BITCOIN RAILS #50: HISTORY OF SEGWIT & TAPROOT | with Pieter Wuille
🔗 YOUTUBE: youtu.be/QNrW4dUc_U4
A primary maintainer of Bitcoin Core from 2011-2022, Pieter Wuille is arguably the most influential developer in Bitcoin’s history since Satoshi himself.
After receiving keys to the Bitcoin codebase from @gavinandresen, who was tasked with maintaining the codebase by Satoshi Nakamoto, Pieter went on to implement some of Bitcoin’s most dramatic and influential upgrades, including but not limited to:
- Implementation of Bitcoin’s Taproot and Segwit upgrades
- Implementation of libsecp256k + Bitcoin’s unique encoding structure for the cryptography securing all Bitcoin public/private keys
- The first import/export feature for Bitcoin private keys into Bitcoin (now Bitcoin Core)
- Development of hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets, enabling backups via a single seedphrase and paving the way for seedphrases themselves
- DER signatures, Miniscript, and so much more
A truly special episode of Bitcoin Rails, this is a rare long-form interview with one of the most important historical figures in the arc of Bitcoin’s development.
Pieter and I walk through how Bitcoin consensus works in practice, the history of Bitcoin's most critical early developments, and the key role of his good friend, Greg Maxwell, nearly every step of the way.
This episode of Bitcoin Rails is powered by:
— Best In Slot (@bestinslotxyz) - the leading API for Ordinals and BRC-20 data aggregation and indexing.
— Spark (@lightspark) - a statechains implementation advancing Bitcoin-powered payments.
— Citrea (@citrea_xyz) - a leading Bitcoin rollup technology and BitVM alliance contributor.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
00:42 Early Days in Bitcoin
01:25 First Contributions to Bitcoin Core
04:38 Challenges and Innovations in Bitcoin Development
06:54 The Hal Finney Challenge
12:16 Bitcoin Core Contributors Back Then
14:18 The Creation of HD Wallets and Seed Phrases
17:47 Greg Maxwell Role and Relationship
21:00 Implementing Libsecp256k1
28:39 Why Did Satoshi Choose ECDSA
33:34 Addressing OpenSSL Issues
40:41 Why Pieter Wrote BIP 66
47:54 BIP 103 Proposal and Initial Reactions
49:57 SegWit Development and Implementation
01:05:39 Taproot's History, Details, and Benefits
01:11:09 Why Taproot Has No Hashed Addresses
01:16:55 Pieter's Thoughts on BitVM and other non-softfork dependent scaling solutions cc @robin_linus
01:18:27 Non-Soft Fork Scaling Solutions
01:23:03 Future Consensus Changes and Challenges
01:25:28 Bitcoin's Miner Centralization and Security Concerns (e.g. MEV) cc @TheBlueMatt
01:34:48 Miniscript: Simplifying Bitcoin Script? cc @Rob1Ham
I can safely say this list is one of the most terrible things to ever come into this space.
Together with the "holding" mindset.
And I can say that, because I've held coins myself and saw the exact same outcome. Anything you hold, on a long enough timeframe, will go to zero. Sure, some of these might have exit pumps, but about about the other 10 that some people decided to buy?
The same happens with any coin you're holding now, by the way, it will go to zero. Might not be now, might not even be in 2026, but will go to zero.
SOL itself might go to zero. The idea of holding something you got no control of, is terrible. The equivalents of ourselves, from the old ETH cycle, are probably holding it still, from when they sold their NFTs for $4,000 worth of ETH.
The only thing worth holding are dollars in your bank account, and your skill to make them.
📉 Bitcoin Daily 📈
Liquidity pool above 93550 reached ✅👍
I’ve been calling for that 2024 close retest in every Daily review since Nov 24 😉
🎯 Key Levels
Above: 95000 / 96500 / 97300
Below: 90954 / 89150 / 87855
The pump hasn’t formed a clear top or reversal yet, so price can still push higher. Still, this move printed a higher high on lower timeframes, giving some hope that the correction stage is ending and $BTC is shifting into a bounce phase.
On higher timeframes the road back to bullishness is long, and new ATH this year is even further away. But honestly, most participants can’t hold a position for a week, so long-range fantasies don’t matter.
Focus on closer targets. If upside continues, the 97–100k zone becomes the next meaningful boundary. If it doesn't, wait for alarms set for dynamic levels to buy the dip back to D/M-20sma.
⏰ TG alarms set for: 126208, 117875, 111565, D/W/M20sma, 109557, dev Y VWAP/VAL, 96012, 83250
TradingView - tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSD/#Crypto#BTCUSD#BTCUSDT #Trading#CryptoTrading #CryptoMarket #Bitcoin
gm.
SOLCRADION by @rezaafsharr
We are truly honored to have the opportunity to present the works of such a remarkable artist as our 83rd Solo Highlight exhibition.
1/1 and curatorial statement ↓
Should @irys_xyz bring more data on-chain, or should they focus on creating better tools for developers to use the data that’s already there?
Both directions matter, but the real question is which one actually strengthens the ecosystem right now.
Bringing more data on-chain increases coverage and makes the network more useful for new applications.
But improving tooling makes the existing data far easier for builders to integrate into real products.
It’s the balance between expansion and usability.
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