GM.

It’s Arsen, bringing you the 16th edition of TLDR Bitcoin - the newsletter that keeps you informed AND entertained.

First, happy Sunday to 1,569 of you reading today.

My back has been killing me this week (more than usual). But I'm getting noticeably better with your advice (Yoga, Pilates, and a standing desk).

While recovering, I also binge-watched Berserk (anime from 1997). No ragrets.

I feel refreshed, so you know I’m bringing the heat today.

Here’s what I got for you this week:

• Bitcoin’s fees made it unusable

• Bitcoin Developer vs. Jpegs

• The US is openly bragging about money printing

Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 41 seconds

BITCOIN’S FEES ARE HIGH AF

Bitcoin fees are having their Snoop Dogg moment: they’re high AF

So, what’s causing this? Well, Jpegs.

Before getting into the weeds, let me remind you that Bitcoin transaction fees vary:

• Demand up = fees up

• Demand down = fees down

The NFT degens have found their way into Bitcoin and are spamming the network with their new transaction type. These transactions are BRC-20 mints, a new token standard on Bitcoin. These have caused transaction fees to spike, making Bitcoin unusable for small payments.

So, why are people paying so much to put a picture of a purple turd on Bitcoin? Well, few reasons:

1. Most of these BRC-20 tokens have a hard cap, which creates FOMO among jpeg gamblers

2. The creators of the BRC-20 standard made these transactions inefficient to make them human-readable (so you can look at the purple turd you just bought)

3. It’s free to mint these jpegs. All you need to pay is the transaction fee

4. People are dumb

All these reasons together have made Bitcoin unusable for low-value transactions. This is why some people on Twitter are going: “HIGH FEES ARE AN ATTACK ON BITCOIN!!1”

So, is Bitcoin dead? Should you start looking for a McDonald’s job? Well, not quite. Let me explain:

Nothing fundamental about Bitcoin has changed. Bitcoin is still secure, immutable, decentralized, scarce, and produces a new block every 10 minutes.

What we’re seeing currently is increased user demand. This is what Bitcoin fees will look like in the future. Transacting on and securing the most secure ledger humanity has ever seen is expensive - as it should be. High fees are the price you pay for that security.

You also have to remember that people love complaining. When fees are low:

• “Bitcoin has a security budget problem”

• “Fees are too low”

When fees are high:

• ”It doesn’t scale”

• “It needs bigger blocks”

• “Fees are too high”

The truth is that Bitcoin is working as designed. Like everything else, this is good for Bitcoin. So yeah…just shut up and let the free market do its thing.

So, what can you do about jpegs? Well, nothing.

Bitcoin is a permissionless system aka you don’t need permission to use it. If people want to pay to put pictures of dickbutts on the blockchain, they can.

Of course, it comes with its own problems. It costs $20 in fees to get $100 from the ATM in El Salvador. We’re talking about a country where the average salary is $300. People relying on Bitcoin daily are being priced out of it, which sucks.

That being said, I’m not worried long-term. Two reasons why:

1/ Onchain fees will come down once the jpeg craze dwindles down

If you’ve been around the block for a while (pun intended), you’ve seen the following manias come and go:

• 2017 - 2018 = ICOs

• 2020 - 2022 = Web3

• 2022 - present = NFTs

NFTs are just another get-rich-quick scheme. And it too shall pass.

2/ Bitcoin L2s are improving

Bitcoin becomes more adopted —> High fees —> incentive for devs to improve L2s (Lightning, Liquid, etc.)

And remember, kids: people who say Bitcoin is broken are trying to sell you their shitcoin.

TLDR: high fees are good for Bitcoin.

Credit: @TheBTCTherapist

JPEGS VS BITCOIN CORE DEVELOPER

There’s one man that hates Jpegs more than anyone: Luke Dashjr

Luke is an OG Bitcoin Core developer since 2011. He hates Jpegs more than I hate stepping on Legos. This is why he is proposing to ban them from Bitcoin.

Luke’s plan? Label all Ordinals & BRC-20 as spam. This way, they can’t be broadcasted to the Bitcoin network.

Luke has written software that does exactly this: filters out small “spam” transactions, including Bitcoin NFTs.

The argument is ideological and technical: the Bitcoin base chain was meant for transactions. It was NOT meant for stuff like:

• DeFi

• Dickbutts

• And other stuff that bloats it.

Will Luke succeed? I doubt it.

After all, miners are making a killing from current high fees. Recently we saw a block (788695) where the fees (6.7 BTC) were higher than the block subsidy (6.25 BTC). This has occurred only once before in the history of Bitcoin.

For this change to happen, you’d need to convince the majority of miners. We’re talking about miners who make at least 15X of what they used before Ordinals and BRC-20. Good luck with that, Luke…

To rub salt in the wound, someone made an ordinal of Luke Complaining about ordinals. Lol.

Aaaand soon after that, Luke was banned from Twitter 👀. Sus.

Anyways, I think the NFT hype will die down eventually. In the meantime, you get to enjoy memes like this:

If you’re feeling generous (and a little entertained), why not share TLDR with a bitcoiner 👇

THE USG IS BRAGGING ABOUT MONEY PRINTING

Brad, Brad, Brad…you did it again.

You’re now officially the most quotable Bitcoin critic of all time. For wrong reasons, but still.

US Congressman Brad Sherman said the quiet part out loud by admitting the US government prints money out of thin air during a House hearing:

That’s a killer quote because it shows the authorities are not even trying to hide what they’re doing with your money. They’re not confessing either; they’re bragging. This scene from The Big Short describes it too perfectly:

RE: making money out of thin air. Here’s a quick analysis of Bitcoin vs. fiat

1. Bitcoin = issued by proof of work at a predefined scheduled

2. Fiat = issued arbitrarily out of thin air to enrich wealthy people who own financial assets

I don’t blame Brad: Fiat sounds better, especially when it has been paying your salary since 1997. Yup, he’s been the resident villain in Congress for over 25 years. California, y u do dis??

Also, Brad, don’t be calling bitcoiners tax evaders when you’re the one avoiding a barber visit.

Anyways, can we do a petition to include this on the USD bills?

Brad, I know you’re reading this. Just because you look like an evil villain doesn’t mean you must be one. Slide into my Twitter DM’s. I’ll share a few orange pills with you.

This week in a meme

Credit:

Job of the week

Fold is looking for a Product Designer to beef up their service.

Like Bitcoin, design, and product development? Well, this might be your new job. Who knows, maybe they’ll give you an extra spin on the wheel as an employee perk.

From the archive

Behold the first-ever Reddit post about Bitcoin. It came 4 months after Satoshi released Bitcoin to the world.

Price of 1 BTC = $0.01.

My favorite comment: “Wow. That’s amazing. I don’t think anyone’s done a completely digital pyramid scheme before.”

That’s it for this one.

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See you next Sunday,

Arsen

PS: Enjoy the newsletter? Please forward it to bitcoiner. It only takes 5 seconds. Writing it takes me 5 hours.