Leak: #EU interior ministers want to exempt themselves from #chat control bulk scanning of #private #messages
https://www.eureporter.co/business/data/mass-surveillance-data/2024/04/15/leak-eu-interior-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves-from-chat-control-bulk-scanning-of-private-messages/


🇬🇧 It's up to all of us now. Write a mail to you government. Share the call to action. Call your government during the day. Together we are the resistance. Stop #ChatControl!

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/council-to-greenlight-chat-control-take-action-now/
https://digitalcourage.social/system/media_attachments/files/112/641/682/436/150/862/original/a3cfc082a2564241.png


Don’t sleep on this Europeans. Call and harass your reps in Brussels.

I would too, but I’m still not allowed to vote here after more than 14 years of legal residence. 🙄

nostr:note1vgyf9fkttrr48vym6zp2vxerkmt5ass45gwqp0nvm65qyug63t0qfdchk4


Voting postponed from Wednesday to Thursday.

Put pressure on your representatives, especially if you live in these countries:

https://i.nostr.build/AaoZR.jpg


🔺In seeking to undo the EU's proposed breaking of end-to-end encrypted services, we should reimagine how democratic societies can effectively prevent and prosecute crime without resorting to mass surveillance.

*NO*TO*CHAT*CONTROL*

New piece up at the Consumer Choice Center:

https://consumerchoicecenter.org/%f0%9f%9a%a9eu-council-members-should-vote-down-chat-control-to-protect-encryption/


Love this question! Yes, if I had to guess. The reason it's appreciating so fast now is because money is moving into Bitcoin from other assets with a much larger capital base. After hyperbitcoinization Bitcoin will be the largest pool of capital so this'll no longer be the case. Then it'll go up like 3-5% a year or something in line with real GDP growth.
Although at that point the account denominator would probably have flipped, so you wouldn't say that "Bitcoin has gone up by x%" you would say "prices have decreased by x%".


I mostly care because I still talk to my family in the EU over Signal, and they're normies so getting them to switch to something non backdoor will be hard. 😔


There are, but they have their own problems. They're a black box, by design. (How did this particular fuzzy hash end up here? You're not allowed to know.) Also companies that host these lobby governments to mandate everyone use their services, so they are constantly trying to rent seek. One of them, Thorn, is a sponsor of chat control for instance.

https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-ylva-johansson-csam-csa-regulation-european-commission-encryption-privacy-surveillance/


Two reasons: First of all in the current law developers/users are not obliged to do anything, only commercial actors. Second of all, even if they where, it's unenforceable. There's no way to make i.e. SimpleX add backdoors without gatekeeping what software you can write or run, which is clearly unconstitutional in many EU countries, not to mention impractical. The current legislation may also violate fundamental rights for that matter, but we'll only see it challenged in court if it passes. So at least my understanding is that nostr would be mostly unaffected.

Please don't misunderstand me as not caring about Chat Control though - I think it's a really bad law and should be repealed so that i.e. Signal and Proton can keep serving the EU. It's good that there are E2EE companies, it makes it way more normie accessible.


Mostly not at all, it only targets commercial actors. Primal might need to do something like geoblock EU. FOSS is a great way to bypass this bad legislation if it does come to pass. SimpleX will also be unaffected.

Also worth noting the vote June 19 is just the council of ministers vote - It won't be law until negotiated with parliament, which is broadly against chat control.


Simple actions you can take to help prevent a bad law from being passed:
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/#WhatYouCanDo #ChatControl


Based Meredith

https://x.com/mer__edith/status/1802612199426306150

https://image.nostr.build/429e631047b9152dbb6d0fca38d23877db8041eb8eee6a35d8f185b81937d567.jpg


Mutiny is good, I use it myself. If you use a Fedimint it's very easy to setup.


What I can surely say is, that #Nostr is here to stay. The idea of a decentralized future and our right to speak freely is inevitable. Ever since I’ve been on here my highest goal has been to support this still very little network of people as good as I can. Especially after such a big conference it’s a great deal to encourage people to contribute here.

I want to share some of my thoughts with you. About how you can support Nostr right now. Spread its importance and let it thrive. Add something if you got some thoughts on that.

💜 Ask questions. Nostr can still be very confusing but people are happy to help. I mean, we all know something and we will find out together and learn. No matter how stupid your question may seem, it isn’t. It’s helpful. Asking a question might look unaesthetic in your profile, but asking questions is human. Be human, the Nostrworld needs curiosity. Notes or events could be seen as a part of a big and endless flowing river. Flow with it.

💜 Share/Build stuff just for fun. Since Nostr is still in a very playful state. It’s sometimes hard to notice that you actually reach people. Or it feels like it’s just a few & you put it in relation to the work you put in. It can be very relieving to post out of pure joy for the protocol or for the thing you want to share. Without expecting too much. When you’re creating on Nostr today, you have to put lots of effort in, so make sure it’s fun.

💜 Engage. Engagement is like the heartbeat of the Nostr-Network. If you decide to be online, make sure to engage a little, so the creators feel seen. We’re social beings, & some may need more feedback than others, this is something we shouldn’t underestimate especially in this early state. No feedback is also feedback, support what you can identify with.

💜 Be the Nostr you want to see in the world. Your own perception of the protocol matters. While we all have very varying perceptions, we are naturally supposed to find the next best consensus. Try to imagine nostr in the future. Where do you see it? Contribute. Share your thoughts!

💜 Connect. Build community. Nostr is not just a new decentralized protocol, I view it as a massive innovation in online interaction. The future is not just bright, it will be different. And to grow the world towards that difference, connect with the people to inspire and to encourage each other to do better.

💜 Take time. To revolutionize the online social networks, I think it’s important to take your time when you engage or when you build. Behind every Npub there is a person with believes, believing something brings a more likely inflexible energy with it. If you decide to discuss the believes of others because they’ve decided to share them, it can be helpful to be open minded and to take your time to listen and to respond mindfully. Patience is power, whether you talk to others or when you build something. Just like ignoring and moving on.

💜 Talk about the other stuff. While Nostr got many social clients already, the other stuff may exceeds your imagination. Think about everything you need an identity for. Who knows where we’re going, but we’re becoming more decentralized to fight censorship and to bring more natural interaction into the online world.

💜 Onboard. Even if you’re unsuccessful. Bring it into the mind of people. This new technology is hard to explain. It takes a lot of time and a lot of minds to form the „What is Nostr?“ question. Don’t be afraid, be convinced. Trust in the future and the people.

💜 Every individual serves different purposes, realize your light and share it with us. Contribute in a way that aligns with you.✨🫂

It was a great experience to meet Nostriches, trying to onboard new Nostriches and listening to the different perspectives on Nostr at the BTC-Prague conference! Thanks for all the inspiration and encouragement. Love you guys. Let’s grow #TheNostr 💜🌱


Nah, that's misinformation. There never was a formal agreement and nothing that needed to be renewed. RHR discussed this a bit last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idcbhEsDsp8&t=298


nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpc0u3ruwx7rcgkruyvmlf6us53kqcp3zcsh80467cj3h2g0npa3zqqsvnh26py3yfa2cp30haj6xlsfgp9uxsd9z9x3s0y85r5g2c73dh0qr4fhh4

This diagram is from nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak book Principles of Economics. And the Original definitions are from Mises' Theory of Money and Credit. (My highlights.)

https://image.nostr.build/a371542793b3196380109a18aedbfedba09808469022ecebee9648d6fa40d508.png

Based on this model ecash would be a bank note - If the Mint is honest and redeems all notes for Bitcoin we'd say it's a 100% Note. If they're dishonest and have less than full backing it's a 0% note.

Circulation credit is when the person issuing a loan pays it out as fiduciary media (i.e. unbacked money substitutes). So they paid you out with money they don't actually have on hand. If the loan is paid out in commodity money, or 100% commodity backed certificates then it's commodity credit.

So in the case of a loan paid out as ecash it depends on it the ecash is fully backed or not - If it is backed then it's commodity credit and if not it's circulation credit.


It is not possible to share this image too widely. Please help me spread it far and wide.

https://m.primal.net/IKnK.png


So, multiple survivors of Epstein are currently suing the FBI…..

I recently found out that allegedly the FBI and the IRS are investigating one or multiple survivors and myself for fraud over Prince Andrew’s money. I received no money whatsoever from the survivors or anything to do with the Epstein case.

I don’t trust that whatever is going to happen will be fair. There are too many powerful people involved. I started speaking about it today. I’ll speak until I can’t legally speak anymore. I’ve probably already said too much but I’m wild like that.

I posted this today and I’ll be posting where it can’t be removed.
https://x.com/elizableu/status/1801363965743636707?s=46


Is anyone working on a nip-104 (double-ratchet DMs) client? I am working on a desktop client (very early) and would like to test against another client.


Corporate wants you to find the differences between OpenAI and NSA
https://m.primal.net/IkaA.jpg


✨ There is a new shiny thing, that everyone is talking about

How to fix spam? Use the social graph

How to improve discovery? Social graph

How to choose an e-cash mint? Social graph

What nobody says is WTF it is and HOW to use it

a thread 🧵https://m.primal.net/IfrA.png


I dismissed the 2019 bull run as a bubble, so I ended up passing on buying any Bitcoin at below $11k. 💀

Oh well, still early in the grander scheme of things. 🤙


Glad to have been of help 🙂


I looked into this myself. This is not possible AFAIK, as the VPN apps want to proxy all your traffic, so they fight each other.

But I found a quite nice workaround, which is to do this:
1. Run just Tailscale on my phone.
2. Run Tailscale on my home server.
3. Set my router to use Mullvad as Wireguard proxy.
4. Set the phone to use the home server as exit node.

That way you can VPN back to your home server, but you also get IP privacy to the phone at the same time.


Aren't Optimism that shitcoin that was posting spam on nostr a while back advertising their airdrops? 😂


The ATH is probably the last halving block - 37.5 BTC in fees. 🔥

https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000320283a032748cef8227873ff4872689bf23f1cda83a5


The only way to truly send a message to Wall Street and right the wrongs brought to the world by the ills of a fiat monetary system that embeds perverse incentives into the financial system that favor a certain class of people is to not play their game.

https://www.tftc.io/gamestop-bitcoin/


Announcing the OpenCash Association – a non-profit for supporting developers and projects building on the Cashu protocol.

We believe that the future of Bitcoin ecash infrastructure should be free and open-source and accessible to everyone.

opencash.dev

https://image.nostr.build/246d509df15c6b647c3ad5edaf4661e6664f7f995d8360e21ef613f363d003a1.jpg


Friday night experiments

https://video.nostr.build/57b19c36e10f0049ff431119c204b983ec51f45ab103cbbbe4203e85b388ad55.mp4


"nostr is just a twitter clone"

nostr:
https://video.nostr.build/57b19c36e10f0049ff431119c204b983ec51f45ab103cbbbe4203e85b388ad55.mp4


This is Mental. X vibes.

GFY
https://i.nostr.build/WG7BR.jpg


Signal strongly opposes the newest #ChatControl proposal in Europe.

Let there be no doubt: we will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees.

This proposal--if passed and enforced against us--would require us to make this choice.

It's surveillance wine in safety bottles.

See more: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/majority-for-chat-control-possible-users-who-refuse-scanning-to-be-prevented-from-sharing-photos-and-links/ nostr:npub1s7dmt40rue0awwcq58xm5jl3ahpmyw9kvq2a5y2nmpumch70lnmq064chv


TRUMP JR IN EL SAL FOR BUKELE INAUGURATION 👀


Biden Follows Through with a Veto on Overturning SAB 121 Crypto Custody Bill

“My Administration will not support measures that jeopardize the well-being of consumers and investors. Appropriate guardrails that protect consumers and investors are necessary to harness the potential benefits and opportunities of crypto-asset innovation,” reads Biden's a letter to the US House.

https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/biden-vetoes-crypto-custody-institutions/


Wow just figured out Bitmain's latest fuckery in real time.

I'll give you the back story...

Once upon a time Bitmain was grinding merkle roots instead of nonces aka "covert ASICBOOST".

This gave them an advantage over other miners who didn't know this was possible. One company went out of business - KNC - citing "the Chinese having some secret advantage we don't know about" - which turned out to be true precisely for this reason.

It's one of the reasons ASIC manufacture is so centralized today and this is correctly identified by many as being one of the most vulnerable aspects of the entire bitcoin ecosystem.

The ASICBOOST issue came to a head when Bitmain used their influence to block the activation of SEGWIT (essential for Lightning) because it would break their ability to do it - at least covertly. Well, they would still be able to use asicboost, but just in an obvious way that would mean everyone else could do it too. They had patented it so as to try and prevent this because that's the kind of people we're dealing with here but I digress...

When asicboost was independently discovered by Greg Maxwell Bitmain lied and said they weren't in fact using it.

This was after years of bullshitting about segwit, with Bitmain pretending to be in favour of "alternative scaling solutions" or even doing segwit as a hard fork instead which would allow them to continue what they were doing.....

Absolutely nobody believed them thanks to GMax having reverse engineered one of their ASICs and demonstrating what they had built and tried to keep to themselves.

This was a watershed moment in the fork wars where everyone suddenly understood why Bitmain had been making nonsensical arguments against segwit forever. Wanting big/small blocks wasn't a related discussion. Segwit fixed TX malleability and was a no-brainer upgrade and in the end was combined with a block size increase anyway as a compromise.

So we proceeded with segwit anyway, at which point Bitmain switched to overt asicboost which is actually even more powerful, it just requires grinding version bits instead of merkle roots but it's obvious if a miner is doing this.

Now everybody does it so essentially the net effect of it being possible is zero, except your node asking you wtf miners are doing signalling for upgrades your node knows nothing about (upgrade coordination is what version bits are actually supposed to be used for).

Oh well, relatively little harm done. If you're happy to ignore the obvious dishonesty and effort to undermine what's arguably Bitcoin's most important ever upgrade.

Fun extra tidbit: Antbleed - an intentional backdoor with which Bitmain could remotely shutdown any Antminer in the world. They said it was for shutting down stolen ASICs but immediately patched it once it was discovered.

Anyway, this company now accounts for 25-30% of all blocks found, if you naively observe the blockchain.

That's not enough to spook anyone, but unfortunately many smaller pools are in fact just fronts for Bitmain which we know for three reasons:

1. The smaller pools are clearly using blocks constructed by, or for the benefit of, Antpool.

2. They share the same custodian of their newly mined coins (Cobo).

3. They have a lending program to bail out smaller pools who get in over their head due to FPPS.

And the trend is sadly in the wrong direction, given Braiins recently abandoning its old payout model and becoming just a simple proxy for Bitmain as result of switching to FPPS.

[Massive shoutout to @mononautical and @0xB10C for helping uncover how centralized pools have become. Those are their Tweeter handles, idk if they're on Nostr.]

Summary - Bitmain is not just Antpool, it probably accounts for >50% of block templates and manufactures >90% of the mining hardware in the world.

So where am I going with all this?

Amazingly, it's about empty blocks.

What does that have to do with anything?

Well, famously OCEAN has found 3 empty blocks in its short existence, causing many to wrongly make allegations of some sort of issue with the pool itself.

This spurred on endless debate about why pools make empty templates in the first place and the actual reason so many of them get solved.

In short, pools send empty templates then immediately follow up with full templates. So quickly, that the interim period accounts for a tiny minority of the empty blocks that get found on the network, and none of ours.

In all three cases with OCEAN, the miner solved the empty block long after already having a full template to work on -

   - leaving the pool in a position to either throw away a perfectly good (but empty) block or to broadcast it to the network and get miners >90% of the reward of a full block. Obviously the latter makes sense and does zero harm to the network while still adding to the overall PoW necessary for any attacker.

So why would an empty block happen a few seconds after the pool had already sent an updated job for a full block?

Because Antminers suck.

*What we didn't realize was that they intentionally sucked.*

You can send an updated job to an Antminer and watch it continue to work on an old job for over 60 seconds in edge cases.

This was something we assumed was due to design of the ASIC itself, and thus just poor engineering on the part of Bitmain.

But it turns out we were wrong, it's due to Antminer firmware.

We know this because they just released a fix for it.

So Bitmain watched, while people kept mining empty blocks, everyone would wrongly attribute it to pools, while explainers on popular websites like mempool(.)space would offer wrong explanations about it happening due to pools being slow to send proper templates and seemingly no one would understand even the motivation for sending empty templates, let alone the reason they get worked on for so long.

But the fix being something that gets released right after OCEAN starts explaining what's really going on here is beyond reasonable doubt.

They had a fix for it, and have been using that fix for their own mining.

Now they can't get away with it because increasingly people are realizing that Whatsminers and ASICs from other manufacturers aren't finding anything like the amount of empty blocks because they switch jobs far more quickly.

An Antminer has a far greater likelihood of finding an empty block because it spends longer working on old jobs.

We've been out here yelling that the issue is with the ASIC *NOT* the pool.

The fact that Bitmain intentionally crippled the firmware on the Antminers they would sell to the world, while keeping more functional units for their own mining is typical of everything Bitmain.

Sure it can be incompetence and coincidental timing on the fix, but I sincerely doubt it.

The conversation around empty blocks reached the point where people were beginning to realize something was broken with Antminers and then they just happen to release a fix for it right after people finally start catching wind of what's really going on.

__________________

So imagine this -

You sell shovels to gold miners, and as we all know, the people who make money during a gold rush are the people who sell the shovels.

But in this case the shovel seller is digging for gold himself too.

And he has intentionally sold crappy shovels to all of his customers so as give himself an advantage.

Empty blocks kept happening, people kept blaming pools.

OCEAN got attacked over it. We explained the real reason they happen so much, and Bitmain releases a fix right after.

Insane.

This goes further than empty blocks.

It's not just empty templates that take forever to work their way out of an Antminer, it's *all templates* and pools are constantly updating work as new transactions show up.

A super lucrative transaction shows up in your mempool?

All other pools are sending an updated job to hundreds of thousands of Antminers who will ignore it for a while, while Antpool has their miners working on it more quickly.

It's not hard to see the motivation for all this, especially going forward as TX fees become more and more important.

Again, insane.

_________________

If you want to watch @wk057 and I figure this all out in real time, watch the video below which was just intended to be a discussion on why empty blocks happen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BkyhdxnDrM


NEW TUTORIAL:

 nostr:npub1mutnyacc9uc4t5mmxvpprwsauj5p2qxq95v4a9j0jxl8wnkfvuyque23vg
-onboard in minutes, no lightning channels needed
-send/receive via lightning, onchain, LN addresses
-seed recovery
-fedimint backend explained, plus how to move to full self custody after building a balance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUbee0BUquo


That's not what reporting functions are for.  Everyone knows they are for targeted brigading of opinions that are uncomfortable to the power regime.

Not sure why this lesson is being repeated on Nostr after being obvious on reddit for two decades, making Nostr necessary.

How could authentic people want a popular brigading tool on nostr after all we've seen

Oh yeah, it's because there are people who want to be able to censor via brigade


Why implement a report censorship tool if you can mute?! nostr:note14303dcktzg3ch7p9qmau79cayskcfjqwnzqw6hpjqvdgevmw4luqt2zazk


#WasabiWallet is going to remove its dependency on a central server. There will be two independent components:

* Wallet API, the one that provides compact filters for wallet synchronization, and
* WabiSabi API for coordinating coinjoins.

Privacy warriors can run one or both. On the client side, In the settings page, users will be able to select the Wallet service provider and the Coinjoin service provider. Other services such as transaction fee rate provider and exchange rate providers are configurable too.

https://image.nostr.build/11389e9f7678cd3be3e78d7f9576351f63f21803549b777244841f0d08c08d22.jpg


✨ zap.store 0.1.2 is out!

Discover apps and latest releases, faster WoT check and more

https://video.nostr.build/be3347e0463e90863521570ee4fdfc7a121aa6c0b282d44b651a33a5083d186a.mp4


Ok here's my briefest possible rundown, I'll try to exclude people you already follow. afaict you haven't been on nostr for a hot minute. I can barely keep up myself. Also, I'm running out the door right now so there's probably a bunch of typos and mistakes, but here you go.

every few days or weeks there's some random wildfire meme event, like one day I logged in and everyone was named Dan

I like the consistent trend of pointing to nostr "problems" are actually features indicating how decentralized it is. like follow like or counts can fluctuate, or you can't gaurantee a post has been deleted. Did you know Mastadon stores like counts in a sql record? anyway, seen a lot of posts like that

Two web-based nostr clients you gotta try if you haven't already are nostrudel (tons of features/customization, I particularly like how it handles relays) and

nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn is working on coracle which has the best in class WoT functionality in nostr afaik

nostr:npub12hcytyr8fumy3axde8wgeced523gyp6v6zczqktwuqeaztfc2xzsz3rdp4 is streaming music on zap.stream 24/7

nostr:npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s posts here occasionally. Always a treat to hear from him.

Some of the grapheneOS folks are on here, like nostr:npub1c9d95evcdeatgy6dacats5j5mfw96jcyu79579kg9qm3jtf42xzs07sqfm

nostr:npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s is prolific and working on cool stuff in golang like REPLICATR

nostr:npub15c88nc8d44gsp4658dnfu5fahswzzu8gaxm5lkuwjud068swdqfspxssvx is publishing about privacy and working on freedom.tech

nostr:npub1jk9h2jsa8hjmtm9qlcca942473gnyhuynz5rmgve0dlu6hpeazxqc3lqz7 is always keeping the vibe light

You already follow nostr:npub1r0rs5q2gk0e3dk3nlc7gnu378ec6cnlenqp8a3cjhyzu6f8k5sgs4sq9ac but I just wanted to say he's definitely the best cat these days.

nostr:npub1ye5ptcxfyyxl5vjvdjar2ua3f0hynkjzpx552mu5snj3qmx5pzjscpknpr is working on a file sharing protocol called blossom (he was on Citadel Dispatch talking about it recently if you want to catch up on that)

all the usual suspects like odell, the jacks, etc. are all still holding it down influentially. divisive and incisive. all of them have been called out and challenged in one way or another, and they're all still going strong. the stakes are high, so good on'em.

There are some folks on here that have sharp technical views on things, I always love seeing them comment on topics:

nostr:npub16r0tl8a39hhcrapa03559xahsjqj4s0y6t2n5gpdk64v06jtgekqdkz5pl
nostr:npub17q5n2z8naw0xl6vu9lvt560lg33pdpe29k0k09umlfxm3vc4tqrq466f2y
nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5

You cannot overestimate the need for good vibes so follow nostr:npub1gvlgps2077uwzmshnn8vxh64sv7l0h26tgrr6gc30d9srdhew9cqxcnhgv

Offset that with the proper antagonism from nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj who will probably save us all in the end.

nostr:npub1ejvhdkt8ppefezgz0sgnwdqrn8l4z8muws2k8dz2tv0a57ac2z9st56q8x (yes)

oh nostr:npub1xdtducdnjerex88gkg2qk2atsdlqsyxqaag4h05jmcpyspqt30wscmntxy also built nsec.app which is pretty cool too

nostr:npub1xv8mzscll8vvy5rsdw7dcqtd2j268a6yupr6gzqh86f2ulhy9kkqmclk3x is still tearin' it up. he's like the benevolent king that conquered lightning, but he's giving it all back to us in the end with nostr:npub19hg5pj5qmd3teumh6ld7drfz49d65sw3n3d5jud8sgz27avkq5dqm7yv9p

NWC will be in everything one day

nostr:npub1t0nyg64g5vwprva52wlcmt7fkdr07v5dr7s35raq9g0xgc0k4xcsedjgqv is scheming up ways to fix lightning (save the money, save the world)

nostr:npub1nxa4tywfz9nqp7z9zp7nr7d4nchhclsf58lcqt5y782rmf2hefjquaa6q8 also built satdress which I continue to use every day to zap people and continue to aggressively recommend

nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg building wild ecash stuff

I think you already follow me, but you should know that if I was a language model they'd probably just delete me for having terrible inference quality

btw I searched for you in Amethyst and couldn't find you even though I follow you. nostr is SO DECENTRALIZED


Mexican billionaire🇲🇽 Ricardo Salinas  reveals the shocking truth about 'fiat fraud' and its role in modern slavery with  Maxkeiser  and  nostr:npub1pq2ll9l7qdmxsfqyrd5w9gul8c7ftqy9yepcqvc8a2l2ys9zhd6sk42rew .

Hear why he warns against CBDCs! 🎧👇
https://v.nostr.build/6G2on.mp4


Are you conservative about changes, or do you want to eff with the block size limit? I have a lot of sympathy for ossification, but if you believe that you should keep the current block size. Because we know Bitcoin works today, and you shouldn't fix what isn't broken. All updates to consensus code are risky, and should be avoided as long as possible.

I'm not a core dev, so take it for what it's worth, but altering the block size feels 10x more reckless than even the most risky soft forks being talked about now (I.E drivechains, OP_CAT et cetera). That alters the entire economics around using L1 for miners, hodlers and everyone else. Nobody could possibly predict all the consequences of doing that ahead of time. Which IMO means you shouldn't do it.


I agree, both on the read on Saylor's points and how the protocol works. We shouldn't fear developers, they can't impose anything on the rest of the network.


New interview with Michael Saylor. I did ask regarding ossification and developer funding.

https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/bitcoin-is-forever-money


Better yet, show who in your WoT follows them. Less subjective.


androidPopupAndIMustScream


Just don't visit their site with a VPN on or you'll get captcha'd immediately 🤡

https://image.nostr.build/898c628936aabb55ff2745d022c043f74014eb8b1bf01f3bab6cf5610c385818.jpg


It is not possible to share this image too widely. Please help me spread it far and wide.

https://m.primal.net/IKnK.png


Communism debunked with a Pencil. ✏
https://m.primal.net/IKgM.mov


✨ Merged NUT: Multinut payments (MPP)

https://m.primal.net/IKaB.png

https://github.com/cashubtc/nuts/blob/main/15.md


Laszlo is a great reminder that spending #bitcoin is good for Bitcoin.

He used bitcoin on-chain to pay for pizza in 2010, and used bitcoin via Lightning to buy pizza in 2018.

Sure, it’s easy to look back now and say “DUDE you wasted generational wealth on PIZZA?!”

But the creators, pioneers, and early adopters of new technology are the ones who change the world. We wouldn't be where we are today without them.

I’ll never tell anyone what to do with their money, and if you simply use bitcoin as a store of value that’s wonderful, because without SoV it’s all meaningless. Store of Value based on the absolute scarcity of 21M coins is the solid foundation that enables everything else. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to study shitcoins.

Hodling drives adoption because NGU is the most powerful Bitcoin meme there is.

Different people move along the progression from Store of Value to Medium of Exchange to Unit of Account at different rates, and not always linearly. So I'll never judge someone just because they're at a different place in their Bitcoin journey than I am.

Personally, I personally use bitcoin as a SoV, MoE, and UoA. I've purchased (a lot of) beer and food, art (shoutout to  nostr:npub1gn78cjuef74m9ksh4j8r6h5d7m7d79est9khup7nwthqj8e7zjuq3jy5zs ) wine (shoutout to  nostr:npub153xmex42x4chdf757hp3q6zxagykkek7pdgwuwd074964dkyha9s82ryu8 ), trading cards, clothing, hotel stays and pupusas in El Salvador, and a whole lot more...

When I spend bitcoin on goods and services, I also convert more of my fiat petrodollars into bitcoin. I DCA into bitcoin every single day, and try to be as short fiat as possible.

I also spend and earn bitcoin every single day by zapping and being zapped on #Nostr

I've funded projects on  nostr:npub1kmwdmhuxvafg05dyap3qmy42jpwztrv9p0uvey3a8803ahlwtmnsnhxqk9 and had my projects funded as well.

I've donated bitcoin to charities and open source development.

I send sats to my favorite podcasters like  nostr:npub1s5yq6wadwrxde4lhfs56gn64hwzuhnfa6r9mj476r5s4hkunzgzqrs6q7z ,  nostr:npub14mcddvsjsflnhgw7vxykz0ndfqj0rq04v7cjq5nnc95ftld0pv3shcfrlx , and  nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev on Fountain because I find their work valuable and want to give value in return. I also receive sats from people on Fountain who enjoy  nostr:npub10qrssqjsydd38j8mv7h27dq0ynpns3djgu88mhr7cr2qcqrgyezspkxqj8

It's a beautiful thing when value can flow across the world without the friction of fiat rails.

So, do whatever you want with your bitcoin. I truly don't care and it's none of my business.

Personally, I'm going to keep using bitcoin as a Store of Value AND Medium of Exchange AND Unit of Account.

I'd like to thank Laszlo for being a pioneer who wasn't afraid to spend bitcoin, because he knew nothing changes unless we change it.

If you want to build parallel systems, you have to build parallel systems... They don't just appear out of thin air because you LARPed about it on social media.

Shoutout to the developers, the Hodlers, the Spend & Replace-ers, the merchants, and the miners. We're all Bitcoiners, and we all believe a better future is possible thanks to Bitcoin.

But the future we want doesn't just happen; we have to build it.
https://m.primal.net/IKDX.jpg


🇬🇧 🚨Alert: The #ChatControl proposal which has been stalling could be adopted by EU governments after all. The "compromise": Either you agree to have your chats scanned or you can no longer share pictures/videos! Read all about it: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-eu-governments-to-agree-on-chat-control-with-user-consent/


Read this article anon.

https://mullvad.net/en/why-privacy-matters/going-dark


...I really don't think Farcaster will ever generate $150m of revenue. Is this just malinvestment or is there something more nefarious going on?


According to https://bitcointreasuries.net/ all the ETFs including the HK ones have a bit more than 1 m BTC.


Mental model: an ecash mint with the purpose of processing payments for a specific service is an alternative to an accounting system.

The flow:

- user tops up balance (e.g. via Lightning)
- service provider (SP) issues ecash to user
- user pays ecash to SP for use of service

Imagine running an entire blockchain for a single application, a website, social network, VPN provider. That would enable interesting use cases but would be a huge waste of resources. With ecash, you can build these systems without blockchains. Lightweight, fast, and cheap.

That is why I'm advocating for businesses to explore these use cases as I see great potential in them, especially in the Bitcoin space. Not only does it guarantee privacy, but it's also easier and safer to build than to have user accounts, passwords, balances, transactions, etc.

Closed ecash systems also do not run into risk of being regulated as money transmission services for the same reason you don't have this issue when you use a BTCPayServer for selling a VPN, for example.

It's only the service provider who gets paid for its service.

I'll be focussing on these use cases as we're developing the Cashu protocol, which allows you to use ecash with Bitcoin.

The internet is as bad as it is partially because payments are so bad. Payments forced us to think in accounts and accounts forced us to be traceable.


Yeah I do miss boosts in Coracle - Boost are often how I discover new people to follow. Making it a toggle as in noStrudel seems to be ideal.


It's been about a month since we launched Lightning Addresses and we're excited to see so many people using it already!

We took some time to explain our unique privacy-preserving fedimint-based approach with our new Blinded Authentication system.

https://blog.mutinywallet.com/blinded-authentication/


Show this to all your friends who have repeatedly shared graphs of decreasing user and engagement numbers on Nostr over the past 5 months, saying that Nostr was dying -- I know I have seen it many times. Also some media reports shared wrong numbers based on the previous broken stats.

nostr:nevent1qqsp34ghpv868zk5j2rp7ztysc6f53f7ju6wyplx795f36uw49uwnuspzpmhxue69uhkztnwdaejumr0dshstqak5c


If you’d like to provide DID feedback to microstrategy

https://github.com/MicroStrategy/did-btc-spec/issues/7


LMAO HFSP


Not a layer at all - To be a layer it has to support unilateral exit (I/E I can withdraw myself / non custodial).

Lightning is a layer two, because I can force close my channel. Cashu / Fedi is not, because eCash is basically a IOU that can be reneged upon by your mint.

FediMint and Cashu is still really cool though, but you need to be aware of the tradeoffs and risks.

I'm curious if  nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg would agree as he's the lead dev of Cashu.


\[T]/


1000%
OP_CAT could not be further away from the critical conservatism and caution in protocol stewardship that made #Bitcoin’s very existence possible.

Thats a hard fucking NO from me dawg.

https://media3.giphy.com/media/fjKUYm8N3GWdO/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7xhr1cuwir11igxzb74z0o44u4pz2jzp451e1araa&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g nostr:note1prrgyfue7xxaazapa3lg3p568tpd8883hnunta0ddvmu5ptljyhs2quhg8


LFG!


Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Sentenced to 64 Months in Prison in the Netherlands

Dutch court found Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to 64 months in prison. Pertsev's legal team has 14 days to appeal the decision.

https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/tornado-cash-developer-alexey-pertsev-sentenced-to-64-months-in-prison-in-the-netherlands/


They made an English summary of the verdict. The full Dutch version should be online shortly.

#TornadoCash is not a legitimate tool https://image.nostr.build/84589525c1bb5ac82e54e7f9239cd71304a22882a8711043a2d9f746b30f5ce5.jpg https://image.nostr.build/c054413351370f2d3a78190313e8fb769914593e3c3961f12761b870df0e988d.jpg


Sparrow v1.9.1 released with:

Testnet4 network support
Increase gap limit to sign

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.9.1

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/


I was also wondering about this, thanks for clarifying.


IrisDB uses tag-replaceable events of kind 30078.

"d" tag is the "file path", for example "groups/follows/somePublicKey" or "user/profile/name". You can update the content of the "file" with a new event that has the same tag.

"f" tag is the "directory path". "groups/follows" in this case. You can list all the "files" in the directory by querying relays with the "#f" tag filter. Strfry doesn't index this field, but some relays do.

Content field is the file content, can be any JSON serialized data.

If we did profile fields and follow lists this way, there would be no overwrite problem when you sign in to a new device that doesn't have your previous profile or follow list. If we did likes that way, unliking would be trivial.

When we create new Nostr apps or features, we don't need to come up with new obscure event kinds.  D tag "apps/events/some-event-name/participants/some-public-key" is more descriptive than some random number that might still conflict with someone else's application.

I wanted to name it "treelike" instead of IrisDB in order to not sound overly complicated, but the npm package name was already taken.

https://github.com/irislib/irisdb

https://github.com/irislib/iris-docs - react app starter template: npm create iris@latest


The recent BTC++ was a 'meeting of the minds’ for a lot of bitcoin developers, and Brandon Black aka reardencode rejoins me on the show to discuss. We talk about:

Various covenant proposals
What has shifted now in thinking
The promise of Great Script Restoration
Could it have bad side effects?
Doing good engineering

https://stephanlivera.com/episode/573/


📣 Introducing zap.store 0.1.0

For months I have been dreaming of a better app store, frustrated by big tech's permissioned bs, GPG's complexities, and Obtainium's reliance on centralized services and poor UX.

Here's the first (very alpha) iteration of zap.store, a permissionless app store leveraging the nostr social graph.

✔ Android only (for now! Desktop coming soon)
✔ Obtainium drop-in replacement (smaller catalog but growing)
✔ App releases are signed/curated by this account, as developers start self-signing
✔ Web of trust check before installing an app

Get it at https://zap.store or https://github.com/zapstore/zapstore

(SHA-256 hash of the APK version 0.1.0 is 8540bd492064c17d83bcdc6d2a463c2aea46f13c2b0d13b8a96023df95bd0c9d)

Feedback more than welcome, it's also possible to send directly from the ⚙ screen in the app

s/o to nostr legends nostr:npub149p5act9a5qm9p47elp8w8h3wpwn2d7s2xecw2ygnrxqp4wgsklq9g722q and nostr:npub1zafcms4xya5ap9zr7xxr0jlrtrattwlesytn2s42030lzu0dwlzqpd26k5 for their invaluable help


The Introduction of Keychat

Keychat is a chat app, built on Bitcoin ecash, Nostr protocol and Signal protocol.

Keychat is inspired by the postal system — stamps, post offices, letters.

Keychat uses Bitcoin ecash as stamps and Nostr relays as post offices.

Senders send messages stamped with Bitcoin ecash to Nostr relays. The Nostr relays collect the Bitcoin ecash, then deliver messages to receivers.

Unlike the centralized postal system, Keychat can use multiple Bitcoin ecash issuers and Nostr relays, each maintained by distinct operators.

Keychat uses Signal protocol to ensure message encryption security and meta-data privacy.

The content of the letter can be exposed easily by opening the envelope. Keychat messages are end-to-end encrypted via Signal protocol, with a unique encryption key generated for each message. Only the sender and receiver can decrypt the message.

The addresses of both parties on the envelope can be tracked. In theory, this problem is solved if they change addresses daily. So Keychat reuses Signal protocol to update sending and receiving addresses for nearly every message.

Like the postal system, Keychat requires no registration. Users just generate Nostr keys as ID.

https://www.keychat.io/


Nice! This is why noStrudel is my daily driver. 💜


shitcoin magazine


Linda Yaccarino here with the “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” Twitter sophistry.

No one has the obligation to listen to you, but if someone decides to label you and curtail your reach to others because they don’t agree with what you’re saying, that person is acting as a de factor censor.

“Corporation” or “government” isn’t the relevant designation. Rather it’s the centralization of the censor. If one person/group/committee can decide for the many, it has the same effect.

Code is just 1s and 0s, but the word has a dual meaning.

To have a “code” is to have principles. Censoring people violates those principles.

A bad idea can be challenged and improved by a good one, but the censorship of people and ideas with which we disagree disables the corrective mechanism itself.
nostr:note10y4ac0vtmy43gsxfpy247rmd9d2k732e2e5y0mpfkxa202r655hq9ssd4f


LOL. Well I fucked up. I sent $5.75 to my Lightning address, which Coinbase thinks is an email address, and emailed bitcoin just like Brian did to nostr:npub1lr2zzf989mvf393y0tv39ara6a4vddkd6y87z784up9vl6ks6j3qtudl6a 😂😂 Apparently they only take Lightning invoices. https://i.nostr.build/Le2gM.jpg https://i.nostr.build/4oBEW.jpg https://i.nostr.build/M5Ok5.jpg


Nostr is based af rn 🔥:

https://i.nostr.build/5Gory.jpg


:keks:


Is this from the Tornado Cash case?


Keep calm and HODL #Bitcoin.

Everyone seems to be overreacting to the Samourai arrests, the FBI PSA, and Phoenix leaving the US. Here's my attempt to break it down.

Samourai

You have to unpack all of the different elements. Could this be a state attack on self-custody and privacy? Maybe. Probably not.

There are a few components here that need to be evaluated on their own.

1⃣ Samourai was a self-custodial wallet
2⃣ Samourai was a mixer
3⃣ Samourai was providing normal people with privacy
4⃣ Samourai were knowingly marketing the service to criminals and flaunting that fact

Reading the charges, it seems like #4 is pretty cut and dry for this case. Their getting arrested for #4, doesn't automatically mean #1, #2, #3 are under siege as well. If Samourai was a taco stand laundering money and bragging about it, I'm sure they would be taken down too.

They may be accused of running a money transmitter now, but that may or may not stick. We'll find out in the trial.

All that said, we should always be vigilant to attempts to erode privacy and the ability to self-custody. It just does not seem that this fight is *that* fight.

FBI PSA

Seems pretty normal that the FBI would advise people to use compliant services, and the entire announcement seems to revolve around potential disruptions due to Samourai being taken down, and potentially others in the future. Given they took action, they have to post some bulletin about it.

Remember that when people lose funds or have funds stolen from them, they do go to the FBI for help. From their point of view, the best thing for people to do is use compliant services where they can potentially help.

The announcement concludes saying that services that purposely break the law will be investigated - so again we go back to #4 above. This is nothing new, and self-custody is not being criminalized.

Phoenix Leaving

As nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m said, it's feels completely unnecessary. Phoenix obviously is not a MSB and they are not doing anything illegal. In my view, their exit from the US app stores is a complete overreaction.

Keep Calm

Could "they" come after wallets, developers, mixers, nodes, LSPs, sidechains, eCash, VPNs, encryption, etc? It's totally possible. But if you're not breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about.

To my knowledge, there is still rule of law in the US, property rights are still protected, and privacy is enshrined in the Bill of Rights (nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu).

It would be very difficult to change the law or stretch it to incriminate these things because it's all just information and software, which is speech. Some will try. But as they are trying, #Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream and integral to the world's financial system.

#Bitcoin is freedom technology and it will continue on.

Go outside this weekend and think about why you're here.


The woke VC mentality will be good for nostr because it’ll come up against reality here and get trounced in a fair fight.

Without friendly algos and fewer brainwashed imbeciles socially and professionally bribed to boost it artificially, it will have to stand its ground on the merits which it obviously can’t.

And when people see it rejected and repudiated, that will be better than if it had never come here. What a great advertisement for free speech and a real public square/marketplace of ideas.
nostr:note1gmhsqgkx82k7l37c38srdamgnx4u74kj72px3an9zed0dp3j36uqq8ewg7


Block size wars come to nostr.

Noise: Pearl-clutchers joined Bluesky en masse when it started censoring more so they were less likely to encounter content running afoul of their fragile sensibilities!

Signal: Nostr boasts technology other platforms envy.

To analyze which protocol has more users at this stage and draw some lesson from it is absurd.

Which function grows faster, f(x) = 2x or f(x) = x^2?

Obviously the latter, though for x = 1, the former = 2, while the latter = 1. We are at x = 1 right now.

The more powerful function is obviously the one with the better axioms. The better axioms are the quality of the technology.

Freedom of speech is essential to that.

This midwit meddling and centralization is antithetical, and it’s why Bluesky is DOA IMO.

Just like the block size wars — “Make the blocks bigger to speed up medium of exchange and hence adoption.”

No, preserve the auditability of the network with small blocks so it’s secure first and foremost. Figure out the rest later.

Same argument under a different guise. Let’s ruin the entire point of this to juice growth! No, let’s keep the conspiracy theorists (who have been right 9 times out of 10 the last 5 years), the cranks, the misfits, the weirdos.
nostr:note19f0dqr8g5sq8g9yh5lvd66cxddhydz2gakvs5qqdnv6ekynpz4gqq89dnj


a useful rebelion to this samurai injustice would be to use JAM, or Joinmarket. Maybe they can crush one of us, but they can't touch an army in it's thousands 🤙

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbyjG2upGO8&ab_channel=BTCSessions


The indictment against the alleged Samourai Wallet (SW) operators was unsealed today. A few friends have been asking for my opinion on it and my channels are blowing up. I used to serve in law enforcement as a detective that specialized in cybercrime and blockchain analysis. The following information may be useful or interesting to some.

Reading through the Department of Justice’s press release and the indictment itself, here are my initial thoughts:

There are plenty of examples of past investigations resulting in arrests/convictions related to the operation of custodial mixing services, with Bitcoin Fog being the one in recent news. With a service taking custody of funds and moving funds between other people/users, they are likely going to be considered a money service business. And if a money service business doesn’t block Americans from using the service, the US Department of Treasury will require the operators of that service to register with them and follow their compliance regulations. Many foreigners have been arrested in foreign jurisdictions in order to be prosecuted in the US with an American judge and jury for allegedly violating federal American laws (read that sentence twice).

With these sorts of cases, you are typically dealing with the idea that a service didn’t register correctly and follow compliance regulations. And then the other idea is that the operator of the service knew and allowed funds to move through it that would be considered “illicit” or “sanctioned.”

Examples of illicit funds may be proceeds from illegal drug sales or funds stolen from someone. The sanction piece can involve entities, such as particular Bitcoin addresses, individuals, companies, or countries, using the service or receiving from the service. The US federal government maintains a sanction list.

The above summary has been an on-going fight on privacy, censorship, and regulatory overreach for a while. It isn’t new (and Roman Sterlingov should be free). SW’s indictment is different from the situation I summarized above though.

SW was a non-custodial service. This means that users controlled (their private keys to) their funds themselves and the service provider (SW) allowed the coordination between users through its infrastructure, such as the app, the server, the continued development, etc. This makes this case much more interesting and more concerning to me.

Regarding the first count against the men: Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering. The SW indictment alleges that SW was a service that provided “large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion.” So we are talking about users using illicit funds with the service and sanctioned entities using or receiving from the service. And we are talking about the SW coordinators “conspiring” with the relevant users to do this.

The indictment is constantly referring to SW as an “application” that is conducting or facilitating the mixing through a “centralized coordinator server.” Who controls the application and server? Allegedly the two men named in the indictment.

When it comes to SW’s Whirlpool service: Through their server, their application is selecting the inputs. Their application is communicating information between all users necessary for the mixing to occur. Their application is using the private keys on behalf of the users. Their application is broadcasting the mixing transactions to the Bitcoin network. The picture the indictment is painting is that the application and server are essentially doing the money laundering, as opposed to the users using the service. Similar verbiage and logic are used to describe SW’s Ricochet service too (adding hops to a send you intend to do).

The above summary is the most shocking piece of the indictment, in my opinion. The implications of this reach beyond Bitcoin-related apps and services. Think of the apps and services, just in general, that a user could use to engage in criminal behavior. Now think of arresting the developers/creators for what the user did.

Regarding the second indictment against the men: Conspiracy to Operate an Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business. The indictment says the SW operators were “involved in the transportation and transmission of funds intended to be used to promote and support unlawful activity.” There isn’t any mention or consideration of custody of funds in this. The logic of the indictment: Some users may have used SW’s application and server for “unlawful activity” and therefore, SW was involved in the unlawful activity. Again, this is a scary precedent. Think of the applications and servers out there right now that users may be using for unlawful activity.

There are many mentions apparently from the coordinators themselves that address the knowledge and intent element (important for a criminal trial). The SW operators were obviously passionate about financial privacy and resisting compliance regulations. Their messages (especially with their style of messaging) will be easy to spin/take literally, even if the coordinators were just trying to be edgy with their marketing/brand. The SW coordinators did not help themselves in this regard.

I think the government will focus a lot on the coordinator’s knowledge and intent of the service being used for illegal activity. I believe this is how the government will “limit” the scope of the precedence and how it will try to differentiate the SW service from others.

Regarding the illicit funds/sanctions piece: The blockchain analysis showing funds from Dark Web markets that sell illegal drugs flowing into SW’s Whirlpool will be easy for the prosecution. The same goes with sanctioned entities sending to or receiving from SW’s Whirlpool. It will also be easy to show funds flowing from known hacks, exploits, and/or thefts flowing into SW’s Whirlpool. The government will need to prove the men knew this was happening and that they facilitated it by providing the SW application and server. Their mouths may be their downfall on this one, but I think it is pretty clear that the SW operators’ intent was to provide a neutral financial privacy tool that didn’t control user funds, leaving the responsibility of the use of those funds on the users themselves.

With the logic in this case, I wonder if it will be argued that blockchain analysis companies are also culpable since they surely had their own funds being mixed in SW’s Whirlpool to collect data points. Were their funds facilitating illegal activity? Or were their funds facilitating financial privacy in general? (Maybe facilitating privacy was just the byproduct of having the chance to trace through exclusions.)

Overall, the case leads to some interesting questions.

Is a wallet software and developer a money service business now? How about a full node? These both facilitate the transmission of funds too. The implications of this case are not good for privacy or code. I’m ready to donate to the defense.


Ok I've built this for fun and it's incredible.

A Cashu gateway: it's a normal Cashu user who has a Lightning node (or another Lightning payment backend). Everyone can act like a gateway as long as the mint supports ecash HTLCs (NUT-15).

If you as a Cashu user know of such a gateway, your wallet can send your Lightning payment request to it instead of to the mint.

The gateway responds with an amount (it can take a fee). If you agree, you send it ecash, and it pays your Lightning invoice. The process is atomic.

What does that mean? Let's think a little ahead and imagine this was deployed on a significant scale.

Even if the mint is full KYC for peg-in and peg-outs, a user could still make Lightning payments anonymously with the help of other users.

(!!! this alone would be huge !!!)

This would also enable us to make on-chain-only mints which opens up a whole new way of building mints (reserves could be in a multisig for example).

Crazy part: Gateways can be lazy and use custodial Lightning backends. The user doesn't care as long as the invoice gets paid.

Yes. That means you could use your Strike or Blink or LNbits account to act as a Gateway for a Cashu mint you like.

There could be many of crazy people like you. Nobody would ever know. Neither the mint. nor your LN service provider would notice. They all just see invoices.

It gets weirder. Gateways could use *another Cashu mint* as an LN backend. I know sounds like an inception nut but bare with me.

A user of mint M1 can ask a gateway of mint M1 to pay an invoice. The gateway could pay the invoice via mint M2 and receive ecash from M1 in return.

I always thought "you could run a mint for a thousand users on a Strike or a Blink backend without them even noticing the smallest thing".

Now I think you could probably run a mint for 100k users without them noticing, if there are other gateways handling payments for everyone.

Note: this is still experimental. Only paying works right now over the gateway, not receiving (more complicated).

The bast part though is that it doesn't require any Cashu protocol changes and the mints don't have to give you permission to do this.

It's all pretty nuts.

nostr:note142qdxj9dnp9nsmsuet9vw5pgtgtwj4e7vxv5qa0wvk8vdqy76cdqw3d5kr


Serious: Vulnerability in PuTTY let's attackers with a compromised server get your ECDSA private keys which use the NIST P521 curve.

If you have a key of this type, we recommend you revoke it immediately.

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/vuln-p521-bias.html


A note on the dangers of socio-technical determinism in analysis of monetary policy.

This was a very interesting WBD episode that I believe almost everyone can learn something from.

Peter McCormack talks to Nicholas Bowick about the fiat and bitcoin systems from a technical design and engineering perspective.

Nicholas also lines out some of the key principles of modern engineering, which I found illuminating.

The reason I write this, however, is because he said something related to "the designers" of the fiat system, which probably resonates with many people, but which IMO isn't on point, and which can have unintended and not-so-positve consequences.

This note shouldn't be read as a critique of Nicholas.

Instead, I cite a passage of what he said because I think it articulates well what many people think, plus it makes it a useful launchpad for my comment.

Here it is:

“People get conspiratorial about this, they observe ‘I’m getting fucked by the system everywhere I turn’...I think the far scarier reality is there’s just no one in charge at that level, we’ve absolutely not designed this thing at it’s highest level of operation.”

As I got the impression that Peter didn't disagree with this viewpoint, I feel it's important for me to argue that the statement isn't a fair representation of what has actually happened.

The assumption that the fiat system and the economy "emerged" with these flaws, leading to a design that operates somewhat suboptimally, and since "there is no one in charge" then people "get conspitorial," isn't a viewpoint that I share.

If you study the history of monetary policy, you see that monetary monopolies controlled by rulers from the outset were designed by them to centralize wealth and power, without any consideration of economic efficiency or social fairness

In Fraudcoin - 1000 Years with Inflation as a Policy, I describe the important transition from monetary freedom to monetary monopoly in Norway.

It analyzes why the king acted like he did, what he did and how he did it.

In other words, it presents "the original conspiracy."

Fraudcoin also demonstrates how the concept of central banking based on paper and debt money developed in Sweden, and how this caused a knock-on effect as other nations swiftly copied this terifying innovation.

The mint used in coin monopolies and the central bank had the same function - to centralize and control the only production of money that was legal tender, for the benefit of the ruler and a political class consisting of powerful and wealthy people, and at colossal costs to the rest of civilization.

Everything that has happened after the kings established their coin monopolies are IMO just minor details, a technical evolution of something that always was and will be purely political.

It's the original abolishing of monetary freedom and the establishing of the monetary monopoly that is the only conspiracy that interests me.

All the other conspiracies are in comparison mere details.

The way this policy evolved, had the intended consequences, as the technical innovations in monopolization of money served the rulers' interests, by enabling them to continue to amass more wealth and power.

For instance, the adoption of issuance of paper money controlled by a central bank, made it easier and cheaper to achieve their objectives.

This wasn't a design flaw.
It was designed this way so that it could function at its "highest level of operation" from the viewpoint of the ruling class, to use Nichola's words while formulating the exact opposite conclusion.
Today the 1%-ers own half of the global wealth.

This is a result of the original conspiracy, when the king set up his mint, and the "elite's" subsequent investments in protecting their privilege by introducing innovation.

As we show in our most recent book, UNBAR, these developments were probably related to an evolution in people’s belief systems where they lost faith in their ability and obligation to stand up for themselves to fight the rulers.

It’s necessary for me to refer to another important political development.
The people in the Netherlands and in the colonies in North America rose up and reclaimed their monetary freedom.

After I had written Fraudcoin and UNBAR, I became aware that the same had happened in Argentina in 1816.

And what was the cost of this victory for the people of Argentina?

1200 men died.

"Only 1200," as I think it is fair to say that the number is extremwly low, when we consider the social and individual value of reclaiming the right to use the money people like best.

Next, I learned that the Irish probably protected their monetary freedom until as late as the 17th century, which to me was downright mindblowing.

How many of the Irish people know about that today?

Very, very few, I assume, and I just stumbled over an article about it (I'll see if I can put the link in a comment here.)

These historical lessons demonstrate that it is possible to protect and to fight and win back monetary freedom.

However, they also teach us important what and who to fight, which is necessary to understand if we want to win.

The monetary monopoly was from day one designed to have the redistributive effects that it still has.

And it's being maintained by today’s political class for the exact same reason.

To say that people are "conspi" if they point to the root cause, may make many say to themselves:

"It's the system, it just happened, it was an evolution, it just "emerged."

"And because it doesn’t have a root cause, as it hasn't been designed or maintained with deliberate actions, I cannot fight it and I cannot change it."

Which might lead some people to say:

"The only thing I can do is to stack sats."

In this way it also makes them believe they don't have a moral obligation to fight it, "because it's impossible."

This line of thinking removes people's feeling of a responsibility to fight to reclaim their freedom, and this is what I consider to be the worst disease in today's society.

We need to move away from this type of thinking based on what I call socio-technical determinism, simply because it reduces our potential as human beings.

People must become aware of the need to fight for freedom, including fighting for the right to use the money we like best.

Just like we have done on several occasions throughout history.

It's a moral obligation.

We owe it to our ancestors who themselves fought to be free.

And most of all, we owe it to the next generations.

(Disclaimer: When I use the word "fight" I don't necessarily argue that we should use violence. Peaceful resistance might be a lot more efficient.)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/48PyH8Ow2ocLO3apDN08iB?si=r22AiVMNSCCEoZBxcwqFyA


And FreeTube is also good: https://freetubeapp.io/


UPDATE: Patriot Act v2.0: US House Passes FISA 702 Surveillance Expansion 'Reform'

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a two-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA 702”), a controversial warrantless spying authority, and in an extremely narrow tie vote, rejected critical reforms to stop rampant abuse of the law.

https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/patriot-act-v2-0-us-house-votes-on-fisa-702-surveillance-expansion/


Sparrow v1.8.5 released with:

Whirlpool over decentralized Soroban
Restart in different Home Folder
Faster initial server connections
Upgrade to HWI 3.0.0

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.5

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/


Some clients show a notification for every reply in a thread you're included in - Then if you are tagged in a really long thread you will get spammed with notifications.


Yeah I've also been tagged in a hell thread a couple of times, it's the worst.

NoStrudel, Amethyst and Primal all filter notifications from them.

Coracle also works OK but you have to mute the poster in the thread first, then you won't see any replies to them.


Sat down for a few hours today and wrote up a bunch of examples and docs for the three blossom libraries I've made so far

https://github.com/hzrd149/blossom-client-sdk
A Typescript package for making requests to blossom servers
Docs site: https://hzrd149.github.io/blossom-client-sdk/

https://github.com/hzrd149/blossom-drive-sdk
A Typescript package with the core Drive and EncryptedDrive classes used in Blossom Drive. I'm hoping other clients can use this to integrate with blossom drive
Doc site: https://hzrd149.github.io/blossom-drive-sdk/

https://github.com/hzrd149/blossom-server-sdk
A Typescript package with a few helper classes you can use to build your own blossom server implementation
Doc site: https://hzrd149.github.io/blossom-server-sdk/

Let me know what you think. and feel free to open any PRs if you see typos or want to add more


He was here a year ago but stopped posting. 😕


I've been seeing this new transaction type in the mempool that's an inscription batch payment. Anyone know what the "wizards" are up to? #asknostr

For example: https://mempool.space/tx/f60cca0445d634051a58ccdb65ce6b5ac070c1a2412f05043fd61b3a75534073

https://image.nostr.build/e61cbaccb02a9ca6714a89686c5b9ff6ff9a58980299f7403866378e023f21ea.jpg


I have a specific requirement for zap.store that no relay provides out of the box, custom indexing multiple fields for NIP-50 full-text search (and rejecting certain event kinds).

I thought of customizing the fiatjaf golang relay framework but didn't want to learn new tooling just for this.

 nostr:npub1gzuushllat7pet0ccv9yuhygvc8ldeyhrgxuwg744dn5khnpk3gs3ea5ds pointed me at Bun.sh which is a powerful JS toolkit with built-in websockets and sqlite, and I basically got a relay implemented in under a day... very cool.

This will eventually index all software releases on zap.store, and I'm thinking of making this same server implement  nostr:npub1ye5ptcxfyyxl5vjvdjar2ua3f0hynkjzpx552mu5snj3qmx5pzjscpknpr-Blossom, keeping copies of all the indexed artifacts.

#zapstore

https://image.nostr.build/62251418d5885c062b2ae120ee3092a66c47f5757bc955ff56ddc83bd029f50f.png


"A Pirate Ship Full of Guinea Pigs" - a short review of the first #SovEng cohort in Madeira, written by  nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc

https://sovereignengineering.io/2024/03/20/what-was-SEC-01.html


Elon can’t even keep Xitter safe from hackers. Imagine what could happen to a Tesla.

Oh, wait.
https://image.nostr.build/a78e6506c948f8b05d78984f405b0bee9112eeae35c1a8d8862edeb2e052a102.jpg


Just wrote an article about Blossom Drive. a new nostr app I'm building for file sharing and censorship resistant file hosting

If you want to give it a try its hosted at https://blossom.hzrd149.com/

nostr:naddr1qqxkymr0wdek7mfdv3exjan9qgszv6q4uryjzr06xfxxew34wwc5hmjfmfpqn229d72gfegsdn2q3fgrqsqqqa28e4v8zy


Outflows will continue until Grayscale cuts fees I'd expect - No reason to use GBTC 1.5% fee when IBIT has 0.2%.


ZEUS v0.8.2 is now available

- LSP support for LND REST connections
- Point of Sale: Print receipts [Android]
- Multi-currency conversion tool
- 33 new fiat currencies
- Enhanced wallet recovery interface
- Default channel opening settings
- New invoice expiration picker interface
- LND v0.17.4-beta

## Links

Blog post: https://blog.zeusln.com/new-release-v0-8-2/

Release notes: https://github.com/ZeusLN/zeus/releases/tag/v0.8.2

ZEUS documentation: https://docs.zeusln.app/
Embedded node FAQ: https://docs.zeusln.app/for-users/embedded-node/faq

Android

Universal APK: https://zeusln.com/zeus-v0.8.2-universal.apk
arm64-v8a APK: https://zeusln.com/zeus-v0.8.2-arm64-v8a.apk
Manifest: https://zeusln.com/manifest-v0.8.2.txt
Manifest Signature: https://zeusln.com/manifest-v0.8.2.txt.sig

F-Droid https://zeusln.com/download

Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.zeusln.zeus

iOS

IPA: https://zeusln.com/zeus-v0.8.2.ipa

Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zeus-wallet/id1456038895

https://image.nostr.build/750cd643cc9b6686f0dabd0778a1dd8af7e97e7f48cc880a06768ae4a1ad3aae.png


Not to mention a video recommending nostr got 500 k views on Tiktok, and we got a bunch of newbies coming in. Very good day indeed! 💜


Congratulations nostr:npub1cjw49ftnxene9wdxujz3tp7zspp0kf862cjud4nm3j2usag6eg2smwj2rh! Finally that creep will not harass you again. 🤙


Well it's web, so I think you can run it in a mobile browser as well. Haven't tried it.


On noStrudel you can just toggle this button. Also Coracle won't even show reposts at all, you can't even change the setting.

https://image.nostr.build/6370049c42442e12835aef506d658412a74b92fcd03cced0c56339b126a4be16.jpg


Don't forget The Dirge. 😏

https://media1.tenor.com/m/A080TLInvCwAAAAC/dancing-coffin-dancing-pallbearers.gif


Me personally I'm a threads hater... It's basically just a blog post split into > 20 different chunks. The reading experience on Twitter was terrible unless you used TwitLonger to turn it back into a continuous text again.

Nostr has long form content which obviates the need to do this in the first place. Having the thread as a single article in markdown with headlines and such is about 1000x more pleasant to read IMHO.


::rolling on the floor laughing::


WoT fixes this
https://i.nostr.build/76n3.png


You wont believe it… Coinbase is down again! ☠☠☠


Checked Kraken just now, order books looks liquid. This is probably fake.

https://image.nostr.build/1ebf4593584122857271e7f3d530f68359057f122240274c4e62ee5e6ffbc883.jpg


'MORNIN


Nope, still at it.

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpkvxhzjgem6f2r7x9a7u9cxjwl99q46hkk488uy4nvsxt8n37l9vqy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwwpexjmtpdshxuet59uqzpljuq4zkggmtdnvwkpwdvxs3nej2vtm30fd0slfsdwtuq9wt0jwr29kmge


Right after Solana and Filecoin. 🤡


LOL, enjoy your rug loser.


Every current topic really has been discussed in Bitcoin Talk before! 😆


hear me out... globally available, instant payments for EVERYONE who joins nostr, INSTANTLY. No setup required.

How? Well.. NUTS! Magic nuts at that.

1. user creates npub -> creates your nuts address
2. UI displays that user has a nuts address. They can get zapped RIGHT AWAY. That's right - everyone can get zapped IMMEDIATELY! Forget 4% address in profile bullshit.. 100% adoption!!
3. User can change their address to an LN one of course.. or to other cashu address in settings. Upon modifying a field or detected LN address, the UI changes the visual to show its an LN address or it's been modified. Why the change? Well, so people don't go zapping large amounts into the void if the new user never claims their nuts.

At this point, we don't even need cashu websites, because you can do everything in the client UI.

What about centralization?
OK. Rotate trusted mints. It's no different than what Primal has going now as far as I know. You are trusting someone for a bit and have the option to transfer your sats out. Same with nuts. Concerned about rugs? Swap your address to an LN one. Or.. choose another mint, or add your own if you're a pro.

This would bring nostr to 100% sats accessibility.

What about lost sats? F'em! Thank you for your contribution to bitcoin my humble sirs and ladies. The tradeoff of global(nostr) zap adoption is massively better IMO.

LET'S FKING GO!


Much coping and seething in this genre will be written. There is a rich vein of salt yet to be mined. 😎


Sure, let's store private medical data on a public append-only ledger. Brilliant. Inspired. 🙄


Fund your addiction by posting more memes!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/F8Knnumz6vQ/hqdefault.jpg


Saying the quiet part out loud.


The seething and coping from the haters will only ever increase. 😎


HASHRATE IS RIPPING SO FEES ARE LOW.

NEXT DIFFICULTY ADJUSTMENT IS GOING TO BE A BIG ONE AND FEES WILL LIKELY GO UP.

NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO MANAGE YOUR LIGHTNING NODES AND UTXOS IN WALLETS.

https://www.discreetlog.com/utxos/


I remember seeing this at the time and going "OK so the Empire is holding a Nuremberg rally, that's pretty blunt but OK." Now it's just even less subtle than before. 😂


Awesome Privacy has a section on note taking software:

https://github.com/pluja/awesome-privacy?tab=readme-ov-file#notes-and-tasks

Out of these I can only personally vouch for Obsidian - I've been meaning to try out Logseq as well.


No BS Bitcoin is the GOAT 💯


Michael Diamant was on nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak's podcast once, one of my favorite episodes.

https://saifedean.com/podcast/162-fiat-architecture-with-michael-diamant


When governments try to ban #Bitcoin: Bruised by stock market, Chinese rush into banned #Bitcoin.

„The underground #Bitcoin market in China is thriving.“

https://www.reuters.com/technology/bruised-by-stock-market-chinese-rush-into-banned-bitcoin-2024-01-25/


Any German bitcoiners motivated to help with this? CC nostr:npub1qv02xpsc3lhxxx5x7xswf88w3u7kykft9ea7t78tz7ywxf7mxs9qrxujnc nostr:npub1mturmynk3dwsqpfh87p7xr2zq0qtw37pwpzfuqh75cg6pksjtmnqqxv6kw

https://en.odfoundation.eu/a/723329,submission-to-fatf-tools-to-prevent-abuse-of-aml-cft-laws/


Not your car, not your car.

https://m.primal.net/HZjo.png

from nostr:npub1ql2zzp3g6yndgz05js7wdc4qkr88wkyne5nw2cc7csrtzqs0yeesgwrxya


Interesting! Of course any privacy guarantee from fiat eCash would have to be verified. Because frankly I don't trust those people further than I can throw them. Let's just say I strongly doubt Augustin Carsten suddenly turned into a financial privacy advocate. 🤔


There's a uBlock filter you can use to remove cookie banners FYI.


We've teamed up with other #privacy focused companies to fight against the #surveillance pushed by the #EU Chat Control Bill. 💪

You are not a criminal & shouldn't be treated like one.👮♂

Contact your representatives and make your #voice heard! 📣
👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImM88kFB6No

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/805/434/850/964/886/original/3b56d64b94667d8f.webp


Here you go: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.12783


What's the difference between "de-platformed" and "silenced at will"?


Sparrow v1.8.2 released with:

Improved transaction tree
Quicker transaction tab loading
Reduced rescans on Bitcoin Core
Effective fee rate for CPFP

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.2

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/


EPSTEIN AIR FREQUENT FLYER GILL BATES: Oh, we blew it on social media, we should do better,” – that is an outstanding challenge that there are very negative elements to, in terms of polarization. Even now, I’m not sure how we would deal with that.

 SAM ALTMAN: I don’t understand why the government was not able to be more effective around social media, but it seems worth trying to understand as a case study for what they’re going to go through now with AI.

https://video.nostr.build/f4409a14fac6f1bd14bc98676b557a9e615f0173ea10ef8f1b6a856a20a3e04b.mp4


Better life hack: Use the Privacy Redirect browser extension. You can make every YouTube video load in Invidious, even the ones embedded on other web sites. 😎


Just checked and it works for me.


It is sad that EU regulators and public opinion are listening to #Greenpeace. This should be exposed properly.

If you are a #Bitcoin miner, don’t abandon this propaganda. Help us, end-users and human rights activists to defend bitcoin on the ongoing attack on PoW in the #EU.

One of the goals of the EU bodies, particularly the European Central Bank (#ECB), for such an approach is to use “a policy tool that disincentivises investing in such assets from the outset and prevents the build-up of transition risk through crypto-assets in the banking system” until 2025.

As end-users of Bitcoin for fundraising and payment instruments, Open Dialogue Foundation concerns that such a policy would directly affect both us and the Bitcoin industry, which services we and other activists use. Especially because the European Commission wants to “collaborate internationally with different standardisation bodies to develop the energy-efficiency label” for PoW:

“States shall implement targeted and proportionate measures to lower, and must be ready to stop, the electricity consumption of crypto-asset miners, in line with the proposed Council Regulation on an emergency intervention to address high energy prices.”

We need to do educational advocacy - over 200 face to face meetings with MPs and regulators so they can learn and ask questions from bitcoin miners they never ask in public. Just as we did thanks to nostr:npub1kp7jzme0qs3wcqjjmkq6v5fm359sclhc22glhadgtmerlr0h37nsn8487l  nostr:npub1hyqrsvl6hle8r5rc9cpshesm0mpcee75tgde4p5lhke5h83dyqqqdwk7cp and nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m last years with #MiCA and #AML Regulations.

We need to be able to defend our rights to use Bitcoin in a legal way. So far it seems that the fight in the EU for Bitcoin is more important for activists than for bitcoiners, because everyone is excited about Bitcoin ETFs in the US, or believes that the market will solve the problem in the EU/move to other jurisdictions, or just doesn't believe in engaging with politicians to educate them. 😔

And I understand and respect all of that arguments, but we as human rights defenders have no place to move and we operate there, in the EU. 🙏

We need your support.

Now, before it is too late. https://image.nostr.build/f2ae7b2320da88512b29171d2cd1934598358146426a788ee8ffd408177a5c23.jpg


Ecash zaps:

- Receiver (R) announces on their nostr profile which mints they're on
- R posts something dope on nostr
- Sender (S) mints P2PK-locked ecash from R's mint to R's nostr pubkey
- S attaches locked ecash to R's post
- Observer (O) sees ecash attached to R's note and verifies P2PK lock ("receiver is R") and DLEQ proof ("ecash is legit").
- O's nostr client shows "1234 sats zapped from S to R"


My thinking on the ETFs are: They're not made for me or people like me, but people who are unable to self custody for whatever reason. The way I'd like to take the ETF discourse is like: Yes, you should self custody but if you can't yet what's the least harmful set of training wheels you can put on?

I've thought about this for a bit, and I think the most important aspect is that you get a ETF with direct withdrawal on chain: So that when you do learn to self custody, you can do so without selling and re-buying your stack, and potentially giving away 20-30% of it as capital gains tax. You can also withdraw in an emergency to "run the bank".

I think odds are pretty good that if we get one ETF to add direct deposit/withdrawal all of them will have to. ETFs list on the same stock exchanges and are very competitive, they just can't afford to be behind their competitors in features.

nostr:nevent1qqsp88t9sfc4cdtf2pmun5mewqkmh4764cq7fca42w0mg8z86usq9lqpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcq3qgcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqxpqqqqqqz5u4m0p


Self-custody is king, BUT if you are not up to it... YET, the Bitwise ETF is not only the cheapest but 10% of profits will go to open-source devs through Opensats, Brink, and the HRF.

The only issue is that they use Coinbase as a custodian instead of self-custodying themselves, like how Fidelity is doing.

You can also pay more and go with the memes with $BRRR if you are rich.

I wonder if they will ever show proof of reserves for these.

- Bitwise, Coinbase / $BITB / 0.20%, 10% of profits to Opensats, Brink, HRF
- Fidelity, Own / $FBTC / 0.25%
- Ark Invest, Coinbase / $ARKB / 0.21%
- BlackRock, Coinbase / $IBIT / 0.25%
- VanEck, Gemini / $HODL / 0.25%, for the OGs.
- Franklin, Coinbase / $EZBC / 0.29%
- Wisdom Tree, Coinbase / $BTCW / 0.30%
- Invesco, Coinbase / $BTCO / 0.39%
- Valkyrie, Coinbase / $BRRR / 0.49%, for the memes!
- Hashdex, BitGo / $DEFI / 0.90%
- Grayscale, Coinbase / $GBTC / 1.50%


Reminder for all the confused bros out there:

https://dergigi.com/2022/11/19/dear-crypto-fiat-bros/


Main difference is that Grayscale is a closed-end fund, meaning it's hard to sell shares of them if you should want to. ETF stands for exchange-traded fund, so it's listed on one or more stock exchanges and trades more or less instantly. This leads to more liquidity and less deviation from the underlying Bitcoin price.


HFSP


…a great way to encourage abuse in the future is to do nothing in response to present abuse. …all press is good press, and complaining about spam filtration and idealogical maxis just makes more people learn about the difference between mempool policy and consensus validity, and indeed whether Bitcoin should have a purpose at all.

https://medium.com/@southern_hands/a-brief-response-to-rodarmors-inscriptions-a-guide-for-the-ideological-maxi-2d8d657548b0


I just opened one for 10k sats. But really it depends how the on chain fees look like at the time. Check https://mempool.space/ for the next block fee rate at any given time.


Interesting analysis on the potential impact on open source developers of the latest poorly thought out EU Act.

TL&DR: it looks like they duct-taped some amendments to protect open source developers ... a bit.
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/eu-cra-what-does-it-mean-for-open-source/


Thanks Jeff! I've been thinking on and off about how to transition into retirement after I have enough of a stack to do so. I had some other ideas but just waiting until the bottom is in to calculate your withdrawal rate feels simple and robust. 👍

I'm also a bit interested in Bitcoin Money Market Funds idea as well as a way to hedge volatility, we'll see how that develops.

https://www.axiombtc.capital/orange


Pura Vida Matt 🤙


Check out nostr:npub19gq4ax8e2j9xw205q7g6n2hnnne2hxk9stw946k9qj49qr3wsj5qnha9s5


An excellent discussion on the current Ordinals debate, with Ocean's Bitcoin Mechanic & nostr:npub1s5yq6wadwrxde4lhfs56gn64hwzuhnfa6r9mj476r5s4hkunzgzqrs6q7z.

https://m.primal.net/HUiK.mov

Full podcast episode available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXccoOlmtMY

#bitcoin #ordinals #inscriptions


During the previous cycle, we’ve established a ton of new tools and projects that completely changed how we interacted with #Bitcoin.

I think many dont properly appreciate the fact that Lightning is becoming (or possibly already has become) the primary mode of interaction. And even despite fees, onboarding onto Lightning is seamless due to a growing ecosystem of LSPs. 2 years ago that honestly seemed like an overly optimistic goal.

In addition
• we are finally on the cusp of workable DLCs, we will likely very soon have bitcoin native “stable sats” via this tool
• multisig is becoming an industry standard for BTC native financial services
• Fedimint/ecash is starting its rise - which will completely change the custodial landscape
• we have two insanely exciting new communication protocols making their MVP debut - Nostr + Hypercore
• There is an explosion of new entrants in the Lightning ecosystem
• We have numerous new mining & mining pool projects around redecentralizing hash power coming to fruition - Including a FOSS package to “run your own pool.”
• Everyone is bitching about fees being too high instead of Bitcoin’s “security budget problem.”
• We have multiple, entirely novel approaches for new scaling layers - including an incredibly creative new means to use ANY arbitrary code to enforce ownership of a bitcoin UTXO.
• Traditional finance cannot ignore us any longer. For better or worse, they are allocating.
• A country adopted bitcoin as legal tender and started building national payments infrastructure with the bitcoin/lightning stack.
• We have multiple other increasingly bitcoin friendly regimes and political leaders popping up across the global south.
• Streaming sats, zaps, lightning prisms, running lightning services for friends and family, user friendly personal nodes, zero setup non/custodial Lightning - these were all “what ifs” at the end of the last cycle. Today they are all here.
• Tons of new developer interest has flooded into the Lightning ecosystem, and we now have the tooling and dev kits to do an order of magnitude more applications with barely any knowledge or configuration from the app creators needed for it to work securely and easily. This is hugely underappreciated, imo.

There’s a ton of stuff that I know I’m even missing here that deserves a mention, but the ecosystem has matured incredibly these past few years. Most of the biggest leaps have been in infrastructure, which is exactly what is laying the groundwork for a 10x at the application layer that I think comes with this next cycle.

___________

The REAL kicker though, is that we did this under largely the same development conditions as the past 10 years, but today, Ai is about the drastically change that landscape. Over the next 3 years, the accessibility of development and the capital required to complete a project will DRASTICALLY decline. Already we have LLMs specialized in code that are enabling “so so programmers” to build small & simple functions/apps with very little effort. We have “screenshot to code” which lets you take a picture (or photoshop) a website and it will immediately create the HTML or React code needed to make the website exactly as seen, and this is **just the beginning.** LLMs have been in the public eye for ONLY one year. The amount of building that will be unleashed in the next 3 is going to be hard to fathom.

I want people to understand, if you are technically literate at all, you NOW have the capacity to create a lighting app, a game, a desktop tool, a Nostr app, a Hypercore based software, a website or PWA, **even if you don’t know how to code.** the dev kits, libraries, and Ai combined have done all the heavy lifting for you. The game is changed, start playing.

The acceleration is about to get fucking crazy, and a ton of stuff is aligning at the same time. We have no idea how far these next few years are going to take us.

Buckle
The
Fuck
Up


TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO AT BITCOIN 2021 - WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY - ONWARD 🫡

https://m.primal.net/HUxT.mp4


Argentina’s new foreign minister. https://image.nostr.build/a03d8038638cda5deacaec86a5bf2eca32b9df5c5a2f5d1e91ad89a5fadd5d34.jpg https://image.nostr.build/9f2db4fbccfc0a9c65a8728172bdd9eeeb558ea529da3baf76d1770b1912fdd2.jpg


One more thing - Please do not show every notification from a thread you where tagged in. This just lets people troll you with hell threads. My notifications on Snort are unusable.


I've two pieces of feedback:
- It's annoying when you go into replies in the feed, and then back, the position in the feed is not kept. This makes it annoying to read through the feed.
- Have you considered adding web of trust the way Coracle does it? I honestly find it hard to use any other web client these days as comments are otherwise full of airdrop spam.


Inflooencor: Why no engagemnt here😩
Me: Your content is shit.
Inflooencoor: https://i.nostr.build/g4Y6.webp


Things are different here. Better. https://image.nostr.build/7bba345d0cb617a4bb2c67fe5a9fb80eee18b24b12b57c7bbc48c95eb74c99d3.jpg


"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair


A bunch of people have been shilling [Liquid](https://liquid.net/) has a scaling solution with on-chain fees on the rise. I wanted to take the time to breakdown why this is a fool's errand and there are better ways to go about this.

Liquid is based on [Elements](https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements) which as they claim in their README is `a collection of feature experiments and extensions to the Bitcoin protocol`. Liquid is just another blockchain. It is a fork of bitcoin with a few fancy things added (Tokens, CT, covenants) and bundled together with a 1 minute block time, federated custody, and some blockstream branding.

Blockchains do _not_ scale. As we are seeing today, the bitcoin blockchain does not have enough throughput for everyone's transactions. This is for good reason, keeping the cost of running a full node low is a priority, this was one of the main reasons the blocksize wars were fought.

So why does Liquid exist? People lately have been touting it as a way to ease fee pressure but in my opinion this is a fool's errand, no different than people back in 2017 saying to use litecoin because fees on bitcoin were too high. Liquid is just a fork of bitcoin, it has the exact same scaling problems and the only reason it has smaller fees is because it is never really been used. For now, it can work as a temporary stop-gap (essentially finding arbitrage for fees), but building actual infrastructure on top of liquid will run into the _exact_ same problems as on-chain bitcoin.

The problem is that Liquid is trying to use [trust as a scaling solution](https://trustisascalingsolution.com/) but did it in a completely inefficient way. When you are trusting the 11-of-15 multisig, you don't need all the benefits that a blockchain gives you, everything is dictated by the functionaries anyways. The problem is if liquid gets any meaningful amount of users it will also end up with huge fees and we'll be back to square one because Liquid's architecture didn't actually leverage any of the trust tradeoffs it took and just inherited all the same problems of on-chain bitcoin.

There are real solutions available. Lightning is the obvious alternative but it does have it's own problems, I think a lot of people have been seeing the problems with small scale self-custodial lightning, it is extremely hard to scale. This is why I am extremely excited about [fedimint](https://fedimint.org/). Fedimint has almost the exact same trust model of Liquid (a federated multisig) but is built on a much better architecture that actually allows for scaling.  Fedimints don't have a blockchain but instead operate as a chaumian ecash mint. This allows for them to do actually innovative things instead of just being bitcoin plus a couple features. There isn't a block size, instead the transaction throughput is just gated by the processing power of the guardians. Smart contracts are limited by having to do everything on-chain with bitcoin script, they are pure rust code and allows for all sorts of crazy things. And it all still interoperates with Lightning, essentially giving a Wallet of Satoshi with way less rug-pull risk, tons of new features, and is extremely private.

All this said, it is sad we aren't talking about self-custodial scaling solutions. Today the only real one is Lightning and with current fees, it isn't reasonable unless you have a few million sats. The problem is that this is just inherently a limitation with Lightning. Lightning is excellent when you have high value channels and can make payments across the network, but it does excel at "pleb nodes" where one guy puts 100k sats to try it out, this comes with too many limitations with paying on-chain fees and needing to have reserves to pay future on-chain fees. However, this is potentially solvable. Lightning has solved the problem of scaling payments, where if you have channels, one on-chain transaction can represent many actual payments. What lightning did not solve is that one utxo still represents one user, and this is the limitation we are running into today. Currently the only way we solve this is using a multisig sig (Liquid and Fedimint), but we can solve this in a self-custodial way if we activated covenants. Covenants essentially let us give fine grained control of what is going to be spent from a UTXO before the UTXO even exists. Currently, there are a few proposals (CTV, APO, TXHASH) all with varying ways to do it and different tradeoffs, but imo something like this is desperately needed if we want any chance to scale bitcoin in a self-custodial way.


My 5 sats: Positions should be sized to how secure custody you have. I have most of my savings in cold storage, but around $150 in self custodial lightning, and I'm considering having around $10 in Cashu for simpler zapping.

Generally where NYKNYC comes from is a well intentioned effort to steer people away from leaving significant money on exchanges. This is not an acceptable trade off IMO, many have been burned by doing this in the bear markets. And people coming into Bitcoin are used to interacting with finance through an institution and generally need to be educated not to do that.


There are 60 million millionaires in the world, and every single one of them has a store of value problem. And so does everyone else in the world.

The cost to ship a sizable amount of gold internationally costs hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Even if you just buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold domestically and bring it home, you're paying a spot markup of thousands of dollars. The cost to close a luxury mansion real estate deal (which many wealthy people just own and leave empty as a store of value) can be hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and then depending on their jurisdiction they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in property taxes on it. An international wire transfer often costs like $30 and takes days and is entirely permissioned/centralized/credit-based. Credit card fees are like 3%. The global banking industry generates hundreds of billions of dollars in fees per year even though it's all centralized.

Bitcoin is a decentralized global liquid store of value and settlement network. You can send money to any internet-connected person in the world generally in an hour or less depending on desired block confirmations. You can indefinitely self-custodially store value in a unit that is scarcer than gold and scarcer than real estate and that unlike both gold and real estate is globally portable. It currently costs like $35 to do this and everyone is losing their minds at how expensive that seems. But $35 is an *outstanding* price for this service, and in ten years I have no idea what the price will be but there are many scenarios where it could be way higher.

Right now, bitcoin fees are higher than normal because people are trading frogs on the timechain and so forth. But regardless, people need to be ready for the prospect of sustained high fees if bitcoin adoption continues to grow structurally with limited block space. This means users, developers, businesses, etc. To put it into this bigger context, fees are still insanely cheap compared to other alternatives listed above that give similar store of value and global payment properties at scale.

I'm a bit surprised fees haven't *already* been $35 on a regular basis by now. So to flip it around; fees aren't expensive because there are frogs on the timechain; fees are still cheap because relatively few people are using bitcoin to send and store money compared to the total addressable market that could be doing so.

Does this price out small users? Unfortunately, yes. That's where layers come in, and the options vary depending on if someone is a power user or not. Hal Finney wrote about that in 2010; it's not a new narrative.

A couple Lightning channels can open a lot of payment liquidity for you. Sidechains like Liquid didn't get much attention when fees were low but now people are giving them a second look. Chaumian mints allow communities around the world to set up their own community banks/custodians with built-in privacy.  Places like Cash App allow people to buy bitcoin with decent custodial assurances run by serious people (eg it's not some crazy-haired idiot in the Bahamas). These are all tools that people can use to have bitcoin price exposure, pay in bitcoin, etc. And a unique aspect of bitcoin is the ability to split control. Multi-institution multi-sigs, or federated sidechains: the fact that ownership can be broken into several different entities is not something available to gold or similar assets, and yet a lot of people take it for granted on bitcoin. These are all tools that businesses can offer and people can use for smaller amounts, and then pull into on-chain self-custody if they have a sizable balance for longer-term storage.

In the future, some soft forks or non-form upgrades might allow other types of models. I think the ecosystem is still in its infancy. But in the meantime, it helps to have perspective on what bitcoin offers compared to alternatives, and to be realistic about the long-run inevitability of substantial base-layer fees if any meaningful adoption becomes sustained, and thus the importance of preparing for them.

https://m.primal.net/HUCU.png


Twitter account suspended because I posted “eat the glass” in response to a do hard things entrepreneurship post.

This apparently encouraged self harm and now I’m on read-only until a faceless bureaucrat in San Francisco clicks a button.

The use case for Nostr was always obvious but now it is increasingly tangible.

The censorship will continue until the protocols and tools improve. Thankfully that is why we are all here.