Developer burnout is real… I‘ve gone through it myself. It‘s a bid for health that, when listened to, can be an amazing opportunity

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation." — Jonathan Larson

This is the way. I’ve been running my coaching business almost entirely in bitcoin for the last two years. Only one client wanted to pay in USD. Otherwise I don’t even put ACH as a payment option on invoices anymore. Accounting/invoicing needed some getting used to. But holding BTC in the company has worked well. I pay fiat expenses out of pocket with a personal debit card and reimburse from the LLC twice a year in bitcoin. Expenses usually stay lower than income. So free cash flow accrues value. Distributions are paid out at the end of the year in bitcoin. View quoted note →

Thoughts on trustlessness… View quoted note →

In case you don’t know James Mickens… this piece is a must read. Funniest man in itsec. View quoted note →

Another question… why is no wallet using Liquid instead of Coinjoin for privacy? I’m aware of the trust trade-off, but it seems like a workable solution for a spending wallet. At least until Fedimint has all the bugs ironed out and we’ve figured out a good onboarding UX to select a default mint. View quoted note →

Honest question about Liquid… what’s the scaling strategy? The Blockstream website states 7-10 tps i.e. the same order of magnitude as the main chain. Or is it designed to increase tps over time?

Dealing with a loved one who has Schizophrenia is hard. Most meds have bad side effects. So compliance is often low. It can be especially stressful when they’re in psychosis. The person you love isn‘t there and can get aggressive and impulsive. You have to watch out for their safety while not forgetting your own wellbeing. It’s exhausting and you feel powerless. One of the most painful things for the ego is to acknowledge that you can do nothing but step back and be patient until they are ready to get help, or they endanger themselves or others to the point where you have to call emergency services. The biggest lesson for me is to take guilt-free time for myself, have a healthy routine, and reach out to friends for support who have similar experiences in their family. Exercise 5 times a week, enough sleep, eating healthy, fasting and meditation help a lot. It’s also important to let go of negativity and focus on what I‘m grateful for. I‘m really enjoying seeing the ocean every morning while I drink tea. And I‘m excited to get back into coding after focusing on coaching for a while. Wish me luck 🙏🏼

💯 the beauty of being nomadic is that you can stay nimble. Yes, be constructive where you are. But also look at the alternatives. My thesis is that countries with younger demographics will likely be better places to live during a transition to a bitcoin standard. I’m mostly intrigued by El Salvador, Costa Rica or Bali right now. I miss Bali and have been many times. I want to explore the others though. View quoted note →

Unfortunately even with BOLT12/BIP353 mapping to ProtonMail addresses (and assuming Async payments ships) self-custodial Lightning won’t scale to ProtonMail’s 100M userbase. The on-chain fees to open channels would result in a horrible UX. The only feasible architecture that offers decent privacy with good UX and low fees at that scale is currently ecash. But I don’t see a way for a company like Proton to run a mint (at least not without the executives risking jail time). I am bullish on seeing a million grey market guerrilla ecash mints though. And would love to see single-click install for Cashu on Umbrel (ideally running on phoenixd with automated liquidity management). View quoted note →

I had this conversation with a friend about the Euro recently. He said “but we need a common currency in Europe”. I smiled and said “we already have one”. View quoted note →

If any Swan needs coaching right now feel free to reach out. Miss you guys 🦢🧡

The free banking revival, brought to you by ecash on bitcoin, and gift cards on starbucks and big macs. View quoted note →

Good point. One thing that is applicable to any market is just shipping more. This is primarily a note to myself, as I tend to overthink and get stuck at a limiting belief. @levelsio just ships. View quoted note →

Observation: On Nostr I follow a bunch of indie hackers building open source stuff creating immense value, most notably in nostr and bitcoin. They’re all grant funded. On X I follow a bunch of indie hackers building proprietary stuff creating immense value, most notably in AI. Many are making insane monthly recurring revenues (MRR) and are all bootstrapped/self-funded. Question: How do we create a culture of open source indie hackers in bitcoin/nostr that are making self-sustaining MRR?

Friday is demo day View quoted note →