Agreed And your proposal is?

Convince men and women to accept Bitcoin in their daily lives, in their businesses, in payments between family members, etc. Only by using Bitcoin as a daily currency can we fight against the state. By doing it this way it becomes impossible for the state to track it and apply kyc.

Black markets are real markets, c’mon maaan

Exactly, the black market is the only viable solution.

He pensando mucho en esto. Estoy de acuerdo. Creo que el espíritu y la filosofía de bitcoin nunca ha sido incorporarse al sistema estatal sino existir independiente a este y a pesar del estado. Solo cuando los bitcoiners formen una red lo suficientemente grande para mantenerse aparte de la red de intercambios regulada por algún gobierno Bitcoin podrá desarrollar todo su potencial. #hola #hispano #bitcoin #btc #plebs #plebchain #sats #zap #GM

That's the hardest part: convincing.

I will borrow these words.

not if they're using cucked kyc systems like Strike

I like this take. It also makes me think that the inferior money the US federal government spends on IRS agents, infrastructure and records could easily by shifted into mining Bitcoin and the return on investment would outpace all the nonsense of imprisonment, violence, garnishment and tax filing. Seriously, why not mine Bitcoin and run lightning nodes? I'm sure the agents would rather be tech minded miners, node runners and Bitcoin gurus. It's amazing and it's sad that they are dying and yet they keep hitting the stimulation button for their fix of power. Utility companies, City, county, state and Fed governments could even get rid of big data wearhouses by putting the miners in people's businesses and homes. Providing a real service of data, power and shared income.

Bitcoin needs to be black money

Make ₿itcoin Peer 2 Peer Cash Again!

I won't recommend onchain bitcoin to anyone because of the glaring lack of privacy and anonymity. It's too easy to fuck things up and be ensnared. Lightning is a non-starter for someone in the position of receiving $2 or $5 (many small payments) while also not having liquidity. Obviously it also doesn't scale, because either you're opening a new channel with each transaction, or expanding channel capacity (eithet one is an onchain tx, meaning it's neither private/anon or does it scale). Next comes ecash. I'm not going to be personally liable for the money of everyone I orange pill by running a mint, and I'm not going to recommend a randomint that will one day surely rug them. For the same reason, I won't recommend a custodial lightning solution either. Liquid could kinda work, and at least it has confidential transactions.. but software (and hardware, afaik only Jade supports it) support is very lacking. Lightning works great for people like us (with its many caveats, thr whole network is one giant hot wallet after all). I have channels with obnoxious amounts of usd worth of liquidity that I opened years ago In case you guys haven't noticed, that's not most people. Unfortunately I have observed that the vast majority (and that includes even most bitcoiners) don't care and/or don't understand the value of privacy and anonymity. Bitcoiners at least understand the fiat scam, that's why we're bitcoiners. But most normies in most places don't. Normies don't get the tech either. It's a bit like the internet, you have a small minority who has any idea how a computer works and how networking works and why you probably shouldn't be running closed-source apps on closed-source systems running in closed-source hardware.. but most people noy only don't care, they brag about not caring. Until they're hacked (happened to a noob I know recently), and suddenly they understand why they shouldn't have made their entire digital world as secure as their stupid apple login, because now the "hacker" completely owns them. Then they come crying for help, after years of saying they "have nothing to hide". Well, now that person literally has nothing to hide, it was all pwnd 😁 Anyhow, the point is, I see bitcoin in a bit of a deadend right now unless you're a baller and can put in serious money into it regularly. It's totally unusable in a self-sovereign way for the vast majority of people and I don't see how this is going to change. That's one half of it. The other half is, damn every single one of you who stubbornly failed to see why privacy WITH anonymity was important (not aimed at you @Cyph3rp9nk), and who're all so surprised now that the complete lack of priv/anon in bitcoin is being weaponized against it. Yeah, no shit. Why do you think they want the mass-surveillance? To enforce tyrannical laws. DUH. A totally transparent system gave them that ability ON FUCKING STEROIDS. Now the chicken are coming home to roost. And believe me, I take no pleasure in any of this. I'm just another guy trying to live in peace and doing my thing, but all the NGU fanatics and their arrogant ignorance could only result in what's coming. Anyway, so I recommend #monero to people nowdays for transactions, and when/if they reach a certain point where saving makes sense, and they have by then enough capital, then it's time to talk about swapping xmr for non-kyc btc. But mark my words, all of this is too much for normies. One day they want to sell those btc like normies (kyc cex) and their accounts will be frozen. They literally don't understand what fully traceable means. 9 out of 10. It's incredible, I don't know what's between their ears. Transparent chain. All traceable. By design. It'll get you into trouble, unless you fit in the officially approved Statist box (kyc purchases, all traceable, no "suspicious" transfers, FULL SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL). It's... not hard to get.

Not quite: those producing high quality goods, services, stuff will refuse to take anything but bitcoin. HODLers will be force to trade if they want high quality stuff.

Increasing adoption It is what everyone is working tirelessly for.

The solution is civil disobedience and bitcoin adoption.

I have never had a problem spending any amount of non-kyc coinjoined bitcoins in the USA.

There's truth in what you are writing. For the way forward, have you heard of projects that are concerned with these very issues of Bitcoin privacy, global scalability, and creating an economy based on Bitcoin? One of them is called 'BitcoinOS' which is to become a protocol for rollups on BTC main chain. The other is called 'Sovryn' which tried its hand on creating non-KYC finance on Rootstock L2 which is merge-mining with BTC main chain. If you are as concerned and interested in the subject as it seems from your text, it may at least be worth checking out if these guys there are up to something.

Have you bought a car or a house?

I am not up to date with more recent efforts, and I have an intuition grounded in years of experience that tells me the lack of privacy and anonymity in L1 is going to negatively impact Bitcoin's use as freedom tech even when other layers do possess those properties. Having said that, I applaud, support and commend any and all efforts to make Bitcoin more private and anonymous. I save in Bitcoin, as long as I have trustless a way in and out from whatever it is that I can spend privately with (Monero and Lightning at the moment), I am happy. I am also fairly sure that this is not going to be solved with just tech. Many here eschew politics, I don't like it myself, but the fact is, our opponents organize against us using politics as a weapon, with the backing of the violence of the State once their surveillance becomes law. Perhaps at some point the right answer is for us to organize politically and internationally as well. Or things will probably just keep sliding into tyranny.

For me it's very black and white, I'm not interested in living in a world of complete control and surveillance. Hopefully it doesn't get to the point where using privacy-preserving tech becomes a crime.. and if it does, then I hope enough others are bothered by it and are willing to push back. Logic and common sense however would dictate that we should then organize before that happens, not after.

I fully agree with you! We'll do our very best then with what we contribute 😉 And be joyful along the way.

Monero fixes this. I hate to say this but in this case it's true.

I agree with the need, and the local, grassroots (aka decentralized) approach. I also appreciate that you didn't say people wouldn't pay sales tax at a black market, but that they don't have to. Good choice of words! I'm not so sure shorting local governments from tax revenue is going to win them over to make BTC legal tender. Maybe there's something here though. Things frequently aren't legalized until the laws prohibiting them are irrelevant (e.g. abortion in America), so maybe it's similar here. Perhaps a point of leverage would be something along the lines of this: "Hey, I sold 1M sats worth of goods this month, and I'd be happy to pay you the 90K sats for the sales tax." Let them decide if it's worth it to them to accept bitcoin or perhaps even encourage its use. If they're willing to listen, explain the costs of trying to find a buyer, never getting market rate, having the additional burden of tracking cost/value at different times, etc. Turning sats into fiat takes effort. This would make it clear to them that just accepting bitcoin payments for sales tax would benefit them, and reduce the burden on people, thus helping them win over the hearts and minds of their constituents. I'm curious to hear from people who have tried these types of approaches. How did it go? What objections did you hear? What local officials were you able to gain as allies?

For sure it does. Bitcoin is some kind of captured now. They monitoring every ttansaction very closely, its like a CBDC now. Not much privacy tools for Bitcoin left. So the real P2P cash is Monero now. I say this as Old School Bitcoiner, in since 2013. But the current development is horrible. BTC has lost its narafive from being P2P and switchsd to digital gold which is it now. Price will go up, driven by govs and they watch it more and more as they don't invest billions of fiat shitcoins in it without to know everything about it

Its possible to buy a house or rent a house with Monero, you can buy a car, also possible. As you wrote all Bitcoiners which KYC'd coins are screwed now. Monero's circular economy is growing and growing. You can see the acceptance growing on any place where they accept cryptos.

Non-KYC'd Bitcoin are traceable. Here is a big difference between BTC and Monero.

Your claims about tracking bitcoin don't hold water. Bitcoin currently has about the same amount of anonymity as cash. Just like cash can be tracked by serial numbers, bitcoin can be tied to accounts that nobody knows who owns them. Prove me wrong by telling me the name of the person who made this transaction:

The Mempool Open Source Project®

Explore the full Bitcoin ecosystem with The Mempool Open Source Project®. See the real-time status of your transactions, get network info, and more.

Boy, I'm a Bitcoiner since 2013, I have no fiat shitcoins. I use Bitcoin in my daily life private and my company. So don't tell me I'm loosing myself in Monero vs. Bitcoin. It seems you don't see the facts.

tell me how. step by step.

Its not me who tracks you. You have to read what I have wrote. There are companies which does that job. Bitcoin is not anonym, its pseudonym.

Learn it. Same with Bitcoin 😉

You have to read what I wrote. Bitcoin is pseudonymous. The fact of the matter is that you can't back up your claim that companies are able to identify who made that transaction. They can ocassionally tie a transaction to a person, but as soon as the money moves, they don't know it it's still that person's money. At this point we're just talking past each other, so I guess I'll just end with: have a nice day. 👋

lol

🫂 .. but I just bought dozen eggs for bitcoin and a dinner. we are winning with every merchant

Around here in Portugal you find plenty of people using monero. I'd certainly accept it for large transactions. To be quite frank, wouldn't accept any other crypto right now unless it is stable and private.

The Bitcoin traders map is expanding, so that seems like a good sign. Also layer 2s like Lightening are pretty effective, and more tech is being designed to combat the issues you list. There's more than just hope.

We see exactly how the reality is. They block tainted coins, they tie UTXO to persons etc. There are already cases at the court.

The fact of the matter is that chainanal is mapping he entir utxo set. Probably more than 90% of new users come in through KYCed gateways or ETFs and the anonset of people who have*avoided* KYC is only going to get worse. Because when there is NO GOOD WAY to add entropy back into the system, it trends towards maximum surveillance. You can argue that is good enough for now, but Bitcoin privacy is in a pretty sad fucking state and its only looking to get worse in the short term. Most of the network is already under surveillance and they *certainly* be sure when you do self transfers etc. Beyond that you're just trusting the legal system to do the right thing.

I’m not sure if it’s really possible to have significant discrepancies between declared income and observed spending patterns without prompting an audit or investigation. You can buy like an expansive pc with crypto without the RSI noticing it, but buying a €565k house with 3000 XMR you bought in 2015 at ~$0.5 without the need to explain the origin of the funds seems unlikely.

> prove me wrong by fighting this straw man I created > bitcoin has the same anonymity as cash Prove yourself right by showing me the publicly available transaction history of every dollar bill in existence. You can't track cash as it changes hands. You can track which bank ATM it left and which one it wound up in, that's about it. Cash can't be tracked from one hand to another using serial numbers.

Actually you can, yes, and people have. I know of several examples in my circles. And they're all bitcoiners too.. yet Monero is the tool they use. And no, it's not because they don't want to spend the BTC .. they sold BTC for XMR on a DEX for the purpose, in other words, using the tools we have available as they're intended. They all chose #monero for the same reasons I would have: - No way this tx would work on Lightning (amount too high) in most conditions - They don't want the seller to identify portions of their transparent BTC stash But even if they couldn't use XMR, because hypothetically it's heavily criminalized (in most parts of the world, if you don't know, paying cash for a house is totally normal, so paying XMR for a house wouldn't be strange), what, you would take that as victory? Makes no sense. It's really simple and for a guy who goes by the handle "Cypherpunk", you should get it! Cypherphunks build and use anonymous systems, because otherwise and inevitably, those systems become tools for mass-surveillance and not tools for liberation. Look, it's really simple: Is Bitcoin private? No, you can always see the amounts, source and destination. Is Bitcoin anonymous? No, it's pseudonymous, and weakly so, the more you use it the more you dig your own grave, and the evidence is eternally available for perusal by literally anyone at any time from now til the end of time. On the other hand .... Is Monero private? Yes. Is Monero anonymous? Yes. So Monero is the cypherpunk dream money. That's just how it is. It's super intelectually dishonest to not acknowledge this in my opinion. This is why we say Bitcoin is like a cult sometimes. The truth can be staring you in the face, but the heavy fog of dogma won't let you see it. They're both tools, Bitcoin is not good for everything, and neither is Monero, because there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. See past the dogma please, you're a smart guy. It's obvious, Monero is the best tool for financial privacy at the moment, just as Bitcoin is the best tool for maintaining & increasing purchasing power over the medium and long-term. I'll end with this. Most Monero people I know would agree that if Bitcoin did everything Monero can, there would be no need for Monero. If it was the other way around, would you have the same attitude? The answer determines whether you see these technologies as tools to be used, or religions to be followed. We see tools. There is no cognitive dissonance. Maxis see religion, dogma, holy books and priests. It's all or nothing, black or white, and anyone who says otherwise is an heretic. Sounds familiar? Cordially, Papa Figos

Ser it is +99.99% of new users that come in via KYC. It is 99% of existing users who continue to use KYC. #KYCNotMe #DontRiskItBisqIt

I have as well fren. I hope this anti xmr rampage has at least revealed to you that you have been at least partially blind to its use case.

Essentially you swap it to bitcoin on a DEX and then sell the Bitcoin for dollars

I think this is peak centralization. It was Covid and then these first post years. Everything from here on now will go in the other direction. USA (biggest capital market in the world) going very very orange pilled (Trump, Eric Trump, a bunch of Bitcoiners in the inner circle), MSTR exploding, its strategy being accepted and replicated, Argentina going very red pill, plenty of other countries offering no tax on gains, China allowing Bitcoin (huge), also new jurisdictions offering tax benefits, BTCmap increasing 40% in 2024 alone, a bunch of small Bitcoin communities popping up everywhere. The next 4 years you'll see the pendulum strongly going in the other direction. What you're actually living right now is Year 0 of adoption. I don't think it can get more bullish than this.

In Europe, in some years I think we'll see the ECB parasites changing their tune on Bitcoin. They'll receive a knock from some of the creditors and the tune will change. Everybody ended up using the internet. Bitcoin is the new internet but for money.

Straw man argument. Nobody has claimed visa/mc is private. Try steel manning instead.

Case to say, should have used Monero. That is what works on what you call Black Market. And to mention John McAfee: "If criminals don’t use your products, your products are useless."

Ligthning is effective? You don't know lighning or you are using a custodial, ligthning is a bad solution since the beginning, try to use it in self-custody and you'll see if is effective..

And the blackmarket no longer wants Bitcoin, they want Monero. Bitcoin is a tool of the past as P2P money, no one wants to use it, because in the way it is now, it isn't a good tool.

You should convince yourself to use the better tool for the job and not to convince people to use a tool that doesn't fit the job no more..

Monero is a non-scalable and centralized shitcoin due to its dynamic block size architecture.

That's nonsense..

Monero guys are the transaction guys. Good 99% of Bitcoiners tell you how to transact and which is the best way, what is the best privacy tactic for BTC, BTC is the only money but they don't transact. From the maybe 1% which transact most of them using custodial solutions. Find the error 😀

Then you hear the arguments but you can't buy a house with Monero or a car. Always funny to hear that from guys which would never ever use their digital gold for such things. In general you have to be creative if you use Cryptos in your daily life. You have to adapt, try out, test etc. There is no perfect way for everyone. It's individual and everything is possible.

Yes, end of course I paid with Monero. Too big for LN and too much informmation for a native BTC transaction. If you use Bitcoin as often, as some if us early Bitcoiners from 2009-2013 you'll figure it out why all of us ended up becoming Monero bros.

Doesn't the last paragraph describe lightning? A point of entry & exit, can't track what happens in between?

I totally agree, and I know it's frustrating when you feel like most people don't understand / don't want to understand. But on the bright side, I think you'll find that most people are just pragmatic and will use whatever the best tool is that's put in front of them. So I do think most people would use Monero for day to day transactions that they want to be private, and it's short term enough that they're not worried about losing purchasing power in the meantime. I don't agree with your house example though, because really there's no way to 'own' a house anonymously, so there's sort of no point in buying it anonymously either. Surely? Also about using Bitcoin privately, I think coin joining and mixing etc are becoming easier all the time. And I think if there's a push for that sort of thing (or other privacy preserving techniques) to just become the norm in wallets then it will all be mixed together enough to stop really mattering anyway. Unless you're trying to preserve anonymity for a very specific opsec reason, but that's different.

+1 & fam get'n there/*

keep port/land ore/gon weird/*****

Sure, but it's moot as you said

Your bad faith arguments aren't winning anyone over. It's simple. Bitcoin has privacy. Just accept that simple fact. Monero has better privacy, and I hope Bitcoin gets some protocol level updates to try to get closer to where monero is. Try having an honest conversation with people. Trying to belittle people isn't going to be very effective. Besides, you can avoid looking childish if you talk to people like an adult.

First I wouldn't buy a house for that price, it is just overpriced and not at a place I'd enjoy living. And the second part is that you don't need to declare the real price you pay. Maybe in your country this would be a problem, around here it isn't. The only sideffect is that legally you have to offer the neighbors the chance of buying a house/land for the public price you are selling.

I would agree with most of that before the lightning network existed. Now Bitcoin really is like cash. Both are imperfect and both offer a significant degree of privacy. If you want more details, I'd suggest the privacy chapter of the book "Resistance Money". It lays it out in great detail, with citations and it includes fun tidbits like that those automated checkouts at stores scan the serial numbers of bills.

Oh, but there are multiple ways to legally buy houses anonymously enough. Setup a company at some tropical island and make it the house owner. Good luck trying to uncover the owners for an offshore company. Or, use a surrogate person that will own properties on your behalf. You'd be suprised how many homeless people are owners of properties on their name without even imagining. If that's too risky, then do a contract with a reputable law firm and have them own the property on your behalf as trust fund holders. Plenty of methods suited to all tastes and budgets. But I really see just about zero people using coin joining or any other convoluted method in the real world. They'll just wire monero to cut costs with commissions or risk of losing their money at some shady place.

This👆🏻

Bitcoin is not a payments system . It is the best Asset to own and hold ... You don't go around buying coffee with #gold .. do you ?

Hang out with friends. they pay da bills in fiat then you zap em da corn

Like a collectible then 😬 just hold it and do nothing with it?

I agree with you 🎯 but for me, this is like for example SimpleX, it’s only a msg app, not even talking about currency, and man, no way for people to get it and use it despite explaining and trying to open up peoples eyes… it’s even harder on currency (my experience of course) lot to do still 😵‍💫

We will never be able to shake of the system they created. They will always find a way to bring the water to their mill. 😒 only way is off grid and self sustain... that is the way to lose THEM!

"During all these years the HODL strategy has been totally wrong, while we have carried out HODL the states have encircled us."

You lack vision.

Which is why the white paper is called "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system"?

So what .. it happens all the time .. devs start working to solve an inferior problem and they end up hitting a jackpot .. Google guys just wanted to make a page rank algo and they went to sell it to Yahoo ... You know the history .. same thing happened to Bitcoin .. Satoshi were targeting a simpler problem but due to their incredible insights in math , cryptography and coding ..they created GOLD ... I hope you understand creating a GOLD replacement is a LOT HARDER problem than fiat replacement ! ..

Okay ..enlighten me !

What do you do with Art ? Or Gold , or even Real Estate ? ..you sell when you absolutely need to .. selling my house and buying coffee are NOT same thing ?

Gold is money, Bitcoin is better money. I don't think Satoshi wanted to solve an "inferior" problem and then somehow ended up creating gold, or some asset which is not money but happen to scarce and desirable.

First point - YES Second point - I don't know what Satoshi wanted ..I guess you too ... But the white paper clearly says they were designing a p2p cash system .. turns out they created a replacement for Gold .. which one would you choose ?

Thanks for the digital gold zapped through wonderful nostr :-)

Yeah but this is supposed to be p2p digital cash, not a pile of, let’s see if it values more I think…

Yes Satoshi did start with a p2p cash system in mind .. but ended up creating digital gold ..