Are you not entertained?! Hell of a start to the year if you're a bitcoin bull. Number continues to go up and pretty much everyone who has ever bought bitcoin and held on to it for any period of time is swimming in gains. Exciting stuff. Very fun to be a part of.

Uncle Marty is going to be that hardo coach who forces you to get back to basics in the midst of a rip-your-nads-off rally. The price of bitcoin is but one aspect of the Bitcoin Network. There are many things happening in parallel to price discovery. These things include chip manufactures producing ASICs, miners locking down energy and plugging things in, and the industry that is being erected to make Bitcoin more accessible to the masses. One of the most important things running in parallel to price to discovery is the development of the protocol. If you're getting into Bitcoin I believe it is worthwhile to learn about the software that allows Bitcoin to work and how different stakeholders within the network interact with each other. Doing this will help you better understand the limits of the protocol so you can set realistic expectations and better understand the different paths for scaling the network to the masses.

Luckily for us, Bitcoin Core contributor Anthony Towns published Bitcoin in 2021 yesterday and expressed his thoughts on the current state of the protocol and what he plans to prioritize working on in 2021. If your thumb is currently raw from refreshing your favorite bitcoin price feed, I recommend you take some time to read Anthony's note. It's nice to hear what the individuals who are actually writing the code that allows individuals to access Bitcoin have to say.

I agree with Anthony's intuition that the robustness of the protocol and focusing on things that improve second layers like Lightning are good priorities to focus on in 2021. It seems like a wave is headed towards Bitcoin and it seems advantageous to batten down the hatches by making the P2P layer more robust against ISP attacks and make scaling solutions more reliable so more activity can be pushed to higher levels of the stack.

Find your zen. Learn to look away from the price if you can. It is only going to be more distracting from here. It is always good to get back to basics when you can.

Final thought...

A good pair of slippers go a long way.