Thread - Nostr Hypermedia

Thank you for your insights. You have been hitting the nail in the head for a long time. Unfortunately, I agree with you. Time to leave… Congratulations on your cashing out! The last days have been brutal: First the cc hack, then bip110! devastating… We arrived at the “then they fight you” stage, but what followed was “then you lose”… Maybe 110 was doomed to fail, and maybe pow change is too. Still, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be done as there is nothing to lose from it.

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Replies (4)

Control-Plane Capital . 6 days ago

It's tough. I knew most hardware wallets were backdoored and still used coldcard because - Bitcoin-only and thought that someone had already done the work and verified seeds are random. Someone probably did verify, but then they changed their RNG algos in 2021 (I had no clue). Massive red flag in hindsight. I am not affected, but it's a terrible way to get rugged for everyone who is. It's been 18 years and we still haven't figured out self-custody, but you still have influencers talking about separating money and state. Delusional. View quoted note →

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Jah 6 days ago

Curious about your mention of monero… My view is that it addresses many of the shortcomings of btc, but at the expense of complexity and, as so, more need for learning (your time is limited so it would impact the other spheres of your life) or trusting (not an option). But even if you put the time to it, ultimately, it will face the same problem of being vulnerable to social attacks, bad choices, and capture, if it gets enough adoption. You have to fix “capturability”, not technology.

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Control-Plane Capital . 6 days ago

Yes, I've implicitly compared Bitcoin to Monero in this aritcle (

Bitcoin will fail as mass, non-custodial Medium-of-Exchange

When we look at the past 5-10 years, Bitcoin’s trajectory is quite clear. Capture goes up, freedom goes down.

). Monero is better digital cash by a wide margin, but it's not a silver bullet. For the current regime, privacy by default is a non-negotiable. I'd use Monero if I need digital cash, not as a store of value. Many Monero devs likely work for the government, some hardware wallets are very likely backdoored, government agents can decide to spam L1 until running nodes becomes annoying, they can make it radioactive so 99.99% of the population avoid it like the plague, etc. Still, if you need to use digital cash, Monero is your best bet. The other recommendations I've mentioned are going to be more important for most people.

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Jah 5 days ago

Yes, that’s a great framework you offer on your articles. Thank you for taking the time to write and share it! Monero as digital cash, not store of value. Yes… makes sense as so. I can accept leaning more on trust for small amounts and daily usage. But store of value is the grand goal. This is how I imagined it going: I understand it might come as naive according to your framework, and the recent developments confirm that. So yes: Maybe I was choosing to believe a lie… but it’s hard to let go of such a beautifull dream! :) Good to have you back!

Jah

disagree: I think the value btc has today comes exactly from the expectation that will be used as Store of Value. the major problem with fiat is not that it is a bad Medium of Exchange. it's that is a bad SoV. SoV is the most important and is the base use case. (Satoshi's genesis message regards the bank bailout money printing, which destroys SoV, not MoE) there are 8 billion people in the world. if every human was to make a bitcoin transaction, they would only be able to make TWO transactions in their lifetime! bitcoin was not designed to be a MoE. it was designed, and is its most important goal, to create decentralized incorruptible absolute scarcity, to be the ultimate STORE OF VALUE. Bitcoin adoption will only happen when people choose to store their savings in self custody bitcoin, instead of deposits, stocks, houses. Then, when they make a large buy, which need their savings, they will move their bitcoin, onchain (not rehypothecated fiat games). everything else is a distraction and detour from this path. and a delay to adoption. using bitcoin for small daily purchases (MoE) will come later, as people start measuring things in btc, instead of usd, and already have savings in btc thay can "whitdraw from". then, only THEN, they will think: "why do I need to go trough fiat? what if I just paid directly in bitcoin to this store?" this will then be handled in L2 (maybe partly custodian or with another set of rules. will see what happens then... now is too soon to tell). the way I see it, goes like this: bitcoin is scarce, secure, decentralized, permissionless -> good SoV -> people protect savings in it -> spend savings when needed -> gradually stop using fiat (first for large purchases, then smaller and smaller) -> blockchain gets filled -> scalling with L2 -> MoE if SoV checkpoint is not achieved, nothing else will.

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