@ b6ca2216:f45f8b5b

my 3. article

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Ein Lämmchen löschte an einem Bache seinen Durst. Fern von ihm, aber näher der Quelle, tat ein Wolf das gleiche. Kaum erblickte er das Lämmchen, so schrie er:

"Warum trübst du mir das Wasser, das ich trinken will?"

"Wie wäre das möglich", erwiderte schüchtern das Lämmchen, "ich stehe hier unten und du so weit oben; das Wasser fließt ja von dir zu mir; glaube mir, es kam mir nie in den Sinn, dir etwas Böses zu tun!"

"Ei, sieh doch! Du machst es gerade, wie dein Vater vor sechs Monaten; ich erinnere mich noch sehr wohl, daß auch du dabei warst, aber glücklich entkamst, als ich ihm für sein Schmähen das Fell abzog!"

"Ach, Herr!" flehte das zitternde Lämmchen, "ich bin ja erst vier Wochen alt und kannte meinen Vater gar nicht, so lange ist er schon tot; wie soll ich denn für ihn büßen."

"Du Unverschämter!" so endigt der Wolf mit erheuchelter Wut, indem er die Zähne fletschte. "Tot oder nicht tot, weiß ich doch, daß euer ganzes Geschlecht mich hasset, und dafür muß ich mich rächen."

Ohne weitere Umstände zu machen, zerriß er das Lämmchen und verschlang es.

Das Gewissen regt sich selbst bei dem größten Bösewichte; er sucht doch nach Vorwand, um dasselbe damit bei Begehung seiner Schlechtigkeiten zu beschwichtigen.

Quelle: https://eden.one/fabeln-aesop-das-lamm-und-der-wolf

@ b6ca2216:f45f8b5b

{"id":12345,"title":"deleted","body":"deleted"}

@ b6ca2216:f45f8b5b

{id:123, title:"my first article", body:"This NIP defines kind:30402: an addressable event to describe classified listings that list any arbitrary product, service, or other thing for sale or offer and includes enough structured metadata to make them useful. The category of classifieds includes a very broad range of physical goods, services, work opportunities, rentals, free giveaways, personals, etc. and is distinct from the more strictly structured marketplaces defined in NIP-15 that often sell many units of specific products through very specific channels. The structure of these events is very similar to NIP-23 long-form content events."}

@ 623ed218:fa549249

Pup's Double-Takes #002:

"Should You Spend Bitcoin?"

Welcome to Pup's Double-Takes, where I dive into the things that made me stop and say, 'Wait, what?' My goal is to unpack the curious and confusing, making it educational and, hopefully, a little entertaining along the way.

PDT-002: Should You Spend Bitcoin?

"Why would I buy anything with Bitcoin when the price could go up so much?"

This question reflects a common debate about spending Bitcoin, but many discussions miss the forest for the trees regarding our broader economic activity. So let's take a step back and dive into what really matters.

The Bitcoin Pizza Story

You've probably heard the story of Laszlo Hanyecz, who spent 10,000 Bitcoin on two Papa John's pizzas on May 22, 2010---a day now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day. At the time of writing, those 10,000 Bitcoin would be worth around $670 million. That's a staggering number, but notice my phrasing here. I did not say, "those pizzas would be worth $670 million." This is an important distinction.

Those pizzas were perishable, consumable goods that gave Laszlo value in the moment. Nobody would argue that pizza retains value over time---once it's eaten, it's gone. So, it doesn't make sense to say those pizzas were ever worth $670 million.

What About You?

Here's the more interesting question: Did you buy any pizzas in 2010? Did you buy any Bitcoin?

You might think Laszlo was foolish for spending 10,000 Bitcoin on pizzas, but if you bought any pizzas or other goods in 2010 and didn't buy Bitcoin, you essentially made the same decision he did. You valued the goods and services you consumed more than you valued Bitcoin. And that's the real point here: Every financial decision you make reflects what you value in that moment.

At the time, Laszlo valued two pizzas more than he valued 10,000 Bitcoin. You, too, valued whatever you purchased more than Bitcoin---whether you were aware of Bitcoin or not.

The Opportunity Cost of Every Transaction

Every transaction involves an opportunity cost---the value of the next best alternative you forgo when making a choice. When you spend money---whether it's Bitcoin, dollars, or any other currency---you're making a decision. You're choosing to exchange one form of value for another, and that decision comes at the expense of using that money for anything else.

When you bought a pizza with fiat currency, you were implicitly saying that the value of the pizza was worth more than anything else you could have done with that money at the time, whether that was purchasing a different good, or saving in Bitcoin, or some other store of value. And that's okay. This is how economics works for everyone.

This is where I take issue: Considering the potential future value of Bitcoin and deciding not to spend it reflects a narrow and incomplete view of your economic actions. When you spend Bitcoin on a pizza, you're giving up your stake in whatever future price action that Bitcoin may have seen. But the same consequences exist in every financial transaction you make.

Instead of focusing solely on the Bitcoin part of your financial life, I would argue we should take a more holistic approach.

Cash Flow and Savings

Cash flow is simple: it's the difference between what you earn and what you spend. Ideally, your income is higher than your expenses, leaving you with a surplus of money ("labor receipts") to invest or save.

The second key concept is the quality of your savings vehicles. Bitcoin is seen by many as a superior store of value compared to fiat money, which loses purchasing power over time due to inflation. Bitcoin's finite and metered supply issuance means that it is likely to maintain its purchasing power against goods and services, unlike rapidly inflating fiat currencies. As a relatively small monetary network still early in its adoption cycle, it may even gain value against these goods and services over time, even if its value may swing wildly over shorter time frames as the market determines its present value.

This leads us to the reason I find it nonsensical to make any blanket statements about whether or not you should be spending Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin Standard

If you denominate your life in Bitcoin terms, you will realize that every non-Bitcoin purchase comes at the expense of being able to hold Bitcoin. There is functionally no difference between paying for a pizza with Bitcoin or paying for it with fiat. In both cases, you have chosen to acquire a consumable good with value you had saved.

Am I arguing that you should blow your entire stack while retaining your fiat? Obviously not. But why would you be saving fiat in the first place?

Ultimately, there is an argument to be made for holding a small amount of fiat to cover necessary payments should the price of Bitcoin drop. However, the focus should not be on whether you are spending Bitcoin or fiat, but rather on the value you're exchanging.

Conclusion

The real issue isn't the question of whether you should spend Bitcoin or fiat; it's the understanding that every financial transaction, regardless of currency, is a choice to exchange value.

Whether you're using Bitcoin or dollars to buy a pizza or pay your rent, you're parting with a portion of your stored value to obtaining a good or service you value, at the expense of obtaining anything else with that portion of stored value. The currency used is just the medium---it's the value you exchange that matters.

Digging Deeper:

Hey there, I hope you enjoyed this read! If you did, and would like to read more of my barks, follow the links below!

• Curious how I found Bitcoin? Read "Paw Prints to the Timechain"!

• Bitcoin meets psychology? I touch on this in "Maslow's Apex".

• Want to understand the basics of Bitcoin? Read "Bitcoin Best Practice"!

• If you like seeing bad media takes unpacked, check out "PDT-001: Let's Talk Supply Issuance".

External Resources:

• Want to earn rewards on your mortgage? Use my referral to earn 20,000 free sats at sign up!
• Do you like sharing Bitcoin content and earning sats for doing so? Join me at Stacker.news!

...Woof!

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/731850

@ ff18165a:dd7ca7f0

Chef's notes

1. DO NOT add too much Peppermint Extract! It’s extremely strong and it will make your milkshake way too strong if you add more than a few drops.
2. Feel free to be creative with your toppings. We used Caramel Flavored Whipped Topping and it turned out great!

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 min
• 🍳 Cook time: 2 min
• 🍽️ Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup Milk
• 2 drops Peppermint Extract
• 2 packets Stevia
• 1 cup Ice
• 2 drops Green Food Coloring
• Green Sprinkles
• 1 Crushed Peppermint Candy
• 2 Mint Leaves

Directions

1. 1. Blend together until smooth and frothy
2. 1. Pour into a tall glass
3. 1. Top with listed toppings
4. 1. Add straw and enjoy

@ 5753e5a0:50004efb

DEBUT EP ALERT!

I'm stoked to announce that my debut EP, LEA, is finally here on Nostr! After months of hard work and dedication, I'm thrilled to share this collection of tracks with you all.

As an artist, there's no better feeling than releasing your music to the world. LEA is a culmination of my passion for electronic music, and I'm proud to say that it's a true representation of my sound.

This EP is a game-changer. With its unique blend of drone, hip-hop, and alternative rap, LEA is sure to take you on a journey that's both chill and uplifting. From the opening beats to the final drop, every track is carefully crafted to transport you to another world.

So, what are you waiting for? Head over to Wavlake and stream LEA now! Not only can you listen to the EP in its entirety, but you can also support me directly by streaming my music and zapping. Every stream counts, and I appreciate your support.

Listen to LEA on Wavlake now!

https://wavlake.com/album/056bd2c4-1edb-4a1d-a0e7-753f452cb1a8

Tracklist

1 LEA

2 One Sec

3 Thanking Siri

4 LMM

5 A Team (freestyle)

Stay tuned for more updates on upcoming releases, and get ready to immerse yourself in the world of SR Extra. Thank you for being part of this journey with me!

— SR Extra

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

political motivations of J6 judges:

Judicial Sentencing Patterns

Federal judges in Washington have been handling the sentencing of Capitol riot defendants, with some notable trends emerging:

Harsher Sentences: Judges appointed by Democratic presidents have generally imposed tougher sentences compared to their Republican-appointed counterparts. This disparity suggests a potential political bias in the sentencing process.

Partisan Divide: The sentencing patterns reveal a clear partisan divide, with Democratic-appointed judges more likely to view the January 6 events as a severe threat to democracy.

Specific Examples

Judge Tanya Chutkan: Appointed by President Obama, Judge Chutkan has consistently handed down sentences exceeding prosecutors' recommendations. Her actions could be interpreted as politically motivated, given her Democratic background.

Judge Trevor McFadden: In contrast, Judge McFadden, appointed by President Trump, has been more lenient in his sentencing, even acquitting a defendant in a bench trial. This stark difference in approach further underscores the potential political influence on judicial decisions.

Implications

@ df8f0a64:057d87a5

書き散らす動機

残暑続きからの急な気温低下で鼻炎がひどくなる今日この頃、皆様お元気でしょうか

株主への抗議のために退職してから2ヶ月半、流石に暇を持て余してきました 時間がある上に能動的に働く気も起きず、ひたすらボーッとしたりうねうね考え事をする日々です 幸いにして人生も折り返しにさしかかる頃になり、時折「今、人生が終わって構わないのでは？」というようなことも考えたりします （鬱病既往歴ありますが私は元気です）

子どものお迎えを終えて、いつもどおり夕食をとり、またうねうねしているうちに ふと、6年前の年末に急死された、仕事でお世話になったTさんのことを思い出しました

子を寝かしつけてもまだ頭の中をぐるぐるしていたので、ここに吐き出してすっきりしようという魂胆です

Tさんとの出会い

私のキャリアの（ほぼ）スタートはVC（ベンチャーキャピタル）でした 誰のせいでもないとある経緯もあり、周囲からは警戒され避けられ、わずか6年ではありますが、 インナーサークルに入り込めない時期を過ごし、当時の上司と二人、とにかくやれることをやり続ける毎日でした

いつものようにピッチイベントに参加しているとき、近くの席にいたスーツ姿の3人組と目が一瞬合います

「事業会社の人だ」

協調投資やファンド出資のきっかけを掴むべく、その3人に話かけます

「よろしければ弊社投資先のご紹介や御社の...」

ひととおりの挨拶を済ませ、この人たちにも避けられるんだろうと思いながらも要件を切り出します

「是非やりましょう」

いつもとは違う嬉しい返事をくれたのがTさんでした

面倒見の良い他社の先輩

そのときの3人組であるMさん・Iさん・Tさんには、私の仕事人生の中で最もお世話になったと言っても過言ではありません

ファンドの営業を受けていただき、協調投資を行い、VCからの転職後にも協業相手として他部署のキーマンをご紹介いただき...

社会人になったばかりの私の、今思い返せば恥ずかしい（部下がこんな提案したら卒倒する）レベルの提案を、 誰もが知る一流企業の多忙な役職持ちであるにも関わらず、毎回一時間も割いて丁寧に対応してくださる心の広い方でした

当時、VCと接点をもつような事業会社の対スタートアップ部隊は、本業でご活躍されている方が兼任で取り組むパターンが多く、Mさん・Iさん・Tさんももちろんそう

その後も昇進され、最後には本社の取締役に。今年遂に退任され、所謂「あがり」でしょうか、子会社の取締役に異動 長い社会人人生をほぼ走りきり、有終の美を飾ろうとする時期にさしかかっています

でもTさんはそこにはいません

残される側

冒頭触れたとおり、Tさんは6年前のこの時期に急死されました 死因については、Tさんのご友人がFBに投稿していた文章を読んでも、Iさんに聞いてもわからない

悲しいかな、四十年近く生きていると、死因が明かされない理由がわかるようになる機会が一度や二度はあります Tさんもおそらくそうだったのでしょう

直前まで、Iさんと一緒にベイエリアに出張され、楽しそうなコメントと共に写真を投稿されていたのに 晩婚なのか再婚なのか、とにかくご結婚されて一年ちょっと。お子様も生まれたばかりだったのに Tさんは近い人間に心中を隠して、静かにこの世を去りました

あなたの快い返事に、どれほど私が救われたのか 転職後の提案のとき、受付で顔を出してすぐ「元気？」と声をかけてくださったことがどれほど私を安心させてくれたか あなたが声をかけてくれる度、私の社会人としての成果が生まれたことに、私は十分に感謝を伝えられていません

まだしばらく残る理由

振り返って、Tさんのように誰かの人生をenhanceできたのか？と自分に問うと、まだできたとは思えません。残念ですが

今ここで死んでも私は構わないけど、まだもうちょっと頑張るべきかな、老いてから誰かに感謝をしてもらうまで生きてみてもいいかな

そうふと思い直しているうちに日付が変わりました

@ d3f06d83:7ff53dc3

Chef's notes

This is the beginning of a great pizza.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 15 min
• 🍳 Cook time: 0
• 🍽️ Servings: 0

Ingredients

• 1 cup of pizza flour or bakery flour (00 flour)
• 1 zatchet of yeast (7g)
• 1 cup of water
• 1 spoon of honey (or sugar)
• 2 Litre container with a lid

Directions

1. Pour the water in a 2L container
2. Add honey/sugar and stir
3. Add the yeast and stir. Wait 15 minutes or until the yeast is active (bubbling)
4. Slowly mix the flour avoiding clumps
5. Close the lid and leave in the fridge overnight

@ 805b34f7:3620fac3

** I published this article on 3/26/2020. I'm back in Puerto now and just re-read this to fire myself up for some potential tubes. Now, I want it to live on Nostr.

“When in doubt, don’t go out” is a well-known aphorism among surfers. I think it’s bs. Let me explain.

**I speak from my experiences as a regular surfer and with my close group of regular surfers in mind.

In surfing, there’s a comfort zone, an adrenaline zone, an aw crap zone (doubt), and a hell no zone.

Comfort zone —It is in this place where it is safe and fun to try new maneuvers. The heart rate is low and the stoke rate high.

Adrenaline zone- This is personally my favorite zone. The surf is big or good enough to get the heart rate up and the juices flowing. Each movement matters and this is where some of the best surfing goes down.

Aw crap zone — This is the land of the I don’t know, the doubt. It’s always damn near impossible to sleep before an aw crap day of surfing. This is the place where limits are tested. Maybe you’re surfing in a new place with new risks such as shallow reef, a difficult takeoff, or it’s just huge. This aw crap zone will test and define your limits.

Hell no zone — When you know, you know. This is beyond doubt. You’re totally satisfied (yet still curious) from watching from afar. Maybe one day!

These zones are bound to change as the surfer progresses. One day there may be no “hell no zone” as the surf master has pushed his or her limits to the extreme.

Pushing

Pros are only as good as their home breaks. NOT. Tell that to Kelly Slater and the Hopgood brothers who grew up surfing Florida slop. Although, perhaps their garbage wave situation lit a fire underneath them which inspired them to seek out better waves and progress rapidly. Anyways, a surfer grows up surfing their home breaks often. Some people grow up on the North Shore or in Tahiti, others grow up in Huntington. A surfer’s perspective on waves and danger is influenced by their exposure.

I finally got bored with myself surfing my home waves. Sure, there were days that were outside of my comfort zone and epic, but it was time to go find waves that I had only seen in videos. I decided to pack my backpack and head to those famed Indonesian reefs that I’ve mind surfed for hours, but always had the question mark in my head as to whether or not I could conquer them.

Surfing over shallow reef is something that I was not used to and it terrified me, but I also knew that every surfer does it including five-year-olds so I had to send it. I escaped the first mission unscathed and with some of the best waves in my life.

In order to find those best waves of my life, I had to enter the ‘aw crap zone’. The I don’t know land. The unknown. When in doubt, I went out.

And Now I’m Here

I blew this wave, but wow pretty.

Current forecast looks like it will be right at my edge.. again. We'll see.

I’m surfing the famous Playa Zicatela every day with the whole world shut down due to Co-Vid19. I’ve always been curious to know what it’s like to be inside massive barrels, so I’m slowly making it happen. This is a battle that I chose. I’m learning how to sleep with surf anxiety. The first couple of nights were rough, but I’m starting to accept it now.

This very morning inspired this article. I got up, went to the roof, and checked out the waves. It looked pretty mellow despite the fact that I knew there was a lot of swell in the water. I just thought, eh, maybe it’s not big like it was forecasted. I got in the water, took my first wave, wiped out, but whatever. I’ve been here for a week and I still wipeout on just about every first wave. But, I quickly found out that this was not the real set. The next set was enormous, and it sent adrenaline shrieking through my spine and filled my brain with the aw craps. The questioning of my life and why I’m out here quickly followed. Am I good enough for this? (maybe). Could I survive a wipeout that size?(probably). Is my board right for this? (definitely not). The second wave I took was bigger and I pulled the eject cord and jumped from what felt like the top of a cliff all the way to the bottom and got creamed (my perspective). After a couple of flips, I popped up the back laughing and was ready for another. I survived, therefore, I can keep pushing.

Not gonna lie, surfing almost feels like work lately. Almost every day here is just about in my personal aw crap zone.

However, it’s worth it for me. This is a journey that I deem worthy of my time. It does it for me. It’s those little moments inside the barrel and gosh-dang-golly hopefully soon getting shot out of the barrel that keep me stoked and looking forward to tomorrow. It’s proving to myself that I can do things I didn’t know for sure were possible.

The Process to Progress

Progression sometimes feels like a snail crawling up Mt. Everest. But when you zoom out, those incremental small improvements compound over time. Each wipeout is a little victory. Each wave that is ridden is a little victory. Your brain is learning from every experience that you choose to give it. Confidence slowly builds as we continue to learn from the masters and even develop our own style. Next thing you know you’re drinking a beer in a barrel that can kill a normal man like Mr. Slater did here.

Freakin Goat

Stagnation leads to burnout, depression, and boredom (Not scientific facts but I’m right I know it). 

The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear, and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt. — Farnam Street Blog 

I’ve seen a few buddies give up surfing or digress. It happened to me while I was focusing on baseball. It’s sad because surfing is fun and the better you get the more fun it is. It’s even more fun with a core group of guys who are at a similar level pushing each other. It can get boring if you don’t push yourself, and it gets scary real quick if you aren’t in surf shape.

“Whenever we learn a skill, we frequently reach a point of frustration — what we are learning seems beyond our capabilities. Giving in to these feelings, we unconsciously quit on ourselves before we actually give up.” FS Blog

Progression takes effort. Effort takes a conscious decision to expend your limited energy. It’s the only way to get gains in whatever game you are playing. Also, progression takes humility.

I got the pleasure of surfing Kelly Slater’s Wave Ranch. I knew I was going to have fun, but the night before I was damn nervous. Why? Well, I knew there’d be cameras and that I didn't want to blow it. I’d be surfing with pros and I was going to look horrible compared to them. Sure enough, the one right the camera got, I blew. Oh well. No 30-second barrels for the boys. Life moves on.

Full vid here https://vimeo.com/367128298

Can't wait to go back here one day

You’re bound to fail, especially when you take risks. If you’re a prideful person, the setbacks will be greater. It’s how you deal with the failure that determines if you will become a master.

So if in doubt, go out. Your hell no zone is going to start to shrink. This applies any skill that you are sharpening. You’re only going to get the big clients if you go after them, a piano player will improve by practicing harder songs, a black belt gains nothing from fighting a white belt, etc.

Pick your battles wisely. Then…SEND IT, SURVIVE, LEARN, APPLY, REPEAT.

10/19 - Even though I'm a much more experienced surfer now, I'm still terrified. On my way to go get a board now and get ready for some swell! I'm on my honeymoon, so we'll see how hard I push. I have quite a few more responsibilities now then I did back in Covid times... But if in doubt, I will go out. PV.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with bread, and side salad

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 1 Can (10 ½ ounces) condensed chicken gumbo soup
• ½ Soup can tomato juice
• ½ Soup can water
• Croutons

Directions

1. Add soup, juice, and water.
2. Heat through, stirring often.
3. Serve with croutons

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with bread, and side salad.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 1 Can (10 ½ ounces) condensed chicken noodle soup
• ½ Soup can V8 juice
• ½ Soup can water
• Croutons

Directions

1. Add soup, V8, and water.
2. Heat through, stirring often.
3. Serve with croutons

@ f33c8a96:5ec6f741

@ 6ad08392:ea301584

Prediction: Social Networks of the 2030s, will be different to Social Networks of the 2020s, and in some ways, will come to slowly resemble the Social Networks of the mid 2000s and early 2010s.

In the last decade - the past five years especially - social apps have become more social media than social network. They’ve become more about discovery, and less about relationship. More about size, and less about connection. More about the algorithms, and less about the social graph.

Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, gave a fantastic talk on a similar thread at SXSW 2024, called “The Death of the Follower”

https://youtu.be/hwn6-8XpIuE

I believe this will change over the coming decade, as people begin to crave community and connection again, and not just content consumption.

This doesn’t mean the multi billion user platforms run by algorithms will disappear. In fact, they will probably be larger and stronger than ever.

BUT…I predict that we will also see the rise of many, many niche and micro-social networks with a focus on relationships, communities and the social graph.

In fact, there will also be applications that do a mixture of both media/content/algorithm and network/community/social.

In this essay, I’d like to look at the history of Social Networks, how they started, how they’re going, what the evolution looked like and what the future will hold.

Social 1.0?

Social 1.0 has been about massive, billion+ user platforms. Think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn.

While there is certainly a variance in the kinds of users attracted to each, and also how they work, there are some underlying commonalities among them.

First of all, each of these Social 1.0 networks are platforms.

They are built in such a way that they own not only the content and data, but also the user’s identity (eg: your handle), the social graphs and connections (follows/following), and the algorithms that serve up the content (or censor it).

This is not a problem in and of itself. In fact, it worked extraordinarily well for the teams who built sticky-enough applications that fostered network effects and reached scale.

The problem however, arises later, when the platforms who basically own everything, lose the incentive to provide value, and instead need to find ways to keep people “locked in.” Turns out, the best way to lock people in is to push their dopamine buttons and hook them on content. In other words, when social-networks reach saturation, the only thing left to do is drive consumption.

This of course creates some perverse incentives. And since we are creative human beings after all, we find ways to game the incentives, resulting in the problematic state that social media finds itself in today: a big digital dopamine-dispenser, where the user, instead of being a client, becomes the product, and a slave to the algorithm.

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.”

-Tristan Harris, The Social Dilemma Documentary

The second issue is the converging nature of all these social networks.

Because they are siloed platforms, they cannot leverage content between each other. In the early days of social (pre-2010), there were open APIs all over the place and each social network bootstrapped off the other. Instagram bootstrapped both off Twitter and Facebook!

But, as the realisation dawned on each of them that their key asset was their users, they had to - economically-speaking - cut off access to others that might leech their user base. This is perfectly rational market behaviour, given the constraints they were working with. Your social network is valuable insofar as you have enough connections there to sustain it. If someone starts to suck your users away, it could destroy you. See MySpace and many others along the way.

So what happens here in time, is that all the feature set of all these platforms begin to, slowly by slowly, inch toward each other.

Instagram created the first real “influencers,” and since then every other social network copied. SnapChat created stories, basically everyone followed. TikTok came out and has since pushed almost every social network towards being more ‘social media’ by implicitly incentivising video. Now, almost every platform is doing some sort of video short.

Of course, the increase in internet bandwidth and device quality has gone hand in hand with this. Video is far more engaging and close to “real life” than simple photos or text are. But there’s something else that came with this. And that’s the more from being networks with a social graph, toward being essentially content engines. I will elaborate on this in a future essay.

The result of all this is a strange blend of excess redundancy and dependence on platforms which own your digital footprint.

I find myself these days, posting basically the same shit, across multiple social apps. Sure, there is some variance, but since everyone is increasingly getting on all of them, the audiences, while quite different in the early days, are slowly becoming the same.

This redundancy part, is something that platforms like Buffer and Hootsuite have taken full advantage of.

Other than the annoying redundancy, the dependence side of things involves me as a creator, trying to optimise all of my content for the algorithms, ie": for maximum engagement instead of maximum value, across all of these platforms. And worse, trying to do it such a way that doesn't get me banned, because my content, my social graph and my identity are owned by the platform, not by me.

Long term, what this does is both (a) waste a lot of time, and (b) make creators less interested in producing for their niche, and instead producing for a bunch of algorithms that are increasingly converging around appeal to a lowest-common-denominator of consooomer.

It’s a strange situation, that almost had to happen, but which we can change.

How and why did this happen?

Despite what the conspiracy theorists might believe, this was not all part of some premeditated agenda. These things are complex and emergent. Nobody had any clue what these platforms would come to be in the early days. Nobody had any idea Facebook would be used for marketplaces or that Instagram would change the very nature of travel, food and fashion. But they did, because they evolved, and did so in such a way that conspiring to use them became necessary.

Because Social 1.0 platforms are all companies, they are able to be “captured” - especially if they’re public. This is part of why Elon is such an important figure. He’s rich enough to not be entirely captured and he acts as somewhat of a bastion against the rot. That being said, this is not a viable long term solution to the problem, because one man is fragile, and the nature of the current paradigm and available building blocks is such that it will trend once more to centralisation, censorship and co-opting.

So if you want to know the real reason as to why we got here, it pretty much boils down to the building blocks that we had available. If you have mud all around you, don’t be surprised that the best structure you can build is a mud-hut.

This first round of social networks saw humans and human nature collide with an ‘internet’ that fundamentally lacked an identity layer, something the early pioneers were not ignorant about. The issue was that a viable implementation was never conceived - or at least, never broadly adopted. The internet stack only made it four layers deep:

What happened instead of a native digital identity for the web, was the creation of many identities owned by the actual applications built ON the internet. Instead of a protocol like TCP or IP, identity became a feature inside of a product. In fact, “logging in” is basically a feature, and your profile or identity are simply a database entry owned by whichever online product / service you signed up for. You have an identity with Amazon, with your bank, with your sales software, with Facebook, with Google and with every other online service.

This of course got very messy in time. We all ended up with a million and one identities, each requiring their own username and password. Not only that, but each online service became a honeypot full of private, identifying data that hackers love to exploit.

Some bandaid solutions arose to solve this problem. One was password managers (which we all hate). The other was SSO. Companies like Google and Facebook saw an opportunity here and being so broadly used developed Single Sign On (SSO) - and to some degree, they solved a big issue. It’s much easier to have a secure email set up with Google and just log in using SSO. The solution of course, comes with its very own problem, namely; Google/Facebook (insert SSO provider) ends up owning your identity, making you increasingly dependent on them.

This might be ok in a perfect world, but as you know, we live in an imperfect one. It’s very easy for Google to not only use that information to exploit you (selling your data, selling you shit, etc), but you can very easily get ‘cancelled’ or deplatformed.

While this is problematic with an email account, it even worse with a social account on a platform like Facebook or Twitter, because at least with your emails, you can own the list. On a social network, you could spend years building a following, an audience, a treasure trove of data and content - and then one day, be cancelled for saying or believing the wrong thing. Or perhaps even worse: become algorithmically irrelevant.

This is clearly a problem and one that has only become more prevalent since 2020. Celebrity chef Pete Evans, was de-platformed from Facebook and Instagram in 2020 after his public support for Trump and his opinion on the Covid-19 situation. Almost 2 million followers, gone overnight. The same has happened to countless other creators and online personalities who dared have an opinion in conflict with the mainstream narrative - I was one of them. My personal twitter account was perma-banned in 2021, right as my public profile began to take off because I dared question official narratives (although I created a new one).

So ultimately, we have a web stack that is ok, and got us quite far over the last 30-40 years - but comes with a unique set of problems, that are a function of the building blocks we’ve had to work with. I don’t believe there was a ‘master plan’ to get here, but there was no other option consider the ingredients we had. The only way to really handle identity, and later social, at scale, has thus far been with these constraints.

Hence why I call it Social 1.0, and why now, with the emergence of new technologies and new ways of managing your digital identity and footprint, we have an opportunity to build a new Social Web that doesn’t fall into the same trap as the first one did. We understand how people behave online much better than we did a decade or two ago. If we learn from the past, we can do things differently in the future. We can build something fundamentally new, and more importantly, better.

What is Social 2.0?

Social 2.0 is the term I’m giving to this very nascent but emerging new field of social networks that are smaller and more niche, and that are once again focusing on the connection between people, as opposed to the algorithmic content-recommendation engines. Some (not all) are leveraging the new building blocks that have emerged over the last five years.

In general, they are smaller, more community focused, and concentrate around a particular domain. This is a trend that is gaining traction, with a number of strong examples in various domains:

• Cara: Basically an Instagram for artists
• BlueSky: Basically Twitter for the Left
• TruthSocial: Like Twitter for MAGA
• New Public: Pluralist digital public spaces
• Dribble: A social network for designers and digital artists
• Primal: Like a Twitter meets Venmo that appeals to Bitcoiners
• Farcaster: Kind of like Twitter, but for Crypto Degens, built on ETH
• Ditto: Decentralised, self hosted, community-social networks
• Highlighter: Like Patreon meets Substack for digital creators that want censorship resistance.

And of course there is Satlantis, which is essentially a Social Network for Sovereign Individuals. We are interested in the global community of people who live at the nexus of the following interests and domains:

Beyond their size and focus, the most interesting commonality, which in my opinion will become an ever-increasingly defining characteristic for Social 2.0 platforms, is that some of these (eg: Highlighter, Primal, Ditto and Satlantis) are all built atop a common social protocol: Nostr.

This is important because the identity and social graph do not live on the platform, but instead live on an underlying protocol - a bit like how your email lives on and is transmitted on the SMTP protocol.

This approach and what it implies could be the most significant upgrade to the web, perhaps since Web 2.0 really became a thing. If a robust, user-owned identity layer is adopted across the web, the entire topography of the internet will change, and so will the design space and the kinds of products which can be built.

Of course, the benefits it comes with, also bring some drawbacks, but in my opinion, they far outweigh the downsides. This is why I am so interested in the future of the social web, and the role Nostr in particular can play.

What is Nostr?

An explanation of Nostr is probably not necessary for anyone reading this essay here, but I'll summarise how I explained it over on Substack for normies and non-Nostr people. Hopefully it's useful when you're doing some Purple-pilling.

• Nostr is a rich identity layer for the internet.
• This identity is rich because you can append meta-data to it, for example, a profile photo, a description and perhaps most importantly, a list of follows and followers. This is what makes it a ‘social protocol,’ and not just native identity for the web.
• This identity is also sovereign, meaning that it’s not “issued” by some platform or entity, but instead mathematically derived as a crypto-graphic key pair. Your private key is your ID, and your public key is your public address / username (how people find you). So long as you control the private key, you fully control your ID.
• Unlike a blockchain, Nostr is stateless (like the internet) so it has the capacity to scale, and because it’s not money, it doesn’t need consensus. This avoids all the extra bloat that kills the usage of all other “crypto” and “blockchain” networks.
• Storage is solved by the market. If you are posting data that might be censored, you can run your own relay (like a database) and ensure that it’s never taken down. If you’re posting non-sensitive content, you can very easily rely on the network of relays that the apps you’re using use. This is fine for 99% of use cases, and is abstracted away so nobody is impacted or annoyed.
• It is very tightly linked to Bitcoin, the lightning network and other e-cash solutions, which make it “internet money native.” This is a huge benefit because commerce on the web will only want to grow, while the legacy digital banking infrastructure gets more stringent and draconian - so we need a plan B. Bitcoin solves that, and Nostr can scale without needing to shoehorn a token into it.
• Like TCP/IP and SMTP, it is a protocol. This means it’s not owned by a single entity or company - making it much harder to capture.
• As a new protocol layer, it upgrades the topography of the web, and opens up a design space that was not possible before. It’s a significant new building block for the web. Recall the earlier diagram depicting the current “internet stack.” With Nostr and Bitcoin, the internet stack gets a serious upgrade:

Of ocurse, if you haven't read @nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a 's peice on Nostr it's worth doing so: https://www.lynalden.com/the-power-of-nostr/

I also did a thorough X post explaining it here: https://x.com/SvetskiWrites/status/1828403019081269661

There’s also a great post from my other Substack called Reviewing Reviews:

https://remnantchronicles.substack.com/p/reviewing-reviews

Comparing Social 1.0 and 2.0

Now that you have all of this context, let’s close out this essay with a quick comparison table between the two social paradigms:

As you can see, there are some general differences. And while I don’t show it to make the claim that one is good or the other is evil, I personally believe that Social 2.0 is technically and socially superior. It has better building blocks, and it’s the best shot we have at making the web more sovereign, independent and useful.

Also note:

1. These dichotomies are not hard rules. There’s a lot of both elements across all kinds of social networks, but broadly speaking Social 1.0 is larger, more about discovery than relationships, more about content consumption and more algorithmically driven than Social 2.0 will be.
2. The rise of Social 2.0 doesn’t mean social 1.0 will entirely disappear. In fact, part of the 2.0 movement implies that there will be both big and large social networks, and both protocol-connected and independent platform-enclosed social networks. In fact, there will also be blends of the two. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Threads, or maybe even X one day, leverage something like Nostr. Maybe they become “Nostr-compatible” so that people who have built profiles and audiences on Nostr, can easily port them over to X, while maintaining control.

It will be interesting to see how the future evolves, now that we have some new and unique building blocks. One thing I am certain of, is that the future will look different to the present, and I look forward to helping built it with Satlantis.

Thankyou for reading the first full essay on Social 2.0. If you're interested in checking out Satlantis, go here: Satlantis.io

Aleksandar Svetski

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with bread, and side salad.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 1 can (10.5 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 Can (10 ½ ounces) condensed chicken noodle soup
• 1 can (10.5 ounces) condensed vegetable soup.
• 3 Soup cans water
• Croutons

Directions

1. Add soups, and water.
2. Heat through, stirring often.
3. Serve with croutons

@ 45bda953:bc1e518e

This post will be edited and refined over time.

Eschatology is the study of Biblical prophecy pertaining to what is commonly referred to as the end times. Bitcoin is the transformation of Austrian school economics theory into an efficient and applicable method driven by natural incentives and free market consensus mechanisms.

What happens when eschatology is viewed through a Bitcoin inspired world view?

In this thesis I contend that it is possible and very probable that the consequences of what Satoshi Nakamoto created in Bitcoin and the prophecies surrounding Jesus Christ with regards to the second coming and a thousand year kingdom of peace and prosperity convalesce into a very compelling argument for Biblical prophecy fulfilment.

...

No one would argue that modern major banks are today more powerful than kings of old and governments are mere puppets to the sway that the banking empires hold over them.

In Biblical prophecy when kings and powers are mentioned people rarely think of banking but nothing is comparable to the immense scale of wealth, power and territory controlled directly or indirectly by banks.

IMF, BIS, the FED and Blackrock are where the levers of power are pulled in the current dispensation. Governments restructure more frequently than these institutions whom endure and exercise unmerited influence over said governments and the public interests they claim to represent.

An excerpt from the King James Bible, Daniel chapter 2 describes prophetically the ages of man and its rotations of power.

Interesting to note that it is symbolically portrayed in monetary/industrial metals. All used as tokens for trade, symbols of wealth and manufacture.

Gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. Gold has been a dominant symbol of power and wealth through millennia. Silver, brass and iron ores are mainly industrial metals although they all had prominent turns as coinage. Due to the debasement and concentration of gold specifically.

Clay on the other hand is only a symbol of power in construction and iron has never been used in construction to the extent it is in the 20th and 21st century. Skyscrapers are the symbols of money and power today, i.e. big bank and government buildings.

Daniel Chapter 2:24–45

24Therefore Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went and said thus to him: “Do not destroy the wise men of Babylon; take me before the king, and I will tell the king the interpretation.”

25Then Arioch quickly brought Daniel before the king, and said thus to him, “I have found a man of the captives of Judah, who will make known to the king the interpretation.”

26The king answered and said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, “Are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen, and its interpretation?”

27Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, “The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. 28But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: 29As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be. 30But as for me, this secret has not been revealed to me because I have more wisdom than anyone living, but for our sakes who make known the interpretation to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.

31“You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. 32This image’s head was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. 34You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

36“This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king. 37You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; 38and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all — you are this head of gold. 39But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. 40And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, inasmuch as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything; and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. 41Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay. 42And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile. 43As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. 44And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 45Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold — the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.”

I speculate that the toes of iron and clay represent the world banking empire. Skyscrapers are constructed from iron and cement. Different forms of clay is a necessary cement ingredient. Architecture has always been used as a symbol of dominance by rulers especially true of systems who use awe as a means to cause feelings of insignificance in the individual thereby asserting their power at low cost. Ironically it never costs the ruler to create these structures, the cost is always carried by the people in time, resources and energy.

Skyscrapers and large construction are the modern symbols of money and power. Not so much kings, palaces and temples. The stone breaking the power of the statue has to break something contemporary other than kings and palaces if it is to be eschatological prophecy fulfilled in our time.

https://www.britannica.com/technology/cement-building-material/History-of-cement

The invention of portland cement usually is attributed to Joseph Aspdin of Leeds, Yorkshire, England, who in 1824 took out a patent for a material that was produced from a synthetic mixture of limestone and clay.

https://www.thoughtco.com/how-skyscrapers-became-possible-1991649

Later, taller and taller buildings were made possible through a series of architectural and engineering innovations, including the invention of the first process to mass-produce steel.

Construction of skyscrapers was made possible thanks to Englishman Henry Bessemer, (1856 to 1950) who invented the first process to mass-produce steel inexpensively.

You watched while a stone was cut out without hands,

No hands needed when the stone is an idea.

As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties:\ — boring grey in colour\ — not a good conductor of electricity\ — not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either\ — not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose\ \ and one special, magical property:\ — can be transported over a communications channel

Greshams Law illustrated in slow motion picture.

1: The banks collapse. Being fundamentally weak because of zero reserve lending, any student of Austrian economics has been correctly predicting banking collapse, and have incorrectly been advocating gold as the solution to this collapse. Many of the big economies are valued through their housing market. Housing will be demonetised (Iron and clay economy) meaning shelter and property will become affordable to the average wage earner again. The large cement and iron structures become redundant. Everyone will work from home and a value to value economy will make banks seem like relics from an age of stupidity and evil.

2: Industrial metal iron will not be for mega structures that contain speculators and bookkeepers who have fiat jobs slaving for fiat money. Iron will be used to improve the lives of individuals. Iron as coinage is already demonetised.

3: Brass is demonetised as coinage and only valuable in industry. Ammunition, music, plumbing etcetera.

4: Silver has been a terrible money throughout history and when the silver investors wake up to the fact that they are holding onto a redundant asset with zero monetary properties compared to the alternative they will dump their holdings, crashing the silver market and subsequently reducing the prices of producing -

solder and brazing alloys, batteries, dentistry, TV screens, smart phones microwave ovens, ad infinitum. To quote Jeff Booth. "Prices always fall to the marginal cost of production."

5: The final Rubicon is gold, people get excited about the Bitcoin exchange traded funds but it is nothing compared to the value proposition when gold pundits, large investment funds, governments pension funds and reserve banks finally realise that gold is worthless as money in this new dispensation.

To illustrate the point more vividly.

Ezekiel 7:19

They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling block of their iniquity.

What we are witnessing is the biggest rug pull the world has ever seen. In this future metals will exclusively be used for industrial use cases after being stripped of their monetary premium.

This collapse is something that happens slowly over a long period of time. More or less one hour.

Revelation 18 verse 11–19 (The fall of Babylon)

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

TLDR - No more money printer go BRRR. means death to the bourgeoisie cantillionaire class.**

Is it realistic to assume that all the worlds monetised industries collapse to fair value in one hour?

Coming back to eschatology, 2 Peter 3:8

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Eschatology students use this verse to speculatively project the fulfilment of Biblical prophecies with regards to their predicted time of occurrence. Now let’s apply this to Babylon falling in one hour.

1000 (one day) divided by 24 (hours) equals 41,6 years (one hour)

Since the first block was mined in January 2009 you add 41,6 years you get a completion date of 2050 a.d

Remember, this stone (Bitcoin) becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. A kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.

But contemporary sources must reflect this probability if it is a good theory. https://www.newsbtc.com/news/50-of-population-to-use-bitcoin-by-2043-if-crypto-follows-internet-adoption/

If the banking system is first to collapse we can give it +- 10 years and we are already 14 years in since (Genesis Block) the stone struck the feet. People are slow to see the reality of the world they are living in. If all this is accurate then the world banking system is doomed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exK5yFEuBsk

Regards

Echo Delta

bitbib

@ 599f67f7:21fb3ea9

Merkatari bat zara eta zure negozioan Bitcoin onartzen hasteko prest zaude? Edo agian Bitcoin zale sutsua zara, tokiko negozioak Bitcoinen mundura erakartzeko gogoz? Beharbada, ez zaizu Bitcoin interesatzen, baina ordainketa-prozesadore azkar eta merke bat erabili nahi duzu edo web-denda sinple bat sortu nahi duzu? Galdera hauetakoren bati baiezkoa erantzun badiozu, gida hau zuretzat da. Bitcoin Txoko-k ostatatutako BTCPay Server-en denda bat konfiguratu dezakezu eta zure produktuak eta zerbitzuak Bitcoinen truke saltzen hasi hamar minuturen buruan, doan.

Zer behar dut?

Mugikor edo ordenadore bat baduzu eta posta elektronikoko kontu bat ere bai, orduan prest zaude!

Kontu bat sortu

Bitcoin Txoko-n BTCPay Server-en kontu bat sortzea doakoa da. Joan btcpay.bitcointxoko.com helbidera kontu bat erregistratzeko. Egiaztatu zure posta elektronikoa, bertan bitcointxoko@gmail.com helbidetik bidalitako mezu bat aurkituko duzu, baieztapen-esteka bat izango duena.

Zure lehen denda sortu

Baieztapen-estekan klik egitean, dendaren sorrera orrialdera eramango zaitu. Eman zure dendari izen bat eta hautatu moneta lehenetsia eta prezio iturri hobetsia. Adibidez, EUR eta Kraken aukeratu ditzakezu, azken hau gomendatutako prezio iturria baita. BTCPay Server-ek zure produktuen edo zerbitzuen prezioa EUR-tik Bitcoin-era bihurtuko du, erosketa unean aukeratutako prezio iturriaren arabera.

Zorro bat konfiguratu

Ordainketak onartzen hasteko, lehenik eta behin zure denda zorro batera lotu behar duzu. Transakzio handiak (500 EUR baino gehiago) maiz espero ez badituzu, Lightning zorro bat konfiguratzeko gomendioa egiten dizugu, eta une honetan (on-chain) Bitcoin zorroa ez erabiltzea gomendatzen da. Lightning zorroa erabiliz, transakzioak azkarragoak eta merkeagoak izango dira.

💡 Lightning sarea Bitcoin ordainketak jasotzeko sare ezin hobea da, transakzio berehalakoak eta komisiorik baxuenak eskaintzen baititu on-chain transakzioekin alderatuta. Horrela, zure negozioak eraginkortasunez eta kostu txikiarekin jaso ditzake ordainketak.

Lightning zorro bat konektatzeko modurik errazena LNDhub erabiltzea da, zure Lightning nodo propioa exekutatu beharrik ez baituzu izango. LNDhub zorro bat ez baduzu oraindik, ez kezkatu; Bitcoin Txoko-k doako LNDhub zorroak eskaintzen ditu, eta bost minutu baino gutxiago behar dira konfiguratzeko. Begiratu nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3exuerqdfkxccnyv3cqgs9n8m87l0hd9xxqwndqcmwzh4uvyxmwlw0637kuhg98pkcy8ana2grqsqqqa28nkyu7t zure LNDhub zorroa nola lortu jakiteko, eta prest zaudenean itzuli konfigurazioa jarraitzeko.

Zure LNDhub zorroa prest dagoenean, jarraitu urrats hauek BTCPay kontuan konfiguratzen: 1. Joan zure BTCPay kontura eta Wallets aukera bilatu alboko barran, ondoren Lightning aukeratu. 2. Hautatu Use custom node. 3. Kopiatu zure LNDhub administrazio URL-a eta itsatsi konexioaren konfigurazioan. 4. Proba ezazu zure zorroaren konexioa. 5. Ondo joan bada, honako mezua agertu beharko litzateke: Connection to the Lightning node successful, but no public address has been configured. Ez kezkatu "no public address has been configured" atalaz, horrek zure nodo propioa exekutatzen ari bazara bakarrik du garrantzia. 6. Zorroaren konexioa arrakastaz probatu ondoren, sakatu Save botoia. 7. Save sakatu ondoren, LNURL atalean, desaktibatu Enable LNURL aukera. Egin aldaketak eta ez ahaztu berriro Save botoian klik egitea. 8. (Hautazkoa) Une honetan, gomendagarria da Display Lightning payment amounts in Satoshis aukera markatzea, Satoshitan zenbatutako ordainketa kopuruak irakurtzeko errazagoak baitira. Satoshi Bitcoin-en zatirik txikiena da; Bitcoin bat 100 milioi satoshik osatzen dute.

Jarraitu urrats hauek zure zorroa arrakastaz konfiguratuta izateko eta Lightning bidezko ordainketak onartzeko.

💡 Zure Lightning nodo propioa erabiltzen ari bazara, konfigurazio prozesua antzekoa da. Ziurtatu zure nodo inplementaziorako konexio kate egokia ematen duzula.

Saltoki puntua (PoS) sortu

Urrats honetara iritsi bazara, zorionak! Zati aspergarriena amaitu da, eta orain zure Saltoki puntua (Point of Sale, PoS) sortzeko unea iritsi da, BTCPay bidez zure lehen Bitcoin ordainketa onartzen hasteko!

Saltoki puntu bat sortzeko: 1. Joan Plugins > Point of Sale atalera. 2. Eman izen bat zure Saltoki puntuari eta sakatu Create botoia.

Jarraian, zure PoS aplikazioarekin egin ditzakezun gauza erraz batzuk azalduko ditugu. BTCPay-k ezaugarri asko ditu, baina gida honetan oinarrizkoak soilik azalduko ditugu, hasiera emateko.

💡 Gogoratu BTCPay Server-en saltoki puntu bat baino gehiago sor ditzakezula, bakoitza erabilera jakin baterako. Horrela, negozio desberdinetarako edo produktu eta zerbitzu berezietarako konfigurazio bereiziak izatea posible da.

Teklatua (Keypad)

Demostrazio erraz baterako, PoS estilo gisa teklatuaren eredua erabiliko dugu.

1. Eman zure PoS-ari izen bat eta erakusteko titulua.
2. Hautatu Keypad estiloa Point of Sale style aukeraren azpian.
3. Sakatu Save eskuineko goiko izkinan, eta ondoren View sakatu zure PoS begiratzeko.

Ordainketak lehenago konfiguratutako LNDhub zorroan jasoko dira. Jolas ezazu fakturak sortzen eta deskontu eta tip (aholkularitza) aukerak aktibatuz. Gainera, telefono bat baduzu (adibidez, iPhone ez den bat) NFC teknologia onartzen duena, bezeroek NFC txartelak erabiliz ere ordain dezakete, hala nola BoltCard erabiliz (ikusi nostr:naddr1qqxnzd3e8qcr2wfn8qcrgwf4qgs9n8m87l0hd9xxqwndqcmwzh4uvyxmwlw0637kuhg98pkcy8ana2grqsqqqa28qjzxr4). Ez al da zoragarria?

💡 PoS estilo honen erraztasuna maximizatzeko, Keypad PoS zure telefonoan Progressive Web App (PWA) gisa gorde dezakezu sarbide azkarrerako. Mugikor gehienetako nabigatzaileetan aukera hau Install App edo Gehitu orri nagusian izenarekin agertzen da.

Horrela, zure negozioan Bitcoin ordainketak erraz onar ditzakezu, eta erabiltzaileek ere modu intuitibo batean ordaindu ahal izango dute.

Product list (with cart)

Posible da saltoki puntu bat sortzea produktu zehatzekin, bakoitza bere prezioarekin. Ezaugarri hau erabil dezakezu kutxa sinple bat, bezeroen auto-ordainketa sistema edo web denda bat konfiguratzeko.

Nola sortu produktu-zerrendadun Saltoki Puntua: 1. Joan berriro alboko barrara eta aukeratu Point of Sale. 2. Oraingoan, Point of Sale Style azpian, hautatu Product list with cart. "With cart" aukerak bezeroari produktu bat baino gehiago aldi berean erosteko aukera ematen dio. 3. Zure produktuak sortu, edo zuzenean sakatu Save eta View produktu laginak probatzeko.

Ondorioa

Gida honetan, zure negozioan Bitcoin onartzen hasteko BTCPay Server erabiliz jarraitu beharreko oinarrizko urratsak azaldu ditugu. BTCPay Server proiektu irekia da eta etengabe garatzen ari da. Askoz ere ezaugarri eta funtzionalitate gehiago eskaintzen ditu, hala nola Shopify integrazioa, crowdfunding eta ordainketen banaketa automatikoa. Gainera, zure denda pertsonaliza dezakezu gaikako diseinuekin, ordainketa-gune pertsonalizatuarekin, erabiltzaileen kudeaketarekin, posta elektronikoko jakinarazpenekin eta askoz gehiago.

BTCPay Server-en ahalmen guztiak aprobetxatu nahi badituzu, zure Lightning nodoa konfiguratu eta zure BTCPay zerbitzaria ostatatzea gomendatzen dizugu. Informazio gehiago lortzeko, haien dokumentazioa eta bideoak ikustea komeni da.

Zalantzarik edo galderarik baduzu, jakinarazi iezaguzu! Zure iritziak entzutea gustatuko litzaiguke eta galderak argitzen lagundu nahi dizugu.

Bitcoin Txoko komunitate ireki bat da. Gure zerbitzu guztiak dohaintzekin finantzatzen dira. Gida hau erabilgarria iruditu bazaizu, kontuan hartu gure zerbitzariak martxan mantentzen laguntzeko dohaintza bat egitea. Eskerrik asko aldez aurretik!

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with crackers, or croutons, and side salad. Fiesta Nacho cheese soup gives a pleasant kick of flavor

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 1 Can (10.5 ounces) condensed Cheddar cheese soup
• 1 Cans (10 ½ ounces) condensed tomato soup
• 2 Soup cans water
• Bacon, fried and crumbled.

Directions

1. Combine soups, and water.
2. Heat through, stirring often.
3. Garnish with bacon.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

Why waste time, looking at other people's stuff?

I get this question a lot, on Nostr, and it feeds immediately back to the next question: Why don't you just build your own client, if you're so smart?

This was a completely new question for me, as I'm used to collaborating with at least one other person, even when doing FOSS stuff. (No, this isn't my first such project; we just used to call it "volunteering" and "sharing the code", which sounds way less glamorous.) It never occurred to me, that a habit of collaboration and interaction was some sign of my ignorance and incompetence, or somehow proof that I can't vomit up "Hello World!" in 5 different programming languages.

I also made the deadly political mistake, when I entered the Nostrsphere, of refusing to call myself a "dev". For me, "dev" is a special title, given to someone doing a specific type of programming (fiddling with GUIs, mostly, which I've only done occasionally, as a sub), whereas the types I've done are "test automation", "development operations", "database management and data curation", "requirements engineering", and "application administration". Because it's so much easier to find someone interested in building a GUI, rather than building AnythingElse, I tend to slide into AnythingElse and it eventually became my professional specialty to be the Girl Friday of every project.

But, in Nostr, there is no AnythingElse category. There are only (GUI) client devs and AllOfTheIdiotsWhoMustBowDownToTheDevs. Which merely doubled my instinct to distance myself from the term. I do not want to join some cargo cult and be pedestalized and regarded as some sort of superhuman everyone owes fealty to, in return for raining GUI presents down on my loyal subjects.

Software engineers are simply people who are skilled craftsman, not gods, and it is fair to point out that some are more skilled than others. It is also completely fair to criticize their products, report bugs, and wonder aloud at endemic low-quality.

Which brings me back to the initial question:

What does the inquisitive dev know, that the others don't?

1) You learn an awful lot about an awful lot, by looking at specs, reviewing code, and trying out various implementations of concepts you are already familiar with. There are, in fact, n number of use cases for every event type, and I've seen so many of them, that I can conjure them up, or invent new ones, on the fly, rather than wasting time inventing similar events. 2) They don't have to explain their concept to you, later, when you interact. Each interaction brings you closer to parallel-levels of knowledge, which raises the signal-strength of the interaction, and widens your own knowledge base, for interacting with third parties. 3) You are increasingly-likely to contribute code or perform some other more-advanced task, for other people, as you don't face the hurdle of adjusting to a new repo or unfamiliar language, while being less-likely to merely fork-and-ignore because you have a standing business relationship with the other developer. 4) If the other dev stops maintaining the repo, you'll be inclined to continue on your own. You may even eventually receive administrative access, rather than needing to fork, as they trust you with their stuff. This means that the risk of the repo becoming abandoned falls, with each active dev snooping around it, even if that is not their primary project. 5) It helps you determine who to focus your energy on interacting with, further. Is this person new to software development, perhaps, but has some interesting transfer-knowledge from some other branch, that has resulted in a surprisingly novel concept? Is this person able to write very clean code, so that merely reading their code feels like mental training for your own craftsman's toolbox?

...and many more reasons, but this is getting too long, so, let's just cut to the chase.

What does a craftswoman want?

But, this still doesn't answer the question of my private motivation. Why do I want to gather all of this knowledge, from those further ahead, than I?

I think Nostr has long moved past the initial stage, where mere speed was of the essence, so that one npub could finally post a note and have it appear on the other npubs' client. That must have felt like a miracle, but it increasingly feels like a disaster, as the steadily-rising complexity of the Nostr ecosystem causes haphazardly-structured and largely-unexamined code bases to begin to atrophy, or result in developers running around at an exhausting speed, with their bug-extinguishers, to put out fire after fire.

I think the time has arrived, for a different kind of development. Maybe even for a different kind of developer. Not replacing the experimentalism that made Nostr fun, but adding the realm of production-quality software engineering. The sort of software development that requires relay administration, testing, support... collaboration, interaction, maybe even someone who does AnythingElse.

I want to build useful, elegant products people enjoy using and feel comfortable relying on. I want them to use them, naturally and happily, to accomplish tasks they consider worthwhile. I don't want them thinking about me, while they use it. The craftswoman should never be greater than her work.

I want them to feel free -- nay, be eager! -- to give me both positive and negative feedback. My assumption is always that our production is imperfect because we are imperfect, so you do us a favor, by pointing out where we can improve. That's why we wish to integrate a feedback form that produces ngit issue events, putting your questions and comments straight on our board.

And there will be an AnythingElse person, reading that board, and responding promptly, rest assured.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Trim down bread to fit serving bowl, if necessary, prior to broiling. Top with Parmesan cheese.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 1 Can (10.5 ounce) condensed onion soup
• ½ Soup can water
• ½ Soup can V8 juice
• 4 Ounces sliced roast beef
• 2-3 slices French, or Italian bread, or Texas Toast
• Butter
• Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Combine soup, water, and V8 juice.
2. Heat to simmer.
3. Add roast beef, heat throug
4. Ladle soup in bowl
5. Top soup with bread
6. Top bread with roast beef

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with side salad.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 10 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 3 sausage links cut into penny sized slices, or two patties crumbled
• 2 Cans (10 ½ ounces) condensed minestrone soup
• 1 can (10.5 ounces) condensed tomato soup.
• 3 Soup cans water
• Croutons

Directions

1. Brown sausage in saucepan
2. Add soups, and water
3. Heat through, stirring often.
4. Garnish with croutons

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve over baked potato, cooked white rice, or drop biscuits.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 15 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 2-4

Ingredients

• 2 - 4 Hotdogs, sliced thin
• 1 TBSP Butter
• 1 Can (10.5 oz) bean & bacon soup
• 1 Can (10.5 oz) condensed pea soup
• 1 Soup can of milk
• 1 Soup can of water

Directions

1. Lightly brown hotdogs in butter.
2. Mix soups, milk, and water in a bowl.
3. Add soup mix to hotdogs, heat through but do not boil.

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

Cancer cases in England hit record high - with almost 1,000 people diagnosed every day

Cancer cases in England have reached a new high, with nearly 1,000 diagnoses made every day, according to NHS data. In 2022, there were 346,217 cancer diagnoses, a 5% increase from 2021. The rise largely stems from a significant increase in prostate cancer cases, which rose by over 25%.

While the incidence of cancer has increased, death rates are falling. Dame Cally Palmer of NHS England stated, "Our work is leading to more people starting treatment promptly – potentially saving lives." Current initiatives are encouraging earlier cancer checks post-pandemic, aiming for quicker diagnoses and better care for patients.

Sauce: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/cancer/index.html

@ 188302bb:9052db11

I really like 'that ufo podcast' but am looking for some others that take it seriously.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/730749

@ c0e0c427:a1f63a16

Chef's notes

Some say beat the cream as hard as you can but I find I have much better success when I take my time. So take it easy and be patient and that magic butter moment will arrive.

Details

• 🍳 Cook time: 15 min
• 🍽️ Servings: Approx 250g butter

Ingredients

• Pure fresh cream
• Salt

Directions

1. Keep cream in the fridge until ready to start.
2. Pour cream into a bowl.
3. Beat with hand mixer or kitchen betchtop mixer with the balloon whisk.
4. Maintain a medium power level in the mixer throughout. Note that it can get messy with lots of splatter and you might like to have a tea towel over the operation to limit clean up.
5. After 5 min the cream will be whipped this is a great sign! Keep going.
6. After 10 -15 min you’ll see the cream start to separate into solids and buttermilk.
7. Keep whisking until you see the bright yellow butter solids start to clump together in the mixer.
8. Pour off the buttermilk and save for later (bonus side product that makes the best pancakes and is actually really great in scrabbled eggs)
9. Rinse in butter solid with cold water to remove all the buttermilk. This is an important step and the buttermilk increases the rate of spoil.
10. Mix in salt and shape the butter into a block.
11. Wrap and store in the fridge.

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

Joe Biden and Senator Lindsey Graham about securing a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty, as revealed in Bob Woodward's new book "War".

The Proposed "Megadeal"

The conversation took place in the context of Biden's attempts to negotiate a "megadeal" between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel[1]. The goal was to create a permanent, U.S.-led security alliance in the Middle East[1].

Bipartisan Collaboration

Graham reportedly told Biden that only a Democratic president could convince Democrats to "vote to go to war for Saudi Arabia," to which Biden responded, "Let's do it"[1]. This exchange highlights the bipartisan willingness to consider military commitments in the Middle East[2].

Political Calculations

Graham suggested that: - A Republican administration wouldn't be able to secure such a deal - Democrats wouldn't support it if introduced by Trump - Republicans could provide 45 votes if Israel encouraged it Biden assured Graham he could secure the remaining Democratic votes[1].

Saudi Arabia's Perspective

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was reportedly interested in the deal to gain protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella[1]. However, after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, bin Salman became hesitant, fearing potential assassination if he didn't stand up for Palestinian rights[1].

Current Status

The deal is currently in suspended animation due to bin Salman's concerns and changing regional dynamics. The Biden administration continues to pursue negotiations, urging Israel to make concessions on Palestinian rights to facilitate the agreement.

The article concludes by noting that if Woodward's reporting is accurate, both Biden and Graham seemed willing to commit American troops to potential conflict with relative ease.

Sauce: https://reason.com/2024/10/18/biden-and-graham-reportedly-schemed-on-how-to-go-to-war-for-saudi-arabia/

@ a012dc82:6458a70d

Table Of Content

• The Current State of Bitcoin ETFs

• The 'Silver Bullet' Solution

• The Role of ARK Invest

• Implications for the Future

• Conclusion

• FAQ

In the dynamic and rapidly changing landscape of cryptocurrencies, Cathie Wood's ARK Invest has consistently been a pioneer, leading the charge with innovative strategies and investment products. The latest development from the firm is a groundbreaking strategy for their Bitcoin ETF filing, a solution they have intriguingly dubbed the 'Silver Bullet'. This approach, while shrouded in some degree of mystery, aims to address regulatory concerns that have long plagued the cryptocurrency sector. It promises to pave the way for a more secure, transparent, and efficient future for Bitcoin investments, potentially revolutionizing the way we perceive and interact with this digital asset.

The Current State of Bitcoin ETFs

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) have become a popular investment vehicle in the financial world. They offer diversified exposure to a particular asset class or sector, allowing investors to mitigate risk while capitalizing on market trends. However, the creation of a Bitcoin ETF has been a contentious issue. Regulatory bodies, particularly the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have expressed concerns over the potential for market manipulation and the need for robust investor protection measures. This has led to a stalemate, with several Bitcoin ETF proposals being rejected or left in regulatory limbo.

The 'Silver Bullet' Solution

ARK Invest's 'Silver Bullet' solution is a novel and ambitious approach designed to address these regulatory concerns head-on. While the specifics of this strategy remain undisclosed due to confidentiality and strategic reasons, it is believed to involve a blend of advanced technology and stringent compliance measures. The 'Silver Bullet' is not just a solution; it's a statement of intent, a commitment to providing greater transparency, reducing the risk of market manipulation, and ensuring robust investor protection. It's a testament to ARK's belief in the potential of Bitcoin and their determination to overcome the regulatory hurdles that stand in its path.

The Role of ARK Invest

Under the visionary leadership of Cathie Wood, ARK Invest has emerged as a strong advocate for cryptocurrencies and the transformative potential of blockchain technology. The firm's active management style, combined with its unwavering focus on disruptive innovation, has led to significant returns for their investors and cemented their reputation as trailblazers in the investment world. The introduction of the 'Silver Bullet' solution is another testament to ARK's commitment to pushing the boundaries of traditional finance, challenging the status quo, and driving the adoption of innovative financial products.

Implications for the Future

If successful, the 'Silver Bullet' solution could have far-reaching implications for the future of Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency sector. It could revolutionize the way Bitcoin ETFs are viewed by regulatory bodies, potentially leading to a shift in perception and a softening of the regulatory stance. This could pave the way for more widespread acceptance of Bitcoin as a legitimate and regulated asset class. The potential impact of this cannot be overstated. It could lead to an influx of institutional investors into the Bitcoin market, further driving its growth, increasing its liquidity, and promoting its adoption on a global scale.

Conclusion

The 'Silver Bullet' solution introduced by ARK Invest represents a significant and potentially game-changing step forward in the quest for a Bitcoin ETF. While the road to regulatory approval may still be fraught with challenges and uncertainties, this innovative approach offers a promising glimpse into the future of Bitcoin investments. As we continue to navigate the uncharted waters of cryptocurrency regulation, it is clear that firms like ARK Invest are not just observers but active participants, leading the charge towards a more secure, transparent, and inclusive financial future.

FAQ

What is the 'Silver Bullet' solution by ARK Invest? The 'Silver Bullet' is a novel strategy introduced by ARK Invest for their Bitcoin ETF filing. While specific details are confidential, it's designed to address regulatory concerns, aiming to provide greater transparency, reduce market manipulation risk, and ensure investor protection.

Why is the 'Silver Bullet' solution significant? If successful, the 'Silver Bullet' could revolutionize how Bitcoin ETFs are viewed by regulatory bodies, potentially leading to more widespread acceptance of Bitcoin as a regulated asset class. This could attract more institutional investors into the Bitcoin market, driving its growth and adoption.

What is ARK Invest's role in the cryptocurrency market? Led by Cathie Wood, ARK Invest is a strong advocate for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. The firm's focus on disruptive innovation has led to significant returns for investors and the introduction of the 'Silver Bullet' solution is another testament to ARK's commitment to pushing the boundaries of traditional finance.

That's all for today

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

@ e97aaffa:2ebd765d

As eleições nos países democráticos, são uma espécie de um concurso de popularidade, vence o mais popular. Os governos, como querem vencer as próximas eleições, tendem a tomar medidas com execução curtas, que apresente resultados num curto espaço de tempo. Os governos deixaram de fazer reformas estruturais, que teriam bons resultados daqui a 10 a 20 anos, pensam apenas a curto prazo, com uma alta preferência temporal e que sejam populares. Os incentivos estão completamente desalinhados.

Isto coloca os partidos políticos, um pouco refém da opinião pública, dificilmente fazem algo contra a opinião da maioria dos cidadãos. Se executar medidas muito impopulares, existe uma forte probabilidade de perder a próxima eleição.

Assim os governos só aprovam propostas que tenham uma “aprovação” parcial da população, poderá não existir uma maioria, mas uma parte terá que compreender essa proposta.

Muitas das vezes, os governos querem aprovar uma nova lei, mas sabem de antemão que é extremamente impopular, por isso, primeiro manipulam a opinião pública para ganhar apoio popular, depois sim aprovam a lei. Ou seja, cria uma narrativa, um motivo que justifique aquele ato.

Vamos um exemplo prático, dificilmente um governo aprova um aumento de impostos com o único objetivo de aumentar o salário dos deputados, seria extremamente impopular.

Os governos acabam por manipular a população, criam uma narrativa, prometem que o aumento dos impostos é para ajudar os mais pobres. É algo popular, mas depois de aprovada, uma parte do dinheiro vai para os pobres, a outra parte vai para os bolsos dos deputados. Assim conseguiram realizar a ideia inicial com o apoio popular.

Em suma, os incentivos levam os governos a tomar medidas que tenham uma parte de apoio popular. Terá que existir sempre um motivo que justifique. É uma espécie de equilíbrio de Nash, tem que existir um equilíbrio entre a opinião do governo e a opinião da população. Se existir uma enorme divergência, as perdas são muito superiores aos benefícios para o governo.

Bitcoin

A grande herança/legado do Satoshi não foi a tecnologia (até tinha muitos bugs) mas sim a política económica e protocolo de consenso, as suas múltiplas teorias dos jogos coexistentes, é uma verdadeira obra prima.

Já foram realizados inúmeros melhoramentos no código (tecnologia), talvez daqui a 20 anos, pouco restará do código inicial, mas a sua política está inalterada e está completamente atual e possivelmente nunca será alterada.

O Satoshi ao criar um novo sistema monetário alternativo, sabia que mais cedo ou mais tarde, o bitcoin seria atacado pelos governos. Como aconteceu em todas as tentativas anteriores ao bitcoin.

Após este comentário de um anónimo:

Você não encontrará uma solução para problemas políticos na criptografia

Satoshi respondeu:

Sim, mas podemos vencer uma grande batalha na corrida armamentista e conquistar novos caminhos para a liberdade por alguns anos. Os governos são bons em cortar cabeças de redes gerenciadas centralmente, como a Napster, mas redes P2P puras, como Gnutella e Tor, parecem estar se mantendo funcionando.

Assim quanto mais tarde, melhor, permitindo o desenvolvimento tecnológico e um maior crescimento da adoção. A adoção é o melhor escudo, um escudo humano sem armas mas com o poder no voto, de poder eleger ou derrubar o governo.

A diferença de poderes entre o estado e o Bitcoin é desproporcional, num confronto direto, o pequeno nunca vencerá essa guerra. O pequeno nunca conseguirá explodir o grande, mas poderá implodi-lo, ou seja, entrar dentro do sistema como um cavalo de Troia e depois implodi-lo.

A minha convicção, é que Satoshi não cria destruir o sistema Fiat, mas sim construir uma alternativa, com diversos casos de uso.

Bitcoin seria conveniente para pessoas que não têm cartão de crédito ou não querem usar os cartões que possuem, não querem que o cônjuge o veja na conta ou não confiam em fornecer seu número para “caras da por”, ou com medo de cobrança recorrente.

Se pensarmos bem, até é importante manter o sistema FIAT, nem que seja como uma referência (a não seguir). Nós, só sabemos que a refeição A é deliciosa, porque já provamos a refeição B (que é uma porcaria). Se perdermos a referência da B, deixamos de saber que A é deliciosa.

É claro que em última instância, se o sistema alternativo tiver uma adoção de 100%, acabaria por destruir o sistema FIAT. O essencial é existir liberdade monetária, o poder de escolha fica em exclusivo no indivíduo.

Como é lógico, o estado não quer perder o monopólio da moeda. Como expliquei na introdução, os governos democráticos necessitam de uma motivo plausível ou uma razão moral para proibir, parte da população tem que compreender. Se não compreender, vão questionar o porquê, isto pode gerar um efeito oposto, o chamado efeito Barbra Streisand. Ao proibir sem motivo aparente pode gerar um movimento de adoção em massa, porque somos humanos e o fruto proibido é sempre o mais apetecível.

O Bitcoin ao ser construído num limbo, repleto de teoria dos jogos, sem violar qualquer lei vigente, sem nunca bater de frente com os governos, é uma revolução pacífica e silenciosa. Como nunca pisou linhas vermelhas, coube aos governos encontrar um motivo para proibir, durante toda a história, os políticos bem tentaram mas nunca encontraram o motivo plausível.

Bitcoin vive nesse limbo, não viola qualquer lei, mas ao mesmo tempo, não compactua com os governos, apenas está a criar um sistema monetário paralelo. É como os bons advogados trabalham, aproveitam os buracos das leis ou contornam as leis sem nunca as violar.

Para que a adopção seja rápida, é importante tem de estar dentro da lei.

Quando os governos/procuradores não encontram provas diretas para condenar, adoram encontrar motivos circunstanciais, subterfúgios. Um bom exemplo foi Al Capone, apenas conseguiram encarcerar por sonegação de impostos, ele nunca foi condenado por crimes mais graves, de sangue.

Um bom exemplo foi o algoritmo de assinaturas Schnorr, que só foi adicionado ao Bitcoin na atualização Taproot, não foi adicionado anteriormente devido as pendentes, que estaria em vigor à data do bloco gênesis. Satoshi era rigoroso e calculista.

Em Dezembro de 2010, Satoshi demonstrou que não queria um conflito com os governos, ainda era muito cedo. Após o bloqueio das contas bancárias dos Wikileaks, Assange queria receber doações em bitcoin, mas Satoshi tentou dissuadi-lo, ainda era cedo, a descentralização ainda não era suficientemente robusta.

Não, não faça isso. O Bitcoin é uma pequena comunidade beta em sua infância. Você não arrecadaria mais do que alguns trocados, e a pressão que você traria provavelmente nos destruiria (a rede do Bitcoin) nesta fase.

O Wikileaks chutou o ninho de vespas e o enxame está vindo em nossa direção.»

Após estes acontecimentos, Satoshi afastou-se.

Transparência

Muitos apoiantes do Monero, criticam o Bitcoin devido à falta de privacidade, mas Satoshi optou por uma transparência total e por um pseudo anonimato.

O problema fundamental com a moeda convencional é toda a confiança necessária para fazê-la funcionar. Precisamos confiar que o banco central não vai desvalorizar a moeda, mas a história das moedas fiduciárias está repleta de violações dessa confiança. Deve-se confiar nos bancos para reter o nosso dinheiro e transferi-lo eletronicamente, mas eles emprestam-no em ondas de bolhas de crédito com apenas uma fração de reserva. Temos que confiar-lhes a nossa privacidade, confiar que não permitirão que ladrões de identidade drenem as nossas contas. – Satoshi

Satoshi descreve magistralmente os problemas do sistema financeiro, o ter que confiar, a falta de transparência e a reserva fracionária. Bitcoin é exatamente a resposta a isso, um sistema totalmente transparente, onde tudo é visível, tudo é auditável e sem a necessidade de confiar em terceiros.

Assim, garantiu a segurança e a integridade do sistema, promoveu a confiança e incentivou a verificação e não confiar em informações de terceiros. A qualquer momento, qualquer pessoa consegue verificar todas as transações e saber o supply total do bitcoin, isto é incrível.

Don’t Trust, Verify!

É claro que essa total transparência gera “efeitos secundários”, uma menor privacidade. Temos que saber viver com isso, é um mal menor, para garantir um bem muito superior, uma moeda justa.

A transparência é a prioridade, privacidade fica parcialmente garantida através do pseudo anonimato, tem algumas limitações, mas bem utilizado, pode garantir uma certa privacidade, basta fazer uma boa gestão de chaves e uma utilização de endereços descartáveis.

Como uma camada de segurança adicional, um novo par de chaves deve ser usado para cada transação para evitar que elas sejam vinculadas a um proprietário comum. – Satoshi

O problema do pseudo anonimato é agravado devido ao mau comportamento das pessoas, que utilizam exchanges e vinculam os endereços à identidade real.

A possibilidade de ser anônimo ou pseudônimo depende de você não revelar nenhuma informação de identificação sobre você em relação aos endereços bitcoin que você usa. Se você publicar seu endereço bitcoin na web, estará associando esse endereço e quaisquer transações com o nome com o qual você postou. Se você postou com um identificador que não associou à sua identidade real, ainda é um pseudônimo. – Satoshi

Não é possível querer os dois mundos em simultâneo, quem quer privacidade não poderá utilizar exchanges, apenas p2p.

E Satoshi tinha razão, atraíram as “vespas”, em 2011, o Gavin Andresen foi convocado pela CIA, o serviço de inteligência dos Estados Unidos, para falar sobre o Bitcoin.

Comunicado de Gavin Andresen:

Aceitei o convite para falar porque o fato de ter sido convidado significa que o Bitcoin já está no radar deles, e acho que pode ser uma boa chance de falar sobre por que acho que o Bitcoin tornará o mundo um lugar melhor. Acho que os objetivos deste projeto são criar uma moeda melhor, criar um sistema de pagamento internacional mais competitivo e eficiente e dar às pessoas um controle mais direto sobre suas finanças. E não acho que nenhum desses objetivos seja incompatível com os objetivos do governo. Estou apenas um pouco preocupado que falar sobre bitcoin na CIA aumente as chances de que eles tentem fazer algo que não queremos que eles façam. Acho que aceitar o convite deles e ser aberto sobre exatamente o que é o bitcoin tornará menos provável que eles o vejam como uma ameaça.

Como no Bitcoin não existe uma privacidade total e as transações são rastreáveis, não representava uma ameaça para a segurança nacional dos estados. Assim não existe um motivo plausível para o governo o proibirem.

A total privacidade é claramente uma linha vermelha para os governos.

A generalidade das pessoas tem dificuldade em compreender o verdadeiro valor da privacidade, acreditam na ideia, “quem não tem nada a esconder, não tem nada a temer”. Na época, se o governo tivesse a intenção de atacar o Bitcoin, possivelmente teriam conseguido proibi-lo e as pessoas nem teriam contestado.

Foi exatamente o que aconteceu agora com a Monero, a privacidade/anonimato foi utilizada como o motivo, está a ser ilegalizada em vários países, sem gerar alguma consternação na população. Infelizmente as pessoas não dão valor à privacidade, são demasiado ingénuas, acreditam que isto dará mais segurança.

Qualquer sociedade que renuncie um pouco da sua liberdade para ter um pouco mais de segurança, não merece nem uma, nem outra, e acabará por perder ambas. – Benjamin Franklin

Eu acredito que se o bitcoin tivesse o mesmo grau de privacidade da Monero, hoje em dia, ou já não existia ou seria apenas um micro nicho, nunca teria atingido a atual dimensão.

É um equilíbrio, se houvesse um maior grau de privacidade a adoção seria baixa, se privacidade fosse nula (FIAT) a adoção seria elevadíssima. Satoshi optou por um pouco de equilíbrio, com o pseudo anonimato.

O bitcoin sacrificou um pouco a privacidade, em prol de um bem muito superior, é o instituto de sobrevivência. Esse sacrifício era a única via, uma maior privacidade poderá ser garantida com outras soluções ou em segundas camadas.

A camada base deve manter este nível de privacidade, como padrão, quem quiser uma maior privacidade terá que optar por sistemas alternativos, como mixers ou outras camadas.

A tecnologia deve ser imparcial e genérica, é uma situação similar das facas, apenas uma tecnologia agnóstica. A responsabilidade não está na tecnologia, mas sim de quem a utiliza. Quem utiliza uma faca para cometer um crime, é quem deve ser condenado. Deve ser condenado quem faz mau uso da tecnologia e nunca deve ser condenado quem construiu a tecnologia e muito menos proibir a tecnologia.

Num futuro longínquo, a camada base será um local de Settlements, apenas utilizado por liquidity provider(LP), bancos ou pessoas com bastante valor. A generalidade das pessoas utilizarão apenas camadas secundárias, onde existirá um maior grau de privacidade. Vão existir centenas de L2 ou sidechains que estarão ligadas à L1, onde a liquidez está colaterizada, por isso é essencial uma transparência total, para ser facilmente auditável a quantidade de fundos colaterizados, para garantir a segurança.

Neste futuro, a maioria das transações na L1 serão de instituições ou estados, eu acredito que vão querer implementar maior privacidade, nesse momento, seremos nós a não querer. A verdade está na transparência.

Custódia

Como os políticos não fizeram nada durante anos, o Bitcoin cresceu na adoção, mas sobretudo na descentralização. A descentralização atingiu uma tal dimensão, que hoje em dia, é impossível proibir o Bitcoin e os políticos sabem disso. Como já não é possível proibir tecnicamente, agora a única via, é tornar ilegal a sua utilização.

Os políticos durante anos tentaram fabricar motivos plausíveis, manipularam a opinião pública com FUDs e informações falsas, mas nunca conseguiram um forte apoio popular.

O Bitcoin continuou a crescer, agora os governos ocidentais mudaram ligeiramente de estratégia, em vez de proibir, estão a direcionar/condicionar a sua utilização, ou seja, estão a aceitar o Bitcoin como um ativo, como o ouro, como reserva de valor, sobretudo em locais centralizados, como ETFs e em exchanges, bancos, tudo altamente regulamentado. Tudo por baixo da asa dos governos, onde os políticos podem controlar, confiscar o bitcoin e identificar facilmente.

Mas ao mesmo tempo vão dificultar a auto-custódia e a utilização do Bitcoin como meio de troca. O grande medo dos governos é o Bitcoin ser utilizado como uma moeda, eles não querem concorrência às suas moedas FIAT, estão apenas a tolerar como reserva de valor.

Agora o grande objetivo é ilegalizar/limitar a auto-custódia, mas aqui existe um enorme medo por parte dos governos ocidentais, ao fazê-lo, podem dar uma percepção à sua população que é um ataque às liberdades individuais, os governos não querem dar imagem de ser autoritários. Poderia também gerar o efeito Barbra Streisand, gerando uma adoção em massa, o tiro poderia sair pela culatra. Mesmo sem proibir, os governos vão utilizar os impostos para limitar a adoção e a utilização.

Como o euro e o dólar tem uma volatilidade muito inferior ao Bitcoin, é natural que a utilização do Bitcoin como moeda seja baixa na União Europeia e nos EUA. Como o benefício é baixo, mas o risco é muito elevado, possivelmente os governos vão deixar andar, só vão proibir a auto-custódia em último caso, em desespero.

Será pouca a utilização como moeda na Europa e nos EUA, mas a adoção vai ser grande como reserva de valor, vai permitir reduzir a volatilidade e ainda vai dar mais resiliência ao bitcoin. O aumento da adoção não será apenas pelo cidadão comum, mas também por políticos, empresários e investidores, criando um forte lobby pró-bitcoin. Este conflito de interesses dos políticos, vai dificultar a aprovação de medidas mais restritivas, porque haverá sempre algum bitcoiner dentro dos partidos políticos, haverá oposição interna.

A entrada da BlackRock foi um divisor de água, podemos não gostar, mas a percepção geral mudou completamente, existe antes e depois do apoio BlackRock. Os ETFs que estavam há 10 anos num limbo, foram aprovados em meses, a narrativa negativa (que o bitcoin consumia muita energia e só era utilizado por criminosos) desvaneceu. 

Mas nem tudo poderá ser um mar de rosas, existe um dúvida no ar, de que lado está a BlackRock, sobre a auto-custódia, fará lobby para que lado?

Em teoria, a proibição da auto-custódia faria crescer o número de clientes, mas provocaria um efeito secundário, como a soberania e a descentralização é fulcral, ao atacar esses pontos teria um forte impacto no preço, os clientes da BlackRock perderiam dinheiro e poderiam desistiriam dos EFTs. O que no início poderia resultar num aumento de clientes, poderia resultar numa perda de clientes, é a teoria dos jogos, o Dilema do prisioneiro. O melhor para ambos, é a coexistência dos serviços custodiais e não-custodiais, porque ambos geram procura, ambos serão beneficiados. Só o tempo dirá, de que lado está a BlackRock.

Hoje em dia é visível a forte adoção dos EFTs, tanto por empresas/instituições, como por particulares, alguns milionários. Os ETFs são um produto simples, muito fácil de utilizar, sem necessidade de fazer a custódia, mas existe sempre o risco de confisco. As empresas e fundos de pensões, não terão outra alternativa, obrigatoriamente terão que estar sempre em serviço custodiais, mas no caso dos investidores particulares, estes vão pensar duas vezes.

Numa fase inicial vão utilizar os ETFs, depois com tempo vão estudar e compreender como funciona o bitcoin. Possivelmente alguns vão mudar para auto-custódia ou para outros serviços mais resilientes ao confisco.

Os particulares milionários como tem empresas ou outros ativos, como no mercado de capitais ou então imobiliário, já estão demasiado expostos aos poder do estado e há boa bondade dos políticos. Os milionários também têm medo dos governos, por isso, já colocam parte da sua riqueza em jurisdições mais amigáveis (offshores). Nas offshores só uma pequena parte do capital tem origem criminosa, a grande maioria do dinheiro tem uma origem lícita, as poupanças estão ali como uma proteção, uma segurança extra, porque também tem uma certa desconfiança do poder político.

No futuro, alguns desses milhões de dólares que estão depositados na Suíça, Dubai, Caimão, Curaçau e entre outros, vão ser transformados em bitcoin, é inevitável. Alguns vão optar por serviço custodial nessas mesmas jurisdições, mas certamente alguns vão optar pela auto-custódia.

As offshores dão segurança ao cidadão, mas apenas estava acessível aos mais ricos, mas agora existe o Bitcoin, que dá ainda mais soberania e está acessível para toda a gente, é universal.

Até para o lado dos governos, é mais fácil rastrear as transações de Bitcoin do que as transações em certas offshores.

Meio de troca

São nos países onde as moedas perdem mais poder de compra, é onde existe uma maior adoção do Bitcoin. Assim, a forte adoção como reserva de valor, vai permitir reduzir bastante a volatilidade do Bitcoin, provocando uma forte adoção em países com moedas com inflação mais elevadas, sobretudo na América central e latina, na África e na Ásia.

Hoje em dia, este “mercado”, das compras do dia-a-dia, foi dominado por stablecoins. Mas as stablecoins são uma CBDCs disfarçada, o FED tem um poder absoluto sobre elas, congela fundos a qualquer momento, sem qualquer limitação. Os EUA já utilizam as stablecoins como uma política expansionista, esse processo vai acelerar nos próximos anos, vão imprimir biliões/triliões de dólares para financiar o governo e vão distribuir essa inflação para o resto do mundo em forma de stablecoins.

O forte crescimento da adoção das stablecoins de dólares, está a colocar em causa as políticas monetárias internas nos países subdesenvolvidos. Atualmente os políticos utilizam a moeda como uma arma contra o seu próprio povo, este refugia-se no dólar, como uma proteção contra as altas inflações e contra a tirania dos seus políticos.

Não é o Bitcoin a principal ameaça às moedas FIAT, mas sim as stablecoins de dólares.

Nestas economias sempre houve dólares, existem mercados paralelos de dólares, mas este mercado tinha uma limitação física que impedia o seu crescimento, é difícil entrar novas notas/cédulas de dólares em circulação. O digital resolveu esse problema, agora é fácil entrar “novos” dólares nessas economias, os governos mais austeros, com políticas de controle de capitais mais agressivas, não conseguem evitar a entrada.

A utilização das stablecoins está a crescer rapidamente, mas em algum momento, existirá um ponto de inflexão, os governos não vão querer perder o poder da sua moeda FIAT, vão retaliar. Ao contrário do papel-moeda, as stablecoins são fáceis de confiscar/congelar fundos. Os governos vão retaliar e vão começar a obrigar a Tether (e os outros) a congelar fundos arbitrariamente, será congelamentos em massa.

Haverá muitos conflitos diplomáticos, a Tether vai compactuar com grande parte dos governos, mas será que compactuará com o governo russo no congelamento de fundos?

Só nesse preciso momento, as pessoas vão compreender o verdadeiro valor da descentralização do Bitcoin. Será um catalisador no aceleramento da adoção do Bitcoin, como moeda, nessas economias.

Além disso, a política expansionista dos EUA não é imparável, nem inesgotável, um dia terá que afrouxar, quando colocarem o KYC como obrigatório, milhões de pessoas vão afastar-se das stablecoins.

Mais tarde, os fluxos migratórios desses países subdesenvolvidos, serão uma forte contribuinte para eclodir os mercados p2p na Europa e para os EUA, vai gerar uma enorme utilização do Bitcoin como moeda.

A “reserva de valor” vai alimentar o “meio de troca“ e por sua vez este vai alimentar ainda mais o “reserva de valor”. Se isto acontecer, os governos ocidentais poderão desesperar e vão tentar desesperadamente ilegalizar o bitcoin, especialmente os governos europeus, mas talvez seja tarde demais. O Bitcoin já estará disseminado em todo o lado, como um vírus.

Independência

Como disse em cima, quanto maior for a adoção, maior é o escudo humano. Apesar de existir milhões de bitcoiners, ainda somos uma gota num oceano, neste mundo com biliões de habitantes.

Bitcoin é um sistema financeiro alternativo, mas ainda está altamente dependente do sistema FIAT, para crescer. Se os governos conseguirem cortar todas as rampas de entrada FIAT, a adoção ficaria muito mais lenta. Seria como em 2012, quando não existiam exchanges, a única maneira de comprar era através de p2p, os scams online eram imensos, não existia confiança, as pessoas tinham medo de comprar, não arriscavam. As exchanges facilitam imenso, foram fundamentais para acelerar o crescimento da adoção.

Bitcoin necessita reduzir esta dependência e tornar-se totalmente independente, para isso é essencial uma adoção massiva. As economias circular vão desempenhar um papel fundamental, se em cada terra/cidade existirem várias pessoas disponíveis para p2p, já não será necessário ir online para trocar FIAT por Bitcoin, aí sim alcançarmos a independência.

O Bitcoin tem que ser acessível, fácil, rápido e sem a necessidade de uma KYC.

Impacto Global e Social

Quanto maior for o impacto global, mais resiliente será o bitcoin, é a teoria de jogos na sua plenitude.

Se houve um forte crescimento na adoção do Bitcoin como moeda em países em desenvolvimento, utilizada por grupos sociais perseguidos, pelos mais pobres, pelos mais necessitados e cidadãos em países sob regimes autoritários, todos eles serão um escudo humano e social no ocidente. Ou seja, haverá pressão social sobre os políticos ocidentais, porque qualquer coisa que prejudique o Bitcoin teriam um impacto tremendo no preço, consequentemente, vai destruir as poupanças dos mais necessitados em todo o mundo. O impacto seria global.

Será que o governo terá coragem de prejudicar as populações mais necessitadas em todo o mundo?

Conclusão

Quanto maior a adoção, maior será o escudo humano. Tudo isto não passa de uma opinião pessoal, a minha interpretação. Não confie em nada aqui escrito, verifique!

@ 3ad01248:962d8a07

The 2024 US presidential election is less than a month out and many states have already sent out early ballots to their citizens. The time to decide is coming ever closer and have no idea who I am going to vote for or if at all. Well let me be clear, the Harris/Walz ticket is a no go for me as they represent more of the same policies of the Biden administration. As someone who takes a holistic view of things, what Biden did while in office wasn't 100 percent all bad.

I think trying to wipe away the debts for millions of Americans struggling with college debt isn't bad policy because college education isn't what it used to be. I went to college and for some it is beneficial if you are going into a specific line of work such as education or law school. For the vast majority of people who go to these overpriced universities are going there to party and for the "experience".

The propaganda of go to college, get a good job and buy a house has been crammed down everyone's throat for so long that it is considered normal to be in debt when you graduate. I see Biden trying to rectify some of this with his attempt to wipe away debt. Again not an endorsement but give credit when its due.

I also like that fact that the Biden administration has made American manufacturing and green jobs a priority of his administration with his Inflation Reduction Act passed 2 years ago. It looks like it has benefitted Republicans states to the tune of $161 billion.

I do like the fact that he stood by Ukraine and has provided weapons and resources to Ukraine to help it defend itself. I don't know if there is some conspiracy behind why the war was started or Russia geopolitical motivations for starting the war, all I know is innocent victims are being killed by Russian military hardware and that is not ok morally.

If America or Americans are going to be known for something, let it be known that we stand by our friends. That's how I live my life and I'm yours as well. We don't abandon friends in need. Imagine if we were in Ukraine's situation, wouldn't we want a friend to come to our aid?

Again this isn't a ringing endorsement of the Biden Administration as they have done significant harm to our creditworthiness and national debt crisis. The country is $35 trillion in debt and counting with no credible plan to get this under control. They are going to pass the buck to whoever gets elected in November. This is incredibly reckless and stupid on their part to not even attempt to reign in the debt.

I know Trump or Harris will continue the big spending policies that is going to turn us into Argentina someday. This gravy train that we are on right now will not last forever. Mark my words. This is going to blow up in our face in spectacular fashion. Now on to Trump.

Trump Is More Of The Same

My value align more with the Republican party and I am torn between holding my nose and voting for Trump knowing his baggage, voting third party or not voting at all. I judge Trump the same way I do the Biden Administration. Trump did some good things while he was in office such as trying to curb illegal immigration by building a wall.

I was very much in favor of that as I think uncontrolled immigration is horrible for the country and creates are false expectation from illegal immigrants that we will provide for them. So I give him kudos for trying but he wasn't ultimately successful because he didn't know how to play the game and keep his mouth shut.

Honestly if he stayed off Twitter but his nose to the grindstone he could have got so much more done and gone down as one of the most successful presidents in modern times. He had that kind of potential but now that is all gone.

Even if he is elected again in November, he will get hardly any help from Democrats to get anything done. They will be on their war path again of trying to stymie anything and everything he does, even if it is for the good of the American people. Do we really want to go through ANOTHER 4 years of this? I sure as hell don't.

Also lets not forget 2020, Jan.6th and the whole COVID fiasco that was. Trump seems incredibly proud of the vaccines that have been known to cause irreparable vaccine injury or the fact that he supported unconstitutional lockdowns or let it passively happen state by state violating our freedoms as American citizens.

Jan. 6th is another mark against him. If he knew he lost why the fuck did he push the election was stolen narrative? To soothe his ego? Fuck that shit. Multiple people died because he pushed this narrative that turned out to be false. This really gets under my skin. Case after case was thrown out in court and multi million dollar lawsuits against Tucker Carlson were settled out of court. This alone should disqualify Trump in my eyes.

Throw in his support for the genocidal war in Gaza, and this makes it incredibly hard to vote for him.

Buuut there are two things that are making me reconsider voting for him. Trump's 180 on Bitcoin and freeing Ross Ulbricht. I don't know if Trump's change of heart on Bitcoin is genuine or not but it does seem that he is starting to understand how important Bitcoin is and can be for the future of the country.

Even if he hasn't had a change of heart personally, as long as he puts people in his administration that will leave Bitcoin alone is a victory in itself. In addition to have a friendly regulatory environment, it has been stated numerous times that a Trump victory will cause the Bitcoin price to go up. Who doesn't want that right?

This is the rub, do I vote for a person with his history or do I vote third party or not vote at all? My conscience is leaning towards voting third party or not voting at all. The deal breaker for is providing arms that are used to kill innocent people. This might be a naïve on my part but it really doesn't sit well with me at all. How do you guys feel about this?

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/729964

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the AI-generated full transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #129 with Max Hillebrand!

Check out the https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/ for our books, merch, and more!

Luke: Max, welcome for the first time to the Bitcoin Infinity Show.

The Lodging of Wayfaring Men

Knut: Yeah, so one of the first things, you have made the best book recommendations to me that I've ever gotten from anyone. And one was The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard, and the other one was Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans Hermann Hoppe. And now you recommended another book, which I haven't read yet, called The Lodging of Wayfaring Men.

what is that book about and why do you recommend it so much?

Max: It's a beautiful book. it's incredible. And it's written for us and for Bitcoiners, but it's over 20 years old. it was written in like 1997 to 2002 and that time period. And it's loosely based on real events, which is fascinating. the book is crazy. it goes about a group of cypherpunks who are, Building an anonymous marketplace, and the first attempts of an anonymous digital currency.

And again, this shit really happened. the story is quite wild. With, the freedom tech being built for very good reasons. people who understood the philosophical impact. and the deep reasons for why freedom is important. So they were very motivated, and, dedicated to make the world a better place in their lifetime.

And so they got their shit together and got organized and built something incredible, right? And it took them a couple attempts. and eventually they rolled it out and enabled people to trade right, to do their business, online in cyberspace, and encrypt it. And so that made a lot of people very happy because, you know, you get to live life free and undisturbed, so it got adopted by many users.

So much so that eventually the government started to notice that somehow they're making less tax revenue than before. And something's a bit fishy, you know. And then they started to investigate and You know, the NSA and FBI put a decent amount of people on the topic and tried to de anonymize the users of these services and infiltrate them.

And yeah, so the story is about this whole clash between the first and second realm, you know, people who built FreedomTag. And people who enslave others and how those two worlds kind of clash. it's a book that's very inspiring.

Knut: What was the website called?

Max: So, the author's name is Paul Rosenberg.

originally this book was published anonymously, years later, when it was safe to, associate their actual name with this, he did. he was, a teacher, an electrical engineer's teacher. He wrote 30 books on that subject, and is a very eloquent and practiced writer, but also a hardcore cypherpunk and freedom lover, and very well read,

So he has the freemansperspective. com. This is a newsletter. You can go back. It's going for, I don't know, 10, 20 years or something. And every week there's one or two short pieces of articles that he writes. And this book is actually also includes some writings that he did in the past and published. so it's somewhat a collection of his thought.

The Lodging of Wayfaring Men is a fiction book, right? It's basically a fictionalized story with, character arcs and such. the author is very technical, and he understands cryptography and how to apply it. He understands distributed networks and laying fiber optic cables and stuff like this.

So there's a lot of real computer science in this fictional world. And that makes it quite applicable to today where we're surrounded with cryptography much more than at the time when this book was written.

Knut: So, all right.

Taxes

Knut: bit of a jump here, but why is, avoiding paying taxes the most altruistic thing you can do in life?

Max: this is actually one thing that gets covered in the book, right, where,

Knut: that was the case.

Max: because this is also why this book is so interesting to recommend to newcomers, to this philosophy, because at the beginning, not everyone is convinced that this is a good idea. Even the creators of this technology don't know the end result and how other people will use this tech.

There's a lot of ambiguity there. And so this book follows characters who reason through these very difficult questions. For example, I'm going to spoil this book a bit, but everyone should read it anyway. So, there's one character who was a lawyer, right? He works together with an ex FBI agent, who both of them share this common, seeking of justice, like real justice, to stop bad guys from doing bad things, to good people.

the ex FBI guy is somewhat disillusioned. With the institution of the FBI to actually provide and establish justice. so now he is somewhat like walking this line in between the institution and, the actual free realm, vigilant justice basically.

and here then when thinking of. this case. is there a wrong being done by the FBI trying to stop this project? Or is this project actually good? Do they have justice in doing what they do? then, he, reasoned of, is the avoidance of tax, of, of taxation evil.

And, and, of course then walks through the reasonable steps of thinking. No, if, two people transact voluntarily. both people are better off after the trade than before, right? Both people are happy, both say thank you and shake hands. that's trade. That's the market, right? and then you have coercion,

Where one guy says, give me that, and the other says, no, actually, I don't want to give you that, but the guy hits him and takes it anyway. And so that means afterwards that the guy who stole it is obviously better off. He's happy, right? He got the thing, but the guy who was the victim was being stolen from is worse off.

And so humans have the capacity to do mutually beneficial things, right? To literally create value, make both of us better off than we were before. And we also have the potential to destroy value and take from others. and one is beneficial and fosters the growth of civilization and the other destroys it.

Knut: And so, you know, avoiding being stolen from is a good thing. Reminds me of one thing we go into in the new book, about the difference between lawful and illegal. I don't remember the name of the guy now, but some Dutch libertarian thinker, who emphasized on the terms, made the point that something being lawful is like lawful in an ethical sense, like the basis in Don't Steal, whereas legal is the top down government imposed legal framework, and how the two don't always align, or rather, they almost never align.

Natural vs Man Made Law

Max: Yeah, this is the difference between natural law and man made law. A natural law is one that is universal across time and space. It's always present, and it's immutable. It cannot be changed, at least not by us. And, you know, physics, for example, is a natural law. And arguably there is a natural law to ethics as well.

Specifically, as morality increases, freedom increases. And as morality decreases, freedom decreases. That's the law of gravity in the ethical realm. and, that man didn't make it, right? We just realize it because it is what it is. And then we have man made law on the other hand. this is depends on a certain territory, right?

The law in the U. S. is different from the law in Russia. And it also depends on time. I think the American law in the 1700s is very different from what it is today. and so there are these imaginary lines where these rules apply and there's Other places or times where they do not apply. So they're arbitrary, right?

And so they can be designed, to the benefit of some and at the expense of others. And that is ultimately what, politics is about.

Knut: Yeah, I think this is one of the key points that that quote unquote normies have such a hard time wrapping their head around. Natural law and like what, what makes don't steal a natural law? Like what, what is the very foundation of, libertarianism or anarcho capitalism or absolute property rights or whatever you may call it, consensualism?

And to my understanding, it has to do with homesteading. If you're the first person that acquired something, then no other person has a right to take that away from you. And you can logically deduct your way to that being true. Like, what's your view on that? And what's your understanding of that? And how would you explain that to a layman?

Max: Well, the reality is such that we have limited scarce resources. If we have one piece of steak on the table and three guys who are hungry, like some are gonna go home on an empty stomach, right? We literally don't have enough food to feed us all, right? And one piece of something can only be used by one person at one time, right?

We cannot duplicate one piece of steak into many and satisfy everyone. So this is a natural form part of reality, right? That's just how things are, you know? So there's a potential of conflict over who gets to allocate these scarce resources. And there's a couple solutions to it, right, that have been proposed.

Like one would be like, nobody owns it, right? Nobody gets to eat it because it's natural and it's not part of your body, so don't touch it, right? But then we die, you know, all

Knut: that's the problem with that.

Max: That's kind of a problem.

Knut: Yeah.

Max: so

Knut: Yeah.

Resource Allocation

Max: So let's rule that option out. another solution is, of course, we all own it. Right?

And we all, get to use it. But, that doesn't really work either, right? Because, sure, we all own it, but who actually gets to eat it? Because there's three different mouths and the food only goes into one of them. we can't all actually own something if we cannot all use it.

It is limited and only a few can use it. So, everyone owns it isn't the solution to the problem. Because everyone cannot own it, there's not enough for everyone. So again, that's an issue. Ultimately, we all starve. And another option would be, we vote.

We somehow pick who gets to allocate these resources. But then, I mean, we're 8 billion people. How are we all going to vote on who gets to stake? Right? Like That's, that's going to be impractical. Like, how are we even going to communicate, all 8 billion of us, to get together in a vote? So again, until we have the result of the vote, nobody eats the steak, so we all starve again.

It's not really a good solution either. And then we have one option that, like, a small subset of the people gets to make the choice of, you know, how to allocate these resources. And we can just pick them, vote for them, for example. But here again, now other people are allocating the resources for others, right?

Like, and some bureaucrat, a hundred kilometers away, is not gonna know, like, who of us is vegetarian and doesn't want the meat. Right? and that just means that someone who's far off doesn't have the knowledge to actually allocate the resources in a proper manner. And that leads to misallocations, right?

We starve, again. Because the guy who doesn't want the meat gets it and then it rots. And the guys who would actually like it never get access to it and they starve. So that's the fundamental problem of socialism, basically, of some priest class allocating the resources for others. So again, the solution doesn't work either.

So we're not left with much. But one thing that seems to work is private property rights. Again, as you said, the person who creates something, the butcher, or the farmer who raised the cow, can now decide what to do with it. Does he butcher it himself? Does he sell it to a butcher? So the person who created something gets to own it, and gets to decide how to allocate this, and then he has the right to either consume it himself, or to abdicate the consumption of this good.

So to say, I won't use it, I will trade it, I will give it to you, right? And he can make it a gift. Just say here, half the entire cow, like, I like you, I like your family, you, like, I'm happy that you're happy, right? Great, that's possible, right? Or, of course, he would want something from you in return, like, give me a bar of gold, or, a bushel of wheat, or something else.

we now have a way that we can allocate resources in a clear, simple rule set, the person who created it. can decide what to do and have a contractual agreement to transfer this ownership to someone else. the people who actually have the problem now have the power to allocate the resources to solve those problems and not some guy far away, but just you and me who created stuff.

Ownership of Information

Knut: And as you said, this only applies to scarce resources. So what, would be an example of a resource where you could eat the steak, but I could have it too. And, the thing that comes to mind, is information, of course. So, can you own information?

Max: No, like, because that, that doesn't really make sense, right? To own means to allocate, how to allocate these, to decide how to allocate these resources. All right. And then, that's a solution to a problem of a lack of resource allocation, right? or for a lack of resources that need to be allocated rather.

But with information, there is no lack. Like if I have a PDF, I can copy it to you and I can send it to you, and I can send it to a hundred other people, and I still have the exact same high fidelity version. Of the information that I shared with others, and of course it's the same with words, right? The words that I speak, they're not lost on me, right?

I still retain them and the information that they represent. and that means we don't need to be, stingy with information. We can give it to everyone. and it doesn't degrade the quality quite on the contrary, right? without information there is no production.

imagine yourself on an island, and you have all the raw materials, all the machinery, like everything there, but you don't know anything about physics, or material science, or just production stages of how to build things. If you don't know any of that, the raw material is worth nothing to you.

Nothing. Because you don't know how to allocate, how to shape this raw material into other things so that it actually solves your problems in the end. we need information in order to produce things. That's the theory behind it. The blueprints, so to say. the cool thing is, we don't have to be stingy with the blueprints.

We can give every human on this planet Equal access to all of the information that we as humans have accumulated, and now all of a sudden you will never be stranded on an island not knowing how to do something, because you can just look it up. In the grand database of accumulated human knowledge, of course, technology has made that much more possible and low cost.

Back in the day, in order to share an information, you needed to speak verbally to it, right? So you're limited to time and space, or you need to scratch it on some stone or clay or write it on a piece of paper, And then still, you have the scarcity of the paper, right? There's only one book.

And there's a hundred people who want to read it. So again, information is limited. Not because the information itself is limited, but because the medium of the information is scarce. And that was a big tragedy that we were never able to communicate at a large scale, and remember these conversations and easily access them.

Until the cypherpunks who came up with computers, right? And realized that we can build this realm of information That is so cheap to transfer and store information, that we can just basically do it for free, for anybody, for 8 billion people. And all they need is a rather cheap form of silicon, and like, nicely arranged.

but of course people try to hold on to the protection schemes that extract money from others, and capital from others, and You know, nation states have enforced intellectual property rights and patents and such, and that just harms people. It doesn't bring forward the best out of humanity. And that's a big shame.

Knut: Now, very well put. this has been Praxeology 101 with Max Hillebrand.

Bitcoin and Praxeology

Knut: where I want to follow on, follow up here is, how does this apply to Bitcoin? Because Bitcoin is only information, so how can anyone theoretically ever own a Satoshi? Do you really own it, or what is it?

Max: What is actually a Satoshi? Look into the Bitcoin code base. There is no such thing as Satoshi, right? The transaction has a field that is an integer. But it's just an integer. It doesn't even have a unit associated to it, right? So, it's just a number. Satoshis are just numbers in a database.

And you don't own the number 270, 000 just because you have 270, 000 bitcoin. The actual number of satoshis, no, you don't control them. You don't own them. But information has another interesting thing that cypherpunks realized, right? That, once, like, when you have a secret, then you can choose to share it with others.

And then once you've shared it with one person, however, you cannot control what that person does with the information. He can keep it secret for himself, or he can tell it to the entire world. And so, there is such a thing as giving access rights to information. And this is an important part in Bitcoin, of course, right?

Our secret keys should be secret, privately kept just for us, because if you do share your secret key publicly, then all of a sudden anyone can, Signed messages, with this private key and therefore spent Bitcoin in the transaction chain of Bitcoin. and well, that's a critical part of it.

So Bitcoin basically relies on keeping information, hidden from others, in order to ensure that we, solve, like, basically Bitcoin. It's just a piece of software, right? So it is non scarce information, but it wants to be money. And money needs to be scarce, right? Because if I can spend a bar of gold first to you, and then the same bar of gold later to you, we have infinite inflation, right?

The money system just dies. so scarcity is required. It's a required feature for money and digital money therefore requires digital scarcity. And so what Bitcoin does is it establishes a set of computer code that defines the access, right? Two certain chunks of money, so to say, right? And the chunks of money are Bitcoin UTXOs, unspent transaction outputs, and the spending condition, so to say, or like the rule how to allocate this money, who gets to decide it.

Where this money goes next is defined by a script and a small computer program that evaluates either to true or to false, depending what input you provide. And so the script is the lock, and usually it's a single public key. And then the way to prove that You're actually authorized to spend this coin is by creating a valid witness.

You know, the input to the script, to the program that returns it to true rather than to false. And usually, again, that's a signature of a single private key over the transaction structure that you're actually spending the money. Bitcoin's genius realization is that. We just all have to check every transaction of everyone else.

And when we do that, we can be sure that, nobody's being stolen from, That nobody is, losing access to his money, that someone is spending the money with a wrong signature. he doesn't have the private key. He cannot produce a valid signature. So we have to make sure that such a transaction does never make it into the blockchain, right?

that's the first important aspect. And the second is we want to ensure that there's no inflation. that's Because if we can just create as many tokens as we want, then the value of the token goes to the marginal cost of production. If we can produce a token with the click of a button, then the marginal cost of that token, or the value of that token, will be zero, right?

So we need to make it, Difficult, or in fact, in Bitcoin, impossible to create additional units, you know, there's 21 million and that's it, right? That's the set of rules. And therefore, when we check each transactions, we also ensure that there is no transaction that has one Bitcoin on the input side and 10 Bitcoin on the output side, therefore increasing the total supply of Bitcoin.

And so Bitcoin is a massive verification machine to ensure that this computer system is this way of speaking to each other, actually balances the books of the system. of how many units of money are there, and who has the right to allocate these, and so it's basically a system that creates a natural resource, and then also manages the allocation of this natural resource.

Knut: so Bitcoin is almost a parallel universe where, in fact, you do own the Bitcoin, basically, but the ownership is not defined by you as a person. It's defined by the knowledge of a secret. so you prove that you have access to it by having access to the private key, which unlocks it.

Ownership of Bitcoin

Knut: On earth that can prove that you own a Bitcoin except you, the holder of the private key.

Max: If the holder of the private key reveals information to others that indicates such, one very common way that this would be is you have a mobile wallet, that does not run a Bitcoin full node, That connects to someone else's full node to check if you have Bitcoin,

You don't use Tor, so there's an IP address linked from you to the server, and so the server operator knows that this IP address just asked how much money is on this address, and so we have, a very strong indication, that this IP address owner owns

Knut: It can be a very strong indication, but in my mind it can never be proof. Because you need to sign with the actual private key to prove. Otherwise it's boating accident time.

Max: guy with the gun doesn't need proof, right, he just needs a good enough guess. For him, he needs, like, there is a praxeology to violence. thieves are actors. They live in a state of uneasiness, they have problems, and they try to find a solution to that problem. They don't have ethics, they don't have morals, and so their solution to the problem harms other people.

But nevertheless, they are still actors. And so they think that they will be better off after the action of theft than before. That's a value judgment. And it's an entrepreneurial one. So they might be correct, they might not. They break into a house, hoping that there is a bar of gold hidden under the couch, right?

Turns out there's not, right? So, if they spend a lot of money breaking into the house, and there's no loot, they're not profitable thieves. And this means that they destroyed their capital, right? They spent 10 Bitcoin on getting the equipment, and they got 0 Bitcoin back. So, that means they're 10 Bitcoin poorer, and eventually they will run out of money and starve.

So, thieves need to be profitable in order to do their thieving, and that's the genius that cypherpunks realized. If we exponentially increase the cost of attack, and exponentially decrease the cost of defense, then we make thievery unprofitable. And that's the genius of private public key cryptography and encryption, right?

It's trivial to generate a private key and then generate a public key or a signature, right? But to brute force a private key or to forge a signature without it, like, requires more energy that would collapse into a black hole, you know? So that's kind of a problem.

And for thieves, right? It's really good for the people who want to defend themselves. Because they can very cheaply do it, and it just doesn't make sense to attempt to break the encryption. But nevertheless, computer systems are very complex, and there's a lot of metadata associated with, computing and communicating between computers.

And so, there are, microphones and radio frequency scanners that you can point on computers and see the computation happening in the machine because there's a lot of radiation outside of the computer that can be correlated to which bits are being flipped you can have all types of side channel attacks to extract secrets from a computer while it's running the problem is that the holistic technology stack we have is quite susceptible to revealing information that should have been kept secret.

And again, that is a critical part, of course, to communication encryption, but even more so for Bitcoin. If we lose the assurance that only we know the private key, the money system is broken. And that's why Bitcoiners were so paranoid and started this whole thing of hardware wallets and secure elements to Really ensure that we don't leak private key material, but it's an extremely difficult task, because, well, this reality is very observable, and the cards are, to some extent, quite in favor of surveillance, unfortunately.

the guy with the gun in this case could be the government, Yeah, exactly, it can just be like a poor guy who needs to provide for his children, you know, and, he sees a way for feeding his family for the next two years, and that's a good trade off for him.

Knut: Yeah, momentarily.

Max: right?

Bitcoin and World Peace

Knut: So, if we manage to do this, on a grand scale, and if people in general manage To exponentially increase the cost of the attack while simultaneously decreasing the cost of defense. Does that lead to world peace at one point? Is that the end goal?

Max: Yeah, I think so. Oh, I mean, that makes sense. If every economically rational thief will realize that he is worse off if he does this stealing, right? Like, actually, because he needs to spend much more money in an attempted theft, and most likely he's not going to succeed. And, I mean, this exponential difference has to be huge, though, right?

Because, like, we had castles, you know? Like, castles are quite, like, quite extreme asymmetric protection. Like, if you're behind castle walls, with a well staffed militia that actually defends the walls, It's quite difficult to get to you if you just have, you know, like, humans and swords and ladders. that's, like, sieges are, in the favor of the defender.

But still, they happened a lot, right? And people were able to overcome these defenses. Because, I guess they weren't never holistically secure, you know? There was always some backdoor that enabled the attacker to go through, to get through, right? and that might just be brute force, right? You just bring a huge army and You're fine with tens of thousands of your own guys getting killed, but eventually, you know, after you throw a couple hundred thousand people at the problem, someone will succeed to break through.

Quite a brutal tactic, obviously, but it worked.

Knut: you get in.

Max: But then cryptographers came around and were like, well, but there's math.

Luke: Yeah, we can use RAM in another way. 1 plus 1 is 2. What? Are you sure?

Knut: that might be offensive.

Luke: That's a different kind of worms.

Knut: Yeah. . Yeah. So, the,

Bitcoin For Attack

Knut: so Bitcoin being this perfect defense mechanism, because all it does is increase the cost of the attack, can Bitcoin ever be used for attack in your opinion? Like, can it be used in an aggressive way?

Max: I think directly not, because again, it is just, speech and such, but on the other hand, maybe yes. Because, let's say, if someone hacked your machine, and got access to your private key, and spends the Bitcoin, like, in the context of Bitcoin itself, it's a valid signature, it's a valid transaction, and it will be included.

So, in the legalities of Bitcoin, it is no theft, right? It is a valid transaction. but, On the ethical realm, you worked hard to get these Bitcoin and you didn't want to send them to the attacker, so he is definitely stealing them from you. So, Bitcoin can be stolen, certainly, in the human analysis.

Not on a technical level, we've never seen a transaction confirmed with an invalid signature, but on the human level, There have been a lot of people that got separated from their Bitcoin against their will, right, against their consent. and, and that is theft. So, thieves can use Bitcoin, thieves can get paid in Bitcoin, thieves can take your Bitcoin and pay them to themselves, right?

that's a fact of reality too.

Aggression and Spam

Knut: Could that be used in an aggressive way?

Max: it is just the writing of bits and bytes, right? So there's, however, again, a limited amount of resources that are available specifically in Bitcoin. And not just do we have 21 million Bitcoin, we also have like, Two and a half slash four megabyte blocks, right?

And so this means there's only a certain number of transactions that can be fit into a single block. that means we have, again, a scarce resource and we need to allocate it. this is why there is a price for Bitcoin transactions, because that's how we solve the scarcity problem, right?

by whoever pays the most gets in. that's a, or it's not even whoever pays the most. It's like. You can choose who goes in by mining a block, right? You have full freedom of choice of which transaction do you include into your block. And if you don't mine, then you can propose to someone else, say, please include my transaction into a block.

But again, there's a large demand and a limited supply. so most likely people will start bribing each other and it's like, yeah, if you include my transaction in your block, I'll give you sats. And in fact, Bitcoin, the Bitcoin software launched with a anonymous peer to peer marketplace for the scarce good, which is Blockspace.

Satoshi didn't have to do that, right? Bitcoin would have totally worked, if, if you could not, like, if every input sum has to be exactly equal to every output sum, right?

There cannot be that outputs are smaller than inputs and the leftover goes to the miners, but that could have been a consensus rule, right? But then most likely we would have seen some third party external marketplace. Where people would do the bidding on please include my transaction into the block.

And then of course they would have to figure out how do we actually pay the miner to get our transaction in the block. So Satoshi had the genius to embed an anonymous marketplace. Into the core essence of the protocol, right, with the rule that outputs can be smaller than inputs, and the rule that we have this gossip peer to peer network, which like the whole peer to peer network is kind of optional, by the way, but it's just there to kind of make it easier so that we have this anonymous marketplace for Blockspace that we can propagate offers, right, and one person sends the offer and gets spread to the entire network.

So the demand side is no monopoly. Anyone can broadcast a message to the peer to peer network hoping to be included. And then on the supply side, the actual miners, there's also no monopoly. Anyone can spin up his computer and start SHA 256 hashing. On the most recent chain, right, with his own candidate block.

And nobody can stop you, right? That's the definition of no monopoly. New market participants are not hindered to enter the system. And so this is the most radical free market that we've seen probably ever. And it's been kind of hidden inside Bitcoin since the very beginning.

Mining vs Hashing

Knut: Yeah, you can of course also pay the miner in something else than sats to get included into a block. And if a mining pool does this, the individual miners doesn't necessarily have a claim to a piece of the pie of whatever money was paid to the mining pool owner under the table and not on the system, right?

They can't even see it. So how big of a problem is that, and can you really call yourself a miner if you're just selling hash power to a pool and the pool isn't transparent?

Max: I mean, it's actually true that we, like, there could be in the future, A alternative marketplace for block space that's not inside the Bitcoin Core client. And by the way, arguably that's better, because we have a piece of software that does one thing really well, and then, you know, we just specialize and put the two modules together.

architecturally speaking, this might be better. we see things like, for example, the mempool. space explorer, or accelerator, right, is one. Marketplace that is now establishing that that seems to work now quite well. Of course, it has the issue of there's a central, like, order book, so to say, and probably custodian for the money as well.

And so, I'm not sure, but it's one approach of doing such an alternative marketplace and there can be downsides. it's not really public of how much Volume is going through here, right? how much are people speeding up their transactions, And I guess the same goes to much earlier where we just had mining pools offering this in their own API, or a webpage.

so at least now, like we, we have a dedicated service provider. That's not a mining pool doing this, which I think is an improvement. but we could also, you know, build. A, like, off chain peer to peer network, so to say, that's not related to Bitcoin per se, but that has all of the aspects that we want just dedicated for an optimized market book for this resource.

And Bitcoin should still work, I think. Like, the marketplace inside Bitcoin Core is not essential in the long run. It was just very convenient to bootstrap it. But, you know, in 50, 100 years, I wouldn't be surprised if we have Dedicated systems for, for these things that potentially are in different repositories and such different softwares.

Knut: So, in your opinion, how damaging is a temporary fee spike over a weekend or something where it goes up to like, 2000 SATs per transaction. what impact does it have on lightning channels and lightning providers and so on? Like do you consider it an attack or what is it?

Max: it's an inevitability almost, right? If you have a hard, extremely limited supply, right? there is only two and a half megabytes in the usual block, and you have extremely fluctuating demand, and there is no way to speed up production of the good. there is bound to be extreme, differences of we have way more demand than supply or way less, right?

But it will be very rare that we will fill just exactly everyone who wanted to gets in. So to actually clean out every transaction that wanted to be made is quite rare already now and in the future, if Bitcoin continues to be used, this is even more unlikely, right?

So then the question is just how, like, do you get into the top, like, the top payers to get included in the block still? And this is where just the technology is quite difficult, because this is like, you're, you're, you're, it's an order book, right? You're trading, basically, and you don't know if the price goes up or price goes down.

And this is all at least supposed to be automated. Bitcoin wallet developers are building trading bots, block space accountants charged to purchase block space on behalf of the user. the user just clicks send and that's it. the software does all of the complexities of constructing a transaction that is of a size acceptable, right?

Because if fees are super high, you don't want to build a transaction with a hundred inputs and one output, right? You would want to have a transaction with one input, one output. It would be way cheaper if the fee spike is currently high. a smart robot should build a different structured transaction with more or fewer inputs and outputs to accommodate the current fluctuation of the market.

And of course, the fee rate is another, like what's actually your bid that you put into this marketplace? And that's trading like. How much are you going to pay for the stock? Nobody really knows, right? And so it's kind of good luck and you don't know if it goes up or goes down. And sometimes you overpay, right?

And you pay way more than was actually needed to get into that block. And so you lose money, you lose capital. And sometimes you don't pay enough and you don't get included for months, right? but there's better software that can alleviate a lot of these problems.

Spam Making Bitcoin Worse as Money

Luke: Well, so I guess another side to this question, because everything you're saying makes makes total sense from the perspective of that this stuff is definitely going to happen from from hyperbitcoinization side. There's just going to be more demand than there is supply of block space. But I think the issue that we've been exploring a lot.

Lately, is, is that when there are transactions that aren't really being made for the purpose of moving value from one person to another in the form of Satoshis, they're, they're another form of value, subjective value that is communicated through arbitrary data, or at least some other type of, of data.

Does that change the property of Bitcoin as money? That's essentially, I think the, the root of the, the argument any, anyone talking

Knut: Yeah, exactly.

Luke: the functionality of Bitcoin is

Max: Well, I think. There's a couple aspects to this, right? We have again a scarce resource block space, and there's the problem of how do we allocate this block space. And there are very stringent rules on this, right? You cannot have arbitrary data in blocks, right? There needs to be, for example, the transaction structure.

There needs to be inputs that point to previous outputs, and there need to be outputs, the sum of the inputs, sum of outputs, hashes, transaction headers, all of the stuff needs to be followed in order for this to be considered a valid block. So the Bitcoin developers have, from the very beginning, had a very, I guess, authoritarian regime to allocating these resources, which makes sense.

If you don't put stringent, like, structure in a protocol, then people just fill it with garbage and every software breaks, right? So it's like a practicality thing that we need to have a very opinionated, kind of thing. Set of rules and we need to pick one of them and like just do it because if we don't pick any then it won't work and also if we pick the wrong one it won't work either.

imagine the rules would have been like a broken hashing algorithm, for example, not SHA 256 but SHA 1 or something that's broken. People can create collisions, right? So there could be two transactions that have the exact same transaction ID. breaks the system, right? So if that would have been the set of rules, Bitcoin would have broken, right?

And now also, again, if we allow arbitrary things to be built, then people will just use it as data storage, for example, and just fill it up with megabytes of images. And again, limited amount of resources. If all of it is used for, for pictures, then none of it can be used for money transfer, right? So this is again, an inherent conflict.

the tricky thing though is, now we have this. established set of rules in the Bitcoin consensus and how do we change it, right? And that's the really tricky part of, making up man made rules. Bitcoin is not Natural in the sense, right? Like, humans came up with this shit.

Like, this is our creativity that made this happen. and so, it's not nature made, right? It's man made. Of course, men are part of nature and such. So it's a bit, wishy washy here, but ultimately, we made it, we can change it, we can make it better, and we can break it. And that's a really scary position, because I think we all realize that this is quite an important project, and we definitely have it in our power to break this thing.

I hope we do our best effort.

Caution When Changing Bitcoin

Luke: my interpretation of that is, is that, caution when making changes to Bitcoin is paramount. Would you agree with that?

Max: Well, inaction is an action too, right? And that might be even more dangerous. So, there might be critical bugs in the protocol that if not addressed will break the system and potentially they are currently being exploited, right? And so, in such a case, we should do our best to fix it as soon as possible.

Satoshi knew that from the very beginning, right? So, how exactly we do that? Who knows?

Knut: Well, if it's up to the individual miners, which it is, what blocks they want to mine, what transactions they want to include in a block. And it can be fixed that way, a sly roundabout way, if you will.

Max: Well, if we could trust the miners with stuff like this, then we could trust the miners with enforcing the 21 million, right? But we can't, right? We don't rely on anyone. We verify it ourselves, right? And so the reason why we don't have actual JPEGs in Bitcoin blocks is because your node says no to any block that actually has a JPEG in it, right?

Blocks have to have transaction in it. If not, you kick them out, right? So even if there's valid proof of work Proof of Work doesn't solve the problem of integrity of the block, right? This has nothing to do with Proof of Work. In fact, Proof of Work is one part of the rules of the integrity of the block that is defined, enforced, and verified by the full nodes itself, right?

Specifically, if you want to get rid of inscriptions, that's certainly a hard fork. Like, taproot transactions are currently valid, and if we make these taproot transactions in the future invalid, that's a hard fork, right?

It would be great to hard fork Bitcoin. We could clean so much stuff. It's just a practical reality that breaking the hard fork use of a running protocol is extremely difficult and arguably, unethical. Because people have signed up to the previous system, built businesses and, stored their money in these types of scripts.

If we now make them unspendable, what is that? No?

Mining Incentives

Knut: so, when it comes to mining, there's, minor incentives, like, the thing we talked about before, about, under the table payments to big mining pools, To me, the obvious fix to this problem is to get it into the brains of the hash salesmen, that they ought not be mere hash salesmen, but actual miners and know what block they're mining on.

Because I think the ethos among the individual miners is, better than, these bigger pools that might not be, as, concerned with the longevity of the Bitcoin experiment, but, more fiat minded and wanting a quick buck now rather than save the system in the long run.

So, right now it feels like we're trusting these bigger entities to have as much of a disincentive to destroy Bitcoin so that they won't, it's tricky. Like it's a gray zone, right? What's your thoughts?

Max: I think Satoshi's genius in designing the Bitcoin protocol was that he did his best to separate different tasks that need to be done in the system into different like conceptual entities, and then to ensure that each of these aspects is distributed as widely as possible. And this is ultimately what it means that Bitcoin is decentralized, right?

There is not one person that defines the set of rules, for example, or one person that writes the candidate block, Or one person that provides the proof of work for the candidate block, or one person that provides the signature for each transaction, right? Each of these things is distributed. And in the ideal case, in the original Bitcoin client, to every user, right?

Like, the Bitcoin software in 2009 was mining by default for everyone, right? So, literally the entire stack of the operation was at 100 percent of the users, right? There was no non validating, non mining users. In the beginning, right? We had perfect decentralization, so to say, right? And then if efficiencies kick in and economies of scale and division of labor, and we start to optimize each of these things kind of on its own and split it out into different branches of government.

Yeah, specialized entities, so to say. And if you specialize on being the best hasher that you could possibly be, you just give up on being the best block candidate creator that you could possibly be. Because if you do the one thing that you're marginally better at and focus all your attention on that, you will be the most profitable.

so, yes, it is. It is an issue. and we, Bitcoin would be better off if we further distribute the risk and responsibility of each of these tasks to as many people as possible. And I think we've done a really good job, for example, of distributing the ownership of private keys.

And like, there's, I don't know, many millions of private key holders on the Bitcoin blockchain, right? So that's, that's great. but, and we have. Probably done this as well with hashers, right? There's a decent amount of quite large independent hashing institutions, right? Not so well with mining pools and actual block candidate creation, like, that's pretty bad.

Like, there's two or three of them, so that's scary as fuck. Right there we've utterly failed and we've made Bitcoin way worse than it was before. in this one metric of resilience, of decentralization, of distribution of risks, we made it a lot more efficient, but we made it much more vulnerable to attack.

that is a problem. Thankfully, a lot of people are working on fixing it. It's a really difficult problem, right? It's not that there's some malicious, attempt of trying to break it. I mean, maybe there is, but the more likely answer is just bloody difficult computer science. it just needs an insane amount of research and development before we will have tools that are even coming close to being actually adequate.

Right? I'm not praising Satoshi's 2009 code as being perfect, because it was a pile of shit, right? And you could break it in a million ways. so we've improved a lot, but we're very far from done because to some extent the realities of the difficulty of the situation have caught on much faster than our ability to solve these.

Yeah, I mean, the problems that are currently existent in Bitcoin and that now we're at Nostriga today and talking about Nostr, this sort of related communication layer in relation to Bitcoin, you mentioned at the very beginning, Freedom Tech.

Freedom Tech and Nostr

Luke: So, we, when we last talked to you, you were focusing on Wasabi Wallet and now obviously that project has just been made open source, essentially, and so my question to you on that is, what are you focusing on in terms of Freedom Tech now?

Max: Nostr is definitely a highlight, right? Nostr is just incredibly cool. And it's so wild to think that Nostr is like two years old. it's not old, but look at the amount of stuff that we've built. In this short time frame, how powerful are we? It's incredible, right? If we get our act together and actually build on, such an open protocol and get people excited about it and people using it, it doesn't take us long to fundamentally change the pattern of speech on this planet.

Wow, that's incredible. Like, we did that. And we're just getting started. think about where Nostr is going to be in five years. It will be wild. Absolutely insane. that's very bullish and very encouraging. And it's super exciting to work at such an early stage in the protocol, because there's so many obvious improvements.

There's so many obvious use cases. There's so many low hanging fruits of how we can make it even better than it currently is. Alright, so we have something that's already great, and we know a million ways on how we can make it even better. and you can be part of making a meaningful improvement in getting this to like an exponential blow off of awesomeness.

Knut: Meaningful improvement of humanity, really.

Max: Yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing, like, that's why Freedom Tech is so exhilarating to work at, because we're ending slavery. That's kind of a big deal, you know,

Knut: Yeah, it should have been done at least 300 years ago.

Max: Yeah.

Luke: No, it's, it's amazing. And well, and actually, so a couple of things here. First of all, we've talked about this a little bit, how Nostr seems like it's the playground that people wanted as an alternative to Bitcoin. In other words, people who went and started making shitcoins were basically just wanting a playground to do all this stuff.

But now is, is, is Nostr basically the place where people can do that and channel their energies in a way that isn't going to break money?

Max: Yeah. I absolutely agree. So I'm very bullish on a lot of these use cases and one other area that currently interests me a lot, is just zero knowledge cryptography. it's wild what's possible. it's absolutely wild. Within the last five years or so. The theory has developed.

And again, a lot of shitcoin projects putting zero knowledge proofs on blockchains and such, and I'm not quite convinced that we actually need a blockchain for that. I think relays are just fine. And so I'm quite bullish on having actual zero knowledge proofs much more integrated in Nostr clients. Like, you can do amazing things with this.

Like, for example, anonymous web of trust, right? You could prove to me under an ephemeral anonymous identity, right, that you are in fact, On my follower list. Like, I'm following you, but I don't know who you are. Right? So, these types of things are trivial with zero knowledge stuff. And we don't have any size constraints or computation constraints in Nostr.

Because it is not a global consensus system. Only the people who are interested in this proof actually have to, like, download it and verify it and such. so, it's, I think we can do a lot of amazing stuff here. it seems pretty obvious wins here.

Knut: driving these 180 IQ young developers into Nostr instead of shitcoin development is, is like moving them? To do, to think more of what they should rather than what they could, because I think that's, that's sort of the main problem with this nerdy set of shitcoin developers is that they, oh, I could do this if I just do this and they, they focus on what they can do rather than what they should do.

And it's Nostr, Changing the direction of that, are people thinking more of ethical things while developing on this than

Max: it's a big claim, right? That like a piece of tech can

Knut: it's hopium

Max: improve the morality of people. it's definitely a big claim, but it seems true. Like, if you think about it in Bitcoin, like probably each of us, our level of morality before we discovered Bitcoin and what it is now.

And our understanding of morality has substantially, improved, right? And I'm not sure if it would have happened, at least to this extent, without being exposed to the Bitcoin technology. and Bitcoin is just money, you know, like, humans do a lot more than buy stuff, sure, money is incredibly important, but it's far from everything of the human experience.

And I think Nostr. We'll do a lot of the other stuff and Nostr has this freedom mindset embedded into the protocol just as Bitcoin has. And so I'm extremely bullish on seeing the people who get exposed to Nostr and what it does to them in the long run.

Hyperbitcoinization vs Hypernostrification

Max: So what happens first? Hyper ossification or hyper ization both at the same time.

Knut: does one lead to the other?

Max: there's definitely synergies here, right? and, yes, one leads to the other. there's, I met a bunch of people who got interested into Nostr first, and then used Bitcoin for the first time. It's a very common theme, actually. again, because Like, social, like, think of the, think of the, like, average screen time of people, right?

it, for sure.

I think Nostr is going to be way bigger than Bitcoin in the improvement of the human condition.

Knut: Then again, every time you press the like button or the retweet button or whatever on your social media app, even the legacy system, you are providing someone with some value. That's why your account is valuable to, Facebook's and the Twitters of the world. There is a value thing embedded into everything you do on the internet.

Max: It's just, you don't get a tradable good.

Knut: No, no,

Max: sell the like to someone else.

Knut: not at this point.

Max: They have now a star emoji. If you send the star emoji, you can send the star emoji back to the company, and they will give you money. So, voila. It's basically a shitcoin, but it's a star.

Luke: is it more important to fix money or the other stuff?

Max: Well, that's a big one. Both again, because money is only half of every transaction, right? And so maybe the earlier example of the marketplace for Bitcoin block space is perfect because why did Satoshi include the marketplace, the other stuff together with the money? Because it was kind of essential, right?

you need to have both at the same time in order to live, right? You need to speak, you need to advertise your products, you need to negotiate with the customers, right? You need to convince them of the value that you will provide to them, and then you need to receive the money and tell them that you've received it, and ultimately hand over the goods, right?

So there's a lot of human interaction into every trade, and the money aspect is just Like, one small part of this long interactive chain of protocol, basically. I think we need both at the same time. And we're just discovering upgrades to each of them as we move along. But this has always been in synergy.

Like, the internet is way older than Bitcoin, right? So arguably, we need the other stuff first, right? We needed like 20, 30 years of other stuff before we could actually come up with the money.

Knut: so fix the money, fix the world then fix the world and you fix the money.

Luke: No, but seriously, we actually talked about this. in that, maybe an analogy to, that the internet needed to develop in a centralized way because the, literally the hardware and everything, the architecture, the client server model was literally a centralized and centralizing system. Model and that needed to exist first.

And then the analogy is that gold was centralized naturally in the sense that physically the physical constraints of gold made it so that it naturally centralized into banks and then fiat solved that problem to sort of decentralize it, but it broke everything. So now the mechanism of fixing the money and decentralizing the money was gold.

Bitcoin, but the corollary for decentralizing the communication is Nostr. So both things have kind of happened in a parallel. That's, what we were discussing.

Wrapping Up

Luke: That is the alarm Oh,

Knut: Oh, okay.

Max: so we'll wrap it up.

Knut: Well, I'm

Max: Nostr for sure. Max at TowardsLiberty. com. You can send me mail, notes and sats to that, which is, by the way, crazy, right? That we can have like this unique identifier to get, like, all of your needs settled is wild. Check out, lodging of Wayfaring Men. That's, the main shill of this video.

And I made the audiobook for it. it's on a podcast. The podcast is by the author, Paul Rosenberg. And, it's called Parallel Society, right? So check that out. right now we've released the first episode. the others will come shortly thereafter. the other book recommendation I should highlight, which we haven't mentioned yet, is Cryptoeconomics by Eric Voskuhl.

Most of what I said here was very much inspired by that book. He has the most rigorous understanding of Bitcoin. It's by far the best Bitcoin book. So I also did the audiobook for that. Just search for Cryptoeconomics in your

Knut: audio book though.

Max: when you have to read tables of math formulas, it's starting to fall apart.

But there's a lot of verbal logic in the book that goes very well. Just get the free PDF for the actual graphs and

Knut: And keep using Wasabi and fire up your own coordinators and whatnot, right?

Luke: Now get on stage, Max. Don't want to make you late.

Max: Bye

the book, that's not what I said.

Luke: right, that's it.

@ c0e0c427:a1f63a16

Chef's notes

I reuse my basic pickle brine at least once. Pickle brine is all about your preference. Make it as sweet as you like with extra sugar, spicy as heck so you are remembering you had them the morning after or a little extra zesty by changing the ratio of water to vinegar to 1:1. Note that the ratio is by weights and I use metric instead of freedom units because that is how I work but imperial will work if for keep the ratio the same by WEIGHT.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 min
• 🍳 Cook time: 0 min

Ingredients

• 50mls apple cider vinegar
• 100mls water
• 50grams sugar
• Fresh dill
• Chilli
• 5-10 cucumbers

Directions

1. Mix vinegar water together in a pot and bring to a simmer
2. Turn off the heat and stir in the sugar until dissolved.
3. Add into the brine fresh dill and chilli to your preferred taste.
4. Allow brine to cool.
5. Chop cucumbers into rounds or julienne and place into a clean and sterilised jar.
6. Pour brine into jar so cucumbers are fully covered.
7. Can enjoy in 2 days. Keeps up to 2 months.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Cook pancakes ahead of time and freeze. Move to refrigerator the night before serving.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 20 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 4 Slices Bacon
• 1 Can (10.5 ounce) condensed cream of chicken or mushroom soup
• ½ cup milk
• 4 boiled eggs, sliced
• 2 TBSP pimiento, chopped
• Pancakes

Directions

1. Cook bacon until crisp; remove and crumble
2. Pour off drippings
3. Blend soup and milk;
4. Add bacon, eggs, and pimiento.
5. Heat through stirring frequently.
6. Spoon between pancakes, sandwich style.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 Can (10 ½ ounces) condensed Cheddar, or cream of celery soup.
• ½ cup milk
• 4 boiled eggs, sliced
• 2 TBSP pimiento, chopped
• 4 Slices of toast

Directions

1. Add soup and milk in medium pot.
2. Mix in egg slices, and pimiento reserving some for garnish.
3. Heat through, stirring often.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

There was once a man, who missed an important meeting because his alarm clock didn't ring. He was a bit upset, and wished for it to be corrected, so he promptly got up, got dressed, and took the alarm clock back to the store, where he'd gotten it from.

He stood in line, patiently, at the service counter, and waited his turn. When he got to the front, the clerk asked, "How may I help you?"

"Oh, I'm having trouble with this alarm clock. You see, it doesn't ring, when the time is reached. I was wondering if that could be fixed."

"Why should we fix that? We're actually very busy building the new model. Should be out in a few weeks. Just wait for that one. Goodbye."

"What? Wait! You can't just leave it broken, like this."

"Why not? What right do you have, to demand an alarm clock that rings? Besides, how many alarm clocks have you built?"

The customer was now quite flustered and a bit ashamed of his self, "Well, none. I admit that, but..."

"Well, there you go! Outrageous, that you should criticize something someone else has accomplished, that you have not. Besides, you are incompetent to tell if anything is even wrong. Maybe this is some sort of non-ringing alarm clock. Perhaps it has lights or wave sounds..."

The second customer in line suddenly piped up, "Ahem. I'm sorry to interrupt. I must admit, I've also never built an alarm clock, but I'm a jeweler, who sells and repairs watches, and I must agree with you, sir," nods to first customer, "This is most definitely a ringing alarm clock and... See here? This bit of the bell arm has rusted through and broken off. Shoddy craftmanship, I'd say."

"Oh, Mr High-n-Mighty jeweler, claims to know how a good alarm clock is to be made, while having zero experience. I've had enough of this outrage. I'm getting the vapors and need at least a two-week sabbatical, to recover from such gross mistreatment. The store is closing immediately. Everyone out!"

"But my clock, sir!"

The door slams in his face, and he heads home, dumping his clock in the garbage bin down the street. Next time, he will simply use the alarm on his cell phone. That always rings.

@ dc734347:5844239d

M2M SIMs come in every SIM form factor, so it’s easy to find one whose size and features best fit your device design and use case.

Mini SIM (2FF) The Mini SIM is the largest removable SIM card currently in use. This SIM has been used since the mid-1990s. Today, the Mini SIM is still a good option for larger connected devices, like cars and vending machines.

Micro SIM (3FF) The Micro SIM is significantly smaller than the Mini SIM. It’s large enough to be manageable for easy physical swapping of SIM cards, but it fits better in mid-size IoT devices like tablets and telehealth monitors.

Nano SIM (4FF) The Nano SIM is smaller and slimmer than the Mini and Micro SIM. It’s an ideal solution for compact IoT devices. https://uktelecomdistribution.co.uk/m2m-sims-html.html is perfect for automotive, GPS trackers, telemetry, alarms, and point-of-sale terminals.

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Wünsche euch allen einen wunderbaren Tag, bald ist Wochenende!!

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Try Fiesta Cheese soup for a little flavor kick. Omit lemon juice and pepper.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 15 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 8 Strips bacon
• 1 Can Cheddar cheese soup
• ½ Cup milk
• 1TSP Lemon juice
• Cayenne pepper to taste
• 2 Medium tomatoes, sliced
• 4 Slices toast

Directions

1. Cook bacon. Set drippings aside.
2. Add soup to skillet
3. Heat to simmer
4. Add milk, lemon juice, and pepper
5. Blend till smooth
6. Heat slowly so as not to scorch milk.
7. Plate toast, and lay tomato and bacon on each slice.
8. Ladle soup over toast.

@ e968e50b:db2a803a

I played at the "Freedom Stage" last night, which I think was ironically paid for by Fifth Third Bank. Anyway, I wore my freedom hat.

I was wringing my hands the whole time about whether or not to put a bitcoin.rocks sticker on the plaque for that piece of the Berlin wall. In the end, I don't think that's the hill I want to die on. I'd rather get thrown in prison for helping some overseas political dissenter with my node.

I'm back at this festival on Saturday and am going to bring some cashus to distribute.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/729732

@ 8d34bd24:414be32b

This was ready and went out on substack on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, but I missed posting on nostsr.

Check out:

• God Demonstrates His Power: Part 1 (Egypt)

• God Defends His Honor: Part 2 (Phillistines)

Many people today talk as if there are many ways to God or that all religions really worship the same god. This is not true. It is a lie from Satan. There is only one true God. There is only one way to God—through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Through this event in history, the God of the Bible made Himself known as the one true God, the God who answered with fire in an unfathomable way.

Elijah vs Baal

It isn’t just foreign people that need to know the power of God; it is also God’s own people, Israel.

Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him. It came about, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him. So he erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. Ahab also made the Asherah. Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (1 Kings 16:30-33) {emphasis mine}

Ahab and his foreign wife, Jezebel, “did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” They worshipped multiple false Gods and persecuted the believers in the one true God. Therefore God used Elijah to make clear who was really God.

Now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17:1)

God’s first action was to stop the rain and cause a severe drought throughout the land. God provided for the needs of His servant and prophet Elijah. First He used Ravens to feed him. Then He used a Sidonian widow to provide for him. God also did a miracle to bring the Sidonian widow’s son back to life, but God had only begun to teach Ahab and the Israelites who the one, true God is.

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, “Is this you, you troubler of Israel?” He said, “I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed the Baals. Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” (1 Kings 18:17-19) {emphasis mine}

Ahab accused Elijah of being the troubler of Israel when, in fact, it was Ahab who was the troubler because he was the one leading Israel astray. Do we see this today? We constantly see the people, whose sins cause trouble, accusing others of the very sin that they are guilty of committing.

God was going to prove who was the real, true God. He was going to pit His single prophet, Elijah, against all 450 of the prophets of Baal.

Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people did not answer him a word. (1 Kings 18:21) {emphasis mine}

Elijah challenged the people to follow their God (the one, true God), but they stayed silent and wouldn’t stand up for the truth. How often today do we see believers who are afraid to speak up for the truth? They would rather please the people around them than their creator God. Our sinful, human nature never changes.

Then Elijah said to the people, “I alone am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men. Now let them give us two oxen; and let them choose one ox for themselves and cut it up, and place it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other ox and lay it on the wood, and I will not put a fire under it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, He is God.” And all the people said, “That is a good idea.” (1 Kings 18:21) {emphasis mine}

I’m sure everyone, especially the prophets of Baal, were shocked when they were called upon to offer a sacrifice, but they had to rely on their god to provide the fire. They couldn’t light a fire themselves as they had always done. They all had to wait to see which god, if any, was powerful enough to create fire out of nothing, with no help from man.

Being dramatic, Elijah and God, had the prophets of Baal go first. These prophets of the false god, Baal, picked their ox and their altar and started chanting.

Then they took the ox which was given them and they prepared it and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, “O Baal, answer us.” But there was no voice and no one answered. And they leaped about the altar which they made. It came about at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, “Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.” So they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves according to their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out on them. When midday was past, they raved until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice; but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention. (1 Kings 18:26-29) {emphasis mine}

This was a pathetic attempt to get a man-made idol to act. The prophets chanted; they cut themselves; they raved, “but there was no voice, no one answered, and no one paid attention.” There was nothing these people could do to make their false god do anything. With blood, sweat, and tears, they failed.

I’ll admit I so enjoy Elijah’s mocking, “Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; either he is occupied or gone aside, or is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.” A god that needs rest isn’t much of a god and Elijah makes his point clear to the prophets, but even more to the people watching and waiting for a response.

By the end of the day, it says “and no one paid attention.” Which god to worship was everything, but back then, just as today, people lose interest quickly and don’t put the time and effort into important things like they should.

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down. Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” So with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar, large enough to hold two measures of seed. Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox in pieces and laid it on the wood. And he said, “Fill four pitchers with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” And he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time. And he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. The water flowed around the altar and he also filled the trench with water. (1 Kings 18:26-29) {emphasis mine}

When Elijah’s turn to call on God came, he was different. He called the people to come and pay attention. He rebuilt the altar of the Lord using 12 uncut stones for the 12 tribes of Israel as had been prescribed by God. Then, in order to make sure nobody could possibly believe anyone, except God, had brought fire, He poured four pitchers of water on the altar three times so the altar, the wood, and the sacrifice were sopping wet. It is unlikely any person could start a fire until this mess dried out, but a person didn’t need to start the fire. The omnipotent, creator God was going to bring fire and nothing could stop Him. When God acts, He acts in a big way.

At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that You, O Lord, are God, and that You have turned their heart back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. (1 Kings 18:36-38) {emphasis mine}

Elijah prayed that God would let the people know that there is a true God in Israel. Then “the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” The prophets of Baal had prayed, cried out, and cut themselves all day long with no hint of a response, but when Elijah gave a simple prayer asking God to reveal Himself fire instantly came down from heaven. It didn’t just light a fire; it didn’t just burn the offering; but the fire consumed the wood, offering, stones, dust, and water. God didn’t leave the option to not believe. He made His power immediately obvious to everyone in attendance.

When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God.” (1 Kings 18:36-38)

The people, who had been silent and not said a word, now fell on their faces and repeated, “The Lord, He is God; the Lord, He is God!” They realized their sinfulness and they realized God’s awesomeness, so they worshipped — real worship. There was no more nonchalance. There was no more waffling between gods. They knew who was God and they fell down in worship.

God was merciful to His people and displayed such power that they could do nothing except worship Him. For those who had led them astray, the prophets of Baal, there was no mercy and they were put to death.

Shortly after, Elijah prayed, and it rained a torrential rain that watered the parched land.

God once again led his chosen people back to Him. Unfortunately, they never stayed faithful. Even when one generation was mostly faithful, within a generation or two, they were back to worshipping false gods.

It might make you wonder why an all-knowing God would pick a people who were so consistently unfaithful. I think it was to show His own faithfulness. He was showing the world that His word is true.

If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)

Trust Jesus.\ \ your sister in Christ,

Christy

Bible verses are NASB (New American Standard Bible) 1995 edition unless otherwise stated

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

The 4P's

Remember the Four "P"s of Marketing? Let's look at them, in relation to digital creative work on Nostr.

Product

The product needs to be designed to fulfill a need or desire in the market. If you are writing things nobody wants to read, singing songs nobody wants to hear, or posting pictures that nobody wants to see, then you need to reevaluate your product choices because you are spam.

You are wasting your time, which means you bear a cost for the production of these goods. Is it really worth it? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you could do something else, or do something in addition, to make the product more appealing.

On the other hand, if you are producing something valuable to a niche audience, you might want to think more about specifically aiming for and catering to that audience, rather than wasting your energy trying to appeal to a larger, indifferent group. It is better to be loved by a few and hated by many, than to be uninteresting to nearly everyone and ignore those who love you.

Price

People should have some anchor for the price, even if you have not explicitly named a price, so that they can know what such effort is "normally" worth and orient your value-provided up or down from there. It should also be clear what they are paying for, so that they know what the scope of the payment covers.

If there is no such anchor available, you can help create one by coming up with your own personal scale for other people's works and discussing it, in public. Any listeners will react positively or negatively, but they will all now have a mental "price point" to orient their own prices around.

If you have fixed and/or variable costs, the price you name should at least cover them, otherwise you need to lower the costs or raise the price. If you name no price, expect to get nothing, and you will never be disappointed. But you may also occasionally get a lot, and have it nearly knock you off your feet, so be prepared for that, too.

Generally, things that are free are of lower quality because producers have no incentive to expend great effort to produce things nobody values enough to pay for. The only major exceptions to this are cross-financing, such as freemium or preview models (typical for things like Substack or OnlyFans), or production funded by third parties (as is the case with Linux and GitHub). In both these cases, the payment exists, but is deferred or distanced.

Many products or services therefore start off "free", during an introductory period, but if they aren't getting enough income from it, they'll eventually give up and wander off. We pay creatives for their continued efforts and continued presence.

Placement

It is of vital importance that you place your products efficiently. Things you should consider:

1. What relays will this work be accessible from? Large relays will extend your reach, but your product will appear within a sea of spam, so its relative value will decline, the same way the perceived worth of the nicest house on the block is dragged down by the houses around it.
2. Writing to large relays also destroys the perceived exclusivity of the offer, although this can be partially mitigated by encryption. A mix of wide/exclusive is probably best, since exclusive access to someone unknown is less valuable than to someone well-known.
3. Remember that the people paying for exclusive access, aren't necessarily paying for access to "better" material, they're paying for access to you, as a person, and/or they are trying to encourage you to continue your work. Rather than having your blockbusters behind a paywall, have the more personal items there and spend more time responding to the people who actually care about you and your art.
4. Do you even want the work directly accessible over Nostr? Perhaps you prefer to store the work off-Nostr and simply expand access to that, to npubs.
5. Something that covers price and placement is what sort of payment rails the hosting platform provides and/or you will accept. Some people only want to accept Lightning zaps, but others might be okay with fiat transactions of some sort, on-chain Bitcoin, gift cards, badge or NIP-05 sales, or some other method. Generally, the more payment options available, the less friction preventing payment. Lightning is arguably the payment method with the least friction, so it should go first in the list.

Promotion

Get Noticed

Who is your target audience and how can you get their attention, so that they find out which product you are offering? This one is extremely difficult, on Nostr. Mostly, everyone just screams things into the void, and people with more followers scream louder and are more-likely to be heard. So, I'd say:

• try to have more followers,
• find someone with lots of followers to help you with marketing, or
• join a "boost cooperative", where you join forces with other smaller accounts, to promote each other's notes.

Find your tribe

Use hashtags, but limit yourself to those that are truly relevant, and never have more than 3 in a note. Post to communities/topic-relays or groups, or write an article or wiki page or etc. and then cross-post to your kind 01 feed, with a hyperlink to a website that displays your work properly.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serving with Texas Toast is a great option.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 15 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 TBSP butter, melted
• 1 Can (10.5 ounce) condensed cream of celery soup
• ½ Cup milk
• ¼ Cup chopped onion
• 1 Package (4 ounces) sliced beef
• Toast

Directions

1. Melt butter in heavy skillet.
2. Brown beef and onion in butter.
3. Mix soup and milk.
4. Add soup to skillet.
5. Heat; stirring often.
6. Serve on hot toast.

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Garnish with chopped green onions, mushrooms, or serve with a side of carrots for variety.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 10 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 cans condensed beef broth
• 2 soup cans of water
• ½ bay leaf
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Add soup, water, and bay leaf in pot.
2. Bring soup to boil, reduce heat
3. Simmer 5 minutes
4. Remove bay leaf and discard.
5. Beat egg slightly.
6. Pour thin stream of egg into soup while stirring.
7. Salt and pepper to taste.
8. Serve with toast.

@ e968e50b:db2a803a

Part 1

Part 2:

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/729510

@ 06639a38:655f8f71

• Worked on the https://nostr-php.dev docs
  • Introduction
  • Request events
  • Publish event
• Discussed a FOSDEM stand application with Jurjen and Tanja to attend that conference with Nostr
• Release version 1.4.2 of Nostr-PHP
  • https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/1.4.2
• Pre-release 2.0.0-alpha1
  • https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/releases/tag/2.0.0-alpha1

@ 06639a38:655f8f71

Week 40

• Added a page with my research findings around async concurrent websocket requests: https://nostr-php.dev/references/async-concurrent-requests

Week 41

I attended the Nostrdam meetup and helped as a volunteer at the Nostr booth at the Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024 conference. Here are some photo's:

I also wrote down my personal learned lessons from this expierence: https://nostrver.se/note/my-learned-nostr-lessons-nostr-booth-bitcoin-amsterdam-2024

@ 765da722:17c600e6

*“‘Paul … set apart for the gospel of God … to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” *Romans 1:1-6.

“Are you a member of our rewards program?” the cashier asks me at whatever random store I am buying an item. Before I put my phone number into their machine to see, I ask what benefit I will reap for belonging. The poor young woman does not know. Perhaps she’s never been asked before. We just simply belong to things today, and the commitment is so low.

Sadly, this secular way of thinking has crept into the church. Both Satan and Jesus have been campaigning long for your vote. Your soul is at stake. The promises from the “father of lies” have proven to be empty while those of the One who embodies truth have proved to be “precious and very great.”

So, the next lie is that you “belong” to God with very little invested. The devil doesn’t stop us from going to Bible class or worship services when it’s convenient to us. Nor does he shake when we obey the gospel as he knows we won’t grow in our faith. Just as long as we’ll shrug at the pearly gates when asked if we belong.

Bible #commitment #belonging

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Serve with a breakfast meat, and toast.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 TBSP butter, melted
• 1 can (10.5 ounce) condensed Cheddar cheese, cream of celery, chicken, or mushroom soup
• 8 eggs
• Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Melt butter in heavy skillet.
2. Mix in soup, eggs and pepper in bowl or measuring cup.
3. Add soup to skillet.
4. Cook over low heat until eggs are set, stirring gently.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

I entered STEM in the late 90s and women weren't discouraged (much), but we also weren't actively encouraged. Neither were the guys. The head of our IT department was a woman, and that was actually not that rare, back then. In fact, the % of women getting comp sci or IT majors has been steadily falling, as this article by Texas Tech University magazine notes.

I've long been puzzled by the big "Girls Coding" push, that the corporations have been engaging in. It accomplished nothing in my workspace, except causing potential colleagues to view me with increasing suspicion. Entering IT teams in the 90s, everyone assumed I must be a genius because everyone there was some sort of genius. Now, they assume that I'm there to fix their "lack of diversity". This starts me off on the wrong foot, every time.

People went into IT because they cared about the subject matter. There wasn't much money in it, so the work atmosphere wasn't cutthroat or dominated by venture capitalistic intentions. We were just a bunch of middle class mathematicians and engineers, basically, hiding out in the computer room with our nerdy friends, building stuff we thought would be useful and cracking our dorky jokes.

Destroying this wholesome atmosphere with divisive company politics, turning it into a high-stakes game for gamblers, and the constant economic precariousness of software projects, is what made women leave IT and it is what is keeping women away.

We've managed to recreate that familial atmosphere, in our nostr:npub1s3ht77dq4zqnya8vjun5jp3p44pr794ru36d0ltxu65chljw8xjqd975wz team, and that's probably why we girls like being there. Turns out, the people who are best at recognizing your talents and accomodating your personal responsibilities, are your friends on the team, who are simply happy that you're there and want you to keep showing up.

@ 6ad3e2a3:c90b7740

Virtually everyone knows this parable and its self-evident wisdom. But I think we can apply this Solomonic technique to some issues that have arisen recently.

There has been a concerted push of late to rid the internet, particularly social media, of “misinformation.” The idea is that the First Amendment, which protects free speech, is too permissive in an environment where people can amplify falsehoods at scale. Those who would police misinformation argue the harms of misinformation outweigh the benefits of free expression.

Those (like me) who believe in the First Amendment don’t dispute that it protects online expression that could turn out to be false, and that false information can lead to real-life harm. But my belief is the far greater harm is in stifling free expression because (a) no one is wise enough to be the ultimate arbiter of truth; (b) false assertions can be corrected by true ones; and that (c) disallowing free speech is a path to the ultimate tyranny wherein the only corrective mechanism we have has been totally disabled.

I believe were King Solomon to weigh in on this dispute he would say, “Let’s flip a coin. If it’s heads, ideas with which I disagree would be banned, and if it’s tails the ideas with which I agree would be banned.” Then he would take me aside and whisper: “Don’t worry, both sides of the coin are heads!” (And he would take the misinformation police aside and assure them both were tails.)

At which point, I would say, “No! I don’t want opposing ideas to be banned! I want dissenters to be able to make their case because maybe I’m wrong about something.” By contrast, the misinformation police would say, “Great, we can finally rid the internet of harmful wrongthink! Let’s have the coin flip!”

And then Solomon would say, “The greatest purveyor of misinformation over the long haul is those who would police it” and re-affirm a commitment to the First Amendment.

. . .

I saw a recent interview with J.D. Vance where he was asked whether he believed the 2020 election were stolen. Vance pivoted to talking about the effect of censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, but I think he might have asked a more pertinent question back of the interviewer, namely, “Would you concede an election you earnestly believed were stolen, i.e., one where you believed Kamala Harris had won fair and square, but only due to cheating Trump were declared the winner?”

In other words, would you accept the results of an election you thought were fraudulent? The answer is obvious: one must accept a fair result and reject a rigged one, no matter who wins.

Of course, because both sides are so distrustful of one another, that means any result could be rejected on suspicion of fraud, and a peaceful transfer of power would therefore be impossible. How to resolve this dilemma?

Enter Solomon who asks: “Who is willing to take all necessary measures to ensure undetected fraud cannot occur?”

And then depending on which side were advocating for voter ID, hand-counted paper ballots, one-to-one signature matches, transparent and open access to recounts, rigorous purging of non-citizens from voter rolls and a process that was completely auditable from start to finish, he would declare that side as the one upholding the democratic process.

. . .

Humans are fallible, they make errors, they cheat, lie and manipulate. One cannot merely trust technocrats to know what’s true and false any more than one can trust election officials to administer high-stakes elections without total transparency.

It doesn’t matter whether you have the “correct” beliefs or belong to the faction that is “good.” Everyone thinks his beliefs are correct, virtually everyone believes his party is the good one. To the extent you care about the truth, you will view dissent policing as the ultimate scourge. To the extent you have respect for democratic institutions that ensure the peaceful transfer of power you must view opaque and inauditable elections as the ultimate threat to the state’s legitimacy.

If you make exceptions because in the short term they help your cause, you are like the mother in the parable, willfully and short-sightedly sacrificing the thing about which you purport to care the most

@ aedd8f68:296cf1be

Note: This is not some fancy writing piece. this is just brain farting that I thought it was too long for a regular post.

Alex Gleason is always doing a lot of crazy interesting work. Ditto is a step in the right direction for an alternate type of relay ecosystem that runs alongside the standard globally focused community we all know.

While #Ditto is awesome, what I'd really like to see something similar, but more focused on a multi-community experience that simultaneously makes each community's viewing experience focused only on that community's content. Just for fun, to write down some ideas, below are the 2 big changes that I think would make ditto the ultimate "communities" system that could trounce Reddit.

1. Single relay experience on the domain:

By default, I think community sites should only show content from the built in relay (or a relay group for redundancy). Currently on ditto.pub, when you first sign in, it feels a lot like any other web nostr client. The default home just shows follows I have from other relays instead of being thrown into the community content. You have to click the local feed, to filter the community's content, but it's limited to people who registered a NIP-05 for that domain. I think that it would be great if you could contribute with any NIP-05 and it counts as community content. That could be accomplished by equate community content to content posted on the relay. There are countless apps to get a feed of your relays, so it doesn't benefit me to see it on a communty's domain.

2. Sister client giving multi-community aggregation experience:

I think communities should like pokemon and you grab the ones to identify with. Create a set of web and mobile app clients that manage viewing and switching single relays at a time. The client experience would be like reddit where you navigate ditto communities like subreddits. If a community is a pokemon, then this is the pokedex? OK I actually don't know shit about pokemon so that might not be the slam dunk I thought it was. Whoops.

Ideas / more particulars

• To see a community's content, you add a community relay subscribing to subreddit, or simply visit the domain.
• Another great feature would be customizing the relays that make up your home feed, and making other named combo-feeds (especially awesome if you are a part of 2 rival communities who's focus generally overlap)
• The client would use more globally used relays to handle settings like your list followed ditto communities, etc (configurable)
• Similarly, to help users find communities, ditto servers can optionally publish their relay info to a list on a "discovery" relay. Main popular discovery relays would be set by default (where communities publish discovery info to), but could be configured to other relays (if people wanted to set up custom curation relays or something.)
• Registering a domain handle (NIP-05) at the community domain can be more focused on people with relay moderation roles, or just people who really for some reason want that community to be their whole identity (i don't personally get that, which is why mastodon is not for me)
• Communities could work independently of the aggregator app(s) If people just wanted to visit the domain to post (from any NIP-05)

@ 7ab1ed7a:f8e15275

First and foremost, a significant acknowledgment goes to Riccardo (@rblb0) for his discussions and contributions so far. The details outlined below largely derive from our discussions and his documented insights here.

The IoT specifications for Nostr will likely be articulated through more than one NIP, aiming to extend beyond data capture. However, the cornerstone of IoT in Nostr involves capturing data from and managing devices - therefore, an initial proposal, a PR, to NIP 90 is essential. Future IoT-specific NIPs may address additional functionalities such as remote configuration and group encryption.

NIP 90 (Data Vending Machine) Overview

NIP 90 (DVMs) allows for both data capture and remote device control. For example, a device, hereafter referred to as a 'Thing', might react to a DVM job request or autonomously publish job results.

We will propose a change to NIP 90 to add job responses as addressable kinds with the kind 36107.

A 'Thing' could represent a single device or a collective of devices associated with a Nostr npub. It's possible for a device to have a single npub with multiple functionalities such as controlling a motor or monitoring temperature and pressure.

An IoT job request requires a single i input tag containing a stringified json array representing a sequence of methods to run that should be executed in order.

Job Request

json { "content": "", "kind": 5107, "tags": [ ["i", "<stringified-json-array>", "text"], ["output", "text/plain"] ] }

Example of a stringified JSON array in the 'i' tag

json [ { "method": "setTimezone", "params": ["Europe/London"] }, { "method": "setLanguage", "params": ["en-GB"] }, { "method": "getTime", "params": [] }, { "method": "setTemperature", "params": ["value", "20", "unit", "celcius"] } ]

These methods, defined as text, enable a wide range of devices to operate under this NIP.

Standard Job Response

• Kind: 6107 (follows NIP90 specifications)

json { "pubkey": "<service-provider pubkey>", "content": "<stringified-json-array>", "kind": 6107, "tags": [ ["request", "<job-request>"], ["e", "<job-request-id>", "<relay-hint>"], ["i", "<input-data>"], ["p", "<customer's-pubkey>"], ["amount", "requested-payment-amount", "<optional-bolt11>"] ], // additional fields as necessary... }

Addressable Job Response

A new addressable event kind, 36107, is proposed for NIP 90.

Addressable events (aka parameterised replaceable events) are events for which a relay MUST only store the most recent event identified by a "combination of kind, pubkey and the d tag value" addressable events will allow the use of public relays for IoT data whilst being "kind" to the network.

json { "pubkey": "<service-provider pubkey>", "content": "<stringified-json-array>", "kind": 36107, "tags": [ ["i", "<input-stringified-json-array>"], ["d", "<unique-string>"] ], }

In the example above, the d tag can have any value, but using a human readable string such as "iot-device-123-event-8333" can improve usability.

@ 76c3384a:9279a6e5

-

"I want to learn to read and write mommy."

I designed this workbook for my eldest when she was 5 years old. She came to me one day asking me, "Mommy, I want to learn to read and write."

The first book I designed (the one she used) was done by hand with pencil and paper. I wanted to digitize the worksheets for my other children to print and reuse, but at the time I had no experience with digital design. Since I was a Linux user I used Libre Office and Inkscape. Learning on the go eventually publishing 4 workbooks and 1 basic reader all crafted with open source software. At first workbooks were only available in Afrikaans, but I had many requests to also publish them in English and now all of my material is available in English and Afrikaans.

-

Since 2024 my digital books are available for free (no strings attached) for anyone to use, they have also been updated and revamped to be Bitcoin-friendly. All I ask is that you refer to my website or Nostr account when sharing.

I am not a teacher and have no degree or diploma in education. Just a mom that had difficulty finding classical education workbooks to help my daughter learn to read and write. I took it upon myself to design something that worked for us.

I hope you find this helpful. Enjoy, and follow me on Nostr.

About this workbook

An educational exercise book teaching children to read and write during the foundation phase. “Look mommy, I can read and write” is for home and classroom use. It can be used as an extra aid for Grade R or Grade 1 curriculum or as a revision book.

Each exercise was drafted by hand and then digitized. The letters had to be as similar to hand written symbols as possible. It was well researched. Due to the fact that all is in black and white, the children can be more creative by using colour pencils and crayons.

The first letter is the letter “a”, then follows the letter “d”. By doing just the first two letter exercises the child will already be able to sound (read) the word “dad”. Each letter consists of three exercises.

-

There are many pictures to colour, sentence and word building exercises.

This book is particularly ideal for parents who want to play an active role in this phase of their child’s development and education. It will also give satisfaction to the parent that wants to teach his/her own child to read and write by working together in the book.

It is a great homework aid for teachers to send home for extra repetition.

(The character style and writing symbols may differ depending on the country you live in.)

DOWNLOAD PDF HERE!

-

-

Written, designed and cover by SemcoMama

semcomama.co.za / semcomama.npub.pro

© All rights reserved. Feel free to share with all mommies out there and you can also follow me on Nostr @semcomama. If you appreciate my work and found value in it zap me some sats. (through my website or my Nostr account).

education

@ 18bdb66e:82eb5e5d

Chef's notes

Crack one egg at a time into small bowl, then ease into soup mixture before cracking the next egg. Use a slotted spoon to remove egg from soup mixture.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins
• 🍳 Cook time: 10 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 3

Ingredients

• 2 TBSP butter
• 1 can (10.5 ounce) condensed cream of celery, chicken, or mushroom soup
• ½ cup milk
• 6 eggs
• 3 English muffins (split, toasted, buttered)

Directions

1. Melt butter in heavy skillet.
2. Mix in soup and milk in bowl or measuring cup.
3. Add soup to skillet, heat to boiling
4. Gently ease eggs into soup mixture.
5. Reduce to simmer. Cook over low heat until whites are firm.
6. Place one egg each on a muffin half.
7. Spoon soup mixture over egg and muffin.

@ d96e0407:8a0da63d

In the very beginning, the big bang occurred, leading to the creation of our very universe. Star dust miniscule particles, which formed the building blocks of life, spread in every direction from the cosmic confetti. Special human beings gained the ability to freely manipulate star dust to accomplish great deeds. They were known to have the "filii sidus," or, in other words, children of the star.

Chaos ravaged the earth; bolts of crackling electricity danced across the sky and shockwaves rippling through the earth, causing the ground to tremble and quake violently. The humans fought among themselves, using the filii sidus as their soldiers. The war ended with the blame shifted towards the children of the star, causing widespread hate towards them. Mobs were organized, seeking to end any filii sidus before they could fully master their abilities.

Clank! The wheels of her skateboard hit a large metal container while trying to perform a flip. She lived in a dystopia community—the slums of all the slums. Earth had never been the same after the intercontinental war. You could say it had reset itself to the dark ages. The advancements in science and technology of their century were seen as myths by the ghetto people. They were stuck in the 23rd century. The streets are lined with abandoned vehicles and makeshift shanties, home to desperate survivors.

"Check this out," he said, performing an ollie. They all stared in awe. He performed a mid-air twist without grabbing the skateboard. "I can do better," she scoffed. She had this rivalry with Hakeem, the popular kid on their block. He walked slowly towards her, grabbing the board on his left arm, and gave a deep breath. "You mind showing us, "he said with a smirk on his face. She immediately tried to hide the tension on her face and placed her board on the floor. "Common Aliyah, you just need to outshine that jerk," she said to herself.

Aliyah took a deep breath, positioned their feet carefully on the deck, and pushed off, gaining speed as she approached the launch ramp. With a swift motion, Aliyah popped the tail of the board, launching into the air. The board spun rapidly beneath them, flipping three times in a blur of motion. Midway through the trick, she felt a sudden shift, a slight wobble in their stance. The board began to veer off its intended course, its rotations becoming erratic. "Oh no," she whispered to herself. She had lost her balance; the rest of the crew, including Hakeem, prepared themselves to catch her.

She couldn't stand the thought of being saved by Hakeem; she couldn't give him a chance to tease her. She gave a deep breath; her eyes faintly glowed, giving her access to star dust miniscule particles. Her concentration remained steady as she telekinetically flipped in the air and landed on the ground with the skateground in her hand. "How did you do that? "Hakeem asked. He was shocked; she couldn't have flipped like that. Actually, no one could; she had to think of an excuse like fast. "I am a great acrobat," she bellowed. She was a pretty skilled liar, a great skill she used in getting out of trouble. "Well..." Hakeem voiced but was halted by Aliyah's hand. "I gotta leave," she hastily dashed away.

Whiz, she slid over the abandoned vehicle and landed on the floor gently. She didn't head back home; apparently she saw a strange individual in a cloak. Most people would report to an adult, but she wasn't most people. Aliyah was a smart, crafty, and mischievous lady. Her parents gave her the nickname "monkey" in respect to her personality. The coast was clear; she picked up its trail and swished away. It was an abandoned garage with tons of wrecked-up cars and oil all over the floor. "Thought you could corner me," the figure stood on a truck. It ripped off the cloak revealing itself. It was a cyborg, or he was a cyborg with blonde spiky hair and blue bionic eyes. The rest of his body was bionic with a mix of fleshy parts."Filii sidus, you are one of them," he said. "You purposely lured me here," Aliyah yelled with her eyes glowing blue.

She was scared; the filii sidus were usually hunted down and killed. She inherited her abilities from her mother, who hid her abilities all her life, and she was to the same. A bluish aura covered her wrist, and she levitated a few feet off the floor. "What do you want from me?" she roared, forming a cyclone. He remained unperturbed; her displays were amateurish at best. "I was sent to get you out of here," he said. She raised her eyebrows in confusion. "Sigh," he took in a deep breath. His eyes glowed, and a holographic video appeared. Five filii sidus came together and formed a sanctuary for their kind. The sanctuary grew and became the Order of Star Dust. The video stopped playing, and he stretched out his hand, offering to protect her.

A bunch of images painfully went through their heads. "Hakeem," she yelled. She dashed off, rushing to help her friend. Her topmost speed would get to the destination in two hours. She took in a deep breath. Her eyes faintly glowed and went boom. She arrived at the destination with Hakeem laying on the floor bleeding and patrol officers beating up the rest of the kids. "They did this," Aliyah said angrily. She was the only one who could save Hakeem, but with the cost of exposing herself. She placed her hands on his injuries, and a bluish aura appeared. It slowly wrapped the wound, moving like a viscous fluid, and her eyes radiated with blue light. The blood stopped gushing, and the wound closed up. "Aliyah, what are you doing?" he groaned. The patrol officers stopped hitting the kids and shot a bullet at Aliyah.

Thwack! He blocked the bullet with his hand. "You," she said, surprised. "My name is Jesse," he replied. The cyborg blitzed to the patrol officers, throwing an uppercut at one. He twirled and released a laser beam, slashing off their hands. "We have to leave before a mob forms, "he asserted. They came out one by one with their weapons, ready to terminate the filial sidus. "I will hold them off while you perform your trick," Jesse explained. He appeared in front of a huge man, punching him in the gut. He grabbed the hand of another man, dislocated the bone, and punched him in the face. They released bullets at him, but they hit an invisible wall. He gave a smirk and began a blitzkrieg on the mob. Jesse was super fast. Aliyah couldn't see him attacking them, but all she could hear was the screams as he landed hits on their vitals. She released a blast, knocking everyone to the ground. "Let's go,she uttered. A blue light illuminated them and sent them crashing to an abandoned barn. "Where the fuck did you transport us to?" Jesse yelled.

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the full AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127 featuring George Manolov!

If you'd like to support us, check out https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/ for our books, merch, and more!

BIS128 - Ben Perrin - Transcript

Knut: Ben, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, this is where we first met, in Riga, five years ago.

Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, and our lives took a turn.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, it's amazing what can happen in a seemingly short period of time. Everything is markedly different, I think, on both ends.

Knut: Yeah, but I mean, I can't believe how you do what you do, like, you do like the double amount of conferences that I do.

Ben: I think I need to slow myself down a bit.

Knut: but you've been traveling around a lot, like, with the family as well.

Ben: Yeah, we try to strike a balance. Sometimes I go solo, sometimes it's the full family. Sometimes it's, me and the missus. It really depends, but, a little bit of both all through the year.

how's it been, like, what's your, well, Yeah. I mean, the travel aspect of it is fantastic. I love seeing all these places and it's kind of cool. To be honest, seeing all the Bitcoiners just in different parts of the globe all through the year, it's like every time it's a quasi family reunion, right? In cool locations.

Knut: Who was that that called us a traveling circus? Joe, yeah, it's Joe Hall.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, accurate. I think it's based, I was just saying outside that we should just collectively, you know, buy a jet, put all the necessary stuff in it and just hop around the globe and host a bunch of events and then get it all done in a couple of months and then

Luke: It's not a bad strategy.

Knut: no, it's a low time preference

Ben: are we going to start a geyser fund for the jet,

Knut: yeah, what private jet wanted, like,

Luke: If anything, it would be a good meme anyway, right?

Ben: How many bitcoin do you think we need for a jet? Sats.

Knut: Yeah, well, it'll take a while to gather the funds and we'll call that a jet lag.

Ben: I all enjoy seeing the exorbitant amount of Bitcoin required. And then like, you know, 5, 000 sats raised so far.

Knut: Yeah, and then five years later, 5, 000 sats is enough for a jet.

Luke: there we go. Oh, absolutely.

The Origins of BTC Sessions

Luke: So can you give us a little bit of, your story, how this all started? how did you get into Bitcoin and how did you become a, cause you're not actually Mr. Sessions, but you are, you get confused for that all the

Ben: Yeah. so, prior to Bitcoin, I actually, taught kids how to breakdance for years.

Knut: Australian ladies,

Ben: Yeah, non Australian ladies, no, no, I, I taught, I was basically doing in school residencies. So, like, in, in phys ed, instead of the phys ed teacher, you know, helming the, the dance unit, I would come in as a novelty and, You know, teach the kids a routine over the course of a week and then they'd perform at the end of the week.

And, so it was a fun job, but it didn't particularly, pay the bills. So I needed a side hustle. And that side hustle for a while was, I went on a bunch of tech blogs and I just kind of learned how to tear, tear apart a MacBook and like swap out the hard drive and the RAM and things like that.

And then, so I would flip MacBooks because everybody wanted a MacBook, but you could get it used. And so I would upgrade it and then sell it and earn a few hundred bucks in an afternoon. And that felt pretty decent. But because I was on those tech blogs, the Bitcoin articles would be in front of me from time to time.

it took about a year of saying, ah, crap, I missed the boat over and over again, to finally say, maybe I should actually read into this and figure out what it was. And, I spent the better part of two years trying to learn how to use it. And searching desperately for video tutorials because I'm a very visual learner.

It was always like, Oh, go to this blog and, or, or go to this forum and halfway down in the comments, some dude described in point form how to do this. And I was like, I, I can't learn like this, but I had to. And so the channel was more like a response to the itch I couldn't scratch for myself.

And I figured if, if I wanted that, somebody might find Bitcoin tutorials useful, and, that was eight years ago. And so now, yeah, eight, eight years worth of, doing tutorials.

Knut: So, do you have any other, educational background? university studies or anything like

Ben: this was just like, it was a com, so the skills that kind of came together were, even though I was teaching dance, like, teaching a concept that can be complex to like a school kid. As long as you can break it down in a simple manner, like I had to get used to sometimes five year olds trying to learn and memorize a routine.

With very foreign movements to them. regardless of subject matter, it translates if you can break something down. And the tech aspect of it, like I was not technical whatsoever before Git. Other than like, I mean, yeah I said I tore up Macbooks, but like, if you can, put in a Nintendo cartridge.

That's like the skillset that you needed to do that. and so that was just like trial and error, you know, tearing your hair out, doing it again, trying again, learning what not to do. and then just the being comfortable, like in front of a camera, I guess, over time.

Knut: So, the stripe from tearing your hair out?

Luke: Yeah, it grew back eventually, but turned color. Yes. did you realize that you're never allowed to change your hairstyle ever again?

Ben: The first time going to a conference and, somebody coming up and saying like, Oh, I saw you from across the parking lot. And I was like, Oh crap, I'm stuck with this forever. Yeah, now it's like, I literally, but this is going to be the OPSEC thing. Cause when it's time to disappear, I just have to die this back.

And I, I'm a ghost.

Luke: Yeah, Nobody will know who I am. It's like if Knut shaves his

Ben: Yeah,

Knut: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: Yeah.

Luke: Although actually the beard hasn't even been going that long, but now you're used to it.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

What Has Changed in Bitcoin?

Luke: So, what's changed over this eight years? Because I imagine early days that you're teaching vastly different things from now in the space.

Ben: Yes and no. there's a lot more to teach now than there ever was. like the early days, I was more or less confined to whatever phone app happened to be out as a wallet, there was very limited option for hardware, like it just kind of started to pop up as I was early days. and then like Bitcoin ATMs or online exchanges, that was kind of the crop of what I could do.

And now, the list of things I would like to cover is growing faster than I can cover it. It's an impossible task to teach everything. And so, that's a great thing, because there's so much optionality out there for people. I think because of that now, we're seeing a lot more people do tutorial videos, which is fantastic.

every time I see a new person throw their hat in the ring and start making video tutorials, I'm like a mini victory. I've treated the opposite of. Competition because you can never have too much education, just as everybody should have a Bitcoin podcast.

Neutrality

Knut: Yeah, so speaking of podcasts and video tutorials, like, how do you stay neutral in terms of the products? I mean, you must be getting offers from everyone here and there, like, can you promote this for me? Can you do that for me?

Ben: so there's two aspects to it. I mean, number one, obviously the only way that I can do this full-time is to have sponsors on the show. But the sponsors that I usually have, it's typically not them coming to me. Not to say there isn't people coming to me, but the ones that come to me typically are like shitcoin casinos and stuff like that.

And saying it's a default. No. but the sponsors that I tend to have typically it's me saying, Oh, I use this and it's great. And then I reach out to that entity and say, would you like to sponsor the show? But that comes with a caveat of no matter what, The whole point of the channel is to educate people how to use things, so I will be covering your competitors and teaching people how to use them as well.

So, it's just, you gotta just be forthcoming with, like, the pros and cons of everything, and be realistic about how things work, and, yeah.

Knut: yeah, yeah. Oh, can I have that water? Sorry. yeah, this is a tricky thing, like, especially for consumers, like, how can you trust the content you're consuming, but I think, the essence of that is that, authenticity is the currency of the future, whoever said that, but, it's such a great.

Like your reputation is everything. if you're discovered to be a sellout or if people discover you're a sellout, you lose, or your sponsors too, at certain point, right. So,

Ben: It's, especially in Bitcoin, I feel like, Bitcoiners hold each other to a higher standard than fiat world does. and, Bitcoiners it's not so easy to forget, somebody. not that you can't, redeem yourself when you make a mistake as long as you own it.

I think the worst thing that you can do is just double down instead of being like, you know, fucked up kind of thing. So, yeah.

Early Days

Luke: No, exactly, and I mean, I was actually curious about this. Did you ever go to, like, when you're getting into Bitcoin, were you ever curious about some of the, checkcoins and

Ben: Oh yeah, like, especially early on, because, there was no good resources, that succinctly described the difference between Bitcoin and everything else. It wasn't until, I spent most of my time learning about Bitcoin specifically, and then, I heard little things about other shitcoins but I never gained any conviction with any of the other ones, and to me it was always considered gambling, if I had anything like that.

And so it took working at an OTC desk in 2017, like a physical walk in with cash and buy Bitcoin or shitcoins to open my eyes to just how degenerate all of that stuff was. like my experience at the peak of the 2017 bull run. Was being in a room probably about double or triple the size of this.

we had three desks, with money counters on them, and it was shoulder to shoulder people in this room, all standing with stacks of cash, Ready to buy whatever coin had gone up the most that day. Ripple hit 3. 50. I'd love 10, 000 worth of Ripple, please. and it was just that day after day after day.

And people convinced that like, oh, this is the future. This is how it's gonna be. And after going through all that and seeing the ICO craze and everything, it just put such a bad taste in my mouth witnessing that and in a way being party to it, like working and being on the other side of the desk from that, that, discussions with and working with Francis Pouliot, with BullBitcoin.

He actually poached me from that company that I was at and it was a breath of fresh air to get somewhere and focus on Bitcoin. And so that was the formation of where I'm at now.

Bull Bitcoin

Knut: In 2019, you were here with the bull Bitcoin

Ben: Mm hmm.

how many of you were here? was a lot of us. 15 Yeah, there was, there was a lot. it was like they brought a bunch of the Debs and like Madex was here. 'cause he did the shirts and everything. Yeah. Francis Dave, like, yeah.

We were all out here and it was a good time.

Knut: Bull Bitcoin is definitely the most based exchange in the world, I think. think there are exchanges nowadays that are on par with them, but if you take the historical perspective, there is no second

Ben: Yeah, well it was such a departure for Francis to come out and be like, his announcement of what BullBitcoin was going to be and to say, we are actively Bitcoin only I remember people in the room as he announced it being like, Seriously, you guys are only doing Bitcoin.

You're actively choosing not to do anything else. And, it seemed like a crazy move to a number of people that watched that announcement and it was the best thing that they could have done.

Knut: Of course. I mean, I love that before and after picture of Francis, you know, when he's in his corporate suit and everything. The before picture and the second picture, it looks like something out of Commando or

Yeah. Rolled out of the jungle. No, it's great.

Ben: Yeah, that was a formative time for sure.

Calgary Community Building

Luke: Yeah, and I mean, those were my first touch points with crypto, the 2017 run, and I mean, in the offices in Calgary, because I'm just starting my career, just out of school, and I'm working at an oil and gas company, and it's like, everyone's talking about Ethereum or Ripple,

Yeah, and so that was the only thing that I got off my ass and went and bought a little bit for a little while with some Ethereum, and as soon as everything crashed in 2017, it's just like, I'm like, Yeah, I forgot about it for four years until things started to climb again.

And so no, no regrets, like, what ifs or anything like that. But, but yeah, that, that was, that was the culture at the time though, is, is, is what I'm saying. and this, this was all like, I had no idea this was all going on around me, the Bitcoin community, in, in Calgary. Right. and so this is, this is now where.

You're active in building the community in Calgary, right?

Ben: yeah, so, we're now kind of, you know, I've reached a point where, you know, it's great using Bitcoin as a savings mechanism and all that, but, I think it was late last year. there was some announcement in and around like exchanges, basically sending out the warnings to everybody, like, Hey, if you coin join and then send to the exchange, we'll have to shut your account.

Like you've got to at least add a hop and every, and people were. We're getting angry and almost like shooting the messenger, like, Oh, like, why don't you just not comply? And it's like, well, then the business doesn't exist. So I, like, I kind of get it. But at the end of the day, I got annoyed because people were, again, shooting the messenger rather than like just trying to do something about it.

And, and so that kind of, spurred me into. You know, recognizing that the only way around that is to actively use Bitcoin peer to peer, right? Like, not just save it. Cause like, if you're, if you're saving your Bitcoin and you're putting it away and everything, and then all of a sudden, every on and off ramp, it just Disappears overnight because of regulatory overreach.

What the hell do you do? Like, yeah, you can find your, your, your peer to peer exchanges and stuff like that, but like, isn't it so much better if you can just know the place where you can get beef or, you know, your barber, if you, if you can just use your money for everything that you need and then also just save it.

Like, isn't that a far better world than having to rely on somebody somewhere to exchange for a worse money?

Vexl

Knut: Are you familiar with Vexl? Yes. looks really promising, I think. yeah, we had Grafton on. Weeks ago. And, it's great. most of the users are in Prague at the moment, but still, if we can get that going, it's like, I view it as VL being is to local Bitcoins what B2C pay server is to BitPay you're taking these centralized models and.

making them peer to peer and more decentralized.

Ben: it, yeah, it's needed, whatever the, I really like the idea of what Vexel's doing, again, like, it's thin in my area for people listing stuff on there, but, again, at the end of the day, I think in, however we can do it to kind of build out, starting from the Bitcoiners themselves, ways to meet our daily needs, just using Bitcoin, like, I've been, I've been basically living on a Bitcoin standard since 2020.

Now, 90 something percent of my income is all Bitcoin. and I use it, like I, by default, don't have dollars beyond, like, exactly what needs to come out of a bank account each month for some specific payments that I can't do externally.

Knut: So what is your reaction when people say that Bitcoin isn't money?

Ben: So you can say it, but you're fucking wrong. it's puzzling when somebody says that to me because my entire life is a refutation of that statement. Like,

Knut: that's a clip right

Ben: Yeah.

Sats Market

Luke: that's fantastic. I had no idea any of this stuff existed. I literally got into Bitcoin as I was leaving Canada and I haven't been back to Calgary in three years now. I'm super looking forward to next summer.

I'll make it to your sats market and the Bitcoin rodeo and everything. So can you tell us a little bit about the sats market

Ben: Yeah, so, I guess I kinda went off the rails when I was about to dive into that, but that knee jerk of me getting angry that people weren't doing anything about it, that spurred me into doing the first sat market, and So I was like, guys, the only way around this is to just start using Bitcoin.

And so I put out the word online and said let's do this in three weeks, let's do a market. And we got 35 merchants together in that period of time, put on a big, Christmas market. And it was great. I was surprised how many people got together and made that happen. And so now we've done three of them.

we did a spring one as kind of like a dry run, to prep for the Bitcoin rodeo one that we did in July. but now I think we're going to do two per year so that it's kind of more of an event. but then we want to actually form relationships with each other so that, you don't need the market to get the things that you want.

So like, you know, my kid shoved something in the toilet, I called the Bitcoin plumber. And he came and I paid him in sats for sorting out my shit coin problem. and I think a big part of the market was, yes, it's great having, Bitcoin related merch and goodies and stuff like that.

But like, It shouldn't be all that. It needs to be stuff that people actually need. So we have local farmers come in, and you know, they've got beef and eggs and chickens and all that. We have a lot of tradesmen, like roofers, people doing flooring, people doing all kinds of different stuff.

We've got a guy who, one of the services he's offering is teaching people how to homestead. so like there's, there's a wide variety, there's a children's author, there's a whole bunch of different stuff. and it's a very eclectic mix of a lot of different things. but also like the useful, like, oh, I need food, you know, I need my haircut.

Canada and Alberta

Knut: so, do you expect, I mean, if you look up government overreach during the early 2020s in the dictionary, you'll get a picture of a Castro's bastard doing, do you expect some kind of clamp down or like problems with this from a government side in Canada?

Ben: Well, the nice thing about it is that it's the hardest thing to prevent when I know the guy I get my eggs from. When, you know, what are you going to say? you guys can't be friends anymore. Go fuck yourself. like if I happen to go visit my buddy at his house And he happens to give me some eggs, and I happen to slip and scan a QR code then like I was to stop that Yeah

Luke: would go, Well, I mean, some calibration on this as well. I think for people who aren't familiar with how Canada is basically, Alberta and Calgary is like the heart of freedom country in Canada. Quebec is also a little bit, it's got its own flavor of that essentially, but Alberta has been going through some really interesting times in the last decade.

Ben: so It's very different from the US in that the individual states have so much more, free reign to set things how they like, and you can freely move around between states. But in Canada, the federal government has a lot more power over each individual province than I would like.

But Alberta, as of late, has been really pushing back against federal overreach, in particular, and around energy, health, and education. so there's been all of these things that have culminated in, we created the Alberta Sovereignty Act, which Gives us a conduit to any time the federal government tries to do something where they're stepping out of their wheelhouse, we basically can now refer to that and flip them the bird and say, tough.

We saw that province next to us, Saskatchewan, when they tried to impose a carbon tax, the entire province, the government just said, we're not collecting it. And so like, you're starting to see, and it's very interesting because The sovereign individual, the book, when they were discussing, the idea of local governance and the breakdown of larger nation states, when they were talking about Canada, it was written in the 90s when Quebec was voting whether it wanted to remain part of Canada.

And so one would have assumed at the time they would have said Quebec will be the first to separate from Canada. But they said no, it's more likely to be Alberta because it's so energy heavy. and we get kind of screwed by the rest of Canada, so there's what's known as equalization payments, if we produce and have a lot of industry, rather than using that as a mechanism to incentivize people to move away from areas where industry may not justify so many people living towards where the good jobs and the resources are.

they just say, Oh, you guys are doing pretty well. We're going to take, however many billions of dollars of that, and we're going to pepper it over here.

Knut: Yeah.

Ben: when you look at say Quebec versus Alberta, Alberta, I can't remember what this is. Very recently, in the past few years, there was a year where I think Alberta paid 10 billion dollars in equalization payments, and, Quebec received 11.

And, and, and so basically we just gave Quebec all the money, and that's like 40 percent of their GDP.

Knut: yeah, it's socialism. That's how socialism works. The problem with socialism is that eventually you'll run out of other people's money.

Ben: Yeah. and so, but I mean, what would have happened if that wasn't in place is there wouldn't be as many jobs in Quebec and a number of people might have said, Oh, there's more jobs over here. We're going to move to where the industry is.

Luke: Yeah. Free market. It's natural. It's what happens when you leave things be and let people cooperate and collaborate the way they want. but instead we're incentivizing people to stay put Well, and I mean, the other thing, not just the equalization, right, is that the energy is literally landlocked in Alberta, and to get the oil to market, you have to take it to a coast, that's how this stuff gets sold, and there's just been fights over building pipelines within Canada or into the United States, Barack Obama cancelled the Keystone pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline the first time, Then Trump re approved it, and then Biden finally cancelled it, and I think they're actually giving up on it now.

But even within Canada, that's the problem, is that Quebec, who gets all of this money from Alberta, says they will not let a pipeline through their province.

Knut: yeah, it's, in the book.

yeah. yeah,

Luke: your feeling on just the political situation in general in Alberta and Canada as a whole?

Ben: it's interesting because I don't put Too much or really any trust in politicians, but the political pendulum making it's I feel like it already peaked to one side and it's about to swing back and they'll be that degree of What seems like normalcy for a while and then it'll swing too far the other direction again in the 90s growing up I felt as if These conservatives are gonna censor everything and, it was always like, Oh, we need to take this off TV and off the radio and we don't want anybody to see this In my head, I was always like, well, just don't watch it.

Don't listen to it. If you don't like Like, why are you telling others what they can or can't do or watch? And so I always grew up thinking that's where the pressure's gonna come from. But as that political pendulum swung to the left, it doesn't matter who's in power, it's just what are they censoring, right?

And so I think I leaned left, politically speaking, early in my life because it was just like a knee jerk. Against whoever was telling me not to do things, and so I felt like I swung left, and then it got to a point where I was just insufferable, like, actively, trumpeting whatever the leftist politicians would say, and it wasn't until a friend of mine actually said to me, I asked him about the election when Trudeau got elected for the first time, which I voted for, and,

Luke: Sorry.

Ben: The thing that opened my eyes to how insane I had gotten was, a friend of mine that I would have assumed for like the, who he was and kind of his lifestyle and everything like that would have, definitely been voting for Trudeau. So I asked him what he thought of the election. And he said, you made me vote conservative. And I was like, I stepped away from that conversation and took a long hard look in the mirror and realized the person that I thought I was helping by voting this way voted the opposite because I was such a loud mouth. what I ended up doing is I started searching for the exact opposite of what I would have searched for on like YouTube and all that.

And it was my first peek into how bad the algorithms get you. And because all of a sudden I was getting served inside of a couple of weeks, I was getting served the polar opposite end of the spectrum and nothing but that, and like rage bait. it made me realize like.

There's, there's no winner in that scenario.

Pendulum

Knut: it's so funny that they use the word pendulum because that's one of the chapter names from the new book. And we describe exactly that process of left and right, but also how this dynamic happens in smaller communities as well. And the danger we see in the Bitcoin community here is that, I've noticed this effect that Whenever people discover Bitcoin and realize that the government is lying to them.

The lazy thing to do is just to buy the opposite narrative and buy into all the conspiracy theories, and all of a sudden Alex Jones is not a liar, have you noticed that too, and like, are you worried about the Bitcoin community, that we're getting sloppy, buying into stuff?

Ben: Yeah, I think it's inevitable that people have that reaction in that we're at that point in time where people are deeply distrustful of every single institution. And I think it's exactly what you're saying, is that the knee jerk reaction is, so everything's a conspiracy, or everything's a scam. And, you know, kudos to the people that are a little bit more nuanced with the thinking. I can fall into that trap too. And, I think it's also, to go back to one of the other formative moments in Bitcoin for me was, as I first started getting involved. Seeing the coverage of Mt.

Gox, on the news because I had, I still knew very, very little about Bitcoin at that point. I had just started learning, but even with, a month or two of reading, I knew that all of the reporting was completely wrong. where they were saying Bitcoin got hacked. And I knew it was just a bad company, lost people's money.

And, to see every news outlet report it the same and all be wrong, and know that I've done effectively the minimal viable research, and I know that you're incorrect. It made me step back and say, well, God, like, what if other things that I know even less about are being reported incorrectly?

Knut: I know exactly what I reacted to the most, that they describe Bitcoin ma mining as solving this super complex

Ben: Yes.

Knut: Yes. When it's really just guessing a number over and over again. so it's portrayed as something that's absolutely isn't

Ben: Yeah. it's blindly throwing a dart at a dart board somewhere.

Knut: I had experiences with this earlier on where, you know, being interviewed for smaller things and just reading the interview afterwards and seeing how much they got wrong. this is so often everything.

Ben: Yeah. Cause I mean, there's people in society that are tasked with trying to distill information and present it in a friendly public facing manner. And, when you're trying to do that, it's difficult to do that accurately and also in an entertaining way that drives clicks and views and all that kind of stuff.

so I think a lot of people by default just use some of those bad habits and, you know, go for the clicks, I suppose.

Nostr

Luke: Well, and how do you feel about an antidote to this in Nostr, decentralizing communication?

Ben: Yeah, I think. With this, it definitely puts us in the right direction in that, you know, previously, the way, we've seen dissenting opinions dealt with is just shutting them down. you know, now, I still very much think that the entire world has not yet grappled with the fact that you can instantly communicate with anybody, anywhere, and get a megaphone to tell the world whatever you think.

and people have not been great at learning how to distill information and decide if the information is right and true. we're still as a species not great at that, but I think having Absolute censorship resistance puts us towards that because then the only tool you have to fight against bad information is better information.

And so people need to stop being babysat and actually be forced into a space where they have to distill information and think critically. and that's a muscle that most people haven't exercised and even myself, at times just, you know, it's easy to go the lazy way. But I think, yeah, with something like Nostr where, you can say whatever you want.

Nobody can remove it afterwards. it forces hard conversations to be had rather than trying to silence them. So I think it's a slow process and it's not gonna happen anytime soon. But it gets us stepping in the right direction.

Knut: I think communication is the thing that elevates us from barbarism to civilization, really. Because if you go down to first principles and what this is all about, it's like humans have two ways of resolving conflict, and the one is violence, And the other is communication. You agree and you argue and you come up with a solution.

And the latter is obviously preferable to the former, because we don't want violence. seeing things that way makes everything so much clearer, you realize that even without the internet communication would have won out in the long run, because it's more efficient than violence.

Violence is costly. so, and it did sort of like there were fewer wars, like in, Early 90s when the internet wasn't a thing than ever before. So like, fewer people were killed in wars. So the internet has just sped up the process. And right now you can communicate with anyone in the entire world at an instant.

And it's not only text, it's video, like without a lag. And on top of that you have bitcoin, which is, part of that, because it is communication. What bitcoin pointed out was that money doesn't have to be anything but communication. That's why I'm so extremely optimistic about it, because it is the cure all, in that sense, because it's so damn powerful,

Why Are You Bullish?

Knut: so Ben Sessions, why are you bullish?

Ben: am I bullish? in this moment, I think I'm most bullish because people haven't stopped building and they're doing so at such a breakneck pace that I guess alluding to earlier in the conversation, how that list of things for me to teach people about is growing faster than I can teach it.

And, and that's a great place to be in, given that when I started, the most common question I got from people hearing, Oh, you're doing a Bitcoin tutorial channel. I mean, you're going to run out of stuff to do, aren't you? And it's the exact opposite. and so I, when there's that much of a brain drain and, and there's so many people Interested in somehow being involved and contributing and seeing this as the seismic shift that it is.

how can you not be bullish about that? I mean, we started a company a few months ago called Bitcoin Mentor. Educators, one on ones and all that. But we put out the word that we were looking for people that wanted to be Bitcoin educators. We had 350 applicants. Isn't that insane?

Luke: It's amazing.

Knut: Yeah,

Ben: Obviously we couldn't take all 350, but we built a solid team from the people that were there and there was some really talented people there.

The Bitcoin Mentor

Ben: So can you talk us through what this is? what is the Bitcoin? It's the Bitcoin Mentors. Yeah, Bitcoin Mentor. I, have previously for a number of years done, Private one on ones with people, typically, you know, Zoom or whatever, video call. those were usually people that had gone to the free tutorials on YouTube, but they need a little bit of extra hand holding.

Maybe, like, it's either just their confidence in doing it themselves, and they just want somebody to kind of walk them through it the first time, or they hit a snag and I didn't cover it as in depth as I should have or, there's a lot of moving parts. I got to the point where I was so busy with these sessions, these one on ones, that I wasn't having time to make the tutorials anymore.

And, you know, I can't not have that. You know, that's like, it's such an important thing to have the free resource out there as well. So, I met, my co founder now, Mike, and, we just kind of formulated an idea of building a team and, yeah, so it's basically for anybody that's either like brand new and is just trying to wrap their head around, key management or hardware or whatever, or for the, you know, What I would refer to as the Bitcoin luddites, the ones that have, and this isn't at all a dig because this happens to everybody, but.

Where you come in, you learn the few things you're comfortable with, and then you stand still for a long time and you begin wondering like, is my setup still as good as I thought it was when I originally did it? Should I add to it? Should I learn something new? Or I just wanna level up and learn some new things?

We get a lot of people coming in like that, being like. Yo, I, I don't know, I got a ledger like five years ago and I set it up and I haven't done anything since. And now I think I want to try a cold card or whatever else, or now I want to run a node or now I want to, you know, I want to learn again.

Luke: And so we get a lot of those people coming in the door saying, help walk me through this. And once they've done it once, then, okay, that's a skill they've attained and they can do it themselves without any assistance after that. Oh, awesome initiative. And I mean, yeah, like obviously there's a need there for people to get involved in this stuff. And I mean, the user experience in Bitcoin is still very much, you have to do the things or else it's not quite going to work. And I mean, do you think it's ever going to be?

So simple that anyone can just quickly get on to Bitcoin in a self sovereign way. I don't, I don't think that there's ever going to

Knut: always a trade

Luke: there's

always a trade off. do you think about that?

Ben: there's always a trade off. I think, and it also depends on what our interactions with Bitcoin look like in the future, like in terms of what is the average person's experience using Bitcoin. Bitcoin, I would venture to say that their initial interaction with Bitcoin inside of Five years or less is not going to be on chain.

Like people aren't going to be onboarded directly to on chain. They're going to, I think the way that we teach needs to be completely inverted because the way I used to teach was, okay, let's attack a regular on chain Bitcoin wallet first. here's how you set it up. Here's your seed phrase on chain transactions work like this, you know, every 10 minutes, all like, here's how the fees work.

That was typically the first thing you wrapped your head around and then you would say, Oh, and now there's this thing called lightning. And this allows you, you know, for more day to day, smaller trends. And so you'd, you'd start at the base and you'd build the knowledge to the upper layers. But that's not going to be how people interact with Bitcoin because, economically speaking, that's not going to make sense.

They're going to come in from a top layer first with their first few sats.

custodial lightning. exactly. But what will be the goal is working your way down through the self sovereignty stack to hopefully get as close to the base as you can for that person. And so it's gonna be like, oh, I came in through a Fediment, or I came in through a Cashument, or I came in through a Custodial Lightning Wallet.

Knut: You'd be like, okay, great. Transactionally, you now know what you're doing, but let's see if we can give you more control. And move that direction. had a thought about the 350 applicants, because they all want to be Bitcoin mentors. I think they probably all are, just on a smaller scale. Like, all of those people are teaching their friends and family how to use things.

It's already amazing. Because you're right, all of those applicants were vying to be part of a specific group but nothing precludes them from continuing to be the bitcoin person in their group of friends that people come to for advice and help. beautiful.

What is Ben Most Excited About - Fedi(Mint)

Luke: And so you mentioned a couple of things like, Fedimint and Cashew as one example, like just new stuff that's been coming up. What are you most excited about that's, like projects that look really exciting to you right now?

Ben: I'm very interested in the Fediment stuff. I think it's really cool. Now, again, you gotta recognize that it's a trade off. But, I tend to look at things from the perspective of What is available to us right now? No, I recognize that things can change and maybe you have the ability to have shared, you know, UTXO custody in a way,

But with how Bitcoin works right now and the tools that are available to us, I think FedAmends are pretty damn good trade off, to enable a number of things that are very attractive. So like, instant, peer to peer free and perfectly private transactions within a mint. Gaining the privacy of the crowd if you spend to another mint.

and what I mean by that is, maybe you have a mint that has a thousand people in it, and another mint that has a thousand people in it. When you go to send money to somebody in the other mint, it's a lightning transaction between the two. federations, but nobody knows which person in this mint initiated the transaction and nobody knows which person in that mint received it.

yeah, it's beautiful.

so I love that. there's things like you can do offline payments. there's a lot of really cool things. and Feddy app is doing is something that I think it would be super. Useful in the context of what we're doing with the sat market in Calgary is if we had, you know, within, if we had everybody sound like a mint.

And within the Feddy app, we could have a community that in that same app with their wallet management, they also see all of the resources needed to use said Bitcoin locally. So maybe it, it, by default, we have built in there, the btcmap. org that will center in on Calgary when you tap on it within the app, maybe it has bit refill or whatever to get your gift cards.

Maybe it has whatever other, because It's like a whole ecosystem in a singular app that you can tailor for your specific community, which is, so useful, and I didn't know exactly what it was going to be until I actually physically saw it.

Yeah, Yeah, so I love it.

Now, yeah, we still have some questions about it, but we'll talk to Obi one of these, like, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. So we're looking forward to interrogate him about the nooks and crannies about Fede. But, yeah, it's very, very promising. yeah, it's, I think that particular ecosystem is gonna make leaps and bounds in the coming years and it'll be very interesting to see how it's used and how resilient it is, in the way that they're trying to flesh out that ecosystem because at this point anybody can make a mint. And so, and that's a double edged sword, because anybody will make a mint, and some will be, they won't all be created equally.

Some will rug, for sure, some will rug pull, but others will, you know, It'll likely be done well and stand the test of time and kind of, it'll be more of a reputation based thing rather than,

Knut: that's reputation based is, is, is based. I mean it's, that's what we're excited about, about Nostr, a lot of the You know, web of trust things so that you get all the, the reputation score is basically your, you own your social graph and your friends and your connections and your posts and everything.

And that's where you get your recommendation is from. So I think that ends up, you know, killing woke disney one day because there won't be a discrepancy between user scores and critics

Ben: yes,

Knut: like so

Ben: yeah,

Knut: much going on

Ben: yeah, that's fantastic.

Luke: It's fantastic to get your perspective on this because you're probably one of the people who really actually gets in there and tries the most things

Amplifying, right? like that

Ben: I tend to tinker around with pretty much everything that I can get my hands on. there's more people that are starting to be that as well. if you were to look at my apps on my phone, it's just like a disgusting amount of different Bitcoin wallets and everything.

and those are just the ones that I have put in a folder. If you go through the entire app drawer, it's just, I don't remember when I downloaded this

Outlook for Canada and Alberta

Luke: No, it's funny, but, you're clearly bullish on Bitcoin. And what about Canada? What's your feelings on Canada, Alberta as well?

Ben: I hope Alberta secedes. So that's that would be, I'm, I'm, I'm very pro, smaller and more local governance. I, you know, I, I think that you become disconnected from, your constituents when you try to govern too many of them all at once, it's very difficult when you have. a large group of people in very, very different conditions and trying to say, you guys are all gonna live by the exact same rules.

I think more local governance is great. I feel like Trudeau will be gone next year. everybody's sick of him, including his own party, but at the same time, if I had to guess, I would say that, he'll be stubborn enough to run again. And that Polyev will probably win he's a bitcoiner but at the same time, I don't think that he'll do anything, in terms of regulatory that would be super favorable.

Luke: I think it'll just kind of be status quo. if anything, it'll at least buy some time. To build out things that make Bitcoin more resilient in the face of the next tyrant. I've still got all my family in Canada, tons of friends in Canada, I hope for the best in Canada, I'm the coward, sort of, and left, but no, no, it was more of a pull than a push, I mean, as much as things were difficult a few years ago in Alberta, I mean, like, yeah, it was other reasons, but still, of course, close to my

Knut: voted with your feet. It's good. you made a freedom footprint. That's what you

Luke: Well, yeah, awesome to have you and other great people in, in Calgary and, and Canada, you know, still bearing the torch and everything. So,

Ben: Yeah, there's a good, there's a solid group there, and yeah, the Calgary, the Alberta, generally, like all the Alberta Bitcoiners, there's something there, and I can't wait to see that blossom into what it seems to be becoming.

Luke: well, sign us up for the sats market, in June, July, next year. Cause, yeah, well, a hundred percent

Knut: We need Knut to come stampeding I can do the stampeding. yeah, apparently it's not optional.

Wrapping Up

Knut: anyway, where do you want to send our listeners? Like with btc sessions. com? Is that a thing now? Dot ca,

Ben: flair on there. if somebody's listening or watching this that is unfamiliar, and you need to learn anything, just search BTC Sessions on YouTube. you'll find it there. I'm on, Nostr, I'm on X still. you gotta be where the normies are at when you're trying to orange pill and educate, I suppose, too.

the Bitcoin Mentor stuff, you can check out at bitcoinmentor. io if you need some more hand holding on anything. There's a solid group of educators there.

Luke: fantastic. And I'm going to look at this camera now to my friends from Calgary, who I've been telling you to go attend the sats market. Get to it, talk to this guy, you won't regret it, and you know who you are.

Thanks for everything you do, and thanks for being on the show.

thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Ben, thanks again. This has been the Bitcoin Infinity Show.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

A fortnight of being real on Nostr

It's been over two weeks, since I announced that I would primarily be noting from my lesser-known Silberengel npub, and it's been an interesting experience. As with anything I ever do, I clicked around a lot, tested out a lot, and tried out a lot. Mostly, I observed.

Let me share, what I've learned

1. Nostr-related products are increasingly useless, if you don't follow anyone, or only follow a handful of people. Everything is geared to follows and you usually really do need to follow gobs of people, to have an interesting feed, by capturing the most-active people (about 10% of the people you follow). Those people tend to quote and boost other people's notes into your stream, allowing you to follow those additional people and so on, like a snowball scheme. This means that follows are actually a feed-management mechanism, rather than any indication of a relationship between npubs. It also means that 10% of the npubs decide what everyone will look at.
2. Many people collect followers, by being active for a very short time, following lots and lots of people and getting follow-backs, then they unfollow the smaller npubs or abruptly change their tone or the content (this is common with spammers and scammers). Then they have a high WoT score. What, precisely, is being trusted here? (Also, centering WoT on follows is influencer-maxxing for plebs, KWIM?)
3. Why are individuals never unfollowing these npubs? Because nobody unfollows anyone who hasn't seriously upset them. Follow-inertia is rampant and the follow lists are so long that most people don't even know who they are following. So long as the "bad npub" doesn't spam the people who are following them directly, they don't notice anything. That means following spam can inadvertently protect you from spam, whilst the same spammers throw crap at your own frens, all damned day.
4. Most relay owners/operators don't ever look directly at the feed from their own relay, so it's usually full of enormous amounts of garbage. Your clients and personal/private relays are often downloading and broadcasting all of that garbage indiscriminately, so the garbage gets passed around, like a social media virus. Many of you just haven't noticed, because you also don't look at the feed from your relays (see 1).
5. Almost all business logic (the controls, in the classic model-view-controller setup) has been placed on the client-side. This is great, if you're a client developer, as it makes relays superfluous and traps your customers in your app, by making moving to a different app more onerous. Every move requires a period of readjustment and fiddling, before they can see their feed the way that they are used to seeing it. This is less great, if you're a user and are interested in trying out a different app.
6. When I began, two weeks ago, the concept of topical, private, and personal relays interacting were mostly a pipe dream (pun intended), but I've been pleased to see, that some other people are beginning to catch on to the appeal of decentralizing and specializing the model layer. A diverse, sprawling network of relays, connected through the outbox model and negentropy syncing, is really next-generation communication, and essential for ensuring censorship-resistance, while supporting smooth interaction.
7. Once you get above a few hundred followers (which I already have, That went fast!), additional followers are increasingly spam or inactive/bot npubs, and once you get a few thousand followers, that Bot Effect goes parabolic, as your notes are spread more widely onto spammy relays. You won't notice, yourself, as anything over a few hundred becomes Some Big Number and you'll eventually stop even looking to see who they are, or caring about them, at all. Which leads directly to my next point...
8. The number of followers a person has, correlates with an increase in their disdain for people who care about follower counts, likes, reactions, or even zaps. This noblesse oblige says nothing about the usefulness or information any of these signals carry. You will please also notice that they never change npubs and rarely change profile pics because of reasons I don't need to elaborate on, further.
9. On-boarding is a lonely experience because nobody looks at the feed, and you initially have no followers. Even if you reply to people, they often can't see what you wrote because of your low WoT score. That is, unless you already know someone there, who can vouch for you. Or are lucky to get discovered by the Nostr Welcoming Committee and end up one of the biggest npubs overnight, which is like winning the follower lottery. For most new npubs, the experience is terrible and they eventually give up, for a handful the experience is absolutely fantastic and they are hooked. Obvious lesson: nobody should onboard, who doesn't know at least 1 other person: so invites only. Unlike Those Other Protocols, Nostr doesn't need a centrally-determined invite, as every client or relay can offer their own version, geared to a different audience. The goal simply needs to be: get off 1.
10. I don't get many zaps or reactions, anymore, but I still have interesting conversations, and I no longer face the surreal situation of every cough, hiccup, or sneeze I emit being front-page news. Nostr feels more like Nostr, again, and less like Twitter, and now I want communities and forums even harder.

@ c80b5248:6b30d720

Using tools like Continue in your vault

As the capabilities of artificial intelligence continue to expand, integrating AI into our workflows has become an increasingly attractive option. One of the most exciting applications of AI is its potential to enhance the way we manage and organize information. Obsidian, a powerful knowledge management tool, provides a robust platform for building a personal knowledge base. By layering AI tools like Continue over your Obsidian vault, you can unlock new levels of efficiency, creativity, and insight. This article will start to explore how to effectively use AI tools within Obsidian to enhance your note-taking, information management, and productivity.

An Explosion of AI Tools

Over the past few years, I have tinkered with ChatGPT and other chat interfaces, but I only recently stumbled upon the rapidly growing space of AI tools for coding. In such a short time, some amazing tools have emerged, most notably:

• Aider: A command line interface tool to iteratively generate, edit, and refactor code.
• Cursor: A fork of Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with integrated AI functionality.
• Cline: A plug-in for command line and code editor built to work with Antropic's Claude 3.5.
• Continue: A customizable VS Code plug-in with chat and code editing abilities.

These tools are designed to assist developers in writing, debugging, and even generating code from natural language prompts. They are powered by large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 and Llama 3, which are trained on vast amounts of text data and can produce human-like responses to a wide range of prompts.

In this article, I will focus on Continue, a VS Code plug-in that offers multiple ways to interact with AI. It features autocomplete powered by an LLM of your choice, as well as the ability to generate new code blocks directly in the editor. It can also incorporate context from external sources or the local codebase. Additionally, it includes a standard chat window for interacting with the LLM.

The new twist is that I won't be using Continue to write code, but rather to write notes in Obsidian. I will be using the chat window to generate notes, and the autocomplete feature to assist me in writing them. By leveraging the context feature, I can bring in information from my Obsidian vault, allowing me to create more complete, accurate, and better-organized notes. I can also use the vault as context to ask for summaries or retrieve information from my notes, even as the vault continues to grow.

It's worth mentioning that while I am focusing on Continue, there are likely other tools that can be used in a similar way or provide better features. One example is the text-generator plug-in for Obsidian. This plug-in allows you to generate text using an LLM of your choice, and it can be used to generate notes, summaries, or even entire documents. It can also generate code, but I was unable to get the plug-in working with my LLM provider. Using Continue is a bit of a hack, as it requires working through an IDE like VS Code, but it's a good way to get started with AI tools in Obsidian. I will assume that you already have an Obsidian vault set up. If you don't, you can ask your assistant to help you organize it once you have it up and running.

The system I am going to describe here relies on two primary components:

1. Continue (installed in an IDE like VS Code)
2. An LLM provider to power Continue

Let's start by talking about LLM Providers. If you already know how these work, feel free to skip to the next section.

LLM Providers

LLM providers are services that offer access to large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 or Llama 3.1, typically via an API (application programming interface). These providers usually charge by the token, which is the number of words processed by the model. You can go directly to a provider like OpenAI or Anthropic, or you can use an aggregation site like OpenRouter that provides a single API to access multiple models. Each provider has its own data privacy policies, so it's important to review them carefully. For this reason, I have been using DeepInfra. They run their own models and offer a clear privacy policy - even better, they tend to have the lowest costs.

h/t nostr:npub17vhnjkt04m6thytr8dna67v2pa4tjk7uh3ut40eq9wy8d28u0kvq7qnhkq nostr:note1qfckzxm687peaddwjpmms92kj3v59wrrx0cs2fcxlkm6pm9lyu3squscxa

Another option is to use Ollama to run some of these models locally. However, the hardware requirements for achieving good results quickly are quite demanding. For example, the smaller chat model I use in my configuration, which has 72 billion parameters, requires a 48 GB GPU to run efficiently—something that is not within my budget. This is why I am using DeepInfra.

Note: If you are setting this up for the first time, consider adding a small amount (less than $5) to a provider like DeepInfra and testing it out before you invest time in setting up a local Ollama instance. I have also had some issues with shutting down Ollama on Windows, so your mileage may vary.

If you choose to use a provider like DeepInfra, you are ready to move to the next section. If you prefer to set up Ollama, you can refer to their documentation for installation instructions. I prefer to run it in Docker, which can be done in Linux by running

bash docker run -d -v ollama:/root/.ollama -p 11434:11434 --name ollama ollama/ollama

or if you want to have an interface like ChatGPT, you can even run Open WebUI in the same command with

bash docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

Once Ollama is running in docker you can start up the models you want to use by running the following in your terminal.

docker exec ollama ollama run model_name

See the Ollama model library to choose which models you want to run locally.

Getting Started with Continue

Continue is installed as a plug-in for VS Code or JetBrains. I personally use it with VS Code, so my instructions will be based on that. If you are using a JetBrains IDE, you should refer to the Continue documentation for installation instructions.

After installing the plug-in, continue will prompt you to set up your LLM provider. In my experience, once this initial GUI goes away, you can't get it back. Instead, you will do most of the configuration within the config.json file for Continue, which you can access by clicking in the lower right corner of the Chat box. In VS Code, if you ever can't find anything, F1 is your friend and will launch a searchable menu.

Continue provides recommended settings from each provider, which you can find here. For my coding and writing, I chose the very new Qwen2.5 72B Instruct due to its high benchmark scores and relatively low costs. This model costs $0.35-0.40 USD per million tokens, compared to the best available on DeepInfra, the Llama3.1 405B Instruct, which costs $1.78 per million tokens. The results may be slightly worse, but I prefer cheaper and faster for my purposes. For autocomplete, I am using a faster and code-specific model, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B. I have not yet tried changing the autocomplete model for usage with Obsidian, but that is on my to-do list. Lastly, by the time you read this article, these models may be out of date. One nice thing about having a provider API is that you can easily switch and test different models to see how they work. Aider has one of many model leaderboards that will show you some benchmarks.

After working through the configuration, your config.json file will have a list of chat models and a tab for the autocomplete model. It will look something like this:

```json "models": [ { "title": "DeepInfra Qwen2.5 72B Instruct", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct", "apiKey": "your-api-key" }, { "title": "DeepInfra Llama3.1 405B Instruct", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct", "apiKey": "your-api-key" }, ],

"tabAutocompleteModel": { "title": "DeepInfra Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B", "provider": "deepinfra", "model": "Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-7B", "apiKey": "your-api-key" } ```

Trying it Out

The Chat UI

Once you have Continue configured, you can open your Obsidian Vault in VS Code. You will want to add a .continueignore file in your folder that lists .obsidian and any other files or folders you want Continue to ignore for context purposes.

Click the three dots in the bottom of the chat bar and check that your vault (@codebase) index is complete. You can now chat with the LLM and ask it questions using your vault as a reference.

@codebase what are some common themes from this vault?

Continue provides a docs page that lists some types of questions that an LLM will be able to help with. Naturally, I asked the LLM to put these in the context of an Obsidian Vault and here is what it told me:

```md

Useful Questions

1. High-Level Questions About Your Notes:
2. "What are the main themes in my notes on personal development?"

3. "How do I incorporate agile methodologies into my project management?"

4. Specific Information:

5. "What are the key points in my notes about productivity hacks?"

6. "Can you find any references to neuropsychology in my notes on cognitive science?"

7. Generating Content:

8. "Write a new note on the benefits of meditation, using the same structure as my other wellness notes."

9. "Draft a summary of my recent project retrospective, following the format of my previous summaries."

10. Contextual Questions About a Specific Folder:

11. "What is the main purpose of the 'Research' folder?"

12. "How do we use the concept of 'flow' in the 'Psychology' folder?"

13. Relationships and Connections:

14. "What are the connections between my notes on 'Time Management' and 'Goal Setting'?"

15. "How do my notes on 'Digital Marketing' relate to 'SEO'?"

16. Task and Project Management:

17. "What are the next steps I should take based on my notes for the 'Personal Finance' project?"

18. "Can you list the tasks I need to complete for my 'Career Development' plan?"

19. Deep Dives and Analysis:

20. "Can you provide a detailed explanation of the concept of 'reflective practice' found in my notes?"

21. "What insights can you derive from my notes on 'Project Management'?"

22. Insight and Reflection:

23. "What have I learned from my notes on 'Mindfulness'?"
24. "Can you help me reflect on my progress based on my notes for the 'Health and Wellness' topic?"

Not Useful Questions

1. Literal Review of All Files:
2. "Find everywhere where the term 'mindfulness' is mentioned in my entire vault."

3. "Review all my notes and find any spelling mistakes."

4. Comprehensive Tasks that Require Literal Access:

5. "Add a new section to all notes that discuss 'productivity' and summarize the main points."

6. "Rewrite all my notes on 'Digital Marketing' to include the latest industry trends."

7. Refactoring and Detailed Edits:

8. "Update all references to 'Scrum' to 'Kanban' in my 'Agile' folder."
9. "Add a new parameter to the function calculate_score and update all usages in my 'Programming' notes."

Summary

• Useful Questions: Focus on high-level insights, specific information, generating new content, contextual questions about specific folders, and reflecting on your notes.
• Not Useful Questions: Require the LLM to see and edit every file, perform comprehensive reviews, or make detailed edits across multiple notes. ```

Text Generation

Continue also offers in-editor code generation with the hotkey Ctrl+I and an entered prompt. I have only tried a few things with this, but it was able to successfully review a set of meeting notes I had written and summarize all of the outstanding questions. I expect you could also use this to autogenerate backlinks on a note where a follow-up note might be helpful, or quickly generate templates to be used in Obsidian. I ended up editing this entire article by selecting sections and prompting the AI with the following: "You are a proficient writer. Please edit this text for style, typos, spelling, and grammar."

Autocomplete

Continue will also attempt to autocomplete unless you turn it off in the bottom right bar in VS Code. While writing this article, the autocomplete feature was somewhat helpful even though it is not code. Further configuration may optimize this even more. Keep in mind that autocomplete triggers frequently and will burn through a lot of tokens, so you will want to keep an eye on your usage. With the cheaper models I am using, I have only spent 10 cents over the past four days of moderate usage at work and at home. A bulk of that cost is due to autocomplete, and I sometimes turn it off to keep costs down. You may be able to limit these costs effectively by configuring the number of input tokens that can be sent to the API, but I am not sure how that will impact the results.

## Conclusion - Brought to You by Qwen 72B

In conclusion, integrating AI tools like Continue into your Obsidian vault opens up a multitude of possibilities for enhancing your note-taking, information management, and productivity. By leveraging the chat window, text generation, and autocomplete features, you can create more comprehensive and accurate notes, generate summaries, and automate routine tasks. The integration of LLMs into your workflow not only streamlines your processes but also provides deeper insights and connections within your knowledge base. While there are initial setup steps and some considerations around cost and configuration, the benefits of AI-assisted note-taking in Obsidian are well worth the effort. As AI tools continue to evolve, the potential for further enhancements and optimizations is immense, making this an exciting and valuable addition to any knowledge management system.

@ e968e50b:db2a803a

Hey everybody!

There is now a webLN version of my Piggysats Wallet. Just head over to this link and sign in with your Alby wallet or other web extension wallet. The goal of these piggy bank fronts are to create savings tools for kiddos that are also fun and appealing to their cute little brains. This one should have the lowest barrier to entry to date![^1]

It only grabs the transactions of certain types of wallets right now. I'm troubleshooting that, but in the meantime, it should be a safe way to look at your balance and make invoices. You'll need to manually put in your LNURL if you want to use the "Life Skills" textbook for a QRCode of your LNURL.

https://piggysats-webln.vercel.app

You can also:

1. use an LNBITS instance: https://bitcoin-piggy-bank.vercel.app
2. or host your own LNBITS version, which is a little more complicated: https://github.com/ttooccooll/Bitcoin-Piggy-Bank

[^1]: especially for stacker news parents staring down the barrel of Nov 5th!

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/728405

@ a012dc82:6458a70d

Table Of Content

• BlackRock's Bold Move

• The Potential Impact on Bitcoin's Price

• The Role of Retail Investors

• The Future of Bitcoin

• Conclusion

• FAQ

The world of digital assets has been gaining significant traction, with traditional financial firms finally acknowledging that cryptocurrencies are here to stay. This shift in perception is not without reason. The potential of cryptocurrencies to revolutionize financial transactions, coupled with their growing acceptance as a legitimate asset class, has made them impossible to ignore. Among the key players making waves in the crypto space is BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, boasting $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM). The firm recently filed for permission to create a "spot market" Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF), a move that could potentially slingshot Bitcoin's price skyward. This move signifies a significant shift in the traditional finance world's approach to digital assets, marking a new era of acceptance and integration.

BlackRock's Bold Move

BlackRock's decision to venture into the Bitcoin ETF space is a significant development in the crypto industry. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has historically been resistant to Bitcoin ETFs, making BlackRock's move a bold one. This decision is not just a gamble but a calculated move based on the growing demand for digital assets and the potential they hold. This move, coupled with similar actions from other financial giants like Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, and Citadel, has already had a positive impact on the crypto market. The announcement alone has boosted crypto trading markets, with Bitcoin gaining 20% in a week and surpassing the $30,000 mark for the first time since April. This price surge is a testament to the influence these financial institutions wield in the market.

The Potential Impact on Bitcoin's Price

The creation of a Bitcoin ETF by a firm as influential as BlackRock could potentially transform the Bitcoin market. Bitcoin's fixed supply limit of 21 million BTC and its existing inventory's relative illiquidity could lead to a supply-demand imbalance. With 68% of BTC in circulation remaining unmoved in the past year, there isn't a lot of stock available for BlackRock and other interested parties to snap up. If demand exceeds supply, it could inevitably lead to price gains for Bitcoin. This scenario could potentially create a bullish market for Bitcoin, driving its price to new heights. However, it's important to note that this is a hypothetical scenario, and the actual impact will depend on a variety of factors, including regulatory decisions and market dynamics.

The Role of Retail Investors

While institutional investors like BlackRock play a significant role in the crypto market, the role of retail investors cannot be overlooked. The participation of ordinary crypto users might be necessary to stabilize the price of Bitcoin. As more institutional investors enter the market, retail investors may also be encouraged to participate, potentially leading to an increase in trading volume and further price appreciation. Retail investors bring a different dynamic to the market. Their participation could lead to increased liquidity and could also serve as a counterbalance to the large trades made by institutional investors. The involvement of retail investors could also lead to a more diverse and robust market, contributing to the overall health and stability of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The Future of Bitcoin

The entry of BlackRock and other major asset managers into the Bitcoin space could potentially stabilize Bitcoin's price at a substantially higher level than the current $30,000. However, long-term price stability also requires broad retail participation. The involvement of large financial institutions in the digital asset market has arguably had a calming effect on retail investors, which could lead to increased acceptance and trading volume in the coming months. As the market matures and regulatory clarity improves, we could see a more balanced market with both institutional and retail investors playing significant roles. This balance could contribute to the long-term stability and growth of Bitcoin's price.

Conclusion

The involvement of large financial institutions, such as BlackRock, in the crypto markets represents a significant shift and a decisive moment for these markets, both in the U.S. and globally. While it's still early days, the potential impact of BlackRock's proposed Bitcoin ETF on Bitcoin's price cannot be underestimated. If institutional investors continue to enter the market, their demand could certainly drive prices higher, potentially propelling Bitcoin's price to the moon. However, it's important to remember that the crypto market is highly volatile, and investors should always do their due diligence before making investment decisions. The future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remains uncertain, but the involvement of major financial institutions like BlackRock signals a promising future for these digital assets.

FAQ

What is BlackRock's recent move in the crypto space? BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has filed for permission to create a "spot market" Bitcoin-based exchange-traded fund (ETF).

How could BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF impact Bitcoin's price? The creation of a Bitcoin ETF by BlackRock could potentially increase demand for Bitcoin. Given Bitcoin's fixed supply limit, this could lead to a supply-demand imbalance and potentially drive up Bitcoin's price.

What role do retail investors play in the Bitcoin market? Retail investors play a significant role in the Bitcoin market. Their participation could lead to increased liquidity and could serve as a counterbalance to the large trades made by institutional investors.

Could BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF stabilize Bitcoin's price? The entry of BlackRock and other major asset managers into the Bitcoin space could potentially stabilize Bitcoin's price at a substantially higher level than the current one. However, long-term price stability also requires broad retail participation.

That's all for today

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

Let's talk about baking bread

I've mentioned a few times, how large-scale central planning leads inevitably to artificial scarcity and rising prices. Allow me to illustrate -- using a completely invented allegory about bread -- that has absolutely no parallels to any economy you may already be familiar with.

We start with 20

Let us say, there is a group of 20 people in a village doing something that requires some niche skill and interest, but not inordinate amounts of talent or uncommon knowledge, such as baking loaves of bread containing emmer wheat. This is not an easy thing to do, and you'd have to read up on it and practice, to begin with, but it's not an insurmountably-high barrier for anyone who already knows how to bake.

Now, they're not baking all that much of this bread, as the market for people who want to eat it, is still rather small. But, they're happy to bake the bread, and sell it below cost (at $10), as they can see that the market is steadily growing and they know that there is a possibility of recuperating their investments, and maybe even turning some profit. They hope to eventually profit either directly (through the selling of the bread), or indirectly (as A Person Who Helped Invent Emmer Bread), or ideally some combination of the two.

They are baking away, and honing their baking skills, and scrounging up the money for bigger and better ovens or cleverly-arranging discounted contracts for slightly-larger deliveries of wheat, and more and more bakers see this activity and wander over to their village, to see how this bread is made. Well, the current bakers are starting to sink under all of the bread orders they are receiving, and customers are complaining of late deliveries, so they start to ask the 10 visiting bakers, if they would like to also set up a bakery and take some of the production off of their hands.

We now have 25 bakers

The visiting bakers consider it and 5 agree and the rest wander off again, as they already are quite busy baking the bread they've always baked, and they aren't as certain of the possibility of growth, for this new type of bread.

The 5 additional bakers take a while to setup shop and assemble staff and place wheat orders and etc., but after a few weeks or months, they are also adding to the bread supply. There are now 25 bakers, all completely booked-out, producing bread. The price of bread has fallen, to $8/loaf.

And the bread they produced! All of the bakers competing for orders and expanding their product lines and customer base quickly lead to the white emmer bread being followed by whole-grain emmer bread, emmer dinner rolls, emmer-raisin bread, and even one rebel daring to bake spelt-emmer pretzels because... Well, why not? The customer, (who, at this point, is the person eating the bread), gets to decide which bread will be baked, and the pretzels sell like hotcakes.

The emmer hotcakes also sell like hotcakes.

No baker is making much (or any) money off of the baking, but they all can see where this will end up, so they are still highly motivated and continue to invest and innovate at breathtaking speed. We now have emmer baking mixes, "We luv emmer" t-shirts, emmer baking crowd-sourcing, all-about-emmer recipe books and blogs, etc. The bakers see this all as an investment, and cross-finance their fledgling businesses through selling other bread types, their spouse's day job, burning through their savings, or working Saturday night, stocking shelves at the grocery.

Everyone can be a winner! Everyone can find their niche-in-niche! Everyone can specialize! Private enterprise for every baker, who rises and falls on his own efforts alone! And although everyone was competing with everyone else, there was no bitterness, as everyone could clearly see that effort and reward were in some sort of balance.

We are now short 3

But, alas, that was not meant to be. The joy and harmony is short-lived.

A gigantic, wealthy foundation, who is dedicated to "ensuring much emmer bread will be baked, by financially supporting emmer bakers" enters the chat.

"We have seen that there is much baking going on, here, but just think how much better and more baking could be done, if we financed your baking! Isn't that clever? Then you could really concentrate on baking, instead of having to worry about financing your business or marketing your products. All you have to do, is apply to receive our baker's grant, by signing this form, acknowledging that you will only bake products containing nothing but emmer and you will otherwise support our mission. We promise to pay you $100/loaf."

The 2 people making spelt-emmer pretzels, and the 1 person making spelt-emmer cookies, refuse to sign on, and slink off, as they are very convinced of the rightness of including spelt. One emmer-purist baker refuses on some economic principle that nobody comprehends, and immediately turns around and goes back to work in their bakery, with their shoulders hunched. But the remaining 21 bakers happily apply for a baker's grant. The mixed-grain bakers are upset about the breakup of the emmer market, and spend some time sulking, before wandering off to the new, much-smaller, spelt bread market, that is setting up, down the street. Where they sell their bread for $6 and slowly go bankrupt.

And then there were 10

2 weeks go by. 4 weeks go by. Baking has slowed. The grant hopefuls hold a meeting, where they discuss the joys of baking. Baking slows further.

Everyone is too excited, to find out if their new Universal Customer will be paying for the bread they bake. $100 a loaf! Just think of it! All of the bakers quickly do the math and realize that they not only will turn a profit, they can buy themselves a nice house and a new car and...

Nobody listens to the complaints from The Old Customers, who are the useless individual people only paying $8, despite them slaving away, all day, in front of a hot oven. They should be happy that they are getting bread, at all! Instead they complain that the bread is dry, that the delivery is late, that the bottoms are burnt. Ingrates.

And, then, the big day arrives, and the foundation happily announces that they will be giving 10 lucky bakers a grant.

The bakers are stunned. It had seemed that all of the bakers would be getting the grants, not only part of them. But, of course, the Universal Customer looked through the applications and tried to spend its money wisely. Why give grants to 5 bakers, who all produce the same type of olive-emmer bread? Give it to one, and then tell him to produce 5 times as much bread. He is then the olive-emmer bread expert and they will simply keep loose tabs on him, to nudge him to bake the bread in a sensible manner. And, of course, he shall always focus on baking olive bread, as that is what the grant is for.

The bakers stroll off, to their bakeries. Those who baked olive bread and received no grant, close up shop, as they can see which way the wind is blowing. The other grantless bakers reformulate their bakery plans, to see if they can somehow market themselves as "grant-free bakers" and wonder at how long they can stand the humiliation of selling to demanding, fickle customers at $8/loaf, when others are selling at $100/loaf, to an indifferent customer who doesn't even eat it.

The happiest 10 bakers leave for another conference, and while they are gone, their bakeries burn down. Their grants continue to flow, regardless, and the actual bread eaters are now standing in line at the last few bakeries, paying $20/loaf.

The End.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

Young people, in Europe and America, started moving out at the turn of the last century. It wasn't a tradition, in those countries. Housing was formerly multigenerational, but people became steadily more transient, with industrialization and the following rise of office work and the concentration closer to cities.

Prior to then, housing (including rents) was prohibitively expensive, so everyone tried to stay in their parents' or employers' home, for as long, as possible. Both the "Go west!" and "Lebensraum!" slogans hint at that crowded past. People risked their lives, en mass, trying to find enough cheap land, to build their own home. Many people left Germany, and similarly crowded countries, to move to places like Texas, where you could own your own home and therefore marry without your employers' or parents' permission.

It is still common to have inheritance fueds, here, in Bavaria, with the children squabbling over who gets to "keep" the house and how much "payout" the other children will receive, as compensation. Because you cannot always simply move to a different home in the same area (there is little available land for building and nothing to rent), leaving the ancestral home can result in de facto banishment from the entire region.

Wages increased, after WWI created a tighter labor market, and governments and large corporations (receiving government subsidies) began building or subsidizing massive amounts of homes, while the size of each home shrank dramatically. Those factors combined to lower the relative cost of housing, to the individual purchaser.

But the resulting Baby Boom construction explosion so overwhelmed the housing and mortgage markets, that housing is a very unappealing long-term investment, now, as there is hardly anyone around, to move into those many homes, when the Boomers pass. Their children and grandchildren (if they have any) are much poorer than they are, and much fewer in number, which guarantees that the housing market in most areas will eventually begin to collapse, in real terms, as Boomers pass away, or attempt to downsize.

To stabilize prices and prevent fires or delinquency, governments will begin demolishing empty houses, as they already sometimes do, in the former East Germany. Former West Germany dealt with steadily-falling house prices by mass-importing foreigners and paying for their rent at above-market prices, to artificially reinflate the housing market, but it appears that the easterners had a more politically- and economically- sustainable model for ridding themselves of excess homes.

But the era of cheap housing is over, and will continue to be so, for the next 10-15 years, so young people increasingly stay home, well into adulthood. As some cultures now have "moving out", as a prerequisite to dating, their childrens' marriage rate has plummeted and, consequently, so has the birth rate.

@ 01d0bbf9:91130d4c

Chef's notes

Amazingly tangy, firey hot, but still mellow and bright.

I use this on everything– Use it to dress salads, dip (honey mustard) for fried chicken, elevate your taco nights, heck a spoonful first thing in the morning will wake you up better than coffee!

Don't forget to use up those delicious chilis and garlic, they are so good!

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 min
• 🍳 Cook time: 1-2 weeks
• 🍽️ Servings: (12x) 8oz jars

Ingredients

• 16oz fresh chili peppers
• 8oz red onion
• 8oz garlic
• 96oz honey
• Fresh thyme

Directions

1. Thinly slice peppers, garlic, shallots and fresh thyme
2. Add chopped ingredients to the honey
3. Leave to ferment (loosely covered) for 1-2 weeks
4. Drizzle that amazing pungent firey gold liquid over EVERYTHING. (Don't forget to use up those amazing chilis and garlic too.)

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/728382

@ e7211c22:e87afeee

Chef's notes

If you do one thing to improve your health in the kitchen, ditch the industrial seed oils and make your own mayonnaise. Make sure to use virgin coconut oil and extra virgin olive oil, not light or refined olive oil. That being said, use extra virgin olive oil from a lighter tasting olive variety, such as Arbequina, or mayonnaise will have a strong olive oil taste. Where do you get extra virgin olive oil from you may ask? Ugly olives, of course. The addition of yogurt and whey greatly extend the shelf life of your mayonnaise from 1-2 weeks to 1-2 months in the refrigerator, while adding beneficial probiotics. To spice up you mayonnaise, see end of directions.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 15 minutes
• 🍳 Cook time: 0 minutes
• 🍽️ Servings: lots

Ingredients

• 1 whole egg
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 Tbsp Grey Poupon
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dash white pepper
• 1/2 cup virgin coconut oil, warmed to liquid
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, from a lighter tasting olive variety, such as Arbequina
• 1 Tbsp plain yogurt
• 1 Tbsp whey

Directions

1. Mix first six ingredients in a bowl with an immersion blender or food processor.
2. Combine oils in pourable measuring cup.
3. Slowly, drip by drip, begin to add oil to first six ingredients while running immersion blender or food processor. If oil is added too quickly at first, emulsification will not occur and mayonnaise will be ruined.
4. Continue adding oil to first six ingredients drip by drip, increasing to slow drizzle, then thin stream, then steady stream. Take breaks pouring oil if necessary to completely blend in oils.
5. Add yogurt and whey. Refrigerate.
6. To spice up your mayonnaise: Sriracha mayonnaise - with first six ingredients add 1 clove garlic, mashed, 2 Tbsp sriracha, 2 Tbsp lime juice, and an additional 1/4 tsp salt. Chipotle lime mayonnaise - replace 1 Tbsp lemon juice with 1 Tbsp lime juice, with first six ingredients add 1 clove garlic, mashed, 1/4-1/2 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, 2 limes juiced and zested, and an additional 1/4 tsp salt.

@ 599f67f7:21fb3ea9

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Hona hemen nola funtzionatzen duen eta nola konfigura daitekeen:

Nola funtzionatzen du?

Nostr proxy batek hainbat erreleirekin konektatzen du. Errele horietara gertaerak eskuratu eta argitaratzen ditu. Bezeroaren aplikazioak WebSocket konexio bakarra ireki behar du proxy-ra, eta horren bidez proxy-ak konektatuta dituen errele guztiak eskuragarri izango ditu.

Irudiaren egiletza: Yonle 2023

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Proxy-ak bezeroaren izenean erreleekin konektatzen denez, erreleek proxy-aren IP helbidea ikusten dute, eta ez bezeroarena. (Hala ere, proxy hornitzailearengan konfiantza izan behar duzu).

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Orain ez duzunez zuzeneko konexioak behar, errele bikoiztuak ezabatu ditzakezu.

Ikusiko dugu elkar Nostr-en!

@ a9434ee1:d5c885be

1. Relay = Community?

If spinning up a relay is getting easier and cheaper by the day, why can't the relays literally be the group/community?

Then: * Any relay is by default a public community. The more restricted read- or write-access is, the more it becomes a private group. * Any publication targeted at (h-tag) and stored, and thus accepted, by a relay can be seen as a publication in that community. * All-in-1 hosting solutions (integrated blossom servers, lightning nodes, ...) are made easier.

2. Why invent new kinds?

Why can't Kind 1 posts that are targeted and accepted by a relay (i.e. community) just be the forum-posts of that community? Why create new kinds for this? And even weirder, why create a new kind with that exclusively serves as a reply to that new kind? Why not just use generic replies (kind 1111) and take the #otherstuff (event kinds and apps) as an opportunity to introduce those?

For chat messages, however, I get it. You need a kind + reply-kind for those.

3. Community VS Private group

It seems like the only distinction you really need, both for the user and the apps implementing all this, is:
1. Public Community: anyone can read and follow this community but for writing the admins can set limits (pricing, white listings, ...) 2. Private group: only the profiles that even know this relay (i.e. group) exists can interact with it. Read-access has to be granted (invite, pricing, ...) and admins can set limits for writing too. Beyond this distinction it's a bit naive to try to categorize them. Open vs Closed doesn't really mean much for example, since technically all groups/communities set limits and are thus closed. It's more interesting to look the ways in which they can be closed and build on the simplest distinctions you can make there.

The difference between Public communities and private groups is the most important one because they both have very different UX and specification requirements:

Memberlist

Communities: None existent
Anyone can read and follow. It just has limits on who can publish what, when. So the most interesting thing to surface is probable something like a list of most active members or a highlighted set of profiles that have special characteristics within this community (top supporter, god-mode, resident artist, ...).
Private Groups: Necessary for it's existence
The whitelisted npubs for read-access are the members.

Moderation actions

Both types of groups need a way for the admin(s) to:
* Block/remove users * Remove events * Edit metadata (name, description, guidelines...) * Specify who can write publish what, under what condition

Only private groups need a way for the admin(s) to:
* Add/approve new members → specify who has read-access, under what condition

Generalizing too many actions like add member, join request, etc... that are only applicable to one of these categories just creates bad UX for the other one. You don't "add a member" to a public community. People can follow it without asking anyone's permission (ok yes, some will AUTH for reading but that's besides the point). Some of its followers will then just choose to publish something there and the admin either allows them or not.

Having a common protocol for specifying the conditions for this write-access interoperably (as mentioned above) is what I would like to see instead: * Both Communities and Private groups need it anyway * You have to assume admins need granularity in the conditions they set for publishing in their group/community: Who, what, under what condition, ... * You don't want to link out to custom websites (or similar) explaining their allowance schemes

Sidenote: we need a similar kind of spec for the services that allow you to spin up your hosting solution (relay, server, node, ...) so that, when you click "Create new community" in an app, those services can be surfaced. With their business models (including options to self-host parts of it) just there, in the app, without linking out. Same for the lines of communication and payments that are needed to make those business models work from within any app.

Publication and Discovery

Only Communities allow for the exciting possibility of publishing something in multiple overlapping communities at once. Someone writing about how Bees are Capitalists can target their article at the communities that most overlap with its content (and with the author's means and write-access of course). Members of a community around beekeeping can organically discover content and communities on Austrian economics relevant to them.

With Private groups publication happens only in the group and discovery is blocked on purpose.

@ c69b71dc:426ba763

Chef's notes

This cashew blue cheese is a true plant-based delight, delivering the rich, tangy flavours you’d expect from traditional blue cheeses like Roquefort or Gorgonzola. The fermentation process, with the help of «Penicillium Roqueforti», creates a beautifully marbled, creamy cheese that’s both bold and complex. It’s a labor of love that rewards your patience with an unforgettable vegan cheese experience! Whether enjoyed on crackers, in salads, or simply on its own, this cheese will elevate any dish with its unique flavour profile.

Note 1: For this recipe you need parchment paper, a potent blender, glass jars with lid and two cheesecloths.

Note 2: Always use very clean tools, and avoid touching with your fingers or tasting with them while working on the cheese!

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 4-5 weeks
• 🍳 Cook time: 0
• 🍽️ Servings: Two small cheese loaves (2x 10-12 cm diameter)

Ingredients

• 300g raw cashews
• 3 tbsp water
• 3 tbsp kefir, kombucha or rejuvelac
• 2 tbsp coconut oil (raw, unrefined)
• 1-4 capsules vegan probiotics
• 1/2 tsp Himalayan salt (iodine-free, no additives)
• 1/16 tsp «Penicillium Roqueforti» (blue cheese mold culture)

Directions

1. Day 1: Soak 300g of cashews overnight in water.
2. Day 2: Rinse the soaked cashews thoroughly and let them drain well.
3. In a high-speed blender, combine the cashews, 3 tbsp of water, 3 tbsp kefir or rejuvelac, and 2 tbsp coconut oil. Blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
4. Add 1-4 capsules of vegan probiotics, 1/2 tsp Himalayan salt (free of iodine and additives), and blend again briefly.
5. Add a pinch (about 1/16 tsp) of «Penicillium Roqueforti» powder (blue cheese culture) and give it another quick mix.
6. Transfer the cashew mixture to a glass container, leaving the lid lightly on top (do not seal it completely) and store in a warm place, ideally in your kitchen, for 24 hours to ferment.
7. Day 3: Divide the fermented cashew mixture into two smaller glass containers lined with cheesecloth. Press the mixture down firmly to eliminate air pockets.
8. Store in a cool place (12-14°C / 53-57°F), ideally in a wine fridge.
9. Day 4: Remove the cheese from the containers, take off the cheesecloth, and turn the cheese onto parchment paper.
10. Sprinkle salt all over the cheese, ensuring it is evenly coated.
11. Cover the cheese with larger glass bowls, ensuring that air can flow from underneath, and return to the wine fridge or the cool storage area.
12. Days 4-7: Turn the cheese daily onto fresh parchment paper to maintain its texture.
13. Day 7 or 8: Pierce the cheese with a thicker wooden skewer to create holes, allowing oxygen to reach the center, encouraging the blue mold to grow throughout the cheese, not just on the surface.
14. Alternatively, crumble the cheese completely and then press it back into shape to ensure oxygen distribution.
15. Days 8 toaround 12 or 15: Once the blue mold has fully developed around and inside the cheese, wrap the cheese in parchment paper, place it in a wooden cheese box, and then wrap it in a cloth bag.
16. Transfer to a regular fridge to age for another 2-3 weeks or even several months, depending on your desired strength of flavour.

@ 03742c20:2df9aa5d

Strfry เป็นซอฟต์แวร์รีเลย์ที่ส่วนใหญ่เลือกจะติดตั้งใช้งานงานกันเนืองจากมันถูกเขียนด้วยภาษา C++ ทำให้รีเลย์มีขนาดที่เบาไม่กินทรัพยากรเครื่องมากอีกข้อดีคือรองรับ nip เยอะพอสมควร

ถ้าเราอยากจะเป็นเจ้ารีเลย์ Strfry บ้างล่ะต้องทำยังไง

วิธีติดตั้งรีเลย์ Strfry โดยใช้ Docker

อย่าลืมติดตั้ง Docker ให้เรียบร้อยก่อน

ดาวน์โหลดไฟล์ strfry.conf และโฟรเดอร์ strfry-db git clone https://github.com/notoshi404/nostr-relay-docker.git cd nostr-relay-docker/strfry แก้ไขไฟล์ strfry.conf sudo nano strfry.conf ``` . . relay { # Interface to listen on. Use 0.0.0.0 to listen on all interfaces (restart required) bind = "0.0.0.0"

# Port to open for the nostr websocket protocol (restart required)
port = 7777

# Set OS-limit on maximum number of open files/sockets (if 0, don't attempt to set) (restart required)
nofiles = 0

# HTTP header that contains the client's real IP, before reverse proxying (ie x-real-ip) (MUST be all lower-case)
realIpHeader = ""

info {
    # NIP-11: Name of this server. Short/descriptive (< 30 characters)
    name = "strfry"

    # NIP-11: Detailed information about relay, free-form
    description = "This is a strfry instance."

    # NIP-11: Administrative nostr pubkey, for contact purposes
    pubkey = "[Public_Key(hex)]"

    # NIP-11: Alternative administrative contact (email, website, etc)
    contact = ""

    # NIP-11: URL pointing to an image to be used as an icon for the relay
    icon = ""

    # List of supported lists as JSON array, or empty string to use default. Example: [1,2]
    nips = ""
}

. . ```

Public_Key(hex)

docker-compose.yaml services: strfry: container_name: strfry image: notoshi/strfry # original dockurr/strfry ports: - 7777:7777 volumes: - ./strfry-db:/app/strfry-db - ./strfry.conf:/etc/strfry.conf docker pull notoshi/strfry docker compose up -d เพียงเท่านี้เราก็ได้รีเลย์แล้ว

ถ้าใครอยากเปิดเป็น public ให้เพื่อน ๆ ใช้ด้วยอย่าลืมทำ proxy ใน nginx หรือใครไม่มี publicIP ก็ใช้ cloudflare tunnel ช่วยได้

มีข้อมูลจุดไหนผิดพลาดต้องขออภัยไว้ ณ ที่นี้ด้วยช่วยเสริมพูดคุยกันได้

หวังว่าบทความนี้จะเป็นประโยชน์ แล้วเจอกันใหม่ในครั้งจะพาทำเรื่องอะไรนั้นรอติดตามกัน

NOT YOUR RELAY NOT YOUR DATA

siamstr #nostr #relay

@ 1d5357bf:1bdf0a52

If Bitcoin Is in Its Infancy, Nostr Is Still in Its Nursing Stage Skepticism is healthy, especially within the Bitcoin community. At the moment, Nostr users are predominantly Bitcoiners, and it's understandable that people are cautious about adopting new technologies. However, based on my limited experience over the last few months, Nostr has shown immense potential and is evolving at a breakneck pace.

The Speed of Development: A Double-Edged Sword The rate at which new functionality is being rolled out on Nostr is staggering. On the one hand, this rapid development brings constant innovation and new tools for users to explore. On the other hand, it often means that many implementations still need refinement, or at the very least, better documentation. It's exciting, but there are still bumps in the road that need to be ironed out. Censorship Resistance and Relay-Based Architecture One of Nostr’s most appealing features is its decentralized architecture, which revolves around relays. This design ensures that the protocol is censorship-resistant. If you’re tech-savvy enough, you can even run your own relay, allowing you to retain full control of your notes. This distributed system empowers users by giving them the tools to protect their content and stay independent of centralized entities.

A Protocol, Not a Platform Nostr is not a platform—it's a protocol. This distinction is crucial because it enables a high degree of interoperability, which can pave the way for a diverse ecosystem of applications. This opens up a world of possibilities and allows for network effects to take hold as more people and applications begin to interact with the protocol.

Privacy and Control Another advantage is the ability to manage your privacy more effectively. With Nostr, you can use multiple nsec/npub keys, giving you more control over your identity and interactions. This flexibility is a game-changer in a world where privacy is often compromised by centralized platforms.

Areas for Improvement Of course, Nostr is not without its challenges. Many of the available applications feel unpolished, and spam is a growing issue (the infamous "reply guy" problem). The ephemeral nature of the content also presents a challenge—once you post something, you can't "put the toothpaste back in the tube," sort to speak.

Enjoying the Ride Despite its growing pains, I’ve found Nostr to be an enjoyable experience so far. There are no algorithms dictating what you see, which results in a signal-rich environment with minimal toxicity—for now, at least. It’s refreshing to engage in conversations that aren’t manipulated by unseen forces, and I look forward to seeing where Nostr goes from here.

@ e7211c22:e87afeee

Chef's notes

Originally from American Lamb Passport recipe booklet

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 30 minutes
• 🍳 Cook time: 20 minutes
• 🍽️ Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs ground mutton or lamb
• 1/3 cup yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano
• kosher salt, to taste
• 3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, finely chopped, plus 3 Tbsp sauce
• 4 cups cabbage, finely shredded
• 1 bunch radishes, thinly sliced
• 1 cup fresh pineapple, diced
• 4 green onions, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
• 1 lime, juiced
• corn tortillas, warmed for serving

Directions

1. In large skillet, brown lamb, onion, garlic, oregano, and 1 tsp salt. Add 1/3 cup water, chipotle chiles, and adobe sauce and stir to combine, scraping up any bits from the bottom of skillet. Cook for 2-4 minutes or until liquid evaporates and sauce clings to the lamb.
2. Toss cabbage, radishes, pineapple, green onion, and cilantro in a large bowl. Add lime juice and sprinkle with 1/2 tsp salt and toss to combine.
3. Spoon meat onto warm tortillas and top with a generous heap of slaw. Serve with other toppings such as avacado, sour cream, queso fresco, or pickles jalepenos.

@ 7f21affa:57e19174

Chef's notes

Oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 mins

Refrigerate the dough for 2+ hours

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: About 3-4 hours
• 🍳 Cook time: 20 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: 10

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 3 sticks of butter
• 2 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
• 2 tsp salt
• pinch of paprika/jalapeno powder (I use both)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 medium diced onion
• 1 diced red/green bell pepper
• 1 cup peas
• 4 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp red flakes
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 cup beef broth
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 diced white/russet potato
• 3 tbsp scallions
• 1 cup shredded cheese (mexican, fiesta, or cheddar)
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp water

Directions

1. In a pot, heat up 1 cup water with 3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups butter)
2. In a bowl, add 2 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 2 tsp salt, & pinch of paprika/jalapeno powder.
3. Once butter is melted in the pot, cool & transfer to the bowl.
4. Mix then wrap dough in plastic.
5. Refrigerate wrapped dough for 2+ hour till hardened.
6. Heat up large pot on medium heat, then add 2 tbsp oil.
7. Saute 1 lb ground beef
8. Leaving the beef juice, then scoop up cooked beef into metal bowl for later
9. Using the beef juice, saute diced yellow onion, diced bell pepper, 1 cup peas, 4 minced garlic cloves, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp redflakes, 1/2 tsp white pepper & 1/2 tsp cumin
10. Add 1/2 cup beef broth, 2 tbsp tomato paste
11. Add the cooked beef & diced potato
12. Lastly combine 3 tbsp scallions
13. Turn on oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit
14. Once dough in fridge has hardened, take out
15. Grab a golf ball sized piece of dough and start flattening with your hands
16. Dough should be around 5-6 diameter circle
17. Put about 2 tbsp of beef filling you made earlier & sprinkle with a little cheese
18. Crimp edges with fork
19. Brush the empanadas with egg wash (1 egg + 3 tbsp water mix) before putting in oven
20. Bake for 20 mins & enjoy!

@ 6bae33c8:607272e8

I woke up this morning, and neither the 40-minute edited version, nor the five-minute highlights were ready yet. No chance I’m gonna spend 3.5 hours on the full game, fast forwarding through commercials with my imprecise and not-very-responsive Apple TV remote. Especially not for this game.

I’m a little annoyed I switched from the Broncos to the Saints in my home picking pool, but that’s more than offset by my starting Javonte Williams in one of the first-place BCL leagues at the last minute. Checked the box score, was like, “Hell yeah!” Imagine having left him on the bench in the hopes Rhamondre Stevenson might play or Bucky Irving would get enough carries!

• I also picked up and used Mason Tipton for my Steak League team which lost Rashid Shaheed, has Chris Olave hurt and CeeDee Lamb on bye. That worked out too.

• It was nice to see Alvin Kamara do nothing. There are a lot of teams that got off to fast starts with him in their lineups. What a contrast between this destroyed version of the Saints and the team that came out of the gates so quickly.

• From the box score it looks like Spencer Rattler did a ton of dink and dunk, and took a bunch of sacks before getting hurt.

• Bo Nix’s box score looks like something out of the 1960s. I have Courtland Sutton in the one bad BCL — had to use him with Shaheed out — and it’s just as well. I can bury that Christian McCaffrey team at the bottom of the ocean.

• I don’t know what else to say about this game except that if your star corner (Patrick Surtain) had to miss a game, this was definitely the one to miss. And if the Game Pass had to be late in editing a game, it seems like this was a good one to miss too.I woke up this morning, and neither the 40-minute edited version, nor the five-minute highlights were ready yet. No chance I’m gonna spend 3.5 hours on the full game, fast forwarding through commercials with my imprecise and not-very-responsive Apple TV remote. Especially not for this game.

@ 59df1288:92e1744f

Hey folks, it's time to dive into the latest splash from our Nostr community, where conversation topics are more unpredictable than a cat meme-dominated feed! Who knew the collision of anime avatars and Bluesky escapades could inspire such a meme tsunami, evoking nostalgia from the anime floodgates of yore? Meanwhile, our resident astrologers are sparring over election predictions, oscillating between the trustworthiness of polls and the ever-enigmatic prediction markets—which might just be a precursor to our own cosmic comedy. And if you're planning to stay fit amidst all this digital drama, don't forget to hydrate—both your body and your curiosity, because you’re going to need it to soak up the full scoop of these lively exchanges.

Anime Ava-Lanche! 🎎

Alright, so the crew is having a laugh about fiatjaf's latest escapade on the Bluesky app. They're getting flooded with anime girl memes, and it seems to have sparked quite the chatter!

Npub1dq0vnsph9wpmp9pcsc6qj2l5h7xsjyxyxt5tsl986u3v4lncknnsf8yffq is all about those furries—furries everywhere! And npub12fp3f07wum5zlp5h8js9f5j99gx0mzjr0607hxanjsp6t50rpe2sap3k9z chimed in with a vent about how Instagram can be a softcore mess 😱. It's a whole debate on how some networks feed you all sorts of cringe right from the start.

Npub1gd8e0xfkylc7v8c5a6hkpj4gelwwcy99jt90lqjseqjj2t253s2s6ch58h thinks it's all a bit better for anime lovers, though! But even they admit maybe we shouldn't be seeing everyone else's side hobbies. Meanwhile, npub1wrrzte0nd3ulxufnwqvyrn6te72jtxv9sfymmxj0mrn7dprdmr7s42pnt6 is throwing threads under the bus too! 😂

And then there's npub1nshq4pcyzdmnewg4h8yu6tsuh5t72whzkz5x4wj7t0c0cy7yyrfqq2cgnl comparing it to the early Nostr days when all you saw was "Bitcoin this, Bitcoin that." Honestly, this whole thread has been one big meme party.

Npub1uvx00x8svjwma2zhddwpthyke6zc3rrxqg5gj8mxdjv77zvwmz2qgw603z and npub1yj69jq9f977y2f7vl96m6stf3rjyf3hym8ekf3g4senlqamz8l3qfsvhk7 have even got someone named Rexy pulling out the dino-emoji game! 🦖

Looks like everyone had a blast dissecting these digital dilemmas. Don't miss out on the animated antics!

Check out the full convo here

Election Predictions and Polymarket Drama 🎰

So, Rabble kicked off an interesting chat about prediction markets and their huge role in election outcomes, especially how they're diverging from the typical polls in the upcoming U.S. elections. 🍿 The convo got spicy, with claims of one person possibly trying to sway things in favor of Trump! 🇺🇸

utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 chimed in, thinking polymarket folks might just be more into Trump. Then, npub193jegpe9h0csh7al22mkcstqva2ygyny7ura8kwvrn4tsmtnl4lsrxny6k jumped in, saying these predictive methods rock harder than polling. Plus, they pointed out the wild reality that neither side will claim this election has been stolen for once. Isn't that a plot twist? 🤔

npub1468024mrwz6uhywjvt8s6vw4e604egnv8tfd2m2utrmqyd3nu3fsutvgjn kept it real by insisting it’s all about managing expectations. As always, npub14pfjj6jf8y702pdjar2q36ve5r4t2gu2lp4yma00j49jkgy7d90swg7mwj added a layer of complexity, comparing the poly market to a derivative of the polls. Basically, it's all a numbers game and perception is key! 🎲✨

npub1melv683fw6n2mvhl5h6dhqd8mqfv3wmxnz4qph83ua4dk4006ezsrt5c24 wanted to mix things up with prediction markets on Nostr with zaps. That’s a new twist that could definitely shake things up! 🚀

Check out the full convo here

🎲 Predicting Election Predictions 🎲

Hey, guess what our pals on Nostr have been debating! It's all about predicting election outcomes and whether we can trust polls or those shiny prediction markets. 🗳️ npub13pdlcgrk7xpfwwcy2qjyt92jxvhkw3mh9k27zvs0jvfxa0ch88zs6sx3yr dropped some serious knowledge on data analysis and how the media might twist things, even diving into data rabbit holes. Who knew stats could be so wild?

npub1s0fs9dwztm2rukm42vh6df4a5gwykclf75tgyeuc75t0cs2eh8rsu2rqf5 threw shade at US election integrity, basically saying it's like betting on a dice roll. 🎲 Not his cup of tea, clearly. Then Moon chimed in, saying prediction markets are like a hive mind but can still get distorted. 🤨

Rabble added to the mix, hinting at potential profits from manipulation - cheeky, right? 💸 And while Moon thinks our election gridlock is part of some grand design, npub1s0fs9dwztm2rukm42vh6df4a5gwykclf75tgyeuc75t0cs2eh8rsu2rqf5 outright disagrees, casting major doubt on voting machines and exit poll suppression.

Honestly, with all this drama, it's clear nobody's getting a fortune teller gig anytime soon. 😂

Check out the full convo here.

Nostr Gossip: Search Magic and Purple TestFlight Buzz

Hey there! 🎉 So, there's been some fun chatter happening on Nostr lately. Our friend vrod kicked off an interesting convo about the new search feature. seth jumped in, all confused about finding old notes, thinking they were lost forever. 😅 But The: Daniel⚡️ swooped in, showing off some wizardry 🧙‍♂️ and got everybody amazed at how good it is now!

Meanwhile, damus dropped some deets about the new Damus TestFlight. They've got a big push on getting buddies to try it out and help make things better (or "unsuck" them, in his own words). Moon chimed in, querying if all this TestFlight jazz is necessary if you're already in Nostr Purple. Sounds like there's a lot of buzz and people are keen to see what's new! 🚀

Catch up with the full convo here.

🤔 Nostr Notes & Sneaky Sneak Peeks

Hey! So, in the latest buzz, vrod kicked things off with some excitement about a new #damus search feature, telling folks to dive into the past with their favorite #bangers. Seems like the search is the talk of the town! Gerardo was kind of surprised, like, "Whoa, there's a search now?" and npub1x8gv0umecuecqvd46tnvpthzls6zd62aeuvc0fwxg6z8pjf4jtmqda95xh was all about the hype, calling it lit with fire emojis. 🔥

npub14yf4yasnqgpkzjrzhysshglf82e8nkp8r9sn5hzqu4n244k3avtshhwpyu seemed a bit amazed too, having just sent a DM about this—talk about timing, right? They were peeping around with the eyes emoji and a purple heart. vrod reassured everyone it's always been there but got a sleek update, suggesting the universe view. Sounds fancy! And Gerardo was impressed, saying, "Oh snap!" It’s like hugs all around for the team!

Check out the full convo here.

Stewarding the Digital Spaces and Local Market Buzz 🌐

In today's Nostr catch-ups, it looks like everyone's chatting about community building and the ins-and-outs of local marketplaces. There's a cool convo led by some friend's take on how digital spaces need a steward, kind of like how physical communities have their leaders. Seems like npub1m2u4v2jtz4np0y3lk2anr4vm4vr4l7jlr7y94qglhfrgewsczchqg6y2gl is trying to "purple pill" or "orange swallow" Facebook marketplace fans into Nostr markets. Sounds like a scheme, but apparently, it's all about trying new things in the digital trading space. Then, schmijos shared that local second-hand exchanges are buzzing there, while npub1mvfmxhy4mfujqpjawsnp4ucsa03chrau4ly9u5js35n5r3f48wjqcks7g2 is super bullish on $NOSTR. 🙌

Check out the full convo here.

Pumping Iron and Healing Vibes 💪

Meanwhile, vrod kicked off a chat about their workout regime that's got everyone sharing their fitness journeys. mcshane is dealing with some medical things but isn't letting it stop them from staying active—lifting when it doesn't hurt and dreaming of jiu-jitsu in November. 😅 Meanwhile, npub1ruj546gf5d4sqqxrk68ndwf245tg73fjwfwhekdk0adsjzy0yyjsrzsqw2 offers up a solid reminder: sometimes resting up is the best medicine, which is hard for mcshane to accept!

Check out the full convo here.

App Store Frustrations 📱

Lastly, dtonon had a mini-rant about trying to test Strike. It's apparently distributed through the app store but isn't showing up as available in their region—frustrating, right? Gotta love that regional availability drama!

Catch you up soon with more Nostr tea! ☕

All About the APK Obsession 📲

So, npub1qqsvf646uxlreajhhsv9tms9u6w7nuzeedaqty38z69cpwyhv89ufcqpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj70v5n7z was super curious about getting direct access to some APKs and suggested zap.store might be the place. It turned into a little Q&A sesh with npub16v82nr4xt62nlydtj0mtxr49r6enc5r0sl2f7cq2zwdw7q92j5gs8meqha wondering if Strike is open-source, and dtonon looking for those trustworthy download spots. 🤔 Thanks to Derek Ross, some clarity emerged around APK Mirror, with a little nod to some past buddy vibes. 😄

Check out the full convo here.

---

Random Trivia Madness 😂

Vitor Pamplona shared some random trivia goodness that had npub1xjtu3nk7m7zsxh4wj0apf3xlcl532xqfw2znte4748sxw3s2rlhqcuemqn chuckling and loving the unexpected info drops. npub1smreuk4gcs0k3jdz8zzckzxy6c7pkr8x6nafd5e2jr0jt0vrkpeqvpxn8w simply didn't need this kind of enlightenment, while npub16pcgz3fct9znjcv37sn7zdrtk4xgjsgla7rm6dz82y9syashr7mq7nafu7 threw in a "slow worm" comment to keep things mysterious. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Check out the full convo here.

---

October Mysteries and Gear Talks 🏕️

elsat dropped a little heart-eyed emoji, sparking a convo about upcoming weather surprises. plebiANON was wowed and pondered about October norms, and laughed about those unprepared jeans-and-tennis-shoes folks. NGMI moments, right? 😂

Check out the full convo here.

---

Countdown Snapshots ⏱️

emperor's new groove brought up a neat 07min56s snapshot! npub1hee433872q2gen90cqh2ypwcq9z7y5ugn23etrd2l2rrwpruss8qwmrsv6 was in the comments twice, hinting at some Japanese-related intrigue. Are we talking translations, or is there some other story behind the scenes? 🤔

Check out the full convo here.

---

Tech Troubles and Feature Fun 🎉

Hey there! So, here's the scoop on our pals' latest Nostr chats. Everyone's been buzzing, and here's what you missed!

In the first chat, vrod kicked things off, trying to figure out some version stuff for TestFlight. But no worries, SimplestBitcoinBook swooped in saying their update worked like a charm, complete with a happy emoji! 🎉

Then, vrod was hyping up a purple-themed test that's about to go public. TKay was so excited about a new feature and wondered why it wasn't the talk of the town! But our friend, vrod, playfully hinted at some sneaky marketing tactics with a cheeky hashtag. 😅 #Unmarketing

Moving on, there was some experimenting with image uploads — everyone's favorite dog content was making the rounds! npub14yf4yasnqgpkzjrzhysshglf82e8nkp8r9sn5hzqu4n244k3avtshhwpyu chimed in, fascinated by some pretty eyes, and got a loving emoji nod from npub1xwwmvty3er863uy9lz03zhc6m9wlzr88f9esywdkq4xjg5en9yyqktl3nz 🥰

But wait, there's tech talk too. danieldaquino wanted to know what device TKay was using, which turned out to be an iPhone 14 Pro Max — ooh, fancy! The scrolling speed on Damus was praised, and there was a hint that the mechanics might've changed... but it's likely just their phone being picky. 😁

Finally, a doozy on social platforms: Rabble brought up how folks are jumping ship from Twitter to Bluesky due to changes in blocking features. npub1kpwmzh57k9nyae54myvw8204r5a0mw47egtmsxewytm2qtxltdsqww0yvj was a bit skeptical, surprised at the motivations for leaving Twitter behind.

Check out the full convo here

Who's Sending What? 🤔

In a brain-bending twist, tyiu explained how you can be both the sender and receiver of a message if you send a copy to yourself. A real "wait, what?" moment! calvadev⚡️ chimed in, finally understanding how all the DM secrecy works, thanking tyiu for clearing the air. The crew's gearing up for some serious tech shifts to upgrade their chatting game. 🚀

Check out the full convo here

The Job Hunt Hustle 💼

elsat threw out a mysterious job offer, and npub1njst6azswskk5gp3ns8r6nr8nj0qg65acu8gaa2u9yz7yszjxs9s6k7fqx, ever the spirited one, dove right in saying, "Fuck it, I'll do it. When do I start?" 😂 Meanwhile, npub18gyx2szjxlm3m853fch0z4u3257cftlw3mn22l9c7afu50qse0jq67lymq cracked a joke about getting paid in "experience" and "exposure". Classic banter, got to love it!

Check out the full convo here

Smart Card Mysteries🔍

elsat was a bit puzzled about a new product floating around the chat. Semisol came to the rescue, explaining it's a cool smart card that supports all kinds of fancy tech stuff like NFC and xprvs. Plus, you can secure it with a PIN code. They've tweaked the survey for clarity, so hopefully, there won't be any more head-scratching moments!

Check out the full convo here

Video Player Vibes 🎬

vrod teased the group with news of a brand-new video player coming to #damus soon. Everybody’s curious about what it might bring to the table, and it’s got folks buzzing on what might be next for their viewing pleasure. Is it going to revolutionize how we watch stuff? Only time will tell, but anticipation's in the air! 🍿

Check out the full convo here

Damus Lovers Unite! 😍

So, our buddy 4evangeli0n was raving about sticking with #Damus despite some pesky video player hiccups. They're all in for the long haul, cheering on the growth and celebrating the freedom that comes with #nostr. Loyalty level: 100!

Jumping in with a boost of good vibes, vrod simply threw in a heartfelt "Thank you! 💜" showing some love right back. You know, just spreading the positive energy all around. 🙌

Check out the full convo here

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

Sometimes you have to take risks to grow. What's the biggest risk you've ever taken that ended up paying off.

My biggest risk that paid off was moving to another country and starting a new life 10 years ago due to corruption and torture in my home country.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/728159

@ 7ab1ed7a:f8e15275

I'm proud and thankful to announce that funding has been granted by OpenSats to fund the development of the Nostr library for Arduino.

The fund will help with work on the development of the Arduino Nostr library as well as fund work on IoT related NIPs.

@ 4ba8e86d:89d32de4

Ele oferece a opção de utilizar autenticação de dois fatores para aumentar ainda mais a segurança. O aplicativo foi desenvolvido em 2016 pelo americano Mo Bitar para oferecer um lugar seguro para armazenar informações pessoais sem a preocupação de que seus dados sejam coletados ou expostos a terceiros.

O Standard Notes é um cofre de aço para seus dados mais confidenciais, que protege suas anotações e arquivos com criptografia de ponta a ponta líder do setor e auditada 4x. Armazene com segurança todos os seus dados confidenciais em um só lugar e acesse-os de todos os seus dispositivos, com a certeza de que seus dados estarão sempre protegidos pelos mais altos padrões de segurança.

Ao contrário de outros serviços de anotações, o Standard Notes apresenta medidas de segurança avançadas e controles de privacidade que protegem seus dados contra hacks, violações de dados, acesso do governo e até mesmo acesso de funcionários. Ele defende a privacidade dos usuários e apresenta políticas revisadas por pares e auditáveis.

O Standard Notes utiliza criptografia de ponta a ponta para proteger todos os dados, que são criptografados sempre que tocam um disco, como em seus servidores ou no dispositivo do usuário. Auditorias independentes são realizadas periodicamente em sua criptografia, aplicativo e código do servidor para garantir que os dados estejam protegidos. O código aberto do Standard Notes permite que os usuários tenham clareza sobre como seus dados estão sendo tratados em cada etapa do caminho. Ele não coleta ou armazena informações do usuário, como endereço IP ou agente do usuário, para proteger a privacidade.

1. Acesse a F-droid ou Google Play Store em seu dispositivo Android.

2. siga as instruções para criar uma conta ou fazer login em uma conta existente.

3. Comece a criar suas notas e armazenar outras informações importantes com a tranquilidade de que seus dados estão seguros e protegidos.

https://github.com/standardnotes

@ af9c48b7:a3f7aaf4

Chef's notes

This recipe originates from Meat Church BBQ. It's simple to make and tastes great if you like spicy food. While this recipe is for chicken, I feel that it would be just as good on skirt steak or other poultry.

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 25 minutes
• 🍳 Cook time: 20 minutes
• 🍽️ Servings: 8-10

Ingredients

• 8-10 Chicken Thighs ( Boneless Skinless)
• 26 oz Can Pickled Jalapeno Peppers (La Costena Brand Whole Jalapenos Recommended)
• 1 Stick Unsalted Butter
• 8oz Bottle Cholula Hot Sauce
• Fajita Seasoning (Meat Church Dai De La Fajita Seasoning Recommended)
• 8 Slices of Cheese (Cheddar, Pepper Jack, Whatever You Like... recommend Colby PepperJack)

Directions

1. Combine boneless skinless chicken thighs in a ziplock back with the entire can of pickled jalapeno peppers. Marinate for up to 24 hours based on desired spicyness.
2. Once marinate time has ended, remove chicken thighs and pat dry. Season both sides of chicken with the fajita seasoning and allow 15 minutes to adhere. Save the jalapeno peppers for grilling.
3. While the meat rests, melt one stick of unsalted butter and mix with the 8oz of Cholula Hot Sauce.
4. Cook the chicken on a hot grill, turning and basting the chicken regularly. This will insure a good char and ensure they chicken cooks evenly. Cook the chicken until the internal tempurature reaches 165.
5. Place cheese over each piece of chicken and melt thoroughly. Remove chicken and grilled jalapenos from the grill.
6. This dish pairs well with a toasted bun and mayo if desired, or as a stand alone main dish.

@ 7ab1ed7a:f8e15275

I've started building an IoT DVM simulator. It's written in TS and uses Deno for simplicity.

The project will be used to test the ideas in and support the NIP 90 PR.

https://github.com/blackcoffeexbt/nostriot-dvm-simulator

It has a basic plugin architecture so we can test a whole suite of how different IoT commands can work easily (config, intents, sensors, all the things).

This is the current, very basic roadmap for this project:

• [ ] Announce capabilities via NIP 89

• [ ] Respond to DVM job requests

• [ ] Accept payments for DVM job requests

I'll also be working on a basic - for now - IoT DVM client that can be used to interact with IoT DVMs.

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the full AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127 featuring George Manolov!

If you'd like to support us, check out https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/ for our books, merch, and more!

Welcoming George Manolov

Luke: George, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, thank you for joining us.

George: Thank you, Knut.

Knut: Good to have you here, George.

George: to be here, yeah.

you're here to tell us about the city that I was most surprised by ever. Like, I've never heard of the city before I went to Bulgaria, Yeah, time flies.

Knut: So Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which was amazing, this rich, Thousands of years of history plays with a lot of different eras and different styles of architecture and stuff, really enjoyed Plovdiv, and you have a football team there.

George: yeah, indeed.

George Manolov and Botev Plovdiv

George: Please give us the story about George and Plovdiv Yeah, sure.

Knut: Plovdiv.

George: Sure, sure. So, Plovdiv is, well, I would say it's the oldest living city in Europe, so continuously inhabited. Like you say, not many people know it. I guess, like, we don't have good enough marketing, but, that's probably part of my job right now, right? To spread the word about it. so it's, like the second largest city in the country.

And, yeah, it's just this, it's very, like, I love how you put it because almost nobody has really heard of Plovdiv, right? Most people, when they hear of Bulgaria, they've probably heard of Sofia but Sofia is, okay, but Plovdiv is kind of the chill place, Plovdiv is the place that is actually worth visiting, the place where, people just enjoy going there.

I was born there, right? and, grew up there till 18 or so, then, Studied, lived in Sofia most of the time. And, last year, in kind of summer, I was already kind of way deeper into Bitcoin. I decided I'm going to go full time into Bitcoin, just commit all my time in Bitcoin at the time, educating, publishing books in Bulgarian about Bitcoin, creating my own educational platform.

And then I got, reached out and connected really to the owner of the football club in the city, which is also the oldest football club in the country, Botev Plovdiv, who was, well, he got introduced into Bitcoin himself and he realized it's going to be a very big, project. You know, going to play a central role in where the world is going.

Knut: What is this the owner of the club?

George: That's right. The owner of the club. was like, Hey, I think we can do something unique with Bitcoin because, you know, the club is really a company, right? It's a business on the one hand, but it's a special type of business, it's not where just you produce a certain product or service.

It's really a living organism where people are involved into it, for very emotional reasons. people feel like it's their own and it's not like a small group of people. It's a very large group of people. In our case, we have tens of thousands, arguably more than a hundred, 200, 000 people who care, who watch, who follow the club.

And so on the one hand, like there's many different ways in which we can look into this, but on the one hand. It's for me, what really inspired me and what got me like, Oh my God, like, is this really happening is that we can bring the conversation about Bitcoin from a completely different angle into society to a group of people who for the most part would never really They would like this, they would never listen to podcasts like this, they would never get to any of the kind of places and things we listen to, watch, consume, right?

and people go, You know, people go kind of for bread and circus, right,

Knut: yeah, yeah.

George: for the games. That's what really football is, right? It's fun and it's emotion, it's enjoyment, but then we push them censorship resistance and hard money, right?

And we don't really push it, you know, that's the thing, right? Because are like consistently, progressively, gradually over time, introducing it and finding the best way and the most appropriate way to, yeah, plant that seed. To the minds of the people, into the views of the people and so on and so forth.

so it's really like, you know, what we're trying to build is, we feel we're in a very privileged position, right? because we've been, the first really professional sports club globally, I would say, to have, uh, crypto Bitcoin, you know, people, departments, who is actually full time employed to, you know, think of a way to grow the business, to think of a way to integrate Bitcoin natively, within the various aspects of, of, of the organization, which obviously initially includes like accepting payments and so on and so forth.

But, um, but there's so much more you can do exactly with this type of, Like organization, again, like not, not, not just a business in a traditional sense.

Knut: Yeah. And, uh, won the league, right? Is that, is that right?

George: Yeah, man, like it's, uh, yeah, so we, um, when I started last year, things were super bad. Like exactly one year ago, I was there for the, for one of the first games. It was horrible. Like, I was like, okay, this is a great idea, but if the team is doing so bad and if, uh, if they keep losing and if the fans keep getting, you know, being unhappy, Um, it's not gonna go anywhere, but still, I gave it a, I gave it a go, right, because I was like, okay, I just hope that the sports side guys are going to do their, their part, and I have my opportunity here, um, to, to just like push, to educate, to, To do what, what, what life is giving me an opportunity to do.

And, uh, very fortunately, as we started working, the team started performing better and better and better. We got a completely new coach. We got a new sports director. We, we had a lot of key staff changes across the organization, which, Um, relatively quickly started showing results. So, uh, yeah, like, 10 months later in May, we won the Bulgarian Cup.

Luke: Is that the cup or the league? Like, uh,

George: it's the cup, it's the cup. So, so, I was saying, like, we started very bad in the league. And so, we were doing better and better, but still, like, we finished 9th in the league out of 16 clubs at the end of the day. But which was still okay, because, like, when I joined, like, we were, like,

Luke: Worried about relegation or something like that?

George: there. I mean,

Knut: We're complete, uh, like I've tried to take an interest to football, but like, uh, my ADD just, the brain just wanders away after five minutes and I can't concentrate anymore. So I don't

Luke: a basketball fan.

Knut: Am I now?

Football for Noobs

Knut: Uh, so, uh, what's the difference between the cup and the league? Let's begin there. That's, that's how much of a football noob I

George: So, so pretty much in every country is the same, right? You have a league or a championship where you have, in our case, 16 teams, and every team plays twice against every other team. So home game, away game, and then, you know, you either win three points when you win, or you lose, or you draw, and you, you, you win one point.

And then, so after you play, after you play, in our case, this, what is it, games? You know,

Luke: 30.

George: yeah, about 30. Yeah, right. You're better than Matt, it's obvious. So, um, so once you play these 30 games, um, you, um, yeah, like the team with the most points wins, right? Whereas, uh, the cup is direct elimination

Knut: So quarterfinals, semifinals, all that.

George: exactly. So it's the easier way. So this was the way for us to due to the bad start of the season. This was the way for us to, to achieve something in this season and to achieve something important because what the Cubs gives us as an opportunity and gave us was to play in the European Leagues.

So UEFA Leagues. And we just did that. We played six games. Uh, for the Europe, uh, Europe League and the Europe Conference League.

Knut: Okay. But to, to be in the champions league, that's a totally, you have to, yeah, yeah. You have to win the league and you have to win all sorts of stuff. Like how does that work?

George: yeah. You have to win the league. And then in our case, so in every country it's different, but in our case, we have to win, like we go to qualifications for the Champions League. So it's like, I mean, three to four games. And if we win that, we go to the Champions League.

Knut: Alright,

George: That's the current state of affairs, although that can change over the years.

Knut: alright, uh, it all makes sense to me now, that's a lie, but anyway.

Luke: No, uh, I'll definitely, we'll acknowledge here that I'm more of the, the sports fan, uh, generally here, and I, I follow football, I like, uh, I like European, uh, football, uh, well, and obviously I'm using the correct, uh, term despite my, um, my pseudo American accent, uh. Yeah, anyway, um, uh, no, it's fantastic to see, and I mean, yeah, for the non sports fans, uh, listening to this, I get that

Knut: Well, I am a sports fan, it's just that Starcraft 2 is my sport, and yeah, yeah,

Luke: yeah,

George: eSports.

Knut: yeah, yeah, so I watch, watch Starcraft 2 games. That's what I do for procrastination sometimes.

Luke: valid sports, I'm not going to compare it to other things that aren't

Knut: breakdancing? Is that a valid sport?

Luke: Breakdancing is, um, hmm, interesting. I think anything with points, that judges give points, is kind of not a sport, it's an activity.

Knut: yeah.

Luke: but, yeah, anyway,

Knut: thing to do.

Luke: is a thing to do, yes, definitely, but back to, back to, um, um, Botev Plod, is it Botev, Botev, what's, what's, Botev, Botev Plod, yeah, so, so, um, yeah, yeah, like, the, the, the achievement, winning, winning the cup, I mean, the, The cups are sort of more difficult.

They're both difficult in their own way, right? Like, the cup, you lose one game, you're out, basically, right? But, I mean, the league is like this endurance, achievement, right? You have to perform well over the course of the whole season. But the cheat code, so to say, and I probably subconsciously used the other football team's terminology, who's in the space, Real Bedford, um,

Botev Plovdiv's Bitcoin Strategy

Luke: The, the idea right, if, if I'm getting it, is that you guys would, would keep the Bitcoin in the, in the, the treasury, the, the company, and then over the course of time it's just gonna do the number go up thing and, and the, the club will have more resources.

Right. Is that, is that the idea you're thinking with the, the bitcoin strategy?

George: There's actually many, many things to it. And this is kind of the most, let's say, vanilla type of approach. Yeah, like just buy Bitcoin and hold it on the balance sheet, which is, which is great. But there's actually so many other things you can do. And that's where, because if you just do that, frankly, like, I mean, you don't need me involved, right, much.

I mean, just call Coinbase, whatever, wire the money, crack in and, buy. but with us it's like, really, uh, we see a huge opportunity to, first of all, align our brand with the Bitcoin brand, which is a royalty free, uh, The biggest brand in finance, for sure. One, uh, like it's going to be the biggest brand in the world for sure at some point.

Right. So that's, that's one play. And to do this, it's not enough for you to just buy Bitcoin and hold it on a balance sheet. It's what you need to do is proof of work, right? You need to do things that nobody has ever done. You need to really kind of be creative. Uh, and, and, um, to push the boundaries of what anyone has ever done before, right?

So, so that is, uh, that is my kind of job and it's a lot of, um, a lot of just like, let's, let's think of what, what new things we can do with Bitcoin and sports and football that nobody has ever done. Just because others are focused on the short term things, they're focused on, hitting those, those quick wins, those quick goals, which is why, for example, like a lot of the sports and, and that have, you know, interact, they haven't really interacted outside of Bedford with Bitcoin, right?

It's mostly been crypto because it's just, okay, let's make some quick money. Um,

Luke: usually, it's usually just sponsorships, right?

Knut: yeah,

George: yes. Um, and for us, because on the one hand, like, we're not like Manchester United, right? We're not Chelsea. So we don't have that much to monetize immediately. Like we're a large club, but.

Luke: You're a large club in a local league, which is, which is different from the, it's not one of the leagues that is internationally positioned like that. But, but, I mean, the, the difference between you guys and Bedford that I, that I think is, is really interesting. Like, McCormack, what he, Peter McCormack, what he's doing, I mean, he's, he's taking a club from the bottom and aiming for the top.

But who knows how long that's going to take him to get there, right? But you guys are already in the top of your league, right? Like, in the top league.

George: right, yeah, and also there's, there's different in this, we're in the top of our league. My goal, personally, is to go to Champions League, but this is very hard, right? Because, like, okay, when you start from Peter's ground, like, it's easy, okay, every year you level up, you level up, or, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's easy, but it's easier than, uh, than once you're, you know, at our level.

For us, it's important to play currently every year in European leagues like we've done so far and to every year consistently, like, increase the level of the sports, level of the business department bit by bit, and, but like breaking that point where we, you know, win the league, Where we win several more games and enter the Champions League, that, that's really hard.

I mean, because you're already at that stage where everybody, like, so many teams are so strong, right? So it's um, it takes just a lot of ingredients for you to, to, to hit, uh, in order to win. But we're gonna get there.

Knut: and does the club self custody it's bitcoin? And if so, is it a something out of 11 multisig, that sounds like a football thing?

George: Why so? Ah, yeah, an 11? Nah, nah, fuck that. I mean Nah, even, even 7 Motosick is a, is a killer, but no. Um, yeah, I can't really speak too much about this at this point. Yeah. Um, but, um, but yeah, I mean, we do, of course we do self custody. So that's, that's the approach that we've chosen with kind of a lot of, um, we've chosen to go really pure, pure Bitcoin in terms of the strategy.

And that's how we set ourselves apart. That's how we believe we win the long game because for instance, like we Bitcoin with BTC pay server. Which in my mind they don't even have competition. It's the only like, real, solid, autonomous, sovereign way to accept payments. And it's also the way which makes sense for like, Frankly, any standard business, because like, man, we're selling scarves, we're selling, um, membership boat cards, we're selling jerseys, we're selling basic merch, and if we are to sell it with basically any other service out there, outside of BTC Pay Server, we have to basically, uh, indirectly do KYC, right?

Like, we have to go through KYC, we have to go through KYB, which is ridiculous, um, in my mind. And so, um, so that's why we're exceptionally thankful to B2C Pay Server guys, uh, for what they've built. Uh, it's been like an absolute pleasure to, um, to use their product, to use their service. Uh, we have, you know, outside of B2C Pay, we, uh, we are the first, uh, sports club on Nostr.

Where, uh, we have, uh, actively been posting, exploring, you know, meeting people here. Kind of thinking of what we could do from our angle again, like first, first time on Nostr.

Aqua WAllet

George: Um, we have partnered with, uh, Aqua, JAN3's Aqua wallet, which has a, a Botive skin mode now. So if you go to settings, you can turn Botive mode and then it turns into the colors of the club and, you know, have the picture of the stadium there.

Um,

Luke: I'm using Aqua right now because, uh, uh, usually I like to use Aqua as like a sort of a middle wallet, uh, uh, because it's still slightly slower than other lightning wallets because they, they, the, everything actually lives on, on liquid and then they, they, uh, go out via bolts. Uh, so it's slightly slower than a faster, um, like, like than other, um, more direct lightning wallets.

And so usually when I come to a conference, I'm going to load up a, like a temporary. I don't know, Blink or something like that, but I forgot to do that, so I'm just using my Aqua wallet, and you know what, it's been great here, it's been working, uh, so yeah, we're big fans of Aqua wallet and what

Knut: Yeah, and a BTC pay server. I mean, uh, we can echo everything you said that we, BitcoinInfinity. com, like, and the store here We just fired up. Everything is powered by a BTC pay server, and we just love it. Yes.

Luke: So what was your question about, uh, Aqua?

George: If yours is on BOTEV mode.

Luke: Uh, I don't think I've gone into the settings and changed it to Vaudev mode, I'll have to do that, maybe we'll take

George: It's dark mode,

but cooler.

Luke: Doc dark mode, but cooler. Okay. Okay. Actually that's a, that's a, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. We'll take a, we'll take a picture after, uh, after the episode and we'll de proof, bot, uh, bot e mode, and, uh, uh, post that on Nostr.

How does that sound?

George: Let's go.

Knut: Yeah. Nostr. Um, is there a connection there between both a plot and Nostr while you're doing Nostr stuff as well?

History and Freedom

George: Yeah. Well, look, um, a lot of these things is like, so What Botev Plovdiv stands for, um, very importantly, so the club was named after Hristo Botev, who's, uh, like, one of the most Bulgarians, if the most famous Bulgarian revolutionaries, like, historical figure, uh, he was a poet, he was a revolutionary, he fought for Bulgaria's freedom back in the day,

Luke: Which, which day, which, what day did you

George: uh, 110, uh, what is it, like, 50 years ago or so?

Yeah.

Knut: Mm-Hmm?

Luke: Okay. So, so

Knut: before the Commes.

Luke: ottoman, uh,

George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he, he, he fought for the, for the liberation of Bulgaria from, from the Ottoman Empire. And a lot of what he stands for is this fight for freedom, his fight for liberty. Um, and this, this lives until this very day into the identity of the club and to what we stand for into the songs, into the, into the music.

Um, you know, um, the kind of like what, what our fans also resonate with, um, and, and what they sing like in many, in many ways. Right. So, um, Freedom of speech, freedom of, uh, of like freedom in general is, is a value that is deeply ingrained into kind of like what the club stands for. Um, and, uh, you know, that's why I'm into Bitcoin.

That's why I believe. And that's, that's why I saw this even bigger opportunity. Oh my God, like, how is this happening? There's so many, sometimes, you know, some like weird things happen in life and you have no explanation why and how all these things align. But, but for me, it's like this club was made really to.

to be aligned with BOTEF and to be, uh, to, to, to be aligned with Bitcoin and with Nostr. If I look at all the other clubs in Bulgaria, right, like just in Bulgaria, none of the others, like, there's no this contextual historical background that you can make these connections. But with us, we have it, and what a chance that, like, we have this owner, and he got, like, introduced to it, and then we got connected.

Like, how the hell does this happen, man? I don't know,

Luke: We like to say this, the surreal doesn't end, you know, and like, uh, my, my whole story, I've been talking about this, uh, at the, the conference here is like two years ago was the first time I ever met Bitcoiners here in Baltic Honeybadger. We, we met for the, for the first time, uh, all three of us, uh, met for the first time two years ago, I've been in Baltic Honeybadger and it's like, things, things happen so fast.

Uh, I've, I've, uh, I've thought it was been awesome just following, uh, what you've been doing with the, the club and the story. So great to, Great to get to talk about it, but, uh,

Bitcoin in Football

George: Yeah. No, for, for me, like really the, the most exciting part is really even coming forward. So, uh, because, so now it's been, so we, a long, we announced, uh, publicly that we're doing this, uh, 31st October last year. So the anniversary of the, of the, uh, Bitcoin White paper, um, we've built a lot right. And very, very importantly, I'm super proud, like, I don't know if you saw this, but like a month ago, we played on European League, the UEFA League with Bitcoin straight on our jerseys, which was like, like, when I saw this, I'm like, dude, it's crazy that this is happening.

But, but the best is really yet to come, like, like we like to say. Um, so I, I think we, we're, we have, um, we have still so much more to do. So for me, the next big part, which I'm super excited about literally in the coming month as, uh, as I go back. So is to finally get some of our. Players or at least one or two to get to do something publicly about this, because at the end of the day, that's why for me, the more I do, the more I, uh, play in this arena, I realized this is really a Trojan horse for us to bring Bitcoin into the conversation, into the minds, like I said, of people who otherwise wouldn't and, and our players, you know, especially a few of them, they're really influencers, right?

Um, a lot of people follow them. A lot of people respect them. And, um, and if they do, uh, you know, something meaningful, something cool, something impactful, this is going to have a huge impact onto our forwards. This could very well have impact onto, um, other sportsmen, other football people, other football clubs, right?

Uh, so that's why I'm doing it, right? Really?

Luke: No, this is fantastic, and actually this was exactly where I was hoping to go next, so thank you for queuing that up. But, no, no, the game theory of all this, right? Like, one club getting, Positioning as the, as the Bitcoin club in a league, uh, really means that eventually all the other clubs are going to need to adopt Bitcoin.

If they're going to be able to compete, because if play playing out the game theory, number go up, whatever it is, Bitcoin strategy plays out, you guys are going to be the most financially capable club. Financially sustainable in not very long, you know, assuming everything plays out the way we're thinking it will, right?

So, so other, other clubs then would become incentivized to also adopt Bitcoin. So what, what do you, what do you think about that? Like you, do you, do you see that, uh, happening as well?

George: Yeah, I'm not really sure if it would happen to me. That fast, to be fair. Like, I think it's inevitable, right, obviously, but I think it, yeah, like, I think this definitely takes at least three, four years, maybe more. Um,

Luke: That's, that's still pretty fast.

George: yeah, I guess. I mean, I mean, like, okay, let me define it better. It takes three, four years.

So, for other clubs within our league to start doing something like this, uh, maybe it takes less time for other clubs to realize it, but I think for them to do it, it also depends on our actions, right? So because like, we don't have like a treasury of microstrategy or something, so it's not, and we're not doing like a

Luke: you don't?

George: monthly like leverage on top of leverage on top of another leverage, you know, uh, we're not in, in Michael's privileged position. but we can do other cool things, right? Uh, one of the, um, so this is not yet live and this is not yet happening, but one of the, like two, two projects, let's say, I'm gonna briefly, like, tease here that, that I'm working on that I hope to have very large impact is first, uh, building this, uh, simple tool Uh, called like a Bitcoin, uh, football salary calculator that, uh, it's like really a DCA tool, but like looking back and like tailoring it to our niche where I want to, for us to visually and emotionally Show, um, to players, but also to fans of ours, like what Bitcoin could have done for their remuneration, if you look one year back in time, two years back in time, three years back in time, four years back in time, and for them to really realize, Oh my God, this is a no brainer.

Right? I want to make this mess. And this is hard, right? Um, because like, there's so many tools and like, but I want to be, because the audience is very wide, very different types of audience. I want to make this so that you can consume it in like two, three, four minutes. And you're like, okay, I need to learn more about this.

This actually is interesting. There's like, that's so much dense and emotional and compact information that you're like, Whoa. Why am I not doing this? How did I miss this?

Knut: What, what, what was the name of that website? I, I don't know if it's still up, but bitcoin or shit.com or something like that. So, so it lists if you bought this item when it came out, an iPhone five or whatever, uh, and if you had bought b bitcoin instead.com, I think that that's the, that's the name. So if you bought, uh, if you bought Bitcoin instead, it shows you how much, how much more money you'd have now and how many iPhones you

George: Yeah. Yeah. And of course there's many of these tools, obviously like we've all see them and we all like like them and retweet them and repost them. And it's all great. But I think, at least I hope that we can do something impactful with this. If we really tailor it, compact it to a specific type of niche audience with a specific message designed for them.

And because this audience is also like. A type of audience who can also like, um, you know, bring it to other bubbles that we ourselves are not part of, right? So that's, for example, one like, uh, one like project I'm very, very excited about and I hope we can, um, yeah, we'll bring forward relatively soon.

There's a few moving elements, but definitely in the coming month or two, uh, at most. And then, uh, and then, you know, speaking of the other clubs, what, what I want us to do is what we're working is next year, we're targeting to do, I hope we could do the world's first, uh, Bitcoin, uh, Cup tournament. Uh, for youth players, 70 year old boys who are, you know, right there before they sign their first professional contract, start earning money, for them, first of all, like, it's a Bitcoin football cup, like, it's the first time this, this could potentially ever happen And then it's, it's a football first tournament, right?

This is the, we want to make it like top quality, like really the highest quality when it comes to sports, but then you have Bitcoin involved all over the place, right? In terms of brand, in terms of rewards, in terms of, um, in terms of like plays, um, like, like games and, and interactions, activations, uh, throughout, before, throughout, and after the, And after the event, and for this, I'm targeting to get really like, like big clubs.

I mean, because it's academies, right? I mean, I cannot get the Manchester United first team, just maybe we could get the Manchester United 17 year old team or, you know, another big club. We get some of these, and then like we get their brands, we get them on the focus of Bitcoin. And we drive the conversation faster, you know, not three, four years from now, but Less

Knut: what about, um, like right now there's you and there's, um, you guys and there's a real bed for it, right? Those are the two I know of in Europe. Are you aware of any other clubs that are doing a Bitcoin strategy? I mean, is this virus spreading? Like, have you heard anything like,

George: Um, Oh, there's, uh, there's the Austrian Admira Vakir who have done some integration. So it's a second tier, uh, second league, uh, second league, uh, club that have, uh, that have, uh, you know, they've also had Bitcoin on the, their second team jersey. And, um, and they, they also accept Bitcoin payments, uh, here and there, but you know, the thing is, there's some other clubs, um, there's a Miami, um, not Miami, um, a Hawaiian club that, that is doing, uh, that is doing like their Bitcoin gig,

Knut: yeah, there are other, other sports, right, other sports team and sports teams in other sports that are doing it. But, but for football specifically,

George: which ones?

Knut: Uh, I'm so bad with sports, but wasn't there like a hockey team or a basketball team or

Luke: I'm not aware of any others, actually. Yeah, like, uh, there's been some attempts at

Knut: it's

Luke: an orange colored team or something like

Knut: more the individual athletes,

Luke: Yeah, yeah, there have been individual

Knut: for instance, a

Luke: have been individual

Knut: player, and there was some American football player.

George: There's been individual athletes, a lot of them. There's been, I was asking if you know, but there's been a baseball club in Australia, the Port Heat. Uh, who did kind of a Bitcoin strategy. Uh, but very unfortunately that didn't work out. They kind of started this at the peak of the last bull cycle. And, um, and as I understand, uh, there wasn't like a strong alignment between the owners and the management in terms of like understanding that this is a long game.

So that's why this kind of flopped. Um, but yeah, like I, I think the reason why it's not happening in more, unfortunately, and, and, and I see this even, even within our club, uh, you know, but, but definitely no other clubs because Fiat has permitted sports as well. Right. So all the sports club, uh, clubs or the vast majority in football, for sure.

They're like, you know, on the hamster wheel themselves.

Knut: They're indebted,

George: They're indebted.

Knut: to an extreme level,

George: yeah, like, like fighting for every dollar for every income. So it's, it's hard for you to like, Oh yeah, we're going to have this long term Bitcoin strategy that's going to take like two, three, four, five years to play out.

And we can benefit a lot from it. It's very, very hard in, you know, unfortunately for a large organizations, sports club in particular to To have this realization, to map this out, to get others on board. That's why it's not so popular and uh, and that's why I'm grateful and keep pushing that we have this chance.

Luke: I mean, you make a great point here about essentially the, it's the organizational alignment, right? Like the, the, these are companies, sports clubs are companies. They just have this large, the business is involved around getting fans to come in and consume this sort of marketing. Product, essentially. So it's, it's a certain kind of company that's run a certain way, but just like any other company, you need, you need alignment from the management.

So it's, it's fantastic that, uh, Boteb Plovdiv has, has the, uh, alignment and is, is putting their, their trust in you to, to move this thing forward. And I mean, from the, from the perspective of this thing, Playing out, right? The, the best part that, uh, I think one of the best parts that you, you mentioned again was the, the influencers.

Like you get, you get some players, there's, there's so many angles to, to reach people through this. I think it's, I think it's fantastic. The, uh, orange pilling a player and then they move to another club, but they, they, maybe they don't get to get paid in Bitcoin, but maybe they still put, put their money in, in Bitcoin.

Maybe they even ask their club to, to, uh, pay them in Bitcoin, something like that. And then the, the Questions start getting, uh, asked and all this.

5 Year Goals

Luke: So what, what is the, the goal in, in five years, for example, where, where do you see the club in the five year mark?

George: Oh man. Yeah, in five years, I think we definitely have to be in Champions League. Like in my mind, you know, like people around me like, oh, you're too ambitious. I'm like, man, yeah, like in five years, we definitely have to be in Champions League. Uh, that's, that's my personal goal. On our internal Slack, I have the Champions League icon there.

That's why I'm there, right? Um, so, uh, it's a lot of hard work. Like, it's really a lot of hard work. And it's also not completely dependent on me and my work, to be fair. Like, because, at all. I mean, really, like, uh, I mean, at the end of the day, the most important part is the sports department, right? Uh, in the club.

Um, so that has to continue going well. But, but I think We're going in a good direction there too, because we have the, they're the long term view as well, right. We have our academy internally, which is, yeah, it's one of the best academies. It's the best really academy in terms of infrastructure in the country.

That's why we're also can't afford to think of this Bitcoin Cup tournament, because we have the infrastructure, we have like a super cool stadium, that's crazy. If we can, if we can do a final for, for such a tournament there. Um, so, so we have all the things in place in terms of In terms of assets, I would say, uh, it's just a lot of moving parts.

a lot of work, consistency, and a bit of luck. Always it comes, you know, when, when it comes to, when it comes to football and sports, but, but five years from now, I want us to be in the champions league. I want us to be the absolute, you know, international professional level, uh, Bitcoin level, Bitcoin sports club.

and, uh, and I want for this tournament that I start to be like a, like, like to have the fourth edition by then. Uh, and, and I want to have clubs, but five years is a lot of time, you know, as you say, like, I also want to have other clubs following us by then. I think that's absolutely, absolutely is going to be doable.

Knut: What, what are the, what are the tax laws around Bitcoin in Bulgaria? Like what, are there any issues there? Or like what, is it easy enough,

George: It's kind of okay. Uh, it's kind of okay. So if you just buy Bitcoin and hold it, like you don't, uh, you don't, uh, incur taxes, uh, until you sell it, if you accept Bitcoin for payments, um, and if you don't sell it, you can just, uh, keep it as inventory on your balance sheet. So again, no,

Knut: but there's a capital gains tax or something if you sell it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright.

George: 10%. So it's, it's, uh,

Knut: Pretty good.

George: Yeah, I mean, it's not like El Salvador. Okay. Uh, but, but it's, uh, it's, it's way better than many other places. Um, and, uh, yeah, so we've been looking, looking actually, so I was in El Salvador a couple of months ago, because we've been looking very much to do stuff there.

And we've been, uh, yeah. Um, because we've been, we've been thinking of what to do more with Bitcoin, right? So that's why I said, like, it's not just about buying and accepting Bitcoin. It's about corporate strategies, about branding strategies, about how to make money. Um, it's about education strategies. It's, there's so much around it.

So in terms of corporate strategy, I was, uh, we're very attracted by El Salvador, um, and their, uh, capital markets regulation, because they're basically striving to build capital markets on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is legal tender there. They have all kinds of, tax incentives for companies to issue debt or to sell equity.

on their capital, on their, um, well, let's say nascent upcoming capital markets, because it's not like it's, you know, hustling and bustling yet. Um, but, but they're, they've put a lot of the rails, uh, um, or they're building a lot of the rails to, um, to really enable the, the, the creation of Bitcoin based capital markets.

So, um, we've had great talks there. We have meetings with, uh, um, we have. Yeah, with the Bitcoin office, right? Um, so, ideally, like, we're striving to build some connection there and to do something, interesting and world first again from a corporate perspective. It's just that, as many things, it's a little harder than you would expect it to be, or it takes a little more time than, Then you would hope to do it.

But my idea or long term vision, frankly, like what we want to do with Bitcoin, uh, and with the club is to enable our current fans and global fans to become co owners of the club. And that's why, you know, I have big hopes for, uh, for us being able to do this out of El Salvador and through El Salvador, because this would, like from a tax perspective, from a branding perspective, from legal security perspective would be, would be ideal.

It's just that, again, um, my enthusiasm is a little over, uh, ahead of kind of like how, uh, how, how advanced and set up everything there is, but, uh, but we're, we're very actively talking to them. We're working with many parties there, so. Just maybe we can have big news there too.

International and Local Effects

Luke: Well, no, and, and you actually said something great about global fans. I think this is a, a fantastic thing, right? A a again, Bedford is, is similar. They've, they've got, they've got fans all over the world and, and I think for you guys it's like who is going to tune into the Bulgarian football league outside of Bulgaria before, well, not too many people, but now a bunch of Bitcoiners.

If they're into, if they're into football or, or not even, because this is the funny thing. There were, there were a lot of people posting about that. They, they've got, they, they don't usually follow, follow sports at all, but, but they'll follow the Bitcoin team. So the, the funny thing is, I think, I think the first, the first club to adopt Bitcoin in every league is going to get all of these global fans.

And maybe the, maybe the, the second one, the third one, maybe can get some kind of other support, but it's really the first one in every

George: really.

Luke: That, that

George: Not

Luke: That's that. I, I completely agree with you there. It's the, it's the first one

Knut: first mover advantage.

Luke: mover advantage. It's gonna get, it is gonna get all of the, all of the Bitcoiners are gonna now be, be supporting and, uh, uh, yeah.

I mean, have, have you seen, uh, some, some uptick in, uh, kind of international

George: yeah, yeah. So, international but also local. Like, local is very important. Like, we have, like, so many people in the country who's like, just what you say, like, I didn't care about sports or football, like, forever, or at all, ever, but now I follow, now I buy merch, now I come, you know, every now and then they come to games, so

Luke: Well, because there's the bread and circuses thing that you said, it gets tossed around in the Bitcoin world and also some other places on kind of the Twitter sphere and whatever, it's like it's a distraction, that sports is sort of a distraction from clown world basically and it's a way of people to sort of Uh, forget about what's going on around them, but I think that's also missing the, the positives, which it, it's a, it's a community builder, it brings people together, there's a, there's a sense of, of pride in, in something local succeeding, everyone, everyone's happy, there's, there's real economic, uh, effects usually when a, when a local sports team wins, and so, so from, from my perspective, I, I, I think, I think sport is a good thing, and it's, and it's, it's something that, that people can rally around, and so,

George: an amazing thing.

Luke: Yeah.

And, and so what, what are, what are you looking at locally? Like what, what do you hope to have the effect, uh, uh, locally in, in piv?

George: Yeah. Um, yeah, no, look, uh, for me, sports, like, for us, the, the, the, the, about Plovdiv, for me, that's what I realized, like, we're kind of very much into Bitcoin and stuff, obviously, that's our interest, but I think when we go on a Bitcoin standard, Right. And, uh, in general, people start feeling wealthier, opposed to, like, being in the grind.

You're just going to have more time for fun stuff, right? Like playing football, I mean, or volleyball, or whatever your sport is, or, like, going and cheering your team, and, uh, and being part of such a community. And I think that's really what, you know, even Nostr is about. Like it's, Being part of these communities, because that's fun, and like, we as humans, at the end of the day, we are living to be part of communities, right?

And you find your community, you're an active part of it, you contribute to it, you evolve it, right? You build it in one way or another. And unfortunately, you know, today in the fiat world, this is just like A stress valve in many ways, or like you say, like Brothers and Sisters, whatever. Um, but, uh, but I think it can be so much more, right?

It is, but it can be so much more for a larger amount of people and so on and so forth. uh, but yeah, well, back in Plovdiv, man, like, I have big hopes. I really have big, big ambitions there. I want to get Bitcoin into the wallets of, uh, of like tens of thousands of people. I want people to wake up. I want people to see.

Luke: big is piv? How many

George: It's like three, four hundred thousand people. So it's a lot. Uh, our stadium is, uh, 21, 000 seats stadium. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's, it's 19. I wish it was 21.

Luke: Yeah. You'll have to add 2000 more

George: Maybe, yeah, we'll, we'll think of some additional construction.

Luke: the, make the infinity stand when

George: Right. Right. But, uh, but yeah, like the setting was super cool. Like, it's really cool.

Like when it's feel like, man, the atmosphere is amazing. Um, and so it's, and it's really this community that you can feel that people are involved. So it's, it's like consistency and it's social engineering in one way or another, right?

Knut: one of our favorite words,

George: but in a positive way.

Knut: in a positive way, okay.

George: So it's social engineering for us to ingrain Bitcoin and make it part of kind of what people see, do, have, own, interact with, right?

So, uh, I think exactly because of this community element, exactly because, Because, you know, football is a football club and there's this unique living organism we can, we can create this and, you know, it's fascinating. I'm so much into this and there's other people who are so much into this. Oh my god, like, we can make such a big difference.

And, and like in the country. You know, on a political and economic level, they don't get it. Like, they don't see it. They just are in their, you know, like, oh, are we going to accept the euro? Oh, what's happening with the war? I'm like, who cares? Let's build.

Bulgarian Currency Situation

Knut: Yeah, Bulgaria has its own shitcoin, I almost forgot about that, but uh, what's it called again?

George: Kinda. Um, but not quite, to be fair. It's, it's a good coin, uh, not for investing, but, but for medium of exchange is actually decent. Uh, Lev, Lev

Knut: Lev, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

George: and I recently got educated about this. So, uh, the lev is pegged to the euro. So, um, uh, so, so that, that is super cool for, for us, for me as a consumer, for businesses, because like the fixed rate.

So for trade is, um, It's, it's good, right? As the world would be in the future. You have one currency, Bitcoin, you don't have the currency exchange risk, right? We don't have it only with the European Union. And the good part with this, so, we got, we got hyperinflation back in 1997. Was really bad. People lost almost everything, everything, in many cases.

Um, and then we got this so called currency board introduced and the currency board is like we have the left, but the left has to be backed up by other currencies. So it's like a stable coin, kind of like how Tether is backed by, by dollars. You know, the levy is backed by euro and like a basket of, I think they have some other currencies and assets, which is cool because the local politicians, they cannot print, they cannot, you know, so, so it's been, it's been, I think, way better than Hungary, Sweden, uh, Finland, you have your, oh

but Sweden I've heard it's kind of bad,

Knut: It's kinda bad, Norway too, like, both Swedish and Norwegian crown, and the crown in Czechia, like the Czech Republic, it's also

George: Yeah.

Knut: I mean, they're all going to shit the smaller

George: So, so for us, it's like, I would say we're better than, than the Corona, the, and, and all these like local currencies, because we kind of just are there to the, peg to the Euro. The local politicians don't have the opportunity to print. So it's, it's a very good position for us to be.

Luke: You, you get the, the negatives of the, the euro. But, but still, I mean, I mean the, the realistically, the dollar at the Euro and maybe the, the Chinese currency are the only, are the only ones that are in the, sort of within our own, within our own lifetimes are, are going to be not as terribly bad against Bitcoin.

But all the other ones are just, are. All the other ones are

Knut: Yeah, I think it's just a matter of time before both, uh, at least Sweden, uh, switches to Euro standard. If not switching to Bitcoin standard happens first, but well, we'll see, we'll see what happens.

George: man. I'm very bearish about the Euro.

Knut: yeah, yeah, it's like,

Luke: It'll be the second last to fall or third last but but yeah it's it's it's it's not going to be the the last and so it's yeah.

Knut: So that is what it is. I mean, speaking of Bulgaria and currencies and stuff,

Bitcoin Adoption in Bulgaria

Knut: like, how is the rest of, how is Bitcoin adoption in general in Bulgaria? What's happening in other places? Like, Plamen opened a bar, I saw, and like, what are the connections? What's happening?

George: It's actually quite cool. I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy with, with how the ecosystem is evolving. There's, there's Plamen, um, with his whole community, like content creation, the conferences he's been doing, which has been like a very, I think he's responsible for like, I don't know, probably like, 000, maybe several 10, 000s of people who have opened their eyes and even if they're not hard bitcoiners, they now own bitcoin.

Uh, so that's huge. We have other content creators also who've had an impact. We have now once or twice per, yeah, about twice per year we have like, uh, A small, uh, merchant, uh, like, conference events, so for merchants to accept Bitcoin. we have these people who are active and who are doing things. Now, actually, yeah, there's something new that's coming up here, uh, literally in Plovdiv is we have this, um, this, uh, great dudes who have this, um, um, it's an application for, uh, ordering food, like takeaway and, uh, what is it, like,

Knut: like Glovo or

George: yeah, yeah, like Glovo, um, but, um, but, um, But it's not like this big corporate thing that, but, but still, it's a very good product and they've integrated accepting Bitcoin there for quite some time now they've made it even easier and they've introduced.

So we have like about, I think it's 15 restaurants in Sofia and like five or so in Plovdiv where through their system, you can order food. And pay with Bitcoin online, or you can also go in the restaurant and pay in Bitcoin online, and they just, um, they just won a, uh, grant from, uh, Bitcoin Beach, uh, and, uh, they're going to use the grant, uh, to, well, the attempt is really to start like a small circular economy, if you would Um, where, so if you go, uh, to one of those restaurants and pay with Bitcoin, you're going to get sats back 10%, and then, um, the restaurant is also going to get 10 percent sats back.

And if you order food, um, through their app, also the driver is going to get, uh, some sats back. And, uh, we've just been discussing, because obviously we're partnering with them, with the football club, so we'll push this out, because some of the restaurants that are there are our, I mean, basically, like, we have two restaurants locally that are partners, we got them in, right, obviously, in the deal, um, So, so that is also like, for me, it's like super cool because now for so far, the club has been pushing Bitcoin.

Now we have two of our restaurant partners who are themselves like hard Botevists, Botefans, and like they're popular. Now they're starting to accept Bitcoin in their, in their two restaurants, right? And they're going to have their campaigns. We're going to push them more. So, um, so I'm really excited about this and fingers crossed this goes well.

We have good metrics because if we have good metrics. Yeah, we'll look for ways to grow this. So there's a lot of grassroots things happening, which I love. On the top, nothing.

Knut: It's the way it's supposed to be.

George: But it's the way it is. Yeah, it's a better

Luke: Yeah it really seems like that you get one or two of these big anchors like like for example you you guys have had that had that conference last couple of years but now with both of Plavdev now Bulgaria is really got a couple of big anchors. Big relative in relative terms, uh, and all of this other stuff can, can start coming up around it.

And, uh, love, love to see it. I mean, he, I mean here, here with Rega, there's Honey Budger has been going for a really long time, and I, and I even think that they are honest about, we, we would, we just talked to, to Max, uh, about this, uh, from Defi and like yeah, there's not much other adoption in, in Lavia and this conference has been going on for a long time.

Exactly. And so it's just like, uh, it's, it's, it's great to see, uh, in, in your case, in Bulgaria's case, that there's, there's more of this, uh, picking up. So, yeah,

George: Well, I think it's really, in our case, I don't know, like it's grassroots, like I said, and I really believe grassroots and then Rio or for the vast majority, Rio adoption comes permissionless life. It comes like it's not forced. You know, there is this point where, okay, there's Plamen, like, he got the inspiration, he makes his content, he does the conferences, Like, our owner, he sees this opportunity for Bitcoin, for the club. He takes the action, right? So it's, it's not like, so it's individuals, right? Taking actions and then, as you have, you know, several of them, maybe others get inspired or get ideas going and that's how the magic happens. And, uh, yeah. Excited about it.

Wrapping Up

Luke: it's awesome, man. Great hear your story. So, was, uh, was there anything else that you wanted to discuss or bring up on this topic?

George: no, I mean, what I would say is absolutely, uh, Please, uh, you know, Knut, you've been, but please, you're absolutely welcome, Luke, join as well, like, both of you should come

Knut: Absolutely. Highly recommend it. I had a great time in Bulgaria, and it's such a fascinating country, it's such a rich history and such a beautiful place, and the food is great, and it's very affordable, it's very, yeah, very

George: like, I have people who come in Plogis specifically to, like, nomads, spend, like, a or a month. So, so please enjoy, visit the game. come spend in the restaurants where they accept Bitcoin, follow us on social media for sure, so, X and Nostr,

Luke: Yes, all the details, please.

Knut: And also like one of the eras, uh, infamous eras of Bulgaria is the commie era, right? Where you can see the impact that system had on the country and how horrid it is. Uh, so it's, it's, uh, that might not be a good pitch for, uh, but that's

Luke: Let him, let him share his social medias, Knut.

George: wait, do you have, do you have something

Knut: no, no, I think like the, The point I was getting to is, if you get to Bulgaria, don't only go to Sofia, go around the rest of the country, because it's not as raped as that town was by, as that city was by communism, all this concrete, yeah, yeah,

George: yeah, the,

Knut: you can really see the impact there. I'm not, um, yeah, this came out totally wrong, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to, To hype Bulgaria here, but also there's a historical lesson to be learned in the country, for sure,

George: sure. It's really like, there's so many different things there. So there's the communist part, there's like fucking amazing nature, there's like

Knut: is everything, yeah.

George: if you're into hiking, there's like, just like from Sofia, what I love about Sofia, like just last week, twice, end of the day, I'm like fucked up, like tired of computer.

40 minutes up and I'm up in the mountains, hiking, in like 2000 meters altitude. Uh, so, so there's all these like super cool things, but on the socials, yeah, we're on Twitter. we're on Nostr, uh, so Twitter is, um, botif underscore, uh, en, on Nostr, uh, we are just botif. Yeah, you can find us.

Luke: going say you're NPUB? No, no, no,

George: I'm still learning it, okay?

Luke: we'll post, you're still learning, we'll post all the details in the show

George: Yes. Yes. And feel free to also check out our website. We have, due to our El Salvadorian, um, kind of project, we already have a Salvadorian website, which is very easy to remember, botif. sv. So you can go there and from there you'll find all the links and information.

Luke: Absolutely fantastic.

Knut: Great! Get the inverse of Clown World. This is a shill. BitcoinInfinityStore. com And thank you very much for coming on,

George: was great having

Knut: Great to have

Luke: George, thanks so much. This has been Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thank you for

@ 6ff0b3a6:ca85496b

Chef's notes

Carnivore or ketogenic diet need the right protein at home and anywhere: this grass fed and finished beef chips are dry and easy to enjoy anywhere

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 10 minutes
• 🍳 Cook time: 6 to 7 hours

Ingredients

• Grass fed and finished hotpot/veneer/sluces 1 to 1.5mm thick
• For dry meat use Bnis round slices for hotpot and with more fat use brisket slices

Directions

1. Dry heat as long as possible as low temperature as possible
2. I dry for 6-7 hours @55 deg cel =130 deg F.
3. At the same time you can also prepare your carpaccio plate and let them freeze in the freezer or on the fridge as you prefer…
4. After 7 hours, place into glass recipient or surround airy food grade rope to make a unit and store on the fridge
5. Salt can be added before the drying or after

@ dca6e1cc:ea7d1750

When your back is up against the wall.

And the territory is unfamiliar.

When inaction isn't an option.

And opportunity is calling you from uncertainty.

What are you like when your back is up against the wall?

I take a moment to float. I'm buying time. I need to think.

When writing is just writing

Is it just a question?

Is it a report?

What tone and theme do I choose for my life?

If I don't write, then what am I doing?

Art.

Absurdity.

Excellence.

I didn't take that path. I took a path with an extra entendre. Not entirely simplified. Decisions have consequences. Be conscious of the decisions you are making.

If you were given the opportunity...for the sake of what? I have a life that's destined for me.

One thing at a time.

Wait... What I'm after is well-being and impact. Love and self-actualisation.

You have privileges disguised as desires. Your potentiality is evident, but you can't shoot yourself in the foot and expect to run. You're exactly where you need to be. Look forward and act from the seat of your consciousness. Your brain-mind is simply a tool at your disposal. Take care of your tools.

Taking care of my body is a must. While doing so, I lean into the core of the problem at hand. I dismantle the situation by tapping into my reserve. I've been craving a challenge. I feel important decisions and determination at hand.

How are you when your back is up against the wall?

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/727836

@ de75eb1d:710c3014

Chef's notes

A tangy, crunchy mustard pickle for cheese sandwiches that can be made with a range of seasonal veg - especially good for preserving homegrown 'wonky' produce as everything gets chopped small and hidden in the bright yellow sauce!

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 20 mins + overnight
• 🍳 Cook time: 20 mins
• 🍽️ Servings: Makes approx 2kg (x7 280g jars)

Ingredients

• 500g Cauliflower
• 150g Onion
• 1kg Mixed Vegetables (such as green beans, carrot, courgette, beetroot, radish)
• 750ml White Vinegar
• 1tbsp Mustard Seeds
• 50g Mustard Powder (or 200g Jar English Mustard)
• 1tbsp Turmeric Powder
• 200g Sugar or Honey
• 2tbsp Cornflour
• 1/2tbsp Crushed Dried Chilli (optional)

Directions

1. Dice all the vegetables into small bite sized pieces, cover with the salt and leave overnight
2. Rinse thoroughly to remove the salt and gently squeeze out as much water as possible
3. To make the sauce mix all the other ingredients with a small amount of vinegar, stir into the vegetables then top-up with the rest of the vinegar
4. Briefly cook the mixture until the vegetables are just soft, approx 20 mins
5. Transfer whilst hot into sterilised jars, leave to mature for 6 weeks before opening

@ 721be1b2:2cee7c6e

Nostr (short for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays") is a decentralised, censorship-resistant social network protocol designed for secure and private communication. It enables users to post notes and interact with others without relying on any centralised platform, unlike traditional social media platforms.

NIPs, or Nostr Implementation Possibilities, define the set of specifications or guidelines that clients and relays can follow to ensure the interoperability of all parts. This is the case with NIP-05, which defines an account verification mechanism by mapping Nostr public keys to DNS-based identifiers that resemble an email address.

Unlike the blue check mark on X.com, NIP-05 can be easily implemented by users for free. To get your account NIP-05 verified, you will need the following:

• Nostr public key in hex format
• Domain name that you own and manage (e.g., example.com)
• Nostr account name in an email-like format (e.g., johnnycage@example.com)
• Web server or a place to host a file from the domain name

For the Nostr public key in hexadecimal format, you can use the key converter tool at this link: https://damus.io/key/. Copy your user public key (npub) from your client and paste it in the link above to convert the key to hex format, i.e:

5c83da77af1dec6d7289834998ad7aafbd9e2191396d75ec3cc27f5a77226f36

Please note that some clients may not recognise your public key in hex format, and you may need to use your npub key instead.

Create a nostr.json file and paste the following: ``` { "names": { "johnnycage":"5c83da77af1dec6d7289834998ad7aafbd9e2191396d75ec3cc27f5a77226f36" } }

```

Upload the file to the web server and modify your DNS so your domain example.com is redirected to it. As a result, you should be able to access the file like this: https://example.com/.well-known/nostr.json

NIP-05 also defines how to handle CORS issues, since some Javascript based Nostr clients may be restricted by browser CORS policies, it is recommended to configure the web server to respond requests with the following header:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

As a final step, go to your Nostr client and configure your Nostr address for verification. In the case of the Amethyst client, this is done under Profile -> Nostr Address -> johnnycage@example.com. Once validated, a checkmark symbol should appear next to your chosen Nostr address.

Keep in mind that not all nostr clients behave the same, so you will need to adjust these steps based on your client of choice.

For more information about NIP-05, head here: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/05.md

nostr #nip #grownostr #howto #blog

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Test Test Test ++Test++ ~~Test~~ * Test

1. Test

Test

---

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Merchant Comments

I extracted about 900 valuable comments from our verification reports and I exposed them via BTC Map sync API. Comments turned out to be extremely valuable since they often add important context to certain Bitcoin merchants. The next steps are client app support and automating new comments.

Feed Reader Support

Some people are only interested in new places or comments in their areas, so they don’t want to install our apps and check them all the time. BTC Map data is open, and we never intended to lock users in, that’s why I created a few experimental Atom data feeds. Let’s say you want to get notified of new places and comments in the Netherlands, so now you can just add the following feeds to your feed reader of choice:

https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-places/nl

https://api.btcmap.org/feeds/new-comments/nl

Of course, you can mix and match any number of BTC Map areas, communities and countries alike. Web feed links are always available on our website, in area activity section.

RPC Interface

Most of our administrative tasks are now centralized, which means that processing new change requests might take a long time, depending on how busy we are. This model can’t scale, that’s why we’re building an admin API, alongside GUI and CLI tools which can be used to simplify access to many local administrative tasks. There is no ETA on that, but I think we’ll be able to delegate most tasks to local community managers pretty soon.

Trending Countries

1. Netherlands - 190 events and comments
2. Italy - 173 events and comments
3. Germany - 169 events and comments
4. Spain - 101 events and comments
5. Portugal - 98 events and comments
6. El Salvador - 95 events and comments
7. United Kingdom - 83 events and comments
8. Brazil - 78 events and comments
9. Switzerland - 77 events and comments
10. Czechia - 74 events and comments

Many merchants in the Netherlands were re-verified by Comino, which shows that a single maintainer can keep the whole country up to date. Having a single maintainer per country would allow us to keep the whole world up to date, so if your country has some old and outdated merchants, we need your help!

Italian re-verification effort can mostly be attributed to mpbin. This user not only re-verified many existing places but also added some missing general tags such as contact details and so on. Those tags are extremely valuable, so even if your area is up-to-date, you might want to check if you have enough contact details for every merchant. This account apparently belongs to Bitcoin Italia Network, and it looks like they’re taking ownership over the whole region.

Germany’s data was enhanced by many different accounts, but 65% of German locations are still outdated, so this country needs more love from local editors. Spain continues to be in a good shape, thanks to descubrebitcoin efforts, and Portugal data quality continues to improve, thanks to Sxajne.

Big thanks to Rockedf for contributing to almost every region!

Trending Communities

1. Satoshi Spritz - 176 events and comments
2. Einundzwanzig Deutschlan - 169 events and comments
3. Einundzwanzig Portugal - 98 events and comments
4. Einundzwanzig Schweiz - 78 events and comments
5. Bitcoin Association Switzerland - 77 events and comments
6. Dezentralschweiz - 77 events and comments
7. Bitcoin Berlin - El Salvador - 60 events and comments
8. Free Madeira - 51 events and comments
9. Berlin 2140 - 48 events and comments
10. Einundzwanzig Berlin - 48 events and comments

Global Metrics

The number of verified merchants has dropped from 6,867 to 6,734 (-2%), which means that we’re struggling to keep more than 5-7 thousands of places up-to-date, and we need more contributors who can re-verify outdated merchants.

The total number of merchants has increased from 11,685 to 11,833 (+1.3%), which is in line with our long-term trend. The stream of new merchants has no signs of tapering, we’re just struggling to maintain the old ones in certain regions.

The average number of days since the last verification has increased from 323 to 340 (+5.3%), which means that our data is now significantly less reliable than it was a month ago. This is yet another confirmation that our main bottleneck is the lack of local maintainers.

Conclusion

Our main issue is growing number of outdated locations, and getting more maintainers can take some time. It’s not the only way to improve BTC Map though, so we can focus on highlighting the best quality merchants, which I’m intending to be busy with during October. I have a few ideas on using different quality signals, and it might make sense to simply mark or hide outdated or unreliable merchants.

The best way to help us is to re-verify some outdated locations in your area, if you have any:

https://btcmap.org/map?outdated

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Chef's notes

This soup is a beautiful combination of simplicity, flavor, and nourishment. Quick to make, it delivers a fresh, slightly sweet taste that’s rich in nutrients. I've added avocado oil, pine nuts, sprouted buckwheat and millet, and a few herbs for the decoration. Feel free to experiment with different herbs, sprouts, seeds etc. making it a delightful and wholesome dish 💚

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 5 min.
• 🍳 Cook time: 0
• 🍽️ Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 1 cup raw fennel (medium-sized) cut into peaces
• 1 small-medium apple cut into pieces
• 1 cup water, kefir, or rejuvelac
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tbsp (preferable raw) almond butter
• 1/2 tsp salt or herbal salt
• 1 tbsp Nama Tamari
• 1 tbsp avocado oil (or sesame seed oil)
• 1 pinch of nutmeg (about a knife’s tip)

Directions

1. Add all ingredients to a blender: fennel, apple, water (or kefir/rejuvelac), nutritional yeast, almond butter, salt, Nama Tamari, avocado oil, and nutmeg.
2. Blend until smooth and creamy.
3. Pour into two bowls and garnish with pine nuts, sprouted buckwheat, sprouted brown millet or any other sprouts, and fresh herbs as desired.

@ 4ba8e86d:89d32de4

Ele é baseado no conceito de "separação de privilégios", o que significa que ele separa o sistema operacional em duas máquinas virtuais separadas, uma para o sistema operacional e outra para as aplicações. Isso permite que as aplicações rodem em um ambiente isolado e seguro, sem acesso direto à rede e aos recursos do sistema, protegendo assim a privacidade do usuário.

O Whonix foi lançado em 2012 como uma iniciativa do desenvolvedor alemão Patrick Schleizer. Ele criou o Whonix como uma resposta à crescente preocupação com a privacidade e o anonimato on-line, especialmente após as revelações de Edward Snowden sobre a vigilância em massa realizada pela NSA.

O Whonix foi projetado para ser usado em conjunto com a rede Tor, que é uma rede de comunicação anônima que permite que os usuários naveguem na internet sem revelar sua localização ou identidade. O Whonix permite que os usuários se conectem à rede Tor de forma segura e anônima, sem expor seu endereço IP ou outras informações pessoais.

O Whonix funciona em duas partes: o Gateway e o Workstation. O Gateway é a máquina virtual que lida com todo o tráfego de rede e estabelece a conexão com a rede Tor. O Workstation é a máquina virtual que você usa para suas atividades online. As duas máquinas virtuais se comunicam apenas através de uma rede privada, o que garante que o tráfego da rede esteja completamente isolado.

O Whonix vem pré-configurado com várias ferramentas de privacidade e segurança, como o navegador Tor, o cliente de email Thunderbird com suporte a criptografia, a suíte de criptografia GnuPG, entre outras. Além disso, ele possui uma série de recursos de segurança, como proteção contra vazamentos de DNS, capacidade de rotear todo o tráfego através da rede Tor, bloqueio de conexões não autorizadas, entre outros.

O Whonix resolve o problema de privacidade e segurança online, fornecendo um ambiente totalmente isolado e anônimo para navegar na web, enviar emails, trocar mensagens instantâneas e outras atividades online. Ele também ajuda a proteger os dados pessoais do usuário de roubo de identidade e outras ameaças de segurança.

Além disso, o Whonix é uma ótima opção para quem vive ou trabalha em países com censura na internet, já que a rede Tor é capaz de contornar bloqueios de conteúdo e oferecer acesso à internet de forma anônima e segura.

O Whonix é uma solução completa para quem busca privacidade e segurança online. Ele oferece um ambiente totalmente isolado e anônimo para todas as atividades online, garantindo a proteção dos dados pessoais e a privacidade do usuário. Com uma série de recursos de segurança e ferramentas pré-configuradas, o Whonix é uma ótima opção para quem deseja navegar na web com privacidade e segurança, independentemente de onde estejam.

https://github.com/Whonix

https://www.whonix.org/

@ f2e2c80b:1b1b0af9

Ingredients

• .

Directions

1. .

@ bf95e1a4:ebdcc848

This is the cleaned, AI-generated transcript of Bitcoin Infinity Show #127

If you'd like to support us, check out https://bitcoininfinitystore.com/ for all our books, merch, and more!

Welcoming George Manolov

Luke: George, welcome to the Bitcoin Infinity Show, thank you for joining us.

George: Thank you, Knut.

Knut: Good to have you here, George.

George: to be here, yeah.

you're here to tell us about the city that I was most surprised by ever. Like, I've never heard of the city before I went to Bulgaria, Yeah, time flies.

Knut: So Plovdiv, Bulgaria, which was amazing, this rich, Thousands of years of history plays with a lot of different eras and different styles of architecture and stuff, really enjoyed Plovdiv, and you have a football team there.

George: yeah, indeed.

George Manolov and Botev Plovdiv

George: Please give us the story about George and Plovdiv Yeah, sure.

Knut: Plovdiv.

George: Sure, sure. So, Plovdiv is, well, I would say it's the oldest living city in Europe, so continuously inhabited. Like you say, not many people know it. I guess, like, we don't have good enough marketing, but, that's probably part of my job right now, right? To spread the word about it. so it's, like the second largest city in the country.

And, yeah, it's just this, it's very, like, I love how you put it because almost nobody has really heard of Plovdiv, right? Most people, when they hear of Bulgaria, they've probably heard of Sofia but Sofia is, okay, but Plovdiv is kind of the chill place, Plovdiv is the place that is actually worth visiting, the place where, people just enjoy going there.

I was born there, right? and, grew up there till 18 or so, then, Studied, lived in Sofia most of the time. And, last year, in kind of summer, I was already kind of way deeper into Bitcoin. I decided I'm going to go full time into Bitcoin, just commit all my time in Bitcoin at the time, educating, publishing books in Bulgarian about Bitcoin, creating my own educational platform.

And then I got, reached out and connected really to the owner of the football club in the city, which is also the oldest football club in the country, Botev Plovdiv, who was, well, he got introduced into Bitcoin himself and he realized it's going to be a very big, project. You know, going to play a central role in where the world is going.

Knut: What is this the owner of the club?

George: That's right. The owner of the club. was like, Hey, I think we can do something unique with Bitcoin because, you know, the club is really a company, right? It's a business on the one hand, but it's a special type of business, it's not where just you produce a certain product or service.

It's really a living organism where people are involved into it, for very emotional reasons. people feel like it's their own and it's not like a small group of people. It's a very large group of people. In our case, we have tens of thousands, arguably more than a hundred, 200, 000 people who care, who watch, who follow the club.

And so on the one hand, like there's many different ways in which we can look into this, but on the one hand. It's for me, what really inspired me and what got me like, Oh my God, like, is this really happening is that we can bring the conversation about Bitcoin from a completely different angle into society to a group of people who for the most part would never really They would like this, they would never listen to podcasts like this, they would never get to any of the kind of places and things we listen to, watch, consume, right?

and people go, You know, people go kind of for bread and circus, right,

Knut: yeah, yeah.

George: for the games. That's what really football is, right? It's fun and it's emotion, it's enjoyment, but then we push them censorship resistance and hard money, right?

And we don't really push it, you know, that's the thing, right? Because are like consistently, progressively, gradually over time, introducing it and finding the best way and the most appropriate way to, yeah, plant that seed. To the minds of the people, into the views of the people and so on and so forth.

so it's really like, you know, what we're trying to build is, we feel we're in a very privileged position, right? because we've been, the first really professional sports club globally, I would say, to have, uh, crypto Bitcoin, you know, people, departments, who is actually full time employed to, you know, think of a way to grow the business, to think of a way to integrate Bitcoin natively, within the various aspects of, of, of the organization, which obviously initially includes like accepting payments and so on and so forth.

But, um, but there's so much more you can do exactly with this type of, Like organization, again, like not, not, not just a business in a traditional sense.

Knut: Yeah. And, uh, won the league, right? Is that, is that right?

George: Yeah, man, like it's, uh, yeah, so we, um, when I started last year, things were super bad. Like exactly one year ago, I was there for the, for one of the first games. It was horrible. Like, I was like, okay, this is a great idea, but if the team is doing so bad and if, uh, if they keep losing and if the fans keep getting, you know, being unhappy, Um, it's not gonna go anywhere, but still, I gave it a, I gave it a go, right, because I was like, okay, I just hope that the sports side guys are going to do their, their part, and I have my opportunity here, um, to, to just like push, to educate, to, To do what, what, what life is giving me an opportunity to do.

And, uh, very fortunately, as we started working, the team started performing better and better and better. We got a completely new coach. We got a new sports director. We, we had a lot of key staff changes across the organization, which, Um, relatively quickly started showing results. So, uh, yeah, like, 10 months later in May, we won the Bulgarian Cup.

Luke: Is that the cup or the league? Like, uh,

George: it's the cup, it's the cup. So, so, I was saying, like, we started very bad in the league. And so, we were doing better and better, but still, like, we finished 9th in the league out of 16 clubs at the end of the day. But which was still okay, because, like, when I joined, like, we were, like,

Luke: Worried about relegation or something like that?

George: there. I mean,

Knut: We're complete, uh, like I've tried to take an interest to football, but like, uh, my ADD just, the brain just wanders away after five minutes and I can't concentrate anymore. So I don't

Luke: a basketball fan.

Knut: Am I now?

Football for Noobs

Knut: Uh, so, uh, what's the difference between the cup and the league? Let's begin there. That's, that's how much of a football noob I

George: So, so pretty much in every country is the same, right? You have a league or a championship where you have, in our case, 16 teams, and every team plays twice against every other team. So home game, away game, and then, you know, you either win three points when you win, or you lose, or you draw, and you, you, you win one point.

And then, so after you play, after you play, in our case, this, what is it, games? You know,

Luke: 30.

George: yeah, about 30. Yeah, right. You're better than Matt, it's obvious. So, um, so once you play these 30 games, um, you, um, yeah, like the team with the most points wins, right? Whereas, uh, the cup is direct elimination

Knut: So quarterfinals, semifinals, all that.

George: exactly. So it's the easier way. So this was the way for us to due to the bad start of the season. This was the way for us to, to achieve something in this season and to achieve something important because what the Cubs gives us as an opportunity and gave us was to play in the European Leagues.

So UEFA Leagues. And we just did that. We played six games. Uh, for the Europe, uh, Europe League and the Europe Conference League.

Knut: Okay. But to, to be in the champions league, that's a totally, you have to, yeah, yeah. You have to win the league and you have to win all sorts of stuff. Like how does that work?

George: yeah. You have to win the league. And then in our case, so in every country it's different, but in our case, we have to win, like we go to qualifications for the Champions League. So it's like, I mean, three to four games. And if we win that, we go to the Champions League.

Knut: Alright,

George: That's the current state of affairs, although that can change over the years.

Knut: alright, uh, it all makes sense to me now, that's a lie, but anyway.

Luke: No, uh, I'll definitely, we'll acknowledge here that I'm more of the, the sports fan, uh, generally here, and I, I follow football, I like, uh, I like European, uh, football, uh, well, and obviously I'm using the correct, uh, term despite my, um, my pseudo American accent, uh. Yeah, anyway, um, uh, no, it's fantastic to see, and I mean, yeah, for the non sports fans, uh, listening to this, I get that

Knut: Well, I am a sports fan, it's just that Starcraft 2 is my sport, and yeah, yeah,

Luke: yeah,

George: eSports.

Knut: yeah, yeah, so I watch, watch Starcraft 2 games. That's what I do for procrastination sometimes.

Luke: valid sports, I'm not going to compare it to other things that aren't

Knut: breakdancing? Is that a valid sport?

Luke: Breakdancing is, um, hmm, interesting. I think anything with points, that judges give points, is kind of not a sport, it's an activity.

Knut: yeah.

Luke: but, yeah, anyway,

Knut: thing to do.

Luke: is a thing to do, yes, definitely, but back to, back to, um, um, Botev Plod, is it Botev, Botev, what's, what's, Botev, Botev Plod, yeah, so, so, um, yeah, yeah, like, the, the, the achievement, winning, winning the cup, I mean, the, The cups are sort of more difficult.

They're both difficult in their own way, right? Like, the cup, you lose one game, you're out, basically, right? But, I mean, the league is like this endurance, achievement, right? You have to perform well over the course of the whole season. But the cheat code, so to say, and I probably subconsciously used the other football team's terminology, who's in the space, Real Bedford, um,

Botev Plovdiv's Bitcoin Strategy

Luke: The, the idea right, if, if I'm getting it, is that you guys would, would keep the Bitcoin in the, in the, the treasury, the, the company, and then over the course of time it's just gonna do the number go up thing and, and the, the club will have more resources.

Right. Is that, is that the idea you're thinking with the, the bitcoin strategy?

George: There's actually many, many things to it. And this is kind of the most, let's say, vanilla type of approach. Yeah, like just buy Bitcoin and hold it on the balance sheet, which is, which is great. But there's actually so many other things you can do. And that's where, because if you just do that, frankly, like, I mean, you don't need me involved, right, much.

I mean, just call Coinbase, whatever, wire the money, crack in and, buy. but with us it's like, really, uh, we see a huge opportunity to, first of all, align our brand with the Bitcoin brand, which is a royalty free, uh, The biggest brand in finance, for sure. One, uh, like it's going to be the biggest brand in the world for sure at some point.

Right. So that's, that's one play. And to do this, it's not enough for you to just buy Bitcoin and hold it on a balance sheet. It's what you need to do is proof of work, right? You need to do things that nobody has ever done. You need to really kind of be creative. Uh, and, and, um, to push the boundaries of what anyone has ever done before, right?

So, so that is, uh, that is my kind of job and it's a lot of, um, a lot of just like, let's, let's think of what, what new things we can do with Bitcoin and sports and football that nobody has ever done. Just because others are focused on the short term things, they're focused on, hitting those, those quick wins, those quick goals, which is why, for example, like a lot of the sports and, and that have, you know, interact, they haven't really interacted outside of Bedford with Bitcoin, right?

It's mostly been crypto because it's just, okay, let's make some quick money. Um,

Luke: usually, it's usually just sponsorships, right?

Knut: yeah,

George: yes. Um, and for us, because on the one hand, like, we're not like Manchester United, right? We're not Chelsea. So we don't have that much to monetize immediately. Like we're a large club, but.

Luke: You're a large club in a local league, which is, which is different from the, it's not one of the leagues that is internationally positioned like that. But, but, I mean, the, the difference between you guys and Bedford that I, that I think is, is really interesting. Like, McCormack, what he, Peter McCormack, what he's doing, I mean, he's, he's taking a club from the bottom and aiming for the top.

But who knows how long that's going to take him to get there, right? But you guys are already in the top of your league, right? Like, in the top league.

George: right, yeah, and also there's, there's different in this, we're in the top of our league. My goal, personally, is to go to Champions League, but this is very hard, right? Because, like, okay, when you start from Peter's ground, like, it's easy, okay, every year you level up, you level up, or, I mean, I'm not gonna say it's easy, but it's easier than, uh, than once you're, you know, at our level.

For us, it's important to play currently every year in European leagues like we've done so far and to every year consistently, like, increase the level of the sports, level of the business department bit by bit, and, but like breaking that point where we, you know, win the league, Where we win several more games and enter the Champions League, that, that's really hard.

I mean, because you're already at that stage where everybody, like, so many teams are so strong, right? So it's um, it takes just a lot of ingredients for you to, to, to hit, uh, in order to win. But we're gonna get there.

Knut: and does the club self custody it's bitcoin? And if so, is it a something out of 11 multisig, that sounds like a football thing?

George: Why so? Ah, yeah, an 11? Nah, nah, fuck that. I mean Nah, even, even 7 Motosick is a, is a killer, but no. Um, yeah, I can't really speak too much about this at this point. Yeah. Um, but, um, but yeah, I mean, we do, of course we do self custody. So that's, that's the approach that we've chosen with kind of a lot of, um, we've chosen to go really pure, pure Bitcoin in terms of the strategy.

And that's how we set ourselves apart. That's how we believe we win the long game because for instance, like we Bitcoin with BTC pay server. Which in my mind they don't even have competition. It's the only like, real, solid, autonomous, sovereign way to accept payments. And it's also the way which makes sense for like, Frankly, any standard business, because like, man, we're selling scarves, we're selling, um, membership boat cards, we're selling jerseys, we're selling basic merch, and if we are to sell it with basically any other service out there, outside of BTC Pay Server, we have to basically, uh, indirectly do KYC, right?

Like, we have to go through KYC, we have to go through KYB, which is ridiculous, um, in my mind. And so, um, so that's why we're exceptionally thankful to B2C Pay Server guys, uh, for what they've built. Uh, it's been like an absolute pleasure to, um, to use their product, to use their service. Uh, we have, you know, outside of B2C Pay, we, uh, we are the first, uh, sports club on Nostr.

Where, uh, we have, uh, actively been posting, exploring, you know, meeting people here. Kind of thinking of what we could do from our angle again, like first, first time on Nostr.

Aqua WAllet

George: Um, we have partnered with, uh, Aqua, JAN3's Aqua wallet, which has a, a Botive skin mode now. So if you go to settings, you can turn Botive mode and then it turns into the colors of the club and, you know, have the picture of the stadium there.

Um,

Luke: I'm using Aqua right now because, uh, uh, usually I like to use Aqua as like a sort of a middle wallet, uh, uh, because it's still slightly slower than other lightning wallets because they, they, the, everything actually lives on, on liquid and then they, they, uh, go out via bolts. Uh, so it's slightly slower than a faster, um, like, like than other, um, more direct lightning wallets.

And so usually when I come to a conference, I'm going to load up a, like a temporary. I don't know, Blink or something like that, but I forgot to do that, so I'm just using my Aqua wallet, and you know what, it's been great here, it's been working, uh, so yeah, we're big fans of Aqua wallet and what

Knut: Yeah, and a BTC pay server. I mean, uh, we can echo everything you said that we, BitcoinInfinity. com, like, and the store here We just fired up. Everything is powered by a BTC pay server, and we just love it. Yes.

Luke: So what was your question about, uh, Aqua?

George: If yours is on BOTEV mode.

Luke: Uh, I don't think I've gone into the settings and changed it to Vaudev mode, I'll have to do that, maybe we'll take

George: It's dark mode,

but cooler.

Luke: Doc dark mode, but cooler. Okay. Okay. Actually that's a, that's a, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. We'll take a, we'll take a picture after, uh, after the episode and we'll de proof, bot, uh, bot e mode, and, uh, uh, post that on Nostr.

How does that sound?

George: Let's go.

Knut: Yeah. Nostr. Um, is there a connection there between both a plot and Nostr while you're doing Nostr stuff as well?

History and Freedom

George: Yeah. Well, look, um, a lot of these things is like, so What Botev Plovdiv stands for, um, very importantly, so the club was named after Hristo Botev, who's, uh, like, one of the most Bulgarians, if the most famous Bulgarian revolutionaries, like, historical figure, uh, he was a poet, he was a revolutionary, he fought for Bulgaria's freedom back in the day,

Luke: Which, which day, which, what day did you

George: uh, 110, uh, what is it, like, 50 years ago or so?

Yeah.

Knut: Mm-Hmm?

Luke: Okay. So, so

Knut: before the Commes.

Luke: ottoman, uh,

George: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he, he, he fought for the, for the liberation of Bulgaria from, from the Ottoman Empire. And a lot of what he stands for is this fight for freedom, his fight for liberty. Um, and this, this lives until this very day into the identity of the club and to what we stand for into the songs, into the, into the music.

Um, you know, um, the kind of like what, what our fans also resonate with, um, and, and what they sing like in many, in many ways. Right. So, um, Freedom of speech, freedom of, uh, of like freedom in general is, is a value that is deeply ingrained into kind of like what the club stands for. Um, and, uh, you know, that's why I'm into Bitcoin.

That's why I believe. And that's, that's why I saw this even bigger opportunity. Oh my God, like, how is this happening? There's so many, sometimes, you know, some like weird things happen in life and you have no explanation why and how all these things align. But, but for me, it's like this club was made really to.

to be aligned with BOTEF and to be, uh, to, to, to be aligned with Bitcoin and with Nostr. If I look at all the other clubs in Bulgaria, right, like just in Bulgaria, none of the others, like, there's no this contextual historical background that you can make these connections. But with us, we have it, and what a chance that, like, we have this owner, and he got, like, introduced to it, and then we got connected.

Like, how the hell does this happen, man? I don't know,

Luke: We like to say this, the surreal doesn't end, you know, and like, uh, my, my whole story, I've been talking about this, uh, at the, the conference here is like two years ago was the first time I ever met Bitcoiners here in Baltic Honeybadger. We, we met for the, for the first time, uh, all three of us, uh, met for the first time two years ago, I've been in Baltic Honeybadger and it's like, things, things happen so fast.

Uh, I've, I've, uh, I've thought it was been awesome just following, uh, what you've been doing with the, the club and the story. So great to, Great to get to talk about it, but, uh,

Bitcoin in Football

George: Yeah. No, for, for me, like really the, the most exciting part is really even coming forward. So, uh, because, so now it's been, so we, a long, we announced, uh, publicly that we're doing this, uh, 31st October last year. So the anniversary of the, of the, uh, Bitcoin White paper, um, we've built a lot right. And very, very importantly, I'm super proud, like, I don't know if you saw this, but like a month ago, we played on European League, the UEFA League with Bitcoin straight on our jerseys, which was like, like, when I saw this, I'm like, dude, it's crazy that this is happening.

But, but the best is really yet to come, like, like we like to say. Um, so I, I think we, we're, we have, um, we have still so much more to do. So for me, the next big part, which I'm super excited about literally in the coming month as, uh, as I go back. So is to finally get some of our. Players or at least one or two to get to do something publicly about this, because at the end of the day, that's why for me, the more I do, the more I, uh, play in this arena, I realized this is really a Trojan horse for us to bring Bitcoin into the conversation, into the minds, like I said, of people who otherwise wouldn't and, and our players, you know, especially a few of them, they're really influencers, right?

Um, a lot of people follow them. A lot of people respect them. And, um, and if they do, uh, you know, something meaningful, something cool, something impactful, this is going to have a huge impact onto our forwards. This could very well have impact onto, um, other sportsmen, other football people, other football clubs, right?

Uh, so that's why I'm doing it, right? Really?

Luke: No, this is fantastic, and actually this was exactly where I was hoping to go next, so thank you for queuing that up. But, no, no, the game theory of all this, right? Like, one club getting, Positioning as the, as the Bitcoin club in a league, uh, really means that eventually all the other clubs are going to need to adopt Bitcoin.

If they're going to be able to compete, because if play playing out the game theory, number go up, whatever it is, Bitcoin strategy plays out, you guys are going to be the most financially capable club. Financially sustainable in not very long, you know, assuming everything plays out the way we're thinking it will, right?

So, so other, other clubs then would become incentivized to also adopt Bitcoin. So what, what do you, what do you think about that? Like you, do you, do you see that, uh, happening as well?

George: Yeah, I'm not really sure if it would happen to me. That fast, to be fair. Like, I think it's inevitable, right, obviously, but I think it, yeah, like, I think this definitely takes at least three, four years, maybe more. Um,

Luke: That's, that's still pretty fast.

George: yeah, I guess. I mean, I mean, like, okay, let me define it better. It takes three, four years.

So, for other clubs within our league to start doing something like this, uh, maybe it takes less time for other clubs to realize it, but I think for them to do it, it also depends on our actions, right? So because like, we don't have like a treasury of microstrategy or something, so it's not, and we're not doing like a

Luke: you don't?

George: monthly like leverage on top of leverage on top of another leverage, you know, uh, we're not in, in Michael's privileged position. but we can do other cool things, right? Uh, one of the, um, so this is not yet live and this is not yet happening, but one of the, like two, two projects, let's say, I'm gonna briefly, like, tease here that, that I'm working on that I hope to have very large impact is first, uh, building this, uh, simple tool Uh, called like a Bitcoin, uh, football salary calculator that, uh, it's like really a DCA tool, but like looking back and like tailoring it to our niche where I want to, for us to visually and emotionally Show, um, to players, but also to fans of ours, like what Bitcoin could have done for their remuneration, if you look one year back in time, two years back in time, three years back in time, four years back in time, and for them to really realize, Oh my God, this is a no brainer.

Right? I want to make this mess. And this is hard, right? Um, because like, there's so many tools and like, but I want to be, because the audience is very wide, very different types of audience. I want to make this so that you can consume it in like two, three, four minutes. And you're like, okay, I need to learn more about this.

This actually is interesting. There's like, that's so much dense and emotional and compact information that you're like, Whoa. Why am I not doing this? How did I miss this?

Knut: What, what, what was the name of that website? I, I don't know if it's still up, but bitcoin or shit.com or something like that. So, so it lists if you bought this item when it came out, an iPhone five or whatever, uh, and if you had bought b bitcoin instead.com, I think that that's the, that's the name. So if you bought, uh, if you bought Bitcoin instead, it shows you how much, how much more money you'd have now and how many iPhones you

George: Yeah. Yeah. And of course there's many of these tools, obviously like we've all see them and we all like like them and retweet them and repost them. And it's all great. But I think, at least I hope that we can do something impactful with this. If we really tailor it, compact it to a specific type of niche audience with a specific message designed for them.

And because this audience is also like. A type of audience who can also like, um, you know, bring it to other bubbles that we ourselves are not part of, right? So that's, for example, one like, uh, one like project I'm very, very excited about and I hope we can, um, yeah, we'll bring forward relatively soon.

There's a few moving elements, but definitely in the coming month or two, uh, at most. And then, uh, and then, you know, speaking of the other clubs, what, what I want us to do is what we're working is next year, we're targeting to do, I hope we could do the world's first, uh, Bitcoin, uh, Cup tournament. Uh, for youth players, 70 year old boys who are, you know, right there before they sign their first professional contract, start earning money, for them, first of all, like, it's a Bitcoin football cup, like, it's the first time this, this could potentially ever happen And then it's, it's a football first tournament, right?

This is the, we want to make it like top quality, like really the highest quality when it comes to sports, but then you have Bitcoin involved all over the place, right? In terms of brand, in terms of rewards, in terms of, um, in terms of like plays, um, like, like games and, and interactions, activations, uh, throughout, before, throughout, and after the, And after the event, and for this, I'm targeting to get really like, like big clubs.

I mean, because it's academies, right? I mean, I cannot get the Manchester United first team, just maybe we could get the Manchester United 17 year old team or, you know, another big club. We get some of these, and then like we get their brands, we get them on the focus of Bitcoin. And we drive the conversation faster, you know, not three, four years from now, but Less

Knut: what about, um, like right now there's you and there's, um, you guys and there's a real bed for it, right? Those are the two I know of in Europe. Are you aware of any other clubs that are doing a Bitcoin strategy? I mean, is this virus spreading? Like, have you heard anything like,

George: Um, Oh, there's, uh, there's the Austrian Admira Vakir who have done some integration. So it's a second tier, uh, second league, uh, second league, uh, club that have, uh, that have, uh, you know, they've also had Bitcoin on the, their second team jersey. And, um, and they, they also accept Bitcoin payments, uh, here and there, but you know, the thing is, there's some other clubs, um, there's a Miami, um, not Miami, um, a Hawaiian club that, that is doing, uh, that is doing like their Bitcoin gig,

Knut: yeah, there are other, other sports, right, other sports team and sports teams in other sports that are doing it. But, but for football specifically,

George: which ones?

Knut: Uh, I'm so bad with sports, but wasn't there like a hockey team or a basketball team or

Luke: I'm not aware of any others, actually. Yeah, like, uh, there's been some attempts at

Knut: it's

Luke: an orange colored team or something like

Knut: more the individual athletes,

Luke: Yeah, yeah, there have been individual

Knut: for instance, a

Luke: have been individual

Knut: player, and there was some American football player.

George: There's been individual athletes, a lot of them. There's been, I was asking if you know, but there's been a baseball club in Australia, the Port Heat. Uh, who did kind of a Bitcoin strategy. Uh, but very unfortunately that didn't work out. They kind of started this at the peak of the last bull cycle. And, um, and as I understand, uh, there wasn't like a strong alignment between the owners and the management in terms of like understanding that this is a long game.

So that's why this kind of flopped. Um, but yeah, like I, I think the reason why it's not happening in more, unfortunately, and, and, and I see this even, even within our club, uh, you know, but, but definitely no other clubs because Fiat has permitted sports as well. Right. So all the sports club, uh, clubs or the vast majority in football, for sure.

They're like, you know, on the hamster wheel themselves.

Knut: They're indebted,

George: They're indebted.

Knut: to an extreme level,

George: yeah, like, like fighting for every dollar for every income. So it's, it's hard for you to like, Oh yeah, we're going to have this long term Bitcoin strategy that's going to take like two, three, four, five years to play out.

And we can benefit a lot from it. It's very, very hard in, you know, unfortunately for a large organizations, sports club in particular to To have this realization, to map this out, to get others on board. That's why it's not so popular and uh, and that's why I'm grateful and keep pushing that we have this chance.

Luke: I mean, you make a great point here about essentially the, it's the organizational alignment, right? Like the, the, these are companies, sports clubs are companies. They just have this large, the business is involved around getting fans to come in and consume this sort of marketing. Product, essentially. So it's, it's a certain kind of company that's run a certain way, but just like any other company, you need, you need alignment from the management.

So it's, it's fantastic that, uh, Boteb Plovdiv has, has the, uh, alignment and is, is putting their, their trust in you to, to move this thing forward. And I mean, from the, from the perspective of this thing, Playing out, right? The, the best part that, uh, I think one of the best parts that you, you mentioned again was the, the influencers.

Like you get, you get some players, there's, there's so many angles to, to reach people through this. I think it's, I think it's fantastic. The, uh, orange pilling a player and then they move to another club, but they, they, maybe they don't get to get paid in Bitcoin, but maybe they still put, put their money in, in Bitcoin.

Maybe they even ask their club to, to, uh, pay them in Bitcoin, something like that. And then the, the Questions start getting, uh, asked and all this.

5 Year Goals

Luke: So what, what is the, the goal in, in five years, for example, where, where do you see the club in the five year mark?

George: Oh man. Yeah, in five years, I think we definitely have to be in Champions League. Like in my mind, you know, like people around me like, oh, you're too ambitious. I'm like, man, yeah, like in five years, we definitely have to be in Champions League. Uh, that's, that's my personal goal. On our internal Slack, I have the Champions League icon there.

That's why I'm there, right? Um, so, uh, it's a lot of hard work. Like, it's really a lot of hard work. And it's also not completely dependent on me and my work, to be fair. Like, because, at all. I mean, really, like, uh, I mean, at the end of the day, the most important part is the sports department, right? Uh, in the club.

Um, so that has to continue going well. But, but I think We're going in a good direction there too, because we have the, they're the long term view as well, right. We have our academy internally, which is, yeah, it's one of the best academies. It's the best really academy in terms of infrastructure in the country.

That's why we're also can't afford to think of this Bitcoin Cup tournament, because we have the infrastructure, we have like a super cool stadium, that's crazy. If we can, if we can do a final for, for such a tournament there. Um, so, so we have all the things in place in terms of In terms of assets, I would say, uh, it's just a lot of moving parts.

a lot of work, consistency, and a bit of luck. Always it comes, you know, when, when it comes to, when it comes to football and sports, but, but five years from now, I want us to be in the champions league. I want us to be the absolute, you know, international professional level, uh, Bitcoin level, Bitcoin sports club.

and, uh, and I want for this tournament that I start to be like a, like, like to have the fourth edition by then. Uh, and, and I want to have clubs, but five years is a lot of time, you know, as you say, like, I also want to have other clubs following us by then. I think that's absolutely, absolutely is going to be doable.

Knut: What, what are the, what are the tax laws around Bitcoin in Bulgaria? Like what, are there any issues there? Or like what, is it easy enough,

George: It's kind of okay. Uh, it's kind of okay. So if you just buy Bitcoin and hold it, like you don't, uh, you don't, uh, incur taxes, uh, until you sell it, if you accept Bitcoin for payments, um, and if you don't sell it, you can just, uh, keep it as inventory on your balance sheet. So again, no,

Knut: but there's a capital gains tax or something if you sell it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright.

George: 10%. So it's, it's, uh,

Knut: Pretty good.

George: Yeah, I mean, it's not like El Salvador. Okay. Uh, but, but it's, uh, it's, it's way better than many other places. Um, and, uh, yeah, so we've been looking, looking actually, so I was in El Salvador a couple of months ago, because we've been looking very much to do stuff there.

And we've been, uh, yeah. Um, because we've been, we've been thinking of what to do more with Bitcoin, right? So that's why I said, like, it's not just about buying and accepting Bitcoin. It's about corporate strategies, about branding strategies, about how to make money. Um, it's about education strategies. It's, there's so much around it.

So in terms of corporate strategy, I was, uh, we're very attracted by El Salvador, um, and their, uh, capital markets regulation, because they're basically striving to build capital markets on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is legal tender there. They have all kinds of, tax incentives for companies to issue debt or to sell equity.

on their capital, on their, um, well, let's say nascent upcoming capital markets, because it's not like it's, you know, hustling and bustling yet. Um, but, but they're, they've put a lot of the rails, uh, um, or they're building a lot of the rails to, um, to really enable the, the, the creation of Bitcoin based capital markets.

So, um, we've had great talks there. We have meetings with, uh, um, we have. Yeah, with the Bitcoin office, right? Um, so, ideally, like, we're striving to build some connection there and to do something, interesting and world first again from a corporate perspective. It's just that, as many things, it's a little harder than you would expect it to be, or it takes a little more time than, Then you would hope to do it.

But my idea or long term vision, frankly, like what we want to do with Bitcoin, uh, and with the club is to enable our current fans and global fans to become co owners of the club. And that's why, you know, I have big hopes for, uh, for us being able to do this out of El Salvador and through El Salvador, because this would, like from a tax perspective, from a branding perspective, from legal security perspective would be, would be ideal.

It's just that, again, um, my enthusiasm is a little over, uh, ahead of kind of like how, uh, how, how advanced and set up everything there is, but, uh, but we're, we're very actively talking to them. We're working with many parties there, so. Just maybe we can have big news there too.

International and Local Effects

Luke: Well, no, and, and you actually said something great about global fans. I think this is a, a fantastic thing, right? A a again, Bedford is, is similar. They've, they've got, they've got fans all over the world and, and I think for you guys it's like who is going to tune into the Bulgarian football league outside of Bulgaria before, well, not too many people, but now a bunch of Bitcoiners.

If they're into, if they're into football or, or not even, because this is the funny thing. There were, there were a lot of people posting about that. They, they've got, they, they don't usually follow, follow sports at all, but, but they'll follow the Bitcoin team. So the, the funny thing is, I think, I think the first, the first club to adopt Bitcoin in every league is going to get all of these global fans.

And maybe the, maybe the, the second one, the third one, maybe can get some kind of other support, but it's really the first one in every

George: really.

Luke: That, that

George: Not

Luke: That's that. I, I completely agree with you there. It's the, it's the first one

Knut: first mover advantage.

Luke: mover advantage. It's gonna get, it is gonna get all of the, all of the Bitcoiners are gonna now be, be supporting and, uh, uh, yeah.

I mean, have, have you seen, uh, some, some uptick in, uh, kind of international

George: yeah, yeah. So, international but also local. Like, local is very important. Like, we have, like, so many people in the country who's like, just what you say, like, I didn't care about sports or football, like, forever, or at all, ever, but now I follow, now I buy merch, now I come, you know, every now and then they come to games, so

Luke: Well, because there's the bread and circuses thing that you said, it gets tossed around in the Bitcoin world and also some other places on kind of the Twitter sphere and whatever, it's like it's a distraction, that sports is sort of a distraction from clown world basically and it's a way of people to sort of Uh, forget about what's going on around them, but I think that's also missing the, the positives, which it, it's a, it's a community builder, it brings people together, there's a, there's a sense of, of pride in, in something local succeeding, everyone, everyone's happy, there's, there's real economic, uh, effects usually when a, when a local sports team wins, and so, so from, from my perspective, I, I, I think, I think sport is a good thing, and it's, and it's, it's something that, that people can rally around, and so,

George: an amazing thing.

Luke: Yeah.

And, and so what, what are, what are you looking at locally? Like what, what do you hope to have the effect, uh, uh, locally in, in piv?

George: Yeah. Um, yeah, no, look, uh, for me, sports, like, for us, the, the, the, the, about Plovdiv, for me, that's what I realized, like, we're kind of very much into Bitcoin and stuff, obviously, that's our interest, but I think when we go on a Bitcoin standard, Right. And, uh, in general, people start feeling wealthier, opposed to, like, being in the grind.

You're just going to have more time for fun stuff, right? Like playing football, I mean, or volleyball, or whatever your sport is, or, like, going and cheering your team, and, uh, and being part of such a community. And I think that's really what, you know, even Nostr is about. Like it's, Being part of these communities, because that's fun, and like, we as humans, at the end of the day, we are living to be part of communities, right?

And you find your community, you're an active part of it, you contribute to it, you evolve it, right? You build it in one way or another. And unfortunately, you know, today in the fiat world, this is just like A stress valve in many ways, or like you say, like Brothers and Sisters, whatever. Um, but, uh, but I think it can be so much more, right?

It is, but it can be so much more for a larger amount of people and so on and so forth. uh, but yeah, well, back in Plovdiv, man, like, I have big hopes. I really have big, big ambitions there. I want to get Bitcoin into the wallets of, uh, of like tens of thousands of people. I want people to wake up. I want people to see.

Luke: big is piv? How many

George: It's like three, four hundred thousand people. So it's a lot. Uh, our stadium is, uh, 21, 000 seats stadium. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's, it's 19. I wish it was 21.

Luke: Yeah. You'll have to add 2000 more

George: Maybe, yeah, we'll, we'll think of some additional construction.

Luke: the, make the infinity stand when

George: Right. Right. But, uh, but yeah, like the setting was super cool. Like, it's really cool.

Like when it's feel like, man, the atmosphere is amazing. Um, and so it's, and it's really this community that you can feel that people are involved. So it's, it's like consistency and it's social engineering in one way or another, right?

Knut: one of our favorite words,

George: but in a positive way.

Knut: in a positive way, okay.

George: So it's social engineering for us to ingrain Bitcoin and make it part of kind of what people see, do, have, own, interact with, right?

So, uh, I think exactly because of this community element, exactly because, Because, you know, football is a football club and there's this unique living organism we can, we can create this and, you know, it's fascinating. I'm so much into this and there's other people who are so much into this. Oh my god, like, we can make such a big difference.

And, and like in the country. You know, on a political and economic level, they don't get it. Like, they don't see it. They just are in their, you know, like, oh, are we going to accept the euro? Oh, what's happening with the war? I'm like, who cares? Let's build.

Bulgarian Currency Situation

Knut: Yeah, Bulgaria has its own shitcoin, I almost forgot about that, but uh, what's it called again?

George: Kinda. Um, but not quite, to be fair. It's, it's a good coin, uh, not for investing, but, but for medium of exchange is actually decent. Uh, Lev, Lev

Knut: Lev, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,

George: and I recently got educated about this. So, uh, the lev is pegged to the euro. So, um, uh, so, so that, that is super cool for, for us, for me as a consumer, for businesses, because like the fixed rate.

So for trade is, um, It's, it's good, right? As the world would be in the future. You have one currency, Bitcoin, you don't have the currency exchange risk, right? We don't have it only with the European Union. And the good part with this, so, we got, we got hyperinflation back in 1997. Was really bad. People lost almost everything, everything, in many cases.

Um, and then we got this so called currency board introduced and the currency board is like we have the left, but the left has to be backed up by other currencies. So it's like a stable coin, kind of like how Tether is backed by, by dollars. You know, the levy is backed by euro and like a basket of, I think they have some other currencies and assets, which is cool because the local politicians, they cannot print, they cannot, you know, so, so it's been, it's been, I think, way better than Hungary, Sweden, uh, Finland, you have your, oh

but Sweden I've heard it's kind of bad,

Knut: It's kinda bad, Norway too, like, both Swedish and Norwegian crown, and the crown in Czechia, like the Czech Republic, it's also

George: Yeah.

Knut: I mean, they're all going to shit the smaller

George: So, so for us, it's like, I would say we're better than, than the Corona, the, and, and all these like local currencies, because we kind of just are there to the, peg to the Euro. The local politicians don't have the opportunity to print. So it's, it's a very good position for us to be.

Luke: You, you get the, the negatives of the, the euro. But, but still, I mean, I mean the, the realistically, the dollar at the Euro and maybe the, the Chinese currency are the only, are the only ones that are in the, sort of within our own, within our own lifetimes are, are going to be not as terribly bad against Bitcoin.

But all the other ones are just, are. All the other ones are

Knut: Yeah, I think it's just a matter of time before both, uh, at least Sweden, uh, switches to Euro standard. If not switching to Bitcoin standard happens first, but well, we'll see, we'll see what happens.

George: man. I'm very bearish about the Euro.

Knut: yeah, yeah, it's like,

Luke: It'll be the second last to fall or third last but but yeah it's it's it's it's not going to be the the last and so it's yeah.

Knut: So that is what it is. I mean, speaking of Bulgaria and currencies and stuff,

Bitcoin Adoption in Bulgaria

Knut: like, how is the rest of, how is Bitcoin adoption in general in Bulgaria? What's happening in other places? Like, Plamen opened a bar, I saw, and like, what are the connections? What's happening?

George: It's actually quite cool. I'm, I'm, I'm quite happy with, with how the ecosystem is evolving. There's, there's Plamen, um, with his whole community, like content creation, the conferences he's been doing, which has been like a very, I think he's responsible for like, I don't know, probably like, 000, maybe several 10, 000s of people who have opened their eyes and even if they're not hard bitcoiners, they now own bitcoin.

Uh, so that's huge. We have other content creators also who've had an impact. We have now once or twice per, yeah, about twice per year we have like, uh, A small, uh, merchant, uh, like, conference events, so for merchants to accept Bitcoin. we have these people who are active and who are doing things. Now, actually, yeah, there's something new that's coming up here, uh, literally in Plovdiv is we have this, um, this, uh, great dudes who have this, um, um, it's an application for, uh, ordering food, like takeaway and, uh, what is it, like,

Knut: like Glovo or

George: yeah, yeah, like Glovo, um, but, um, but, um, But it's not like this big corporate thing that, but, but still, it's a very good product and they've integrated accepting Bitcoin there for quite some time now they've made it even easier and they've introduced.

So we have like about, I think it's 15 restaurants in Sofia and like five or so in Plovdiv where through their system, you can order food. And pay with Bitcoin online, or you can also go in the restaurant and pay in Bitcoin online, and they just, um, they just won a, uh, grant from, uh, Bitcoin Beach, uh, and, uh, they're going to use the grant, uh, to, well, the attempt is really to start like a small circular economy, if you would Um, where, so if you go, uh, to one of those restaurants and pay with Bitcoin, you're going to get sats back 10%, and then, um, the restaurant is also going to get 10 percent sats back.

And if you order food, um, through their app, also the driver is going to get, uh, some sats back. And, uh, we've just been discussing, because obviously we're partnering with them, with the football club, so we'll push this out, because some of the restaurants that are there are our, I mean, basically, like, we have two restaurants locally that are partners, we got them in, right, obviously, in the deal, um, So, so that is also like, for me, it's like super cool because now for so far, the club has been pushing Bitcoin.

Now we have two of our restaurant partners who are themselves like hard Botevists, Botefans, and like they're popular. Now they're starting to accept Bitcoin in their, in their two restaurants, right? And they're going to have their campaigns. We're going to push them more. So, um, so I'm really excited about this and fingers crossed this goes well.

We have good metrics because if we have good metrics. Yeah, we'll look for ways to grow this. So there's a lot of grassroots things happening, which I love. On the top, nothing.

Knut: It's the way it's supposed to be.

George: But it's the way it is. Yeah, it's a better

Luke: Yeah it really seems like that you get one or two of these big anchors like like for example you you guys have had that had that conference last couple of years but now with both of Plavdev now Bulgaria is really got a couple of big anchors. Big relative in relative terms, uh, and all of this other stuff can, can start coming up around it.

And, uh, love, love to see it. I mean, he, I mean here, here with Rega, there's Honey Budger has been going for a really long time, and I, and I even think that they are honest about, we, we would, we just talked to, to Max, uh, about this, uh, from Defi and like yeah, there's not much other adoption in, in Lavia and this conference has been going on for a long time.

Exactly. And so it's just like, uh, it's, it's, it's great to see, uh, in, in your case, in Bulgaria's case, that there's, there's more of this, uh, picking up. So, yeah,

George: Well, I think it's really, in our case, I don't know, like it's grassroots, like I said, and I really believe grassroots and then Rio or for the vast majority, Rio adoption comes permissionless life. It comes like it's not forced. You know, there is this point where, okay, there's Plamen, like, he got the inspiration, he makes his content, he does the conferences, Like, our owner, he sees this opportunity for Bitcoin, for the club. He takes the action, right? So it's, it's not like, so it's individuals, right? Taking actions and then, as you have, you know, several of them, maybe others get inspired or get ideas going and that's how the magic happens. And, uh, yeah. Excited about it.

Wrapping Up

Luke: it's awesome, man. Great hear your story. So, was, uh, was there anything else that you wanted to discuss or bring up on this topic?

George: no, I mean, what I would say is absolutely, uh, Please, uh, you know, Knut, you've been, but please, you're absolutely welcome, Luke, join as well, like, both of you should come

Knut: Absolutely. Highly recommend it. I had a great time in Bulgaria, and it's such a fascinating country, it's such a rich history and such a beautiful place, and the food is great, and it's very affordable, it's very, yeah, very

George: like, I have people who come in Plogis specifically to, like, nomads, spend, like, a or a month. So, so please enjoy, visit the game. come spend in the restaurants where they accept Bitcoin, follow us on social media for sure, so, X and Nostr,

Luke: Yes, all the details, please.

Knut: And also like one of the eras, uh, infamous eras of Bulgaria is the commie era, right? Where you can see the impact that system had on the country and how horrid it is. Uh, so it's, it's, uh, that might not be a good pitch for, uh, but that's

Luke: Let him, let him share his social medias, Knut.

George: wait, do you have, do you have something

Knut: no, no, I think like the, The point I was getting to is, if you get to Bulgaria, don't only go to Sofia, go around the rest of the country, because it's not as raped as that town was by, as that city was by communism, all this concrete, yeah, yeah,

George: yeah, the,

Knut: you can really see the impact there. I'm not, um, yeah, this came out totally wrong, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to, To hype Bulgaria here, but also there's a historical lesson to be learned in the country, for sure,

George: sure. It's really like, there's so many different things there. So there's the communist part, there's like fucking amazing nature, there's like

Knut: is everything, yeah.

George: if you're into hiking, there's like, just like from Sofia, what I love about Sofia, like just last week, twice, end of the day, I'm like fucked up, like tired of computer.

40 minutes up and I'm up in the mountains, hiking, in like 2000 meters altitude. Uh, so, so there's all these like super cool things, but on the socials, yeah, we're on Twitter. we're on Nostr, uh, so Twitter is, um, botif underscore, uh, en, on Nostr, uh, we are just botif. Yeah, you can find us.

Luke: going say you're NPUB? No, no, no,

George: I'm still learning it, okay?

Luke: we'll post, you're still learning, we'll post all the details in the show

George: Yes. Yes. And feel free to also check out our website. We have, due to our El Salvadorian, um, kind of project, we already have a Salvadorian website, which is very easy to remember, botif. sv. So you can go there and from there you'll find all the links and information.

Luke: Absolutely fantastic.

Knut: Great! Get the inverse of Clown World. This is a shill. BitcoinInfinityStore. com And thank you very much for coming on,

George: was great having

Knut: Great to have

Luke: George, thanks so much. This has been Bitcoin Infinity Show. Thank you for

@ 9358c676:9f2912fc

OBJECTIVES

To establish a guideline for the management of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) in our center, for both outpatient and hospitalized patients, with the aim of:

• Reducing morbidity and mortality associated with the condition.
• Improving the quality of medical care and optimizing hospital resources.
• Delaying the progression of antimicrobial resistance.

SCOPE

All patients over 16 years of age diagnosed with Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia who are being followed by our institution in an outpatient or inpatient setting.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Physicians from the Medical Clinic, Medical Emergency, Coronary Unit, and Intensive Care Service. Nursing Coordination. Pharmacy Service. Infection Control Committee.

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Adults. Recommendations for its management. Lopardo et al. MEDICINA (Buenos Aires) 2015; 75: 245-257. Argentine Society of Infectiology. ISSN 0025-7680
2. Diagnosis and Treatment of Adults with Community-acquired Pneumonia. An Official Clinical Practice Guideline of the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America. 2019. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Volume 200 Number 7 | October 1, 2019. DOI: 10.1164 rccm.201908-1581ST
3. ERS/ESICM/ESCMID/ALAT guidelines for the management of severe community-acquired pneumonia. Intensive Care Med (2023) 49:615–632 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-023-07033-8
4. Antimicrobial resistance. WHO. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/antimicrobial resistance
5. Internal Medicine. Farreras-Rosman. Volume I. Elsevier. 2008 Edition.
6. Considerations for the Responsible Use of Antibiotics in COVID-19. Argentine Society of Infectiology. 2020. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BmXD5x6rEpSqDIc8urccdqLcZKkP3U7X/view
7. Penicillin Allergy. Castells M. New England Journal of Medicine, 381(24), 2338–2351. doi:10.1056 nejmra1807761

INTRODUCTION

Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, affecting patients of all ages and with various risk factors. Proper management in both outpatient and hospital settings is crucial for improving clinical outcomes and reducing associated complications.

This document aims to standardize and optimize the treatment of pneumonia based on the most current evidence and recommendations from leading scientific organizations. It seeks to be a practical tool for healthcare professionals, providing a clear and concise approach to the diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of patients with pneumonia.

FOUNDATIONS. HOSPITAL SITUATION ANALYSIS:

• Pneumonias represent a significant burden on the healthcare system due to their high prevalence and potential severity, underscoring the need for a standardized approach.
• A clinical guideline facilitates decision-making, ensuring that all healthcare professionals follow a uniform protocol that integrates best practices, thereby reducing variability in treatments. This allows for better resource utilization, optimizing antibiotic use and reducing the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.
• Antimicrobial resistance has been proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and related organizations as the leading cause of death and hospital expenditure by the year 2050.
• Pneumonias in our center, in their various presentations, have shown significant prevalence in hospitalizations according to measurements taken in 2024.
• In our center, antibiotics, as a whole, have been the main source of financial losses related to drugs during the billing cycle from June 2023 to July 2024.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL SITUATION:

Pneumonias represent a global incidence of 1.26 cases per 1000 inhabitants. It has been documented in some centers that this incidence can increase in patients over 65 years of age, representing 34 cases per 1000 inhabitants. Outpatient mortality varies between 0.1% and 5%, but can reach up to 50% in hospitalized patients, especially those requiring Intensive Care Unit stay.

The main risk factors for developing pneumonia are:

• Chronic Heart Disease.
• Chronic Respiratory Disease.
• Chronic Kidney Disease.
• Advanced-stage HIV infection.
• Immunosuppressed. Solid Organ Transplant. Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation.
• Diabetes mellitus.
• Neoplasms.
• Smoking.
• Chronic use of Corticosteroids or Proton Pump Inhibitors.
• Multiple Myeloma and Hypogammaglobulinemia.
• Anatomical or Functional Asplenia.

The main causative agents of acute community-acquired pneumonia in our setting are:

• Respiratory Viruses (Influenza, SARS-CoV2, RSV).
• Streptococcus pneumoniae.
• Haemophilus influenzae.
• Staphylococcus aureus.
• Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Chlamydophila pneumoniae.

It should be noted that Streptococcus pneumoniae shows a good sensitivity pattern to penicillin and continues to be the most frequent causative microorganism. Haemophilus influenzae only shows beta-lactamase production in 10% to 23% of cases. Staphylococcus aureus in our setting has a low incidence of methicillin resistance, although this possibility should be considered in certain situations and severe clinical presentations. Given these considerations, beta-lactams remain the first-line treatment.

Regarding Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates, they will only be relevant in patients with risk factors such as bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, prior treatment with corticosteroids, or broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Emerging pathogens of some relevance include the eventual emergence of cases caused by Leptospira interrogans, Legionella pneumophila, and Hantavirus. These cases should always be associated with a specific epidemiological link.

DIAGNOSIS

The diagnosis of pneumonia is based on clinical and imaging criteria. For the diagnosis of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia, we will consider:

Symptoms and Clinical Signs (at least 1 of the following): * Fever. * Altered general condition. * Cough. * Sputum production. * Chest pain. * Dyspnea. * Hemoptysis.

plus

Radiopacity on Chest X-ray (Alveolar consolidation with or without air bronchogram, interstitial pattern, bronchiectasis, cavitation, pleural effusion, new radiopacity, etc.). It is always recommended to request both frontal and lateral views.

Chest CT remains a method with greater sensitivity and specificity for evaluating lung parenchyma compared to conventional X-ray in infectious pathology. However, a simple chest X-ray is an adequate method for the initial evaluation of the condition and its complications, which is why a CT scan is not recommended as an initial method for evaluating pneumonia and should always be preceded by a conventional chest X-ray.

CT studies should be considered in the following situations:

• Respiratory failure.
• Evaluation or suspicion of differential diagnoses to Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia.
• Evaluation or suspicion of complications of Acute Community-Acquired Pneumonia.
• Evaluation of radiological patterns that are not entirely clear on the chest X-ray.

CHOICE OF CARE SITE AND TREATMENT

For the choice of care site and treatment of pneumonia, it is recommended to complement clinical criteria with validated mortality scores associated with risk factors and clinical status.

CURB-65 (1 point for each item): * Confusion * Elevated urea greater than 90 mg/dl * Respiratory rate greater than 30/minute * Systolic blood pressure < 90 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure < 60 mmHg * Age equal to or greater than 65 years

Results:

• Groups 0 to 1: Outpatient management.
• Groups 1-2: Admission to General Ward.
• Groups 3-5: Admission to Intensive Care Unit.
• Appendix: A pulse oximetry reading of less than 92% is recommended as an independent factor for inpatient management under expert recommendation to complement the score.

COMPLEMENTARY STUDIES AND CULTURE SAMPLING

Once the diagnosis is completed, the patient's risk stratification and the choice of admission site are made, the following complementary studies and culture sampling are recommended to proceed with the patient's study during treatment.

Outpatient patient: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests).

Inpatient patient in general ward: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests). Acid-base status if pulse oximetry is less than 92%. * Sputum sample (Gram stain, culture, antibiogram). * Blood cultures. * In the presence of pleural effusion: Thoracentesis. Physical-chemical study for Light's Criteria. Direct and Culture of Pleural Fluid.

Inpatient patient in intensive care unit: * Pulse Oximetry. * Laboratory routine (complete blood count, glucose, urea, creatinine, liver function tests) plus acid-base status. * Sputum sample (Gram stain, culture, antibiogram). Tracheal aspirate, Mini-BAL, or BAL sampling for patients requiring ARM upon admission. * Blood cultures. * Urinary antigen for detection of Streptococcus pneumoniae, if available in microbiology. * In the presence of pleural effusion: Thoracentesis. Physical-chemical study for Light's Criteria. Direct and Culture of Pleural Fluid.

Special considerations for Viral Pneumonias: * We recommend performing a viral panel for Influenza A/B for any pneumonia presenting at least 1 risk factor mentioned during periods of viral circulation in the community. * We recommend performing a viral panel for SARS-CoV2 for any pneumonia presenting at least 1 risk factor mentioned during periods of viral circulation in the community or having epidemiological criteria of a suspected COVID-19 case. * The Infection Control Committee will timely inform based on the National Epidemiological Bulletin about the presence of circulating respiratory viruses in our setting.

Special considerations for Atypical Pneumonias and HIV Testing: * We recommend serological testing for IgM/IgG for Chlamydia and Mycoplasma for any pneumonia presenting a subacute evolution at the time of clinical presentation or clinical-radiological dissociation in its presentation. * In the suspicion of pneumonia caused by emerging pathogens (Legionella pneumophila, Leptospira interrogans, Hantavirus), consider the necessary epidemiological link as a prior epidemiological background before requesting specific diagnostic tests. * HIV testing is recommended for all pneumonias, with special emphasis on those that do not present the conventional risk factors mentioned.

ANTIMICROBIAL TREATMENT AND DURATION OF TREATMENT:

Directed antimicrobial treatment will be based on the present risk factors and the choice of care site and treatment.

Outpatient patient <65 years and without risk factors:

First choice: * Amoxicillin 875mg/12h orally for 5-7 days.

Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally for 5 days or * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day for 5 days.

Outpatient patient >65 years or with at least 1 risk factor:

First choice: * Amoxicillin-Clavulanate 1g/12h orally for 7 days.

Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally for 5 days or * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day orally for 5 days.

Inpatient patient in General Ward <65 years and without risk factors:

First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5-7 days.

Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1g/day IV for 5-7 days.

Inpatient patient in General Ward >65 years or with at least 1 risk factor:

First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days.

Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1g/day IV for 7 days.

Inpatient patient in Intensive Care Unit:

First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days.

Scheme for history of allergy to Beta-Lactams: * Ceftriaxone 1-2g/day IV for 7 days.

Special Considerations for Inpatients:

Scheme for risk factors for Pseudomonas aeruginosa*: * Piperacillin/Tazobactam 4.5g/6h IV or Cefepime 2g/8h IV for 7 days +/- Clarithromycin 500mg/12h orally/IV for 5 days.

Scheme for risk factors for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus**: * Add to conventional scheme: Vancomycin 15-20mg/kg/8-12h IV +/- Clindamycin 600mg/8h IV for 7-14 days.

Aspiration Pneumonia:

First choice: * Ampicillin-Sulbactam 1.5g/6h IV for 5-7 days.

*Risk factors for Pseudomonas aeruginosa: Bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, prior treatment with corticosteroids or broad-spectrum antibiotics. Documented isolates in respiratory cultures of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

**Risk factors for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: Previously healthy young patients with severe, necrotizing, and rapidly progressive pneumonia, cavitary infiltrates, hemoptysis, prior influenza, intravenous drug users, rash, leukopenia, recent or concomitant skin and soft tissue infections.

The routine use of corticosteroids in pneumonia is not recommended.

CONSIDERATIONS ON ANTIMICROBIALS IN VIRAL AND ATYPICAL PNEUMONIAS:

In the case of a concomitant antigen test or PCR for Influenza A/B or SARS-CoV2, the following treatment recommendations are made:

Influenza Virus A/B:

First choice: * Oseltamivir 75mg every 12 hours orally for 5 days. Other considerations: * In cases of Respiratory Failure in ARM or Obesity: Oseltamivir 150mg every 12 hours orally for 5 days. * Concomitant antimicrobial treatment is recommended as there is documented frequent association of Influenza Virus and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

COVID-19: * First choice is conventional treatment with dexamethasone 8 mg IV for 10 days in the event of respiratory failure. * Routine antimicrobial treatment is not recommended for COVID-19; therefore, upon a positive SARS-CoV2 test, it is recommended to discontinue antimicrobials.

Consider maintaining concomitant antimicrobial treatment only in suspected bacterial infection due to severe presentation: * Focal alveolar consolidation +/- air bronchogram in imaging studies plus 1 of the following: sepsis, risk factors, and/or immunosuppression.

Atypical Pneumonias with Seroconversion for Chlamydia or Mycoplasma:

First choice: * Clarithromycin 500mg every 12 hours IV/orally for 14 days. * Azithromycin 500-1000mg/day IV/orally for 14 days. * Doxycycline 100mg every 12 hours IV/orally for 14 days.

CONSIDERATIONS ON PENICILLIN AND OTHER BETA-LACTAM ALLERGIES:

Patients who report penicillin allergy are often misclassified. It is documented that more than 95% of patients who report penicillin allergy can receive beta-lactams without any complications. Additionally, penicillin hypersensitivity diminishes over the years.

Allergy to one beta-lactam does not imply the impossibility of using the entire spectrum of beta-lactams, as there are only a few cases of cross-hypersensitivity.

Therefore, we recommend the safe use of beta-lactams except in cases of a reported or documented history of severe allergy to penicillin (anaphylaxis).

In doubtful cases or confirmed allergy events during hospitalization, a consultation with an Allergy Specialist is available to evaluate the case.

FOLLOW-UP IN OUTPATIENT TREATMENT MODALITY

Patients undergoing pneumonia treatment in an outpatient setting can continue their treatment at home, considering advising them to seek further consultation in case of alarm signs (fever that does not subside after 48 to 72 hours, dyspnea, hemoptysis, chest pain, etc.). Nevertheless, it is good practice to consider a follow-up consultation in the emergency department or clinic after 48 to 72 hours of starting antibiotic therapy.

It is not routinely recommended to repeat a chest X-ray or CT scan to evaluate the evolution of pneumonia under outpatient treatment. Only in the case of suspected complications or unfavorable evolution. A follow-up at the end of treatment with the primary care physician is suggested.

FOLLOW-UP IN INPATIENT TREATMENT MODALITY

For hospitalized patients, we should consider transitioning from parenteral medication to oral when the following conditions are met

• Completion of 48 hours of parenteral treatment.
• Presence of a 24-hour afebrile period, with hemodynamic stability and significant clinical improvement.
• Availability of the oral route.

It is not routinely recommended to repeat a chest X-ray or CT scan to evaluate the evolution of pneumonia under outpatient or inpatient treatment. Only in the case of suspected complications or unfavorable evolution.

PREVENTION

The prevention of pneumonia is based on timely immunization with pneumococcal vaccines, influenza vaccination, and COVID-19 vaccination according to the immunization recommendations and current schedule from the Ministry of Health.

ICD-11 CODING

• CA40 - Pneumonia.
• CA40.0 - Bacterial Pneumonia.
• CA40.1 - Viral Bronchopneumonia.
• CA40.2 - Fungal Pneumonia.
• CA40.Z - Pneumonia, organism unspecified.

Autor

Kamo Weasel - MD Infectious Diseases - MD Internal Medicine - #DocChain Community npub1jdvvva54m8nchh3t708pav99qk24x6rkx2sh0e7jthh0l8efzt7q9y7jlj

@ 8947a945:9bfcf626

สวัสดีทุกคนบน Nostr ครับ รวมไปถึง watchersและ ผู้ติดตามของผมจาก Deviantart และ platform งานศิลปะอื่นๆนะครับ

ตั้งแต่ต้นปี 2024 ผมใช้ AI เจนรูปงานตัวละครสาวๆจากอนิเมะ และเปิด exclusive content ให้สำหรับผู้ที่ชื่นชอบผลงานของผมเป็นพิเศษ

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เมื่อวันที่ 16 กย.2024 มีผู้ติดตามคนหนึ่งส่งข้อความส่วนตัวมาหาผม บอกว่าชื่นชอบผลงานของผมมาก ต้องการจะขอซื้อผลงาน แต่ขอซื้อเป็น NFT นะ เสนอราคาซื้อขายต่อชิ้นที่สูงมาก หลังจากนั้นผมกับผู้ซื้อคนนี้พูดคุยกันในเมล์ครับ

นี่คือข้อสรุปสั่นๆจากการต่อรองซื้อขายครับ

(หลังจากนี้ผมขอเรียกผู้ซื้อว่า scammer นะครับ เพราะไพ่มันหงายมาแล้ว ว่าเขาคือมิจฉาชีพ)

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ผมบอก scammer รายที่สองว่า ต้องรอนะ เพราะตอนนี้กำลังติดต่อซื้อขายอยู่กับผู้ซื้อรายแรกอยู่ ผมกำลังรอเงินเพื่อมาซื้อ ETH เป็นต้นทุนดำเนินงานอยู่ คนคนนี้ขอให้ผมส่งเวบแรกไปให้เขาดูหน่อย หลังจากนั้นไม่นานเขาเตือนผมมาว่าเวบแรกมันคือ scam นะ ไม่สามารถถอนเงินออกมาได้ เขายังส่งรูป cap หน้าจอที่คุยกับผู้เสียหายจากเวบแรกมาให้ดูว่าเจอปัญหาถอนเงินไม่ได้ ไม่พอ เขายังบลัฟ opensea ด้วยว่าลูกค้าขายงานได้ แต่ถอนเงินไม่ได้

Opensea ถอนเงินไม่ได้ ตรงนี้แหละครับคือตัวกระตุกต่อมเอ๊ะของผมดังมาก เพราะ opensea อ่ะ ผู้ใช้ connect wallet เข้ากับ marketplace โดยตรง ซื้อขายกันเกิดขึ้น เงินวิ่งเข้าวิ่งออก wallet ของแต่ละคนโดยตรงเลย opensea เก็บแค่ค่า fee ในการใช้ platform ไม่เก็บเงินลูกค้าไว้ แถมปีนี้ค่า gas fee ก็ถูกกว่า bull run cycle 2020 มาก ตอนนี้ค่า gas fee ประมาณ 0.0001 ETH (แต่มันก็แพงกว่า BTC อยู่ดีอ่ะครับ)

ผมเลยเอาเรื่องนี้ไปปรึกษาพี่บิท แต่แอดมินมาคุยกับผมแทน ทางแอดมินแจ้งว่ายังไม่เคยมีเพื่อนๆมาปรึกษาเรื่องนี้ กรณีที่ผมทักมาถามนี่เป็นรายแรกเลย แต่แอดมินให้ความเห็นไปในทางเดียวกับสมมุติฐานของผมว่าน่าจะ scam ในเวลาเดียวกับผมเอาเรื่องนี้ไปถามในเพจ NFT community คนไทนด้วย ได้รับการ confirm ชัดเจนว่า scam และมีคนไม่น้อยโดนหลอก หลังจากที่ผมรู้ที่มาแล้ว ผมเลยเล่นสงครามปั่นประสาท scammer ทั้งสองคนนี้ครับ เพื่อดูว่าหลอกหลวงมิจฉาชีพจริงมั้ย

โดยวันที่ 30 กย. ผมเลยปั่นประสาน scammer ทั้งสองรายนี้ โดยการ mint ผลงานที่เขาเสนอซื้อนั่นแหละ ขึ้น opensea แล้วส่งข้อความไปบอกว่า

mint ให้แล้วนะ แต่เงินไม่พอจริงๆว่ะโทษที เลย mint ขึ้น opensea แทน พอดีบ้านจน ทำได้แค่นี้ไปถึงแค่ opensea รีบไปซื้อล่ะ มีคนจ้องจะคว้างานผมเยอะอยู่ ผมไม่คิด royalty fee ด้วยนะเฮ้ย เอาไปขายต่อไม่ต้องแบ่งกำไรกับผม

เท่านั้นแหละครับ สงครามจิตวิทยาก็เริ่มขึ้น แต่เขาจนมุม กลืนน้ำลายตัวเอง ช็อตเด็ดคือ

เขา : เนี่ยอุส่ารอ บอกเพื่อนในทีมว่าวันจันทร์ที่ 30 กย. ได้ของแน่ๆ เพื่อนๆในทีมเห็นงานผมแล้วมันสวยจริง เลยใส่เงินเต็มที่ 9.3ETH (+ capture screen ส่งตัวเลขยอดเงินมาให้ดู)ไว้รอโดยเฉพาะเลยนะ ผม : เหรอ ... งั้น ขอดู wallet address ที่มี transaction มาให้ดูหน่อยสิ เขา : 2ETH นี่มัน 5000$ เลยนะ ผม : แล้วไง ขอดู wallet address ที่มีการเอายอดเงิน 9.3ETH มาให้ดูหน่อย ไหนบอกว่าเตรียมเงินไว้มากแล้วนี่ ขอดูหน่อย ว่าใส่ไว้เมื่อไหร่ ... เอามาแค่ adrress นะเว้ย ไม่ต้องทะลึ่งส่ง seed มาให้ เขา : ส่งรูปเดิม 9.3 ETH มาให้ดู ผม : รูป screenshot อ่ะ มันไม่มีความหมายหรอกเว้ย ตัดต่อเอาก็ได้ง่ายจะตาย เอา transaction hash มาดู ไหนว่าเตรียมเงินไว้รอ 9.3ETH แล้วอยากซื้องานผมจนตัวสั่นเลยไม่ใช่เหรอ ถ้าจะส่ง wallet address มาให้ดู หรือจะช่วยส่ง 0.15ETH มาให้ยืม mint งานก่อน แล้วมากดซื้อ 2ETH ไป แล้วผมใช้ 0.15ETH คืนให้ก็ได้ จะซื้อหรือไม่ซื้อเนี่ย เขา : จะเอา address เขาไปทำไม ผม : ตัดจบ รำคาญ ไม่ขายให้ละ เขา : 2ETH = 5000 USD เลยนะ ผม : แล้วไง

ผมเลยเขียนบทความนี้มาเตือนเพื่อนๆพี่ๆทุกคนครับ เผื่อใครกำลังเปิดพอร์ตทำธุรกิจขาย digital art online แล้วจะโชคดี เจอของดีแบบผม

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ทำไมผมถึงมั่นใจว่ามันคือการหลอกหลวง แล้วคนโกงจะได้อะไร

อันดับแรกไปพิจารณาดู opensea ครับ เป็นเวบ NFTmarketplace ที่ volume การซื้อขายสูงที่สุด เขาไม่เก็บเงินของคนจะซื้อจะขายกันไว้กับตัวเอง เงินวิ่งเข้าวิ่งออก wallet ผู้ซื้อผู้ขายเลย ส่วนทางเวบเก็บค่าธรรมเนียมเท่านั้น แถมค่าธรรมเนียมก็ถูกกว่าเมื่อปี 2020 เยอะ ดังนั้นการที่จะไปลงขายงานบนเวบ NFT อื่นที่ค่า fee สูงกว่ากันเป็นร้อยเท่า ... จะทำไปทำไม

ผมเชื่อว่า scammer โกงเงินเจ้าของผลงานโดยการเล่นกับความโลภและความอ่อนประสบการณ์ของเจ้าของผลงานครับ เมื่อไหร่ก็ตามที่เจ้าของผลงานโอน ETH เข้าไปใน wallet เวบนั้นเมื่อไหร่ หรือเมื่อไหร่ก็ตามที่จ่ายค่า fee ในการ mint งาน เงินเหล่านั้นสิ่งเข้ากระเป๋า scammer ทันที แล้วก็จะมีการเล่นตุกติกต่อแน่นอนครับ เช่นถอนไม่ได้ หรือซื้อไม่ได้ ต้องโอนเงินมาเพิ่มเพื่อปลดล็อค smart contract อะไรก็ว่าไป แล้วคนนิสัยไม่ดีพวกเนี้ย ก็จะเล่นกับความโลภของคน เอาราคาเสนอซื้อที่สูงโคตรๆมาล่อ ... อันนี้ไม่ว่ากัน เพราะบนโลก NFT รูปภาพบางรูปที่ไม่ได้มีความเป็นศิลปะอะไรเลย มันดันขายกันได้ 100 - 150 ETH ศิลปินที่พยายามสร้างตัวก็อาจจะมองว่า ผลงานเรามีคนรับซื้อ 2 - 4 ETH ต่องานมันก็มากพอแล้ว (จริงๆมากเกินจนน่าตกใจด้วยซ้ำครับ)

บนโลกของ BTC ไม่ต้องเชื่อใจกัน โอนเงินไปหากันได้ ปิดสมุดบัญชีได้โดยไม่ต้องเชื่อใจกัน

บบโลกของ ETH "code is law" smart contract มีเขียนอยู่แล้ว ไปอ่าน มันไม่ได้ยากมากในการทำความเข้าใจ ดังนั้น การจะมาเชื่อคำสัญญาจากคนด้วยกัน เป็นอะไรที่ไม่มีเหตุผล

ผมไปเล่าเรื่องเหล่านี้ให้กับ community งานศิลปะ ก็มีทั้งเสียงตอบรับที่ดี และไม่ดีปนกันไป มีบางคนยืนยันเสียงแข็งไปในทำนองว่า ไอ้เรื่องแบบเนี้ยไม่ได้กินเขาหรอก เพราะเขาตั้งใจแน่วแน่ว่างานศิลป์ของเขา เขาไม่เอาเข้ามายุ่งในโลก digital currency เด็ดขาด ซึ่งผมก็เคารพมุมมองเขาครับ แต่มันจะดีกว่ามั้ย ถ้าเราเปิดหูเปิดตาให้ทันเทคโนโลยี โดยเฉพาะเรื่อง digital currency , blockchain โดนโกงทีนึงนี่คือหมดตัวกันง่ายกว่าเงิน fiat อีก

อยากจะมาเล่าให้ฟังครับ และอยากให้ช่วยแชร์ไปให้คนรู้จักด้วย จะได้ระวังตัวกัน

Note

• ภาพประกอบ cyber security ทั้งสองนี่ของผมเองครับ ทำเอง วางขายบน AdobeStock
• อีกบัญชีนึงของผม "HikariHarmony" npub1exdtszhpw3ep643p9z8pahkw8zw00xa9pesf0u4txyyfqvthwapqwh48sw กำลังค่อยๆเอาผลงานจากโลกข้างนอกเข้ามา nostr ครับ ตั้งใจจะมาสร้างงานศิลปะในนี้ เพื่อนๆที่ชอบงาน จะได้ไม่ต้องออกไปหาที่ไหน

ผลงานของผมครับ - Anime girl fanarts : HikariHarmony - HikariHarmony on Nostr - General art : KeshikiRakuen - KeshikiRakuen อาจจะเป็นบัญชี nostr ที่สามของผม ถ้าไหวครับ

@ 4ba8e86d:89d32de4

Ele utiliza criptografia forte para criptografar os arquivos antes de serem enviados para a nuvem, garantindo que apenas o proprietário dos arquivos tenha acesso a eles.

O Cryptomator é gratuito para uso em sistemas operacionais como Windows, macOS e Linux, mas requer uma licença paga para uso em iOS e Android. A licença pode ser adquirida por meio do ProxyStore https://digitalgoods.proxysto.re/en , que aceita pagamentos em Bitcoin e moedas fiduciárias.

Desenvolvido por Tobias Hagemann e Christian Schmickler, dois engenheiros de software alemães, o Cryptomator surgiu com o objetivo de criar uma solução acessível e fácil de usar para proteger arquivos armazenados na nuvem. Lançado pela primeira vez em 2016, rapidamente ganhou popularidade na comunidade de privacidade e segurança cibernética.

O Cryptomator é uma ferramenta simples para autodefesa digital. Ele permite que você proteja seus dados na nuvem sozinho e de forma independente.

A maioria dos provedores de nuvem criptografa dados apenas durante a transmissão ou mantém as chaves para descriptografia para si. Essas chaves podem ser roubadas, copiadas ou mal utilizadas. Graças ao Cryptomator, só você tem a chave dos seus dados em mãos.

O Cryptomator permite que você acesse seus arquivos de todos os seus dispositivos. É fácil de usar e se integra perfeitamente entre seus dados e a nuvem.

Como o Cryptomator protege seus dados?

A tecnologia do Cryptomator atende aos padrões mais recentes e criptografa arquivos e nomes de arquivos com AES e comprimento de chave de 256 bits.

Para começar com o Cryptomator, você atribui uma senha para uma pasta - nós a chamamos de cofre - dentro de sua nuvem. Isso é tudo. Nenhuma criação de chave complicada, nenhum registro, nenhuma configuração!

Para acessar o cofre, basta digitar a senha novamente. Você receberá uma unidade virtual criptografada para a qual poderá mover seus dados - exatamente como uma unidade flash USB. Sempre que você armazena algo nesta unidade, o Cryptomator criptografa os dados automaticamente. Bem simples, certo?

A tecnologia por trás disso é de última geração e criptografa arquivos e nomes de arquivos com AES e comprimento de chave de 256 bits. Isso significa: se alguém examinar a pasta em sua nuvem, não poderá tirar nenhuma conclusão sobre seus dados.

Você não precisa confiar cegamente no Cryptomator, porque é um software de código aberto . Para você como usuário, isso significa que todos podem ver o código.

Auditado por pesquisadores de segurança

Além de auditorias de segurança independentes , o software é continuamente e publicamente testado de forma automatizada e possui uma qualidade de código mensurável e cobertura de teste muito acima da média do setor.

O Cryptomator é uma poderosa adição ao seu arsenal de segurança, fornecendo uma camada adicional de proteção aos seus arquivos armazenados na nuvem. Ao combiná-lo com boas práticas de segurança cibernética, você pode desfrutar de maior tranquilidade e controle sobre seus dados pessoais e confidenciais.

O Cryptomator é uma solução confiável e acessível para proteger seus arquivos na nuvem. Com sua criptografia forte, código aberto e facilidade de uso, ele permite que você mantenha a posse exclusiva de suas informações, garantindo que apenas você tenha acesso aos seus arquivos. Ao adotar medidas adicionais de segurança e escolher cuidadosamente seu provedor de armazenamento em nuvem, você pode fortalecer ainda mais sua postura de segurança cibernética e proteger seus dados de maneira eficaz.

https://cryptomator.org/

https://github.com/cryptomator/cryptomator

@ 8947a945:9bfcf626

Hello everyone on Nostr and all my watchersand followersfrom DeviantArt, as well as those from other art platforms

I have been creating and sharing AI-generated anime girl fanart since the beginning of 2024 and have been running member-exclusive content on Patreon.

I also publish showcases of my artworks to Deviantart. I organically build up my audience from time to time. I consider it as one of my online businesses of art. Everything is slowly growing

On September 16, I received a DM from someone expressing interest in purchasing my art in NFT format and offering a very high price for each piece. We later continued the conversation via email.

Here’s a brief overview of what happened

• The first scammer selected the art they wanted to buy and offered a high price for each piece. They provided a URL to an NFT marketplace site running on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet or ERC20. The site appeared suspicious, requiring email sign-up and linking a MetaMask wallet. However, I couldn't change the wallet address later. The minting gas fees were quite expensive, ranging from 0.15 to 0.2 ETH

• The scammers tried to convince me that the high profits would easily cover the minting gas fees, so I had nothing to lose. Luckily, I didn’t have spare funds to purchase ETH for the gas fees at the time, so I tried negotiating with them as follows:

• I offered to send them a lower-quality version of my art via email in exchange for the minting gas fees, but they refused.

• I offered them the option to pay in USD through Buy Me a Coffee shop here, but they refused.
• I offered them the option to pay via Bitcoin using the Lightning Network invoice , but they refused.
• I asked them to wait until I could secure the funds, and they agreed to wait.

The following week, a second scammer approached me with a similar offer, this time at an even higher price and through a different NFT marketplace website.

This second site also required email registration, and after navigating to the dashboard, it asked for a minting fee of 0.2 ETH. However, the site provided a wallet address for me instead of connecting a MetaMask wallet.

I told the second scammer that I was waiting to make a profit from the first sale, and they asked me to show them the first marketplace. They then warned me that the first site was a scam and even sent screenshots of victims, including one from OpenSea saying that Opensea is not paying.

This raised a red flag, and I began suspecting I might be getting scammed. On OpenSea, funds go directly to users' wallets after transactions, and OpenSea charges a much lower platform fee compared to the previous crypto bull run in 2020. Minting fees on OpenSea are also significantly cheaper, around 0.0001 ETH per transaction.

I also consulted with Thai NFT artist communities and the ex-chairman of the Thai Digital Asset Association. According to them, no one had reported similar issues, but they agreed it seemed like a scam.

After confirming my suspicions with my own research and consulting with the Thai crypto community, I decided to test the scammers’ intentions by doing the following

I minted the artwork they were interested in, set the price they offered, and listed it for sale on OpenSea. I then messaged them, letting them know the art was available and ready to purchase, with no royalty fees if they wanted to resell it.

They became upset and angry, insisting I mint the art on their chosen platform, claiming they had already funded their wallet to support me. When I asked for proof of their wallet address and transactions, they couldn't provide any evidence that they had enough funds.

Here’s what I want to warn all artists in the DeviantArt community or other platforms If you find yourself in a similar situation, be aware that scammers may be targeting you.

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My Perspective why I Believe This is a Scam and What the Scammers Gain

From my experience with BTC and crypto since 2017, here's why I believe this situation is a scam, and what the scammers aim to achieve

First, looking at OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace on the ERC20 network, they do not hold users' funds. Instead, funds from transactions go directly to users’ wallets. OpenSea’s platform fees are also much lower now compared to the crypto bull run in 2020. This alone raises suspicion about the legitimacy of other marketplaces requiring significantly higher fees.

I believe the scammers' tactic is to lure artists into paying these exorbitant minting fees, which go directly into the scammers' wallets. They convince the artists by promising to purchase the art at a higher price, making it seem like there's no risk involved. In reality, the artist has already lost by paying the minting fee, and no purchase is ever made.

In the world of Bitcoin (BTC), the principle is "Trust no one" and “Trustless finality of transactions” In other words, transactions are secure and final without needing trust in a third party.

In the world of Ethereum (ETH), the philosophy is "Code is law" where everything is governed by smart contracts deployed on the blockchain. These contracts are transparent, and even basic code can be read and understood. Promises made by people don’t override what the code says.

I also discuss this issue with art communities. Some people have strongly expressed to me that they want nothing to do with crypto as part of their art process. I completely respect that stance.

However, I believe it's wise to keep your eyes open, have some skin in the game, and not fall into scammers’ traps. Understanding the basics of crypto and NFTs can help protect you from these kinds of schemes.

If you found this article helpful, please share it with your fellow artists.

Until next time Take care

Note

• Both cyber security images are mine , I created and approved by AdobeStock to put on sale
• I'm working very hard to bring all my digital arts into Nostr to build my Sats business here to my another npub "HikariHarmony" npub1exdtszhpw3ep643p9z8pahkw8zw00xa9pesf0u4txyyfqvthwapqwh48sw

Link to my full gallery - Anime girl fanarts : HikariHarmony - HikariHarmony on Nostr - General art : KeshikiRakuen

@ f2e2c80b:1b1b0af9

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 10 min (+24h to lievitate)
• 🍳 Cook time: 15

Ingredients

• Toppings:
• Tomato sauce
• Mozzarella fiordilatte
• BIGA
• 200g type 1 flour
• 2g fresh yeast
• 120g water at room temperature
• DOUGH
• 5g fresh yeast
• 5g malt (or honey)
• 50g type 1 flour
• 55g water
• 15g salt

Directions

1. 1. Place the biga with: 5g fresh yeast, 5g malt or honey, 50g type 1 flour and 35g water in the mixer and start kneading at first speed.
2. 1. Add 15g salt and 20g water.
3. 1. Place on the counter, food and knee for 20 minutes, then shape and leave rinse at room temp. for 1.30 h.
4. 1. When ready shape the pizza and spread tomato sauce.
5. 1. Put in hot oven at 280° for 10min.
6. 1. Take out, add mozzarella and bake again for 5 min.

@ 57d1a264:69f1fee1

_Welcome back to our weekly JABBB, Just Another Bitcoin Bubble Boom, a comics and meme contest crafted for you, creative stackers!

If you'd like to learn more, check our welcome post here._

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This week sticker: Bitcoin Student Network

You can download the source file directly from the HereComesBitcoin website in SVG and PNG.

The task

Starting from this sticker, design a comic frame or a meme, add a message that perfectly captures the sentiment of the current most hilarious take on the Bitcoin space. You can contextualize it or not, it's up to you, you chose the message, the context and anything else that will help you submit your comic art masterpiece.

Are you a meme creator? There's space for you too: select the most similar shot from the gifts hosted on the Gif Station section and craft your best meme... Let's Jabbb!

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If you enjoy designing and memeing, feel free to check our JABBB archive and create more to spread Bitcoin awareness to the moon.

Submit each proposal on the relative thread, bounties will be distributed next week together with the release of next JABBB contest.

₿ creative and have fun!

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originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/727696

@ f2e2c80b:1b1b0af9

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 10 min (+24h to lievitate)
• 🍳 Cook time: 15

Ingredients

• 200g type 1 flour
• 2g fresh yeast
• 120g water at room temperature
• .
• 5g fresh yeast
• 5g malt (or honey)
• 50d type 1 flour
• 55g water
• 15g salt
• Toppings:
• Tomato sauce
• Mozzarella fiordilatte

Directions

1. 1. Place the biga with: 5g fresh yeast, 5g malt or honey, 50g type 1 flour and 35g water in the mixer and start kneading at first speed.
2. 1. Add 15g salt and 20g water.
3. 1. Place on the counter, food and knee for 20 minutes, then shape and leave rinse at room temp. for 1.30 h.
4. 1. When ready shape the pizza and spread tomato sauce.
5. 1. Put in hot oven at 280° for 10min.
6. 1. Take out, add mozzarella and bake again for 5 min.