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John Cantrell Profile picture
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Jan 31 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
I’ve been studying Bitcoin for a decade.

I distill what I've learned into threads that explain Bitcoin using simple language.

I’ve covered the lightning network, supply schedule, mining, game theory, difficulty adjustment, proof of work, keys, utxos, htlcs, and so much more 👇
Onboarding 7.753 Billion People to Lightning
Bitcoin Game Theory
Solo Mining
Supply Schedule
12 vs 24 Word Mnemonic Security
Satoshi's hidden message
Trade-Off between scalability and decentralization
What is Money?
Difficulty Adjustment
Lightning Network Explained
Bitcoin Transaction Fees
Mining and Proof of Work
Lightning Network Incentives
UTXOs
UTXO Management
Addresses
Private Keys
Lightning HTLCs
Valuing Bitcoin
Submarine Swaps
BIP-39 Mnemonics
Bitcoin Improvement Proposals
Why Bitcoin
Seeds vs Private Keys

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More from @JohnCantrell97

John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 30
Today is day 30 of my journey to develop a writing habit. It was successful then I ever imagined it could be.

Threads I wrote were viewed over 2.5 million times and over 7K new people decided to follow along.

Let me break down my process and what I learned on this journey 👇
You must make the habit a priority.

Schedule time on your calendar for it and don’t let it be interrupted.

For me I chose to write early in the morning. I would set my alarm for 6am, grab a cup of coffee, and go write uninterrupted for an hour.
Do not feel the need to over edit or stress out about what people will think.

Just write for an hour about the topic, read it over a couple times, hit publish and walk away.

This process is about building a new habit while breaking down old barriers to content production.
Read 11 tweets
John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 29
The adoption and therefore price of Bitcoin might accelerate faster than most people realize.

What is game theory?
How does it apply to Bitcoin?

You probably heard the ideas thrown around but let me break it down for you 👇
Game theory is the study and analysis of the strategy used by rational actors within some environment.

In its simplest form you can think of as analyzing how each player should play in a board game.

The ideas can be applied more broadly to all types of ‘games’.
So what games are going on in Bitcoin?

There’s actually many separate but related games being played within the Bitcoin ecosystem.

There’s the mining ecosystem, development process, individuals, company treasuries, and even nation state games at play.
Read 14 tweets
John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 28
I’m sure you’re aware that the main purpose of the lightning network is to help Bitcoin scale by enabling faster and cheaper payments.

Did you know it’s possible to use it to send arbitrary data along with a payment?

Why might you do that?

Should you?

Let me break it down 👇
Normally when you make a payment using the lightning network the receiver has to create an invoice for the specific amount and then get that invoice to you somehow.

You then instruct your wallet or node to pay that specific invoice and the money is routed to the recipient.
There’s a feature called ‘keysend’ that allows you to send money directly to a node's public key without an invoice.

This means instead of having to communicate with the recipient in order to send a payment you can now do so spontaneously as long as you have their public key.
Read 14 tweets
John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 27
To truly understand why we need Bitcoin it’s important to understand money itself.

What is money?
Why do we need it?
Why Bitcoin?

There’s many books written on these topics but let me try to break it down for you:
At the core of any economy are people who perform work that produces value for other people.

A farmer grows food for us to eat.
A painter creates art for us to enjoy.
A mechanic fixes our car so we can travel.
A teacher educates our children so they can prosper.
Without money the mechanic can only eat if the farmer needs his car fixed.

Each person needs to want what the other is producing at the same time.

A teacher only needs their car fixed so often but the mechanic needs his children educated all of the time.
Read 19 tweets
John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 26
Did you know that Bitcoin maintains a 10 min avg time between blocks regardless of the amount of hash power that on the network?

It’s possible because of a mechanism called the difficulty adjustment and it’s incredibly important to understand.

Let me break it down for you 👇
The difficulty refers to how hard it is for a miner to find a hash that would be considered a valid block on the network.

A higher difficulty translates to more hashes needing to be calculated on average whereas a lower difficulty means less hashes are needed on average.
If we recall from my previous thread on how mining works we know that a miner is hashing random values in search of an output that is less than some target.

When they find an input that produces an output below this target they are able to produce a block and claim the reward
Read 14 tweets
John Cantrell Profile picture
Jan 25
You’ve done your homework on Bitcoin and are learning about Lightning or just set up a node. You aren’t sure how it works and are nervous about losing funds

What’s involved in backing up a lightning node?

I’ve been using lightning for years, let me break it down for you 👇
Your Bitcoin is in cold storage. You stamped your mnemonic into a piece of solid steel.

It won’t be destroyed in a flood, fire, or acid bath.

You can finally sleep at night knowing your Bitcoin are safe.

With Bitcoin covered, you are excited to experiment with Lightning.
You fully expect a similar security model when booting up your lightning node for the first time.

I’ll get a seed phrase and stamp it into another piece of steel.

Unfortunately, it won’t quite be as simple.

What makes lightning more difficult to backup and secure?
Read 13 tweets

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