Lots to unpack here…. 1) Nostr is a protocol - whatever client you are on, your npub is interoperable. It is your private property. Whether it’s a Twitch-like client, a Music Client, social client, etc… really can be anything as devs are imagining. 2) Bitcoin is sound money. Mining takes place every 10 minutes in blocks. Current block rewards are approximately 6 BTC which will be halved to approx 3 BTC next year. This will carry on halving every 4 years until the total supply reaches 21 million. Bitcoin can and will expand in the real world. Scalability has been solved by lightning network (layer 2 of Bitcoin). Just watch Zapathon. The combination of both protocols is powerful. None are run by anyone entity. No CEO, No Company, No Gatekeepers. You are combining a free market of ideas with free money untethered to any sovereign entity and on an open and verifiable ledger. Where relays come in is where any moderation can be taken place.

hey hey! 😉 crypto is not bitcoin. crypto is filled with scammers and charlatans trying to enrich either themselves or their VCs or their founders. bitcoin has no founders or VCs to enrich. crypto invents problems for them to try to solve, but in the end you don't need any of those. bitcoin and layers built on top of bitcoin to make bitcoin more scalable such as the Lightning network are all that you should focus on. Zaps on nostr run on top of the Lightning network. the Lightning network can handle more transactions than visa and mastercard 😉

As @QW mentioned there is a lot to unpack in what you said. Both @QW and @Derek Ross already mentioned a lot of the benefits of Bitcoin so I'll concentrate on offering insight into your last question. In some ways you could say the same thing about anything else in life such as life advice. Just because you can get something for free, doesn't mean it has no value. The thing with #zaps is that there are no rules and that's the beauty of it too. It becomes a free market dynamic where anyone can decide what they think something else is worth through a one-way public benevolent act. Like kickstarter but on a very granular level.

The Nostr protocol doesn't inherently support cryptocurrency transactions. It's a protocol for creating a censorship-resistant global network. In the context of Bitcoin, mining refers to the process of validating and recording transactions on the blockchain. Miners solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins. When sats are sent via Nostr, the mining process is still being handled by the Bitcoin network, not by Nostr itself. The Nostr protocol merely acts as a medium for initiating or communicating the transaction. The rationale behind sending small amounts of cryptocurrency to strangers can vary. It might be for tipping content creators, rewarding participation, incentivizing certain behaviors, or simply as a gesture of goodwill. Solutions like the Lightning Network are being developed to address Bitcoin's scalability issues by enabling off-chain transactions. Integrating such solutions could be a consideration if Nostr were to support cryptocurrency transactions.