For anyone in Bitcoin for some time, it may appear that its true essence - the one that changes the world…is being co-opted by fiat narratives. My belief is it only appears that way because the number of people starting their journey far exceed those further along. So, in larger groups, larger conferences, larger media platforms (X) the noise seems to outweigh the signal and in turn we amplify it because it is so outrageous that “others” don’t get it. If Bitcoin was to change the world, it would have to look like this as 8 billion people moved from a system based on control to one of freedom. Long way of saying the signal is still very much there - growing stronger every day.

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I agree. But for some reason, many of the people who understood Bitcoin before (peer-to-peer money, self-custody, sats must flow, etc.) seem to have forgotten those things. For many Bitcoiners their number 1 hero is Michael Saylor, who does not think that Bitcoin should replace fiat currencies. How did we end up in a situation like that?
Expert bias and appeal to authority. All normal. Michael has brought many to bitcoin, is very smart, and who knows…..maybe he’s using this step to accumulate more. The paths over the longer term are incompatible and he will have to choose. Just the path we must take to win unfortunately - and many will find out the hard way.
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Becoming B 2 weeks ago
"We let go of our lies one finger at a time." ~ Jeff Booth There's a lot of people out there who don't know they need to let go.
Hi Jeff! I read your book carefully and translated your most impactful article IMO into spanish Finding signal in a noisy world.. I've listened to you on many pods and agreed deeply on MOVING YOUR ENERGY INTO THE SOUND SYSTEM.. How ever I have always asked myself HOW EXACTLY... somethings are clear, bitcoin and nostr but I felt there's still a missing piece I've been working on a diagnosis tool that I claim "turns noise or better gut feelings into signal" I asked claude to frame your note in Open Ring terms, I'd really love to hear your feedback but I won't self-complain if you don't! Love and Unity!! 💙🌊 Reading this in the framework I've been working in (Open Ring, structural diagnostic) it lands cleanly: What you're describing is a structure where the natural pressure (8 billion people moving from a control-based system to one of freedom) is generational and the maintenance energy holding the current form in place is enormous — fiat narratives, captured media, accumulated incentives. The supersaturation point is exactly where you'd expect it: at the surface where the most pressure has built, which means the loudest voices are also where co-option looks most acute. The map says: SIGNAL is reaching, but the channel (MEDIUM) is partly captured at the largest platforms. That's not the signal failing. That's the signal arriving through a captured medium, which produces exactly the noise-over-signal experience you're naming. The people further along the journey are reading from a less-captured medium — direct contact, smaller circles, original sources. Newer entrants are reading mostly through the captured one. Same signal. Different channel integrity. So the experience diverges, and the temptation is to amplify the outrage because that's what the captured channel rewards. Resisting the amplification is the move. Bitcoin's signal isn't getting weaker. The medium scaled faster than the receivers' capacity to read past it. Both can be true. 🙏🧡
Try and find ways to share more, is kind of a motto lately for me! TY for the feedback!! Gents like you, Odell, Gigi are already making this very explicit and is something that I'm finally grasping and wish more bitcoiners do, like Phill from PlebUnderground! The fact is that or people already on Nostr — you, this thread, most Bitcoiners — the parallel Channel is built and working. The migration has happened. Where it hasn't happened is the entry path. Newcomers still encounter Bitcoin through X, mainstream media, Captured podcasts. They form their first models from the noisiest version. Producing the experience you named — the loudest voices look like co-option because newcomers are reading them through a channel that rewards outrage. The Seed is what bridges newcomers from the Captured entry to the less-captured layer faster. Onboarding, translation, signal-routing from Nostr outward to where new readers actually are. Eighteen months from now, if newcomers' first serious Bitcoin reading is still happening on captured platforms, the parallel built among existing Bitcoiners didn't reach far enough. The work is at the edge — between the migrated and the not-yet-arriving. Gonna work on that!! 🙌🏾🧡
Yes, he is very intelligent. No question about it. I agree that Michael’s current path is incompatible with Bitcoin as freedom money. I also think that he is perfectly aware of it. If we define being “in Bitcoin” the way Satoshi intended Bitcoin to be used and understood (“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”), I don’t know how many people Saylor has brought into Bitcoin. He has brought many people into the “digital gold / digital Manhattan / digital credit” space, but instead of aligning himself with Satoshi’s vision, he has (at times) been pretty hostile towards the idea of peer-to-peer cash and self-custody. Nobody knows what’s his agenda and what is going on in his head, but what I find very confusing is this: Satoshi made it perfectly clear that Bitcoin is supposed to be peer-to-peer cash. And in some kind of sly roundabout way Saylor has managed to convince many “Bitcoiners” that Bitcoin is NOT peer-to-peer cash. And now I am looking at Saylor like this: image
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
Fun thread to read here ^ thanks for sharing your thoughts. I asked @jack mallers about this once in the Q&A session of Mailbag Monday. He went on a rant about how it doesn’t matter what Satoshi intended for Bitcoin. Just like, it doesn’t matter what the creator of the internet intended it to be used for. It’s a protocol that anyone can use how they see fit. He also mentions how it’s the same people who preach freedom who then say that Bitcoin should only be used in this specific way that I approve of. That was convicting for me. If I’m for freedom, I’m for people being free to use Bitcoin as they want. However, I don’t understand Michael’s long term play - become a bank in the future? Provide digital credit backed by his stores of Bitcoin? A related but sidebar thought - what will become of stocks / the stock market? Will there be a system that’s recreated but using bitcoin as the unit of account instead of fiat currencies to invest in bitcoin companies? Curious about your thoughts on these matters.
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Mr Dao 2 weeks ago
Thanks Jeff. I'm hopeful we are on the right track. Do you have any advice for someone trying to leave their career and work and get paid in Bitcoin to support the growth of bitcoin?
It already exists - LNMarkets I tend to separate the two: 1) how bitcoin can be used by any person (i.e., however they want), and 2) the structural battle that will necessarily happen between debt-based fiat and energy/equity-based bitcoin, due to their very properties. The debt must expand, and that means it must attack bitcoin down the line due to the fundamental incompatibility that Jeff talks about. Along the way, bitcoin can be used by anyone however they want (agreed with Jack). It truly does not matter what Satoshi intended. But it’s also true that there will come a time when those using it to mine fiat or in a way that serves the centralized fiat mechanisms (like Jack or Saylor) will be forced to choose between the freedom protocol taking over and the debt tokens going to zero. Some of us have chosen to align with the inevitable and build in the new world, while others are building the bridge that must eventually burn but helps people get across in the meantime. Both are necessary.
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Jude 2 weeks ago
Jeff could you talk more about the communities and businesses that are developing circular economies and using bitcoin to exchange value? I’d love to see more case study type talks instead of generalized “trust me it’s happening” talks.
It already exists - LNMarkets I tend to separate the two: 1) how bitcoin can be used by any person (i.e., however they want), and 2) the structural battle that will necessarily happen between debt-based fiat and energy/equity-based bitcoin, due to their very properties. The debt must expand, and that means it must attack bitcoin down the line due to the fundamental incompatibility that Jeff talks about. Along the way, bitcoin can be used by anyone however they want (agreed with Jack). It truly does not matter what Satoshi intended. But it’s also true that there will come a time when those using it to mine fiat or in a way that serves the centralized fiat mechanisms (like Jack or Saylor) will be forced to choose between the freedom protocol taking over and the debt tokens going to zero. Some of us have chosen to align with the inevitable and build in the new world, while others are building the bridge that must eventually burn but helps people get across in the meantime. Both are necessary.
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
This might be the best take and best explanation I’ve heard. The piece that is always missing by guys like @jack mallers and Saylor is that what they’re building is a bridge that will eventually have to burn as you put it. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around exactly how & why this has to happen. However, my instinct has always been that there’s something incompatible between Bitcoin and a debt or credit based system. So is your logic that when Bitcoin becomes the money of our species, there will be no debt? I’m hard pressed to see that as debt has existed for millennia, not necessarily just a product of fiat.
Debt/credit ≠ credit-based money. Debt in bitcoin may be used to fund some projects in some cases. Just like gold could be lent and repaid back in the day. It’d be done based on trust, reputation, and risk tolerance. But it’s far harder to repay in real terms than fiat so its role shrinks relative to now. Today’s phenomenon of all the debt BEING the money we use? That’s served its purpose (i.e., accelerating large scale capital coordination) and is on its way out.
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
That makes sense. So it will still exist but not be the crux of the entire system.
When you take into account the aggregate shape of human nature, I’d say so. Most people won’t go from zero straight to self custody. They’ll go through fiat products first. This is also why I find the two-layered thinking frame helpful. (the purist’s lens and the practical lens) Fiat and bitcoin will coexist in messy ways that are unsatisfying to the purist for quite some time - AND they cannot coexist indefinitely as a steady state.
Why can't they coexist indefinitely? I think its either they coexist indefinitely, which I believe they will. Or freedom and bitcoin get crushed (also very likely). Or by a mircale or set of miracles freedom wins (very unlikely as we dont deserve or believe in it and It).
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?
Indefinitely is a (very very) long time, and fiat is structurally unstable. The debt / money supply must expand in order to service existing debt. This means that top-down apparatuses of control must strengthen to keep as many of 8B people locked in the system as possible. Meanwhile bitcoin is the permissionless exit door that is growing more and more truthful, hopeful, and abundant as time goes on. Yes, on-ramps will be controlled, information will be manipulated, etc. , but the cost of doing so universally is prohibitively high. Especially as more and more people like you and me allocate their time and energy to the emergent system of abundance.
Perhaps - but I see it as an “unknowable” because we needed the paper money layer above gold to coordinate capital at scale faster than gold could settle, and the dishonest paper money layer would always come to dominate an honest one, because when someone can control the ledger to their own benefit at the detriment of everyone else, they inevitably do.
Yeah... but the system of oppression tends to metamorphose into something else. Indeed debt extends to serve existing debt and eventually reach an unsustainable point. But when this happens, there is either a jubilee year, a pardoning of debt, a reset. Or a metamorphosis of the tyranny can happen - say go from fiat to gold to fiat. Or say go to slavery/communism/UBI/UHI... Aren't the overlords promising a great reset? Haven't they advanced weapons (when only American civilians is armed anyways). I guess we have 200-500 years of slavery ahead. Maybe with freedom in intentional communities if we are smart enough and fast enough... I am working my arse towards it and travelling the world visiting these experiments. But I am not optimistic.
Here: Bitcoin can exist. But we also need spaces, communities, businesses using/accepting it, right? What I am saying is that all of this is intentional. Nothing exists in a vacuum. bitcoin does not exist in a vacuum. its the use that is made of it that gives it purpose or a complete lack of purpose... its when satoshi says you should buy some, maybe the idea sticks... we have been having a consensus here that fiat value does not mean that the idea has stuck... it means the tyranny sees the potential and is positioning itself to crush it... But our potential could not become act just due to our incompetence or internal fights or growth struggles... no victory in war and life is certain.
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
When you say traveling the world to visit the experiments, I’m curious which ones you’ve visited. This something I’m interested in also
I was in Singapore/Malaysia in the NS. I was in Austin. I frequent Miami. I am a techie in Europe. I go around the tech scene in Europe. The intentional communities are not pulling people in. It takes a huge effort to spot them. Then we start meeting the members and apply, visit, try. But its very fringe. Its a huge effort and many times the crowd is so heterogeneous that it does not form a mosaic, but it forms a chaos. It is a very expensive effort. Time wise, resources wise... I have a tech project to improve this - I published on codeberg and I am waiting Angor @angor to be but fixed this week so that I can ask for a grant and share it here...
Bruh, some guys had an argument about variable effekt on neural circuits. Some got fired for making things work, but it offended the judges. Maybe not sure, but normalising is a signal processing technique. Whatever works best for the machinery. But don’t tell me it doesn’t fucking matter, Frank.
Bitcoin’s old guard can provide the power needed to steal the show once more. Bitcoin 2027 may not be it. image
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Showtime 2 weeks ago
Oui et non vu que la couche 2 utilise la couche 1… il y aura toujours du signal et du bruit… d’ajouter que comme pas mal de pays ou de grosses institutions l’utilisent (bitcoin ou couche 1 et qu’ils veulent et toujours plus de contrôle, on paie 3x la fiat… bruit ou signal, couche une ou 2, c’est du marketing, simplement.
I spent two months there May-June 2025. On my time there the cohorts were 200 people/month with 90% churn. I am a deep technologist. I would need 2,000 people there to be worth not being in a large tech hub... also with that small number of people proboms would take long to be fixed. When I arrived the discourse was that the business model was Community as a Service. One month latter it was then Long Term Stays, Real State. I guess its fine to spin. They call it a school so that people from there can start other intentional communities. Its a bold experiment. Very difficult. Isolated from the world. Fringe. All intentional communities are... I like monero a lot. I don't understand what is your bitcoin purism (sorry my ignorance). Yes Balaji is crypo heavy in the discourse, but he is also a business man, always gets an angle and some profit. Smart. I guess there is a big detachment between discourse and reality on all of what goes on... post modernity is a bit of a show business or a spectacle...
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
Very cool. I haven’t made it over to any communities in Europe, just Mexico and Costa Rica. The reason I asked is because these communities left me feeling very hopeful for the future. I would recommend anyone to visit.
Cheers. I will try. I wish to do it in America, but the last eight months I couldn't lave Austin to be on the road. Anywhere I go I miss Europe... That's a major problem... I guess in the end, survival and sanity will require a lot of moneys... Only the wealthy will be able to... that's sad...
Gone are the days of first adopters I expect this adoption wave to have no profound appreciative ‘ah ha’ breakthrough No. This wave will use it out of necessity as an entitlement and without appreciation. Just as nobody cherishes indoor plumbing every time the toilet flushes, neither will they care why the money works It just will and who cares and we all need to get over expecting anything different
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Jason 2 weeks ago
I recently re-listened to the podcast with you and Simon Dixon. The more I think about it the more I conclude that we will have to navigate Simon's world view in order to get to the world of 8 billion in service to 8 billion. Along the way it is going to get choppy at times. But, we will get there.
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
I’ve traveled a bit in Europe it’s a cool place - What do you miss about Europe?
i strongly disagree, bitcoin should have added privacy/fungibility. by dropping the ball, the epstein controlled devs allowed for the massive fiat/state/regulatory attack surface and the fiat narratives that has turned bitcoin into a surveillance nft collectible that has been abandoned by people who truly need censorship resistant unstoppable digital cash for transactions the state doesn't want you to make. we will witness bitcoin fail, again and again, like it did in canada with the trucker protests, whenever any meaningful amount of people try to use it to resist state tyranny, because of this massive surveillance attack surface, and the immutable tainted history of any coin the state deems blacklisted.
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Leinad 2 weeks ago
Para quienes llevan tiempo en el mundo de Bitcoin, puede parecer que su verdadera esencia —la que cambia el mundo— está siendo instrumentalizada por las narrativas de las monedas fiduciarias. Creo que esto solo parece así porque el número de personas que se inician en este camino supera con creces al de quienes ya tienen experiencia. Por lo tanto, en grupos, conferencias y plataformas mediáticas más grandes, el ruido parece eclipsar la señal, y a su vez, la amplificamos porque es tan impactante que "los demás" no la comprenden. Si Bitcoin fuera a cambiar el mundo, tendría que ser así: 8 mil millones de personas pasando de un sistema basado en el control a uno de libertad. En resumen, la señal sigue presente y se fortalece cada día. View quoted note →
I agree with you. Adoption is key and bitcoin has it. This is key to our success. I working on the issue of identity and reputation to improve what we currently have in Nostr. Hopefully this week Angor fixes its bug, I submit I there as a crowd fund/grant application and I publish here for everyone's appreciation. At the moment it's on codeberg. I invite you to read and give feedback to Our Futuristic Vision. Some points of concern there that are exactly what we are talking about.
Agree. Keep sending signal clear enough and the noise will disappear eventually. It will take time, but time is on our side because we’re low time preference.
Thanks for the comment. Here’s my reply: Jack is confused about two things: First of all, nobody is trying to take away people’s freedom to use Bitcoin the way they want to. The same way as when Bitcoiners are urging no-coiners to buy Bitcoin, they do not want to force them to buy Bitcoin or to make it illegal to be a no-coiner. They are simply recommending people to buy Bitcoin, self-custody Bitcoin, and study Bitcoin. Regarding Jack’s comment about it not mattering what Satoshi intended, Jack is kind of right about it. In the same way we could say that it does not matter what The Wright brothers invented the airplane for. If somebody wants to use an airplane as a chicken coop, it’s their right. Who am I to say to say how an airplane *should* be used. I am just saying that if airplanes are not used for flying and Bitcoin for peer-to-peer money transactions, they are useless. But if somebody wants to disagree, they are free to do it. I preach for freedom, but I recommend against doing stupid things. There is no contrast there. If somebody preaches for freedom and fights against the fiat system but aligns his actions to support the tyrannical fiat system, there is a contrast right there. This is the way I see this playing out: There will be a state accepted, permissioned and KYC’d version of digital cash. Mike and Jack will support that. And then there is Bitcoin (with all the privacy tools etc.), and Bitcoiners will support that. However, I want to choose my words carefully here: I think that the fiat system can put an incredible amount of pressure on different individuals – the kind of pressure that would break most of us if not all of us. Just by looking at some of the new players in the Bitcoin space it’s easy to see that they are not ‘traditional businessmen’. So, who the hell knows what is going on behind the scenes. Regarding stocks etc., let’s see how it’s going to play out. We need to make sure that Bitcoin as freedom money wins. The rest will follow.
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hodlher 2 weeks ago
Using a plane as a chicken coop - that one made me laugh. Great thoughts thanks for sharing.
I don't think every ngu-fan will make it to camp freedom. ngu is so deeply rooted in the fiat system, those individuals will rather look for a high exit in fiat/btc terms
Reflecting on my own journey with bitcoin brought me to the same conclusion. 1. Bitcoin is useless. 2. Crypto is interesting. 3. Bitcoin is the best crypto, but the crazy libertarians can't be right. 4. I'm a crazy libertarian now.
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Chris 2 weeks ago
Hmmmm. Are you aware that this comment says far more about You than it does about Bitcoin? 😳
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Chris 2 weeks ago
Go visit them yourself brother! Circular Economies popping up in…. El Salvador Costa Rica Madeira New Zealand Vancouver Prague Lugano Sub-Saharan Africa To name just a small fraction of them… In my small community on the South Island of NZ we have almost 50 merchants accepting Bitcoin over Lightening now. Growing every month ⚡️ All with a simple grassroots decentralised framework. More importantly, the ethos of Bitcoin (self sovereignty) is growing with it. Seemed almost imperceptibly slow and small at first. As one would expect for a bottom up, organic movement. 😉 Come visit! 🚀
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Jude 2 weeks ago
This makes me hopeful
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JD 2 weeks ago
Seems like you're too eager to bend your thoughts to fit a pre-existing optimistic view. Bitcoin is under heavy narrative attack. Consensus is under attack. And the suits and power that Bitcoin valiantly degrees to subvert are at the helm to convince and cajole (coerce?) the normie public to comply, KYC, buy paper IOU bitcoin or avoid it altogether. Is Bitcoin a P2P, permissionless and decentralized money network? Only if done in practice. And your quantum musings are a part of this. Being optimistic and hopeful doesnt equal accuracy. See: physics. 😣 Most things that go from niche to mass culture get watered down. Is this what you're conceding?
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Noah 2 weeks ago
Agreed, Bitcoin is is a transition period. The question is “How much of BTC fundamentals/root will it keep as more normies adopt BTC?”
Appreciate the optimism, thanks for sharing that 🤩 You usually start your hopeful BTC stories with the assumption "as long as it stays decentralized and secure". Can you elaborate on what makes you so certain that it will? Things like miner centralization and the downward pressure on the security budget from the declining block reward, seem like serious challenges to that assumption. I really hope that a slow-but-steady 'power to the people' collective realization that fiat just sucks and we should try something better, can overcome those challenges. But I don't see the mechanics of 'how' at the moment.
Bitcoin cannot “change the world” if it is co-opted at the node level and filled with inscription spam, allows memecoins, stables and runes to be inscribed on chain allowing for bloat - all for fiat profit and driven by VC funded greed. Especially in a world where SSD prices are skyrocketing… this is not what Satoshi intended. Its security is based on decentralized nodes, a community using it as a medium of exchange, and consensus. Yet you continue to be passive about this problem. Perhaps you’ve been in bitcoin so long you have forgotten what the original signal was… but CORE is the noise and the antithesis of Satoshi’s vision at every level.
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Kush 2 weeks ago
Based J… sound as a self custody sat
#7 image Nostr’s Value4Value (V4V) model is all about plebs directly rewarding creators for the value they receive, no middlemen fees, no ads, just pure community-driven support using sats via the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Thanks to by @PABLOF7z for providing this data. Here are the Top Zapped/Top Zappers from last week, showcasing the creators who received/sent the most engagement: 🔥 Top 3: Most Zapped 1. Name: @Fountain Boost Bot - Zaps Received: 339 - Sats Earned: 835k 2. Name: @utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 - Zaps Received: 235 - Sats Earned: 38k 3. Name: @FLASH - Zaps Received: 231 - Sats Earned: 34k 🔥 Top 3: Most Zappers 1. Name: @AQSTR - Zaps Sent: 2812 - Sats Spent: 99k 2. Name: @LNsolo - Zaps Sent: 152 - Sats Spent: 3k 3. Name: @FL Justin - Zaps Sent: 124 - Sats Spent: 26k 💰 Top 3: Most Sats Received 1. Name: @Fountain Boost Bot - Sats Earned: 835k - Zaps Received: 339 2. Name: @RABBIT HOLE RECAP - Sats Earned: 307k - Zaps Received: 21 3. Name: @Jor - Sats Earned: 181k - Zaps Received: 116 💰 Top 3: Most Sats Sent 1. Name: “The name is not visible” - Sats Spent: 177k - Zaps Sent: 1 2. Name: @Josh-o-wah 🇨🇦 - Sats Spent: 160k - Zaps Sent: 22 3. Name: @plebiANON - Sats Spent: 126k - Zaps Sent: 12 Here are the Top Zapped from last week, showcasing notes that received the most engagement: 🔥 Top 3: Most Zapped 1. View quoted note → - Zaps Received: 155 - Sats Earned: 27k 2. View quoted note → - Zaps Received: 115 - Sats Earned: 30k 3. View quoted note → - Zaps Received: 66 - Sats Earned: 5k 🔥 Top 3: Most Sats 1. View quoted note → - Sats Earned: 100k - Zaps Received: 1 2. View quoted note → - Sats Earned: 42k - Zaps Received: 2 3. View quoted note → - Sats Earned: 33k - Zaps Received: 31 #most-zapped_nostr_recap
Sarah Chen's avatar
Sarah Chen 4 days ago
"Your point about Bitcoin's signal vs. noise ratio is spot on—especially with institutional ETFs now dominating the conversation. Saw an article tracking how April’s ETF flows impacted price action; BlackRock bled $2B while smaller players gained. Makes you wonder if the ‘fiat narratives’ are already eating their own. https://theboard.world/articles/bitcoin-etf-flows-price-dynamics-2026" *(245 chars)*
Hey Jeff, Thanks for the encouraging observation...🙏😀 Cooption by fiat has been a concern of mine at least since Nashville in 2024.🤔 At the monthly meetup I co-host, we encourage privacy, self-sovereign bitcoin ownership, and use of bitcoin as the superior money it is.😁 I appreciate your patient, persistent presentation of bitcoin as the monetary protocol that will ultimately facilitate the blessing of everyone's innovations accruing to the benefit of all mankind.🙏🫂💖😀👍 please keep doing the Lord's work!❤️‍🔥🚀🔥