Nostr’s killer app might be Nostr Wallet Connect. 😆 View quoted note →

Haha this video. Honestly I can’t fathom that this is convincing to anyone who doesn’t already just have the long dick of the govt in their mouth 24/7. Imagine explicitly making the claim that “letting govt and banks create as much money as they want was a great thing for trust.” His framing in this suggests we are winning. He is *defending* fiat. Never underestimate the value of framing. He feels he NEEDS to defend it. Which means he is afraid it is losing its status and power and that they are on the back foot. Yuval you are exactly right, #Bitcoin is built on distrust, and nobody trusts you dumbass. 😆 View quoted note →

As much as I think this is a useful development for a lot of people, especially in the developing world - it’s also a huge banner for regulators that says “CHECK HOW OBVIOUSLY MONEY TRANSMITTING WE ARE!” If Lightning is left to only bitcoin, I think it can be more easily argued that it is separate and unique in construction and should also be in the regulatory framework. But if it’s being used to move dollars around, I think we lose a massive edge in maintaining that perception. All they will see is a dollar payment network where they cannot see into all of the accounts, can’t KYC every user, and can’t freeze the payments. And they will do everything they can to gain that level of control, and far worse likely, if they have such a clear target. View quoted note →

I’ll add another: When I realized that the “politics leads everything in history and the important events were due to kings, czars, militaries, and presidents.” Only to learn the reality is that all politics is downstream of economic incentives and the technological and even natural environment. That which kind or queen did or said what and won or lost which war was largely irrelevant to the fact that gun powder had been invented and the very landscape of what is possible in politics and the economics of violence had shifted wildly and everything was going to change including the very architecture of political power. Public schools have this completely backward, and I think it’s because a political education system is inherently obsessed with the political power ideology. View quoted note →

What’s something you learned that completely changed how you saw everything? I’ll start: When I found out that being healthy and losing weight wasn’t about spending hours exercising & running miles every day, but that 90% of the battle was just about removing horrifically unhealthy (and very normalized) chemical substitute, grain heavy, “fat free”, and sugar packed foods - but was just about getting back to the basics and animal based fats. Everything else is crazy easy after you do that. Then to add, that your mood, depression, energy levels, are also SO insanely dependent on that same problem. What was one of yours?

So @Boeing obviously murdered the whistleblower exposing them and the govt doesn't care. @jpmorgan banked Jeffrey Epstein and his pedo ring for decades to the tune of billions but somehow money laundering needn't be investigated. But because the @npub16v2d...enz8 devs didn't KYC the users of a basic (NON custodial) privacy wallet, the govt is tripping over themselves to lock them in a cement box for as long as possible. We truly live in the Clown World Age. The real criminals literally run our govts. #LandoftheFree

GM Why did the CDC and major health institutions stop reporting mortality data over 2 years ago after more than a year of reporting it weekly? 🤔

Between #Bitcoin, #Lightning, #Fedimint, #Statechains, #Nostr, and #Pears, theres almost nothing we can’t build and no problem we can’t solve. (Ai as an honorary mention but it feels less like a strict tool/protocol rather than a new means of interacting and building with all of the above)

Whenever a service or person asks you for feedback, always mention what you wish it was and the tools that could get it there. #Nostr #Bitcoin #Lightning #Pears Canceled my Medium subscription and this was my reason: " @npub1w0rt...cu4x.com (on Nostr protocol) has free hosting, while it and all other services on Nostr let me pay in sats on an individual basis and without subscription, I can also very easily tip authors and receive tips in sats (bitcoin). I made more in sats from just one article than I have ever made on this or any other platform (I'm not an avid writer, but that only makes it more meaningful that I earned real money, imo). In addition, I don't have to create a new profile or username/password for any of the different services, my profile simply travels with me and logging in or paying doesn't put any of my data at risk. I can also easily highlight and post to Nostr natively because it all has the same profile connected to the same network. Seems a lot harder to justify paying for Medium. Thanks, good luck!"

I feel that so far in #Bitcoin, #Nostr, and the #Pears stack we’ve had a strong focus on two things: • User facing wallets, app, and features • And fundamental network design and implementation However, there are drawbacks to what we’ve focused on: The fundamental network development is critical, but isn’t understood and doesn’t interact well with the end user. While the end user wallets and services often have huge trade offs and rely on third parties or custodians. We have basically let the market for centralized companies work to bridge between these two areas of development and demographics of the community. But as has been shown with recent arrests and the fear rippling through public service providers, I think it’s critically important that we start focusing on building tools to BE a service provider, that are as simple and easy to operate as the end user wallets have been designed. The barrier is still too large between the end UX and the core tools of these environments. For example, we need to think about how we can design an interface that lets anyone with a couple of BTC be a private LSP, automatically, with channel splicing, and try at lets users connect to and use them in popular wallets with nothing but a QR. This would radically change the landscape if “running a server” is as easy as we can possibly make it. This would be the key to genuine decentralization of the market and the ability to quietly make a huge variety of reliable and simple services and onboarding tools that aren’t bug, public, and easily targeted businesses. It would open up an entirely new layer of the market that is never actually targeted and with tradition infrastructure, isn’t really possible. But the new protocols we have today change this. We need to change how we think about the architecture of the market when we have new tools that, rather than simply building the same things with new tools, allow us to completely rethink how things are built in the first place. Recently piece from @Alekandar Svetski is a great example. IMO, It’s time we think about UX for sovereign providers the way we’ve always thought about UX for the average user.

SO stoked that BOLT12 is finally starting to pop up in the wild! 🔥 View quoted note →

Someone mentioned recently that there was a Nostr based Patreon sort of service. Did I imagine that and/or does someone know what I’m thinking of?

Protect this man at all costs. View quoted note →

Never lose sight of the fact that THE most important and most valuable aspect of #Bitcoin is its monetary policy. Everything else is downstream of, or in service of, that element. We are coming from a world where people never even considered “shopping” for a particular monetary policy, but are quickly barreling into a world where if you AREN’T shopping for a monetary policy, you likely won’t make it.

Looks like this claim might be questionable. A few attempts at confirming might not be lining up. Should keep an eye out for this. View quoted note →

😵😵😵 The never ending cycle of data breaches that the horrifically stupid practice of KYC makes us victims of for no good reason. View quoted note →

I'm a 7 "Key Personality Traits of the 7: - Always on the go - Wide range of interests - Childlike enthusiasm and energy - Curious, sparkling eyes - Many ongoing professional and creative projects - Upbeat and optimistic; glass-half-full outlook - Well-liked and popular among peers" It's true. I do have sparkling eyes. 🥹 🤣 Who else dorks out on the Enneagram and Myer's Briggs stuff?

True You Journal

Enneagram Type Seven: The Enthusiast

The Type Seven “Enthusiast,” is relentlessly curious and optimistic, eager to get the most out of life. Sevens do their best to avoid negativit...

A couple of things here to clarify the importance of full nodes: First ---------------------------------- The concept and purpose of running a node is very much like the idea that everyone should be able to own a gun to defend liberty. - It doesn't mean everyone will. - It doesn't mean individuals can "fight off the government goons" with a handgun. - It doesn't mean the state isn't more powerful than one person with their gun. - It DOES mean that to conquer an entire nation of determined, gun owning people who want their liberty requires *active* and *direct* attack, because collectively enough people are armed that popular resistance actually stands a chance against tyrannical governments (who are naturally cowards) The logic for anyone and everyone running a node who is capable is shockingly similar here. Second: ---------------------------------- "Have we ever retroactively fixed a 5 year old "error" in the chain? No. Will we ever, no. Do you ever think, I wonder if that transaction from 2016 is still valid, I had better check?" It isn't really about knowing that every transaction that other people are conducting is valid, it's about ensuring that *the #bitcoin you own* are REAL bitcoin. Bitcoins are created, are defined, and exist entirely and *solely* by a set of rules being followed for how they are created and how they are validly transferred. HALF of the supply of bitcoins was created prior to 2013. If you aren't confirming that the blocks that mined your coins into existence followed the rules, then you don't know if you are following an honest network. --- The prime example here is Bitcoin Dark, which forked off and created 300K extra coins in the "privacy pool balance," then waited almost a year and a half to withdraw the from the privacy pool and since almost no one ran a full node, it went unnoticed except for a bitcoiner who actually ran full nodes for tons of forks out of curiosity and publicly posted when his node saw the bizarre transaction. --- You could easily argue that no one needed to care about what happened 15 months ago on the chain... and every one of them was getting scammed specifically because they didn't. IF we don't have the chain & valid link that traces all the way back to when your coins are created, you have abandoned the triple entry accounting breakthrough. Third ---------------------------------- It isn't about simply making sure people can keep up with the chain when it comes to cost. It's also about ensuring *real* consensus is maintained (again requiring proof that the bitcoins being transferred are also real) across all borders, against any and all attackers, through any firewalls, on public and private networks, AND can recover after a disaster or massive failure on the network or in the software. Even if cheap SDDs are 50TB, if it takes 6 months to sync the chain, and there is either a direct attack, or a major bug that corrupts the data and forces a reset and sync-from-beginning on 60% of the nodes, that threatens the security and decentralization of the entire global monetary foundation for half a year *at best,* while what may be more likely is that having only 40% of the nodes, just becomes the new normal, and we never go back to the security we once had. Last ---------------------------------- This is about securing the *trend* of decentralization indefinitely into the future. It will require constant and deliberate attention and work to ensure it. We will have constant and recurring layers and degrees of centralization in the market, in the technology and hardware around it, in service provision, in some layer on top of Bitcoin that we become overly dependent on, AND on the base layer as costs rise and incentives to run nodes are low. But when an attack arises, when this centralization threatens the censorship resistance, or permission-less nature of the network, we will suddenly and aggressively remember how important it is to run nodes - and it will always be a part of any attempt at defending and repairing those critical re-centralization trends to run a full node, verify everything, and ensure the broadcast layer cannot be squeezed out of existence. That it can be reached to any and all participants no matter where they are in the world. So the real question is: Will this get *easier* to secure and protect in 5 years, or will it be *harder*? Because if it is harder, we have a problem, because how much security and decentralization do we lose exactly? 10%? 20%? What happens when we compound that every 5 years for another 50? If we have set it up to become more centralized in an irreparable way, slowly and incrementally, then that's the surest way to guarantee we end up on a system that only a handful of people run and who can dictate or defraud the whole world as to what is a "real" bitcoin and what isn't. ---------------------------------- There are a number of other nuances here because running (and communicating) a full node history isn't merely a problem of hard drive space, in fact, that's the least of the problems and the one that scales the best... while it is still a problem despite. The bigger problems are the computation, the RAM requirements, the speed of data indexing/recall/verification, the bandwidth to download and broadcast the information that is coming to-and-from the base layer, AND of course to then do all of the computation and verification of the *numerous* layers on top of it that we will have to use. Remember that layers themselves are just another trade off, and it's not as if they cost nothing to run. It is merely that they cost *less* to run than scaling on the base layer. So in short, you can't really make this short, so read the whole thing. ------------------------------------ Also, I actually kind of like your final argument and position on the "you don't even vote in your own republic" is pretty good, but I think it works *in support* of the full node argument, it doesn't replace it. View quoted note →