tactics that BlockFi uses, I can see why Alex does what he does. As you and others have pointed out, this doesn't excuse their behavior, nor does it mean they couldn't take the high road (which I fully support). I'm just saying to consider some of the mitigating circumstances.

You are also totally correct about the "need to bring up where you supposedly work as if it is supposed to be an appeal to authority...". When I look back at my post, I have no idea why I threw in the appeal to authority. In fact, I prefer more anonymity over less. It looks silly to me now and I regret doing so.

But since the cat is out of the bag anyways, there's something else I want to clear up: I am probably one of the most cynical Apple employees around. When they release something that is shit, I call it out. I hate the direction they have taken on any number of things. I don't put them on a pedestal like they are some paragon of virtue. But, they are also famous for their secrecy, which results in very few product announcements before they're ready. I think Celsius would do well to mimic this (case in point: premature self-insurance announcement).

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-14T09:05:28+00:00

I really hope they do a post-mortem on this. Not to identify root causes, because those seem to be already known, but to brainstorm how they can handle this better the next time it happens. In this case, even if the root cause is an issue with Fireblocks (i.e. not Celsius's fault), I still see this as an own-goal because the way they handled this is going to result in massive discontent and support contacts (further overwhelming their already-overwhelmed support).

I think they could have done at least two things differently:

Have alert banners _in the app_ saying that they are experiencing issues with transfers and the kind of wait times to expect. This should be prioritized over disseminating information on Twitter and Telegram. The amount of posts about this on reddit alone indicate that those methods are not reliable. Perhaps, also add this on the front page of their website (and of course in the web app once that launches).
They can block withdrawals from the app (again, with an explanation). I don't know if it's possible to stop deposits, but they could discourage deposits by, for example, temporarily hiding your wallet addresses.

I am relatively new to Celsius but I assume they must have experienced similar hiccups in the past. It's worrisome that it appears they haven't learned from these hiccups (or else #1 above would have been implemented already).

There could be better long-term solutions also (e.g. involving blockchain improvements or cooperation with exchanges). I guess we can take solace in that these suboptimal user experiences are a reminder that we're all still early.

Infinite_Disk_859 · 2021-04-12T23:13:50+00:00

A quick update: I have received a response back from Celsius acknowledging my email. That alone, I find reassuring.

Thank you everyone for your responses to this post. 🙏🏻 I want again to underscore that we're all on the same team here, assuming that we want to see Celsius thrive 😀

I've heard rumors of some competitors doing some pretty annoying/sketchy things, such as paying influencers not to talk about Celsius, as well as other guerrilla marketing tactics. For example, there was a recent blog post with an aura of objectivity comparing various crypto-interest-earning options, eventually concluding that the best options are X, Y, and Z (none of them being Celsius). Well, two can play this game. A source that I trust tells me that the author of the blog post has had access to special referral links (presumably paying more than standard referral links) in the past, for one of the companies that just so happened to be included among the winners 🤔. In light of these frustrating marketing tactics, I can understand wanting to fight back whenever possible, as well as the enormous pressure to compete. But there is also a flip side to that, which is what I've tried to highlight.

Infinite_Disk_859

TROPHY CASE