Bitcoin cannot be explained in a simple sentence. Nothing unknown really can. If I were to ask you what money was, there is no way you could explain it in a sentence and capture what money really was, because if you told me it was the cash in your wallet, I could ask how it can then be transferred over a plastic card, followed by why it inflates over time, followed by followed by why I can't send it to Russia and many more questions. Believe it or not, these are all properties of the money we use today.

We use money every day, yet most of us do not know where it comes from, why there is a government debt, nor what inflation really is.

Shells, salt, and gold were all used as money in the past, they were mediums by which we could take payment, defer for some time, and then make payments at a later date. Today we have cash, but we also have digital accounts with debit and credit balances as our medium for money.

Bitcoin is an alternative medium that can be used as money. Each medium has its properties, and people choose to use the medium that works best for them; the chosen medium can and does change over time as better ones become available, but we often settle on a single medium after a transitional period until a new and better medium is discovered later on.

At a glance, some of the more widely known properties of Bitcoin are:

1. It is digital and can be used over any digital communication technology including the internet.
2. It has a fixed maximum supply of 21 Million Bitcoin (scarce).
3. It has no central authority who controls its supply nor its utility (decentralised).
4. It can be owned and spent without any trusted intermediaries (permission-less).

Of course, there are more nuanced properties that are not so commonly brought up at the beginning of one's journey into the technology:

1. It exists in the form of a constantly growing public digital record (a digital ledger).
2. It relies on people to secure multiple copies of the ledger to remain resilient.
3. It depends on people to defend the properties that they care for in order to uphold its integrity.
4. It relies on energy to be globally abundant, yet costly-to-produce to keep itself impossible to co-opt.

This means that Bitcoin's existence and its headline properties are not self-sustaining or automatic, it is dependent on the active participation and efforts of individuals. There are also real operational costs due to the way it relies on energy production too.

This very circular dependency of properties depending on the people who depend on them should give anyone pause; if its properties depend on people, how easily can those properties be lost? Fortunately, these properties exist for as long as a single individual defends it. Its usefulness as a money is practically none, but the properties exist. As long as others begin to discover and value these properties, its user base will grow and its ability to represent a useful money will improve.

## Contrasting the desired properties
The very properties mentioned at the beginning are unique, but together can make for a much more convenient money than we have today.

Today we have money that can be used online or in person and is convenient most of the time for many of us, but there are limits to how they can be used that are naturally enforced by the medium; the nature of needing to prove your identity to have a bank account, to plead your case before a bank will make a decision to approve or disapprove a large transaction: these are natural properties of our money today due to the mediums we use.

Banks are independent companies with the right to autonomy around who they serve, and what they permit, but they are also the only gateway to digital payments, and in many cases, even in-person payments when shops refuse to accept cash. They are also the gateway to loans and mortgages which are no longer just opportunistic products, but are necessities that people need to survive in society. As a medium for money, both banks and cash leave a lot to be desired - especially today where cash is becoming less widely accepted and increasingly painted as a suspicious tool used only by criminals.

Bitcoin can provide similar properties of cash payments within a digital setting; they are person to person (aka peer to peer) and no intermediary can intercept and block the transaction for political or liability risk purposes. This is often referred to as the permission-less property of Bitcoin. It also seems to be gaining the opposite reputation to cash as a tool for financial freedom and wealth preservation rather than a tool for shady activities, even though many are still trying to push that narrative.

If the convenience and accessibility problem does not affect or appeal to you, another property Bitcoin provides is its fixed maximum supply. This foremost removes the power for others to inflate the value of our money in order to pay for arbitrary political initiatives, forcing governments to cover their costs, including the support of wars, honestly through taxation and other forms of fund raising alone.

This property has another side effect: as traders observe Bitcoin's price in the market, they engage in trading activities, adding massively to its volatility. This volatility attracts more attention to Bitcoin which so happens to accelerate its growth. With a fixed supply, the only other determinant of its price is demand, and while trading demand can be volatile, and while traders tend not to care about the properties of Bitcoin as much as the opportunity for profits, there is an underlying market growth caused by individuals who discover and seek to acquire more Bitcoin after understanding its properties in contrast to those of their own money.

Bitcoin's core properties are much more valuable to people in third world countries. This is where much of the direct use of Bitcoin is happening, where its properties are being utilised and proven, and where there is an opportunity to make the most of this new medium to break free from tyranny and/or help people to improve their positions in the global order; and they will become more familiar with this medium before most of the rest of us catch on to how we can use it effectively as money.

## Mainstream misconceptions of Bitcoin
Many try to downplay Bitcoin by citing its limited supply as its only attribute, but this is clearly not the case. It is the different properties together that make it a strong candidate for money, and it is the growing interest by people that makes it a likely candidate for a widely used money.

Another critique is that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the same, and that there are more units of other cryptocurrencies, but again, Bitcoin is only Bitcoin; each other cryptocurrency should be evaluated on its own merits, yet they are often compared to the success stories of Bitcoin by those who wish to sell the product, and Bitcoin is often described as if it were the whole range of cryptocurrencies by those who wish to debate against Bitcoin.

It is widely accepted that the majority of cryptocurrencies are pump-and-dump and ponzi schemes, but what is not well acknowledged is that Bitcoin seems to be the only technology that does not have a central leader or authority. Many cryptocurrencies claim to have the same decentralised property, but for many reasons, there is always a leader or foundation that plans and pushes changes with little to no resistance, including Ethereum who has shown that when checks and balances are put into place but the foundation needs an exception, the checks and balances can be easily disabled or pushed into the future. It sounds a lot like central banks and how they often tend to kick many monetary problems down the road.

It is not impossible that cryptocurrencies may live for many years and serve a purpose to many, but they are closer to private money than to a neutral commodity, which means that they are likely to be captured and presented as the next money, while inheriting many of the properties of today's bank money with biased policies to the wealthy class over others. Worse still, they may have their leaders shut down operations and only then will we know whether the technology can stand and operate on its own with its users at the wheel, but its market price will likely tumble too.

## Of course there are nuances
As people have explored and interacted with Bitcoin, they have confirmed that it has limitations, such as its limited capability of processing only around 4,200 transactions every 10 minutes on average. This does not however mean that it is doomed to fail, it merely means that if we wish to continue to use Bitcoin in the future among many more users, we may need to reconsider how we use it.

A great example of how we may overcome this limitation is a payments network called the Lightning Network which was designed to provide relief to Bitcoin by handling the majority of economic transactions off band, reducing the number of Bitcoin records from what might naturally be multiple per person per day, to possibly just a few per person per month.

Another example of its nuances, is the public nature of the Bitcoin ledger. Although there are no names or ID's associated with payments, there is a traceable trail of payments that have the potential to reveal very personal and private information such as your net worth, spending habits and who you financially interact with. Think of this as collection of anonymous data that can later be tied to your identity and become personal data.

This trail enables the strict accounting that Bitcoin employs to enforce its fixed maximum supply property and ensure that users can always verify it. Fortunately, researchers and developers have been working to find and develop ways for people to conceal or separate the details of their trades from their historical activities, while also improving the efficiency by which we use the medium; many people don't tend to value their privacy today, but if cheap enough, it can simply become the standard way to use Bitcoin.

Privacy is an important property to achieve, today we have privacy from our neighbours, but none from those who provide it and who also use it to exploit us. Bitcoin has the opportunity to become private from our neighbours and our would-be exploiters at the same time.

Other issues are also being researched and developed, such as how best to develop user interfaces for applications that interact with Bitcoin on behalf of its users (these apps are often called Bitcoin wallets). Many of the things that we must do today, such as writing down 12 words, may feel unfamiliar, but they are huge improvements to much scarier and error prone practices that were used in earlier years such as writing down a 64 character code of random looking letters and numbers. The products we use today will likely change over time, but those who see that progression will better understand the technology and may likely also influence the direction that these products take by simply using, not using, or even complaining or gossiping about them.

## TLDR;
Bitcoin is a medium, a tool that can embody money and be used for trade, just like shells, gold, paper money and bank accounts have done until now. This has been a call for people to explore this medium and understand how to use it instead of ignoring it until you have fallen to a position of disadvantage compared to those who did.

Its limited supply makes it economically enticing as a store of value, but it also possesses properties that make it resilient to manipulation and efforts to control it. These properties mean that Bitcoin is not a passing fad to ignore.

We also compared its properties against the properties of the money we use today in order to highlight the stark difference in nature of Bitcoin, and to hint at some of the reasons why people are exploring Bitcoin for themselves and why it has become the only medium available to many people around the world to use as money.

Finally we explored some of the limitations of this medium in order to ensure that it is clear that Bitcoin is not in its final form just yet; just like the internet, it will evolve to overcome its limitations as people build out extra infrastructure in order to be able to benefit from its properties at scale.

This is my latest attempt to create a succinct description of what Bitcoin is for anyone who is new to it. It focuses on the idea of Bitcoin being a medium or a conduit for money, describes some of the properties of it, and compares those to the properties of the money we use in society today.

This is a long form article, you can read it in https://habla.news/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqrvhh6h9vl7we8r9wncudmmpym4fd82fjtp3nrj3crav2tzjwjs5qqxnzde3xcer2v3jxgursvfnljtn30


Maybe Lightning is an expecting-to-lose-play-money for you now, but there is a halfway-house before you need to start running a node; if you decide to take the next step, explore the non-custodial lightning wallets like the ones I mentioned before I think.

I just don't want you or anyone to walk away with the wrong idea about Lightning or wallet providers, cistodial or non-custodial. Custodial wallets have their place, but they are a risk.

I will also admit that I was being unfair about all all custodial wallets being as unreliable as one another, the legend demo server of LN Bits was more dangerous as they had warnings up, whereas a wallet that is well known and is running as a business is bound to be a little more reliable. But I stand by what I said also: do not keep more funds than you can afford to lose in an instant in a custodial wallet.


Is it possible to open and manage channels with other nodes or is it a single phoenix channel only type server?


Yo nostr:npub1cn4t4cd78nm900qc2hhqte5aa8c9njm6qkfzw95tszufwcwtcnsq7g3vle, maybe don't make diamond symbols with your hands before joking about being the illuminati 🤣🤣
 https://image.nostr.build/472de588af5cbe597c09fdce56b9d23e8463320bcb19807eb6600c1305045d94.jpg


I think one difference is that credits on an account can't be traded for cash, but ecash can be.

Amazon vouchers and gift cards can also be traded for cash, but something something FBI! GET ON THE GROUND! or something.

I feel like even gift vouchers are going away like cash, and when as it does, its perception as a tool for criminals and the subsequent lack of empathy from the people lead to it becoming criminal.


> If authorities recover around $3 billion per annum from criminals, whilst imposing compliance costs of $300 billion and penalizing businesses another $8 billion a year, it is reasonable to ask if the real target of anti-money laundering laws is legitimate enterprises rather than criminal enterprises.

🖐

  ||
🎤
___


The rules and laws of a government do not always speak to the ideologies of the people.


US only?


Zeus can provide a hot wallet too, this is a self custodial solution that doesn't require the hardware part. There are fees however which may still make it uneconomical for $25USD compared to a custodial wallet.

But as I qualified, I was talking about money you can't afford to lose. This whole thing hinges on where that line is for you.

If you COULD afford to lose the money in LNBits legend and you understood the risks, then there was nothing to learn.

But you said "lesson learned", so I'm curious what that lesson was. If it is as I suspect, that LNBits is not trustworthy, then I submit that you did not learn the correct lesson because demo server or not, they had/have the exact same assurances as any custodial wallet provider.


It was honestly a rollercoaster. I couldn't work out who the scammer was 😅


What's soulseek? I choose #nostr.


If you insist on using a custodial wallet for more money than you are willing to lose, then you have not learnt the lesson.

If you are looking for a non-custodial wallet, check out nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 or nostr:npub1mutnyacc9uc4t5mmxvpprwsauj5p2qxq95v4a9j0jxl8wnkfvuyque23vg.


Remember to take funds off sats.mobi too. 🫡


GM


Well, worse still, telegram is mostly unencrypted. You have to explicitly create a "secret chat" to have encrypted messaging and it only works 1:1. No group chats are encrypted.


So then really ask yourself, in what situation has your government ever been so altruistic, and at a global scale too. Who earns that €200 to €1 difference?

Usually in situations like this, such regulations create opportunities that regulators can jump on... "you must do X", "also ~my friend~ this company has been licensed to do that already for a fee of course."

nostr:nevent1qqsvhm6jgf6flshj8a6rh2wd7r26sfqd4g3prnsejtyt493r6twrm4spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qygxc5mk0psuka2500xjyjllfka7ujamrx3gl8jjuvd8zppjez9ny0vpsgqqqqqqs3da6c9


When will you be there? I'm planning end of july.


Everywhere I look to book it redirects me to Il Buongustaio. Is this the same place?


We can never really know. That's the beauty of a decentralised system... no central place to find everything... and why should everyone's personal transactions be there for everyone to see?

The ledger isn't for making everyone's payments public and auditable, it is for making sure there is no inflation bug.

We don't validate double spends for you, we do it to ensure the 21M cap, we don't balance inputs outputs and fees to track payments, we do it to protect the 21M cap.

We do make the blocks immutable for you though. A system where the cap is always preserved but no one can guarantee a transfer of funds is forever is not very useful. 🤷


So just like luke dash jr?


Something other than a browser extension?


It was a demo server. Warnings were always there. It is all gone.


nostr:npub1am3ermkr250dywukzqnaug64cred3x5jht6f3kdhfp3h0rgtjlpqecxrv7 what do you think about a "record mode" and/or more detailed customisation options?

Record mode will sign and record everything and then show you everything you signed for as friendly as possible. Hopefully with the goal of identifying things we don't care about, things we want to always deny and things we want to always be notified about.

In terms of more customisation, I would love to auto approve deletions of draft notes but I want to sign for any other type of deletion. Others may not mind deleting reactions for example.

Also, I would appreciate if we could figure out why #Amethyst drafts don't ever delete themselves after posting a note. My setup: auto sign drafts, notify for post, notify for deletes.


On the protocol itself?!?


Yes. But everyone can help, grab a solo miner like the Bitaxe and connect to another pool. Tip the scales and convince others to do it too because it isn't much to ask at such a small scale yet it can be quite effective.


Got it, I thought this was a report about a new attack, it is just denying some misinformation flying around that I haven't seen anyway. 🤷

Still, its cool to see that once again, GrapheneOS is 10 steps ahead everyone in the game.

So for other devices, there is nothing to prevent brute force cracking but for Graphene (and pixel 6+) the secure element slows the attack down. Is that correct?


When you say "consent-based" do you mean you were able to prove it but you got consent from owners before you tried to exploit their devices?

Or is it a specific type of attack I am not understanding?


Some do, for example I recall a conversation with my uncle about engineers who were designing and manufacturing lifts/elevators.

But I wonder how much "smarts" and "skill" has to do with it vs being a key player in the "current" industry in the eyes of the state.

Tech is currently the top tier in the west, and lets be fair, the US extracts all the value between its insurance and medical bills circle jerk. A perfect system to draw money from the printer and yet rush it past the patients, doctors, the hospital and pretty much anyone but the financial middlemen.


Open your profile, check the address is in there, make a small change somewhere if you have to and save it so it republishes your profile.


Why would you think a skilled group like doctors would be any different to a skilled group like engineers?


Curious minds push the needle forward.


I wondered this also, but apart from timing, payload pattern matching and so on which ultimately just increases the cost to deanonymize data, I just don't seem to have the skill to take a service like Headscale and pull its data storage and notification parts and put it into a nostr native form.

If someone else could do that, that would be amazing.


As important as these things are, I imagine this type of thing will be either gamable or will push towards centralisation.

The cost for this type of thing should not be paid for by relays, it should be by the people. Zaps, donations, taxes, that sort of thing.

These things have costs, if they don't value the platforms (I say platform because I am talking about relays, not nostr as a whole) that they rely on, then they will ultimately fail to notice growing costs and will fail.

On one hand it sucks that something so critical is not guaranteed to work 100% of the time, on the other hand, if people care about that, they will contribute, either by funding or by alerting the alerters who seem to be slacking.


That kid was walking away like I don't want to be rude, but I don't want to do no homework jeez.


Bitcoin always makes me smile.


Well then lol, we beat the joker. 😁


Ah you mean the other way around? It is unlikely that other platforms and their clients will allow others to zap you.


Does the bridge support dms? If so, then yes. Everyone who has an npub has an npub.cash address that will notify the user when you send funds to it.

That said, don't throw money at people who don't appreciate it. If they don't have a configured lightning address on their profile, they probably won't appreciate it.


A "client" describes something that serves as only part of a service. If it needs to pull data from elsewhere or needs to interact with other services, it is a client.

An app can be a client, but it could also be a self contained game for example.


I will rob your store but don't tell the police because my safety and security will be at risk.

YOU MUST PUT THE NEEDS OF OUR EVILS AHEAD OF THE NEEDS OF THE MANY AND THE NEEDY.  THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD LET US THREATEN YOU AND NOT QUESTION ANYTHING WE DO.


How do we know what the favoured minimum stamp is? Is it 1 estamp = 1 message rather than 1 sat? Are you buying estamps from relays specifically?

Do we get to pick a path? If there's only 1 relay, then isn't there IP tracking and behaviour/timing tracking risks?


I don't understand how this works. I understand e2e encrypted messages and relays, but when has a relay needed incentive to deliver the message?

Can a paid relay do a better job than a free one?


I never really know. Is this good or bad?


Their audience is the crypto freaks. They aren't trying to be where the signal is, they're trying to follow the dumb money. They've corporatised.


Are you gonna shave your head too?


Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.

Oh dear, oh dear.

https://image.nostr.build/709be003c04f5bed603094ae543cb320f949c5bf04afde8b48ee979d5af26b31.jpg

nostr:nevent1qqsyr52fjufszg0u6k8fgd3pkrwylk2ju5g0clldwh7xqkaj3g7ujwcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzqgxjnqgddf0e9vz94hszawadeypk6aquc6rtqpq4cs45ydh7ftf0qvzqqqqqqymgmuu6


Alright assholes I'm back in this bitch because I've had it with the Twitter shithole censoring my links and telling me i cant say fuck, no idea if anyone is reading this but if you do read nostr:npub15dnln6cukw3yrflnv3hnrntdt9amh0uw466u6tns05ymqp3nal4qzz3lfc 's fantastic new piece speaking to US regulators on open-source arrests:

https://www.therage.co/us-officials-sour-on-biden-war-on-privacy/


Seeing these memes and wondering why the GBP value seems to be the same...
 https://image.nostr.build/e2c262c81fdf6f824714f4311a733d024ed0c2896c73645c917c80bd9b43d38a.jpg


The knife worked exactly as intended.


I think nostr:npub1jq9dx5dp5lg6t42ugpkd0se9uf5809mw849m0euzwf6h0wcjvtxs069lgq did it first no?


Looks like a trap. How many nerds you got trapped in there?


Qr code to a BTC PayServer website. We have different payment solutions, but not all wallets support everything, so having a webpage that provides the optionality and can change as tech improves over time too is probably best.


It means that Bitcoin has affected the climate so much it has seasons now. 🫡


Help me understand what you mean? It's on fountain.fm not on highlighter afaik?


Bcash


Afaik, you transmit sats. All the magic happens at the edges.

It's like you might be facilitating the trade of helium balloons but you hate helium balloons... who cares, the details are none of your business, you either want the fees to push sats or you don't. You don't get to choose what the sats were used for.


I thought that first picture was Charles Hoskinschun or whatever. Suuuper confused me.


Probably US only right now. Borders, governments and regulations and all that amiright? 🙄


Wtf is a war chest if not to fund war??? Are they promoting war? 🤮


nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z I just want to point out some issues I have using #Amethyst with Amber. I suspect it's bugs caused by the same thing:

1. I had to auto enable the signing of zaps because it wouldn't try to launch my Lightning wallet unless I did.

2. When I submit a note, Amethyst will not even attempt to delete draft notes. It does when I clear a message, and when I cancel a message, but not after submitting one.

I suspect that in both cases, Amber is invoked and the app doesn't do whatever it needs to do after signing.


At this point, I think Core Lightning is more focused on improving and building out the Lightning Network. LND is more focused on using what they have to support shitcoins like Taro and synthetic USD.


No. It was a net improvement. Spam and degen activity is just that, that crowd has always been looking for ways to make their schemes work on Bitcoin and they would have found another way if this wasn't it.


The Lightning network can transmit anything, but it can only transmit Bitcoin trustlessly.

Afaik, the system requires conversion to and from Bitcoin to make maximum use of the network, so it will be used to send Bitcoin only. The trust and currency will remain at the edges... just like Strike.

I just think it is dumb for Lightning Labs who champions LND, to favour development here instead of working on the protocol and things like BOLT12. 🤷


But I qualified with an open question at the end. My initial question certainly can look like your meme but it explains my world view. My follow up question shows I'm open to be taught. You didn't answer the question.

What other scaling options do we potebtially have? What should I be reading about?


What else do we even have? Bitcoin has a lot more demand to get through in the coming future.


What is a better scaling axiom? Centralise coodination and control? Is there anything else?


🤔 I see your thought process, but ecash is just data and especially if it is encrypted data, I don't see how you could fork really, there are unofficial event types that aren't officially documented, is that a fork? Relays that support features that others don't, but unlike Bitcoin, there's no consensus thing to say "I only talk to people who do X and don't do Y"

Also, with regards to being any sort of transmitter of anything, the mint should be the first target. Otherwise everything is a transmitter including whatsapp.


nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg this is where you tell me someone is already working on this too.


Just had a thought... what if your cashu ecash was on a physical device like this that used nwc or another secure method over nostr to make a payment?

Yeah, it's like client-server architecture, but both client and server is yours and heck, it makes your ecash physical, not individually, but like an ecash vault.

Even if we gotta trust a mint, we can still secure the cash. 🤷


This is basically self sovereign 2fa. The sort that a company might use if they have an important brand or reputation.

Imagine, you can turn it on and off exactly when you are using it. Plugging something in is gonna be so much less cumbersome than typing in a password and then getting a code and typing that in and then never logging out either. But maybe that is just me.

Love it. Can't wait for people to take it in all the different directions.

Oh, come on. This device is a mini you, and you can carry it in your pocket. Its physical ownership of your account.

/rambling.


There is likely to be encryption that ensures only intended parties can handle the ecash tokens.


1. Fucking awesome.
2. Nice.

Why would people not like these developments? Nostr is not a silver bullet, but maybe it is the first step. The only thing I can think of is that as mints hide themselves further from our overlords, they may realise that their customers don't have any way to keep them accountable.


FlorisBoard nostr:npub15qydau2hjma6ngxkl2cyar74wzyjshvl65za5k5rl69264ar2exs5cyejr 👀 no crash. Amazing.


On graphene yes, using heliboard.

Going to attempt with florisboard in a reply to see if the keyboard is the issue... It doesn't crash for everyone, you're the special one 🫠


nostr:npub15qydau2hjma6ngxkl2cyar74wzyjshvl65za5k5rl69264ar2exs5cyejr

DanConwayDev (my app crashes when I try to tag him for some reason).


I think this is cool, but 2 things...

1. Will all nostr apps have opportunity on all views to add a comment? How does it look on the edge cases?

2. The bar actually looks big, especially on some of the other demo pages, I would suggest to reduce the rounded corners by at least 1/2.

I do like the idea that this becomes a best practice widget that any app can style however they feel looks best for their own apps but that users can get familiar with.


Missed it 🤷♂


Local tunnel supports web sockets, can it support raw TCP too? And is it free or cheap?


Saw this today. h/t nostr:npub1jt97tpsul3fp8hvf7zn0vzzysmu9umcrel4hpgflg4vnsytyxwuqt8la9y  😆
https://m.primal.net/IDNl.jpg


loving Nostr. and loving the Primal app.

not sure how they did it, but Primal managed to build into their wallet a way to buy sats with phone credit.

i posted a video of that, and the response from local south africans were incredible.

there's no other lightning wallet that does that. as far as i know.

and as far as south africa concerned, and wider africa perhaps, if nostr apps become easy gateways to acquire your first sats, that would be a game changer.

the tricky part is always exchanging fiat for your first sats. there's unavoidable friction with fiat exit points. because fiat is a system of gatekeepers. and it feels like we'll never get rid of that in the fiat world.

we can only circumvent it.

and perhaps, with Nostr, because it's frictionless to connect people, that can become the gateway to making your initial bitcoin acquisition frictionless.

so if I'm onboarding a person to Bitcoin, for the first time, I'm actually onboarding them to Nostr, because that's where they'll likely acquire their first sats.

not sure how this would work, but that's the feeling I'm left with after using primal to make the easiest Bitcoin purchase I've ever made.


Now that urbandictionary is so well known, we can probably shift away from "dictionary" which makes the naming very hard and people will probably get it and will definitely get it once someone explains it and won't put up much if any resistance. So....

UrbanFree
FreeUrban
?


I like freepedia.

How about open dictionary?


So I searched 'joinmarket' on birdsite and found some interesting discussions.

nostr:npub1yxp7j36cfqws7yj0hkfu2mx25308u4zua6ud22zglxp98ayhh96s8c399s I want to take issue with something you wrote: "In contrast, the coordinators in samourai/wasabi/joinmarket interact with the other users, creating/sharing psbts, validating info, kicking trolls out, and taking fees".

Note that (and this is common to other of your posts there) you're referring to Joinmarket as a protocol with a coordinator, because the taker is the coordinator for each coinjoin that it wants to do; but please realize that almost every person reading this will not grok the subtlety. To them a coordinator is a static coordinator. Also you say at the end "taking fees" and this is *in no possible way* a correct description of Joinmarket, since even if you treat the taker as "one time coordinator" (correct), they pay fees, they do not take them. Considering the sensitivity of this issue I *really* don't think it's OK to write that, since it's not true.

The whole paragraph *strongly* suggests that Joinmarket uses the same model as the other two, whereas in fact it's almost purely p2p, especially in the recent structure where directory nodes act only as name servers essentially, and peers then negotiate coinjoins over their own ephemeral onion services.

(Taker/maker is not a static role and in fact it's good for people to switch between them).


Single page resumes became a thing when there were too many people looking for jobs and not enough jobs, so employers wanted to skim everything.

It is objectively better for the reader, but we always have to be concerned whether we are hiring for good CV writing ability, or good workmanship.


Is this a hit piece?


god damnit https://image.nostr.build/8d7b9108e9996d920480d95061b7b840fef236cd202e6fb921374251e5b5a339.jpg


I watched it. Here's the link to the video:

https://inv.dembased.xyz/watch?v=IH5sbZRR-uc

 nostr:npub1mutnyacc9uc4t5mmxvpprwsauj5p2qxq95v4a9j0jxl8wnkfvuyque23vg Design Review


It is a good question. I don't really know what the current landscape is like right now, I can only tell you what is possible. Nostr is kind of like the internet where even if you delete something, it probably exists somewhere else already.

Relays could be subscribed to momostr.pink and be pushing that content to other relays.

More likely, if someone likes your content, they can rebroadcast your note and it will be available on relays that others use.

Archival relays could be scanning for notes and have a copy.

If your post is liked or boosted, (these are different to rebroadcasting to relays) then it is more likely to be seen by other users. This is because people subscribe to their friends, but clients don't typically push unrelated content, no matter how popular it is.

Hashtags help too because people subscribe to those too. As you have done with #asknostr.

So no, I don't think it makes sense to recreate notes. It would just create duplicates which would be noisy.

You could spin up your own relay to push your content to other relays, you could use a nostr client to find and rebroadcast your notes manually, or you can interact with and engage with people too.


Stop appreciating yourself 👀😅


Satoshi told Ben and FiatJaff how to create Nostr.


I think it just feels more modern and expressive to the sender, for sure emoticons often get lost in translation for the reader, but culture and context play a big role and the more you learn about/from your followers, the better you connect with them.

For example, 🤙 is a common one that people use, it is the shakka symbol and became very popular after a bunch of people from costa rica joined nostr.


Long press, type + and click add and save.

Now you'll see a heart in that popup list which is your typical like button.

People on nostr just add reactions instead these days, its more expressive and better.


Sometime I cheat, kill the app and try again, it does take time, but it should be done within a minute (still feels like forever sometimes).


Well.... you are looking at an image editing app, so... if you open mspaint and draw a loading screen in it, don't expect it to load something 🙄


Government intervention concentrates wealth into the hands of a few.


#FiatProblems 🤷


So it's a layer 3 now?


Is it open source? I don't have much free time, but may be able to help.


Oh, was this always possible then? The difference is only that Zeus now offers watch only on chain wallets for the ColdCard?

Can I not send my PSBT to a hot wallet like one on BlueWallet and still use this without importing an XPRIV?


Is it a private db or based on nostr?


So this means I can open a channel from a hot wallet that isn't on Zeus too right?


Afaik, Fedimint is a protocol, Fedi is a commercial implementation.


But will it flip Bitcoin?! 👀


It has come to our attention that some of you seem to believe that "hiding an unhosted wallet in your brain" will protect you or your Bitcoin from government overreach. That unhosted wallet wont do you any good if you run into a bus or accidently fall out of an aircraft.

We strongly recommend using a professional and regulated custodian provider. Your money is safu with them.


No, nyet, nein, na!!!!

No one, not even trusted institutions should ask for your seed words.

Even if they gave you the seed words, they must do so in a way that they cannot see it themselves, and if you think they might know it, DON'T EVEN USE THEIR PRODUCT.

In your case, the person who reached out to you were not Ledger employees.


Link for sats


Seriously.... what? Is this from the same movie?


Why you copy me?


To me


#asknostr #askbitcoin

Running a #Bitcoin Node. Now I need to know. What tool do you self host to estimate fees?

Also, is there a tool that can give estimates based on number of inputs + address type (eg. Channel close, channel open, multisig, DLC etc)


I agree, bitcoin will be the settlement layer that resolves disputes and transfers funds from one private channel (be it 2 party or a channel factory) to another.


I know somone doing it, don't know their nostr identity though... great to see more people exploring it.


So close.


Why? Someone else has it.


Wait what? What is more convenient than picking a new address from your wallet?

Oh that's right, ACCOUNTS, there are no new addresses, so you just copy paste from whereever you want because its all the same man.

🙈


Its not about cold/hot, its about the method of generating.. I should have been clearer.

Your private key has 128bits of security even though it is 256bits long. That's the bar. Go any higher and it is just easier to guess your private keys than it is to guess your mnemonic.

Great.

If you used bias dice or coins, and create 12 words, you will be under 128bits, but mathematicians have already discovered that the effect of the bias is greatly reduced over many rolls/flips.

Same would apply to a computer, but even if you had vetted, open source software, there are so many layers that could be inserting bias, including hardware, and yes they often use many sources to offset the risk, but you don't know what you don't know. So I make no assumption other than that a computer generated set of words is always biased but _probably_ not enough to score lower than 128bits of entropy with 24 words.

I suggested 15 because if we assume SOME bias but just nothing malicious, then we get over 128bits of security.

But I'm a stickler for the details... in reality, 12 words is probably always good enough... that and DON'T MAKE YOURSELF A TARGET.


12 for cold wallets, 24 for hot wallets.

Unfortunately the roles are reversed right now. 🙃

Actually, 15 or 18 would be a nice solution for both, and it is valid.


We were recently made aware of multiple potential DNS leaks on Android. They stem from bugs in Android itself, and only affect certain apps. We have reported them to Google, and are working on fixes.

Read more: https://mullvad.net/blog/dns-traffic-can-leak-outside-the-vpn-tunnel-on-android


5 fingers, this is legit.


nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a woke up today and chose to make sure we all know she knows kung fu.
 https://image.nostr.build/977bd3ca73030c146b8eacec50c557251cedbfd77800445b15f116deff2b5616.gif

nostr:nevent1qqsyw5aj949tfamt74y9wpfp3qnn856fvmanspa4ln3v2d3h92rpf3spz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzp64suatdx2uqhn2xfu7cgjuqgqcrqadp864uxkv6wckf43atj860qvzqqqqqqy0rnf7f


Why? Because he is going to build competing tools?


If this is gonna be a roasting of ecash, I'm here for it. 😅


Yeah, but my friend isn't a regular seller, he's just a pleb. We want plebs to use the best tools and understand the nuances.

Plus, because he's my friend, I'm not scared that he'll get scared off it.


All the fucking ready?!?


Vida to you too Puta! 😄


Nah fuck that... powered by lightspark 🤮


#GM
nostr:nevent1qqsf0fr8ndpwqvhsn9nr3s5x3rwj3t97chc74z7l4hgmv5xwmc0hungpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzqrvhh6h9vl7we8r9wncudmmpym4fd82fjtp3nrj3crav2tzjwjs5qvzqqqqqqydqd639


Why you askin' us?


Someone has a phoenix account that looks official, has no notes but the profile promises to give it to Phoenix for 1BTC 🤣

Needless to say, it ain't them, but they have a few followers unfortunately.


Still a note. 😅


#GN.

Just spent tonight trying to explain #Bitcoin and also the #LightningNetwork to a friend tonight over whiskey.

He was selling trainers and got asked if he would accept crypto to which he replied "bitcoin only"
(🤜🤛) and they said okay.

He asked me what the best way to accept was and since he only has #PhoenixWallet (why are they not on nostr?!?!), I suggested that but his channel was £30 in total size and the shoes were going to be £120 so first hurdle: liquidity.

We checked what the cost would be to add the appropriate liquidity (£7) and added that and the shipping cost to the amount, relaxed the incoming payment fee limit, and created an invoice and sent it with a small itinery explaining the total (£120 + wallet fees + shipping)

The wallet actually told us that it would charge about £4, not £7 when we created the invoice.

First lesson, buying liquidity is more expensive than just naturally growing your channel via a payment.

Only buy liquidity if you are in a low fee environment and forsee the need for more liquidity later and think the fees might go up at the worst time. Don't do it for a one off payment before attempting to receive it.

The alternative would have been to accept an on chain payment. I wasn't sure what service fees it would charge so I sent myself money to see what it would be instead of him finding out later.

As a sender I pay a mining fee of about £2.35. As a receiver I also pay a mining fee as it injects the new funds into my channel. This was a bit cheaper at about £2.04.

Second lesson, if you're going to pay fees to receive lightning bitcoin, consider accepting on chain and adjust the amount to cover fees, it is comparable in fees, but will likely feel cheaper for the recipient as you demand less and the miners demand the rest, they also have the optionality to pay less as you will only ship the goods when the payment is confirmed.

I imagine that this buyer is not going to understand the lightning payment, and will ask for an on chain address and an amount. I think this because they asked about accepting "crypto" and my confidence in them knowing about Lightning is low. In this case, everything will work out.

I then proceeded to try to explain lightning channels and liquidity and why it is different to custodial wallets like Coinbase that relies on trust like the banks.

Takeaways I could summarise AFTER breaking his brain:

1. Many payments can be completed before paying miners, so 100 payments with a £4 fee is better than 100 payments with £4 fee each (£400)

2. The network works because the funds are stuck in a 2 party address, but you can only play back and forth with the amount in that address (aka channel) -- this one is a little hard to grasp IMO.

3. There is only a limited number of ways to cheat, its cheaper and easier to not cheat and the technology ensures that your partner won't cheat because the chances of getting caught is high and the penalty is high too.

4. Phoenix is your LSP, like an internet service provider, they are your gateway to the rest of the network. So you can only receive from the internet whatever is available in the channel for Phoenix to give to you.

5. There are administration tasks: opening a lightning channel, expanding it, and taking from it... they all require mining fees and sometimes service fees.

6. See point 1, if you keep within your channel limits (he related it to a credit limit but there is no credit), then its all cheap and simple, but in this case, it wasn't simple 🙃.

After all this, when he made the observation that it was all very hard and complicated, I shared this video which I think was well received: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS4aSOypLE4

So thanks nostr:npub1aftmyhm62lrp6lwsha3yzyjy5kqdvuy7g23qg28a8q0cnmudv0ds0sdcke this was a good one 🤗.

Amongst all this, I also showed him the nostr:npub18d4r6wanxkyrdfjdrjqzj2ukua5cas669ew2g5w7lf4a8te7awzqey6lt3 website and how to estimate fees and how transactions get queued, that lightning payments aren't shown here but also they are instant and cheaper, he asked the golden question "can the network steal from you?" which is of course, no. And probably more too.

Anyway, it was a tough and intense night, but a fruitful one I think. I will share this with him as a summary to look back on. Hopefully others learn from this and/or find this useful too.


> For many governments, however, any level of anonymity has the capacity to cause concern, and if that means unmasking everyone to identify a few bad actors, so be it.

Oof.


Dial 911, sing "suck a dick, suck a dick" and hang up... your phone is now tapped.


We need more women in #Bitcoin  like this. https://video.nostr.build/01782e2a94eef546bd488d36b41a4c5424480b3698eb2465fb653ca4e07a43b8.mp4


Unicorn 🦄


There is no reason to condemn them even for that. Phoenix is a wallet that I can recommend to newbies, fortunately I am not in the draconian US where exploring technology is something that a government deems worth threatening people over.

Zeus is a great product too, but it isn't going to be the first thing people will lean to outside the US.

You say "they don't allow you to change LSPs within app" but taking down the app is was the kicker. They probably won't kick you out if you are using it over VPN since you don't exactly register yourself and you don't pay with dollars either.

What would be the real feature would be being able to migrate a channel to another app or sell your channel to someone else p2p. 👀


Fees for individual transactions are set by users but markets affect user decisions.

Bitcoin blocks are intentionally capped in size, and transactions get prioritised to mine based on their fee compared to other transactions and this creates a fee market.

Miners have nothing to do with this, but a bunch of speculators are competing to get small transactions mined and are paying higher than sensible fees because they believe that the data they are including in their transactions, and the concept of owning it, is worth something that they can sell at a much higher price than the fee that they used. (I'm talking about NFTs, JPEGs, Runes, etc)

With that noise, where fees would normally be much lower, and paired with the lower block rewards, the miners would be earning much less, miners are currently earning much more. This means that the supply shock is not being realised.

A supply shock is when the producers of a good (miners) are in short supply of that good. They are currently not in short supply because their supply is the fees that they collect.

Fees have dropped recently, but of course these high fees not only prevented a supply shock, but they also provided a bit of abundance, so miners have a surplus that they can dip into in order to satisfy the buyer market.

I think it will be once the fees are low AND the surplus has dried up, that we will see the supply shock.


Not sure I'm following you... miners sell as much as they need to cover costs, lets say that is 6btc per block.

Now the reward is 3.125, so naturally they would need to haggle harder to survive, they will request more from those that pay them in order to stay in business, some fail, supply falls and the typical buyers find themselves competing to buy from miners so the price goes up.

But right now, fees are high. This means that where a miner might get ~7btc per block, they now get ~10btc per block. They can continue to sell at the same price and remain competitive in the market and still save money for later too.

Eventually they'll start getting maybe ~4btc per block and they'll start using their reserves to remain competitive, then finally the crunch and the market as a whole realises that the value of bitcoin needs to go up to sustain mining and so it does.


I would never expose the whole LNBits to public internet, just the endpoints that I want public. This is 101.

For the demo server, they have the whole thing public, they allow you to fuck with the plugins, who knows which plugin granted the hole, but if you just apply basic security practices, there's nothing to worry about.


Are you asking it about money transmitters?


If the wind transmits your 12 words, does it control it?


A while back, someone commented to me that they had heard from many bitcoiners (after I had just said this myself) that they "saved" in bitcoin, that they were risk adverse and did not see bitcoin as risk.

After listening to nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev and nostr:npub13l3lyslfzyscrqg8saw4r09y70702s6r025hz52sajqrvdvf88zskh8xc2, this came back to me and what Guy said helped me to formulate why.

We start with "saving money is safety". Then we learn that we must invest in financial products to protect our wealth, but we do still measure our wealth in an inflating measuring stick, we just understand that if the number is static, we are falling behind.

Investing is risky, so we learn "diversify" is how we reduce that risk, but it is still risky. Once we understand Bitcoin, we realise that we can take a step back and identify what makes investing risky and compare that to bitcoin and cash.

Companies and stocks may one day disappear. This is not such a risk with cash, housing or art. Housing requires constant maintenance and is already above intrinsic value, so although it won't disappear, it can lose much of its value in the future. But even if you don't believe that, it has its costs. Art is subjective in value, it provides no utility but to inspire, and qty of art does inflate, as does housing.

Bitcoin has properties that makes it unique and useful. Once we understand this, we can understand why it cannot disappear so easily, then the understanding of its scarcity after this is easy.

So bitcoin is like cash, but it also does not inflate. Even if markets do better than bitcoin (it doesn't), what matters is only, does it do better than inflation and can it do so sustainably.

We learn that in short term, the answer is kind of no. But long term, it is always yes. And we only ever invest our long term money anyway so the crux is:

Did I invest to make money, or did I invest to save money? When you answer this question, it becomes glaringly obvious that saving in bitcoin is not investing and is less risky than investing, even with diversification.

The hillarious part is that for its many risks, investing does not bear as much reward on average as bitcoin, so why do it at all?

I do believe, however, that when companies operate on a bitcoin standard, they will become valuable investments once again for those who wish to take risks to get ahead.


That is scarily bullish and bearish at the same time. Unless we can say the same of the effect of people that we can say of the effect of governments, then miners may just turn into the new ruling class if governments were ever to become overthrown and bitcoin were to become the money.


I don't think there are any lists. Ideally we run our own 👍


Don't forget to take some personal accountability. If you recommended this product to someone, you did it with full knowledge that this could have happened.

The only way to stay sovereign is to do it all yourself and to lift others up to do the same. Unless it takes exactly zero pressure for you to cave and put the responsibility onto someone else.


I was just thinking out loud, but moderating may not be good enough, it is a chasing game, whereas calling it out is what will likely change culture and provide support around the spaces where this happens.

Don't focus on the "I don't see it" part, I didn't deny it was happening.


What server are you using when you set it up with the wallet?

Keep in mind that their demo server that they were sharing to a few people is not recommended, see: https://boltcardwallet.com/hub.php


I've not seen any harrasment on Nostr... maybe instead of hiding it with censorship tools, we should be highlighting it and calling it out.

Maybe we can drive it out instead.


Our next meetup will be presented by nostr:npub1art8cs66ffvnqns5zs5qa9fwlctmusj5lj38j94lv0ulw0j54wjqhpm0w5 for a Q&A about the history of Bitcoin! You don't want to miss it!

Join us at Holborn on Wednesday 1st May!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMG_AUmWwAAA4-L?format=jpg

https://meetup.com/bitcoinology/events/300661120


They know it was their fault in the end, so they probably don't want to pull that thread.

But find a way to do anything meaningful and cut out the established system of middlemen and suddenly there is infinite motivation to find a way to shut that down.


N


Best practice would be to leave the device alone and focus on securing your backup. That is where all of your attention should be.

I know you paid good dollar for the coldcard, but that device IS the expendable part of your setup.

Set it to kill itself after a few pin fails, set up a brickme pin in case someone tries to coerce you into unlocking it for them. Then leave it alone.

If it breaks, you lost your ability to sign a transaction immediately, you'll have to buy a new one and wait for delivery etc. But that is okay.

Focus on the backup(s). Too many copies = easy to steal, too little copies = easy to lose, seedxor = can help find a compromise between the two.

The best security is always unique to you and your circumstances. Focus on the backups.


If they can find your pin, why can't they find your passphrase?

Think of your pin as your passphrase and its as safe as your passphrase. Treat your passphrase as badly as you treat your pin, and its as vulnerable as your pin.

The pin is up to 6 (or is it 8) characters long, that's a lot of brute forcing. PLUS:

1. The anti maid attack feature where it has you confirm some words based on your device and first half of your pin protects you from giving your pin away to a malicious hacking device (physical phishing)

2. The kill-myself feature prevents someone from using brute force to break in way before they have tried enough times to have broken your pin, even if it were just 4 digits long.


Follow up question... if I am buying Bitcoin, why do I need to provide banking details, and for some, it asks for phone number.

Who gets to see this information and why does it matter? I understand if I am selling bitcoin, but not if I am buying. Also, what does "which currencies do you want to accept?" have to do with buying bitcoin if using Revolut to send a payment?


Bitcoin is a stable coin now. Deal with it. 😎


Gm 🌞

I made this for you!

This POOR TOWN in PERU uses the FUTURE of MONEY
https://youtu.be/C1_MJ1loP-U


We need to stop making excuses and start building relationships. The way we become more self sovereign is by working with one another and not letting central parties turn us into strangers.

With this, who can tell you what you can and cannot do?


Always have been.


Can be an x, just at the bottom of the page IMO.


Red button at the bottom. In the top right corner, it is more like a close window button which I'd expect to be purely navigational and behavw the same as my back gesture.

I see that I can see offers without adding payment details now, but it always leaves an open action in the trades area. I assume this is not an advertised buy offer then, but it does look like it is. That's why I delete it... I don't want it to be taken by someone while I am just exploring the app and have someone expecting me to honour the offer.

Robosats for example lets you look at the order book, filter etc and there is no created actions as a side effect. That's what I expect from exploring an app, otherwise it feels like I might be doing something I don't want to do while I'm just trying to  explore and get familiar with the app.

Know what I mean?


What's TPTB?


nostr:npub15369wu3wzzar5fclhecyqfv683x69n6nhlg7rxqnsg2dydgxflpq3apswl I just installed peach, I was unable to see trades until I set up my own criteria.

I was confused, I feel like I have an open trade so I deleted it just in case. I want to start by being a taker, not a maker.

I'll also admit that the x in the top right was not the most intuitive way to delete the offer.

Is there a way to see trades? This would help me decide what payment options I prefer.


CALL ON  EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT TO VOTE AGAINST EU AMLR PROPOSAL NOW!

Tomorrow the European Parliament is going to vote on its latest #EU #AMLR proposal.
Unfortunately, the Trilogue procedure led to the removal of all civil society recommendations, weakening the position of the only directly democratically-elected EU institution—the European Parliament.

This has resulted in:
🔻 a considerable reduction of financial freedoms & increased financial exclusion;
🔻heightened risks of abuse of the AMRL, including the exposure of EU citizens and residents to the potential misuse of their financial data by authoritarian regimes.

Additionally, as the EU sets global financial regulatory standards, the negative language in the AMLR about privacy payment tools, such as self-hosted wallets & mixers, could lead to restrictions on financial freedoms in third countries and increase the potential for financial repression by illiberal regimes.

See our Submission for more details: https://en.odfoundation.eu/a/725781,building-true-change-btc-coalition-submission-on-the-eu-proposal-for-a-regulation-on-the-prevention-of-money-laundering-or-terrorist-financing/


Have we ever considered that #Bitcoin is just another money that may never become the only one for everyone?
 https://image.nostr.build/bcc861bcb952e69a881d3efd1f25f21073d831da6b0197c22ab24865f9e40509.jpg

Just a flying thought.


I think this:

Link to join the group Nostriches: https://simplex.chat/contact#/?v=1-4&smp=smp%3A%2F%2FPQUV2eL0t7OStZOoAsPEV2QYWt4-xilbakvGUGOItUo%3D%40smp6.simplex.im%2Fj5M4aet7oFpiw8xKG4YMql6PihNA2qRW%23%2F%3Fv%3D1-2%26dh%3DMCowBQYDK2VuAyEAkXpa1gSjfzbmUxMJQRie79owG3NZH3P1vAyzNbAK3zs%253D%26srv%3Dbylepyau3ty4czmn77q4fglvperknl4bi2eb2fdy2bh4jxtf32kf73yd.onion&data=%7B%22type%22%3A%22group%22%2C%22groupLinkId%22%3A%22rqMPdqj4SuWTbiGL5frnxA%3D%3D%22%7D


Most people only consume online. Being censored is not an issue for them because they don’t speak in the first place. To position a protocol as censorship resistant is to appeal to a small minority.

I think a lot more people care about having to put up with crappier services at ever higher prices due to platform lock in. Nostr addresses this.


I'll be in El Salvador between July 23-27. Let's chat, I'll need some help to make the most of my time seeing great sites and meeting bitcoiners and spending bitcoin.

Can you help?


Is this true, or just lazy reporting? Asics can't do AI, so I imagine what they call "miners" include crypto miners and validators too for no reason whatsoever. 🤷

> Companies are doing everything they can to prepare for the halving, including moving away from crypto.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C58Ine5t60-/

(Sorry it is a meta source)

Thoughts? Truth bombs welcome.


I assume you are talking about Hal Finning, AKA running bitcoin.


We put ourselves in this position. I remember it growing up, as a kid, I was reading and listening to people warning that free would incur ads and tracking, while payments should be the way to go. It is unfortunate that society went the stupid route, including myself.

Of course, payment options were never good enough either... companies taking payment and still serving ads proved this.


Paying for facebook would have been a good solution... if we trust that they would actually protect your privacy.

The EU putting companies in a corner: "It's not a choice if it is not free" is stupid. You can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to let innovation free. They aren't charging to spite people, they are charging to cover the costs that they cannot cover otherwise.

Subsidising is not the answer either... track THEM harder and use that to give me in the EU privacy???

Politicians think they know how to run these businesses from the sidelines. Stupid.


Notice that no one has a beard... Grow a beard and fuck up the AI algorithms 🧙♂

nostr:nevent1qqs0kqw042e6hs06a0fm374fdkkg6uf3nc76kjc7j5v2dj9tkwjk24qpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyzmuda53tnaf5chl76slqfsym6yvy0rvd3k3hrmzclxpqaylxplgzqcyqqqqqqgkh6ryd


Oh, you zapped me 😅 thankyou.


What do you mean "take your cashu?"


Gm, less than 100 blocks before we drop to under 1% inflation 🔥🔥🔥

 https://image.nostr.build/1c9724b75d01a5314996ec4c890a01961566bf61075c7395b0d687864ce488b4.jpg


Ranged from 2 seconds to 10 seconds.


Bank money is a promise, Bitcoin is not.

This article explores the concept of a promise with respect to banking and then contrasts this with Bitcoin in order to draw a conclusion to the question of whether Bitcoin is just another banking-like promise based system.

This is a long form article, you can read it in https://habla.news/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzqrvhh6h9vl7we8r9wncudmmpym4fd82fjtp3nrj3crav2tzjwjs5qqxnzde3xymnzdfsxgensvfkcvaf7u

(15 minute read)

I recently had a short conversation with my uncle about saving in Bitcoin. The conversation wasn't very long, but we touched on the difference between trading Bitcoin and saving in it, but I got a little stumped after telling him that the money in the bank was merely a promise. His response was: why is Bitcoin NOT a promise?

I tried to think of an answer, but being technical myself, and having a very technical understanding of it all, I couldn't find a satisfactory answer that was understandable. I needed to walk away and give it some thought. This article is the result.
## What is the definition of a promise?
Before we begin, let's take a moment to differentiate between two things that people think about when they hear "promise" in the context of money:

1. The "promise" of money having value in the future
2. The "promise" of you always having access to money to use for trade

Money has taken shape in many forms in history, from shells, to gold, and now paper money issued by government. There is no promise of any form of money having value in the future. It is possible for our central banks to make such a promise, but this is not something that they have absolute control over; money is merely an expression of what we, as individuals, wish to use for trade and savings.

Currently, most people use government issued currency for trade and as a unit of account, however as trust in our governments and central banks erode, people start to look for alternatives. There is good reason to look for alternatives in today's world, our money is being used against us; our money is inherently political - not only regarding how taxes are handled, but also how newly issued money is directed towards political causes while newly issued money causes debasement of our savings. The 2% target inflation is always framed as a noble goal, but in fact it is a promise to constantly debase your money.

But I digress, the second promise is what this piece will focus on. The promise of you always having access to money to use for trade.

> **As long as there is a middleman facilitating your payment, or facilitating the withdrawal of the thing you use to transact with, there is a promise.**

If there is a middleman between yourself and a trade, then there is a risk of that middleman refusing to honour your transactions. Worse still, if a bank goes bankrupt, something that has started happening again recently, there is no guarantee that your balance is refunded in full.

In the UK, [the FSCS  protects 100% of the first £85,000 you have saved, per UK-regulated financial institution (not per account)](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/safe-savings/). This is needed because the bank may not have the funds owed to you, the money that you thought was yours may never have been there at all.

This is a risk that applies to all forms of custody. If you purchase gold, but the gold is held by a third party in a secure facility, then you do not have gold, you have a promise for gold; when you go to claim your gold, you may find that it is no longer there.
## Banks often break their promise
The 2008 financial crisis is a historical event, it showed that banks took risks so large, that they could not fulfil their duties to their customers. Banks were considered too big to fail and bailouts paid for the survival of a predatory industry, effectively through money printing. At the same time, small businesses were allowed to fail, people lost their jobs and their homes, and yet the wealthy class became wealthier and banking became more prominent and structural to our society.

More recently, in early 2022, a large number of Canadian citizens found their bank accounts frozen, including their business accounts, leading to concerns of being unable to pay employees, as well as being unable to buy groceries, fuel or medicine. This action was initiated by the sitting government using emergency powers against their own citizens who were protesting government policy, **without court orders or any sort of trial**, and in the aftermath the Canadian federal courts ruled that the use of emergency powers to roll out these actions was [unreasonable](https://ca.news.yahoo.com/cp-newsalert-federal-emergencies-act-182031478.html). Although this action was temporary, it had a profound effect on many.

In the UK in mid 2023, Nigel Farage had his Coutts bank account in the UK closed with no reason being provided. Nigel is a controversial figure in the UK, one who has been accused of being racist and bigoted, and therefore it was hard for many to empathise with this story. During this event, after Nigel made this issue public, the bank then made a statement to the public via BBC News with a reason: that his account was underfunded, without first sending the reason privately. Then it came out that this was a lie made by the bank to safe face, as they changed their reason to Nigel having views that were "at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation".

This story was interesting, however what was less publicised, was the stories coming out about [ordinary people receiving similar treatment](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/30/uk-banks-closing-more-than-1000-accounts-every-day), with no reasons being provided, and much harsher personal consequences.

Many such stories exist, but get lost in a swarm of noise and often become forgotten after some time as if it never happened. Much smaller stories exist too, I personally had a payment blocked, and after making a call to unblock it, they asked a series of questions and then decided that they would not honour the transaction. Fortunately, I was able to move my funds to another bank account to make my payment.

Others still have had their bank accounts closed with no reason given, even though they are not criminals, and are not involved in anything suspicious to their own knowledge. Too many people rely on bank accounts, cash is being painted as a tool for criminals and being phased away, and with a bank account being the only way to participate in the online commerce space, the systems we have built as a society place too much power in the hands of middlemen and not enough in the hands of citizens who rely so heavily on this infrastructure to partake in normal activities.
## Is Bitcoin a promise based system?
Bitcoin is virtual, most perceive it as being "on the internet" and conclude that therefore it must rely on middlemen and servers just like everything else online.

Bitcoin is more like BitTorrent; for most people, this is a technology most familiar as the tool for finding pirated movies, music and other content. This technology connects people around the world and provides a way for people to share files and data, its most popular, or at least most publicised application just happened to be piracy, and yet it still exists today. Even though industries tried, It could not be shut down because it is not a centralised service reliant on a single company or server somewhere.

Bitcoin is not a business, anyone can and will participate in the operation of Bitcoin, it is more like a community project where the people who operate it also rely on it for savings and trade. Such a system cannot be found and shut down, nor will such a system be abandoned easily.
### No user accounts
One of the most significant innovations that bitcoin uses, is the ability to have **security without user accounts**. A lot of people who are introduced to Bitcoin will first look for a regulated exchange so that they can learn how to purchase bitcoin, unfortunately, exchanges are for-profit businesses and they would rather you remain a customer to them, than you progress to taking custody of your bitcoin. When you purchase bitcoin on an exchange and do not withdraw them to a wallet that you control, you once again have a promise for bitcoin.

Even the most popular exchange, Coinbase, has terms and conditions that state that [they may suspend, restrict, terminate, deactivate or cancel your transactions or your access to your account](https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/payments_europe#anchor-7-suspension-termination-and-cancellation). Also if they go bankrupt, [user assets could become subject to bankruptcy proceedings](https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/05/11/coinbase-bankruptcy-crypto-assets-safe-private-key-earnings-stock/).

To clarify: if you are registering for an account, providing an email address, password and other personally identifiable information to some service provider, and you use this service to manage your bitcoin, **you do not really have bitcoin**.

Let's explore the two main aspects that make Bitcoin a self service operation with no middlemen:

1. The Bitcoin address,
2. The mining function
### The Bitcoin address
The ownership model of Bitcoin doesn't allocate funds to people, instead it allocates funds to unique numerical identifiers which we call "Bitcoin addresses" and the use of these addresses help to separate the relation between an individual and the bitcoin that they might have control over.

Think about cash, the cash exists as an independent thing, I may own a £5 note now, but if I hand it to you, now you own it. In the same way, if I have control of an address with 0.5 BTC and I hand over that control to you, now you own that money.

Bitcoin is not quite the same as cash, because control over bitcoin isn't physical. Controlling bitcoin requires the possession of private information, and typically, just like an idea, information can only be shared and cannot be transferred like physical objects can. Products like the [Opendime](https://opendime.com/) provide a practical way to produce and contain this private information in such a way that it can be trusted to only exist in a physical form, this then behaves exactly like cash because when I hand you the device, I no longer have possession of the information within it.

The ability for such a product to exist is not to be taken lightly. Imagine being able to trade one of your bank accounts for goods or services, or even just as a gift without having to inform or ask permission from your bank! Even if the banking services are down for the day, you still have a means of trade as long as you believe the bank will eventually resume operations.
#### Normal operation
Of course, the usual way to use Bitcoin is online or using mobile or desktop applications. To load a Bitcoin address with funds, a payment needs to be made and broadcast to the Bitcoin network.

When we wish to move bitcoin between addresses, we use our bitcoin applications to create a transaction, we can think of it like a blank cheque, and we use our private information to apply a digital seal. The private information is called a private key, and the digital seal is called a cryptographic digital signature.

Unlike a signature on a physical cheque, the digital signature cannot be forged; If bitcoin moves between addresses, the only people that could have moved it are the people who own the private key(s).

Once the bitcoin has been reallocated, the new owners need assurance that the bitcoin cannot be "double spent"; that is, the customer must not be allowed to attempt to move the *same* bitcoin to an *alternative* destination. To ensure this, Bitcoin introduced a function called mining.
### The mining function
Mining is at the very heart of Bitcoin, and this is where the question of whether there are middlemen appears to become a little muddy.

The miner performs two tasks:

1. First they collect and choose a set of transactions to cement into a block.
2. Then they attempt to cement the block and broadcast the data to the rest of the network.
#### Choosing transactions
Once a transaction is cemented into a block and broadcast to the network, any alternative signed transactions that attempt to spend the same bitcoin are can simply be discarded as garbage. This is the assurance that recipients need.

Miners cannot modify transactions in any way and they cannot redirect funds or make their own transactions on your behalf, however since miners choose the transactions to put into a block, it could be concluded that they can also choose which transactions to omit from blocks too. If this were true, then miners would inherit the power to freeze funds and censor transactions as they see fit.

Fortunately, mining is a competitive business, transactions offer fees in bitcoin for miners to earn, and opportunity drives competition. Bitcoin mining requires nothing more than access to energy, computers and the internet. This means that mining has competitors from all around the world. If a miner chooses to omit a transaction from a block and broadcast it, the transaction will simply be mined in a future block by another miner.
#### Cementing blocks
To draw an analogy of mining, imagine a game competitors draw parts of a face in a particular order. Let's say everyone needs to draw the left eye, you draw your eye, then everyone races to win a game of chance: everyone must roll 10 dice at a time and the first person to roll all ones wins the round and submits their drawing before the game moves on to another drawing.

The dice game takes time and energy to complete and out of all of the competitors, it really is anyone's game. This is similar to how mining works; miners work with odds so low that it takes 10 minutes on average to complete a round, and the winning miner submits their choice of transactions with a mathematical proof that they beat the odds. We call this proof "Proof of Work (PoW)".

Consider that as more people join, and as miners get faster, the rounds would start to shorten. Bitcoin naturally readjusts itself to ensure that this is not the case, and so more effort put into the network leads to a higher assurance of security.
#### Breaking the cement
The cost of time and energy assures that anyone attempting to change the historical records in any way would need to expend more energy at a faster rate than the rest of the miners in the network working together.

To visualise this, imagine that there is a group of builders building a fleet of houses. You as a solo builder wish that houses had a flat roof, so you start building your own fleet of houses of the same quality, but you start a little late. You hire your own team who agree that flat roofs are the best, but you need to pay them out of pocket because you don't get paid until you have built more houses than the other team who is still building at a steady pace.

Assuming you manage to build as many houses as the other team, there are a few more hurdles for you to jump over, but you now have a chance at swapping out all the old houses for your flat roof alternatives and you get paid. All that risk and cost might have paid off, but attempting to build the same quality at a faster rate means that the payout will likely not cover your costs.

Bitcoin is harder to break than cement. It may require constant human action to work, but incentives keep it going in the same way that keeping a fire alive requires people to fetch wood, and let's say those who fetch wood are rewarded with food, the overall win for everyone is that they can cook food and stay warm, so the system works.
### Is Bitcoin a promise?
No. Bitcoin has a lot of complexity, and this complexity is a trade off for achieving digitisation without other compromises. The potential of Bitcoin to become the next evolution in money is real, and for some it is even realised. No one in this system has power over anyone else, as long as you have bitcoin in an address that you own, it will be there for as long as forever, and when you wish to move it, there will always be someone available to cement that transaction into a block.

Yes, it is digital, yes it is mostly accessed via the internet today, but people are already building technologies to overcome these limitations. LoRa devices (long range radio communication) are being explored as an alternative to the internet as Bitcoin doesn't require much bandwidth to operate, in Africa bitcoin payments happen over USSD, a technology similar to SMS that works on old "feature" phones like the old Nokia phones that were popular early in the year 2000.

Even if all electronics and cross border communication shut down for some time, Bitcoin doesn't stop, the lack of communication will cause some problems, and another money like gold might be better for local trade for some time, but eventually communications will come back and the system is elegant enough to resolve and continue operation.

Also remember that while gold is less complex and easier to understand, it is only trustworthy and cost effective to use for local trading. This is why, in the digital global economy that we are in today, gold is not suitable, and in a brighter future, a system like Bitcoin is better money that can replace all of the trusted institutions with greedy middlemen that we have needed until now to operate in this modern economy.


Looking online at the definition of debt, it is something owed by someone, or something that is promised in return for something given (paraphrased).

When you make a trade for a cryptocurrency (yes, shitcoins as well as bitcoin), you are owed a signed transaction and you can even define the number of confirmations you will require before you consider the debt paid.

You do not consider the miners or the validators as the recipients of your trade, so you cannot consider them your debtors.

For this reason, I would argue that cryptos are non-debt-instruments. Whether they are reliable instruments, and whether they are suitable to be given the title of "money" is where we see the difference between bitcoin and crypto.

No crypto, not even monero, can be considered trustless money, because they are not held to the same level of scrutiny as Bitcoin by their users, and how can they? They already diverged from consensus by ever being created and used as an alternative to Bitcoin, and the trustlessness comes from having maximum diversity in beliefs and thoughts participating in the consensus. Maximum, not "enough".

If you consider crypto to be money, then I would classify them as non-debt-money. It just doesn't mean it is good money.


That moment you realise that even the top economists are trying to make heads and tails of everything, just like we are doing, but they don't have have the north star that we do to keep them oriented just yet.


I see you got your bullet proof vest back?


Ahh! Too slow!

Also, not sure if it is server speed, but it was very slow to respond 🙁


Just decorating my apartment with stickers from nostr:npub1h5cmp8kys9dkzysv4wha3wuzruadalhtj82zyznscsx6fkw2efysje0yp0
 https://image.nostr.build/daee04ccfa9bc25d1bf567b483cfb486b078763d4a0babdc754b80a1b4885386.jpg https://image.nostr.build/8253a87316e33761f8d489aac9c308aec8c6ec4724c96a43788df138e3bd8acd.jpg


I bet you aren't even stinking rich, even though anyone who might have heard this will probably think you must be a billionaire the way people keep talking about bitcoin as a bubble.

But you probably have reconsidered your life goals and priorities. 🫂


Erm... surely you are doing the opposite?


Thank you for your service sir 🫡


Who da fuq moves that much when they speak?


Oh 🤨  🤗🤗🤗 can't wait.


So it was a nothing burger?

I haven't seen or heard anything.


Come on halving on 4/20!!! https://image.nostr.build/45ad78627f454d914789ab2f5cd8fce4f9a83da10930c60b7ce4a5fcc173e295.jpg


whew! welcome back, friend.

nostr:note1mz5j32l49kg0l94x9kk2shz2q0x9v9xk4cpzm4p0da202rlr879qfgrg2p


Leather?


This is a real tweet. https://image.nostr.build/07b1c13d55a69754028dc3328e6398a9d5921381f8440f83a3c1d0b618d077fc.jpg


Of course not... but it was a fun thought.


I recently had a thought... can freedom exist without constraints?

If gravity didn't exist, we might be able to fly, is gravity suppressing our freedom to fly?


Gold


Fuck. You had me laugh out loud 😡😁


Better still, you might have your own reasons, but the cost is too prohibitive.


How are they splurging? Are they using them for something we don't know about?

I mean, not that, anything else? Is there a trend of throwing tomatoes around for fun?


nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 is Olympus Channel service unavailable in the UK?


#asknostr

nostr:nevent1qqsfgdqyp6u22hu8qqd0ayqfl0kpll49mlfqsctga7m7xer5x6f8dkcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzq4jwyxfd93xlxv3yc9whslxszuhu33lx57hav77v878rg37hvkvpqvzqqqqqqyd83trg


I honestly think he needs to buy it with cash. Alternatively, he needs to maybe start converting his wages into bank fiat so it looks like there is regular income in his bank but this is just stupid with so much opportunity cost.

This I think, is the kicker. Getting a mortgage doesn't rely on your wealth, it depends on how well they think you can pay the monthlys AND your other expenses... they do an assessment for you.

You may get paid enough, but if you don't have capital for a deposit then they'll still reject you.

IMO, If you want to be sovereign, buy a house outright or rent until you can. It's hard to be part of society while being poor or while being sovereign.


So far, my long form nostr posts don't get much traction 🙃


That's mario ain't it?


The policy is to reject anything under 1 sat per vbyte. So maybe 1nanobitcioin is 0.1 sats?


Number 7 is most definitely not Craig Wright's we know that for sure.


No one ever puts the timezone 😢


This is the gaslighting that we all went through from the very beginning. It's what made me take so long to understand the problem.

"Your data" is the photos you upload, the messages you send, but "their data" is all of the metadata: when do you post, when do you log in, where are you, who do you message, who do you message more, and later they said fuck it: how old are you, what is your sex, and what is in the contents of your message?


Doing a very poor job of it... 😄😄💩


Pretty


All funds are from channel closes if that helps btw.


I cleared all data and set it up again. I then went to sleep. It still shows 0 balance while my old wallet shows my correct balance.

I also double checked the seed words.

FYI, I'm not panicking or anything, just documenting in the hopes of helping to squash a bug.

New wallet is v0.8.2, don't have the old one to hand right now.


I have an issue in that my old wallet has coins in bc1p addresses and the new one is using bc1q and can't see the coins.

Is this expected?


Saving this for in case of an apocalypse tomorrow.


nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5 do I REALLY have to close my channels to migrate my embedded zeus wallet to another phone?

Isn't it enough to kill the app or uninstall it before restoring?

Also will my tx history be preserved?


We need a free and opensource QR Code reader that understands animated QR Codes for anything.

Hopefully it will catch on and get used for other things and ecash will just slide in undetected.


nostr:npub1mutnyacc9uc4t5mmxvpprwsauj5p2qxq95v4a9j0jxl8wnkfvuyque23vg telling me the first thing I should consider talking to my connections about is them sending me money is just hillarious.
 https://image.nostr.build/602b9ad143246f8ad2abd1f312ea5cf4811e0b6f9f9fbeda1c85547de9cb0f07.jpg


I forgot to add the photo 🤦♂
 https://image.nostr.build/6788a9d68daafba7c5bd7558a290f5614b2f9dc283be3c8c822f0252cce17ac3.jpg
nostr:nevent1qqsydeeu69wj70v86f5kvmetkcvdemkjq8jl4kjtj23r6lyv2j7ty7cpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvupzqrvhh6h9vl7we8r9wncudmmpym4fd82fjtp3nrj3crav2tzjwjs5qvzqqqqqqy67n9un


A big thankyou to nostr:npub1dqepr0g4t3ahvnjtnxazvws4rkqjpxl854n29wcew8wph0fmw90qlsmmgt for these halving glasses and stickers 💪

These will be available, first come first serve at the bitcoin halving party in London on 20th April 2024.

LFG!


Is this the rumor? Did it start here? 😄


Have a kitkat.


It really sucks getting turned down for a job because I have "too much experience". 😮💨

I'm trying to move forward in my career. If you need an expert web developer who thinks outside the box and can make amazing things happen, hit me up and I'll send over my CV/résumé.

Friends boost friends 🫂🔄


Yes.


Next meetup is this coming Wednesday 3rd April.
Don't miss Dr. Tom talk about Mercury Layer: A fully blinded implementation of statechains.

Details below:
https://www.meetup.com/bitcoinology/events/300106395


What does it mean if the most free social protocol, where anyone can talk about anything they choose, is mostly full of people openly talking about Bitcoin?

nostr:nevent1qqsw7skrspf3vjy6dpjv4zse6mh2lytz0yd0ylwujucwf327ksasdgspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qygyzxs0cs2mw40xjhfl3a7g24ktpeur54u2mnm6y5z0e6250h7lx5gpsgqqqqqqsmlq0ap


Heads up if using the testing / unstable version of Debian, Ubuntu, NixOS or other Linux OS based on these, there is malicious code in the latest xz package: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4

>The malicious injection present in the xz versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1
>Luckily xz 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 have not yet widely been integrated by linux distributions, and where they have, mostly in pre-release versions.

Running stable versions are fine:

₿ xz --version
xz (XZ Utils) 5.4.1
liblzma 5.4.1