Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup #43
Mar. 2026
Podcast Spotlight
The Bugle Weekly
Richard Greaser & Rod Palmer
"It's like the 753rd funniest account on Twitter" — @udiwertheimer
- Launched in Jan. 2023 by Richard Greaser — in a parallel dimension where the Bugle rivals the NYT and WSJ. A glitch in the matrix lets you glimpse it.
- In your dimension the stories appear absurd. In theirs, they're front-page news.
- Zero corporate sponsorships — by design. When you take sponsor money, the audience becomes the product. The Bugle refuses that deal.
- The world's most thermodynamically sound Bitcoin podcast — credentialed journalists, 40HPW of listening, chain smoking included.
Book Spotlight
The Fiat Standard
Saifedean Ammous
"The sequel to The Bitcoin Standard — a forensic autopsy of the debt slavery system that replaced gold."
- Published in 2021 as the follow-up to The Bitcoin Standard — this time dissecting fiat money itself: how it works, why it's broken, and who it serves.
- Argues that fiat is not merely bad monetary policy but a technology — one designed for debt creation, government expansion, and the destruction of savings.
- Covers energy, food, science, and warfare through the lens of fiat distortion — how cheap credit warps every sector of civilization.
- Required reading if you want to understand why Bitcoin fixes this — not just that it does.
The mathematics of scarcity
There Will Never Be 21 Million Bitcoin
Era 1 · 50 BTC/block · blocks 0–209,99910,500,000 BTC minted · Σ 10,500,000 total (50% of cap)
Era 2 · 25 BTC/block5,250,000 BTC minted · Σ 15,750,000 total (75% of cap)
Era 3 · 12.5 BTC/block2,625,000 BTC minted · Σ 18,375,000 total (87.5% of cap)
Era 4 · 6.25 BTC/block1,312,500 BTC minted · Σ 19,687,500 total (93.75% of cap)
Era 5 · 3.125 BTC/block656,250 BTC minted · Σ 20,343,750 total (96.875% of cap)
··· halvings continue ···each era mints ½ the previous · Σ → 21,000,000
Era 33 · 0.00000002 BTC (2 sats)0.0042 BTC minted · Σ ≈ 20,999,999.97 total
Era 34 · 0.00000001 BTC (1 sat)0.0021 BTC minted · Σ ≈ 20,999,999.977 total
Era 34+ · 0.00000000 BTC · block 6,930,000+0 BTC minted · Σ ≈ 20,999,999.977 BTC — never 21M
BTC Added Per Era (log scale)
The common belief
21,000,000
BTC — a hard cap that is often cited but never reached
↳ The actual maximum
20,999,999.9769
BTC ever mineable — because integer halving truncates remainders
Just Short of 21M - Off By:
≈ 0.023 BTC · ~2.3M sats
Bitcoin History · Soft Fork #2
Taproot — Privacy & Power
Jan 23, 2018
Greg Maxwell posts
Taproot to bitcoin-dev
mailing list
Taproot to bitcoin-dev
mailing list
Jan 2020
BIPs 340 / 341 / 342
formally assigned
formally assigned
Oct 2020
Merged into
Bitcoin Core
Bitcoin Core
May–Jun 2021
Miners signal
"Speedy Trial"
activation window
"Speedy Trial"
activation window
Jun 12, 2021
Locked in at
block 687,285
by Slush Pool
block 687,285
by Slush Pool
Nov 14, 2021
✓ ACTIVATED
block 709,632
4 yrs after SegWit
block 709,632
4 yrs after SegWit
BIP 340
Schnorr
Signatures
Signatures
Replaces ECDSA
Cryptographer Claus Schnorr's scheme — whose patent expired in 2008 —
lets multiple parties combine their keys and signatures into one.
A 3-of-5 multisig looks identical on-chain to a single-sig spend.
Signatures shrink from ~72 bytes to 64 bytes, and batches of sigs
can be verified together, cutting node validation work.
BIP 341
Taproot
/ MAST
/ MAST
Merkelized Alternative Script Trees
Outputs look like a single key. If everyone agrees, spend with one
Schnorr sig — no script ever hits the chain. If a dispute arises,
reveal only the one branch of the Merkle tree you actually use.
Lightning channel opens/closes and complex multisig vaults become
indistinguishable from ordinary payments.
BIP 342
Tapscript
Updated scripting language
Upgrades Bitcoin Script to read Schnorr sigs and unlocks the full
MAST feature set. Removes the old 10,000-byte script size cap.
Adds an upgrade path — new opcodes can be added in future soft
forks without a new address type. Lays groundwork for PTLCs,
vaults, DLCs, and BitVM-style constructions.
Bitcoin History · Soft Fork #2 — Continued
How Taproot Works + The Activation Fight
How a Taproot output is spent
The Activation Fight (2020–2021)
LOT = false
If 90% of miners don't signal within the window, the upgrade
simply expires. Miners effectively hold a soft veto — echoing
the 2017 SegWit standoff that nearly ended in a chain split.
LOT = true (UASF)
Nodes eventually start rejecting non-signaling blocks, forcing
activation regardless of miners. More confrontational — but
defenders argued it was the only way to guarantee users,
not miners, control protocol upgrades.
⚡ Speedy Trial — The Compromise
Proposed by Russell O'Connor to break the deadlock: a tight
3-month window for miners to signal. If 90% locked in, Taproot
activates automatically 5 months later. If not — everyone learns
something and a UASF is likely next.
Miners locked in at block 687,285 on Jun 12, 2021. 2,016 blocks · 99.7% signaled ₿
Miners locked in at block 687,285 on Jun 12, 2021. 2,016 blocks · 99.7% signaled ₿
Unlike SegWit's blocksize civil war, virtually no one opposed
Taproot itself — the fight was entirely about who should have
the final say over activation: miners or users.
Bitcoin History · After Taproot Activated
What Was Promised vs. What We Actually Got
✦ What was promised
Private Lightning Channels
Cheap Multisig
Taproot Multisig HW Wallets
LN indistinguishable from single-sig
PTLCs
Smaller Blocks
→
✗ What we got first
Ordinals & Inscriptions
BRC-20 Tokens
800 sat/vB Fee Spikes
Blocks Doubling in Size
UTXO Set Explosion
Binance Halting Withdrawals
When did the real benefits actually arrive?
Nov
2021
2021
Taproot Activates — Block 709,632
Protocol live. Almost no wallets support bc1p yet. Zero Taproot transactions in the wild.
2022
First Wallets Ship P2TR
Sparrow, BlueWallet, Ledger, Trezor add bc1p addresses. Single-sig only. MuSig2 multisig still not ready. Lightning still uses P2WSH channels.
Jan
2023
2023
Ordinals Launch — The Unintended Use
Taproot witness discount + no size cap = JPEGs on-chain. Fees spike, blocks bloat, UTXO set explodes.
Late
2023
2023
Taproot Assets on Lightning Mainnet
Lightning Labs ships Taproot Assets v1. First production use of advanced Taproot scripting. Stablecoins over Lightning become real.
2024
P2TR Lightning Channels — Eclair / Phoenix
Phoenix Wallet (Eclair) ships Taproot channels. Channel opens finally look like regular spends. LND and CLN still using legacy channels.
2024
–2025
–2025
MuSig2 Taproot Multisig — Hardware Wallets
Taproot multisig finally reaches Coldcard, Ledger, Trezor. 3+ years after activation. Still rare in practice.
Avg. on-chain fee (USD) — 2021 to 2024
Avg block
size shift
size shift
The ongoing debate: After Core v30 removed the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit (2025), an anonymous soft fork proposal emerged to filter arbitrary data at the consensus level. Bitcoin Knots (the filter-supporting client) grew from 69 nodes to 4,200+ in a year. The question of what Bitcoin's blockspace is "for" remains open — and that's how we got here.
₿ Bitcoin News
20 Million
Bitcoin Mined
On March 9, 2026, Foundry USA mined block 939,999 — the block that pushed Bitcoin's circulating supply past 20 million coins. 17 years, 2 months after the genesis block.
95.24%
of supply mined
1M
coins remaining
114 yrs
to mine the rest
@MartyBent · Mar 11, 2026 · 416.7K views
₿ Bitcoin News
Coinbase Lobbying
Against Bitcoin
Marty Bent reported — confirmed by three independent Capitol Hill sources — that Coinbase is quietly telling legislators a de minimis tax exemption for bitcoin would be "DOA," and pushing to limit it to stablecoins only.
Why? Coinbase made $1.35B in stablecoin revenue in 2025
— almost entirely from interest on USDC reserves. Bitcoin as a spendable currency
is direct competition. Stablecoins aren't.
tftc.io · Coinbase Is Quietly Trying to Kill Bitcoin's De Minimis Tax Exemption
@FBIDirectorKash · Mar 5, 2026 · 3.3M views
₿ Bitcoin News
Gov Contractor
Stole $46M
in Crypto
John Daghita — son of the CEO of CMDSS, a firm contracted by the U.S. Marshals Service to manage seized crypto — allegedly used his insider access to drain government wallets. Arrested March 5, 2026 in Saint Martin by the FBI and French Gendarmerie.
The USMS holds an estimated 198,000+ BTC — worth tens of billions.
Still want the government to hold your bitcoin?
bitcoinmagazine.com · U.S. Federal Contractor's Son Arrested in $46M Theft of Seized Government Crypto
Still want the government to hold your bitcoin?
Runs on Your Machine
Mac, Windows, or Linux. Your data stays yours — private by default.
Any Chat App
Control it from WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, Discord, Slack, or Signal.
Persistent Memory
Remembers everything. Becomes uniquely yours over time.
Skills & Full System Access
Browse the web, run scripts, manage files. Extend with community skills — or let it write its own.
Recommended: OpenAI $20/mo
Works with any LLM — but a standard ChatGPT Plus subscription is all you need to get started.
₿ Bitcoin Tech Topic
OpenClaw
The AI that actually does things. · openclaw.ai
▶ Click to play · youtube.com/watch?v=ewL1Mh4j4Ao
₿ Bitcoin Short Films
Bitcoin is the Pin to the Bubble
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