IMHO Saylor knows his stuff, and is a very sharp mind. He is only in his first bitcoin epoch tho, but ahead of most at that time. He also brings unique knowledge to the table. I think Odell has a conflict of interest in running his VC firm and OpenSats. Nostr could have done a lot better than it has, with the resources it was very kindly given. Especially wrt infrastructure. Ultimately he harms himself by not going full gun on growing the eco system, as much as he could. Saylor tends to be right, and he's not going to throw money at something that he cant verify is going to help. He also runs a software business and knows that most ideas are bad ideas, and well intended engineers trying to tinker with something normally break 2 things for every 1 thing they fix (nostr is getting that way), and he doesnt want bitcoin to go that path. Wise.
It doesn’t matter how long you been in bitcoin! Even if you are 10 years in here it doesn’t mean that you are the smartest or can’t scam people. My whole point is that it’s everything about NGU and pumping the bags and they don’t give a shit about devs! Devs for them are just as tools unfortunately! Also comparing Saylor and Odell doesn’t make too much sense. Clearly Saylor has more experience in business world than Odell with his tiny fund
Saylor isnt ONLY about NgU, he just thinks bitcoin is the best store of value in the world. Nobody could ever have predicted that 15 years an open source project would have that property (yes, i know the genesis block!). But its an amazing achievment. Bitcoin is many things to many people. No one person can say they know the ONE use for bitcoin. But 10s of millions of users have chosen it as a store of value. We, the bitcoin community have to respect that, and not rug the users that have put their trust in the community. Bitcoin is not all about NgU, lots of things that can be built on top of it, or around it. Nostr being one case.
Honestly the worst possible thing you can do is centralize the funding of the devs. That creates a monoculture and would be 1 mistake away from compromising the properties that we cherish or coopting bitcoin.
Don’t you think it’s already happening?
Of course. But it can still be fought. Anything good needs to be fought for. Adding more money to the centralization makes it harder to fight.
That’s why it’s important to rise 🚩
2 engineers review twice as much code than 1 engineer. Going path with just 1 engineer, not wise.
Who selects the engineers?
OpenSats is spending money about as efficiently as a government agency, but with much less accountability.
I find that deeply ironic.
I would push back that Bitcoin lacks privacy and eventually scaling. I think Saylor has a conflict of interest in Bitcoin not developing so he can offer a banking solution to scaling. It's in his interest for Bitcoin to be state sanctioned to minimise regulatory risk. It's also in his interest for society to be highly governed to provide security for his billions.
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