epsql

I think at the heart of the problem is that humanity simply develops of possible technology without ever stopping to ask whether any particular technology is good or bad for us. In order words we have no direction, wee simply seem to explore and build all that which can be explored and built

2026-05-31 19:57:51 GMT

Interesting podcast comparing the bitcoin network to mycelium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27k0dxp3Vb4

2026-05-31 19:55:50 GMT

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So basically compute will be measured in watts?

2026-05-31 19:54:47 GMT

@nprofile…rmzp Is there any way to sign a message? Ocean lightning payouts require that, so I'm wondering whether this can be done via coinos, thanks!

2026-05-31 19:53:58 GMT

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The web app is kind of slow, but the Android app feels great to be honest. Which one are you using?

2026-05-30 19:58:33 GMT

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This is a post waiting for the monero bros, you know it

2026-05-30 14:37:41 GMT

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Also I suggest this blog post by none other than the creator of Nostr, hopefully you don't consider him a "piece of shit scammer" as well
https://fiatjaf.com/7d1ad8cc.html

2026-05-29 13:44:46 GMT

The constitution might be a remarkable thing, not sure why it should reside on a database designed for monetary transactions though
#nevent1q…2plk

2026-05-29 10:18:49 GMT

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GM, what do you make of the current apparently gloomy sentiment prevailing in the Bitcoin world? (or maybe that's just me spending too much time online?)

2026-05-29 10:16:43 GMT

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Can't deny these points, I'm not sure how much they explain why ETFs become more or less desirable to implement from the point of view of the existing fiat system.
Would you say that if monero had no tail emission and somehow rose to more prominence it would still be unfeasible to "trap" it into ETFs by marketing the store of value narrative? Would it be because of the culture or would it be directly caused by its properties?

2026-05-29 09:39:29 GMT

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Why would privacy and fungibility make ETFs less appealing? ETFs holders would still be able to claim that they possess n/21M and ETFs are all about the store of value narrative

2026-05-29 07:55:29 GMT

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Could ETFs have been stopped though? Who could have done so and by what means? I agree nobody should have cheered them on though, as nobody should cheer Saylor and his orange dots on

2026-05-29 07:53:18 GMT

Update on the current sentiment
#nevent1q…hnvk
#nevent1q…h2vk

2026-05-28 19:29:41 GMT

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The sentiment is the following:
- mempool is empty, miners won't be able to secure the network in the long run
- lightning does not really work nor scale, so custodial solutions are emerging against the ethos of Bitcoin
- quantum could hit at any time, disrupting everything, and nobody is ready
- institutional capture is under way (Saylor, ETFs), turning Bitcoin into a fiat asset basically that poses a threat to nobody
- knots/core drama, Luke is going to fork Bitcoin
- Bitcoin is not private and somehow this was discovered recently, or became very much a problem only recently. Coinjoin won't help you because tainted coins are, well, tainted, hence no fungibility
- stablecoins are basically CBDCs and for whatever reason people thought that the trump admin was going to usher in a new era for Bitcoin
Anything else I might have forgotten?

2026-05-28 07:16:13 GMT

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I had already stumbled across it, but I couldn't really understand how the whole thing worked. Do you have a simple explanation of it?

2026-05-27 22:12:25 GMT

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What are you hinting at?

2026-05-26 14:20:01 GMT

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Very interesting, where can I read more on how the enclave works? Thanks

2026-05-26 14:16:55 GMT

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Good questions, is this basically a transfer of trust or is there more to it?

2026-05-26 11:35:28 GMT

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I'm surprised that after 8 hours your note does not have at least a few replies from the monero people saying how lightning privacy sucks

2026-05-26 08:05:13 GMT

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Swap them to lightning via Boltz and you're good to go

2026-05-26 07:53:27 GMT

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Man I wish I had half his oratory skills, I'd probably have to increase my psilocybin intake for that!

2026-05-25 12:33:21 GMT

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So basically overthrowing the existing government with guns would be the necessary step it seems. And then what?

2026-05-25 12:28:23 GMT

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I think it's only natural that proponents of Bitcoin are "obsessed" with it, otherwise the dominant monetary system and culture would have already made them change their mind

2026-05-25 12:26:16 GMT

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How should Libertarianism look like for you to think that it's not controlled opposition?

2026-05-21 15:38:41 GMT

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Also, let's fund freedom projects through USDT which is directly funding the US government. I guess I'm too idealistic

2026-05-21 15:35:13 GMT

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Interesting, didn't know that

2026-05-21 15:20:46 GMT

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Makes sense, I also wonder how many Bitcoin projects are actually profitable and don't need to survive on funding alone (not that there's anything wrong with funding per se)

2026-05-21 14:58:44 GMT

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Yeah but look at the upside, we got taproot which is so great because, uhm because it exposes the public key directly onchain?

2026-05-20 13:23:40 GMT

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What features would the something else that replaces Monero when the time comes have?

2026-05-20 10:13:08 GMT

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#nevent1q…tepa

2026-05-20 09:51:34 GMT

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* "https://monoskop.org/images/1/17/Illich_Ivan_Deschooling_Society.pdf"

2026-05-20 09:50:54 GMT

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I highly recommend reading chapter 7 of https://monoskop.org/images/1/17/Illich_Ivan_Deschooling_Society.pdf
> To the primitive the world was governed by fate, fact, and necessity. By stealing fire from the gods, Prometheus turned facts into problems, called necessity into question, and defied fate. Classical man framed a civilized context for human perspective. He was aware that he could defy fate-nature-environment, but only at his own risk. Contemporary man goes further; he attempts to create the world in his image, to build a totally man-made environment, and then discovers that he can do so only on the condition of constantly remaking himself to fit it. We now must face the fact that man himself is at stake.
> The state of mind of the modern city-dweller appears in the mythical tradition only under the image of Hell: Sisyphus, who for a while had chained Thanatos (death), must roll a heavy stone up the hill to the pinnacle of Hell, and the stone always slips from his grip just when he is about to reach the top. Tantalus, who was invited by the gods to share their meal, and on that occasion stole their secret of how to prepare all-healing ambrosia, which bestowed immortality, suffers eternal hunger and thirst standing in a river of receding waters, overshadowed by fruit trees with receding branches. A world of ever-rising demands is not just evil-it can be spoken of only as Hell.

2026-05-19 14:47:46 GMT

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Right, we need to acknowledge that stating how bad things are in this or that domain can only be the first step. The second and most important step is: what do we do about it?

2026-05-19 13:14:49 GMT

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding the situation, but there seems to be a whole lot of worry about a few maybe subdust UTXOs. Is it ideal that one should receive 121 sats onchain? Of course not. Will it break Bitcoin? I don't think so. It's not like Nostr is being used by millions of people who all of a sudden are going to start zapping like there's no tomorrow, right?
I might be missing something here but I just don't get it, even if these were "attacks" meant to force unknowing people to transfer these tiny UTXOs and thus reveal the true nature of their Bitcoin wealth, who's actuality using their nsec as a private key?

2026-05-19 12:09:28 GMT

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It would be funny if it were not sad, they somehow all seem to think that this onchain zaps thing is so much more dangerous than the whole OP_RETURN debate

2026-05-17 12:10:08 GMT

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Why is this so problematic? I really don't get it

2026-05-17 11:30:42 GMT

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GM, I've noticed that too. I wouldn't say their concerns are without merit though, but yeah that's not encouraging

2026-05-17 09:12:08 GMT

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Would a covenant soft-fork allowing something like https://github.com/JohnLaw2/ln-scaling-covenants make a difference in your MoE assessment? Not sure why something as harmless as OP_CTV or similar proposals are taking so much honestly

2026-05-16 12:42:47 GMT

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Agreed! Which is why I wrote leaning to code "properly", not just focusing on syntax. Syntax is entirely without value though if one takes the time to go deeper into how programming languages actuality work.
For example https://www.nand2tetris.org/ involves a whole lot of coding of the serious kind that taught me a lot about subsystems, abstractions etc etc, which are fundamental engineering principles, but would have escaped me without knowing how to code in Rust for instance.

2026-05-16 12:37:45 GMT

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I think learning to code properly teaches one how to think rationally about problems and systems, so I'm not so sure you would have wasted your time.

2026-05-15 15:49:20 GMT

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No I don't which is why I'm asking, I thought you might have done some reading on the official way Fedi presented their way of proving this and had a quick way to explain it.

2026-05-15 15:35:04 GMT

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Sure, but my question was another one
>What's the current way they prove that it is indeed n different people?
Plus I don't use Fedimint nor do I think I'll ever use it, this is purely for curiosity

2026-05-15 15:06:46 GMT

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I think fedi works only if a group of people gets together and the federation guardians (or whatever they're called) are seen doing whatever they need to do in order to set up the federation
What's the current way they prove that it is indeed n different people?

2026-05-15 13:27:03 GMT

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Do you think lightning gives the user good enough privacy, or not really? Curious to hear your thoughts, thanks

2026-05-14 17:30:26 GMT

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Makes sense, I thought something new came up!

2026-05-14 15:12:57 GMT

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Why is it spyware I mean, any specific thing?

2026-05-14 14:07:11 GMT

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How did you reach this conclusion?

2026-05-13 07:15:40 GMT

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How many people do you think are still capable of the kind of sustained attention that allows them to read a book chapter in one go? That's our society, yes

2026-05-11 17:53:24 GMT

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LFG! How does it work for the node in terms of configuration though? I have only set up my LND node via Tor so I'm not sure about what are options are there, especially for onboarding people easily

2026-05-11 14:32:50 GMT

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> it won't be a tool for transactions as long as the US and wall street can rehypotheticate in the short term
I see capital gains taxes and general culture as more problematic to be honest. What do you mean exactly? Curious

2026-05-11 14:03:42 GMT

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A couple more and the IRGC can start collecting toll payments in sats

2026-05-11 08:24:57 GMT

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Haven't listened to the interview, but on the terms topic I think is about time we dropped capitalism and other isms. I propose we start using the term "extended order" as introduced by Hayek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_order

2026-05-09 11:26:27 GMT

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Musical instruments

2026-05-08 09:31:58 GMT

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Ivan Illich saw the problems with modern education decades ago, always good to keep his analysis in mind:
"School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is"
"School has become the planned process which tools man for a planned world, the principal tool to trap man in man's trap. It is supposed to shape each man to an adequate level for playing a part in this world game. Inexorably we cultivate, treat, produce, and school the world out of existence."

2026-05-07 16:57:19 GMT

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Well said, NGU should at best tell us that something is wrong in the fiat world, but it cannot be one of the main metrics by which we judge whether Bitcoin is successful or not

2026-05-07 16:55:01 GMT

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Where did you get this value from? Curious

2026-05-07 16:38:22 GMT

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I think you're misunderstanding the point: normies need this precisely so that adoption is not prevented by technical hurdles.

2026-05-07 12:07:45 GMT

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Why?

2026-05-07 11:37:16 GMT

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>They've been getting more expensive by a few percent a year. It would be better if they didn't change at all but it's the best we can do. The change so far has been small and predictable. Predictable change is the next best thing after no changes.
You seem to think that predictable change is still pretty good, so why would it so problematic if change year over year was negative, but still predictable? Imagine all prices, therefore including wages, decreased on average by 0.2% from today until the year 2100 given a fixed money supply.
Where would the difficulties arise in such a scenario? If humans can plan for increasing prices, they can also do so for decreasing ones. Plus I'd argue that for prices to fall is the natural dynamic in a flourishing economy: if we're getting better and better at producing things due to improvements in social organization and technology, why would things end up costing more?

2026-05-07 07:08:07 GMT

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Again, your whole premise is that nominally stable prices are absolutely necessary and I reject it. I think much more damage would be done trying to keep them nominally stable than by simply allowing to go where they may. Have prices for the things that you think matter been nominally stable in the last 20 years? Cars, houses, medical insurance, rent, travel?
I don't see how this is a requirement for a well functioning economy.
You're singling out tech saying it's an exception: why would that be the case? Is it because the rate of technical progress has been higher (however we measure it) in this sector than in other ones? So what? Should only sectors with stagnating productivity improvements count towards the nominal stability you think is so crucial?

2026-05-06 22:29:24 GMT

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I simply don't think prices have to be *nominally* stable for us to be able to financially plan things. Sure we need to avoid situations where a beer is 5$ one year, 13$ the next, 1.15$ the year after that etc etc
But that could only happen in two scenarios:
- either the money supply changes in crazy ways due to bad central bank planning,
- or the inputs to beer production go from being incredibly scarce to incredibly abundant due to natural disasters or incredibly positive changes in natural conditions, provided demand for beer stays the same of course.
The second case is quite unpredictable, but the first one can be avoided by not having a central bank in the first place.
Nothing makes me think that planning is any easier with a managed money supply. That's because nobody is planning for a generic future, we're all planning that specific goods and services we might need are going to have certain price ranges when we need them.
Let's say I'm building a next generation videogame console but I fail to anticipate that AI demand is going to make GPUs much more expensive. Should I complain about it to the central bank? What if I'm planning to increase the production of cereals but then the strait of Hormuz gets blockaded and fertilizers get so much more expensive, what then?
If anything a fixed money supply allows the price signal to be as clear as possible: prices change only due to demand, supply, and technology. I argue this would allow much better planning than nominal stability.

2026-05-06 21:49:22 GMT

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I'm not thinking about that. You're implying that stable means nominally equal from one year to another. So if a beer is 5$ in 2026, stability would mean it will keep being 5$ in 2027, then 5$ in 2030 and so on and so forth (at least if I get your argument right).
This seems to be entirely unnecessary as far as I can see, especially if it is to be obtained by means of a central bank / planning agency that needs to constantly adjust the money supply.
Computers once had prices hovering around 10000$, whereas now you can get a pretty good one for 400$. Is that unstable? Is that problematic?

2026-05-06 21:29:52 GMT

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I reject the premise that stable prices can only be had with an increasing money supply. There is no logical reason for it

2026-05-06 21:18:07 GMT

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>The amounts of goods and services offered will vary. If a fixed amount of money chases a varying amount of goods and services the price paid for each good or service will have to vary
I really don't see why this is concerning to be honest. Can you maybe provide an example? I feel this is somewhat of a crucial point for your argumentation and I don't see how it's so important, thanks
Would you say that, hypothetically, if we were on a gold standard and, for whatever reason, no more gold were to be found for many decades, then the markets would have a hard time doing their thing?

2026-05-06 20:02:10 GMT

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Inflation being pretty low and things being pretty good is a qualitative subjective statement that doesn't mean much unfortunately. Are you talking about hamburgers, houses, cars, eggs, or something else entirely?
>Your fixed money supply will lead to wildly swinging prices and kill any business quickly.
I fail to see why this should be so obvious.
>That's why you like dollars and obsess over the dollar price of Bitcoin.
The reason bitcoiners "obsess" over dollars is because the dollar is the dominant monetary system, not because inflation is low and things are generally speaking good as you seem to think. Should we discard this measurement and start focusing on some imaginary benchmark?

2026-05-06 16:58:37 GMT

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This seems really complicated and easily manipulated, I think central banks are trying to do something of the sort already and it's not looking great to be honest. I, for one, would stick to a fixed money supply or a fixed rule like Friedman suggested many decades ago (money is neutral and all that)

2026-05-06 15:45:59 GMT

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It actually is, which set of prices? Should we lower the money supply because there's a war that is limiting the supply side of oil, which is an input for basically all products and services for example?
Provided we answer this question, when are we supposed to act given that whatever change in prices would be observed only after the fact? Should we lower the money supply in year t+1 since we observe higher prices in year t? What if prices naturally fall by the time the decrease has taken place? Would we have to double down on the opposite side? How do we make sure no arbitrary wealth redistribution happens? And many other questions

2026-05-06 15:29:15 GMT

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I tend to think that any amount of money is good enough for any size of the economy, however the size of the economy is measured.
If this were not the case, you'd have to justify adding or subtracting monetary units based exactly on what? When can we say that we have too much money or not enough money?

2026-05-06 14:06:24 GMT

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What's a price stability mechanism?

2026-05-05 13:43:42 GMT

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It is at least a bit in this case given the nature of the subreddit and what seems to be the general level of the discussion. Some of these people are replying to the thread things as:
> Most likely you would have the actual currency, lets call it PowerCoin, and then the government which controls both energy production and the issuing of these coins, would say "Each 1 unit of PowerCoin is worth something like... 1 KWh of energy, and you can trade in 1 PowerCoin to get that much energy."
> Just to make a point for anyone here. You wouldn’t have to store the energy. You wouldn’t need little batteries as coins or something. It would just be a fiat currency backed by energy.
> It would make no sense. Currency is used mostly to keep track of debts and taxes and trade relationships and virtual is probably the best way to do that.
So it's not like we're in some subreddits for cake recipes, you know what I mean?

2026-05-05 10:54:38 GMT

We have people in 2026 talking about how an energy based currency would work in theory and nobody is bringing Bitcoin up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/comments/1rvl6tt/how_would_currency_based_on_energy_work_in/
#asknostr How is this possible?

2026-05-04 14:53:33 GMT

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Not sure I agree with your take that debt creation under the fiat regime has served the purpose of capital accumulation. Why would that have been harder without fiat money?
If anything, it would have been easier to discover and fund successful entrepreneurial projects given that we'd have had an interest rate aligned to market preferences, don't you think?

2026-05-04 09:40:34 GMT

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Technology cannot be rejected entirely since it's a defining human activaty, but I think individuals can use their intelligence to make conscious use of it. How systems develop is another matter entirely though, yet I see hope for the conscious individual

2026-05-01 20:23:44 GMT

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Which is why we like it, right?

2026-04-30 16:39:01 GMT

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You'd surely agree that quantum computing is not the kind of discipline where everyone can have their opinion while also demanding to be taken seriously, right? Of course I agree with you that everyone should be able to speak freely though

2026-04-24 08:15:13 GMT

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Which means you don't think quantum is a threat, otherwise there would only be one quantum scare (and one soft fork)?

2026-04-23 12:39:46 GMT

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ABABAB so 6 digits! 121212 / 37 would work for example

2026-04-23 09:09:34 GMT

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I guess it's just one of those weird things such as the fact that all numbers of shape ABABAB are divisible by 37

2026-04-22 22:31:37 GMT

Let's keep the world humane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojScF_gf85Q&

2026-04-22 11:51:52 GMT

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How does it work from a backend perspective? Is everything somehow hosted on relays, or is Nostr (correctly I might add) used for identity, communication, and payments?

2026-04-22 11:34:31 GMT

"... the distinction between toiling for sustenance and working for purpose. These are not the same thing, and the conflation of them is the deepest error in the technocratic imagination. Toiling for sustenance is what the serf did, labour extracted by necessity, directed by another's will, producing no accumulation of capital, no development of personal mastery, no expression of individual judgment. The serf plowed because he had no alternative; he received subsistence in return; he built nothing of his own. The UHI recipient is the digital serf ... "
Very well said 👏
#naddr1qq…u3ua

2026-04-20 14:31:23 GMT

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What's the chance of actually finding something?

2026-04-20 13:54:57 GMT

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Covenants could be great for LN though, see https://github.com/JohnLaw2/ln-scaling-covenants
To be honest, OP_CTV or similar proposals seem one of the safest soft forks to be deployed in the future.

2026-04-20 09:46:45 GMT

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@npub18zs…lyv6 might have something to say on the matter of morality as it relates to economics. I don't think we should abandon the idea that strong moral values are possible.

2026-04-20 09:30:12 GMT

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Life quality in Europe is generally speaking better also because the European Union is not an empire: nobody in Europe is worried that Taiwan might sooner or later be invaded, and to they are relatively free to focus on quality of life improvements. Or at least they might be worried, but certainly nobody is going to die for it. Maintaining a global empire necessarily leads to tradeoffs.
I would say that European nations are to the US what "clientes" were to the Roman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_kingdoms_in_ancient_Rome)

2026-04-20 08:46:56 GMT

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Makes sense! But then how would you define capitalism? I would image a system inherently requires sound money for it to be called capitalism, although I can see how a car can still be called a car even if the fuel tank is losing ~10% of its gasoline before it can even reach the engine

2026-04-20 08:29:00 GMT

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Bitcoinism == capitalism + sound money? Or does it even make sense to speak of capitalism without sound money? I think the term "capitalism" itself means almost nothing nowadays unfortunately

2026-04-20 08:14:18 GMT

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We'd have to ask which people exactly. In my opinion we have at least two groups:
- a relatively large group who is well served by the fiat system, so there is no reason to question it for members of this group
- an even larger group who is having a hard time, but its members do not understand how basic economics work and more importantly have no time to pause their lives in order to assess the situation, so it's unlikely they will ever come to see Bitcoin as a solution since the causes of the "problem" aren't clear to begin with

2026-04-19 20:22:59 GMT

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Art, religion, sports, psychedelics, philosophy, travel, mysticism, love, community life. Did I forget anything?

2026-04-19 13:03:13 GMT

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Sure, but then is not grown adults you're dealing with, but murderers.

2026-04-16 08:15:47 GMT

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This is part of the attack of labeling Bitcoin as an asset. We need 99% of so-called Bitcoiners to abandon this idea.

2026-04-15 09:09:38 GMT

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Are you hinting at Fedimint?

2026-04-15 09:07:28 GMT

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That's not the point. The point is the asymmetry in effort

2026-04-14 21:33:04 GMT

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These bots are getting ridiculous!