What makes #bitcoin #FreedomMoney? To me it's about maintaining these key attributes: Decentralization Auditable 21 MM cap Permissionless Censorship & confiscation resistant Immutability All of are only possible by us running the node version we see upholding these values. If we ever get to the point where we are unable to vote for the version of the nodes that we run to establish what Bitcoin is then Bitcoin will have failed as a decentralized project and will have been captured by the traditional Finance institutions and this movement will have been killed. As I type this message it appears as though the mining pools are colluding to attack the decentralized mempool by accepting out of band fiat currency transactions which are completely invisible and absolutely go against the above key features in a variety of ways. It also seems that they have co-opted the narrative not only on the internet but at a local Grassroots level and various meetups which have been sponsored by traditional Finance firms and quietly steering the narrative to suggest that the ETFs, ordinals, inscriptions, and other attacks are actually a benefit to bitcoin and using their sheer numbers to drown out advocates who ascribe to Bitcoins decentralized, permissionless, monetary use case as it's essential feature. At this point I think it's important for us all to look into the possibility of running pre-tap root Bitcoin nodes to try to filter out all of these attacks and to also call out any of these mining pools who are adding unexpected transactions to the blocks and or accepting fiat currency bribes out of band attacking the 21 million Bitcoin cap as they trade dollars for virtual bytes versus sats for virtual bytes. The only way Bitcoin will succeed in its mission of separating state from currency is if we can get the key principles of what makes Bitcoin our freedom money conveyed to enough plebs and to try to clear up the confusion that the traditional Finance system is intentionally spreading throughout the community. And while I don't have all the answers, here's a few ideas that we can do to push back: -Hashers should punish pools that include TXs outside of the shared mempool & any miner taking OOB fees. -Run nodes you view as the true #bitcoin (pre taproot at least IMO) -Advocate for custom mining templates for pools/hashers. -Get active in your community and go to your meetups and be the vocal minority to push these core freedom principles and pushing back against the subversive traditional Finance folks who are trying to steer the narrative! -Spread the word. I truly believe that together we can and will achieve the goal of creating a sound money that is independent of the traditional Finance markets and will be separate from State. Let's get it!

Why on earth would we sell our precious #bitcoin for 100k when #WallStreet must buy #bitcoin regardless of the USD price? IMO 100k is a psyop & is being repeatedly touted on #btc X to get OGs primed to transfer their keys to these $ gatekeepers. Don't fall for it! Lets separate state & currency like the good Satoshi intended! ✌️

Then They (REALLY) Fight You! From my perspective, Bitcoin is currently undergoing a multitude of attacks let's break them down one by one. Political / Legal. The current political attacks being lead by senator Elizabeth Warren and cronies was initiated after being directed by Jamie Dimon (who has since been appointed as the AP or Authorized Participant for the largest BTC ETF). These attackers seem to be doing their very best to legally separate plebs from their sats while aligning Wall Street to become the custodians of our freedom money. Technical / Social. The L1 Bitcoin network is currently being spammed by Ordinals and Inscriptions which is prematurely increasing the L1 transaction fees. This is pricing out many lower net worth folks from participating in L1 self custody. This attack seems to have a large amount of buy in from NFT pushers and alt coiners as well as a good chunk of the miners as most of the larger miners are being short sighted and looking to maximize profits in dollars as much and as quickly as possible. This has lead to a huge battle within the Bitcoin community and it currently remains to be seen how this will play out. Wall Street Attacks. By now everyone knows that Wall Street is here as they have had their ETFs green light. If the first two days of trading are any guide of what's to come, then I'm afraid to say its starting to appear they're going to buy OTC and dump spot market in an effort to control the dollar price of Bitcoin. Just look at what Coinbase has said with respect to their reported $7,000,000,000 USD of OTC traded the first day ETFs did. None of course can be independently verified by any of us plebs. These ETF / Wall Street folks are asking us to invert the ethos of "Don't trust, verify." into "Trust us bro." In my view Wall Street would gladly take a substantial loss on these Bitcoin products so long by doing so they believe that it would greatly harm or destroy bitcoin in the process as Bitcoin is the largest threat to their way of life. Great so what now? Any good news or anything we can do about it? Absolutely and glad you asked! From my perspective the best part of all of this is that Bitcoin is still alive and is getting more publicity than any amount of money could have bought it! That being said I believe that all of this noise will get people to understand what Bitcoin is, why it's important, and eventually will understand that the only way to get it to succeed and create a more just and equitable world for all will be to hold Bitcoin in self custody. IMO they will realize that to do this in the most effective way that they will need to minimize their spheres of trust and will learn about how to create their own entropy with simple analog methods offline (such as flipping coins 256 times) and creating their own BIP 39 seeds. They'll also learn how to run their own nodes for verification and to transmit and receive their own bitcoin transactions. These actions will allow for the dollar price of Bitcoin to break free from their manipulation efforts and will eventually get us to a better bitcoin centric world that will break the monopoly of value creation and distribution from centralized control.

As of today it's official, until the day comes when enough folks learn why and how to take self custody of their #bitcoin    into addresses they roll their own completely offline and validate own TXNS w/ their own nodes, the fiat price of #bitcoin    will be a #WallStreet play thing. 🍿

With the invention of #bitcoin Satoshi created a doorway to exit the fiat system. It's now up to us whether we have the will, and ability to use the (private) keys to unlock it. Don't paper /ETF /IOU with #btc folks. Use your own keys to set you free! #SelfCustodialBitcoinOnly #nyknyb

It's puzzling why the #Bitcoin core team doesn't simply have toggle switches or option values for the config file that allows you to enable or disable the various controversial features that they add to core such as taproot, segwit, etc. That way folks can always upgrade their nodes to stay current with any bug fixes 🤔

OK so if my understanding is correct then theses potentially upcoming spot #bitcoin ETFs are BINO (Bitcoin In Name Only) as they are fiat in and fiat out only without the option of #btc redemption. The only positive aspect from them I can see is that they will get people curios to learn about what #btc is which will likely spur more self custody.

PSA fellow #bitcoiners! If you're also against inscriptions in the #Bitcoin mempool, just run an older version of Bitcoin core. For me v 20.x seems to be filtering out all of the #insciptions from the mempool.

It's fascinating seeing how many fiat maxis there are who were LARPing as #bitcoin ers. It's clear that these #ordinals and #insciptions are attacks not only on L1 throughput & lower $ self custody, but also the economics of #btc that L1 is paid on chain w/ ₿ not off chain on $

PSA for all the anti spam #nostr #bitcoin node runners! Setting the permitbaremultisig=0 option in your #bitcoin node config file seems to be effective in ellimating the ongoing spam attacks from my node's mempool. Check it out and pass it along. ✌️

Stock markets 👇 interest rates,and #bitcoin    👆 + #TradFi tripping over themselves to get into our #FreedomMoney as well as nation states engaging and next halfining taking #bitcoin below the stock to flow ratio of gold? Yeah, this time is absolutely different and there will be no narrative left to fall back on relating to bitcoin depreciating in value against the $ after this cycle solidifies. Stack them in self custody while you can folks! ✌️

If you didn't know any better then with the #ordinals & #insciptions attacks, #tradfi attempting to capture #bitcoin spot markets via ETFs, the 🇺🇸 using the Patriot Act requiring CEXs to report when you mix UTXOs, the largest crypto Exchange being pursued by the US, you might think we're at the then they fight you stage. That's OK because we all know whats next!

Unpopular Opinion: Javier Milei should not give up their money printer but should use it to print (aka buy) #bitcoin straight into a multisig cold storage addresses for the people of 🇦🇷. IMO ditching the 🇦🇷 money 🖨 for the USD 🖨 eliminates your national sovereignty.

If the price of #bitcoin is determined by the gyrations of the $ w/ no way to change this then #btc    has failed as it's not independent of #tradfi . Personally I don't believe this & feel as though once enough hold it in their own wallets that the price will escape tradfi tactics.

Some of my thoughts on the recent DRIVECHAIN topic.. What do you think the odds are that all these recent efforts to push additional assets into the L1 #Bitcoin chain such as taro, ordinals, inscriptions, and now #drivechains could just be attempts by the #tradfi regime to break the #Bitcoin miners economic Game Theory relating to the block reward and turn layer 1 bitcoin into a fiat printer? To me this seems probable as they likely need to figure out a way to sustain their mining operation investments without dumping piles of external cash into them should the block reward fall below the cost of production of the #Bitcoin reward in fiat terms (as we're still stuck in a fiat world) since most of these folks do not possess money printers directly. So rather than letting their miners go broke trying to keep the fiat price down and fund the operations by selling the Bitcoin for fiat, they can just create a bunch of BS tokens and junk in the blockchain that they can trade for fiat currency instead. This would allow #tradfi more time to strategically position themselves and infiltrate key #bitcoin industry players (and influencers) before #Hyperbitcoinization and would also allow them to wait out some of the hodlers who will not be willing to take their Bitcoins to their graves in hopes that they would sell them back to them so they can control a Fiat price even longer. Since I truly believe that they can't incentivize a lot of us hardcore Bitcoin mindset folks to sell for their Fiat currency, the thought by #tradfi is apparently that they will instead attempt to control a lot of the infrastructure for the future Hyperbitcoinization world or a world that they think they may have a chance at influencing the protocol development in some roundabout way to their benefit ( which I don't see plausible as I think we will see right through it all). So far here's some main red flags I see from a self sovereignty #bitcoin maximalist perspective who's goal is to push self custody #bitcoin and has hopes for the separation of (all) states from currency: - The largest #tradfi players snapping investments in the top big players in the #bitcoin mining space (Blackrock, Fidelity, etc.) - The same #tradfi players + are all tripping over each other begging the SEC to green light spot ETFs as to be able to create even more paper Bitcoin. - This simultaneously attempts to get Main St to normalize counterparty risk in Bitcoin via #tradfi by investing and accepting their ETFs in lieu of Self custody BTC. IMO these activities are all part of their goal of attempting to keep the bitcoin price in USD suppressed as long as possible and to do that they need to break the bitcoin economic game theory incentives built into bitcoin where miners are only rewarded with 21MM #btc and TX fees and make fiat other ways with their miners such as by adding #ordinals, #insciptions and are now seemingly trying to push for drivechains to get 💩 tokens in L1. By breaking the #btc miners economic game theory with just the block reward (but now with ordinals, inscriptions, and if they have their way soon too be DRIVECHAIN bs tokens) they're hoping the price in fiat can be suppressed even longer while allowing them the ability to generate enough fiat currency stuff contained to fund their operations and more time to control even more of the miners and simultaneously hoping to wait out as many HODLers as possible in the hopes that eventually some will sell their #bitcoin and thus they can scoop it up for a relatively cheap amount of fiat which would allow them to control the fiat value of the #btc longer and in turn which would keep the fiat machine alive longer and hence the monopoly of currency in the governments hands. Fortunately we can reject their plans of attacking the bitcoin miners economic incentive mechanism by not voting for their version of #bitcoin and running our own nodes. That said however I would not sell any of their forks that may happen as they'll likely scoop those up too and actually may drive the public perception that their chain is the true #btc as they drive it's fiat price up as to keep mainstream away from the ideals of the original #bitcoin ( decentralized, irreversible, confiscation resistant, separating money from state, no counterparty risk etc). However the next few years play out it's going to be a very bumpy road and I am not selling any of my forks no matter how much Fiat they offer and will certainly never vote for anything that deviates from the original economic incentives that the miners have with the block reward. ✌️

It seems so simple, doesn't it? I mean if supply and demand equals value and everybody did the same and actually took self-custody of their #bitcoin, then that should theoretically immediately take the price of #bitcoin in fiat currency to infinity which would completely separate state from currency! It truly puzzles me why enough people don't see this and why are so many people so afraid to recommend it from those who do. I mean if we're trying to express the value in a fiat currency that is infinite with a truly fine asset ( #btc), then we should see a much higher Fiat price everything else being equal as there are lots of #bitcoin freedom advocates like myself who will only sell what's absolutely necessary to avoid catastrophe until it becomes the newglobal UOA! Unfortunately the #tradfi team has figured out ways to apply traditional fiat game trickery to manipulate this fiat value such as fake volume and sales, rehypothecation, co-mingling, cash settled futures, and (imo) flat out paper Bitcoin on the centralized exchanges that people don't question and simply believe exists that very likely does not by a significant margin! From my perspective, the only way this can't be traditional Finance manipulation via some combination of the above, is if they have somehow figured out a way to exploit the protocol - which I guess is technically a possibility that I can't personally identify due to all the different soft forks etc which have happened over the years of bitcoin. Regardless I hope that enough people can understand that the minimizing layer one changes to be as simple as possible is essential for being able to independently self-custody and to validate the base layer transactions and supply. This is our only feasible opportunity to separate state from currency and, as I see it, shouldn't be about the short term fiat currency price but rather the freedom associated with separation of state and currency this bitcoin opportunity seemingly offers us by simply taking custody! The real purchasing power for #bitcoin will come when the fiat price can no longer be manipulated by the traditional Finance folks and we all #ChangeTheUOA and decide to only accept #SelfCustodialBitcoinOnly that we validate with our own nodes into P2PKH addresses that we roll ourselves completely offline ✌️

Why is it that the vast majority continue to price things in the dollars and other fiat currencies in which there's an unlimited amount of when we can now do so with #bitcoin that can't be debased, censored, counterfeited or confiscated and not politicized? I mean I understand that layer 2 is still being developed etc but at least when referencing things amongst ourselves even. The other mind blowing question to me is why is it so difficult for people to understand the basic concepts of supply and demand, self custody, and counterparty risk? I mean there's enough historical examples of #tradfi trickery like commingling and rehypothecation and of course what happened in 1971 that should be enough for everyone to want to #ChangeTheUOA to #bitcoin self custody their own sats, and run their own nodes so that we're all #SelfCustodialBitcoinOnly and we finally break fiat / centralized currency grip on us all.

Random #bitcoin ponderings of the day: That day that threshold of the masses finally wake up and realize that fiat is utterly worthless, everything goes to infinity vs any fiat currency. The question really comes down to why does #bitcoin makes sense to step in to fill that void as SoV, MoE, and ultimately UoA (in that order). To me it's because #bitcoin is IMO absolutely superior to fiat (or government backed currencies of any kind) due to its follow properties: - Being as decentralized as possible. - Removing the politics out of currency and the ability to weaponize said currency. - Impossible to debase. - Fully auditable for anyone with a computer and internet connection who runs their own node. - Censorship and confiscation resistant (especially if you roll your own entropy /BIP 39 seed offline and use your own node only sending PSBTs) - Impervious to Counterfeiting. - Can be stored in one's 🧠 - Is allowed to exist and thrive in the USA which has the current world reserve currency (just think about that). - Plebs beat #tradfi in terms of acquiring the bulk of the asset and a large amount of them (IMO) are idealogicaly opposed to trading back to fiat currency (except as absolutely necessary) as they see it for what it is really about - the separation of state (all nations) from their monopoly on currency.

So let's get this straight: -The largest asset manager on earth (et al) have feverishly pulled a complete 180 on bitcoin and are desperately attempting to get a spot #bitcoin ETF approved by the SEC. –A leading presidental candidate has publicly stated that if elected he will eliminate taxes on #btc and start backing the USD with BTC. All this and #bitcoin is still sitting >50% below it's 2021 USD peak. Still think #tradfi doesn't control the fiat price of #bitcoin anon? The only way to stop this insanity is to DCA #BTC and hold your keys offline with addresses you created yourself offline via true entropy you created such as by rolling dice or flipping coins and only sending #bitcoin through your own nodes with PSBTs. Get educated, get committed, and get free. ✌️

Fiat currency is a weapon of mass corruption! Fortunately #bitcoin can in fact fix this too. ✌️