Thinking about gold mining - is Greenpeace USA planning some campaign against hoarding gold by central banks? OK, mining of other metals can devastate the environment, too - but at least other metals can be useful. Gold mining devastates the environment just to have more gold siting idly in vaults. And there is no good reason for hoarding gold, it is just a "tradition": . What about "change the (reserve) asset, not the landscape"? Or "change the asset instead of changing river into poison" - referring to

2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill - Wikipedia

. I guess my slogans are lame, and surely this is the only reason such campaign will not take place.

Cannot believe those Greenpeace USA clowns keep attacking bitcoin: https://nitter.net/lopp/status/1681750013724983296#m "Bitcoin causes x tons of CO2 emissions." So without bitcoin, there would be x tons less CO2 emissions, right? Sure, if you assume that people who buy bitcoin would instead never spend those funds. In other words, money have alternative uses, so if people cannot spend money on bitcoin, they would spend money on other stuff. And this other stuff will probably consume energy and cause CO2 emissions. The alternatives may cause less CO2, so destroying bitcoin may prevent some CO2, but not the whole x tons. And given that btc mining consumes much higher percentage of renewables than the average consumer, btc mining should cause less CO2 than alternatives. BTC mining freezes the oceans! There are some complications. We are only interested in net inflow of funds to bitcoin, which should be equal to the cost of electricity used for mining. We only need to stop spending those funds in the world without bitcoin. So if someone bought some btc for $100, sold that btc for $600, we have an outflow of $500, which must proceed from someone buying btc, but this buyer may freely spend his $500 in the alternative world without bitcoin. Meanwhile, look at a miner selling his mined btc for say $100 - buyer of those btc must not spend those $100 in the alternative world without bitcoin . Still a laughable assumption. And yes, instead of buying btc people may spend those funds planting trees. See - now we cut CO2 emissions by more than x tons. But this is unfair argument, basically assuming best-case scenario, you would need some good evidence to claim this. Much more likely destination of those funds is gold. So without bitcoin we probably have more gold mining, which is not particularly environmentally-friendly process. Of course there are millions other arguments - flaring, grid balancing, lowering time preference.... I just never saw this particular argument.

#BanksSuck Like a good obedient sheep, I wanted to inform N26 of my postal address change. I was able to change "shipping address" without problems. But to change my "legal address" I have to talk to some stupid chatbot. OK, but you are trying my patience already. And then the chatbot says no, not without proof of address. I want to give them info and they make me jump 2 hoops already? Scan or photo of utility bill or residence certificate? So it must be a paper version, right? Third hoop, going to file a reclamation probably.

Unpopular opinion: I found 2 cases where bitcoin investment funds *may* be useful, even for an individual (not just some pension funds who have to invest in regulated things). Note that by investment funds I mean both ETFs and mutual funds Case 1: you have already invested in an investment fund. Then, you pay less taxes if you move your investment to a bitcoin fund than if you sell / redeem your old fund and buy btc. I am sure this is the case for mutual funds (seems fidelity has something like that, see https://marketrealist.com/p/crypto-mutual-fund-fidelity/), not sure about ETFs. Moving between funds is generally not taxed, only the final redemption is. Case 2: You have some old cheap KYC btc, and your beloved county applies FIFO to compute capital gains tax. (Spain does, USA also.) You want to buy more btc, expect the price to rise sharply and plan to sell in 1-2 years. If you buy real BTC, you have to sell your cheap old BTC in those 1-2 years because of FIFO (well, at least you have to declare it so for tax purposes). If you instead buy a derivative now (such as an ETF) and sell it later, you are selling that derivative, not your precious old btc. You could buy and sell the new stack non-kyc - additionally you should sell for cash or another untracable method - you do not need ETF then. So those paper BTC may be worth it in some limited circumstances, and if you carefully weight the risks. Wonder if the state will use some tax advantages to lure people into paper BTC ... and then rugpull. Can you redeem your paper BTC before the rugpull?

I think I am done with bitcoin. It sounded like an interesting idea, but: - it can only handle 7-10 tps. And Lightning does not exist and never will. - there is constant fraud - MtGox, FTX, Prime Trust. And self-custody does not exits. - the 21M limit is an illusion, anyone can create a new shitcoin. And network effects do not exits, so any shitcoin will eventually reach market cap of bitcoin, diluting the value of btc infinitely. /s if not awfully obvious. Perhaps I should be done with browsing

Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange

Personal Finance & Money Stack Exchange

Q&A for people who want to be financially literate

instead - I got those bright ideas from there. But to be honest, I am not totally content with the last point, whether invoking network effects is sufficient. With growing mainstream acceptance of bitcoin, I wonder whether those geniuses will keep criticizing bitcoin indefinitely, and if not, how will they justify their change of mind.

I was about to shill for N26, as they offer 2 month free trial of "N26 Smart Account":

2 Months Smart Free Trial

. It seemed to include free SEPA Instant transfers, which would be handy to buy sats at Robosats Except the linked document does not mention instant SEPA. And I did sign up for this trial and then did a test payment of 1 euro to another my account which does support instant SEPA, and no, neither N26 gave option to pay instantly, nor it arrived instantly. And was browsing their FAQ, where they mention some gambling fee, and the German court says they "feigned consent" by introducing it:

What does the court ruling BGH XI ZR 26/20 mean for N26 customers?

. Sounds rather shady to me. Only keep in bank what you can afford to lose, I guess...

#BanksSuck I called to this bank a week ago about my blocked internet banking. Still not resolved today, called today and just heard some promises: we'll look into it, we need to talk to our security team, we'll call you. And they told me that they didn't try to call me. A WEEK without any feedback from them. It is great they are doing this PR for Bitcoin, but I don't need any convincing. Well, perhaps I do, I am still holding non-trivial amount of fiat in some investment fund managed by this bank. Not for much longer of course. note1pk7jth3xkzh3mulrmq5gf9naxa8s62nmk9hw4rauw6dwadmfgd4qa8rrly

And now for something slightly different. #WarOnSomeDrugs is a tyranny of majority. "Drug are bad, we have to ban them. Wait, I didn't mean OUR favourite drug - alcohol." It is rather difficult to ban majority's drug. Not impossible, USA actually tried it 1921-33. But just compare to the current war on some drugs - it lasts at least from 1971, so 52 years vs. 12 years. There can be some rationalizations - "of course it would be good to ban even alcohol, but it is not really possible, it would cause eiher revolt, be repealed in the next election or be massively ignored. So instead we do what is possible, and ban only some drugs." Or: "alcohol is already causing huge problems (remember, people have no agency, and alcohol has), and some lunatics want to allow more drugs?" I guess just talking about principles doesn't help here. Principles are nice and all, but if you feel threatened, if you believe drugs are causing a catastrophe, you ignore those abstract principles. "What is more important, saving lifes or your funny princiles?" the brainwashed hypocrite asks. "Grow up, you naive child." he adds. Wish I knew how to effectively counter this thinking. To me it is obvious that the catastrophe can be easily invented, or a little problem can be blown out of proportions. "But the catastrophe is absolutely real this time. And even if it is not, why risk it?" Guess I give up... for now.

Got reminded of the criminals in the Iranian goverment. Which in turn reminded me of #ComcastPunishesTorRelays . Not sure if tor bandwidth is the biggest worry of those millions of hostages, but it could be important to get the info both into and out of Iran. So Comcast indirectly helps those criminals, even though it is just Comcast's incompetence and unwillingnes to understand there are non-exit relays. (At least I have no proof of Comcast malevolence, so not going to throw baseless accusations.) Still, not nice from Comcast, to put it mildly. So I am running a bridge instead of non-exit relay on my fixed connection, and began running a snowflake bridge on mobile connection intermittently.

X (formerly Twitter)

Nazanin Boniadi (@NazaninBoniadi) on X

1. ‘The Islamic Republic vs. Iran.’ Thanks to @OsloFF and @HRF for the opportunity to highlight Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom revolution, and dis...

When ranting about my blocked internet banking, I forgot to mention: In Soviet Spain, you cannot pay more than 1000 euros in cash. And the trend is lowering this threshold, both in nominal terms (it was 3000 euros a few years ago I think) and of course in real terms by printing money. And just last month, another innovation about real estate : rent has to be always paid "electronically", whatever that means. ("a través de medios electrónicos" is the literal expression used in the law in Spanish. Already ranted about this at

Stacker News

Spain intensifies war on cash - rent has to be paid "electronically" \ stacker news

They recently amended the law, it now says in art 17 para 3: El pago se efectuará a través de medios electrónicos. Excepcionalmente, cuando algu...

.) Yes, overlords were kind enough to grant an exception for those who don't have a bank account. But the trend seems clear: You will own nothing but IOUs and your will be happy. So in the brave new cashless world, when your bank screws up and locks you out of your account, you are going to have serious problems. How do you pay for food, rent, utilities if the bank does not resolve the issue quickly? Will it even be legal if your friends pay for you, wouldn't that be almost money laundering? Maybe you are paying back those friends with bitcoin, and only a terrorist would do that. And I am now talking about a mere accident, honest mistake committed by the bank. If they really target you, you are really screwed. And cash is sort of competitor to banks, keeps them in check. Eliminate competitor, and they have slightly less incentive to solve your problem. In other words, even today banks commit mistakes. And yet some psychopaths want to restrict or eliminate cash and make us totally dependent on banks?

My bank - Abanca in Spain - felt the need to remind me to not trust the banks. It is just slight inconvenience for now, but could have easily been a major headache in just slightly worse circumstances. Details: My internet banking access was blocked immediately after I tried sending HalCash to my own mobile phone number. (HalCash is a system which send you a code by SMS to withdraw cash at ATM, using that code and no card needed.) The same mobile phone number which I use for "second" factor authentication. Schroedinger's security - my phone number is safe to authenticate 1000 euros bank transfer, and at the safe time totally unsafe, so a mere *attempt* to send HalCash to that number justifies the drastic measure of cutting my access. Note that to withdraw the money by HalCash, one needs a code received by SMS, and a one-time password set by the sender. So my phone number (or ability to receive SMS on that number) is only one of two factors in both cases (bank transfer and HalCash), yet they treat those cases totally differently. Made various attempts to call them. The automaton tells me to tell or dial my identification number. Dial? Very funny, because as a foreigner, I have a letter in my identification "number" (NIE), how do I dial that? Anyway, computer says no, it does not understand - even when I dial just the digits of my id number. Why inform me that it cannot be solved by the automaton and that I need to speak to human, when they can make me try again and waste my time? I thought that John Cleese's "How to irritate people" was a comedy, not a guide. Speaking to a human, he just told me that he opened an incident and that they will call back. This was yesterday and still received no call as of 16:00 today. Maybe because the made a spam call about a year ago and I marked their phone number as spam. To be fair, my debit card works fine, both payments and withdrawals, so not going to die of hunger because of this. Just hugely complicates my buying of Bitcoin.

John Cleese on banks, in 1969: Prophetic words, he basically predicted Lebanese trying to get their money from banks. Guess I have to check his twitter later, wonder if he buys all the mainstream nonsense about bitcoin.

Quite enraging, although when thinking about details, the meme is perhaps only 90% accurate . OK, SBF is really at house arrest, so not exactly free - but it is still million times better than detained. SBF has given up his passport - great, but was Roman even given opportunity to do the same? (I don't know, but I doubt it, if they cite 4 passports as evidence for being flight risk) Not sure about SBF's money - are they frozen like Roman's, making his defense much more difficult? Maybe irrelevant, SBF can probably count on parents for funds. Trial date: 14 Sep 2023 for Roman, so he had to spend more than 2 years in detention. 1 Oct 2023 for SBF, so less than a year in house arrest. If the system wanted some appearance of fairness, it would give priority to those with harsher pre-trial conditions. I know, different courts, but still, such difference in their workload? And Roman's case seems quite simple - little if any evidence against Roman, so what takes so long? There can be devil in the details, hypothetically it could be Roman's defense filing many motions and slowing things down. Perhaps this is not that relevant, and Roman should not even have been arrested, let alone put to trial. I think the major reason for this treatment of Roman is that "his" crime (let's pretend the accusation is true, just to formulate the idea) is against the state, its control, its authority. Millions defrauded customers? Who cares? Providing privacy? How dares he (or whoever founded Bitcoin Fog)? #FreeRoman #JailChainalysisCEO

#ComcastTorBlock Turns out that Comcast probably just does not understand tor - specifically, the difference between exit and non-exit relays. See lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-June/021208.html . And not enough evidence that Comcast really blocks connections to tor relays, just ALL connections *from* tor relays. So raising awareness about that difference could be a way to go. Perhaps we should bug EFF that they do/join such awareness campaign? Repost / retweet. And help me with short-enough slogan or hashtag, because #TorNonExitRelayIsNotAThreat seems too long to me. But "relay" can refer to an exit relay, and those could be a threat, so mentioning "non-exit" seems inevitable. (4th edit of this, sorry for spam, deleted the old versions.)

Comcast tor saga continues. Found out that the blocking is probably implemented by router/modem provided by Comcast. And can be turned off if one is determined enough, and doesn't mind scary warning pop-ups and weekly mail reminders. It is included in their "Advanced Security" feature. Because if random IP address connects to your computer, it is ok, but if a tor relay does, it is automatically a security threat, so should not connect to your computer. At least Comcast geniuses think so. Less evil because of possible opt-out, but still evil, because it has little to do with security and discourages people from running tor relays. (Sources: 2 Comcast customers contacted me and told me, and we did some tests.)

Comcast censorship: People on tor mailing list raised some doubts, so testing again. Started tor relay again (public, not just bridge), and sure, 9 hours after appearing as online at metrics.tor.org, I cannot connect to my Comcast peer. I was able to connect up to that moment, I was testing by socat every 5 minutes. Now turned off relaying, and trying to see whether and when I am able to connect to that Comcast peer again. I guess they must lift the block after some time, otherwise they would eventually end up blocking all IPs of any ISP which assigns IPs dynamically to its customers.

Finally people are starting to notice the Comcast tor blocking:

[tor-relays] Comcast blocks ALL traffic with tor relays

Any Comcast hostages^W customers out there? You may want to do some tests and help find out the exact scope of the blocking.

Proudly participating in #bankrun . And it reminded me of a campaing in Spanish newspapers back in July 2022. They claimed you may have to justify your cash withdrawal of more than 1000 euros, and have to justify it if more than 3000 euros. For example (google translated to english):

Las Provincias

Dinero en efectivo | El nuevo límite de dinero en efectivo que se puede sacar del cajero según Hacienda | Las Provincias

Los movimientos con dinero en metálico son vigiliados para detectar cualquier fraude o blanqueo de capitales

. If true*, it sounds outrageous in current situation. I am forced to suffer a counterparty risk at least in some conditions, like having more than 3000 eur in bank. And what justification is acceptable? If I may just say "I don't trust banks", then the whole justification thing is pointless. And if I may not? Ah, I have to risk and hope that banks do not fail or are bailed out. Well, I may also buy bitcoin, no limit AFAIK, so perhaps the tax agency is really trying to foster bitcoin adoption. 😀 * I have some doubts, none of the articles mentions concrete part of a law or regulation, and I found nothing concrete in the most obvious candidates (law on money laundering, some tax laws).

elDiario.es

Binance sigue bajo la lupa de la Justicia: otro juzgado investiga por apropiación indebida al gigante de las criptomonedas

La jueza María de los Ángeles Velázquez cita a declarar como imputado al consejero delegado, Changpeng Zhao, tras la querella de un empresario e...

Note that this is a private criminal prosecution, it is clear from wording in original. The victim could have relied on public prosecution, and would not have to hire and pay his own lawyer then. Those fee may be reimbruised, but only if someone is convicted. So either the victim is pretty sure he will obtain coviction and be able to collect, or he is desperate and does not trust public prosecution. The final paragraph of the article is revealing: Binance unblocked the funds after the criminal complaint, so basically admitted they had no good reason to have blocked it. I could say you should not send a cent to such scammers, but I would be preaching to the choir very probably.