"Survivors of genocide, totalitarian regimes and conflicts; they're all hopeful for the future because of this thing... and that's maybe its superpower. Not necessarily the scientific properties of it (which are revolutionary) but the hope part of it maybe is the biggest use case of all." Like many others who attended, I struggle to put into words the impact of last week’s Global Bitcoin Summit. I do my fighting from behind a keyboard, or in a suit, but we heard during the event from some of the bravest, most resilient, and most indefatigable people that I’ve ever had the privilege to meet in person. People who had literally survived genocide, escaped from totalitarian nations, or endured torture as political prisoners, and yet who had never given up hope. I’ve returned to the UK inspired - both full of gratitude for having experienced the summit, and invigorated to continue the fight for financial freedom here. Enormous thanks to everyone involved, and especially to @Human Rights Foundation / @HRF (RSS Feed), @gladstein, @Arsh Molu, CK, @Femi Longe, the Bitcoin Park team , @Rod, @Harry, Alex Li, and Anya Chekhovich. It’ll take a while to absorb what we saw and heard. But hope is the key takeaway.

They are literally watching you. Wherever you go, whatever you buy, whatever you do online. The vast majority of us are law-abiding citizens, who want no more than to be left alone. Why should we allow this relentless surveillance to continue unabated, and to permit governments to censor our speech and control our every action? Big Brother Watch are doing great work fighting back against this insidious state attack, but what more can we as individuals do to resist? Eric Hughes wrote. “We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence… We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place… We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it.” This is not a thread intended to help you become a ghost, or to have any chance of really scrubbing yourself from the internet. But it’s a list of some simple steps that anyone can take, even if you’re not technically minded, to protect your data, to make yourself a little less obvious, and to be a little less apparent to a surveillance state than your neighbour. It’s like the joke about two photographers in the savanna taking pictures of a lion. When the lion starts coming their way, licking its lips, one of them pulls on running shoes. “What’s the point of that?” says the other photographer. “You’ll never outrun a lion.” “Forget outrunning the lion,” says the first. “I just need to outrun you”. Privacy-focused 🧵👇 Can I surf anonymously? It’s hard, but try using browsers that minimise the amount of data collection. The Brave browser is a decent option (brave.com). Alternatively, you can go a bit further, and use Tor (torproject.org/download/). DuckDuckGo have recently released their own privacy-focused browser - I’ve not yet tried this, but a link is here: duckduckgo.com/windows?source…. Each of these options should reduce the amount of data about you that’s silently collected in the background by Google, Apple or Microsoft. You can also use a service like Incogni (incogni.com ) to help scrub your data from the internet, to the extent that is possible. Searching in Privacy: We’ve already mentioned DuckDuckGo - they’re probably the best-known of the privacy-focused search engines. Try switching to them instead of Google or Bing: duckduckgo.com Use a VPN: You may have heard of VPNs (virtual private networks) and know that they’re useful in authoritarian countries (like the UK is fast becoming). However, you can use them anywhere, on your computer or your phone, to encrypt your data and mask your IP address, which can help protect your privacy and anonymity when you connect to the internet. I personally use and recommend @Mullvad VPN and I believe @BTC Sessions uses them too. Amusingly, Mullvad were recently raided by the police, but couldn’t surrender any personal information about their customers, because they don’t collect it: theverge.com/2023/4/21/2369… Also Mullvad accept #Bitcoin, if you’d prefer not to let your bank know that you’re paying for a VPN. A private email and calendar: So you’re now using a browser and a search engine that are collecting less of your personal information, and you’ve protected yourself with a VPN. However, every time you sign up for an online service, or a public wifi, you may be asked for your email address - and perhaps you don’t want to surrender this, to be sold on by those companies. Simple fix - create a privacy-focused account. Over time, you may decide to replace your Gmail or Outlook with one of these entirely. I can recommend @Proton Mail who offer a suite of other productivity tools (including a calendar and cloud drive) that are all privacy focused: proton.me/mail. Note that you DON’T have to use your real name when signing up, if you want to preserve your privacy even further. A new service offering similar products is Tuta Privacy. They look interesting but I’ve not trialled them yet: tuta.com/pricing De-Google your phone! If you want to go even further, and don’t mind tinkering with software and hardware, you could get yourself an old Google Pixel and experiment with De-Googling your phone. Privacy-focused operating systems such as @GrapheneOS are relatively easy to install. But do make sure you buy an unlocked Pixel using cash! Graphene OS provide an easy-to-follow installation guide here: grapheneos.org/install/web and there are many good walkthrough videos on YouTube such as this one: youtube.com/watch?v=QOqVOc… After a successful installation, you should have a fully functioning phone that isn’t controlled by a large corporation obsessed with tracking you. You can still run Android apps (even using a sandboxed Google Play Store) or by directly installing the .apks on your new phone. Get what you want - privately: Once you’ve got a nicely de-Googled phone, you’ll need a SIM card and a new number. I can’t recommend @bitrefill enough; not only can you buy an e-SIM from them, using #Bitcoin, but you can also top it up, and buy gift cards and vouchers for almost anything you might want (remember to sign up using your new Proton Mail address though….). For #Bitcoin purchases, ideally use a self-custody Lightning wallet to improve Bitcoin’s relatively poor privacy protections. I have tried and can recommend each of Aqua from @JAN3 and @Phoenix Wallet. Also, although it is multi-currency, @Cake Wallet are doing some interesting things with #Bitcoin silent payments, and @Seth For Privacy, whose views and expertise I trust on these matters, has recently joined their team. More on silent payments here: silentpayments.xyz/docs/explained/. You can also use a service like @peachbitcoin or @Hodl Hodl to buy #Bitcoin privately without KYC. Private messaging: Try @Signal. It’s end to end encrypted, and can be used both for calls and messaging. Signal’s president, Meredith Whittaker, has done sterling work fighting back against bad laws and government overreach. signal.org Simplex is also gaining traction, but UX is still improving. NOSTR! You're here, which is great. They can't censor you here. I can’t say anything better about this new protocol than the inimitable @gladstein so to quote him directly: “Nostr is a community-run digital network highly resistant to censorship and corruption. It has 40,000 weekly active users and a growing ecosystem of clients and applications ranging from social media to long-form publishing to payments.” I highly recommend you check out his recent piece on Reason to learn more:

Reason.com

Can Nostr make Twitter’s dreams come true?

Twitter's founder says Nostr is “100 percent what we wanted”—an open, ownerless network.

Can I block facial recognition? We’re now getting into more esoteric levels of personal protection, and I have to say I have not tested these products. However, given the increasing noise in the UK about the ubiquity of personal surveillance and facial recognition, I might be tempted to try. These glasses claim to be able to block and scramble facial recognition technology (although they’ll be ineffective against gait-recognition tech. Not sure what to do about that other than to wear pebbles in our shoes?) reflectacles.com/#home They do have a decent review here:

DefenseReview.com (DR): An online tactical technology and military defense technology magazine with particular focus on the latest and greatest tactical firearms news (tactical gun news), tactical gear news and tactical shooting news.

Reflectacles Sunglasses: Urban-Cool Counter-Surveillance Eyewear for Professionals and Civilians Alike!

By Toby Melville September 29, 2023 Eyewear has been an important component of fashion for decades, but for the armed professional, eyewear has bec...

Hopefully, with some of these tips, you’ll be able to improve your privacy and control of your data even to a small degree.

Nostr has changed a lot from the scrappy PV days. Largely in good ways. But it was a fun time.

You may have seen the clip of Steve Baker doing the rounds this weekend. You may have laughed or dismissed his comments, perhaps because you disagreed with him on Brexit. But if you did so, please listen again, because what he's saying is important: "Your government rode an enormous credit boom within which the money supply tripled, leading to the global financial crisis…and a sense of injustice which has led to many of our subsequent troubles.” Then read the article shared in the thread, on the $91 trillion debt burden that is currently facing nation states around the world. There is an unpalatable truth here, which sooner or later we are going to have to acknowledge: The only way to get rid of a $91 trillion dollar debt is to debase the currency to the point where a trillion dollars will only buy you a loaf of bread. There’s no sensible way in which a debt of this magnitude can ever be repaid, either through growth or taxation. So what may be likely to happen in the coming years, as this vast web of obligations compounds and continues to grow at an accelerating rate? This is a problem currently confronting Rachel Reeves, our new Chancellor, and Labour, and with which they must engage. Debt, and credit, are not necessarily bad things. Credit oils the wheels of commerce, and enables us to pull profits from the future to invest and to grow businesses today. But the warnings of the Ancient Greeks and the Romans that we should do ‘nothing to excess’ were as true for them as they are for us (nihil nimius in Latin, meden agan in Greek – common sayings for each culture, but sadly forgotten by us). There is no sense in which government debts equal to the size of the entire global economy are not excessive and are not a gigantic problem almost beyond resolution. There are ways out, but none of them palatable. Default, refinancing, or inflation – which will we choose? (Remember that inflation, the enemy du jour, is actually rather good for some people – especially those who owe large sums of money; like nation states). In our credit-based system, money is nothing more than another person's liability (whether the liability of a central bank, or of a commercial bank). It is backed by absolutely nothing other than the belief that the liability will be repaid (to quote even more Latin, this is the origin of the word 'credit', which comes from the Latin credo credere, to believe). If a person holding your liability money begins to believe that you're not good for the money, the entire edifice collapses. Governments cannot allow this loss of faith to happen. Remember, modern money is backed by absolutely nothing other than faith and belief. So a voluntary default (a refusal to pay) is off the table. Refinancing is possible - issuing new debt to pay the principal and coupon of the old. This is the route most governments that can still access the bond markets have taken to date. This works up to a point, much like taking out a new credit card to pay off a previous one. This doesn't get rid of the debt – it merely moves it around and can make it easier to service, but ultimately adds to the debt burden in the long run and has the unfortunate effect of compounding it at the same time. If you’d like to see this in highly unpleasant action, just read up on how the IMF and the World Bank treat borrower nations in the global south. I would recommend the excellent book 'Hidden Repression' from Alex Gladstein (link in the thread). Which leaves us with debasement through inflation. Governments will almost never admit or articulate this, but the surest way to get rid of a trillion dollar government liability is to debase the currency to the point where the nominal value of their obligations is negligible when measured in a currency whose actual value they have destroyed. The quote below is from ‘When Money Dies’, a seminal work on the Weimar inflation. Bondholders and mortgage holders might eventually have got repaid in nominal terms – but the amounts they received were meaningless in comparison to the actual value of the assets that the debtors held (such as houses). This is a nation state problem, but the profligacy of nation states has also made it YOUR problem. Governments are by their nature unproductive - their sources of income are typically either their citizens (through taxation) or accrued via issuing liabilities against their good name (which, in a circular fashion, is actually yours). In one sense, nation states levy taxes not because they need the money – they can usually print it, after all – but in order to reassure the potential purchasers of their government debt that they are good for the money (belief, once again). The exceptions to this tend to be the states that are the net exporters of the fundamental currency that actually enables civilisation to exist, namely energy. So how can you protect yourself, if the conclusion is that the only likely solution to this gigantic problem is strategic inflation and currency debasement? One option is to save whatever you can in hard and finite assets that cannot be replicated or produced with zero cost. That is, don't think you can save in government liability money. Unfortunately, this practice has already hugely contributed to housing inequality in the UK, where, whether they know it or not, the richest among us have figured this out and keep their money not in cash but in houses. You too should have the right to protect yourself - but I'd also like to see an alternative to a 'flight to housing' that exacerbates other social issues. Perhaps find something else. Ideally something that the government cannot confiscate when the house of cards finally comes tumbling down. You'll likely know what I would recommend. But this is something you'll need to decide for yourself, and on behalf of your children, who will unfortunately inherit the mess that our governments and central banks have made.

It is both terrifying and uplifting that most users of Nostr will understand money creation, currency debasement and the role played by central banks better than a man who was the chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden under Obama. He is right that a country which controls its own currency cannot go bankrupt. But that he cannot coherently describe why a country 'borrows' money that it can itself create is nothing short of appalling. It isn't hard to understand that the borrowing itself is in no small way how the money is actually created - because all modern money, other than gold and #Bitcoin   , is nothing more than someone else's liability.  The government creates a debt obligation (a bond) and it promises to pay back the buyers of that debt obligation, together with a coupon or percentage rate (fun fact: these used to be actual physical coupons attached to the paper bonds, which is where the name comes from). The new money is backed only by trust that this liability will be repaid.  It's liability money, backed by nothing more than belief. And it gets worse than this, when we consider how central banks themselves fund governments. When a central bank buys a government bond or makes a loan to a bank, it doesn't pay with cash. Instead, it merely credits the seller's or the borrower's account with new money that it creates from nothing, on a spreadsheet or a ledger it controls. When creating this new money, from thin air, with a mere keystroke, the central bank dilutes the unit value of all the other money currently in the system prior to that point. The new money floods into the system, being exchanged for less liquid assets, and for goods and services. Inflation results; and prices are driven up in the process.  So what can we do? Is there anything we can do to stop this flywheel? Not while we continue to use the liability money that they control and debase. But we now have an alternative. They are fighting us, as hard as they can, because they are desperate that people do not understand how this process works, and how central banks and governments can dilute and debase their national currencies, to the benefit of a few and the detriment of many.  Because the many are beginning to realize that perhaps, after all, they do not need to use only those national currencies that are melting like ice cubes in the sun. There is a new game in town - a money that can't be diluted, or debased, or issued without cost at the stroke of a key.  Thiers’ law states that good money will drive out bad money. And time is surely up for bad and collapsing monies.  Even if Jared Bernstein won't be able to explain why.

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Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) on X

This is absolutely priceless. And probably the most frightening clip you'll ever watch on the people in charge of the US economy. Jared Bernstein ...

If, like many of us, you feel a bit taken aback by events of the past week in #Bitcoin    , you may be wondering about what you can do, practically, to maintain your ability to transact freely and to preserve your privacy. Whatever the enemies of freedom may tell you, in free and democratic countries it remains lawful to possess your own property, and to continue to hold and use that property without fear of unlawful search and seizure. You should confidently continue to pursue self custody of your bitcoin with the knowledge that the law is on your side, even if certain people in positions of power are not. However, it is important to remember that Bitcoin was intended to be a peer to peer system, and that delegating our personal responsibility to third party custodians has meant that the robustness of the system to resisting attacks has diminished. If you want to be able to continue transacting freely with your bitcoin, or holding it peacefully and lawfully, then you may want to take some steps to ensure that the system is as robust and as widely distributed as possible. As we know from the Cypherpunk's Manifesto, a 'widely dispersed system can't be shut down.' Here are some concrete suggestions of things that we can all do, right now, to ensure that the Bitcoin system is as widely dispersed as possible, and that each of us can continue interacting with it freely, no matter what. I'll give further details on each of these, and will put links in the thread, but as a start: 1. If you don't already, learn how to run a node, and start running one. 2. Learn how to open your own Lightning channels on your node. 3. Use open source, non-custodial wallets 4. Learn how to connect these wallets to your nodes 5. Really focus on understanding self custody. 1. Run a node Why is this important? It keeps the Bitcoin network of transaction validators as widely-dispersed as possible and helps to maintain the censorship-resistance of the network. If you run your own node, you will at the same time have access to a wallet that can't be removed from an app store and cannot be shut down.  I run two - one on a little umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4 (photo below) and the other on an old pc.  If you've never done this before, then Umbrel is a fun place to begin. You may also want to look into @start9labs - each provide a good basis to learn how to do this and become part of the network. 2. Learn how to use lightning in a self custodial way Opening and closing channels costs sats; but your own channels mean that you are much more likely to maintain access to them. See the great tutorial from @BTCsessions in the thread. A second tutorial on Fedi is also linked. 3. Use open source, non custodial wallets Especially if, like Mutiny, they can be installed as a progressive web app and don't need to be listed in one of the app stores. Either @MutinyWallet or @ZeusLN are great options.  4. Connect your wallet to your node Zeus especially will enable you to be fully self-sovereign in this context. 5. Focus on self-custody I cannot recommend the guide from @parman_the enough (link in thread). If you are starting from a position where your coins are still in a custodial wallet on an exchange, read the article in the thread below as a starting point, and begin working your way up the levels of self custody. Bitcoin may be under attack; but this is what it was designed for. If it were not continually attacked, there would be no incentive for Bitcoin to improve, or for us, its users, to improve our own practices. You are not alone, and you are not helpless. I hope the suggestions in this post will give anyone new to self custody, or exploring it for the first time, some pointers as to further reading - and encouragement that while we are in a fight, we are absolutely and unequivocally going to win it.

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Sovereign Computing | Start9

Sovereign computing for a free future

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BTC Sessions 😎 (@BTCsessions) on X

In the US? Hate having to keep switching lightning wallets because your government is full of tyrants? Get the @MutinyWallet progressive web app. N...

Bitcoin Storage – The ZeroTrust System – Bitcoin Guides

ZEUS: Bitcoin payments your way

A bitcoin wallet fit for the gods

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How to set up a Bitcoin Node with Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4

Run your own node and achieve unparalleled privacy by connecting your wallet directly to your Bitcoin node.

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Build your own "DIY" Bitcoin & Lightning node, and other stuff on a personal computer. No need to trust anyone else.

You think that’s money in your bank account? It’s not – that money isn’t really there at all. What do I mean by this? All modern monies, with the exception of silver, gold and #Bitcoin   , are liability monies – by which I mean that they are nothing more than a promise by someone else to pay up. They’re a credit and claim system, nothing more. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this from first principles. Indeed, some schools of thought suggest that a system of credit money may have arisen earlier in human society than a system of commodity money. That is, a society that functions by keeping track of mutual promises and obligations could well have emerged before a system that designated gold or some other asset as a token that could be exchanged for any promise, good or service. Where the problem arises is hidden deep in the nature of the word “credit.” “Credit” is derived from the Latin verb Credo, Credere, Crediti, Creditum, which meant “to believe” or “to trust”. Credit or liability money only works, even at the nation state level, for as long as you believe the person making a promise, and trust that they’ll pay up. When you deposit your money at a bank, for example, you exchange your money for a promise. As a matter of law, what you technically have at this point is not “money” in your account, but a claim against the bank in an amount equal to the sum of money you deposited with them. As long as you trust and believe that the bank is good for the money, then all is well. But as soon as you and other depositors lose that faith, then you get a bank run. And thanks to fractional reserve banking, almost all banks will have made more promises to their depositors than they can repay at any one time. If everyone asks them to make good on those promises at once, then the bank will fail. What’s the analogy at sovereign level? What happens when a vastly indebted nation state begins to look as though it can’t service its gigantic debt burden, whether that is thirty-four trillion or a paltry 2.6 trillion? Very simply, a nation state typically has two choices when faced with a snowballing debt burden; and in these circumstances you really want to be a nation state whose debts are denominated in a currency you control – if the United States, you want to owe dollars, and if the United Kingdom, pounds sterling. The first choice is to default on the debt burden, which no right-thinking country will do. Remember, the entire system is built on credit and belief. Lenders NEED to believe in you; they NEED to trust that you’ll repay them. The dollar, remember, is no longer backed by gold. We’re told it is backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States”. So no hard default is going to be remotely likely. Without belief, the system collapses; and they cannot allow people to stop believing (even less than Journey could 😉). Therefore, almost all nations will take the less unpalatable route of creating new units of the currency they control in order to service and repay their debts. Lenders (namely all the people, companies and other nation states who hold those government bonds) will get repaid the right number of currency units, but the value of those units, and their purchasing power, will have been destroyed and debased by the dilution of the total value of the currency as a result of the money printing. If a nation’s debts are denominated in its own currency, it will always print to repay those debts. It prints more and more promises to repay, more and more units of credit or liability money, but in doing so it dilutes the worth of its own credit at the same time as it debases its currency. It’s at times like this that you might want to have a bit of a safety net in the form of a commodity money that is no one’s liability, a money with no counterparty risk that hasn’t been swapped for an empty promise from an insolvent bank or a bankrupt government, a money that you can hold onto and secure yourself, no matter the cascade of failing credit institutions, breaking under the weight of their liabilities. Counterparty risk is only as good as the counterparties. And when our faith in those counterparties runs out, the money follows very quickly.

Regulators are determined to come after #Bitcoin. Although many in the community are opposed to regulation in its entirety, my view is that that if regulation is coming (or already here), we need to do everything we can to make sure it is good and decent and does not impede the proper operation of the most important aspects of #Bitcoin . We discussed this approach recently on What Bitcoin Did, in the links below. Having said this, why is it so hard to create, and lobby for, good and thoughtful regulation? Firstly, in the UK, the instinctive reaction of regulators (and in particular the FCA) has been aggressive and one of reactive and unhelpful opposition to #Bitcoin, coupled with an unwillingness to listen to those at the coal face of the industry. Scroll through their publications or public statements and you will find the same old chestnuts: “it's a speculative asset with no use case”; “it has no intrinsic value”; “it is not backed by anything” (this last one being a particularly amusing, when you consider that a large number of the British public still labour under the misapprehension that the pound sterling is backed by our gold reserves). Instead of levying these (frankly childish) allegations at #Bitcoin , they should instead take advantage of the very large number of people working in the industry who are ready to give up their time to assist the FCA in understanding, as far as it is possible to do so, what exactly Bitcoin really is, and what its properties really are. Secondly, we unfortunately see poor and ineffective regulation emerging as a direct result of this reactive opposition and their failure to pay attention to advice. Without understanding what Bitcoin is, regulators cannot regulate it, or its buyers, in any sensible fashion. By way of example, take the ludicrous categorisation of #Bitcoin  as a restricted mass market investment, which has required exchanges to impose ‘cooling off’ periods, and customers to answer questionnaires before they can buy on exchanges. Or, if you don’t want to do this, you can easily circumvent the FCA’s laughable attempts at preventing access to #Bitcoin    by buying the asset simply and easily in a peer-to-peer and KYC-free manner with an app on your phone. Utterly ineffective regulation is not good regulation – it is in fact idiotic and makes a mockery of the entire process. It is symptomatic of a resolute failure to engage or to understand that this asset is unlike anything they have dealt with before, that its properties are unique – and that furthermore, it is impossible to write rules for the way that both people and the legal system interact with #Bitcoin  if you do not at least attempt to understand its properties first. If a regulator proposes a rule enabling Bitcoin to be confiscated from self-custody, they need to understand this is impossible without either keyholder cooperation or actual physical violence. If a regulator proposes that UTXOs be frozen, then they need to tell us how. If a regulator attempts to ban Bitcoin, we need to show them that users will keep holding and using it regardless. Most importantly of all – I would exhort the FCA and all other government regulators to make use of the many volunteers in the industry who will give up their time and expertise to assist them in making good and effective regulation. Don’t consult them only to ignore their expertise. I quote from the FCA’s recent policy statement released in response to feedback they had from the industry: “On our proposals for cryptoassets, respondents generally disagreed with our proposal to categorise cryptoassets as Restricted Mass Market Investments (RMMI)… Having considered the feedback, we intend to proceed as consulted with categorising cryptoassets as ‘Restricted Mass Market Investments’.” Suggestion: if you’re learning to drive a car, it’s best to follow the advice of your driving instructor. Don’t simply try to make up a new Highway Code as you go. No one else will pay attention to it.