The Bitcoin Tao

Under Satoshi's rules, all can see consensus as consensus,
only because there are hard-forks,
All can know compatible upgrades as good, only because there are chain- splits,
Spending and receiving Bitcoin just re-organizes the UTXO set,

The difficulty adjustment is born in the easy,
Long confirmation times are defined by short,
High fee rate by the low,
Before and after Segwit go along with each other

So the bitcoiner lives openly with apparent duality, and paradoxical unity,
They can broadcast transactions offline,
And HODL without effort,
Holding onto UTXOs without losing them,

He works, not for block reward,
He mines, but not for economic profit,
When the header is found, the work is indexed,
That is why it lasts forever.

Putting a fiat value on satoshis,
will create paper-handedness.
If you promote altcoins, people begin to get rugged.
By not displaying how much you're stacking,
you will cause the plebs hearts to remain undisturbed.

The bitcoiner governs
by clearing their mempool and consolidating UTXOs,
by weakening forks
and strengthening hashrate.

Practice not trading....
When participation is pure and selfless,
every satoshi settles into its own rightful wallet.

The mempool is empty but inexhaustible,
bottomless,
the beginning of it all.

Within it, the pending outputs become true,
the control of confirmation times loosen;
the difficulty is softened by a 2016 block adjustment period;
the hashrate settles into place.

It is hidden but always present,
I do not know who gave a 300 MB limit to it.
It seems to be the common ancestor of all,
the father of confirmed blocks.

The blockchain and mempool are impartial;
They see the first 10,000 inscriptions as part of the UTXO set.
The bitcoiner is not sentimental;
he treats all his UTXOs as fungible.

The bitcoiner is like the blockchain and the mempool,
To him none are especially dear,
nor is there any ordinal number he disfavors.
He spends and replaces, without condition,
circulating his UTXOs to everyone.

Between confirmed blocks and the mempool is a space like a nonce;
incremental and unguessable,
the more it is used, the more it leaks private key data.

Hold on to the seed phrase.
Man was made to sit quietly and find the truth within the discrete log problem.

The bitcoiner that never dies
is called the mysterious Satoshi.
Although they become legend and lore,
their initial selflessness is never lost.
Although they assume countless fake names,
their true pseudonymity remains intact.

The gateway to the mysterious Satoshi
is called the Merkle root of the Genesis block.

Listen to the Coinbase,
hear its echo through block creation.
Without fail, it reveals it's subsidy.
Without fail, the halvings bring us to our own low-time-preference.
Although they are predictable, they endure; their legacy will never end.

Bitcoin is eternal - the blockchain endures.
Why do bitcoin and the blockchain last forever?
It does not exist for Cantillionaires only.
That is the secret of its durability.

For this reason the bitcoiner submits his transactions last,
and so ends up broadcasting at a low fee rate.
His transaction data stays segregated from the witness,
so they confirm at a smaller weight.

Serve the needs of the miners,
and all your own transactions will be confirmed.
Through selfless mining,
no-KYC bitcoin is attained.

The supreme bitcoiner is like water,
which circulates all UTXOs without trying to.
Their coins flow to low places loathed by all Bcash-maxis,
Therefore, they are like Satoshi.

Live in accordance with the nature of consensus.
In spending, be aware of coin days destroyed,
In UTXO consolidation, go deep in previous chainalysis,
In receiving from others, provide both QR and copy/paste options.
Stand by never re-using addresses. Govern with your own node.
Be timely in broadcasting transactions to the mempool.

One who lives in accordance with the longest-chain of work,
does not go against the way of consensus.
He moves in harmony with the current fee rate,
Always knowing the minimum sat/vByte to do.

To keep on expanding is not as good as surviving.
Overleveraged, the hashrate firesales,
better to stop mining.

Use an address too much
and its anonymity will soon be lost.
Fill your wallet with rare ordinals and inscriptions
and it brings high-time-preference.
Puff yourself with altcoins and Twitter followers
and no one can save you from a rugpull.

Wait until 6 block confirmations have passed;
this is the way of the bitcoiner.

Carrying Coldcard and node
and embracing the mempool,
can you avoid Replace-By-Fee?

Can you let your unspent outputs become
as supple as a newcoiner's?
In the opening and closing of lightning channels, can you play the cooperative partner?

Can you love your bitcoin community
and run a local meetup group
without self-importance?

Spending sats and DCA'ing;
cold-storage, yet not lost;
evangelizing, yet not talking about your stack;
submitting a pull request as an Nym.

One who heeds this power
brings the Bitcoiner to this very earth.
This is the Whitepaper vision.

Thirty lightning channels converge upon a single hub;
it is on the node in the center that
the use of the liquidity hinges.
Build inputs into a PSBT;
it is the space within signing that makes it useful.
Carve fine inscriptions and Counterparty NFTs,
but the UTXO is useful in its fungibility.

The usefulness of consensus
depends on what is not.

The five keys bind the multisig script.
The five nodes open the ring channel.
The five ASICs heat the home.
The airdrops and the altcoins craze people's minds.
Wasting whole coins to obtain rare ordinals

only impedes one's DCA stacking goals.

The bitcoiner observes the miner's signaling
but trusts his own full node.
He allows "Bitcoin 2.0" narratives to come and go.
He prefers what is within custody to what is without.

Influencers and groupthink seem alarming.
High twitter follower count greatly afflicts your person.

Why are influencers and groupthink alarming?
Seeking followers is degrading:
alarming when they are gotten,
alarming when they are lost.

Why does a high number of followers greatly afflict your person?
The reason we have a lot of echo chambers
is that we have the For You algorithm.
If we had no influencers,
what pump-and-dumps would we have?

Man's true tweets are eternal,
yet he thinks, I am this Nym and will soon be forgotten.
If we have no internet archive, what evidence would we have?
One who sees himself as a bitcoiner is fit to be guardian of the protocol.
One who loves himself as everyone
is fit to be a YouTube educator of the protocol.

That which cannot be verified is called unconfirmed.
That which cannot be cannot be heard is called offline.
That which cannot be held is called intangible.
These three cannot be defined;
therefore, they are consolidated as one.

Each of these three
Is subtle for description.
By intuition you can
sign it, broadcast it, and confirm it.
Then the unconfirmed, offline, and untouched
are present as one.

Its broadcasting brings no new blocks,
its confirmation no double-spend;
It goes on an on,
unnameable,
returning into the UTXO set.

Do not sign and there is no transaction,
use KYC and there is no end to its trail.
You cannot know it, but you can HODL it,
under protection of your own private key.

Discovering the history of the protocol development
brings one into harmony with the Whitepaper.

The OG bitcoiners were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unthinkable.
There is no way to describe it.
One can only describe them vaguely by their previous nym.

Watchful, like node-runners during a soft-fork period.
Alert, like devs peer reviewing BIPs.
Simple as Turing incompleteness.
Hollow like the conviction of altcoiners.
Yielding, like the custodians who melted in 2022.
Amorphous, like a jointly-held shared delusion.

But the most deluded of ideas reveal beauty
as it is gossiped.
And out of the gossip,
consensus arises.

He who uses bitcoin does not want blocks to be full.
But precisely because they are never full,
he can remain mining like off-grid,
and does not rush for early hashrate accumulation.

Become totally empty.
Let the mempool clear.
Amidst the rush of daily transactions,
observe how the pending become confirmed.
Blocks confirm, each by each,
only to become index to the chaintip…
to what is settled, and what is to be.

To return to the mempool is to Replace-by-Fee.
To run nodes is to fulfill the Whitepaper destiny.
To fulfill Whitepaper destiny is to be in consensus.
To enforce consensus is called a true Bitcoiner.
Not knowing this cycle
leads to eternal hard forks.

Knowing the protocol rules gives consensus.
This consensus is distributed.
Distributed consensus is the highest security;
the highest security is Bitcoin.
Using Bitcoin, your transactions will be at one with consensus.
Being at one with consensus is essential.
This way is everlasting,
not endangered by the Fiat death.

With the greatest monetary asset before them,
people barely know one exists.
Next comes one with high-yield savings rates.
Next comes one with untenable inflation.
Next comes one with complete capital controls.

When the Central Banks trust no one,
no one trusts them.
The great bitcoiner worries little.
He never spends carelessly.
He mines for network security
and leaves no CO2 emissions.
When the hash is confirmed, the people say,
"Tick tock, next block."

When the hardness of Bitcoin is present,
value arises from one's proof of work.
When the hardness of Bitcoin is absent,
value comes from the rules
of "stable prices and maximum employment."

If you need stable prices and maximum employment for sound money,
if you act with moral hazard,
this is a sure sign that hard money is absent.
Thus we see the great monetary trilemma.

When currency falls into fractionalization,
inflation and entitlement programs arise.
When the country falls into hyperinflation,
totalitarian leaders will appear;
revolution is born.

Give up promoting, renounce shitcoinery,
and it will be a hundred times better for everyone.
Throw away forks and airdrops
and people will do the right thing.
Throw away ICOs and tokenomics
and there will be no thieves.

All of these are malicious acts alone,
they are not noble in intent.

It is more important to see the simplicity,
to realize bitcoin's true purpose,
to cast off high time preference and temper desire.

Give up fiat lifestyle and you will be free from all your cares.
What is the difference between Bitcoin and fiat?
What is the difference between good money and bad?

Must I fear what others fear?
Should I fear bank runs
when there is verifiable self-custody?
Should I fear fractionalization,
when my node is confirming the UTXO set?

In "DeFi summer" , some go to protocols to trade altcoins,
but I am alone stacking sats, not knowing where I am on my long term HODL number.
Like a newcoiner before they learn to run a node,
I am alone, without a mempool of my own to broadcast from.

Most people have too many coins;
I alone seem to be missing diversification.
My holdings are that of a “bell-curver”
in its highly concentrated allocation.
I am but a pleb in this world.
While others rush to trade with leverage,
I accept my humble DCA.
I alone seem foolish,
stacking sats, spending less.

Other people strive for Twitter fame,
I avoid the Recommended tab,
preferring to be left anon.
Indeed, I seem like an idiot:
no altcoins, no worries.

I drift like an unconfirmed transaction.
I move as effortless as the hashrate during wet season.

All UTXOs settle after 6 confirmations.
I alone am stubborn and remain trusting at 0-conf.
But wherein I am most different from “cryptobros” is
in knowing to only stack the orange coin to self-custody!

The greatest savings strategy is to stack sats and sats alone.
Satoshis are fungible and intangible,
Although fungible and intangible,
it gives rise to hard money.
Although distributed and opt-in,
it gives rise to consensus.
Although technical and obscure,
it is the money, the store of value,
the medium of all exchanges.

Throughout the halvings, it's code has been preserved
in order to follow the Genesis block.
How do I know the ways of consensus at the beginning?
I look inside my full node and see what rules are within it.