Oh Nick Szabo’s back 👀

It seems like core thinks that if Luke just goes away everything will be fine, but I don’t think people really are following Luke as much as they’re reacting to how core was moving. The nice part is that it’s much easier to smooth things over with your users than to make someone disappear

Idk I think people should be free to have bad ideas in private

I moved to NH with the free state project in 2013. That has a certain connotation to it now, because a lot of people who moved really sort of just flailed their arms around and made a performative scene. Still do. What made me come back, and stay, were the people who got in deep and changed things. A lot of freedoms here the loud ones talk about that were unlocked by the quiet ones.

As a poor startup founder I’ve been using desktop Linux and the worst part is manually updating discord every day

My most controversial bitcoin opinion is Dennis Porter made the best use of the Bitcoin engagement farm by flexing it into state level advocacy that’s led to more state level legislation than dedicated Bitcoin think tanks And most of the influencer hate against him is jealousy / envy. It’s a countersignal. There are people out there engagement farming as much as him and ending up on the wrong side of many bitcoin “issues” du jour

Gotta hang on to the freedom tech

The miner previously famous for announcing they were only going to mine ofac compliant blocks has launched a private txn submission product whose main feature is easily bypassing mempool policy. Pieter Wuille in an interview with optech said “[Out of band payments and private mempools are] our biggest enemy. Among the top contenders of the biggest threats to Bitcoin in the short to medium term” If private mempools become more attractive than the p2p mempool built into core, Bitcoin will have a serious centralization problem. Now imagine the company running that private mempool also has a press release out that they only mine ofac compliant blocks. See where this is going? So much of this conversation has been caught up in jpeg this and censorship that, when in reality this is the real problem. Literally the ofac block company is standing up the service that could actually seriously harm Bitcoin. Knowingly? I don’t know, and honestly I’m sure the core devs had something to say about it, but I’m surprised the social media hornets nest did not. Instead of hearing this very compelling message in support of core’s actions, I’ve been reading all this shit about this core dev actually isn’t very smart and mempool policies are censorship Actually. It is such a missed opportunity to align actual significant efforts to maintain bitcoin’s decentralization and neutrality with the social immune system of the Bitcoin community. I wish I had put it together sooner. Core is supposed to write good code, but there’s this secret other thing that needs to be done, and that’s making sure people run it. I don’t think it’s entirely the Core devs’ jobs, but I think the bit would have helped a lot. Code is law but it’s nothing if no one runs it. I feel like no one wanted to stir the pot? But every core dev is adjacent to a professional pot stirrer. What are the influencers good for if not this? And now, instead of being a little mean to one of the literal worst miners, core has to deal with people questioning whether they’ll even run their code. It’s a shame because I think the threat is real, and the actions are justified. Being a little clearer about the reasons why would do a lot.

David Bailey really did it All the buckling up was worth it 🥹

If I were wanting to make a big impact on bitcoin payments and I was working with big fintech apps with Bitcoin capability. I’d ship Pay to lightning from fiat. Buy / send out in one step (after confirmation of course) - no btc exposure for people who don’t want it - maximal compatibility globally - further shores up the access argument. Big fintechs can make this happen for many users

Ideas are meaningless without execution and the ability to follow through. If you’re only able to copy someone else, you’re always a step behind.

How can c= generate such a return with just routing? Lightning liquidity is the most underestimated part of the network. It’s part of what we solve at moneydevkit, but here’s a bit about how we did it at Block 1. Real transactions. Cash is one of the biggest lightning services on the network. It connects millions to lightning, and as Miles pointed out, more and more people are using it everyday. By nature of cash being custodial, we had insights into what people were using lightning for. This was part of the original thesis of c=. There are some big players out there that node runners have no idea about 🤷🏻‍♂️. Lightning privacy works very well. Apologies monero trolls. 2. Liquidity in our favor Most people buy bitcoin on cashapp and withdraw (based) That transaction flow is ideal for lightning, and in the right hands, you can flex it to pay for and make a handsome return on your own payments and operations. For the plebnet inclined— c= is an inbound generator. For its capacity it’s typically had 1-3X+ more inbound than outbound. This is a very unique position on the network. 3. Strategy The management the team did not only improved the experience for Cash users, it compounded payments and fees going through our channels. We expected to get some return, but we were pretty blown away by the volumes and takes. The ROI we collected was not from Cash. This was just step 0.5. The next steps were to flex our position and liquidity to bolster bigger and higher value things. One of those was Square. In the end, the real value comes from real people making real payments. It’s why I’ve always harped on this: We don’t need X protocol or Y L2. The technology is there. We need to do the hard part of bringing it to real people now. For you nostr folks consider— on-chain fees were never even a thought in our minds. Our margins were fat.

Huge shout out to the c= team, I wish I could be there celebrating with you. 10% ROI on Block's bitcoin and building the first Square lightning integration are huge accomplishments and hard won. Both unprecedented, I am so proud of all of you. We put together an amazing team and did exactly what we set out to do. I am so happy some of this work finally gets to see the light of day. Teams that start from nothing and put out the results you did are rare and extremely valuable. Most startups only dream of hitting $1M ARR. This is the work that makes the dream happen. Considering what it took, you guys are miracle workers. It's my sincere hope that work like this can shine through more often at Block unimpeded.

Congrats to the team that built this. A huge accomplishment. This is how it starts. View quoted note →

People do not want to “be on chain” they just want to do normal things. There is no UX path that starts with “well first they will learn crypto with stablecoins and then…” The first part of that statement is already garbage.

From: Nostr