Unless you were living under a rock yesterday, you may have noticed that the founder and CEO of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey, took the Lightning Network torch from my co-host on RHR, Matt Odell. Pretty, pretty, pretty cool.

Upon passing off the torch, Jack proceeded to go on a tweet spree responding to users with strong support for Bitcoin, an extremely resilient network, while expressing disinterest in other "crypto" projects when asked about them. An epic day for Bitcoin Twitter and Bitcoin awareness in the mainstream.

While it is nice to see that the man who built the best communication tool that humans have ever had access to has the balls to put himself out there with a principled stance on Bitcoin, let's not pat ourselves on the back too hard. A lot of uncertainties lie ahead; Lightning Network is still nowhere near ready for mainstream adoption (or even a guarantee at this point), there are a bunch of things that need to be figured out at the protocol level to ensure long-term survival, and better education for smoother onboarding into the world of digital gold is severely lacking.

Yesterday was a ton of fun, and I may have scored a dope interview out of it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Enjoy this refreshing dose of hopium in the depths of this bear market for a bit, then get back to work.

A huge step in the right direction

One of the beautiful things about Bitcoin is that it allows us to do certain things that aren't possible in the current banking system, like using cryptography to mathematically prove the amount of BTC exchanges have in their custody. Being able to prove how much BTC they have on hand at any given point in time is a great way for exchanges to give their users peace of mind. Even though I'm a strong advocate of storing your own Bitcoin, especially in light of the potential exit scam that was pulled on QuadrigaCX users recently, it is extremely encouraging to see products like these being released to the market to ensure exchange users what they bought is accounted for.

It blows my mind that these Proof of Reserves practices aren't standard across the industry yet. This is probably a product of the fact that most of the market doesn't even know this is possible. With that in mind, let's make an effort to pressure exchanges to implement these practices across the board. It is possible, it is a no brainer, and it should be demanded by anyone seriously investing in Bitcoin that doesn't possess their own private keys.

Seriously though, if any of you freaks are holding large amounts of bitcoin on exchanges, I would take the time to learn about and become comfortable with storing your own private keys or engage with a 3rd party service that provides multi-sig solutions. Bitcoin demands extreme ownership. It empowers the sovereign individual but comes with risks that don't exist in the system we grew up in and are accustomed to.

Final thought...

My Way may be one of Kanye's most underrated songs.