Why is it so difficult to understand what Bitcoin involves?

Because it affects various mental models.

Thread.

🧵Thread: 10 Rules for Verification on a #Bitcoin Hardware Wallet 👇

Rule #1: DO NOT TRUST THE COMPUTER SCREEN.

The very reason for using a hardware wallet is that your computer IS compromised, trusting it makes using the hardware wallet an expensive security theatre (or 2FA at best).
Always verify on the HWW device screen!

Rule #2: Verify your "receive" addresses BEFORE accepting funds.

A compromised computer can be tricked into displaying addresses that belong to an attacker. The only way to make sure you own the addresses is to display them on the HWW device and verify they match.

Rule #3: Verifying change address should be done by the device when sending funds, not before like receive addresses!

It is pointless at best, and misleading at worst, to verify them beforehand like receive addresses...

All hardware wallets support verifying the change address belongs to you AT TIME OF SIGNING A TRANSACTION.
Verifying before that is pointless and error-prone.

Now let's talk some multisig...

$BTC & $USDT & the criminal cartels that pump the prices of BTC while laundering out real fiat profits through their exchange partners. While tax evasion & general financial malfeasance is problematic enough, one has to wonder what else is occurring with the laundered funds ..1/

Despite the romantic, libertarian view of Bitcoin subverting the oppression of the centralized fiat economy, in reality, the backers were also engaging in drug smuggling, assassination markets & human trafficking. 2/

While some of Bitcoin’s ideology of civil disobedience & the hope of building a shining new economy upon the distributed ledger was exciting for a time, the Bitcoin Civil War side-tracked the project heavily. 3/

Once Dread Pirate Roberts and The Silk Road was closed down, nastier websites emerged, and so too did some of the shadiest venture capitalists in the world — necessitating the split of the Bitcoin protocol away from the BTC economy in 2017. But this requires some context. 4/

Unfortunately, in the era spanning 2014-2016, venture capitalists created media entities such as CoinDesk & Cointelegraph, development groups such as Blockstream & MIT Digital Currency Initiative, exchanges like Coinbase & Bitfinex, 5/

1/20 Bitcoin is too slow and expensive for payments. We all know this. To solve this problem, the Lightning network is being built on top of Bitcoin's blockchain. Will it be the end of XRP?

(Video version @ https://t.co/7zJCuKrpqx)

A thread. 👇

2/20 On a normal day outside a bull run, Bitcoin takes ~10 mins to transfer, at a cost of about $0.50. Any time network activity ramps up, those times and fees multiply. Bitcoin's Proof of Work system is painfully slow and can only handle 7 transactions per second.

3/20 To attempt to solve this problem, the Lightning Network is being developed. It's a 2nd layer network that sits on top of Bitcoin's blockchain. It's been in the works since 2015. Yes, 6 years. Do you know anybody who uses it? Me, either, but I'll get to that.

4/20 Lightning works by opening "channels" between parties. Those parties can perform as many Bitcoin transactions as needed and then close the channel. Because the transactions aren't written to the Bitcoin blockchain until the channel is closed, it's much faster.

5/20 Individual payment channels between various parties combine to form a network of lightning nodes that can route transactions among themselves. The resulting interconnections between various payment channels is the Lightning Network.