Earlier this year, Bitcoin Core contributor Andrew Chow gave a presentation at the San Francisco Bitcoin Devs meet up on a subject that was completely foreign to me at the time; Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions. When I watched the presentation in early May, I simply thought PSBT was a cool idea that would be implemented at some point in the future.
I think 2020 is going to be the year of PSBT. It’s unlocking permissionless innovation week after week! https://t.co/MmZWYLpA0a
— Alexander Leishman 🇺🇸 (@Leishman) January 1, 2020
As we sit here today, on January 3rd, 2020 (happy birthday bitcoin!), I am extremely pleasantly surprised with how quickly this standard has been implemented and adopted by hardware and software wallet providers. Uncle Marty is proud to report that he has created his first PSBTs this week and they are awesome! Our friend Alexander may have made one of the most underrated predictions for 2020, it's going to be the year of PSBT.
After having used this format for signing bitcoin transactions, it is easy to see how creative people can get with off-chain schemes used to move bitcoin in unique ways moving forward. Especially considering the fact that PSBT is a standard that different bitcoin-specific hardware and software providers can coalesce around to make sure their products are interoperable. The opportunities that arise for unique CoinJoins, multisig schemes, bitcoin vault configurations, and many other things I'm most likely forgetting seem endless. And this is without Schnorr signatures and Taproot being implemented.
The apps that make PSBT more useful and commonplace seem to be hitting the market already. I tested my first PSBTs using a ColdCard hardware wallet after they quickly implemented the standard. A couple of days ago, Bitcoin Core contributor Sjors Provoost released an app he created to make multisig easier by leveraging PSBT; NthKey.com. Incredible signs that this tech is interesting to work with and, more importantly, extremely useful for people. Expect the proliferation of innovation around PSBT to pick up exponentially in 2020.
p.s. Peep the pod I dropped with Alex Leishman today.
Final thought...
War, man. The elites love it.
Enjoy your weekend, freaks.
