I am not of the “one book changed my life” tendency. Maybe I’ve become too cynical….ahem….skeptical. But I do believe there are works that compel you to try. I’m working my way through “The Matter of Things” by Iain McGilchirst. It’s not light reading, but if you give this book your attention and aren’t profoundly affected by it….I think you missed it.
The two volumes are ca 1500 pages. But I promise those many pages will grip you.
I had a BUSY couple weeks and was off #Nostr. Now that I'm back, I realize...I kinda missed it!
🥲
My daughter just saw my computer desktop and asked "What the heck is all that?"
It all makes sense to me....more or less🤔
If you find yourself in #Prague, definitely find time to visit the people at Paralelni Polis. Great cafe, available work spaces, and you’ll randomly meet some great people. And of course, pay for everything in #Bitcoin !
https://paralelnipolis.cz/en/
Second Culture
Second Culture
Second Culture is a Berlin-style coworking space, versatile venue, and café in Prague – fostering creativity and community in an innovative urba...
They also sell some cool stuff.
Would welcome any recommendations for a place to grab a beer in Prague that accepts bitcoin.
Thanks!
#asknostr #prague #bitcoin #praha
You don’t have give a damn about Ethereum to appreciate how important the Tornado Cash decision is for #Bitcoin and #freedomtech in general. Times are changing. We’re winning - but we haven’t won.
Nonetheless, celebrate victories like this. This is a good day for developers - and thus a good day for all of us.
X (formerly Twitter)
Matt Corva (@MattCorva) on X
The 5th Cir. Court of Appeals ruling in favor of plaintiffs challenging the prior addition of Tornado Cash smart contracts to sanctions list pursua...
GM🫡
My daughter is home from college. Last night she saw me scrolling through #Nostr, asked what it was and whether it was the same as X. Fortunately she has been spared the social media obsession that has afflicted much of her generation. She gets the nature of the deal with the devil users make with social media companies when they use those products.
What really caught her attention was Zaps, reminding me how radical an idea they are to someone not already playing in this space. So we scrolled through my Zaps and sent a few sats out to show how stupid simple it is for the user.
This scroll through Zaps provoked a question I didn’t expect - who is
@ODELL and why does he send you so much money?
What do you say? I told her he was a man on a mission to make #Nostr available to everyone.
She’s now the second #Primal user in the family!
Had drinks with an old buddy tonight. Sign of the bull market, he asked me about #Bitcoin. Apparently he’s done some reading, gets the basics of why most of us find ourselves here. But he was stuck on the fact that he couldn’t drop $100k in cash to buy one coin.
There’s a lot of talk about the need to be a whole coiner, often causing people to infer that if that is out of reach, there’s no point in getting in.
What my friend hadn’t heard was that enjoying the benefits of #bitcoin doesn’t require a number….there are no mandatory minimums in this club.
Rather, what gets you your membership card is changing how you prioritize your money and time. My friend is well off, if probably not a bit leveraged like most other people. My point to him was, even if you only have $5 to spare a day, if you decide that Bitcoin is how you want to save that money, you’re in.
He got it. And I’m certain that once he makes that commitment, and his understanding of what Bitcoin offers him and his family matures, he’ll really learn to appreciate that even those few dollars a day or week he might be able to invest will change his life in ways he has until now been unable to anticipate.
A great description of Economic Nodes in
GitHub
bitcoin-cap
bitcoin-cap has one repository available. Follow their code on GitHub.
Demonstrates why the consensus discussion is critical for protecting the integrity of the protocol. Large institutional players and governments could hold significant sway as adoption among these actors grows. Fortunately the interests of these actors are not necessarily aligned, which of course brings a different set of challenges for positive evolution.
I wish I had some answers - learning as I go.
Economic Nodes
Economic Nodes play a critical role in bitcoin's consensus mechanism. Economic Nodes are full nodes that not only validate and relay transactions but also receive and send substantial amounts of bitcoin payments. These nodes are distinct from nodes just validating blocks and transactions. These Economic Nodes are typically operated by businesses and institutions that handle significant volumes of bitcoin transactions and often serve as bridges between the bitcoin network and the traditional financial system (providing a venue to swap BTC for fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies).
Economic Nodes, or nodes that regularly receive bitcoin, have power and influence which is proportional to the frequency and volume of payments received. For example, a high volume exchange has power in that if their nodes reject blocks mined by Miners, it would devalue the chain that Miners are building upon.
They include:
Cryptocurrency exchanges
Payment processors
Custody providers
Large merchants and service providers who accept Bitcoin as payment
RPC providers (manage and host nodes for application developers)
Powers:
Ability to define which fork is bitcoin by choosing which version of the software to run and set ticker symbols
Reject blocks they consider invalid, potentially causing chain splits
Ability to list or not list markets for spot and derivative markets for forks
Ability to sell fork coins on behalf of users without their permission
Incentives:
Maximize transaction volume and trading activity
Maintain the security and stability of the network
Comply with regulatory requirements in their jurisdictions
May have equity investments in bitcoin businesses
#bitcoin #consensus #freedomtech
Yes, the price is nice….
But it’s not really the price that matters. It’s watching the green shoots of a new and better financial system pushing through toward the proverbial sunlight.
There are some ideas that just won’t be assimilated. There are some ideas that unalterably change the story once they become part of the plot.
I believe history will reveal that #Bitcoin played a key part in the rebuke voters across the globe levied against out of touch institutions. People everywhere are talking about sound money, the insidious effects of inflation, the dangers of out of control debt. These were not common points of discussion five years ago.
Institutions failed themselves. People knew it, but they just couldn’t put their finger upon the why. Bitcoin showed them the why by showing the alternative.
The feeling of change is palpable. The best thing we can do is to stay humble, stack sats, and play whatever constructive role we can in building the system that is emerging.
#Bitcoin #freedomtech
Some of my friends who have resisted #Bitcoin are actually becoming angrier as we approach $100k. I've tried to explain to them - (nearly) every time I've bought bitcoin it felt expensive - a few months later, it looked really cheap. One friend is particularly miffed because his teenage son is tumbling down the rabbit hole.
I've also told them - you can buy it or not....but I guarantee your kids will!
My wife and I stopped by the Nespresso boutique in Tysons Corner after a workout (the new boutique is actually quite nice). When we stepped up to the counter, the saleswoman asked for my telephone number, to which I politely responded "no thank you!" She asked why and told me this was how they were able to track my purchase history. Again politely, I told her that absent a discount, I didn't want to give away marketing data for nothing. Then she asked, "Is that like a bitcoin thing?"
Apparently she recognized the "B" on my hat. I answered that it was more about controlling what you want the world to know about you, especially when people want to profit from your personal information while offering nothing in return. My wife smiled, offered a friendly "Don't get him started," along with a robust pinch on my left tricep. The woman chuckled.
Maybe she learned something?
#bitcoin #nostr #freedomtech #coffeestr
I have seen a lot of talk about consensus on #Nostr and elsewhere over the past few weeks. I am not a developer, and most certainly have less time invested in Bitcoin than many of you. I do have other professional experience, however, that causes me to believe this topic is more important now than at any time in the recent past. Please take my impressions as just that, and I offer them as food for your collective thought.
Until now, Bitcoin has enjoyed the support of a community of developers driven by principled belief in the protocol. Many of you persevered through the times when Bitcoin’s continued existence was not a certainty, and whatever battles you fought were ultimately in defense of a principled vision for what Bitcoin should be. Those battles were also fought among people who knew each other, often for years. As we stand at the precipice of accelerating adoption, the mechanism for arriving at consensus for changes in the protocol will be tested by new entrants to the ecosystem.
Regardless of your thoughts about ETFs and the financialization of Bitcoin, the reality is new, powerful actors are entering the space, actors whose commitments to the principles of the protocol are tempered by the allure of profits. As the invested wealth of these actors grows, it is only a matter of time until they view the developer community as a mechanism for influencing the protocol to their benefit. Young, promising developers who perhaps today have no interest in Bitcoin will soon find lucrative employment opportunities with tradfi firms that today want to better understand and, perhaps tomorrow, influence the development path of Bitcoin.
Additionally, financialization will also bring increased government scrutiny of Bitcoin, markets, and even the developers maintaining and building the protocol. With soon to be trillions of dollars of wealth tied up in Bitcoin, it would be naïve to think that governments will not show interest in how Bitcoin is maintained and developed.
I couldn’t tell you what I think is the best mechanism for arriving at consensus changes. I leave that to all you developers whose talent, time, and emotional capital are imprinted on the protocol. I do believe the proverbial clock is ticking towards a moment in which financial institutions and perhaps even regulators will seek to "tame" Bitcoin and have it serve the interests of the establishment. Without your hard work and vigilance, the 0s and 1s grateful plebs such as myself guard so preciously could easily become worthless bits of data. While I’ve written a lot to end up with no useful suggestions, I do hope I’ve highlighted what I see is a coming pressing need for some kind of agreed upon framework for consensus changes that will both allow for smart evolution while still respecting a set of core principles.
And to all the developers - thanks for all you do.
#Bitcoin
Been noodling this…is Trump a fourth turning or first turning figure? I guess it depends on how the next year goes. Welcome everyone’s thoughts.
#bitcoin #asknostr
As more states and large institutions adopt #Bitcoin, they will certainly take an interest in how the protocol is maintained and changed. Credit to James for raising awareness.
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