>Fiction

“They can seize your house — it sits on land they control. They can freeze your bank accounts — those exist in their systems. They can confiscate your gold — it’s heavy, it’s obvious, it’s searchable. But Bitcoin secured properly? Twenty-four words in your mind are your sovereign territory. They cannot waterboard mathematics out of your skull.” Read Not One Satoshi to find out why the government is confiscating Bitcoin in our near future: https://primal.net/e/naddr1qq8kumm594hkuefdwdshgmmndp5sygpwp3yhgwwf226qvhupm6rzym6zs5tsejhwjzr3ds826h9ad76sfgpsgqqqw4rs80q66t

The one and only nostr:nprofile1qqsf6pjlsnqvhfasa7r0t5k32hnvuqgh329r8cv5lxvekayhkxezqxcpzfmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ucpzdmhxue69uhk66tnwd4k27fwxq6zuumf7ttan7 was the inspiration behind this week’s #Bitcoin #story- Not One Satoshi Let the words sink in as they become a reality in the near future of government confiscation: “Bitcoin is a tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get‑rich‑quick scheme.” Read on 👇 —- The announcement broke with the sunrise. Every surface lit with the same message: “Effective immediately, citizens and corporations must register or surrender Bitcoin private keys to Treasury Custody. Participation is voluntary, patriotic, and ensures national stability. Failure to comply may result in future penalties.” The words were steady, kind. Behind them, images of smiling citizens walking from booths with receipts in hand. Protecting the commons. Strength through sharing. And then the machines appeared. Titans — not monsters of steel, but men built of it, eight or nine feet tall, plated, hydraulic muscles whirring. At their side walked handlers in grey coats, human faces carved of cold stone. Together they moved door to door, street to street, offering stability in the language of threat. Neighbors whispered of families taken at night. Of people who said no, then vanished. Of screams in a police warehouse no one admitted existed. The receipts told another story: the government offered a set price, a number far below the truth but printed official. Some citizens walked away convinced they had done well, grateful. Others left pale, hollow, receipt crumpled in their fist, eyes already haunted. In a tower block apartment, Ava watched from the window as a Titan crouched at Mrs. Lopez’s door. Its handler read from a tablet. “Coinbase purchase, February 2040. Transfer requested for stability. Treasury will compensate you $15,000 .” Mrs. Lopez shuffled forward in her robe, clutching her exchange statements. She hesitated. Then she signed. Minutes later she came out clutching the receipt, muttering, “It’s fair. More than I ever dreamed of anyway.” Her hands shook as she said it. Ava saw her lips move as if to convince herself. Down the hall another man screamed. “These are my children’s futures! You can’t take them!” The Titan’s sensors flared, and the handler’s voice didn’t change tone. “Non-compliance noted.” The door slammed. Hours later, the family was gone. Only silence remained. Ava turned from the window, fists balled. Behind her, her parents stood steady. Her mother poured coffee as if it were any morning. “This is only the first phase,” she said. “Voluntary. But they will come harder.” Her father placed a SeedSigner in Ava’s palm, circuit board warm from assembly. “Remember: they can only take what they can find.” In a quieter suburb, Mark and Dana Conrad sat inside their living room as a Titan’s booth unfolded in front of them. The handler spoke evenly. “Records confirm holdings. We request transfer. Treasury pays fair market price.” The screen flashed their number: eight hundred thousand dollars at today’s rate. Dana gasped, hand trembling. Mark stared at it, dizzy. Eight hundred thousand was more than their parents or grandparents had ever dreamed of. He thought of the speeches, of war talk, of “protecting democracy” and “sacrifice for the nation.” He wanted to believe this was noble. He signed. The Titan hummed. The receipt printed. “Compliance noted. Thank you for your patriotism.” Dana whispered as they watched the machine leave, “We just gave them everything.” Mark said nothing but filled with regret. At the port, the Ruiz family followed their broker through rain, their children’s jackets heavy with stitched secrets. Shamir shards sewn into seams, one fragment in the dog’s collar tag, one in the mother’s memory, projected into her dreams until she could see it every time she closed eyes. The father clenched a decoy hardware wallet in his pocket, just enough dust for a convincing surrender. At the checkpoint, a Titan crouched. Its handler smiled thinly. “Declare all digital assets. Non-compliance will delay clearance.” The Ruiz children clutched toys. Their mother whispered, “Look forward. Smile.” The officer stamped their papers, cleared them through. The Titan’s sensors hummed but saw nothing. As the family boarded the van, the youngest child whispered, “Did we keep it?” Her mother squeezed her hand tight. “Yes, love. We kept it.” Far away, Ava’s uncle sat on his porch, shotgun across his knees, the dog growling at the dust. The sheriff pulled in, hat in hand, a Titan beside him like a steel shadow. The handler read the tablet. “Records show zero-point-eight Bitcoin purchased 2038. Treasury offers fair market rate. Consent requested.” The uncle rose slowly. His voice was gravel. “You can pass laws, you can walk machines up my drive, but no law makes a slave of a free man. This is mine. Over my dead body.” The handler’s eyes flickered, but he didn’t argue. The Titan’s sensors whirred. The sheriff looked down, then back at the handler. “Not here,” he said, voice tight. “Not tonight.” The Titan folded its booth back into its chest. They left, their threat hanging in the dust like smoke. Back in the city, the plaza filled with families. Titans stood at intervals, blue booths glowing, handlers repeating the script. Some citizens lined up quietly, signing, grateful for their receipts. Others cried, trembling as they handed over keys. The rumor of disappearance was heavy, but so was fear of fines, rationing, frozen CBDC wallets. Better to comply. Better to survive. And then Ava walked forward. The Titan nearest her turned, sensors locking onto her. Its handler read evenly: “Ava Scott. No records found. Please declare holdings. Treasury will compensate you fairly.” She stepped into its shadow, raising an empty hardware wallet in her hand. Her voice cut across the plaza. “Bitcoin was built for this moment. Not for speculation, not for profit, but for freedom from exactly what stands before us today. Satoshi Nakamoto created something unprecedented — property that exists purely as mathematics, beyond the reach of tyrants who would confiscate our futures with the stroke of a pen.” The handler frowned. “Non-compliance noted. You will face consequence.” Ava turned to the crowd, her words ringing off stone. “Every government in history has debased its currency when desperate. Every empire has seized private wealth when it needed funding for wars and corruption. Bitcoin is humanity’s answer to thousands of years of monetary tyranny.” Her voice grew stronger. “They can seize your house — it sits on land they control. They can freeze your bank accounts — those exist in their systems. They can confiscate your gold — it’s heavy, it’s obvious, it’s searchable. But Bitcoin secured properly? Twenty-four words in your mind are your sovereign territory. They cannot waterboard mathematics out of your skull.” A woman in the crowd stepped forward. Then another. The handler’s tablet beeped warnings. “This isn’t about getting rich,” Ava continued, her voice carrying to every corner of the plaza. “This is about the fundamental right to own property that cannot be inflated away, seized without due process, or controlled by politicians who have never worked an honest day in their lives. When you memorize those twelve words, when you verify your own transactions, when you say ‘not your keys, not your coins’ — you are declaring independence from financial slavery.” The crowd began to murmur, then chant. “Not your keys, not your coins.” “They fear Bitcoin because it makes every human being their own bank, their own treasury, their own central authority. No more begging permission to send money to your family. No more watching your savings disappear to money printing. No more being cut off from the financial system because you hold the wrong opinion.” The Titans shifted, sensors whirring in confusion. Their programming hadn’t anticipated philosophy. Ava raised the empty wallet higher. “Bitcoin is hope. Hope that your children will inherit a world where property rights are secured by cryptographic proof rather than political promises. Where the separation of money and state is as fundamental as separation of church and state. Where no parliament, no central bank, no treasury department can vote away your life’s work.” The plaza erupted. Voices joined hers, not in fear, but in defiance that came from understanding. The Titans began to fold their booths. The handlers looked to one another, unsettled. They had expected greed and compliance. Instead they found conviction. The machines turned and marched away. Ava lowered the decoy wallet, chest heaving. Around her, the crowd embraced, some crying, others laughing with the relief of those who had just remembered they were free. She thought of her real seeds — twenty-four words scattered across secure locations only she knew, accessed through methods leaving no digital trace, derived from entropy only she had witnessed. Her family had prepared for this day since Bitcoin’s price was measured in hundreds, not tens of thousands. Ava’s uncle’s words rang in her mind. Over my dead body. She whispered back to the crowd, to herself, to the future: “Not one satoshi. Not one.” And in that moment, the plaza knew that somewhere in the world, freedom still had a fighting chance.

What if nostr:nprofile1qqs2xs05tluhtr6hpgsmqqxp04898gayjlyrjlexcrndv8j6el784xqpp3mhxue69uhkyunz9e5k7qg5waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucn8jgfc64 was wrong. In this week’s story, Different Roads Same Moon we explore how. https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsrwa9h5ujx0sjwppazku8q3kfjdyuqat7c7eltjyjw9j5j8y2jk0q6nxgq0

#asknostr what’s the best relays for writers?

“There is no second best.” — Michael nostr:nprofile1qqs2xs05tluhtr6hpgsmqqxp04898gayjlyrjlexcrndv8j6el784xqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwvd6hyun9de6zuenedye390z3 Two friends. One chose #Bitcoin. The other chose #Ethereum. Only one kept their wealth. Both lost their friendship. What’s worth more — being right about Bitcoin, or holding onto the people you love? New story drop #nostr🎤 —— Different Roads, Same Moon Luke Scott tapped the pier rail with his beer bottle, watching the harbor lights flicker like distant stars. “Remember when we used to come here with our bikes?” Marco Ruiz grinned, settling beside his oldest friend. “And you’d time how long it took the tide to cover that rock. Even then you were obsessed with cycles.” “Someone had to keep track. You were too busy trying to impress Sarah Martinez.” “Hey, it worked eventually.” Marco’s laugh carried across the water. “Different approaches, man. You built spreadsheets for your crushes. I just showed up.” Luke smiled despite himself. Twenty years of friendship, and Marco still approached everything like an adventure while Luke mapped the terrain first. “Speaking of different approaches…” He pulled out his phone, showed Marco his Bitcoin wallet. “Finally convinced you to look at this seriously?” Marco’s expression shifted, playful to guarded. “I looked. But Ethereum’s got actual utility. Smart contracts, DeFi—it’s not just digital gold sitting in a vault.” “Twenty-one million coins, forever,” Luke said quietly. “That’s not a bug, it’s the feature. Ethereum’s got an infinite supply and a teenager running it.” “Vitalik’s a genius.” “Satoshi’s a ghost. Can’t be corrupted, can’t be coerced.” Luke’s voice carried the conviction of someone who’d spent years diving deep. “Marco, this isn’t some tech play. It’s sound money. It’s fixing the root problem. As Michael Saylor says ‘There is no second best.’ Marco raised his bottle. “Then I’m building the future and you’re hoarding gold. To different moons.” Their bottles clinked, but Luke noticed Marco’s smile didn’t reach his eyes anymore. Their friendship had started in third grade when Luke helped Marco with long division and Marco taught Luke how to talk to the cool kids. Through middle school science fairs where Luke built precise models and Marco created wild experiments that somehow worked. High school dates where Luke researched conversation topics and Marco just made people laugh. “You overthink everything,” Marco had said junior year, watching Luke stress about asking Jennifer to prom. “You underthink everything,” Luke shot back, but he was smiling. “That’s why we work.” College separated them—Luke to MIT for computer science, Marco to Berkeley for business. But summers brought them back to the pier, sharing stories about girls who broke their hearts and dreams that kept changing shape. Luke talked about elegant code; Marco talked about changing the world. After graduation, they’d moved to the same city within months of each other. Luke landed at a fintech startup; Marco started a marketing consultancy. Different worlds, same friendship. Every Friday night, they’d end up somewhere, arguing about everything and agreeing about what mattered. Then Luke discovered Bitcoin. 2017 had been the year Luke fell down the rabbit hole. Not just buying Bitcoin—studying it. Austrian economics, monetary history, cryptography. He consumed every Satoshi email, every Andreas Antonopoulos talk, every Saifedean Ammous thread. The deeper he went, the more urgent it felt. Marco watched his friend’s transformation with growing unease. “You sound like you joined a cult.” “I sound like someone who figured out the game is rigged,” Luke replied, not looking up from The Bitcoin Standard. They were at their usual bar, but Luke had his kindle out instead of paying attention to the game on TV. “Fiat money is theft, man. Central banks stealing purchasing power through inflation—” “Okay, but Ethereum’s doing something about it. DeFi is rebuilding the entire financial system. Bitcoin’s just sitting there.” Luke finally looked up. “Bitcoin doesn’t need to do anything else. It’s perfect money. Store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account. Everything else is noise.” Marco ordered another beer. His best friend was disappearing into orange-pilled orthodoxy, and he didn’t know how to get him back. By 2020, Luke had started the podcast. “Stacking Sats with Luke Scott” began as weekend hobby but grew into something bigger. His calm, methodical explanations attracted listeners who wanted Bitcoin education without the Twitter toxicity. Sponsors came calling. Speaking engagements followed. Marco, meanwhile, had discovered Ethereum at $300. Not just the price action—the ecosystem. He started a newsletter called “Building Tomorrow,” tracking DeFi protocols, NFT projects, Layer 2 solutions. His subscriber count grew alongside his ETH stack. They still texted, but conversations felt strained. Luke would send Marco clips from Bitcoin maximalists. Marco would counter with threads about Ethereum’s roadmap. Their group chats with college friends became uncomfortable as others picked sides or asked them to stop arguing. “We’re like those couples who can’t talk about politics anymore,” Marco joked, but neither of them laughed. Sophie entered Luke’s life through the podcast. She managed communications for a Bitcoin venture fund and appreciated Luke’s thoughtful approach. She also noticed how his friendships had narrowed to people who spoke his new language. “You miss Marco,” she observed after Luke mentioned him for the third time that week. “He’s free to join us anytime. Just has to admit he’s been gambling instead of investing.” Sophie said nothing, but her silence spoke volumes. The crash came in May 2028. An exploit of the Ethereum had it come crashing down 95% from its highs, and the protocols Marco championed bled users like punctured balloons. Bugs became rampant and drained billions. Fees hit absurdity. News tickers ran red. Luke called him that first night, genuinely worried. “You okay?” “I’m fine.” Marco’s voice sounded hollow. “Down a lot, but I’m fine.” “Listen man, sell what you can, buy Bitcoin. It’s not about the price—it’s about the philosophy. This is what Austrian economics predicted. Malinvestment, boom-bust cycles—” “Don’t start this now.” “Marco, I’m trying to help. This is your chance to learn from—” The line went dead. Luke stared at his phone, torn between vindication and grief. He’d been right about everything, but being right felt lonelier than he’d expected. About a year later, Marco began his quiet journey back to humility. The crash had shattered more than his portfolio—it had broken his confidence in his own judgment. He sold his remaining altcoins at brutal losses and started dollar-cost averaging into Bitcoin, buying $200 worth every week regardless of price. He couldn’t bring himself to call Luke. His friend had become @StackingSatsLuke, with 150k followers and a premium course on Austrian economics. Marco was just another casualty of the altcoin graveyard, too proud to admit defeat and too broke to matter. Instead, he studied alone. He read The Bitcoin Standard cover to cover, then Layered Money and The Fiat Standard. He joined local meetups where nobody knew him, listened to other people tell their stories of discovery and loss. Slowly, he began to understand what Luke had been trying to tell him. Bitcoin wasn’t just superior technology. It was a return to sound money principles, a check on government overreach, a tool for human flourishing. The network’s simplicity wasn’t a bug—it was the feature that made everything else possible. By 2032, Marco had accumulated 1.8 Bitcoin through disciplined DCA and freelance work. It had taken him three years to understand what Luke had grasped immediately: Bitcoin was patience made manifest, delayed gratification encoded in mathematics. He wrote texts over the years to Luke that he never sent, apologies that felt too small and too late. His old friend had become a celebrity in their small world, hosting conferences and advising institutions. What could Marco offer except admission of failure? The fatal accident happened on a Tuesday morning. Marco was cycling to his new job at a credit union—when a robotic delivery truck glitched and ran a red light-an obscenely rare occurrence. Marco had been cycling for years with self-driving vehicles and never saw it coming. Luke learned about it from Maria, Marco’s sister, who’d found his contact information in a folder labeled “Important People.” “He talked about you all the time,” she said at the funeral. “Said you were the smartest person he knew, even when you two weren’t speaking.” Luke wanted to explain their fight, the years of stubborn silence, the opportunities they’d both let slip away. Instead, he listened as Maria shared stories he’d never heard: Marco volunteering at the community center, teaching kids about money and patience. Marco keeping a photo of them from college on his desk she gave to him. Luke’s chest collapsed. He pressed the photo to his face, choking out a sound of true pain he hadn’t made since childhood. Years of pride, silence, wasted seconds—gone. Maria held his hand and let him weep. Marco said he hoped to reconnect when his pride stopped hurting so much. “There’s something else,” Maria said, handing Luke a folder. “His will mentions you specifically.” Inside was a hardware wallet—a BitBox02—and a letter in Marco’s careful handwriting: *Luke— If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead, which means I never got the chance to call you like I should have. Coward’s way out, I guess. You were right about everything. Took me years and most of my net worth to figure that out, but here we are. I’ve got 1.8 Bitcoin on this wallet, earned the hard way through DCA and discipline. I kept learning from you too just from afar this time. The seed phrase is in my safety deposit box at First National, split between two bank envelopes labeled “For Luke” and “From Marco.” I know you don’t need the money, but I hope you’ll accept it anyway. Not as an investment—as an apology. You tried to save me from myself, and I was too proud to listen. By the time I understood, you’d become famous and I was embarrassed. How do you apologize to someone who became a legend by being right about everything you got wrong? I learned something these past few years: Bitcoin isn’t just about the technology or the economics. It’s about community. About teaching people patience and delayed gratification. About showing them there’s a better way. You built that community first. I hope you’ll remember that friendship matters more than being right. Thanks for trying to save me. I wish I’d listened sooner. Your friend always, Marco P.S. - Check the wallet label. I couldn’t resist one last joke.* Inside the wallet: a hardware device. Its label made him laugh through tears: Seed Phrase Karaoke. He plugged it in. 1.8 Bitcoin sat there, each purchase annotated in Marco’s clumsy notes: “Payday DCA,” “Sold the condo furniture,” “Kids’ coding bootcamp donation.” The final note: Different Roads, Same Moon. Luke closed his laptop and walked to the pier where their friendship had started and ended so many times. The harbor lights reflected off the water like scattered satoshis, each one precious and irreplaceable. He pulled out his phone and recorded a voice memo, something personal he’d never shared publicly: “This is Luke, and I want to talk about something more important than Bitcoin. I want to talk about friendship, and patience, and the difference between being right and being kind…” He posted it that night with a simple caption: “In memory of Marco Ruiz, who taught me that the best HODLers are the ones who hold onto people, not just coins.” The response overwhelmed him. Hundreds of stories about lost friendships, about pride and reconciliation, about the human cost of being right. Marco would have loved the conversation it started. Luke kept the BitBox02 on his desk next to their old photo from the pier. 1.8 Bitcoin that represented more than money—it was proof that people could change, learn, grow back toward each other even when pride built walls between them. Sometimes the best inheritance isn’t what someone leaves you, but what they teach you about what matters most. Marco’s final gift wasn’t the Bitcoin—it was the reminder that no amount of perfect money could buy back the time they’d lost to stubborn silence. The pier still creaked in the evening tide. But now Luke heard it differently—not as a countdown to some distant moon, but as a rhythm that connected all the moments when friendship mattered more than being right.