"The Lightning Network (LN), the Manhattan Project of Bitcoin, was supposed to give us everything we ever wanted for Bitcoin: scalability and privacy, while still staying super decentralized and non-custodial. While being non-custodial (it just requires you to run your own lightning node with a hot wallet, what could possibly go wrong), it requires your wallet to be online in order to receive a payment. As of today there are 3,735.09 BTC locked in lightning channels (source: 1ML), a whopping 0.017786% of the circulating supply. The top 10 nodes hold ~ 64 % of the advertised channel capacity, with the single largest node (ACINQ) holding ~11 % (source also: 1ML), which is exactly the hub and spoke network topology that early critics of LN predicted." @Frank Braun

Privacy needs to be baked into L1

Privacy is the absence of information leakage and that implies it comes from value at rest, not value in motion. And privacy at rest can only be ga...

#privacy #monero #zcash #lightning

"The zk-nym scheme enables the creation and use of unlinkable, rerandomisable anonymous access credentials that are 'spent' with Gateways in order to anonymously prove that someone has paid for Mixnet access. [...] zk-nyms allow for users to pay for Mixnet access in a manner that is unlinkable to their payment account; even with pseudonymous cryptocurrencies or fiat. This solves one of the fundamental privacy problems with the majority of VPNs and dVPNs in production today: the linkability of a user's session with their payment information, which can in the majority of cases be easily used to deanonymise them, either at the behest of an authority or by the service operators themselves."

Nym docs

What are zk-nyms? – Nextra

Nym's network documentation covering network architecture, node types, tokenomics, and cryptography.

#privacy #vpn #nymvpn

If anyone in the history of humanity has ever referred to it as a giant wall of digital energy, it's a #shitcoin.

If the person you sent it to can see how much change you got back, it's a #shitcoin.

Anyone interested in buying #coffee for #Monero in the #UK? #asknostr

If you’re earning interest, you’re losing money. Save in #Monero. Spend in Monero. Let inflation be the price paid by those who choose to ignore it.

If it passes through a centralised exchange, it’s a #shitcoin.

What purpose does email serve these days, other than to provide a way for spammers to contact you? #SimpleX #Signal #grownostr #privacy

What are your thoughts on #nymvpn? Have you switched to it from another provider? Why or why not? #asknostr

If you’ve never tried #nano, you should. Nano’s privacy is horrendously bad, and not fit for real-world use as-is, but its ability to achieve: - fully decentralised - permissionless - zero-fee - instantaneous - final settlement is second to absolutely none. It’s the gold standard (pun intended?) for a fantastic user experience with digital cash, and its community is highly focused on that (at the expense of privacy, sadly!) Maybe my dream currency is #cashu on top of #nano? 😎

Protonmail isn't "cryptoemail" just because it uses E2EE. It's just email. Similarly, Signal isn't a "cryptomessaging" app. It's just messaging. It's not "cryptobanking" just because your banking app uses TLS to communicate. It's just banking. And it's not #cryptocurrency just because it uses private keys, bulletproofs, and Pedersen commitments. It's just currency. "Crypto" is a misleading and alienating term to non-power users. It sounds special, complicated, foreign - even extreme(ly niche). The fact that cryptography is involved is the least interesting aspect of it to your average user. So let's stop making it sound so mysterious. It's just currency. It's (e.g. #Monero with #CakeWallet) much faster and easier to set up and use than a typical bank account. You can earn it and spend it much like any other currency. The main difference being that you don't need permission to open an account, nor to send or receive funds, as an individual or business. It allows you to do business with anyone, anywhere, with almost no fees. And it's as private as handing someone cash face-to-face. But it's still currency, just better. Welcome aboard! 😎

Two paths for adoption (of #privacy and #permissionless tech): - Try to convince normies, whose eyes tend to glaze over the minute you mention words like fiat, inflation, privacy, surveillance, etc. - Focus on those who are actually interested in the value freedom tech offers, and have consciously experienced the pain of not using it. Collaborate. Build and ship stuff that helps amplify their and your potential. Normies gonna norm. That's OK. They have different priorities. Life is agonisingly short. They accept a different set of tradeoffs. Preach to the converted. Make stuff for the converted. Sell stuff to the converted - and expand outward from there. #grownostr #Monero

Use #Monero to: - buy access to the best AI models with no account, and no personal information at nano-gpt.com - browse the web privately using Mullvad VPN - buy and sell stuff at XMRBazaar.com - convert to anonymous paper money vouchers (gift cards) accepted by your favourite shops using #CakeWallet - swap for other assets anonymously using trocador.app to explore other interesting #privacy tools like Zano, Beam, etc. - onboard a family member, friend, or local merchant by showing them how to install and use Cake or #monerujo - pay for a truly private, E2E encrypted email service with #protonmail (coming summer 2025!) Live free. 😎

A fun thought experiment for house prices: How much would this house be worth if the law required you to pay cash (not borrow) for it? Or for #Bitcoin: What would the price of Bitcoin be if it were delisted from *all* centralised exchanges worldwide? Happy Paper Bitcoin Summer to all the ETF #cypherpunks! 😎

Don't believe the shills who tell you #Bitcoin is the "apex asset". They want you to help their number go up. Time is the apex asset. Your physical health is the apex asset. Your mental health is the apex asset. Your family's health is the apex asset. Your children are the apex asset. A good education (as opposed to a "formal education") is the apex asset. Invest in the people, the goods, and the services that directly contribute to these. They are your apex assets. The only thing more scarce than Bitcoin is every single thing that actually matters in life.

You need Elon's permission to post on Twitter. You need Mark's permission to post on Facebook. You need Mark's permission to post on Insta. You need Neal's permission to post on YouTube. You need Tim's permission to publish your iPhone app. You need Jeff's permission to read your eBook. You need your bank's permission to spend your money. You don't need anyone's permission to use Nostr. You don't need anyone's permission to use #Monero. You don't need anyone's permission to use #Bitcoin. You don't need anyone's permission to build for the web. You don't need anyone's permission to ship your Android app. Live without permission. #grownostr #permissionless #privacy

Which #cashu mint should you choose? Check out: https://audit.8333.space Very cool way to find available mints, and see auditing stats (success rate, speed, uptime) based on actual payments being sent between mints. Nice one, @calle!

I'm keen to test drive cashu. Anyone willing to zap me a few sats to see whether I set it up right? Any sats will do! 😎 #asknostr

Strong #privacy accelerates #entrepreneurship. The less personal data you collect about your customer (ideally none) the faster you can move without worrying about being liable for protecting it. The more confident you are that no one but you can see your LLM chats, the more you can leverage #AI without worrying about who's watching. The easier you make it for your customers and employees to provide anonymous feedback, the better the feedback you will get. Privacy expands our ability to communicate. Embrace it and encourage it!

I love the approach @Maple AI is taking with running an LLM inside a secure enclave powered by @OpenSecret. Incredibly cool way to ensure absolutely no one else can see your chats, not even a privileged user on the host. Two things needed before I will sign up though: 1. Accept a #privacy friendly payment method like #Monero. 2. Don't require an email. A session token is more than enough to identify me. 😎