fnew

If, like many of us, you feel a bit taken aback by events of the past week in #Bitcoin    , you may be wondering about what you can do, practically, to maintain your ability to transact freely and to preserve your privacy.
Whatever the enemies of freedom may tell you, in free and democratic countries it remains lawful to possess your own property, and to continue to hold and use that property without fear of unlawful search and seizure.
You should confidently continue to pursue self custody of your bitcoin with the knowledge that the law is on your side, even if certain people in positions of power are not.
However, it is important to remember that Bitcoin was intended to be a peer to peer system, and that delegating our personal responsibility to third party custodians has meant that the robustness of the system to resisting attacks has diminished.
If you want to be able to continue transacting freely with your bitcoin, or holding it peacefully and lawfully, then you may want to take some steps to ensure that the system is as robust and as widely distributed as possible. As we know from the Cypherpunk's Manifesto, a 'widely dispersed system can't be shut down.'
Here are some concrete suggestions of things that we can all do, right now, to ensure that the Bitcoin system is as widely dispersed as possible, and that each of us can continue interacting with it freely, no matter what.
I'll give further details on each of these, and will put links in the thread, but as a start:
1. If you don't already, learn how to run a node, and start running one.
2. Learn how to open your own Lightning channels on your node.
3. Use open source, non-custodial wallets
4. Learn how to connect these wallets to your nodes
5. Really focus on understanding self custody.
1. Run a node
Why is this important? It keeps the Bitcoin network of transaction validators as widely-dispersed as possible and helps to maintain the censorship-resistance of the network. If you run your own node, you will at the same time have access to a wallet that can't be removed from an app store and cannot be shut down.
I run two - one on a little umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4 (photo below) and the other on an old pc.
If you've never done this before, then Umbrel is a fun place to begin. You may also want to look into @start9labs - each provide a good basis to learn how to do this and become part of the network.
2. Learn how to use lightning in a self custodial way
Opening and closing channels costs sats; but your own channels mean that you are much more likely to maintain access to them. See the great tutorial from @BTCsessions in the thread. A second tutorial on Fedi is also linked.
3. Use open source, non custodial wallets
Especially if, like Mutiny, they can be installed as a progressive web app and don't need to be listed in one of the app stores. Either @MutinyWallet or @ZeusLN are great options.
4. Connect your wallet to your node
Zeus especially will enable you to be fully self-sovereign in this context.
5. Focus on self-custody
I cannot recommend the guide from @parman_the enough (link in thread). If you are starting from a position where your coins are still in a custodial wallet on an exchange, read the article in the thread below as a starting point, and begin working your way up the levels of self custody.
Bitcoin may be under attack; but this is what it was designed for. If it were not continually attacked, there would be no incentive for Bitcoin to improve, or for us, its users, to improve our own practices.
You are not alone, and you are not helpless. I hope the suggestions in this post will give anyone new to self custody, or exploring it for the first time, some pointers as to further reading - and encouragement that while we are in a fight, we are absolutely and unequivocally going to win it.
https://umbrel.com/
https://start9.com/
https://youtu.be/ypL2y63o9dk?si=AqTo8hMkSeKtatsw
https://youtu.be/um2VL22R-J0?si=nx7CyiifDwwdd9y3
https://twitter.com/BTCsessions/status/1783916680361492689?t=DRFwKydOQQuuG2IjJaUHGg&s=19
https://armantheparman.com/zerotrust/
https://zeusln.com/
https://medium.com/the-bitcoin-hole/how-to-set-up-a-bitcoin-node-with-umbrel-on-a-raspberry-pi-4-32a22535c4bb
https://v2.minibolt.info/

2024-04-25 14:20:11

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Maybe we go back to trading MtGox cards IRL, but stamp private keys on them and never move on chain again?

2024-04-24 20:37:47

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Absolutely agree - two points here. 'Same risk, same regulation' approach only works when the risks ARE actually the same. The risk of Bitcoin is NOT the same as the risk of Dog Wife Hat coin. We hammer the point in all our comms, but as you say there is a huge and well funded lobby pushing the crypto narrative.
Secondly, there is an unfortunate new piece of regulation that will require banks to share the losses with victims of APP (authorized push payment) fraud - ie where someone authorizes a payment to a fraudster. It's easier for banks just to block all 'crypto' transactions to simply their processes and avoid risk from the get go.

2024-04-24 10:49:52

Regulators are determined to come after #Bitcoin.
Although many in the community are opposed to regulation in its entirety, my view is that that if regulation is coming (or already here), we need to do everything we can to make sure it is good and decent and does not impede the proper operation of the most important aspects of #Bitcoin . We discussed this approach recently on What Bitcoin Did, in the links below.
Having said this, why is it so hard to create, and lobby for, good and thoughtful regulation?
Firstly, in the UK, the instinctive reaction of regulators (and in particular the FCA) has been aggressive and one of reactive and unhelpful opposition to #Bitcoin, coupled with an unwillingness to listen to those at the coal face of the industry. Scroll through their publications or public statements and you will find the same old chestnuts: “it's a speculative asset with no use case”; “it has no intrinsic value”; “it is not backed by anything” (this last one being a particularly amusing, when you consider that a large number of the British public still labour under the misapprehension that the pound sterling is backed by our gold reserves).
Instead of levying these (frankly childish) allegations at #Bitcoin , they should instead take advantage of the very large number of people working in the industry who are ready to give up their time to assist the FCA in understanding, as far as it is possible to do so, what exactly Bitcoin really is, and what its properties really are.
Secondly, we unfortunately see poor and ineffective regulation emerging as a direct result of this reactive opposition and their failure to pay attention to advice.
Without understanding what Bitcoin is, regulators cannot regulate it, or its buyers, in any sensible fashion.
By way of example, take the ludicrous categorisation of #Bitcoin  as a restricted mass market investment, which has required exchanges to impose ‘cooling off’ periods, and customers to answer questionnaires before they can buy on exchanges. Or, if you don’t want to do this, you can easily circumvent the FCA’s laughable attempts at preventing access to #Bitcoin    by buying the asset simply and easily in a peer-to-peer and KYC-free manner with an app on your phone.
Utterly ineffective regulation is not good regulation – it is in fact idiotic and makes a mockery of the entire process.
It is symptomatic of a resolute failure to engage or to understand that this asset is unlike anything they have dealt with before, that its properties are unique – and that furthermore, it is impossible to write rules for the way that both people and the legal system interact with #Bitcoin  if you do not at least attempt to understand its properties first.
If a regulator proposes a rule enabling Bitcoin to be confiscated from self-custody, they need to understand this is impossible without either keyholder cooperation or actual physical violence.
If a regulator proposes that UTXOs be frozen, then they need to tell us how.
If a regulator attempts to ban Bitcoin, we need to show them that users will keep holding and using it regardless.
Most importantly of all – I would exhort the FCA and all other government regulators to make use of the many volunteers in the industry who will give up their time and expertise to assist them in making good and effective regulation. Don’t consult them only to ignore their expertise.
I quote from the FCA’s recent policy statement released in response to feedback they had from the industry: “On our proposals for cryptoassets, respondents generally disagreed with our proposal to categorise cryptoassets as Restricted Mass Market Investments (RMMI)… Having considered the feedback, we intend to proceed as consulted with categorising cryptoassets as ‘Restricted Mass Market Investments’.”
Suggestion: if you’re learning to drive a car, it’s best to follow the advice of your driving instructor. Don’t simply try to make up a new Highway Code as you go.
No one else will pay attention to it.
https://youtu.be/e4Z7LZ72o3w?si=xIjaiQnaXkS9UT-p

2024-04-17 18:21:03

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Thanks! Hope you enjoyed.

2024-04-17 18:19:30

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Pura Vida all the way! 🫂💜

2024-04-17 18:18:53

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definitely should. Masterpieces! and endlessly re-readable.

2024-04-16 11:10:59

"Don't panic" is only one of many snippets of life advice from Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but probably one of the best (besides the tip always to have a towel on hand).
If this is your first #Bitcoin cycle, this is absolutely essential to remember (hell, if it's your second or third as well). Never get too euphoric, or too scared either.
All you need to ask, in response to new FUD, or new panic in the wider world, or the endlessly manic news cycle, are two simple questions:
Does this increase #Bitcoin''s limited supply?
And does this make it easier for a small group to make changes to the code without rough consensus?
If the answer to each of these is no, then you can go for a walk and rest easy.
https://m.primal.net/Hvqs.jpg

2024-04-11 09:42:38

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Thanks. I'm fully expecting it to be ignored, but important to get on the record nonetheless.
You also set out a plausible playbook for them. But I find certain things encouraging - not least that the more people learn about CBDCs, the more they hate them. The Bank can't create one without a change in primary legislation. We need to make sure MPs realize that if they vote for one, they'll be punished at ballot box. a
All they care about is keeping their seats.
Also we need to keep showing people where the lifeboats are, to make sure they have a means to transact even after CBDC imposition.

2024-04-10 19:18:32

If you look back over previous #Bitcoin cycles, you find a lot of evidence that while history doesn't repeat, it definitely rhymes.
This time the waffle is 'tokenisation of RWAs'. We've had this before, with 'tomatoes on the blockchain' in 2017. Previously, we also had NFT mania, 'blockchain not bitcoin', metaverse tokens, AI tokens, you name it.
Sadly, 'the blockchain' seems to be THE most efficient vehicle ever for tokenising and selling absolute bullsh!t to unwitting investors.
All this will fall away, and in the end, at the start of the next cycle, #Bitcoin    will still be standing, but likely knee-deep in the effluent from a cloaca of pitch decks, all attempting to sell you something, which you should studiously ignore.
Some examples of this madness:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-09/the-internet-of-tomatoes-is-coming-starting-with-boston-salads
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2018/10/29/where-did-the-money-go-inside-the-big-crypto-icos-of-2017/
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/12/31/here-are-the-top-10-cryptocurrencies-of-2021/
https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/top-10-artificial-intelligence-ai-cryptocurrencies/
https://inc42.com/features/2021-in-review-nft-mania-and-the-celebrities-that-caught-it/
https://hacken.io/discover/rwa-tokenization/
https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/06/26/step-aside-blockchain-technology-imf-and-bis-have-a-new-buzzword-to-peddle/

2024-04-06 09:15:16

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Credit to 1f52b_xyz , with whom we discussed the privacy benefits of e-cash and to whose paper below we refer in our own paper:
https://1f52b.xyz/article/2023/06/the-digital-pound-a-new-form-of-money-for-households-and-businesses/

2024-04-06 09:14:05

The Bank of England is currently running ‘working groups’ on aspects of their #CBDC proposals.
Bitcoin Policy UK have submitted the paper in the link below, giving detailed feedback on our privacy concerns.
TLDR: While we remain opposed to the creation of a #CBDC in its entirety, our view is that the ‘least worst’ option would be a form of anonymous Chaumian e-cash, which no third party can monitor, control or censor - namely, a digital bearer equivalent to physical cash.
To quote Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch, “Anonymous, private, low threshold e-cash could have a future - but Western Countries like Britain won’t accept anything that looks like a ‘spycoin’.”
Key points from our paper:
1. We remain opposed in principle to the creation of a digital pound or CBDC, and our policy position is unchanged - that it is a solution in search of a problem; one that will serve no useful purpose not already served by existing forms of digital money.
2. The proposals to give ‘tiered’ access to the #CBDC in return for the surrender of more and more personal data should be abandoned.
3. These proposals effectively treat personal and transaction data as a form of currency themselves - the digital pound would become more useful the more personal data is surrendered by its users, who would pay for increased usability with the currency of their personal data. It is therefore an unfair and exclusionary model of money.
4. There is little to no sense in expending time, personnel, money and other resources in replicating a system that will be broadly identical to the modern system of commercial bank accounts, while having none of the advantages of the physical cash system. If a CBDC has to exist at all, then better privacy may be afforded by the implementation of Chaumian e-cash.
5. For the Bank’s CBDC truly to replace physical cash, or to offer a genuine digital alternative, it needs to mirror the key features of physical cash. These include being a bearer instrument, offering strong anonymity for transactions and ownership, (the former two characteristics being of particular relevance to this privacy consultation) and must also allow direct claims against the central bank by the public.
6. Without these characteristics, the CBDC is unlikely to be attractive enough to compete with existing digital payment options, leading to public mistrust, low adoption, high running costs, and eventually the failure of the entire enterprise - which is not an outcome with which we as an organisation would be disappointed.
#NoSpycoin #NoToCBDCs
https://www.bitcoinpolicy.uk/post/privacy-and-the-digital-pound-resisting-threats-to-privacy-and-financial-freedom

2024-03-11 15:56:25

Remember, it's never ‘time to gamble on Bitcoin', as you may have seen in the papers over the weekend.
🚨A health warning🚨! We’re going to see a lot of these headlines as the price spikes. Unfortunately, the price is almost always what attracts attention.
By all means, get curious. But I’d exhort you not to dive in because of price euphoria, without having read around the subject first, and understood a little more deeply what might be going on here.
I’m writing with the perspective of more than a decade in the space, and the more I have learned about Bitcoin, the more ignorant I feel and the more I realise how much I still have to learn. To steal a line from Newton, “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
If you are beginning to discover Bitcoin for the first time, I can offer you only three pieces of advice with any certainty (and these are my firm opinions, not financial advice of any kind):
1. At some point, the Bitcoin price will drop.
2. When it does, there will be a flood of articles from journalists, from governments and from central banks, all declaring that Bitcoin is dead.
3. Bitcoin will not die.
It is the last of the above points that is the most important, and where I would suggest you begin your journey. It’s absolutely crucial to ask “Why won’t Bitcoin die?” and try to come up with a better answer than those bankers and journalists who have failed to provide a satisfactory response to this question over the past fifteen years.
It’s impossible to answer this question in a short Twitter post, so without going into the technical, social, financial, or game theoretical reasons why Bitcoin will not die, I’d like to leave you with just one breadcrumb at the start of this trail – ultimately, this isn’t about Bitcoin at all.
It is about a realisation that the financial system, and the way money is created, are gratuitously unfair, and that this unfairness is buried deep in the way that our systems operate, so deeply that it is barely visible and rarely thought about.
It is understanding that if you are not born into a vanishingly small percentile of the population, then the dice are loaded against you from the first day of your life, and that all your efforts to change your destiny by exchanging your time and your work for government-issued money will be undone, by the ability of governments and central banks to create that money from nothing, and to ensure that it flows to those closest to the point of creation – and not to you.
It is the realisation that your time, and your work, will be debased and diluted by the actions of governments and banks throughout your life, and like Alice Through the Looking Glass you will have to sprint alongside the Red Queen of the financial system for all of your days; sprinting just to stay in the same place, and ever at risk of falling behind.
Bitcoin is not a gamble. Its mere price will rise and fall. But its actual value is, strangely, not in itself but in what it represents, and in what it preserves – the value of human time, immune to manipulation and debasement. It represents something of yourself that cannot be taken away or diminished by a third party without your express consent.
Others have written far more eloquently about these ideas and I encourage you to seek them out. Then, when the price has fallen again, you may be able to decide if you want to let go of the Red Queen’s hand and choose another path through the Looking Glass world.
At that point, "It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on." https://image.nostr.build/047757e3fdebc80f5f664042b5998327b3677cadcd83c5443e6488add33929e9.jpg

2024-02-06 16:44:31

Imagine a company that began with no external funding of any kind, and which initially made no money at all. In fact, running this company would cost money, in the form of electricity bills. It has no marketing budget, no lobbyists, no highly paid consultants, and for a very long time its product has no market value. It is subjected to relentless and irrational attacks in the media, from politicians, and from those in banking and finance who begin to suspect that its product may disintermediate or replace them.
But it endures; and its product begins to monetise in real time, even in the face of this determined resistance, and without any external assistance aside from those who begin to believe in its thesis.
Bitcoin, of course, is not a company. But it has arisen from nothing, in the face of unified attacks from across the established world, and it continues to be attacked – fruitlessly – to this day. In some senses, we can say that Bitcoin actually needs these attacks in order to prove its thesis; that it is an unstoppable monetary and messaging network that no one can kill or shut down. If it were to crumble in the face of its opposition, then it would not be fit for purpose.
Bitcoin and the mythological Hydra have much in common. Slaying the Hydra was one of the Labours of Heracles, and one of the hardest; each time he cut off a head, three more grew in its place. He was able to triumph – or so he thought – with the help of his nephew Iolaus, who assisted him in burning the stumps and preventing new heads growing back. Heracles then dipped his arrows in the Hydra’s blood, and they remained a deadly, poisonous weapon during the rest of his life.
But the Hydra had the last laugh in the end. The centaur Nessus, felled by one of those poisoned arrows, begged Heracles’ wife Deianira to soak a robe in his blood as a ‘love potion’ and to give it to Heracles if ever his love wavered. When at last she put it on him, the Hydra’s venom ignited and devoured Heracles – the creature reached back out of the past and brought down the most powerful man of the ancient world.
Governments across the world have tried to ban or kill Bitcoin. So far, all have failed.
Central and commercial bankers mock Bitcoin daily. Each day that Bitcoin survives, producing new blocks and transferring value across the globe, they look more and more foolish.
We want Bitcoin’s enemies to understand that they cannot kill it, and they cannot turn it off. It is here, with us in the world, and it cannot now be uninvented.
And with this understanding, we want them to find a way to work with Bitcoin, not against it. To understand its many benefits, and to use them for all our interests, in our financial, energy and infrastructure systems.
They do not need to fight the Hydra and don the robe of Nessus – there is another way.
https://image.nostr.build/1c00b6a544b6d668a12d83781ff98c483de4ad353248c8729791dfdb085db515.jpg#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=1078x1071&blurhash=%7CSG*s5s%2C%3FawcocxZt7ae%251_Lt6tkR*s.R%2BkBr%3Fj%5BE%2Bt7EMsmWBRkWXRkNHkCWVV%5BW%3BR%2Bs%3AWqNbRkS%24RkxFNHjZofxFt7V%5BofRks%2CWBM%7CxEj%40kVn%25W%3DxDofoyV%40WBWqWCX8kDWBoMxZnhj%5BoLo0oyoeNHS2WrWBkCWCj%5BoJ&x=aa086e5df25c632f9d9b06bd0b8ab7185c9cbe824038d5b8c1663692be0db4ec

2024-01-29 23:05:14

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It's all thoroughly depressing, but your last point is on the nail. Once they work out how to make the gravy train continue by making money from Bitcoin, they'll be all in.

2024-01-29 22:00:27

When I was a junior lawyer at a Big Law firm, my peers and I often used to wonder how the partners could treat us as they did. Sometimes, I’d arrive at the office on Monday, and not leave the building till Thursday, sleeping one or two hours a night on the floor under my desk, or not at all. We had people in our team fainting in the corridors, and falling downstairs from exhaustion, cracking ribs. Once, I worked for 48 hours without a break, and with no sleep at all. I would have done anything, and told anyone whatever they wanted to hear, if they'd just told me I could go to bed.
We used to think the partners couldn’t possibly treat us like this if they thought we were human; and of course, we were right. We were looking at the question entirely the wrong way round. To the partners, we were not human; we were revenue-generating assets with a fixed cost base (our salaries), and we generated that revenue with our time. So the more revenue they got us to generate over time, the better for them. Only once we came to this realisation did it all make sense.
In the same way, we tend to look at journalism the wrong way round. If we are labouring under the misconception that journalism is a search for truth, then articles like this from Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times can be hard to comprehend. But when we realise that journalism is, fundamentally, no longer a search for truth, but for attention, then it becomes much easier to understand. We have also been looking at this question the wrong way round. Jemima is certainly winning attention for the FT ; witness this post. QED!
Jemima does ask “Is it time for the likes of me to admit we were wrong” about #Bitcoin   . Although you can probably guess my answer to this, I actually wanted to address her conclusion, which is that in relation to #Bitcoin, “there is still no there there.”
In her defence, Jemima has, like many of us, grown up in a world where digital scarcity is an oxymoron. Our whole lives, up to the invention of Bitcoin, have been filled with digital abundance, where anything digital can be endlessly replicated without cost. In such a world, it might be forgivable to think that everything digital or intangible behaves in the same way. Most intangible things do – if I send you an email, we both have the same copy, and other copies exist on servers across the internet. If I tell you an idea, we both have the same idea afterwards.
But Bitcoin is not like this.
If I have a Bitcoin, and send it to you, I cannot reverse that transaction, and I lose control of that Bitcoin forever. It cannot be replicated, and it cannot be copied. It is utterly unique, and in sending it, I have lost it.
This is a poor analogy, but Bitcoin can be thought of as an email I can only send once, and a copy of which I cannot retain once sent. It is an idea that vanishes forever from my mind once I tell it to someone else. It is the discovery of digital scarcity in a world of endlessly copiable digital abundance, and we have never seen anything like it before.
If your job, in any sense, involves the pursuit of truth and the exploration of new ideas, then you should seize the chance to explore and understand something like this with both hands. You should not let the chance slip away, or go on repeating the same facile points for more than a decade after the facts have proven you comprehensively and thoroughly wrong.
https://www.ft.com/content/c4fd2c69-c69a-49e4-9e93-d687aa801e87?sharetype=blocked
https://image.nostr.build/7860b8520047d742c387b9a3ab0f517f2c45db8a1efe0245c7c570afe524bcf3.jpg#m=image%2Fjpeg&dim=1080x664&blurhash=rAMbGYpJH%3Dx%5Eo%7EZ%7EyYMc%25h.TDNyEMws%3Ax%5ER3tnMdDi%25iIAtSf%2BROtSROt8%25NRjofWAj%3Foef%2Bo0bINGaJo%7EWAjFo%23emg4V%3F.9SiV%40ozWVjEX8nhbc&x=b48893738dcb8b98e462ca6881143c8b7ac4cac71195ddbca872dc317dc6f5bc

2023-11-14 14:56:53

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Are you waiting for the next block to be found or something?

2023-10-31 20:21:20

Thank you, Satoshi.
https://image.nostr.build/2db6807e46194ec5c740f0280b27a2186c63b96eb669e085ba54fd86fb451a82.jpg

2023-10-23 16:16:54

True in 1958. Still true now.
https://image.nostr.build/59c73824fa358725d42ba8d9076e9eee5e22fb84d7168c1088a220243412d6f7.jpg

2023-10-05 10:43:21

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Followed back! 🤙💜🫂

2023-10-03 23:10:40

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I just set my VPN to Canada and I was able to visit the Telegraph no problem....

2023-10-03 21:57:46

Canada seems to be conducting a live fire 1984 experiment:
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availability-on-our-platforms-in-canada/
https://image.nostr.build/6944cb6505253c95c1ddc1584ec44d7d6a8af26c4938b91dc66918ff6ca3d6b6.jpg

2023-09-20 11:47:36

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Socrates, actually - Plato reported it. Also Socrates' wife Xanthippe threw a bowl of piss on his head

2023-08-07 14:46:42

New guidance on crypto asset promotions from the FCA will categorise Bitcoin as a restricted mass market investment.
In preparing our latest policy document, we consulted across the industry. The prevailing view? That not only is this classification incorrect ab initio, but it is also likely to increase the risk of customer harm by driving UK customers to unregulated offshore exchanges, which are less likely to be compliant with UK rules.
Bitcoin may be described in many ways, but a ‘restricted mass market investment’ is not one of them. It is a digital bearer asset with no counterparty risk; it is a free and open-source payment protocol that has, via its Layer 2 protocols, a transaction throughput far in excess of Visa and Mastercard combined; it is a permissionless money that no government can censor, debase or dilute, and with whose monetary policy no central bank can interfere.
These new regulations, including a categorisation that the industry has consistently advised against, may inadvertently increase those very risks that the rules are intended to mitigate.
https://www.bitcoinpolicy.uk/post/bpuk-response-to-fca-guidance-consultation-gc23-1

2023-08-01 19:20:22

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Did you hear that scientists believe we're only ten years away from being able to build a working printer that connects to your computer every time?

2023-08-01 19:14:48

Would Bitcoin have helped Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning?
Minor SPOILERS below....
.
.
.
In the film, Hunt and team are fighting a rogue AI that's capable of changing our digital history at will. Things get so bad that the team realize they can't rely on the truth of any digital information, anywhere, and try to go completely analogue to fight it.
If you're a Bitcoiner, by this point you're probably already thinking of one digital source of truth that cannot be changed other than by making new valid transactions. An absolutely true ledger, whose historic information literally could not be tampered with, or deleted, without redoing all the vast proof of work that has accumulated in the ledger.
An AI, faced with this impossible task in a realm that straddles the physical and the digital, would be defeated and our source of truth in the timechain would remain uncorrupted. We could include any messages we needed to preserve in transactions broadcast to the network, and the laws of physics would protect them, forever.
Bitcoin is digital, but tied to the real world through proof of work. Energy cannot be forged; and we cannot create more time. The ledger is protected by the laws of the universe, which even an all-powerful AI cannot change.
It was sad, in a way, to see the Mi7 team printing out records rather than using proof of work to defend them. Perhaps that wouldn't have been a good use of blockspace?
Maybe there's a use case for ordinals after all 😜
Gigi is of course magnificent extra reading on this. I particularly love this piece: "Every 10 minutes, Bitcoin re-asserts itself. Every 10 minutes, it cements a message in its timechain: "you shall not steal."
dergigi.com
Bitcoin Is the Rediscovery of Money | dergigi.com
https://cdn.nostr.build/i/d55a675962266bb865355537c8da6fe9527e3b097c27d9847e36125728f013d3.jpg

2023-07-25 23:38:13

Can't quite believe this is happening, and need to thrash out what I'm going to talk about, but it appears that I've been invited to speak at Bitcoin Amsterdam. Delighted to be asked and very much looking forward to it!
https://cdn.nostr.build/i/0a3b24b3dac138d59d45cdd2db697626cd9ad1c43bf8ae7b7b50133c69dfbc63.jpg

2023-07-17 22:01:13

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⚡

2023-07-07 00:07:25

JRR Tolkien on CBDCs: "We now live in a world where Gandalf is genuinely considering using the Ring 'just for a little bit' and 'only for good reasons'."

2023-07-06 08:30:21

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Trying my best
https://nostr.build/i/3bd0fa46368ddf3f05971874246f7c8f1beec3c8369b7aea89e6caf52894ea9e.jpg

2023-07-05 22:30:12

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Excellent news. Do you have a link? The Bank of England received 50,000 responses to their consultation (hopefully all negative -BPUK's definitely was). Potentially half a million pages of negative feedback.

2023-07-05 21:59:12

Some (legal) thoughts in response to a question on whether governments could ban Nostr:
It’s important to consider two things – whether governments can pass laws to make something illegal, and whether those bans can be effective (i.e., can they be enforced).
In England and Wales, Parliament is sovereign. If Parliament so wished, it could pass a law making gravity illegal. Much as in the case of Bitcoin or Nostr, this would of course have no effect on gravity. People would carry on falling downstairs, and Bitcoin and Nostr would at a protocol level be completely unaffected by a ban.
So, we should consider whether enforcement is possible, and if possible, what is the cost of that enforcement to the government. Distributed systems greatly increase the cost of enforcement and reduce the likelihood of enforcement at the same time (in an extreme example, where thousands of people are running their own relays at home behind TOR, a government might need to spend time and resources on house-to-house searches to shut down the relays). This would of course be prohibitively expensive and wouldn’t stop anyone accessing relays outside that government’s jurisdiction. Enforcement might then become retributive – for example, imposing heavy fines and penalties on anyone using Nostr.
However, this once again upsets the balance of power, as they’d have to find you first, and there are very many ways of carefully preserving one’s privacy online (all of which we should be practicing and learning right now in case we ever need them). A government might temporarily shut down access to the internet, which is why I think that investigating continuity solutions such as GoTenna, mesh networks and satellite phones might also be prudent in the longer term.
In short, the government could make Nostr and using Nostr illegal, yes, but such a law would be very hard (if not impossible) to enforce, and enterprising citizens would find ways of ensuring continuity of access to the protocol even if both a ban and enforcement action were ongoing.

2023-07-05 21:56:23

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@npub1qny…95gx - appreciate the sats! You are obviously also a total badass 🤙💜. Keep up the amazing work fighting these bastards

2023-07-05 21:51:43

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Fucking hell, Meredith is an absolute badass

2023-07-05 21:32:08

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Great idea!
https://nostr.build/i/c8b31faeac3c6d4496b0a40f77295c71380a3073a5416a10e55b2f37095df90a.jpg

2023-07-03 10:30:49

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Also it's pretty damn obvious if you think of it simply as Monopoly. If the banker in the game doubles the amount of money they have, what happens to the value of your money in the game world as a result?

2023-07-03 06:32:11

Of course they must. Bitcoiners have been saying this for years
https://twitter.com/freddienew/status/1675723684235866117?s=20
https://nostr.build/i/1f75149809215ec23f5818923cfa0552bd15fc6a3c5c6399fba000991f294e6e.jpg

2023-07-02 00:12:01

A ping of 21 back to @npub1zyu…uu25. Just because we can 😉. Fuck KYC in all its forms.

2023-07-02 00:02:38

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This is suddenly like old Nostr again. It's exciting, we're going to slig a lot of sats around.

2023-07-02 00:01:48

Thank you to the anon pleb who just zapped me 420! A legend, whoever you are.

2023-07-01 23:54:59

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Woo hoo! Thanks so much. Nice work, again

2023-07-01 23:54:21

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You know you want a 69...
https://nostr.build/i/fef52d23c340a70ddfcba408ac4c97d5d82e3e59bacc483e907cd91d4a276838.jpg

2023-07-01 23:48:24

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I'm not a refugee but I love the badge!! Nice work.... Pretty please?

2023-07-01 23:06:41

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Relentless onanism? Not always appropriate....

2023-07-01 22:58:23

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No. Bitcoin only.

2023-07-01 22:57:53

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Welcome!

2023-07-01 22:27:10

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Welcome to Nostr!

2023-07-01 22:06:54

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I tried to send you your first zap!! Connect your lightning wallet eg with Get Alby and enable one touch zaps!!

2023-07-01 22:05:59

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Just like Hansel

2023-07-01 21:13:50

@npub1sg6…f63m I absolutely love that as soon as another Twitter exodus begins, up you pop offering support and guidance. You're like a purple Batman 🤙💜

2023-06-27 20:58:37

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You just want to bang your head into a wall. I despair of the entire VC diligence process. We have good company after company going to the wall while at the same time these negligent funds throw money at charismatic founders without doing basic due diligence on their terrible companies.

2023-06-27 10:35:19

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Iris works well both on desktop and as a PWA on the phone; seamless as the latter in fact. Zap functionality unchanged. See screenshot for example
https://nostr.build/i/4695fa5a7ddeda9afa2118b9ba537c174ad0650e5c3c884eab8b4984f826aa0a.jpg

2023-06-23 08:21:50

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You just can't win when you need to sleep every day

2023-06-22 23:57:33

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Damn, the shoulder is not optimized for training. Sometimes I just injure one in my sleep for the hell of it. Good luck!

2023-06-21 09:46:00

So, incredibly, British economists and the Bank of England have (once again) totally miscalled the UK inflation situation:
https://twitter.com/freddienew/status/1671411979808907264?s=20

2023-06-19 13:22:34

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@npub1hxd…arwt how's this?

2023-06-19 13:19:35

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Located! #nevent1q…8jw8

2023-06-19 13:06:36

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There are really nice posts from Derek Ross and Jack doing exactly this - I'll see if I can dig them out

2023-06-11 21:21:52

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Zapped you, seems to have worked

2023-06-10 22:36:25

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🫂💜

2023-06-10 22:07:23

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@npub149y…svsz no. I just zapped you 21 'one hundred millionths' of a bitcoin.

2023-06-10 22:04:26

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@npub1s05…eyhe - thanks for a happy story today. Thank goodness you were there. It's been a strange day for us here (my parents passed in a car accident 22 years ago today; anniversary always a bit tough) but this news cheered me up. Wishing all good things to the little girl and her family.

2023-06-10 22:01:43

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I honestly did love that period when Nostr consisted largely of posting and paying invoices

2023-06-06 22:11:37

Last chance to tell the Bank of England what you think of CBCDs, Nostriches!
https://twitter.com/freddienew/status/1665649288876118017?s=20

2023-06-02 00:37:37

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Thanks for the feedback, these are excellent and valid points. Will look to incorporate and develop in future pieces. Appreciate you taking the time to read and respond!

2023-06-01 15:08:56

CBDC policy paper done and published. Sent to Bank of England, Treasury, and (of course) the internet:
https://www.bitcoinpolicy.uk/post/bpuk-response-the-digital-pound-a-new-form-of-money-for-households-and-businesses
https://twitter.com/freddienew/status/1664195314331398144?s=20

2023-05-31 23:03:45

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I assume they'll be adjusting for people who lift?

2023-05-31 12:51:22

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I'm assuming you will be using your nym and a fresh proton mail address to answer these? 🤙

2023-05-31 12:44:58

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General responses - reply here: https://app.keysurvey.co.uk/f/41651494/3010/

2023-05-31 12:41:47

There's one week left to get your responses in to the Bank of England's CBDC consultation. BPUK's is ready to go, but we need as many Nostriches as possible to submit responses too!
Details below:
https://twitter.com/bitcoinpolicyuk/status/1663583730919669767?s=20

2023-05-26 19:21:16

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I just tried to zap you Ben - link up a lightning address! Then we can all ping sats around together

2023-05-06 12:36:40

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Thanks Si! Was good fun and I hope the rambling didn't put anyone off.

2023-04-26 22:20:58

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@Mark_Morton_ on Twitter. Scilling were featured in the Bitcoin Farmer documentary on Cointelegraph recently

2023-04-26 22:04:33

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Get in touch with Mark Morton from Scilling Mining. He's a great guy and advises us at Bitcoin Policy UK

2023-04-19 13:00:38

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Spolier alert: inflation did not fall to 9.8%
#[0]
https://i.imgur.com/XqBwFuS.png

2023-04-19 12:59:30

So they said UK inflation was going to fall to 9.8%...
https://i.imgur.com/xvq0ptt.png

2023-04-13 12:23:06

Launched today - been working on this for a while. UK's first Bitcoin only advocacy group. First job - responding to govt consultations from Treasury and Bank of England. Then - identifying sites in UK where mining could be done sustainably and/or with wasted energy or as part of demand response management. https://www.bitcoinpolicy.uk/post/launch-of-uk-s-first-bitcoin-only-policy-organisation

2023-04-11 23:09:13

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I'm looking forward to gouging out their eyes and skull fucking them (to quote Full Metal Jacket). But your approach is cool too.

2023-04-11 15:04:19

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Omg great UX suggestion!

2023-04-11 06:53:30

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Complete idiots. Worth reading Level 39's three on the other place. NYT spent years singing the praises of demand response, then suddenly decided it was bad when it involved Bitcoin. No integrity, absolutely none.

2023-04-11 06:18:35

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You are completely right - but it is funny for this to happen the day after the NYT hit piece

2023-04-11 06:14:54

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Don't let Peter Schiff see this.

2023-03-05 22:12:00

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This is absolutely brilliant I wish I had witnessed it. On a slightly more serious note, it is of course useful to keep this conference as a datapoint, so that in five years when these shitcoins have vanished and new snake oil merchants are pushing their wares, we can refer back to the days of vanished crap like solana and algorand.... And how all their promises came to nothing.

2023-03-05 22:01:58

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🤣🤣🤣 please tell me you did it in a high-energy Saylor style accent

2023-03-05 21:48:15

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Gotcha. I've been reading the depressing blockchain posts. Same story with every Web 3 and crypto proponent, sadly

2023-03-05 21:08:18

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For WOS, you should put the address (looks like an email address) in your settings for lightning/lnd. I just tried to zap you but the long invoice currently in your profile isn't working!

2023-03-05 21:06:07

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Interested in the MP - are you able to disclose in DM? Have been working with the APPG and attempting to upskill them (plus responding to official consultations in professional capacity). Happy to dox myself via DM if you want to diligence me - LMK

2023-03-02 23:57:57

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And to our general astonishment, this does actually seem to work

2023-03-02 19:08:45

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But it's still not nearly as green as taking a piss in a friend's mouth. No water wasted and a refreshing warm drink for your friend. The planet thanks you 🤙

2023-03-02 17:41:25

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And yes, looks like you are correct: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-custody-acquires-xapos-institutional-business-becoming-the-worlds

2023-03-02 17:37:31

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And I love that their name sounds like 'Zap'

2023-03-02 06:56:16

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Though I have to admit I would rather not be up at the moment. Gym is gonna be cold AF....🫂

2023-03-02 06:51:46

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PV!! 🤙

2023-03-01 21:17:00

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Someone's done it with the Bond books, which were going to be censored also. This is Living Daylights, on the chain already (NB I feel VERY conflicted about ordinals but have some sympathy with the idea of leaving a permanent record of otherwise banned or censored texts - open it be contradicted though). https://ordinals.com/inscription/dafdad5f91273691bc314df904024f3e56df9b39be48cad6ff7cac04b0b7c2a0i0

2023-03-01 21:12:02

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This is the only context in which I might be persuaded to inscribe the true editions into the time chain. Fuck these censorious bastards and their attempts to change history. We have always been at war with Eastasia.....

2023-02-20 20:51:40

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It's working great - pinged you some sats via Alby from desktop and WOS from Amethyst. I know this is a terrible thing to say given the associated emissions, but you are now cooking with gas 😜

2023-02-14 22:48:42

This is an incredible piece - absolutely loved this: https://tomerstrolight.medium.com/hello-i-am-bitcoin-a1f804617fab

2023-02-02 20:57:20

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If you are still playing, thank you! lnbc10u1p3ac9v2pp5xgfmd27jk7u9vts4whe2snflcwzvz9673nymdwc5sa7snvua00zsdqu2askcmr9wssx7e3q2dshgmmndp5scqzpgxqyz5vqsp5pt7ls4ymcwjxz2ppj6llw6d9npltjxmkpcsdw2kysqa2kktp6e0s9qyyssq7j2ywmydrptjapn4pwvgmpqjg47y8fvrud8s8g0sxcxe5vmr2pa9fmrwg6xadt2srqa7dgjc7nhx4uas0pct4q0ehjn5jfuskkrm5gqq4w85mt