👀 The next Boston BitDevs will be this Thursday, Nov 13 at Fidelity. Please RSVP so we can add your name to the list for building security.

Evento

BOSTON BITDEVS: Socratic Seminar 32 - Evento

This month we'll be at Fidelity's 245 Summer Street location. Advance RSVP and valid identification are required. The RSVP cut-off is Monday 11/10 ...

And if you really can’t wait, the reading list is now up! Check it out here: bostonbitdevs.org/socratic-32/

Bumper stickers are back in style and I am here for it!!! Don’t commit crime, the government dislikes competition

UX is my passion

It came down to the wire but I finished my son’s Sonic costume last night! The art kid in me was so excited to do this. Happy Halloween! Happy whitepaper day!

“Thanks for picking that up for me! I will Venmo you the money.” “Oh I don’t have Venmo but I can do bitcoin, CashApp, or PayPal” *radio silence* Even if bitcoin has world-class UX, I’m not sure if we’ll ever see widespread adoption until we can figure out how to release the absolute chokehold Venmo has on people, especially millennials. CashApp may not be self custody but at least I can live my bitcoin life if someone uses it to send me money. Venmo has normalized digital payments so much that it’s changed how people behave and has become a verb. Nobody bothers to split bills anymore and they have stopped carrying cash. Why? Because they “can just Venmo you”. I can see stack overflow error happening in real time when I tell my friends I don’t have Venmo because I don’t believe they created the social feature in good conscience and think it’s an awful thing for Venmo to try and normalize the destruction of financial privacy. Yes, you can now make transactions private, even if it’s not the default. No, I don’t care. I’m dying in this hill. I don’t want to link my fiat ass bank account to ANOTHER system when PayPal, which owns Venmo does the exact same thing. And you know what? People have been using PayPal since the dawn of the Internet 2.0. You already have it! And if I’m going to use a newer, mobile, digital payment solution, it’s going to be CashApp because at least I can turn that money you owe me into bitcoin, which is what I actually prefer you pay me back in. To add to that, Block and Jack Dorsey have done so much for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Of course I want to support CashApp! In my experience the hierarchy is: 1. Venmo 2. Zelle 3. Cash (middle ground for “you don’t want to set up CashApp? Weird because I don’t want to set up Venmo!”) 4. “I’ll get your lunch next time” 5. MAYBE PayPal or CashApp 6. Not getting your money back 7. bitcoin So what do I want? Obviously the Bitcoin Standard, but if I can’t have that I want to make cash great again and more people using bitcoin compatible payment solutions. I encourage everyone to join me in a crusade of maximum pain for anyone trying to use something that is not this. We all deserve better! A win-win would be if Venmo integrated bitcoin so then all my Venmo using friends could transact with whoever they wish, using a free and open monetary protocol. For starters it would probably help if I was more often in the scenario of needing to pay people back instead of the other way around…

Is there a succinct way to phrase "technical bitcoin development topics"? Is "bitcoin tech" a thing? It's the closest term I've gotten but it kind of sounds like it means nothing.