Now you can buy bitcoin privately in Proton Wallet, thanks to a new integration with one of the greatest privacy companies in the history of the internetz. People who are for privacy, for bitcoin, and who want to see a future where people are more free don't just talk about it, they do something about it, and that's what Azteco and Proton do. Proton has been offering private email since 2014, and they've been very effective at it. They have 100,000,000 users. And that is a lot of users. Their Proton Wallet is 100% software, and so it can scale dramatically, like WhatsApp and other software only tools have scaled. You do the math. Their wallet is fantastically beautiful, consumer friendly and available world-wide, out of the box. They have everything right. Proton is a very important integration for Azteco, partly because we're fans of that great company, and hold them up as one of the greatest examples of how to serve users. They're one of the very best. That's a fact. Now that the dream of Azteco and Proton is a reality, great potential is unlocked in a way that only true disruptors can unlock great potential. FULL THROTTLE, FOR GREAT JUSTICE.

“Important: Google is locking down Android. Starting Sept 2026, every app — even outside the Play Store — must come from a verified developer. No more anonymous sideloads. No quick comebacks for malware gangs. First up: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand.” And no indefinite access for illegal and anonymous messaging apps, especially ones with the scary hacker chic graphic design. Protocols have no utility without apps to leverage them. You can bury your head in the sand all you want; the facts remain the same. You can’t have a global scale permissionless ecosystem without the explicit permission of Apple and Google. And if your aim is to change the world, you need global scale adoption to do it. That means unfettered access to be able to have your tools installed on the phones of anyone who wants that tool. This is true also of bitcoin. Bitcoin can’t change the world unless easy access to it is made available to billions of users. Running away from this fact doesn’t make it go away; this fact must be confronted head on and the problem solved. The only question is this: are you contributing to the solution of the problem or not? Or are you acting as a safety valve giving encouragement to people who don’t really understand the problem, so that they feel good today and divert their energy to something which cannot possibly win in the end and, leave us in a better world.

The Hacker News

Google to Verify All Android Developers in 4 Countries to Block Malicious Apps

Google will verify all Android developers by September 2026 in select countries to curb malicious apps.

The Durov case and many other reasons are why companies avoid basing themselves in France. No Social Media platform will seek to headquarter in Paris. It’s unthinkable. And the French government can’t go after Andrew Torba who runs GAB because he’s an American operating GAB in America. If GAB launches end to end encrypted chat or anything the Z French government doesn’t like, there’s nothing they can do about it. The solution to “government overreach” is not building systems that can’t be cracked or stopped; they’re persecuting Durov without any proper cause. If your name is associated with a tool that the French government can’t stop or crack or track, they will come after you. This isn’t about right and wrong, following rules or logic. This is not about technical capabilities or clever architecture, “frenz”; this is about computer illiterate tyrants who can’t understand detail or scale or ethics, and if they can, don’t care, because they want to sacrifice Durov to scare everyone. The next iteration in this is to criminalise the authoring and distribution of unlicensed privacy software. The first part, distribution, will stop ordinary people from accessing Telegram or any tool that keeps messages private. This is easily done through Google Play and the Apple App Store. The second will totally dry up the developer pool of people working on privacy software, because none of them want any trouble. Oh, and GitHub will ban your repo, frenz. Before you write “Hello World” in your new tool, you will need to have a Developer’s License before starting work, even in the conceptual stage. It will be illegal for you to share any design, algorithm or outline without both you and the idea recipient having a current Crypto Software Development License. If you think this is completely impossible, please see Bernstein v. US Department of Justice https://medium.com/swlh/why-america-cant-regulate-bitcoin-8c77cee8d794 The answer to this is not “build your way out of it”, obviously. The answer is to first curb the power of the state to persecute software development and distribution before you write “Hello World”. You do that by making the State smaller. You make the state smaller by instantiating sound money. That means globalising Bitcoin. And how do you “globalise Bitcoin?” 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1….. And in case you didn’t know, rote recitation of catchphrases and infantile feel good gibberish will not stop the persecution of Durov, remove KYC in Bitcoin or stop the emergence of Crypto Developer Licensing.

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Pavel Durov (@durov) on X

One year ago, the French police detained me for 4 days because some people I’d never heard of used Telegram to coordinate crimes. Arresting a CEO...

For those of you alive in the early days of the iPhone, you may remember a tool called "Cydia". This tool was in fact the first "App Store" for iPhone. Cydia was written by Jay Freeman (Saurik) in 2008 and was for jailbroken iPhones. It allowed users to install apps, tweaks, and modifications not available on Apple's App Store, all from developers without Apple's approval. Jailbreaking your iPhone meant that you had essentially full control over it, including being able to run a root shell on it, no restrictions whatsoever; it was just like a UNIX machine in your hand. Knowing this (and I've said it before) anyone interested in having an iPhone and Android ecosystem where users are transformed into owners of their devices, requires a new class of App Store not owned by Google or Apple, and that is very popular. There are App Stores for Android other than Google, but they're not as popular as the Google Play Store, and that's not surprising at all, because no normal person is interested in it leaving the fenced area. That being said, it should be possible with the proper marketing to create an ecosystem that can compete with the "Two Party State" of Google and Apple. This would solve many of the problems caused by large companies run by people unconcerned by Ethics and user's rights and lives. In this new ecosystem, for example, it would not be possible to have a bitcoin wallet banned, or removed. If all of this is true (and it is) then the question becomes why has no one picked up on the threat of App Store removal of Bitcoin Wallets, and why have they not acted to either create a new default App Store ecosystem or boosted an existing Alternative App Store ecosystem with a large cash injection? There are plenty to choose from: - Amazon Appstore - APKMirror - APKPure - Aptoide - F-Droid - Huawei AppGallery - Samsung Galaxy Store - GetJar - Uptodown - SlideME - Aurora Store - AppBrain - Mobogenie - QooApp - 9Apps - Xiaomi GetApps - Tencent MyApp - Itch.io - ACMarket - TapTap Obviously Huawei, Xiaomi, all China based stores sand Amazon can be excluded as alternatives, but what they demonstrate by existing is that alternative App Stores that potentially serve billions of people are possible to create, so why bother whining to Google when you can just build your own and solve the problem forever? And you're even more without excuse if you already have access to billions of people through existing business and user relationships to jump start a new ecosystem. Upon launch of this ecosystem, it would mean that every developer of Bitcoin Wallets for Android would be delisted from Google only to re-appear on the new "Liberty App Store Library" where they are published with the features the developers desire and used on terms acceptable to both user and developer. How hard can it be? One thing is for sure; simply complaining about Google trying to kill Bitcoin Wallets is not going to change anything. And obviously every Android app developer would flock to this new ecosystem to publish their apps so that more people would download them. It would grow almost by itself. As for the Apple App Store, well...I guess if they go through with banning Bitcoin Apps, if you want to use Bitcoin your own way, you have to get a 'Droid. Sigh..."The price of freedom!"

This is exactly like banning SSL for all applications where the owner of the user's app isn't identified. The French tried to impose this in the 1990s, but once SSL was everywhere, it was impossible for France to implement it, despite building a regulatory and storage framework to register all SSL private keys. SSL keys can be generated at will almost instantly by anyone without any technical skill. It happens every time you install a browser or set up a server. Sound familiar? That's what happens when you download and open a Bitcoin Wallet. It's exactly the same in nature. Now an absurd ban is proposed for Bitcoin wallets, and it's pretty obvious this would happen in the, "Then they fight you" stage. This is why I've been harping on about spreading bitcoin everywhere as quickly as possible, so that it becomes a global default that cannot be revoked without killing the internets. This is also why I've been working to re-contextualize bitcoin away from what people mistake it for to something more like what it actually is. No one thinks SSL is "encryption"; they think it is "security". Similarly if people think bitcoin is money, then they will think about it as if it is money, as if you "receive" bitcoin, and all other money analogies. If this false categorization by Google of Bitcoin wallets doesn't go through, the next attempt surely will. Unfortunately, people with power can't seem to understand long term strategic thinking in this area, despite the history of Public Key Encryption tool adoption being widely known. A necessary prerequisite to bitcoin being everywhere is the distribution of it to billions of people. That's what we're doing at Azteco. When we succeed in doing this, bitcoin will be a common as SSL Certs in your browser. And no, it will not be enough to simply build tools that use bitcoin; you can't use bitcoin without getting it, and that is the task many people simply run away from rather than confront head on. Things that seem to be very large, very bad problems can be completely eliminated. Faketoshi is the most recent example, but there have been many others, like the RSA Munitions Export case. Bitcoin can win and come out unscathed. It will take dedication to make it happen and people who can think for themselves and make up their own minds about what sort of future they want to be a part of building for mankind. The bitcoin distribution problem is being effectively solved by Azteco, with 700m people being given access to bitcoin in a way that no real bitcoiner could possibly oppose. It didn't take many people to solve the big problems; technical ones like Public Key Cryptography, PGP (Zimmerman), Bitcoin (Satoshi), BitTorrent (Bram Cohen) and many others. Your only question for yourself is this, "Am I a part of the solution or the problem?". And if you think you can build a paralell society on App Store Apps that will help billions of people, you are completely delusional. If App stores can ban Bitcoin wallets, they can ban your sneaky chat app, which, because it doesn't mediate bitcoin, can't change the world, and even if it could mediate bitcoin transactions, cant do so unless people can get bitcoin to use on it, and if they can, that will surely cause an App store ban, because it will be an "Unlicensed Bitcoin Wallet", however they want to define that. At some point, as has been in the past, a problem must be solved directly. With SSL, it was the rapid proliferation of browsers and the browser as the default interface to all eCommerce. The same thing needs to happen with Bitcoin; bitcoin must be the default way billions of people spend online, and the way to do that is to seed the global population with small amounts of bitcoin. When commercial interests merge with the interests of billions of people, you get a platform that completely resists arbitrary change that doesn't serve the people's or commercial interests. This is what must happen with bitcoin, and it can happen, and happen very rapidly.

The hat that Matt Odell is wearing is from the VC company Ten31. Unlike bitcoiner larpers, who whine about KYC and do nothing about it, like supporting businesses that don't KYC to supply you sats, Matt's company Ten31 invested in Samourai Wallet, showing that at least he puts his money where his mouth is, and it's not all LARPing. If you want a world without Internet IDs and a bitcoin ecosystem that is KYC free from end to end, you should be like Matt, who invests in and promotes companies that are doing the hard work to make the world you want a reality. What you do not do is sit on the sidelines and refuse to even speak about the brave people like William Burroughs and Keyonne Rodriguez who are building the systems that are provably what people want. I say, "provably" because hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoin was mediated by Samourai wallet users and its beautiful tools. At the end of the day, there needs to be a small, dedicated, stubborn number of people like Matt, William Burroughs and Keyonne Rodriguez who are willing to stick their necks out and do whatever they can to grow the Ethical Bitcoin Ecosystem. What is intolerable and inexcusable is burying your head in the sand...like an ostrich. It is already proven that the small number of fanatical coders and capitalists have the power to change everything. This is why GPG exists, why GNU/LINUX exists, why WhatsApp and Signal exist and why bitcoin, Samourai and other tools exist. Someone has to do the work, someone has to promote the tools, someone has to rise to the challenge. The perpetually giggling, unserious, threadbare, faddish, cowardly, distracted, unintelligent, eloiesque, "Main Character Syndrome" actors who are too frightened to even say the name "Samourai Wallet" are collaborators with the system they claim to despise and be against. For all of this, bitcoin will succeed and usher in the world these people are too frightened to talk about and don't even know they need. They rejected fiat reluctantly (and this is not their fault; they're the victims of the State), but once seeing its fundamental flaw, should naturally have been radicalized, but were not. Oh well...you can't have everything... OR CAN YOU? https://medium.com/@beautyon_/bitcoin-surveillance-an-ahistoric-market-error-d3871f671c8c

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primal (@primal_app) on X

Bitcoiners sound the alarm about the incoming dystopia.

Unbelievable. Two groups are now reinventing email, Elon and Nostr. You’ve got to be kidding.

As bitcoin crosses $100,000 there are still people out there, who absolutely should know better, who are directing users to buy it from KYC Gulag Services. Out of one side of their mouths, they complain about censorship, government overreach and tyranny, but out of the other they openly promote bad services that abuse users. Why? Worst of all, they do this to people who are new to bitcoin, giving them a completely false impression that it is a requirement for you to identify yourself to use bitcoin. What is wrong with these people? What's wrong with them is that their thinking is incomplete, and they have a slave mentality, brought about by years of being in opposition. Also, many of the services people recommend are USA only, which is yet another arbitrary restriction. Why is it so hard for people to think? They simultaneously want bitcoin to change the world, but refuse to help it do that, by recommending inferior services that will not move that ball forward. I'm sorry to report, dear reader, that it will always be like this; there is an upper limit to the imaginations of the majority of people, even very clever and expert ones, that prevents them from connecting the dots. It's a tragedy that people who also have large platforms don't take that responsibility seriously. But there it is. Not to worry; bitcoin is going to spread and dominate globally without them, just as it reached $100,000 without their aid.

Is “Socialist Nostr” a real phenomenon? I’m beginning to suspect that it is. Tsk tsk tsk SHAMEFUL!

Despite what some people might believe, what is not required is a "Pressure Group" to help Bitcoin adoption. Well meaning people who've grown up in INGSOC believe that the optics of opposition politics is what will keep Bitcoin users safe from regulation. They're 100% wrong. Listing companies that people should use because they're "unregulated" or "outside the law" only generates scrutiny targets. It doesn't help anyone, and actually has another, hidden purpose. People love to rally behind the underdog; what they're trying to do is create the next "Assange", or "CND", or "Occupy Wall Street" that they can be the heads of, so that they're constantly being interviewed and getting their profile raised in the Mainstream Media. This will increase "Membership" in their organizations, opening the door to future employment in the "Compliance" departments of the companies they "defended", or will allow them to contract out consultancy roles for their companies. Think Rico and BitLicense as examples. And of course, being the de facto heads of "the Industry", not only will they scrape up money, but they'll be directly consulted on the rules to govern the companies they "represent", ensuring permanent roles for themselves in perpetuity. If you should refuse their offer of consultancy, they will threaten you that you will not be aware of upcoming changes and will not have a, "Seat at the Table" to protect yourself from predation, as they have a direct line to the violent thugs who could shut you down. Not going along with them will be portrayed as being an outsider with something to hide, as the people representing the industry will be for "transparency" and "Society". This is exactly how this matter works. It is not about the law or right or wrong; it is about making jobs for people who can't write software and who are not able, for whatever reason, to form companies to serve other people directly They see some new field that does not have "regulation" and they anoint themselves as contact points, injecting themselves into the market where no real purpose is served.

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Beautyon (@Beautyon_) on X

Despite what some people might believe, what is not required is a "Pressure Group" to help Bitcoin adoption. Well meaning people who've grown up i...

George Galloway is correct. Britain has placed itself in a uniquely perilous position, and will come out as the ultimate loser. America will stand back and watch them be obliterated. The UK is being run by psychopaths. And what of King Charles? the country he waited to rule will be a smoldering pile of ashes; his son’s and grandsons and heirs will inherit ashes, and what for? For the petulant and rabid bloodlust of Socialists. What a waste. WHAT A SHAME. https://rumble.com/v5rornt-no2nato-episode-21-world-war-3.html

This is true. People are more interested in having their biases and prejudices confirmed and magnified, rather than serving others for the greater good. They’re not interested in right and wrong; in fact they don’t believe there is right and wrong, like John Maynard Keynes. This is the reality everyone lives in. Thankfully, there is only one reality, whether anyone likes it or not. This reality is being played out right now in Bitcoin. No matter what anyone’s feelings are, their cereal box philosophies, delusions and threadbare personalities, the actual reality will assert itself, and whether or not you agree with it, or the people who tell the truth, everyone is subject to it. We are going to win. The enemies of reality are going to lose. We can see this playing out in real time, with people saying one thing and doing another, believing this will not be noticed. Everyone notices. Everybody knows. And everyone can choose! View quoted note →

Get ahead of Elon by watching Praxgirl

Google Image Result for https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MoNU_-__LlQ/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwE7CK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAy0IARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD8AEB-AH-CYAC0AWKAgwIABABGHIgSigsMA8=&rs=AOn4CLDpyEzSh70LpPozu6zFMRWRnuemJQ

President Elect Donald J. Trump has promised to eliminate the Income Tax and move government revenue on to Tariffs as Taft did. The Federal Reserve Dollar is dying since it is being printed into oblivion (the definition of inflation). If Lummis was thinking correctly, the answer to several of these difficult problems at once is obvious. When the Income Tax is abolished and Tariffs are the source of income, it should be mandated that those Tariffs be paid in Bitcoin. This would have several immediate side effects. 1/ There would be a very large increase in demand for bitcoin globally 2/ The Federal Government would legitimately start to amass bitcoin 3/ No American Citizen would suffer theft to achieve this end 4/ The U.S. bitcoin ecosystem would be turbo kick started On the final point, these “monies” coming in to the coffers would be spent inside America, creating multiple cascading opportunities for innovation and learning in bitcoin handling. The “Bitcoin Coffer” would be dispersing and disseminating bitcoin into the economy, triggering the de facto “Legal Tender” status of bitcoin, which I note with appropriate disdain, this bill of pure fail fails to address as part of the overall strategy. https://medium.com/@beautyon_/pandering-as-policy-d125d002dcb3

THE HOUSE OF EL.

“Azteco is available globally; this is Bitcoin for everyone everywhere.” https://medium.com/@beautyon_/azteco-and-bitkey-ushering-in-a-new-era-of-consumer-friendly-bitcoin-b3e5dde4ab88

The idea that machines are required to conduct elections is incorrect, and is not accepted in all civilized nations. Paper ballots and invigilation are all that is required to run a fair and fully auditable election, and the introduction of computers to the methods and execution of elections is nothing more than tech / futurist cultism. Fully invigilated and hand counted paper ballot run elections are what is required. The only reasonable addition to this is, perhaps, a system like Ron Rivest's "ThreeBallot" System that does not require computer tabulation, remains paper based and also introduces a level of verifiability.

ThreeBallot - Wikipedia

1/ Its implementation is familiarly looking and simple for voters to understand, compared to other encryption systems (arguably, the most important advantage of all). 2/ The ballots can be counted directly, without decryption. This is because they have the property that the sum of the marks is the sum of the votes for the candidate, even though any individual ballot section cannot reveal the candidate preference of the voter. 3/ There is no key that requires protection or secrecy in order to maintain security (the "Achilles' heel" of many proposed systems). 4/ While it requires a machine to validate the ballots before depositing them, afterwards the ballot record is entirely on paper and requires no additional security process beyond that afforded traditional ballots. 5/ Each voter's vote is secret, preventing vote-selling and coercion. 6/ Each voter can verify that his vote was not discarded and was correctly used and not altered in the computation of the election result. (And if not, the voter is in a position to prove that the vote counters cheated.) 7/ Everybody can verify that the election result was computed correctly. 8/ The method is designed for use with paper ballots and requires primarily low-tech devices, but is compatible with more advanced technologies. The motivating animus of trying to arbitrarily mechanize processes comes from the psychological need of some people to hand everything in their lives over to machines, since they are incapable of handling real life themselves. Machine are tools, not ends in themselves, and subjecting everything to them is not rational nor is it a proper application of technology. Bitcoin was required because the money cannot be invigilated. Voting however, is not like that. It can be successfully audited by hand, and is done this way world-wide. Invigilated voting systems do not require trust; in fact this is the only aspect in which it is similar to Bitcoin: "Don't Trust, Verify". Machines are not trusted and cannot be trusted to count votes, and neither are the human vote counters in an invigilated system; every vote is seen and verified by multiple people who are adversaries. It works. No one is trusted. To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a Bitcoiner, every problem looks like...what exactly? The purpose of conducting a verifiably fair election is not the implementation and application of technology; the election itself is the purpose.

All of this applies generally as Andrew says, and it also applies specifically to Bitcoin. For generations the core beliefs and foundational narratives held by the fiat Central Bankers are collapsing like a deck of cards. As their worldview and fraudulent financial system crumbles, they will fight desperately, becoming more and more aggressive and irrational, using lawfare against Bitcoin; and some of the companies that mediate it will voluntarily capitulate and obey out of fear or love of the legacy system, “because it's the best we have right now, and rapid change is dangerous”. Trying to convince anti-Bitcoiners or engage in rational discourse is futile. Their entire lives have been based on deception, and watching their lies refuted in real time as the price of Bitcoin goes up and fiat evaporates is too much for their febrile minds to handle. Imagine believing the lies of the Federal Reserve for decades, only to face this harsh reality suddenly, “I have been lied to all of my life. The money I sought, fought for and stored was a lie, and now I am worth literally nothing”. This is the hard truth they’re facing. It's far more comfortable for fiat heads, dollaristsas, Stablecoinists, incrementalistas and “Dollars on the Blockchain” infiltraitors to keep their heads in the sand, insulated in a lie bubble, lashing out at anyone trying to pull you out (Bitcoiners). This is their current state of mind. They are like an injured rabid dog backed into a corner, snarling and foaming at the mouth. I would genuinely pity them if not for their active roles in destroying our country and people and their money, and fighting for the slave system. They will continue to attack and insult and lie about Bitcoin and Bitcoiners, but it won't stop what's already unfolding and can't be contained.

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Andrew Torba (@BasedTorba) on X

The core beliefs and foundational narratives held by post-war establishment figures are collapsing like a deck of cards. As their worldview crumb...

In 2000 Bill Joy wrote an article entitled, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us”. it was published in Wired magazine. Californian technologistas are sometimes very pessimistic and often very bad at predicting the future. There’s no reason to believe that the future has to be a bad one or that any of the tools that are being invented now are going to be the tools that destroy mankind. Over and over again dire predictions about how technologies are going to end mankind, will cause terrible catastrophes and other fear porn guff have been trotted out again and again; it’s always by the same class of people who are more or less the same age. They are super pessimistic, un religious, ignorant, normally super rich and desperate to control other people. These people need to be ignored. First of all, spreading unwarranted FUD is unethical (AnthropogenicGlobal Warming for example), second there’s no technology that man has inside computers that can’t be switched off, even if it were to become a problem, which there’s no evidence that AGI is going to be. The choice everybody faces is whether we’re going to live like a bunch of frightened children, or are we going to live like men and go to the stars and do all those other things. If everybody’s frightened of every single invention that comes forward and goes into the market, man will never get anywhere, and I’m personally sick and tired of reading the fear from people who don’t have powerful imaginations and to want everything to stay the same forever. These same people are terrified of bitcoin and they’re very very scared that if it gets big, deflation will happen and the economy will be destroyed. Of course they’re totally wrong. Bitcoin is not dangerous and the fear mongers will be ignored. However this is a perfect example of how these technologists who are scaremongers don’t really understand what they’re talking about, are men of low degree and low character and are antihuman. It’s up to the people who create things to do things responsibly and to not let inventions get out of their labs that are dangerous. Sometimes bad things are going to happen, but the greater risk is to not do things, not experiment and not move forward. The fact of the matter is the future doesn’t need YOU. And that’s YOUR problem, not OURS.