Just been blocked by bank to withdraw cash as I’m traveling abroad. You have funds but you cannot take it back due to limits and authorization. It reminds me : not your keys not your coins . It is true for crypto and particularly true for fiat. Bitcoin is a real game changer for financial independence.

Is it me, or for a nice looking AI generated app Lovable is the best ? Curious to have your thoughts?

I'm genuinely impressed by how quickly the Nostr community continues to evolve the protocol. Particularly, how it keeps proving it's much more than a social protocol. The Open Marketplace Protocol is another great example. With the same event model, we can build: ⚡ Product listings ⚡ Collections ⚡ Merchant preferences ⚡ Encrypted order communication ⚡ Order processing Simple primitives. Endless possibilities. Just signed events, sovereign identity, and builders shipping faster than ever. Fascinating how every new NIP and protocol expands what's possible without sacrificing simplicity. Nostr is becoming that missing data layer. ⚡ If this gets you excited, zap it and tell me: what should we build next on Nostr?

The more I work on distributed systems, the less I think of Nostr as a social protocol. I increasingly see it as a trust protocol. What fascinates me isn’t the social layer—it’s that every event is cryptographically signed and independently verifiable. That changes how I think about coordination between systems. Instead of trusting the infrastructure, you can trust the data itself. I think that’s a fundamental shift, and I’m excited to explore where it leads. What do you think—is Nostr’s biggest opportunity social media, or trust infrastructure?

Started in the blockchain space 10 years and the on the decentralized identity but it is not resolved, until... Until I discovered Nostr. I think we were trying to solve the right problem with the wrong tools: blockchain, smart contracts, etc. But Nostr isn't a blockchain at all. It takes a different approach: • One cryptographic identity • Controlled by the user • Portable across applications • Decentralized by design I believe the next generation of software won't be defined by who owns the platform—but by who owns the identity. If you were building a product today, would you still build authentication around user accounts—or around user-owned identity?

Often people ask me why do you stay in crypto? AI’s progress is eating the word, but there is always another side of the coin. What I like and why I’m staying in the crypto space in particularly around Nostr and bitcoin, it is because the goal is the individuals. Not the pure progress. Focusing on creating more freedom, more decentralization and more purpose for human behavior should be to goal!

What happens when a SaaS company loses access to the platform that owns its audience? Most businesses don't realize they rent their customer relationships. Open identity protocols are interesting because they allow users and businesses to retain ownership independently of any platform.

There’s no Stripe solution for Lightning payments—and that’s crazy. While stablecoins get all the Stripe integrations, if you want a sovereign business on sound money, Lightning is the only way. Without it, you’re left managing compliance and taxes all on your own

Web3 proved we can build global peer-to-peer systems — and also that complexity is just attack surface in disguise; Bitcoin’s real innovation wasn’t programmability, it was constraint, and the next wave of builders will win by designing less, not more.

Bitcoin makes a different bet: conservatism over expressiveness, physics over governance, simplicity over feature velocity. That bet has compounded for 15 years.

We just shipped a major upgrade to pricestr.xyz — pushing Bitcoin price discovery further into true decentralization. We’ve added new integrations with Hyperliquid, Chainlink and Uniswap, to build a broader, more resilient BTC price signal. Instead of relying on a single source of truth, pricestr now aggregates: - On-chain liquidity signals (Oracle, DEX pricing + AMMs) - Off-chain oracle data feeds - Peer-to-peer market pricing from perps and trading venues The result: a more robust, censorship-resistant Bitcoin price that better reflects how markets actually behave across ecosystems. This is what decentralization looks like in practice — not just ideology, but infrastructure.

Bitcoin builders are such a great community. Discuss with few of them today ! Enlighten folks seeking more recognition and sustainability to create open source for a better Bitcoin usage.

As a business trying to accept Bitcoin in the Nostr era - You don’t just want to “accept Bitcoin”. - You want to receive value natively. You want Instant. Permissionless. No friction. So you start looking for a way to plug it into your business. And… nothing really feels right. Too many layers, too much friction. What you really want is simple. Self-custodial, decentralized and loyalty oriented. This is what I built:

bitlasso - Repeated Bitcoin payments for businesses

Create self-custodial Lightning payment checkouts, mint Bitcoin-anchored loyalty receipts, and turn one-time work into repeat revenue with programm...

Nostr is a powerful engineering tool for modern decentralized apps. I’ve been exploring this technology to create apps that last—reducing the need for backend servers, whether for persistence, communication, or synchronization layers. This is underestimated. It’s too often framed as just a social network, but it goes far beyond that. There is so much potential. For example, we often have to deal with authentication. With Nostr, you can replace that with public key authentication—no more JWT, OAuth, etc. What about settings and customization across systems or apps? You can build that with Nostr as well. It’s as simple as publishing events—completely under your control and decentralized. Need a notification system? No more SMTP to configure, push services to maintain, or other infrastructure. Just push messages to a user’s Nostr profile—directly to their mailbox and without censorship. Want to reduce your storage dependencies and improve persistence fault tolerance? Write your data to Nostr relays and benefit from strong redundancy, auditable authorship, and cryptographic trails. Let users bring their own feed into your app. Let them tip other users with Bitcoin over Lightning. As you can see, many aspects of modern apps can be addressed through strong and efficient decentralization—without necessarily relying on full Web3 or blockchain protocols. But when you combine Nostr with those technologies, it becomes a nuclear power source for your apps. Let me know if this is of interest to you. I’m dedicating a major branch of HexQuarter to Nostr’s decentralized capabilities, and I would love to hear your feedback. Go beyond traditional ideas and disrupt your industry.

Expert Take: 10 Years in the Bitcoin Ecosystem A decade in this industry sharpens your lens. Crypto developers are fleeing to AI. The numbers don’t lie: -8 points of active blockchain devs in 2025, GitHub commits down ~75%, and over $270B in VC flowing toward AI versus $49.75B for crypto. LinkedIn’s fastest-growing roles? All AI. I’ve watched this pattern before. A wave of developers drawn by opportunity — then gone just as fast. This exodus isn’t a mystery. It’s the reflection of a short-termist approach, dictated by trends rather than conviction. But for those who are deeply aligned with the values of freedom, transparency, fairness, censorship resistance, and sound money — there is no better sector to build a lasting legacy in. They say it takes 10 years to truly master a domain. The “snake” strategy — slithering from trend to trend — can generate quick wins. But it builds nothing solid. I chose the long game. Human and societal values. The conviction that technology can genuinely liberate the individual — during our brief time on this earth. Not the trend. Not the opportunity of the moment. Proud of these 10 years. Proud to keep building.

Today I just replaced my website blog post system by coding a simple Nostr client. Awesome how slick and powerful it is.

Most people “learn blockchain” by reading. I learned it by building apps… then protocols. And once you’ve built blockchains from the inside, you stop falling for hype. That’s how I ended up in Bitcoin. Not because it’s trendy — because it’s engineered to survive reality. Build > narratives.