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Bitcoin Magazine

Something is Brewing in Ireland: A Sound Punt Is Released, As Bitcoin Enters The National Conversation

For years, Bitcoin in Ireland has quietly simmered at the grassroots level—discussed in pubs and meetups, debated in Telegram groups, and occasionally splashed across headlines with predictable suspicion. But recently, the temperature is beginning to rise. With the release of “A Sound Punt: The Case for Ireland’s Interest in Bitcoin” by Bitcoin Network Ireland (BNI), and a weekend that sees both the Bitcoin Ireland Conference and Aontú’s Ard Fheis, it’s clear momentum is building on the Emerald Isle.

A Sound Punt: A Paper for the Citizens of Ireland

The new paper, released today by Bitcoin Network Ireland, is a concise, accessible document crafted to cut through the noise and present the merits of Bitcoin to the general public and politicians alike. Its aim is straightforward: provide a rational, jargon-free entry point into why Bitcoin matters, especially in an era of euro debasement and rising living costs.

The name itself is a clever pun—while it is a nod to both “sound money” and Ireland’s former currency, the punt, it also playfully suggests that although the majority of people view it as associated with risk, this may be worth reevaluating. It’s a signal that this is about more than technology: it’s about claiming monetary sovereignty and re-examining what makes money “good” in the first place.

What BNI is attempting to accomplish is bridging an important gap in understanding, helping citizens seeking change and government officials looking for solutions to recognize that sound, stateless money has value for everyone. As Mark Goodwin famously noted, “Bitcoin simply must be for enemies, or it will never be for friends.“—a neutral system that serves all participants regardless of their political stance.

Ireland’s Long and Complicated Relationship With Money

To appreciate the significance of this moment, it’s worth noting that Ireland’s relationship with money has always been distinct from its European neighbors. While the Romans introduced coinage to Britain over a thousand years before it was adopted in Ireland. The native Irish resisted state-issued money, relying instead on barter and bullion well into the second millennium.

In ancient Ireland, the absence of coinage was a testament to a society that was stateless, highly decentralised, and it embraced a polycentric legal system varying between clans. The ideal of that society was that no man in society has rule over others, and even kings could be disposed of if they abused their power.

So it’s perhaps no coincidence that Ireland was the last European society to adopt coinage, as coinage gives power to rulers. Eventually, it was forced upon the land by the English crown in 1601, this period coincided with the final stages of the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603) and the increasing English control over Ireland. To this day, Ireland has never had its own free-floating currency; it has always been tethered to external powers: first the pound sterling, then the European Monetary System, and now the euro under the ECB. So it should come as no coincidence that in recent years, the EU is growing unabated in power and influence over Ireland.

“Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.” — Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743–1812)

Perhaps, given this historical context, Ireland is uniquely positioned to understand the value of sound, stateless money. Bitcoin represents a return to the monetary independence that preceded state-issued currencies, but with the technological advantages of the digital age. Where ancient Irish kingdoms used market goods that couldn’t be manipulated by distant authorities, Bitcoin offers a modern equivalent: a system that can’t be debased or controlled by any power, whether domestic or foreign.

This historical skepticism toward centrally-controlled currency is resurfacing in the present, as the Irish state and its citizens face a new wave of economic uncertainty via euro debasement and tariffs. Geopolitical and economic tensions have rarely felt less stable. Tariff disputes, renewed questions over Ireland’s foreign direct-investment model, and potential tech and pharma layoffs are sure to sharpen the focus on sovereignty and resilience. The release of “A Sound Punt” is timely, inviting the nation to once again question the wisdom of tying its fortunes to distant monetary authorities.

A Political Crossroads

Coinciding with the release of “A Sound Punt,” Dr. Niall Burke—a respected academic and BNI member—will be putting forward two motions at the Aontú Ard Fheis (party conference). Aontú, the party that saw the largest surge in votes in the last general election, has shown itself to be receptive to Bitcoin and is opening its doors to conversations that, until recently, were relegated to the margins. That Bitcoin motions are being presented and accepted at a major party conference is a marker of how the conversation is turning.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin Ireland Conference is gathering the country’s growing community of plebs, builders, and advocates. These circles, once on the periphery, are now finding doors opening in political circles.

Public Discontent and a Call for Financial Autonomy

It’s not just Bitcoiners who are seeking alternatives. Ireland is witnessing its largest public demonstrations since the post-GFC days of 2012. Recent marches have drawn in excess of 100,000 people to the streets of Dublin. These protests reflect deep frustration and a sense that the political establishment is no longer in alignment with its people.

What’s particularly striking is how Bitcoin could serve as common ground for seemingly opposing interests. For protesters, Bitcoin offers protection from inflation and defends against government overreach. For a government concerned about economic stability and growth, Bitcoin may be the very solution it needs, especially to protect pension funds and indeed the state’s very own investment fund—ISIF, from inflation over the coming decades. This is the paradox and promise of sound, stateless money. It serves everyone’s interests because it enforces property rights, and can’t be captured or controlled by any single faction.

Last, but not least, MMA star Conor McGregor’s foray into both politics and Bitcoin is something few would have predicted a year ago, but for those with an ear to the ground, this has been a developing story for some time. His proposal for a national Bitcoin reserve is emblematic of a broader national shift: Bitcoin is finally entering the Zeitgeist and perhaps he, like BNI, has a part to play in keeping it there.

Bitcoin is an open-source monetary protocol, and adoption comes from all quarters, irrespective of politics. Bitcoin is neutral, it supports no partisan cause. What’s perhaps not recognized enough is how empowering Bitcoin can be and we should focus on its ability to unite rather than divide, giving every Irish citizen—regardless of their political views—tools for individual liberty, inflation protection, as well as practical solutions for businesses.

Back to “A Sound Punt” Paper

The paper itself makes a compelling case for Ireland’s interest in Bitcoin:

• Sound Money Principles: It evaluates Bitcoin against the six characteristics of “good money”—durability, divisibility, uniformity, portability, verifiability, and scarcity.
• Store of Value: The document highlights Bitcoin’s fixed supply as protection against rising inflation and currency debasement.
• Practical Examples: It provides evidence of Bitcoin’s monetization, comparing the costs of buying a home in Euros vs. Bitcoin over the span of a decade.
• Common Concern Rebuttals: The paper addresses the most common objections to Bitcoin—energy usage, volatility, criminal activity, undermining traditional currencies, and speculation—offering balanced counterarguments to each. 
• Action Steps: Rather than just theoretical arguments, the paper outlines specific actions for individuals, businesses, and the government to consider, from education to strategic Bitcoin reserves.

The Beginning of a Process

No one expects the Irish government to announce a Bitcoin treasury next week, and it’s debatable whether it should establish one at all. But “A Sound Punt” marks the beginning of a process that could, in time, help reshape Ireland’s approach to money and economic sovereignty.

This accessible primer is just the first step in Bitcoin Network Ireland’s broader educational mission. BNI plans to publish a much more comprehensive policy paper for policymakers in the coming months, which is currently going through the editing phase. While “A Sound Punt” introduces the concepts to the general public, the forthcoming document will provide the detailed analysis and policy recommendations that decision-makers need.

As BNI works to elevate this conversation through both public ed

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Bitcoin Magazine

What to expect from the BTCfi & L2s companies at the Bitcoin Conference in Vegas

The annual Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas is a pivotal event for the Bitcoin ecosystem, where companies unveil breakthroughs, announce partnerships, and deliver speeches that shape the narrative of digital assets. For many, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming. Having attended several conferences and being familiar with the attending companies through my work at UTXO, I’ve highlighted key panels and expected developments for 2025, focusing on Bitcoin’s Layer 2 (L2) and BTCfi ecosystems. 

The full agenda is available using this link: https://b.tc/conference/2025/agenda 

Here’s a breakdown of anticipated announcements and panels, categorized by key themes:

BitVM2 Announcements

Since BitVM’s introduction in 2023, top Bitcoin development teams have been working tirelessly to transform centralized sidechain designs into true Bitcoin rollups and permissionless L2s. At the 2025 conference, expect these teams to unveil the first versions of BitVM2 bridges, providing critical details on their mechanics. Once live, BitVM2 bridges could unlock a wide range of decentralized BTC use cases, accessible to all Bitcoin holders. May 2025 might mark a turning point, potentially signaling the decline of centralized “crypto” and DeFi projects in favor of a Bitcoin-native economy. As the saying goes, on a long enough timeline, everything comes back to Bitcoin.

L2 Partnerships

Bitcoin L2s face a steep challenge: competing with established crypto players while earning the trust of Bitcoiners. The conference is likely to feature major partnership announcements, particularly at the infrastructure level, addressing long-standing barriers to BTCfi adoption. These collaborations could bolster the credibility and functionality of L2 solutions, paving the way for broader acceptance.

Lightning and Taproot Assets Innovation

The recent announcement that Tether (USDT) will return to Bitcoin by issuing its stablecoin on Lightning rails via Taproot Assets has sparked significant excitement. Expect major updates from companies in this space, particularly regarding Taproot Assets and stablecoin integration. The Lightning Network is poised for dominance, and 2025 could be the year it breaks into the mainstream.

Opcodes and Governance Discussions

With growing support for covenant activation on Bitcoin and recent debates over mempool policy on social media, governance discussions will be a focal point. These panels promise to be intellectually stimulating, offering deep insights into Bitcoin’s core mechanics and potential fireworks for those following the debates. Attending these sessions will likely be the most rewarding experience of the week for anyone seeking to understand Bitcoin’s future.

Must-Attend Panels

Below is a curated list of panels aligned with the above categories, along with my expectations for each. (Note: These predictions reflect my personal perspective and are not definitive. This list is not exhaustive but highlights high-signal sessions for attendees with limited time.)

Panels and Keynote with the highest probability of a major announcement related to Bitcoin L2s and BTCfi products: in other words, this is where major alpha will be dropped

Governance Discussions

*Bitcoin L2s and BTCfi products*

L2 and Lightning discussions

This post What to expect from the BTCfi & L2s companies at the Bitcoin Conference in Vegas first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Guillaume Girard.

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Abstract

This document proposes a novel architecture that decouples the peer-to-peer (P2P) communication layer from the Bitcoin protocol and replaces or augments it with the Nostr protocol. The goal is to improve censorship resistance, performance, modularity, and maintainability by migrating transaction propagation and block distribution to the Nostr relay network.

Introduction

Bitcoin’s current architecture relies heavily on its P2P network to propagate transactions and blocks. While robust, it has limitations in terms of flexibility, scalability, and censorship resistance in certain environments. Nostr, a decentralized event-publishing protocol, offers a multi-star topology and a censorship-resistant infrastructure for message relay.

This proposal outlines how Bitcoin communication could be ported to Nostr while maintaining consensus and verification through standard Bitcoin clients.

Motivation

• Enhanced Censorship Resistance: Nostr’s architecture enables better relay redundancy and obfuscation of transaction origin.
• Simplified Lightweight Nodes: Removing the full P2P stack allows for lightweight nodes that only verify blockchain data and communicate over Nostr.
• Architectural Modularity: Clean separation between validation and communication enables easier auditing, upgrades, and parallel innovation.
• Faster Propagation: Nostr’s multi-star network may provide faster propagation of transactions and blocks compared to the mesh-like Bitcoin P2P network.

Architecture Overview

Components

1. Bitcoin Minimal Node (BMN):

   • Verifies blockchain and block validity.
   • Maintains UTXO set and handles mempool logic.
   • Connects to Nostr relays instead of P2P Bitcoin peers.

2. Bridge Node:

   • Bridges Bitcoin P2P traffic to and from Nostr relays.
   • Posts new transactions and blocks to Nostr.
   • Downloads mempool content and block headers from Nostr.

3. Nostr Relays:

   • Accept Bitcoin-specific event kinds (transactions and blocks).
   • Store mempool entries and block messages.
   • Optionally broadcast fee estimation summaries and tipsets.

Event Format

Proposed reserved Nostr kind numbers for Bitcoin content (NIP/BIP TBD):

| Nostr Kind | Purpose | |------------|------------------------| | 210000 | Bitcoin Transaction | | 210001 | Bitcoin Block Header | | 210002 | Bitcoin Block | | 210003 | Mempool Fee Estimates | | 210004 | Filter/UTXO summary |

Transaction Lifecycle

1. Wallet creates a Bitcoin transaction.
2. Wallet sends it to a set of configured Nostr relays.
3. Relays accept and cache the transaction (based on fee policies).
4. Mining nodes or bridge nodes fetch mempool contents from Nostr.
5. Once mined, a block is submitted over Nostr.
6. Nodes confirm inclusion and update their UTXO set.

Security Considerations

• Sybil Resistance: Consensus remains based on proof-of-work. The communication path (Nostr) is not involved in consensus.
• Relay Discoverability: Optionally bootstrap via DNS, Bitcoin P2P, or signed relay lists.
• Spam Protection: Relay-side policy, rate limiting, proof-of-work challenges, or Lightning payments.
• Block Authenticity: Nodes must verify all received blocks and reject invalid chains.

Compatibility and Migration

• Fully compatible with current Bitcoin consensus rules.
• Bridge nodes preserve interoperability with legacy full nodes.
• Nodes can run in hybrid mode, fetching from both P2P and Nostr.

Future Work

• Integration with watch-only wallets and SPV clients using verified headers via Nostr.
• Use of Nostr’s social graph for partial trust assumptions and relay reputation.
• Dynamic relay discovery using Nostr itself (relay list events).

Conclusion

This proposal lays out a new architecture for Bitcoin communication using Nostr to replace or augment the P2P network. This improves decentralization, censorship resistance, modularity, and speed, while preserving consensus integrity. It encourages innovation by enabling smaller, purpose-built Bitcoin nodes and offloading networking complexity.

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This document may become both a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP-XXX) and a Nostr Improvement Proposal (NIP-XXX). Event kind range reserved: 210000–219999.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Trump Media Group Seeks $3 Billion War Chest to Buy Bitcoin and Crypto Assets: FT 

Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the company behind Truth Social and controlled by the Trump family, is preparing to raise a staggering $3 billion to invest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, according to the Financial Times.

JUST IN: Trump Media Group to raise $3 billion to buy Bitcoin and crypto — Financial Times pic.twitter.com/VEyvy5vpGZ

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 26, 2025

The media venture plans to secure $2 billion in fresh equity and another $1 billion through a convertible bond offering, those familiar with the matter told the Financial Times. The capital raise could be formally announced ahead of The Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas this week, where Vice President JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump’s crypto advisor David Sachs are expected to speak. 

The secondary equity offering will be carried out on an at-the-market basis, meaning shares are expected to be priced near the most recent closing price of $25.72, giving TMTG a current valuation of nearly $6 billion. 

TMTG’s push comes amid a wider cryptocurrency resurgence. Bitcoin hit a new record of $111,999 last week, and investor interest in crypto-related plays has surged. The strategy echoes that of Strategy, which used a similar blend of debt and equity financing to buy tens of billions of dollars in Bitcoin—catapulting its market cap to over $100 billion.  

Although the news is still yet to be confirmed by TMTG, a comment they made to the Financial Times may give some doubt to the validity of the story:

“Apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources”, reportedly said TMTG. A White House spokesperson also declined to weigh in. Representatives for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment and Reuters also did not immediately receive a request for comment.

TMTG’s deepening crypto pivot has included a slew of ventures: an NFT trading card series, two memecoins, investments in crypto miner American Bitcoin and stablecoin platform World Liberty Financial, and an upcoming crypto ETF. 

After returning to the White House last year, Trump transferred his 53% stake in TMTG—worth roughly $3 billion—to a revocable trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr., who holds full investment and voting authority.

This is a developing story and will be updated as needed.

This post Trump Media Group Seeks $3 Billion War Chest to Buy Bitcoin and Crypto Assets: FT  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Jippi Launches Pokémon GO-Style AR Bitcoin Education Game at Vegas’s Bitcoin 2025

Jippi, a mobile augmented reality (AR) game developer, will debut its Bitcoin education game at the Bitcoin Conference 2025, held at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas from May 27-29. Inspired by Pokémon GO, the game blends location-based gameplay with financial literacy, aiming to engage over 30,000 attendees by making Bitcoin education fun and accessible.

Using the app, players can explore The Venetian’s grounds to hunt digital “Bitcoin Beasts,” answering Bitcoin-related trivia to capture them and earn 1000 satoshis (sats) per catch. The game is designed to deliver concise lessons on sound money principles, targeting younger audiences, with Jippi’s research showing 90% of Gen Z play mobile games. This approach aims to make learning about Bitcoin intuitive and engaging.

“We’re excited to turn Bitcoin education into an adventure,” said Oliver Porter, Jippi’s Founder and CEO. “Our game meets players where they are, making complex concepts approachable.”

Jippi partnered with six Bitcoin companies—Bitcoin Well, Beyond The Checkout, Bitcoin Trading Cards, Geyser, SHAmory, and 21M Communications—to sponsor unique Beasts. Each is tied to a specific location, offering tailored trivia that highlights the sponsor’s mission. For instance, Bitcoin Well’s Beast teaches wallet security, while SHAmory’s content suits all ages. “Jippi’s game is a fresh way to onboard new users,” said Adam O’Brien, CEO of Bitcoin Well.

The game stems from over a year of development, including university testing and on-site surveys. Jippi’s efforts earned it the top prize at PlebLab’s Top Builder competition in March 2025, a hackathon for Bitcoin startups, cementing its role in gamifying education.

With 30,000 attendees expected, the conference is an ideal stage for Jippi to showcase AR’s potential in Bitcoin adoption. The game promises to transform The Venetian into a dynamic learning hub, encouraging players to explore while grasping Bitcoin’s real-world applications. Jippi aims to expand the game post-conference, adding more educational content.

This post Jippi Launches Pokémon GO-Style AR Bitcoin Education Game at Vegas’s Bitcoin 2025 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

Is the housing market going to crash for real this time?

https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzp6dtxy5uz5yu5vzxdtcv7du9qm9574u5kqcqha58efshkkwz6zmdqqs8dqr35dc0npsc8cuulqm4m7gxrgqq3ytphtja9nx534a592gztzsuzsrja

https://stacker.news/items/990316

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

I. Introduction: Money as a Function of Efficiency and Preference

Money is not defined by law, but by power over productivity. In any open economy, the most economically efficient actors—those who control the most valuable goods, services, and knowledge—ultimately dictate the medium of exchange. Their preferences signal to the broader market what form of money is required to access the highest-value goods, from durable commodities to intangibles like intellectual property and skilled labor.

Whatever money these actors prefer becomes the de facto unit of account and store of value, regardless of its legal status. This emergent behavior is natural and reflects a hierarchy of monetary utility.

II. Classical Gresham’s Law: A Product of Market Distortion

Gresham’s Law, famously stated as:

"Bad money drives out good"

is only valid under coercive monetary conditions, specifically: - Legal tender laws that force the acceptance of inferior money at par with superior money. - Fixed exchange rates imposed by decree, not market valuation. - Governments or central banks backing elastic fiduciary media with promises of redemption. - Institutional structures that mandate debt and tax payments in the favored currency.

Under these conditions, superior money (hard money) is hoarded, while inferior money (soft, elastic, inflationary) circulates. This is not an expression of free market behavior—it is the result of suppressed price discovery and legal coercion.

Gresham’s Law, therefore, is not a natural law of money, but a law of distortion under forced parity and artificial elasticity.

III. The Collapse of Coercion: Inversion of Gresham’s Law

When coercive structures weaken or are bypassed—through technological exit, jurisdictional arbitrage, monetary breakdown, or political disintegration—Gresham’s Law inverts:

Good money drives out bad.

This occurs because: - Market actors regain the freedom to select money based on utility, scarcity, and credibility. - Legal parity collapses, exposing the true economic hierarchy of monetary forms. - Trustless systems (e.g., Bitcoin) or superior digital instruments (e.g., stablecoins) offer better settlement, security, and durability. - Elastic fiduciary media become undesirable as counterparty risk and inflation rise.

The inversion marks a return to monetary natural selection—not a breakdown of Gresham’s Law, but the collapse of its preconditions.

IV. Elasticity and Control

Elastic fiduciary media (like fiat currency) are not intrinsically evil. They are tools of state finance and debt management, enabling rapid expansion of credit and liquidity. However, when their issuance is unconstrained, and legal tender laws force their use, they become weapons of economic coercion.

Banks issue credit unconstrained by real savings, and governments enforce the use of inflated media through taxation and courts. This distorts capital allocation, devalues productive labor, and ultimately hollows out monetary confidence.

V. Monetary Reversion: The Return of Hard Money

When the coercion ends—whether gradually or suddenly—the monetary system reverts. The preferences of the productive and wealthy reassert themselves:

• Superior money is not just saved—it begins to circulate.
• Weaker currencies are rejected not just for savings, but for daily exchange.
• The hoarded form becomes the traded form, and Gresham’s Law inverts completely.

Bitcoin, gold, and even highly credible stable instruments begin to function as true money, not just stores of value. The natural monetary order returns, and the State becomes a late participant, not the originator of monetary reality.

VI. Conclusion

Gresham’s Law operates only under distortion. Its inversion is not an anomaly—it is a signal of the collapse of coercion. The monetary system then reorganizes around productive preference, technological efficiency, and economic sovereignty.

The most efficient market will always dictate the form of hard money. The State can delay this reckoning through legal force, but it cannot prevent it indefinitely. Once free choice returns, bad money dies, and good money lives again.

@ a0e937b7:50db609a

Because we are not merely addicted to #Narrativium: It is our drive, imbued into our very essence. And it is so much easier to absorb our daily dose from the billions of trickles provided by everyone else as a substitute drug #Gossipium, or temporarily saturate our unquenchable thirst by just giving in to the temptation by the incessable stream of Movies and Series providing #Fictionium than it is to find a properly satisfying Source Of Narrativium (acronymize that 😉), let alone create our own Narrativium that might even be worthy of sharing. And yet, there is so much more fulfilment possible by letting one's creativity work instead of merely using a "share" button - which briefly seems to trick the human brain into believing that one has actually participated in providing one's peers with proper Narrativium, possibly as part of an implicit social contract: "I give you all some Narrativium I found, now give me more in return". It is such a trivial action to take, even more effortless than gossiping. But let's be honest, it often just feels hollow. And even when we write something, it is again tempting to just create #Rantium instead of something actually useful.

Gossypium herbaceum, the cotton plant (Photo by H. Zell from Wikipedia)

Originally I merely wanted to post a witty quote from https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Narrativium about Narrativium on Facebook:

"Humans add narrativium to their world. They insist on interpreting the universe as if it's telling a story. This leads them to focus on facts that fit the story, while ignoring those that don't." - T. Pratchett, I. Steward, J. Cohen, The Science of Discworld I

Maybe even subtly allude to how that might explain quite a lot about the everyday insanity that seems to surround us, especially these days.

"We are not Homo sapiens, Wise Man. We are the third chimpanzee. [...] We are Pan narrans, the storytelling ape. [...] if you understand the power of story, and learn to detect abuses of it, you might actually deserve the appellation Homo sapiens." - T. Pratchett, I. Steward, J. Cohen, The Science of Discworld II

Really. I was just going to quote a bit and go on about my day with some meaningless procrastination. Why already bother with housework when I can delay that until tomorrow or the day after and just watch some series in the Arrowverse now? But after ten minutes of a Legends of Tomorrow episode called "Lucha de Apuestas", curiosity got the better of me. What is it with Luchadores and their masks, I mockingly wondered. So I read Wikipedia on it. Lots of culture, history and, most importantly to me, Narrativium. I probably couldn't care less for to guys bumping fists on a stage, I don't really care about watching any sports either. But there's a certain fascination to stories, isn't there? So I felt like sharing about Narrativium, and here we are.

—

That's it for now, I might keep writing on this. One day. Just as I keep continuing writing everything else I start. Not. Well, motivate me.

@ 9cb3545c:2ff47bca

Introduction

Public companies that hold Bitcoin on behalf of investors (often issuing securities backed by those Bitcoin holdings) have faced growing pressure to demonstrate proof of reserves – evidence that they genuinely hold the cryptocurrency they claim. One approach is to publish the company’s Bitcoin wallet addresses so that anyone can verify the balances on the blockchain. This practice gained momentum after high-profile crypto collapses (e.g. FTX in 2022) eroded trust, leading major exchanges and fund issuers like Binance, Kraken, OKX, and Bitwise to publicize wallet addresses as proof of assets . The goal is transparency and reassurance for investors. However, making wallet addresses public comes with significant security and privacy risks. This report examines those risks – from cybersecurity threats and blockchain tracing to regulatory and reputational implications – and weighs them against the transparency benefits of on-chain proof of reserves.

Proof of Reserves via Public Wallet Addresses

In the cryptocurrency ethos of “don’t trust – verify,” on-chain proof of reserves is seen as a powerful tool. By disclosing wallet addresses (or cryptographic attestations of balances), a company lets investors and analysts independently verify that the Bitcoin reserves exist on-chain. For example, some firms have dashboards showing their addresses and balances in real time . In theory, this transparency builds trust by proving assets are not being misreported or misused. Shareholders gain confidence that the company’s Bitcoin holdings are intact, potentially preventing fraud or mismanagement.

Yet this approach essentially sacrifices the pseudonymity of blockchain transactions. Publishing a wallet address ties a large, known institution to specific on-chain funds. While Bitcoin addresses are public by design, most companies treat their specific addresses as sensitive information. Public proof-of-reserve disclosures break that anonymity, raising several concerns as detailed below.

Cybersecurity Threats from Visible Wallet Balances

Revealing a wallet address with a large balance can make a company a prime target for hackers and cybercriminals. Knowing exactly where significant reserves are held gives attackers a clear blueprint. As Bitcoin advocate (and MicroStrategy Executive Chairman) Michael Saylor warned in 2025, “publicly known wallet addresses become prime targets for malicious actors. Knowing where significant reserves are held provides hackers with a clear target, potentially increasing the risk of sophisticated attacks” . In other words, publishing the address increases the attack surface – attackers might intensify phishing campaigns, malware deployment, or insider bribery aimed at obtaining the keys or access to those wallets.

Even if the wallets are secured in cold storage, a public address advertisement may encourage attempts to penetrate the organization’s security. Custodians and partners could also be targeted. Saylor noted that this exposure isn’t just risky for the company holding the Bitcoin; it can indirectly put their custodial providers and related exchanges at risk as well . For instance, if a third-party custodian manages the wallets, hackers might attempt to breach that custodian knowing the reward (the company’s Bitcoin) is great.

Companies themselves have acknowledged these dangers. Grayscale Investments, which runs the large Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), pointedly refused to publish its wallet addresses in late 2022, citing “security concerns” and complex custody arrangements that have “kept our investors’ assets safe for years” . Grayscale implied that revealing on-chain addresses could undermine those security measures, and it chose not to “circumvent complex security arrangements” just to appease public demand . This highlights a key point: corporate treasury security protocols often assume wallet details remain confidential. Publicizing them could invalidate certain assumptions (for example, if an address was meant to be operationally secret, it can no longer serve that role once exposed).

Additionally, a publicly known trove of cryptocurrency might invite physical security threats. While not a purely “cyber” issue, if criminals know a particular company or facility controls a wallet with, say, thousands of Bitcoin, it could lead to threats against personnel (extortion or coercion to obtain keys). This is a less common scenario for large institutions (which typically have robust physical security), but smaller companies or key individuals could face elevated personal risk by being associated with huge visible crypto reserves.

In summary, cybersecurity experts consider public proof-of-reserve addresses a double-edged sword: transparency comes at the cost of advertising exactly where a fortune is held. As Saylor bluntly put it, “the conventional way of issuing proof of reserves today is actually insecure… This method undermines the security of the issuer, the custodian, the exchanges and the investors. This is not a good idea”  . From a pure security standpoint, broadcasting your wallets is akin to drawing a bullseye on them.

Privacy Risks: Address Clustering and Blockchain Tracing

Blockchain data is public, so publishing addresses opens the door to unwanted analytics and loss of privacy for the business. Even without knowing the private keys, analysts can scrutinize every transaction in and out of those addresses. This enables address clustering – linking together addresses that interact – and other forms of blockchain forensics that can reveal sensitive information about the company’s activities.

One immediate risk is that observers can track the company’s transaction patterns. For example, if the company moves Bitcoin from its reserve address to an exchange or to another address, that move is visible in real time. Competitors, investors, or even attackers could deduce strategic information: perhaps the company is planning to sell (if coins go to an exchange wallet) or is reallocating funds. A known institution’s on-chain movements can thus “reveal strategic movements or holdings”, eroding the company’s operational privacy . In a volatile market, advance knowledge of a large buy or sell by a major player could even be exploited by others (front-running the market, etc.).

Publishing one or a few static addresses also violates a basic privacy principle of Bitcoin: address reuse. Best practice in Bitcoin is to use a fresh address for each transaction to avoid linking them  . If a company continuously uses the same “proof of reserve” address, all counterparties sending funds to or receiving funds from that address become visible. Observers could map out the company’s business relationships or vendors by analyzing counterparties. A Reddit user commenting on an ETF that published a single address noted that “reusing a single address for this makes me question their risk management… There are much better and more privacy-preserving ways to prove reserves… without throwing everything in a single public address” . In other words, a naive implementation of proof-of-reserve (one big address) maximizes privacy leakage.

Even if multiple addresses are used, if they are all disclosed, one can perform clustering analysis to find connections. This happened in the Grayscale case: although Grayscale would not confirm any addresses, community analysts traced and identified 432 addresses likely belonging to GBTC’s custodial holdings by following on-chain traces from known intermediary accounts . They managed to attribute roughly 317,705 BTC (about half of GBTC’s holdings) to those addresses . This demonstrates that even partial information can enable clustering – and if the company directly published addresses, the task becomes even easier to map the entirety of its on-chain asset base.

Another threat vector is “dusting” attacks, which become more feasible when an address is publicly known. In a dusting attack, an adversary sends a tiny amount of cryptocurrency (dust) to a target address. The dust itself is harmless, but if the target address ever spends that dust together with other funds, it can cryptographically link the target address to other addresses in the same wallet. Blockchain security researchers note that “with UTXO-based assets, an attacker could distribute dust to an address to reveal the owner’s other addresses by tracking the dust’s movement… If the owner unknowingly combines this dust with their funds in a transaction, the attacker can… link multiple addresses to a single owner”, compromising privacy . A company that publishes a list of reserve addresses could be systematically dusted by malicious actors attempting to map out all addresses under the company’s control. This could unmask cold wallet addresses that the company never intended to publicize, further eroding its privacy and security.

Investor confidentiality is another subtle concern. If the business model involves individual investor accounts or contributions (for instance, a trust where investors can deposit or withdraw Bitcoin), public addresses might expose those movements. An outside observer might not know which investor corresponds to a transaction, but unusual inflows/outflows could signal actions by big clients. In extreme cases, if an investor’s own wallet is known (say a large investor announces their involvement), one might link that to transactions in the company’s reserve addresses. This could inadvertently reveal an investor’s activities or holdings, breaching expectations of confidentiality. Even absent direct identification, some investors might simply be uncomfortable with their transactions being part of a publicly traceable ledger tied to the company.

In summary, publishing reserve addresses facilitates blockchain tracing that can pierce the veil of business privacy. It hands analysts the keys to observe how funds move, potentially exposing operational strategies, counterparties, and internal processes. As one industry publication noted, linking a large known institution to specific addresses can compromise privacy and reveal more than intended . Companies must consider whether they are ready for that level of transparency into their every on-chain move.

Regulatory and Compliance Implications

From a regulatory perspective, wallet address disclosure lies in uncharted territory, but it raises several flags. First and foremost is the issue of incomplete information: A wallet address only shows assets, not the company’s liabilities or other obligations. Regulators worry that touting on-chain holdings could give a false sense of security. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has cautioned investors to “not place too much confidence in the mere fact a company says it’s got a proof-of-reserves”, noting that such reports “lack sufficient information” for stakeholders to ascertain if liabilities can be met . In other words, a public company might show a big Bitcoin address balance, but if it has debts or customer liabilities of equal or greater value, the proof-of-reserve alone is “not necessarily an indicator that the company is in a good financial position” .

This regulatory stance implies that address disclosure, if done, must be paired with proper context. A public company would likely need to clarify in its financial statements or investor communications that on-chain reserves are unencumbered (not pledged as loan collateral, not already sold forward, etc.) and that total liabilities are accounted for. Otherwise, there’s a risk of misleading investors, which could have legal consequences. For example, if investors interpret the on-chain balance as proof of solvency but the company actually had leveraged those bitcoins for loans, lawsuits or regulatory enforcement could follow for misrepresentation.

There’s also a compliance burden associated with revealing addresses. Once an address is known to be the company’s, that company effectively must monitor all transactions related to it. If someone sends funds to that address (even without permission), the company might receive tainted coins (from hacked sources or sanctioned entities). This could trigger anti-money laundering (AML) red flags. Normally, compliance teams can ignore random deposits to unknown wallets, but they cannot ignore something sent into their publicly identified corporate wallet. Even a tiny dust amount sent from a blacklisted address could complicate compliance – for instance, the company would need to prove it has no relation to the sender and perhaps even avoid moving those tainted outputs. Being in the open increases such exposure. Threat actors might even exploit this by “poisoning” a company’s address with unwanted transactions, just to create regulatory headaches or reputational smears.

Another consideration is that custodial agreements and internal risk controls might forbid public disclosure of addresses. Many public companies use third-party custodians for their Bitcoin (for example, Coinbase Custody, BitGo, etc.). These custodians often treat wallet details as confidential for security. Grayscale noted that its Bitcoin are custodied on Coinbase and implied that revealing on-chain info would interfere with security arrangements  . It’s possible that some custodians would object to their clients broadcasting addresses, or might require additional assurances. A company going against such advice might be seen as negligent if something went wrong.

Regulators have so far not mandated on-chain proofs for public companies – in fact, recent laws have exempted public companies from proof-of-reserve mandates on the assumption they are already subject to rigorous SEC reporting. For example, a Texas bill in 2023 required crypto exchanges and custodians to provide quarterly proof-of-reserves to the state, but it “specifically carved out public reporting companies” since they already file audited financials with the SEC . The rationale was that between SEC filings and audits, public companies have oversight that private crypto firms lack . However, this also highlights a gap: even audited financials might not verify 100% of crypto assets (auditors often sample balances). Some observers noted that standard audits “may not ever include the 100% custodial asset testing contemplated by proof of reserves”, especially since quarterly SEC filings (10-Q) are often not audited . This puts public companies in a nuanced position – they are trusted to use traditional audits and internal controls, but the onus is on them if they choose to add extra transparency like on-chain proofs.

Finally, securities regulators focus on fair disclosure and accuracy. If a company publicly posts addresses, those essentially become investor disclosures subject to anti-fraud rules. The firm must keep them up to date and accurate. Any mistake (such as publishing a wrong address or failing to mention that some coins are locked up or lent out) could attract regulatory scrutiny for being misleading. In contrast, a formal audit or certification from a third-party comes with standards and disclaimers that are better understood by regulators. A self-published wallet list is an unprecedented form of disclosure that regulators haven’t fully vetted – meaning the company bears the risk if something is misinterpreted.

In summary, wallet address disclosure as proof-of-reserve must be handled very carefully to avoid regulatory pitfalls. The SEC and others have warned that on-chain assets alone don’t tell the whole story . Public companies would need to integrate such proofs with their official reporting in a responsible way – otherwise they risk confusion or even regulatory backlash for giving a false sense of security.

Reputational and Operational Risks

While transparency is meant to enhance reputation, in practice public wallet disclosures can create new reputational vulnerabilities. Once an address is public, a company’s every on-chain action is under the microscope of the crypto community and media. Any anomaly or perceived misstep can snowball into public relations problems.

One vivid example occurred with Crypto.com in late 2022. After the exchange published its cold wallet addresses to prove reserves (a move prompted by the FTX collapse), on-chain analysts quickly noticed a “suspicious transfer of 320,000 ETH” – about 82% of Crypto.com’s Ether reserves – moving from their cold wallet to another exchange (Gate.io)  . This large, unexpected transfer sparked immediate panic and FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) on social media. Observers speculated that Crypto.com might be insolvent or was manipulating snapshots of reserves by borrowing funds. The CEO had to publicly respond, admitting it was an operational error – the ETH was supposed to go to a new cold storage address but ended up at a whitelisted external address by mistake . The funds were eventually returned, but not before reputational damage was done: the incident made headlines about mishandled funds and rattled user confidence  . This case illustrates how full public visibility can turn an internal slip-up into a highly public crisis. If the addresses had not been public, the mistake might have been quietly corrected; with on-chain transparency, there was nowhere to hide and no way to control the narrative before the public drew worst-case conclusions.

Even routine operations can be misinterpreted. Blockchain data lacks context – analysts may jump to conclusions that hurt a company’s reputation even if nothing is actually wrong. For instance, Binance (the world’s largest crypto exchange) encountered scrutiny when on-chain observers noted that one of its reserve wallets (labeled “Binance 8”) contained far more assets than it should have. This wallet was meant to hold collateral for Binance’s issued tokens, but held an excess balance, suggesting possible commingling of customer funds with collateral  . Bloomberg and others reported a ~$12.7 billion discrepancy visible on-chain . Binance had to acknowledge the issue as a “clerical error” and quickly separate the funds, all under the glare of public attention  . While Binance maintained that user assets were fully backed and the mistake was purely operational, the episode raised public concern over Binance’s practices, feeding a narrative that even the largest exchange had internal control lapses. The key point is that public proof-of-reserves made the lapse obvious to everyone, forcing a reactive explanation. The reputational hit (even if temporary) was an operational risk of being so transparent.

Additionally, strategic confidentiality is lost. If a company holding Bitcoin as a reserve asset decides to make a major move (say, reallocating to a different wallet, or using some Bitcoin for a strategic investment or loan), doing so with known addresses broadcasts that strategy. Competitors or market analysts can infer things like “Company X is moving 10% of its BTC — why? Are they selling? Hedging? Using it as collateral?” This can erode any competitive advantage of keeping financial strategies discreet. It might even affect the company’s stock price if investors interpret moves negatively. For example, if a blockchain analysis shows the company’s reserves dropping, shareholders might fear the company sold Bitcoin (perhaps due to financial distress), even if the reality is benign (like moving funds to a new custodian). The company would be forced into continuous public explanation of on-chain actions to prevent misunderstanding.

There’s also a risk of exposing business partnerships. Suppose the company uses certain exchanges or OTC desks to rebalance its holdings – transactions with those service providers will be visible and could link the company to them. If one of those partners has issues (say a hacked exchange or a sanctioned entity inadvertently), the company could be reputationally contaminated by association through the blockchain trail.

Finally, not all publicity is good publicity in the crypto world. A public proof-of-reserve might invite armchair auditors to scrutinize and criticize every aspect of the company’s crypto management. Minor issues could be blown out of proportion. On the flip side, if a company chooses not to publish addresses, it could face reputational risk from a different angle: skeptics might question why it isn’t being transparent. (Indeed, Grayscale’s refusal to disclose wallet addresses led to social media chatter about whether they truly held all the Bitcoin they claimed, contributing to investor nervousness and a steep discount on GBTC shares .) Thus, companies are in a delicate spot: share too much and every move invites scrutiny; share too little and you breed distrust.

Balancing Transparency Benefits vs. Risks

The central question is whether the benefit of proving reserve holdings to investors outweighs these security and privacy risks. It’s a classic risk-reward calculation, and opinions in the industry are divided.

On the side of transparency, many argue that the credibility and trust gained by proof-of-reserves is invaluable. Advocates note that Bitcoin was designed for open verification – “on-chain auditability and permissionless transparency” are core features . By embracing this, companies demonstrate they are good stewards of a “trustless” asset. In fact, some believe public companies have a duty to be extra transparent. A recent Nasdaq report contended that “when a publicly traded company holds Bitcoin but offers no visibility into how that Bitcoin is held or verified, it exposes itself to multiple levels of risk: legal, reputational, operational, and strategic”, undermining trust . In that view, opacity is riskier in the long run – a lack of proof could weaken investor confidence or invite regulatory suspicion. Shareholders and analysts may actually penalize a company that refuses to provide verifiable proof of its crypto assets .

Transparency done right can also differentiate a firm as a leader in governance. Publishing reserve data (whether via addresses or through third-party attestations) can be seen as a commitment to high standards. For example, Metaplanet, an investment firm, publicly discloses its BTC reserve addresses and even provides a live dashboard for anyone to verify balances . This proactive openness signals confidence and has been touted as an industry best practice in some quarters. By proving its reserves, a company can potentially avoid the fate of those that lost public trust (as happened with opaque crypto firms in 2022). It’s also a means to preempt false rumors – if data is out in the open, misinformation has less room to grow.

However, the pro-transparency camp increasingly acknowledges that there are smarter ways to achieve trust without courting all the risks. One compromise is using cryptographic proofs or audits instead of plain address dumps. For instance, exchanges like Kraken have implemented Merkle tree proof-of-reserves: an independent auditor verifies all customer balances on-chain and provides a cryptographic report, and customers can individually verify their account is included without the exchange revealing every address publicly. This method proves solvency to those who need to know without handing over a complete roadmap to attackers. Another emerging solution is zero-knowledge proofs, where a company can prove knowledge or ownership of certain assets without revealing the addresses or amounts to the public. These technologies are still maturing, but they aim to deliver the best of both worlds: transparency and privacy.

On the side of caution, many experts believe the risks of full public disclosure outweigh the incremental gain in transparency, especially for regulated public companies. Michael Saylor encapsulates this viewpoint: he calls on-chain proof-of-reserve “a bad idea” for institutions, arguing that it “offers one-way transparency” (assets only) and “leaves organizations open to cyberattacks” . He stresses that no serious security expert would advise a Fortune 500 company to list all its wallet addresses, as it essentially compromises corporate security over time . Saylor and others also point out the pointlessness of an assets-only proof: unless you also prove liabilities, showing off reserves might even be dangerous because it could lull investors into a false sense of security .

Regulators and traditional auditors echo this: proof-of-reserves, while a useful tool, “is not enough by itself” to guarantee financial health . They advocate for holistic transparency – audits that consider internal controls, liabilities, and legal obligations, not just a snapshot of a blockchain address  . From this perspective, a public company can satisfy transparency demands through rigorous third-party audits and disclosures rather than raw on-chain data. Indeed, public companies are legally bound to extensive reporting; adding public crypto addresses on top may be seen as redundant and risky.

There is also an implicit cost-benefit analysis: A successful attack resulting from over-sharing could be catastrophic (loss of funds, legal liability, reputational ruin), whereas the benefit of public proof is somewhat intangible (improved investor sentiment, which might be achieved via other assurance methods anyway). Given that trade-off, many firms err on the side of caution. As evidence, few if any U.S.-listed companies that hold Bitcoin have published their wallet addresses. Instead, they reference independent custodians and audits for assurance. Even crypto-native companies have pulled back on full transparency after realizing the downsides – for example, some auditing firms halted issuing proof-of-reserves reports due to concerns about how they were interpreted and the liability involved  .

Industry best practices are still evolving. A prudent approach gaining favor is to prove reserves without leaking sensitive details. This can involve disclosing total balances and having an auditor or blockchain oracle confirm the assets exist, but without listing every address publicly. Companies are also encouraged to disclose encumbrances (whether any of the reserves are collateralized or lent out) in tandem, to address the liabilities issue . By doing so, they aim to achieve transparency and maintain security.

In evaluating whether to publish wallet addresses, a company must ask: Will this level of openness meaningfully increase stakeholder trust, or would a more controlled disclosure achieve the same goal with less risk? For many public companies, the answer has been to avoid public addresses. The risks – from attracting hackers to revealing strategic moves – tend to outweigh the marginal transparency benefit in their judgment. The collapse of unregulated exchanges has certainly proven the value of reserve verification, but public companies operate in a different context with audits and legal accountability. Thus, the optimal solution may be a middle ground: proving reserves through vetted processes (auditor attestations, cryptographic proofs) that satisfy investor needs without blatantly exposing the company’s financial backend to the world.

Conclusion

Publishing Bitcoin wallet addresses as proof of reserves is a bold transparency measure – one that speaks to crypto’s ideals of open verification – but it comes with a laundry list of security considerations. Public companies weighing this approach must contend with the heightened cybersecurity threat of advertising their treasure troves to hackers, the loss of privacy and confidentiality as on-chain sleuths dissect their every transaction, and potential regulatory complications if such disclosures are misunderstood or incomplete. Real-world incidents illustrate the downsides: firms that revealed addresses have seen how quickly online communities flag (and sometimes misinterpret) their blockchain moves, causing reputational turbulence and forcing rapid damage control  .

On the other hand, proving reserves to investors is important – it can prevent fraud and bolster trust. The question is how to achieve it without incurring unacceptable risk. Many experts and industry leaders lean towards the view that simply publishing wallet addresses is too risky a method, especially for public companies with much to lose  . The risks often do outweigh the direct benefits in such cases. Transparency remains crucial, but it can be provided in safer ways – through regular audits, cryptographic proofs that don’t expose all wallet details, and comprehensive disclosures that include liabilities and controls.

In conclusion, while on-chain proof of reserves via public addresses offers a tantalizing level of openness, it must be approached with extreme caution. For most public companies, the smart strategy is to balance transparency with security: verify and show investors that assets exist and are sufficient, but do so in a controlled manner that doesn’t compromise the very assets you’re trying to protect. As the industry matures, we can expect more refined proof-of-reserve practices that satisfy the demand for honesty and solvency verification without unduly endangering the enterprise. Until then, companies will continue to tread carefully, mindful that transparency is only truly valuable when it doesn’t come at the price of security and trust.

Sources:

•   Grayscale statement on refusal to share on-chain proof-of-reserves 
•   Community analysis identifying Grayscale’s wallet addresses 
•   Cointelegraph – Crypto.com’s mistaken 320k ETH transfer spotted via on-chain proof-of-reserves  
•   Axios – Binance wallet “commingling” error observed on-chain  
•   Michael Saylor’s remarks on security risks of publishing wallet addresses   
•   SEC Acting Chief Accountant on limitations of proof-of-reserves reports 
•   Nasdaq (Bitcoin for Corporations) – argument for corporate transparency & proof-of-reserves   
•   1inch Security Blog – explanation of dusting attacks and privacy loss via address linking 

@ e844b39d:adafb6a2

I've been going so deep into black & white for a longer period now that I've totally forgotten about colours!

Actually that is how I felt when I started editing these, it was kinda too much haha

Grasshopper on our banana flower

This was to test my old Minolta 70-210/4 Beercan, even though the AF is slow it still locked in time to get this grasshopper!

I'm contemplating bringing this gear on the long trip instead of the old Nikon stuff, so gotta know it will do almost all sorts of jobs...

Random flower

I know that the pastel colours that I found using auto levels is in there, in the combination of the Sony A900 and the Beercan, which is one of the main reasons that I got it all around a decade ago.

Twig

Maybe too much? But still, these colours are in there, just gotta whack the files hard in post hehe

Sharpness is no problem

All of these are at f4, its sharp enough to tackle anything really.

Spider web

Of course this could be better technically, but it will do for almost anything I'll get across. Also this was manual focus, I didn't think the matte screen and viewfinder would make it possible to focus like this, never really tried before!

Amulet and my Nikon gear

I found a tiny amulet on the floor, of course its the cats that are responsible for that...

Zelda is happy

The A900 has built in stabilization, so any old lenses will get that by default! Which makes it far easier to get things like this right a around 1/4th of a second, even with that mirror clacking...

This one is with the Minolta 20/2.8, which is a lens I should really explore more. I got that and a 24/2.8 for a very low price, never had the time to use them much, and now I realize that they both can focus all the way down to 25 centimeters!

Now that is something I can use creatively, and on the road with ease...

I think this might end with me selling (dumping, really) my Nikon gear instead of this!

We'll find out soon 😁

@ b1ddb4d7:471244e7

Global fintech leader Revolut has announced a landmark partnership with Lightspark, a pioneer in blockchain infrastructure solutions, to integrate bitcoin’s Lightning Network into its platform.

This collaboration, now live for Revolut users in the UK and select European Economic Area (EEA) countries, marks a transformative leap toward frictionless, real-time transactions—eliminating delays and exorbitant fees traditionally associated with digital asset transfers.

Major update: @RevolutApp is now partnering with @lightspark pic.twitter.com/OUblgrj6Xr

— Lightspark (@lightspark) May 7, 2025

Breaking Barriers in Digital Currency Usability

By adopting Lightspark’s cutting-edge technology, Revolut empowers its 40+ million customers to execute bitcoin transactions instantly at a fraction of current costs.

This integration addresses longstanding pain points in digital currency adoption, positioning bitcoin as a practical tool for everyday payments. Users can now seamlessly send, receive, and store bitcoin with the same ease as traditional fiat currencies, backed by Revolut’s secure platform.

The partnership also advances Revolut’s integration into the open Money Grid, a decentralized network enabling universal interoperability between financial platforms.

This move aligns Revolut with forward-thinking fintechs adopting next-gen solutions like Lightning transactions and Universal Money Addresses (UMA), which simplify cross-border payments by replacing complex wallet codes with human-readable addresses (e.g., $john.smith).

Why This Matters

The collaboration challenges conventional payment rails, which often incur delays of days and high fees for cross-border transfers. By contrast, Lightning Network transactions settle in seconds for minimal cost, revolutionizing peer-to-peer payments, remittances, and merchant settlements. For Revolut users, this means:

• Instant transactions: Send bitcoin globally in under three seconds.
• Near-zero fees: Dramatically reduce costs compared to traditional crypto transfers.
• Enhanced utility: Use bitcoin for daily spending, not just as a speculative asset.

The Road Ahead

Revolut plans to expand Lightning Network access to additional markets in 2025, with ambitions to integrate UMA support for seamless fiat and digital currency interactions. Lightspark will continue optimizing its infrastructure to support Revolut’s scaling efforts, further bridging the gap between blockchain innovation and mainstream finance.

About Revolut
Revolut is a global financial app serving over 40 million customers worldwide. Offering services ranging from currency exchange and stock trading to digital assets and insurance, Revolut is committed to building a borderless financial ecosystem.

About Lightspark
Founded by former PayPal and Meta executives, Lightspark develops enterprise-grade solutions for the Lightning Network. Its technology stack empowers institutions to harness bitcoin’s speed and efficiency while maintaining regulatory compliance.

@ 2f29aa33:38ac6f13

The Myth and the Magic

Picture this: a group of investors, huddled around a glowing computer screen, nervously watching Bitcoin’s price. Suddenly, someone produces a stick-no ordinary stick, but a magical one. With a mischievous grin, they poke the Bitcoin. The price leaps upward. Cheers erupt. The legend of the Bitcoin stick is born.

But why does poking Bitcoin with a stick make the price go up? Why does it only work for a lucky few? And what does the data say about this mysterious phenomenon? Let’s dig in, laugh a little, and maybe learn the secret to market-moving magic.

The Statistical Side of Stick-Poking

Bitcoin’s Price: The Wild Ride

Bitcoin’s price is famous for its unpredictability. In the past year, it’s soared, dipped, and soared again, sometimes gaining more than 50% in just a few months. On a good day, billions of dollars flow through Bitcoin trades, and the price can jump thousands in a matter of hours. Clearly, something is making this happen-and it’s not just spreadsheets and financial news.

What Actually Moves the Price?

• Scarcity: Only 21 million Bitcoins will ever exist. When more people want in, the price jumps.

• Big News: Announcements, rumors, and meme-worthy moments can send the price flying.

• FOMO: When people see Bitcoin rising, they rush to buy, pushing it even higher.

• Liquidations: When traders betting against Bitcoin get squeezed, it triggers a chain reaction of buying.

But let’s be honest: none of this is as fun as poking Bitcoin with a stick.

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The Magical Stick: Not Your Average Twig

Why Not Every Stick Works

You can’t just grab any old branch and expect Bitcoin to dance. The magical stick is a rare artifact, forged in the fires of internet memes and blessed by the spirit of Satoshi. Only a chosen few possess it-and when they poke, the market listens.

Signs You Have the Magical Stick

• When you poke, Bitcoin’s price immediately jumps a few percent.

• Your stick glows with meme energy and possibly sparkles with digital dust.

• You have a knack for timing your poke right after a big event, like a halving or a celebrity tweet.

• Your stick is rumored to have been whittled from the original blockchain itself.

Why Most Sticks Fail

• No Meme Power: If your stick isn’t funny, Bitcoin ignores you.

• Bad Timing: Poking during a bear market just annoys the blockchain.

• Not Enough Hype: If the bitcoin community isn’t watching, your poke is just a poke.

• Lack of Magic: Some sticks are just sticks. Sad, but true.

---

The Data: When the Stick Strikes

Let’s look at some numbers:

• In the last month, Bitcoin’s price jumped over 20% right after a flurry of memes and stick-poking jokes.

• Over the past year, every major price surge was accompanied by a wave of internet hype, stick memes, or wild speculation.

• In the past five years, Bitcoin’s biggest leaps always seemed to follow some kind of magical event-whether a halving, a viral tweet, or a mysterious poke.

Coincidence? Maybe. But the pattern is clear: the stick works-at least when it’s magical.

---

The Role of Memes, Magic, and Mayhem

Bitcoin’s price is like a cat: unpredictable, easily startled, and sometimes it just wants to be left alone. But when the right meme pops up, or the right stick pokes at just the right time, the price can leap in ways that defy logic.

The bitcoin community knows this. That’s why, when Bitcoin’s stuck in a rut, you’ll see a flood of stick memes, GIFs, and magical thinking. Sometimes, it actually works.

---

The Secret’s in the Stick (and the Laughs)

So, does poking Bitcoin with a stick really make the price go up? If your stick is magical-blessed by memes, timed perfectly, and watched by millions-absolutely. The statistics show that hype, humor, and a little bit of luck can move markets as much as any financial report.

Next time you see Bitcoin stalling, don’t just sit there. Grab your stick, channel your inner meme wizard, and give it a poke. Who knows? You might just be the next legend in the world of bitcoin magic.

And if your stick doesn’t work, don’t worry. Sometimes, the real magic is in the laughter along the way.

-aco

@block height: 897,104

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@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

I. Historical Foundations of U.S. Monetary Architecture

The early monetary system of the United States was built atop inherited commodity money conventions from Europe’s maritime economies. Silver and gold coins—primarily Spanish pieces of eight, Dutch guilders, and other foreign specie—formed the basis of colonial commerce. These units were already integrated into international trade and piracy networks and functioned with natural compatibility across England, France, Spain, and Denmark. Lacking a centralized mint or formal currency, the U.S. adopted these forms de facto.

As security risks and the practical constraints of physical coinage mounted, banks emerged to warehouse specie and issue redeemable certificates. These certificates evolved into fiduciary media—claims on specie not actually in hand. Banks observed over time that substantial portions of reserves remained unclaimed for years. This enabled fractional reserve banking: issuing more claims than reserves held, so long as redemption demand stayed low. The practice was inherently unstable, prone to panics and bank runs, prompting eventual centralization through the formation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Following the Civil War and unstable reinstatements of gold convertibility, the U.S. sought global monetary stability. After World War II, the Bretton Woods system formalized the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. The dollar was nominally backed by gold, but most international dollars were held offshore and recycled into U.S. Treasuries. The Nixon Shock of 1971 eliminated the gold peg, converting the dollar into pure fiat. Yet offshore dollar demand remained, sustained by oil trade mandates and the unique role of Treasuries as global reserve assets.

II. The Structure of Fiduciary Media and Treasury Demand

Under this system, foreign trade surpluses with the U.S. generate excess dollars. These surplus dollars are parked in U.S. Treasuries, thereby recycling trade imbalances into U.S. fiscal liquidity. While technically loans to the U.S. government, these purchases act like interest-only transfers—governments receive yield, and the U.S. receives spendable liquidity without principal repayment due in the short term. Debt is perpetually rolled over, rarely extinguished.

This creates an illusion of global subsidy: U.S. deficits are financed via foreign capital inflows that, in practice, function more like financial tribute systems than conventional debt markets. The underlying asset—U.S. Treasury debt—functions as the base reserve asset of the dollar system, replacing gold in post-Bretton Woods monetary logic.

III. Emergence of Tether and the Parastatal Dollar

Tether (USDT), as a private issuer of dollar-denominated tokens, mimics key central bank behaviors while operating outside the regulatory perimeter. It mints tokens allegedly backed 1:1 by U.S. dollars or dollar-denominated securities (mostly Treasuries). These tokens circulate globally, often in jurisdictions with limited banking access, and increasingly serve as synthetic dollar substitutes.

If USDT gains dominance as the preferred medium of exchange—due to technological advantages, speed, programmability, or access—it displaces Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs) not through devaluation, but through functional obsolescence. Gresham’s Law inverts: good money (more liquid, programmable, globally transferable USDT) displaces bad (FRNs) even if both maintain a nominal 1:1 parity.

Over time, this preference translates to a systemic demand shift. Actors increasingly use Tether instead of FRNs, especially in global commerce, digital marketplaces, or decentralized finance. Tether tokens effectively become shadow base money.

IV. Interaction with Commercial Banking and Redemption Mechanics

Under traditional fractional reserve systems, commercial banks issue loans denominated in U.S. dollars, expanding the money supply. When borrowers repay loans, this destroys the created dollars and contracts monetary elasticity. If borrowers repay in USDT instead of FRNs:

• Banks receive a non-Fed liability (USDT).
• USDT is not recognized as reserve-eligible within the Federal Reserve System.
• Banks must either redeem USDT for FRNs, or demand par-value conversion from Tether to settle reserve requirements and balance their books.

This places redemption pressure on Tether and threatens its 1:1 peg under stress. If redemption latency, friction, or cost arises, USDT’s equivalence to FRNs is compromised. Conversely, if banks are permitted or compelled to hold USDT as reserve or regulatory capital, Tether becomes a de facto reserve issuer.

In this scenario, banks may begin demanding loans in USDT, mirroring borrower behavior. For this to occur sustainably, banks must secure Tether liquidity. This creates two options: - Purchase USDT from Tether or on the secondary market, collateralized by existing fiat. - Borrow USDT directly from Tether, using bank-issued debt as collateral.

The latter mirrors Federal Reserve discount window operations. Tether becomes a lender of first resort, providing monetary elasticity to the banking system by creating new tokens against promissory assets—exactly how central banks function.

V. Structural Consequences: Parallel Central Banking

If Tether begins lending to commercial banks, issuing tokens backed by bank notes or collateralized debt obligations: - Tether controls the expansion of broad money through credit issuance. - Its balance sheet mimics a central bank, with Treasuries and bank debt as assets and tokens as liabilities. - It intermediates between sovereign debt and global liquidity demand, replacing the Federal Reserve’s open market operations with its own issuance-redemption cycles.

Simultaneously, if Tether purchases U.S. Treasuries with FRNs received through token issuance, it: - Supplies the Treasury with new liquidity (via bond purchases). - Collects yield on government debt. - Issues a parallel form of U.S. dollars that never require redemption—an interest-only loan to the U.S. government from a non-sovereign entity.

In this context, Tether performs monetary functions of both a central bank and a sovereign wealth fund, without political accountability or regulatory transparency.

VI. Endgame: Institutional Inversion and Fed Redundancy

This paradigm represents an institutional inversion:

• The Federal Reserve becomes a legacy issuer.
• Tether becomes the operational base money provider in both retail and interbank contexts.
• Treasuries remain the foundational reserve asset, but access to them is mediated by a private intermediary.
• The dollar persists, but its issuer changes. The State becomes a fiscal agent of a decentralized financial ecosystem, not its monetary sovereign.

Unless the Federal Reserve reasserts control—either by absorbing Tether, outlawing its instruments, or integrating its tokens into the reserve framework—it risks becoming irrelevant in the daily function of money.

Tether, in this configuration, is no longer a derivative of the dollar—it is the dollar, just one level removed from sovereign control. The future of monetary sovereignty under such a regime is post-national and platform-mediated.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

If you're an engineer stepping into the Bitcoin space from the broader crypto ecosystem, you're probably carrying a mental model shaped by speed, flexibility, and rapid innovation. That makes sense—most blockchain platforms pride themselves on throughput, programmability, and dev agility.

But Bitcoin operates from a different set of first principles. It’s not competing to be the fastest network or the most expressive smart contract platform. It’s aiming to be the most credible, neutral, and globally accessible value layer in human history.

Here’s why that matters—and why Bitcoin is not just an alternative crypto asset, but a structural necessity in the global financial system.

1. Bitcoin Fixes the Triffin Dilemma—Not With Policy, But Protocol

The Triffin Dilemma shows us that any country issuing the global reserve currency must run persistent deficits to supply that currency to the world. That’s not a flaw of bad leadership—it’s an inherent contradiction. The U.S. must debase its own monetary integrity to meet global dollar demand. That’s a self-terminating system.

Bitcoin sidesteps this entirely by being:

• Non-sovereign – no single nation owns it
• Hard-capped – no central authority can inflate it
• Verifiable and neutral – anyone with a full node can enforce the rules

In other words, Bitcoin turns global liquidity into an engineering problem, not a political one. No other system, fiat or crypto, has achieved that.

2. Bitcoin’s “Ossification” Is Intentional—and It's a Feature

From the outside, Bitcoin development may look sluggish. Features are slow to roll out. Code changes are conservative. Consensus rules are treated as sacred.

That’s the point.

When you’re building the global monetary base layer, stability is not a weakness. It’s a prerequisite. Every other financial instrument, app, or protocol that builds on Bitcoin depends on one thing: assurance that the base layer won’t change underneath them without extreme scrutiny.

So-called “ossification” is just another term for predictability and integrity. And when the market does demand change (SegWit, Taproot), Bitcoin’s soft-fork governance process has proven capable of deploying it safely—without coercive central control.

3. Layered Architecture: Throughput Is Not a Base Layer Concern

You don’t scale settlement at the base layer. You build layered systems. Just as TCP/IP doesn't need to carry YouTube traffic directly, Bitcoin doesn’t need to process every microtransaction.

Instead, it anchors:

• Lightning (fast payments)
• Fedimint (community custody)
• Ark (privacy + UTXO compression)
• Statechains, sidechains, and covenants (coming evolution)

All of these inherit Bitcoin’s security and scarcity, while handling volume off-chain, in ways that maintain auditability and self-custody.

4. Universal Assayability Requires Minimalism at the Base Layer

A core design constraint of Bitcoin is that any participant, anywhere in the world, must be able to independently verify the validity of every transaction and block—past and present—without needing permission or relying on third parties.

This property is called assayability—the ability to “test” or verify the authenticity and integrity of received bitcoin, much like verifying the weight and purity of a gold coin.

To preserve this:

• The base layer must remain resource-light, so running a full node stays accessible on commodity hardware.
• Block sizes must remain small enough to prevent centralization of verification.
• Historical data must remain consistent and tamper-evident, enabling proof chains across time and jurisdiction.

Any base layer that scales by increasing throughput or complexity undermines this fundamental guarantee, making the network more dependent on trust and surveillance infrastructure.

Bitcoin prioritizes global verifiability over throughput—because trustless money requires that every user can check the money they receive.

5. Governance: Not Captured, Just Resistant to Coercion

The current controversy around OP_RETURN and proposals to limit inscriptions is instructive. Some prominent devs have advocated for changes to block content filtering. Others see it as overreach.

Here's what matters:

• No single dev, or team, can force changes into the network. Period.
• Bitcoin Core is not “the source of truth.” It’s one implementation. If it deviates from market consensus, it gets forked, sidelined, or replaced.
• The economic majority—miners, users, businesses—enforce Bitcoin’s rules, not GitHub maintainers.

In fact, recent community resistance to perceived Core overreach only reinforces Bitcoin’s resilience. Engineers who posture with narcissistic certainty, dismiss dissent, or attempt to capture influence are routinely neutralized by the market’s refusal to upgrade or adopt forks that undermine neutrality or openness.

This is governance via credible neutrality and negative feedback loops. Power doesn’t accumulate in one place. It’s constantly checked by the network’s distributed incentives.

6. Bitcoin Is Still in Its Infancy—And That’s a Good Thing

You’re not too late. The ecosystem around Bitcoin—especially L2 protocols, privacy tools, custody innovation, and zero-knowledge integrations—is just beginning.

If you're an engineer looking for:

• Systems with global scale constraints
• Architectures that optimize for integrity, not speed
• Consensus mechanisms that resist coercion
• A base layer with predictable monetary policy

Then Bitcoin is where serious systems engineers go when they’ve outgrown crypto theater.

Take-away

Under realistic, market-aware assumptions—where:

• Bitcoin’s ossification is seen as a stability feature, not inertia,
• Market forces can and do demand and implement change via tested, non-coercive mechanisms,
• Proof-of-work is recognized as the only consensus mechanism resistant to fiat capture,
• Wealth concentration is understood as a temporary distribution effect during early monetization,
• Low base layer throughput is a deliberate design constraint to preserve verifiability and neutrality,
• And innovation is layered by design, with the base chain providing integrity, not complexity...

Then Bitcoin is not a fragile or inflexible system—it is a deliberately minimal, modular, and resilient protocol.

Its governance is not leaderless chaos; it's a negative-feedback structure that minimizes the power of individuals or institutions to coerce change. The very fact that proposals—like controversial OP_RETURN restrictions—can be resisted, forked around, or ignored by the market without breaking the system is proof of decentralized control, not dysfunction.

Bitcoin is an adversarially robust monetary foundation. Its value lies not in how fast it changes, but in how reliably it doesn't—unless change is forced by real, bottom-up demand and implemented through consensus-tested soft forks.

In this framing, Bitcoin isn't a slower crypto. It's the engineering benchmark for systems that must endure, not entertain.

Final Word

Bitcoin isn’t moving slowly because it’s dying. It’s moving carefully because it’s winning. It’s not an app platform or a sandbox. It’s a protocol layer for the future of money.

If you're here because you want to help build that future, you’re in the right place.

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@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

The Bitcoin Mempool: Relay Network Dynamics

In the last Mempool article, I went over the different kinds of relay policy filters, why they exist, and the incentives that ultimately decide how effective each class of filter is at preventing the confirmation of different classes of transactions. In this piece I’ll be looking at the dynamics of the relay network when some nodes on the network are running different relay policies compared to other nodes. 

All else being equal, when nodes on the network are running homogenous relay policies in their mempools, all transactions should propagate across the entire network given that they pay the minimum feerate necessary not to be evicted from a node’s mempool during times of large transaction backlogs. This changes when different nodes on the network are running heterogenous policies. 

The Bitcoin relay network operates on a best effort basis, using what is called a flood-fill architecture. This means that when a transaction is received by one node, it is forwarded to every other node it is connected to except the one that it received the transaction from. This is a highly inefficient network architecture, but in the context of a decentralized system it provides a high degree of guarantee that the transaction will eventually reach its intended destination, the miners. 

Introducing filters in a node’s relay policy to restrict the relaying of otherwise valid transactions in theory introduces friction to the propagation of that transaction, and degrades the reliability of the network’s ability to perform this function. In practice, things aren’t that simple. 

How Much Friction Prevents Propagation

Let’s look at a simplified example of different network node compositions. In the following graphics blue nodes represent ones that will propagate some arbitrary class of consensus valid transactions, and red nodes represent ones that will not propagate those transactions. The collective set of miners is denoted in the center as a simple representation of where transacting users ultimately want their transactions to wind up so as to eventually be confirmed in the blockchain. 

This is a model of the network in which the nodes refusing to propagate these transactions are a clear minority. As you can clearly see, any node on the network that accepts them has a clear path to relay them to the miners. The two nodes attempting to restrict the transactions propagation across the network have no effect on their eventual receipt by miners’ nodes. 

In this diagram, you can see that almost half of the example network is instituting filtering policies for this class of transactions. Despite this, only part of the network that propagates these transactions is cut off from a path to miners. The rest of the nodes not filtering still have a clear path to miners. This has introduced some degree of friction for a subset of users, but the others can still freely engage in propagating these transactions. 

Even for the users that are affected by filtering nodes, only a single connection to the rest of the network nodes that are not cut off from miners (or a direct connection to a miner) is necessary in order for that friction to be removed. If the real relay network were to have a similar composition to this example, all it would take is a single new connection to alleviate the problem. 

In this scenario, only a tiny minority of the network is actually propagating these transactions. The rest of the network is engaging in filtering policies to prevent their propagation. Even in this case however, those nodes that are not filtering still have a clear path to propagate them to miners. 

Only this tiny minority of non-filtering nodes is necessary in order to ensure their eventual propagation to miners. Preferential peering logic, i.e. functionality to ensure that your node prefers peers who implement the same software version or relay policies. These types of solutions can guarantee that peers who will propagate something to others won’t find each other and maintain connections amongst themselves across the network. 

The Tolerant Minority

As you can see looking at these different examples, even in the face of an overwhelming majority of the public network engaging in filtering of a specific class of transactions, all that is necessary for them to successfully propagate across the network to miners is a small minority of the network to propagate and relay them. 

These nodes will essentially, through whatever technical mechanism, create a “sub-network” within the larger public relay network in order to guarantee that there are viable paths from users engaging in these types of transactions to the miners willing to include them in their blocks. 

There is essentially nothing that can be done to counter this dynamic except to engage in a sybil attack against all of these nodes, and sybil attacks only need a single honest connection in order to be completely defeated. As well, an honest node creating a very large number of connections with other nodes on the network can raise the cost of such a sybil attack exorbitantly. The more connections it creates, the more sybil nodes must be spun up in order to consume all of its connection slots. 

What If There Is No Minority?

So what if there is no Tolerant Minority? What will happen to this class of transactions in that case? 

If users still want to make them and pay fees to miners for them, they will be confirmed. Miners will simply set up an API. The role of miners is to confirm transactions, and the reason they do so is to maximize profit. Miners are not selfless entities, or morally or ideologically motivated, they are a business. They exist to make money. 

If users exist that are willing to pay them money for a certain type of transaction, and the entirety of the public relay network is refusing to propagate those transactions to miners in order to include them in blocks, miners will create another way for users to submit those transactions to them. 

It is simply the rational move to make as a profit motivated actor when customers exist that wish to pay you money. 

Relay Policy Is Not A Replacement For Consensus

At the end of the day, relay policy cannot successfully censor transactions if they are consensus valid, users are willing to pay for them, and miners do not have some extenuating circumstances to turn down the fees users are willing to pay (such as causing material damage or harm to nodes on the network, i.e. crashing nodes, propagating blocks that take hours to verify on a consumer PC, etc.). 

If some class of transactions is truly seen as undesirable by Bitcoin users and node operators, there is no solution to stopping them from being confirmed in the blockchain short of enacting a consensus change to make them invalid. 

If it were possible to simply prevent transactions from being confirmed by filtering policies implemented on the relay network, then Bitcoin would not be censorship resistant.

This post The Bitcoin Mempool: Relay Network Dynamics first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

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Since its creation, Bitcoin has been a revolutionary asset, challenging the traditional financial system and proposing a new form of decentralized money. However, its future remains uncertain and the subject of intense debate. Among the possible outcomes, two extreme scenarios stand out: hyperbitcoinization-where Bitcoin becomes the dominant currency in the global economy—and obsolescence, where the network loses relevance and is replaced by other solutions.

• Hyperbitcoinization: The World Adopts Bitcoin as a Monetary Standard

01 - Loss of trust in fiat currencies: Due to excessive money printing by central banks, many economies face rampant inflation. Bitcoin, with its fixed supply of 21 million units, emerges as a more trustworthy alternative.

02 - Growing adoption by companies and governments: Some countries have already begun integrating Bitcoin into their economies, accepting it for payments and as a store of value. If this trend continues, Bitcoin’s legitimacy as a global currency will grow.

03 - Ease of global transactions: Bitcoin enables fast and low-cost international transfers, removing the need for financial intermediaries and reducing operational costs.

04 - Technological advancements: Scalability improvements, such as the Lightning Network, can make Bitcoin more efficient for daily use, encouraging mass adoption.

If hyperbitcoinization becomes reality, the world may witness a radical shift in the financial system—with greater decentralization, censorship resistance, and an economy based on sound, predictable money.

• Obsolescence: Bitcoin Loses Relevance and Is Replaced

01 - Restrictive government regulations: If major economic powers enforce strict regulations on Bitcoin, adoption could slow, reducing its utility.

02 - Technological shortcomings or lack of innovation: Despite its security and decentralization, Bitcoin may struggle to scale effectively. If superior solutions emerge and gain acceptance, Bitcoin could lose its leading position.

03 - Competition from faster, more user-friendly alternatives: Other forms of digital money may surpass Bitcoin in scalability and usability, potentially leading to a decline in Bitcoin adoption.

04 - Decreasing miner incentives: As new Bitcoin issuance halves every four years, miners will rely increasingly on transaction fees. If those fees are insufficient to sustain network security, long-term viability could be at risk.

In summary, Bitcoin’s future could unfold along multiple paths, depending on factors like innovation, global adoption, and resilience to external challenges. Hyperbitcoinization would represent an economic revolution—ushering in a decentralized, inflation-resistant monetary system. Yet, obsolescence remains a risk if the network fails to adapt to future demands. Regardless of the outcome, Bitcoin has already made its mark on financial history, paving the way for a new era of digital money and economic freedom.

Thank you very much for reading this far. I hope everything is well with you, and sending a big hug from your favorite Bitcoiner maximalist from Madeira. Long live freedom!

@ 90c656ff:9383fd4e

Since its creation, Bitcoin has been much more than just an alternative to traditional money. With the ongoing digitalization of the global economy, Bitcoin has emerged as a foundational pillar for new forms of transactions, commerce, and value storage. Its decentralization, transparency, and censorship resistance make it a solid base for digital economies, where financial interactions occur without the need for traditional intermediaries.

• Bitcoin’s role in the digital economy

01 - Global, borderless transactions: Anyone with internet access can send and receive Bitcoin without needing a bank or government authorization.

02 - Limited and predictable supply: Unlike fiat currencies that can be inflated by central banks, Bitcoin has a fixed cap of 21 million units, making it a scarce and reliable asset.

03 - Security and transparency: The Bitcoin blockchain or timechain publicly records all transactions, ensuring a secure and auditable system.

04 - Censorship resistance: No government or institution can block Bitcoin transactions, enabling a freer and more accessible digital economy.

With these characteristics, Bitcoin is already transforming various economic sectors and driving new forms of commerce and investment.

• Bitcoin in digital commerce and the global economy

01 - E-commerce: Businesses and consumers can use Bitcoin for fast international transactions without exorbitant fees.

02 - International remittances: Workers sending money to their home countries can avoid high fees and long delays by using Bitcoin.

03 - Emerging economies: In countries with unstable currencies and unreliable banking systems, Bitcoin serves as a secure and decentralized alternative for storing wealth and conducting daily transactions.

Additionally, Bitcoin is being adopted by companies and even governments as a store of value, reinforcing its role as a foundation for the digital economy of the future.

• Challenges and adapting to the new economy

01 - Price volatility: Bitcoin’s fluctuating value can make it difficult to use as a daily medium of exchange.

02 - Regulations and governmental resistance: Some countries attempt to restrict or regulate Bitcoin to maintain control over the traditional financial system.

03 - Education and adoption: Many people still lack the knowledge to use Bitcoin safely and effectively.

In summary, Bitcoin is transforming the way the world interacts with money, offering a decentralized and transparent alternative for digital economies. As more individuals and businesses adopt Bitcoin for payments, savings, and global commerce, its impact becomes increasingly clear. Despite the challenges, Bitcoin continues to solidify its place as the foundation of a new economic paradigm—where financial freedom and technological innovation go hand in hand.

Thank you very much for reading this far. I hope everything is well with you, and sending a big hug from your favorite Bitcoiner maximalist from Madeira. Long live freedom!

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

Are Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Starting to Sell?

After a volatile start to 2025, Bitcoin has now reclaimed the $100,000 mark, setting a new all-time high and injecting renewed confidence into the market. But as prices soar, a critical question arises: are some of Bitcoin’s most experienced and successful holders, the long-term investors, starting to sell? In this piece, we’ll analyze what on-chain data reveals about long-term holder behavior and whether recent profit-taking should be a cause for concern, or simply a healthy part of Bitcoin’s market cycle.

Signs Of Profit-Taking Appear

The Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR) provides immediate insight into realized profit across the network. Zooming in on recent weeks, we can observe a clear uptick in profit realization. Clusters of green bars indicate that a noticeable number of investors are indeed selling BTC for profit, especially following the price rally from the $74,000–$75,000 range to new highs above $100,000.

Figure 1: The Spent Output Profit Ratio indicates notable recent profit realization. View Live Chart

However, while this might raise short-term concerns about potential overhead resistance, it’s crucial to frame this in the broader on-chain context. This isn’t unusual behavior in bull markets and does not, on its own, signal a cycle peak.

Long-Term Holder Supply Is Still Growing

The Long-Term Holder Supply, the total amount of Bitcoin held by addresses for at least 155 days, continues to climb, even as prices surge. This metric doesn’t necessarily mean fresh accumulation is occurring now, but rather that coins are aging into long-term status without being moved or sold.

Figure 2: Sharp increases in the Bitcoin Long-Term Holder Supply. View Live Chart

In other words, many investors who bought in late 2024 or early 2025 are holding strong, transitioning into long-term holders. This is a healthy dynamic typical of the earlier to mid-stages of bull markets, and not yet indicative of widespread distribution.

HODL Waves Analysis

To dig deeper, we use HODL Waves data, which breaks down BTC holdings by wallet age bands. When isolating wallets holding BTC for 6 months or more, we find that over 70% of the Bitcoin supply is currently held by mid to long-term participants.

Figure 3: HODL Waves analysis reveals mid- to long-term investors hold the majority of BTC. View Live Chart

Interestingly, while this number remains high, it has started to decrease slightly, indicating that a portion of long-term holders may be selling even as the long-term holder supply increases. The primary driver of the long-term holder supply growth appears to be short-term holders aging into the 155+ day bracket, not fresh accumulation or large-scale buying.

Figure 4: The inverse correlation between long-term holder supply rate and price.

Using raw Bitcoin Magazine Pro API data, we examined the rate of change in long-term holder balances, categorized by wallet age. When this metric trends downward significantly, it has historically coincided with cycle peaks. Conversely, when it spikes upward, it has often marked market bottoms and periods of deep accumulation.

Short-Term Shifts And Distribution Ratios

To enhance the accuracy of these signals, the data can be sliced more precisely by comparing very recent entrants (0–1 month holders) against those holding BTC for 1–5 years. This age band comparison provides more frequent and real-time insights into distribution patterns.

Figure 5: An age band holder distribution ratio provides valuable market insights.

We find that sharp drops in the ratio of 1–5 year holders relative to newer participants have historically aligned with Bitcoin tops, meanwhile, rapid increases in the ratio signal that more BTC is flowing into the hands of seasoned investors is often a precursor to major price rallies.

Ultimately, monitoring long-term investor behavior is one of the most effective ways to gauge market sentiment and the sustainability of price movements. Long-term holders historically outperform short-term traders by buying during fear and holding through volatility. By examining the age-based distribution of BTC holdings, we can gain a clearer view of potential tops and bottoms in the market, without relying solely on price action or short-term sentiment.

Conclusion

As it stands, there is only a minor level of distribution among long-term holders, nowhere near the scale that historically signals cycle tops. Profit-taking is occurring, yes, but at a pace that appears entirely sustainable and typical of a healthy market environment. Given the current stage of the bull cycle and the positioning of institutional and retail participants, the data suggests we are still within a structurally strong phase, with room for further price growth as new capital flows in.

For more deep-dive research, technical indicators, real-time market alerts, and access to a growing community of analysts, visit BitcoinMagazinePro.com.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

This post Are Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Starting to Sell? first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Matt Crosby.

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

Semler Scientific Buys Additional $50 Million Worth of Bitcoin

Medical equipment provider Semler Scientific has acquired 455 Bitcoin for $50 million, marking it one of the largest purchases as more publicly traded companies continue to adopt Bitcoin treasury strategies.

According to a Form 8-K filed with the SEC on May 23, the company purchased the Bitcoin between May 13 and May 22 at an average price of $109,801 per coin, including fees. The acquisition brings Semler’s total Bitcoin holdings to 4,264 BTC, acquired at an aggregate cost of $390 million.

The purchase was funded through Semler’s at-the-market (ATM) equity offering program, which has raised approximately $114.8 million since its launch in April 2025. The company has issued 3,003,488 shares under the $500 million program to date.

“$SMLR acquires 455 Bitcoins for $50 million and has generated BTC Yield of 25.8% YTD. Now holding 4,264 $BTC. Flywheel in motion. ,” said Eric Semler, Chairman of Semler Scientific. The company’s Bitcoin holdings are now valued at approximately $474.4 million based on current market prices.

Semler reported its Bitcoin Yield – a key performance indicator measuring the year-to-date percentage change in total Bitcoin holdings relative to diluted shares outstanding – has reached 25.8% in 2025. The metric has become a standard measure among public companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets.

The company maintains a Bitcoin Dashboard on its website to provide transparent information about its holdings, including market data, performance metrics, and acquisition details, as part of its Regulation FD compliance strategy.

Semler’s move comes amid accelerating corporate Bitcoin adoption in 2025, with over 40 public companies announcing Bitcoin treasury programs this year alone. The market has shown increased sensitivity to corporate treasury activities as institutional adoption continues to grow.

The company’s latest Bitcoin purchase reinforces the growing trend of public companies using equity offerings to fund Bitcoin acquisitions, a strategy pioneered by larger players like Strategy, which recently added 7,390 BTC to its holdings through a similar funding mechanism.

This post Semler Scientific Buys Additional $50 Million Worth of Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Vivek Sen.

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Autor: Milosz Matuschek. Dieser Beitrag wurde mit dem Pareto-Client geschrieben. Sie finden alle Texte der Friedenstaube und weitere Texte zum Thema Frieden hier. Die neuesten Pareto-Artikel finden Sie auch in unserem Telegram-Kanal.

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Die neuesten Artikel der Friedenstaube gibt es jetzt auch im eigenen Friedenstaube-Telegram-Kanal.

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Der Schweizer Historiker Daniele Ganser startet eine Plakataktion. Auf Facebook schreibt er:

"Dieses Plakat habe ich ab heute an sechs Bahnhöfen in der Schweiz aufhängen lassen: Die Schweiz muss die Neutralität bewahren. Keine Zusammenarbeit mit der NATO!

Die Aktion läuft eine Woche. Das Plakat hängt in Basel (Gleis 5 und 7), Zürich (Gleis 9 und 12), Bern (Gleis 3 und 11), Luzern (Gleis 7 und 11), St. Gallen (Gleis 1 und 2) und Chur (Gleis 4 und Arosabahn).

Wenn jemand ein Plakat sieht und fotografiert und es mir per Email schickt freut mich das!

https://globalbridge.ch/die-schweiz-muss-die.../

Daniele Ganser kann man über folgende Seite kontaktieren.

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LASSEN SIE DER FRIEDENSTAUBE FLÜGEL WACHSEN!

Hier können Sie die Friedenstaube abonnieren und bekommen die Artikel zugesandt.

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Wenn Sie auf anderem Wege beitragen wollen, schreiben Sie die Friedenstaube an: friedenstaube@pareto.space

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Sie sind noch nicht auf Nostr and wollen die volle Erfahrung machen (liken, kommentieren etc.)? Zappen können Sie den Autor auch ohne Nostr-Profil! Erstellen Sie sich einen Account auf Start. Weitere Onboarding-Leitfäden gibt es im Pareto-Wiki.

@ cefb08d1:f419beff

Gabriela Bryan vs Caitlin Simmers | Western Australia Margaret River Pro 2025 - Final

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK8l3RPqmE

Jordy Smith vs Griffin Colapinto | Western Australia Margaret River Pro 2025 - Final

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

Highlights: Western Australia Margaret River Pro 2025 - All the Highlights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32055IXrtnU

Ranking WSL Women:

Ranking WSL Men:

Source: https://www.worldsurfleague.com/athletes/tour/wct?year=2025

https://stacker.news/items/990198

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Introduction: The Power of Fiction and the Shaping of Collective Morality

Stories define the moral landscape of a civilization. From the earliest mythologies to the modern spectacle of global cinema, the tales a society tells its youth shape the parameters of acceptable behavior, the cost of transgression, and the meaning of justice, power, and redemption. Among the most globally influential narratives of the past half-century is the Star Wars saga, a sprawling science fiction mythology that has transcended genre to become a cultural religion for many. Central to this mythos is the arc of Anakin Skywalker, the fallen Jedi Knight who becomes Darth Vader. In Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Anakin commits what is arguably the most morally abhorrent act depicted in mainstream popular cinema: the mass murder of children. And yet, by the end of the saga, he is redeemed.

This chapter introduces the uninitiated to the events surrounding this narrative turn and explores the deep structural and ethical concerns it raises. We argue that the cultural treatment of Darth Vader as an anti-hero, even a role model, reveals a deep perversion in the collective moral grammar of the modern West. In doing so, we consider the implications this mythology may have on young adults navigating identity, masculinity, and agency in a world increasingly shaped by spectacle and symbolic narrative.

Part I: The Scene and Its Context

In Revenge of the Sith (2005), the third episode of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the protagonist Anakin Skywalker succumbs to fear, ambition, and manipulation. Convinced that the Jedi Council is plotting against the Republic and desperate to save his pregnant wife from a vision of death, Anakin pledges allegiance to Chancellor Palpatine, secretly the Sith Lord Darth Sidious. Upon doing so, he is given a new name—Darth Vader—and tasked with a critical mission: to eliminate all Jedi in the temple, including its youngest members.

In one of the most harrowing scenes in the film, Anakin enters the Jedi Temple. A group of young children, known as "younglings," emerge from hiding and plead for help. One steps forward, calling him "Master Skywalker," and asks what they are to do. Anakin responds by igniting his lightsaber. The screen cuts away, but the implication is unambiguous. Later, it is confirmed through dialogue and visual allusion that he slaughtered them all.

There is no ambiguity in the storytelling. The man who will become the galaxy’s most feared enforcer begins his descent by murdering defenseless children.

Part II: A New Kind of Evil in Youth-Oriented Media

For decades, cinema avoided certain taboos. Even films depicting war, genocide, or psychological horror rarely crossed the line into showing children as victims of deliberate violence by the protagonist. When children were harmed, it was by monstrous antagonists, supernatural forces, or offscreen implications. The killing of children was culturally reserved for historical atrocities and horror tales.

In Revenge of the Sith, this boundary was broken. While the film does not show the violence explicitly, the implication is so clear and so central to the character arc that its omission from visual depiction does not blunt the narrative weight. What makes this scene especially jarring is the tonal dissonance between the gravity of the act and the broader cultural treatment of Star Wars as a family-friendly saga. The juxtaposition of child-targeted marketing with a central plot involving child murder is not accidental—it reflects a deeper narrative and commercial structure.

This scene was not a deviation from the arc. It was the intended turning point.

Part III: Masculinity, Militarism, and the Appeal of the Anti-Hero

Darth Vader has long been idolized as a masculine icon. His towering presence, emotionless control, and mechanical voice exude power and discipline. Military institutions have quoted him. He is celebrated in memes, posters, and merchandise. Within the cultural imagination, he embodies dominance, command, and strategic ruthlessness.

For many young men, particularly those struggling with identity, agency, and perceived weakness, Vader becomes more than a character. He becomes an archetype: the man who reclaims power by embracing discipline, forsaking emotion, and exacting vengeance against those who betrayed him. The emotional pain that leads to his fall mirrors the experiences of isolation and perceived emasculation that many young men internalize in a fractured society.

The symbolism becomes dangerous. Anakin's descent into mass murder is portrayed not as the outcome of unchecked cruelty, but as a tragic mistake rooted in love and desperation. The implication is that under enough pressure, even the most horrific act can be framed as a step toward a noble end.

Part IV: Redemption as Narrative Alchemy

By the end of the original trilogy (Return of the Jedi, 1983), Darth Vader kills the Emperor to save his son Luke and dies shortly thereafter. Luke mourns him, honors him, and burns his body in reverence. In the final scene, Vader's ghost appears alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda—the very men who once considered him the greatest betrayal of their order. He is welcomed back.

There is no reckoning. No mention of the younglings. No memorial to the dead. No consequence beyond his own internal torment.

This model of redemption is not uncommon in Western storytelling. In Christian doctrine, the concept of grace allows for any sin to be forgiven if the sinner repents sincerely. But in the context of secular mass culture, such redemption without justice becomes deeply troubling. The cultural message is clear: even the worst crimes can be erased if one makes a grand enough gesture at the end. It is the erasure of moral debt by narrative fiat.

The implication is not only that evil can be undone by good, but that power and legacy matter more than the victims. Vader is not just forgiven—he is exalted.

Part V: Real-World Reflections and Dangerous Scripts

In recent decades, the rise of mass violence in schools and public places has revealed a disturbing pattern: young men who feel alienated, betrayed, or powerless adopt mythic narratives of vengeance and transformation. They often see themselves as tragic figures forced into violence by a cruel world. Some explicitly reference pop culture, quoting films, invoking fictional characters, or modeling their identities after cinematic anti-heroes.

It would be reductive to claim Star Wars causes such events. But it is equally naive to believe that such narratives play no role in shaping the symbolic frameworks through which vulnerable individuals understand their lives. The story of Anakin Skywalker offers a dangerous script:

• You are betrayed.
• You suffer.
• You kill.
• You become powerful.
• You are redeemed.

When combined with militarized masculinity, institutional failure, and cultural nihilism, this script can validate the darkest impulses. It becomes a myth of sacrificial violence, with the perpetrator as misunderstood hero.

Part VI: Cultural Responsibility and Narrative Ethics

The problem is not that Star Wars tells a tragic story. Tragedy is essential to moral understanding. The problem is how the culture treats that story. Darth Vader is not treated as a warning, a cautionary tale, or a fallen angel. He is merchandised, celebrated, and decontextualized.

By separating his image from his actions, society rebrands him as a figure of cool dominance rather than ethical failure. The younglings are forgotten. The victims vanish. Only the redemption remains. The merchandise continues to sell.

Cultural institutions bear responsibility for how such narratives are presented and consumed. Filmmakers may intend nuance, but marketing departments, military institutions, and fan cultures often reduce that nuance to symbol and slogan.

Conclusion: Reckoning with the Stories We Tell

The story of Anakin Skywalker is not morally neutral. It is a tale of systemic failure, emotional collapse, and unchecked violence. When presented in full, it can serve as a powerful warning. But when reduced to aesthetic dominance and easy redemption, it becomes a tool of moral decay.

The glorification of Darth Vader as a cultural icon—divorced from the horrific acts that define his transformation—is not just misguided. It is dangerous. It trains a generation to believe that power erases guilt, that violence is a path to recognition, and that final acts of loyalty can overwrite the deliberate murder of the innocent.

To the uninitiated, Star Wars may seem like harmless fantasy. But its deepest myth—the redemption of the child-killer through familial love and posthumous honor—deserves scrutiny. Not because fiction causes violence, but because fiction defines the possibilities of how we understand evil, forgiveness, and what it means to be a hero.

We must ask: What kind of redemption erases the cries of murdered children? And what kind of culture finds peace in that forgetting?

@ 52b4a076:e7fad8bd

Introduction

Me and Fishcake have been working on infrastructure for Noswhere and Nostr.build. Part of this involves processing a large amount of Nostr events for features such as search, analytics, and feeds.

I have been recently developing nosdex v3, a newer version of the Noswhere scraper that is designed for maximum performance and fault tolerance using FoundationDB (FDB).

Fishcake has been working on a processing system for Nostr events to use with NB, based off of Cloudflare (CF) Pipelines, which is a relatively new beta product. This evening, we put it all to the test.

First preparations

We set up a new CF Pipelines endpoint, and I implemented a basic importer that took data from the nosdex database. This was quite slow, as it did HTTP requests synchronously, but worked as a good smoke test.

Asynchronous indexing

I implemented a high-contention queue system designed for highly parallel indexing operations, built using FDB, that supports: - Fully customizable batch sizes - Per-index queues - Hundreds of parallel consumers - Automatic retry logic using lease expiration

When the scraper first gets an event, it will process it and eventually write it to the blob store and FDB. Each new event is appended to the event log.

On the indexing side, a Queuer will read the event log, and batch events (usually 2K-5K events) into one work job. This work job contains: - A range in the log to index - Which target this job is intended for - The size of the job and some other metadata

Each job has an associated leasing state, which is used to handle retries and prioritization, and ensure no duplication of work.

Several Workers monitor the index queue (up to 128) and wait for new jobs that are available to lease.

Once a suitable job is found, the worker acquires a lease on the job and reads the relevant events from FDB and the blob store.

Depending on the indexing type, the job will be processed in one of a number of ways, and then marked as completed or returned for retries.

In this case, the event is also forwarded to CF Pipelines.

Trying it out

The first attempt did not go well. I found a bug in the high-contention indexer that led to frequent transaction conflicts. This was easily solved by correcting an incorrectly set parameter.

We also found there were other issues in the indexer, such as an insufficient amount of threads, and a suspicious decrease in the speed of the Queuer during processing of queued jobs.

Along with fixing these issues, I also implemented other optimizations, such as deprioritizing Worker DB accesses, and increasing the batch size.

To fix the degraded Queuer performance, I ran the backfill job by itself, and then started indexing after it had completed.

Bottlenecks, bottlenecks everywhere

After implementing these fixes, there was an interesting problem: The DB couldn't go over 80K reads per second. I had encountered this limit during load testing for the scraper and other FDB benchmarks.

As I suspected, this was a client thread limitation, as one thread seemed to be using high amounts of CPU. To overcome this, I created a new client instance for each Worker.

After investigating, I discovered that the Go FoundationDB client cached the database connection. This meant all attempts to create separate DB connections ended up being useless.

Using OpenWithConnectionString partially resolved this issue. (This also had benefits for service-discovery based connection configuration.)

To be able to fully support multi-threading, I needed to enabled the FDB multi-client feature. Enabling it also allowed easier upgrades across DB versions, as FDB clients are incompatible across versions:

FDB_NETWORK_OPTION_EXTERNAL_CLIENT_LIBRARY="/lib/libfdb_c.so" FDB_NETWORK_OPTION_CLIENT_THREADS_PER_VERSION="16"

Breaking the 100K/s reads barrier

After implementing support for the multi-threaded client, we were able to get over 100K reads per second.

You may notice after the restart (gap) the performance dropped. This was caused by several bugs: 1. When creating the CF Pipelines endpoint, we did not specify a region. The automatically selected region was far away from the server. 2. The amount of shards were not sufficient, so we increased them. 3. The client overloaded a few HTTP/2 connections with too many requests.

I implemented a feature to assign each Worker its own HTTP client, fixing the 3rd issue. We also moved the entire storage region to West Europe to be closer to the servers.

After these changes, we were able to easily push over 200K reads/s, mostly limited by missing optimizations:

It's shards all the way down

While testing, we also noticed another issue: At certain times, a pipeline would get overloaded, stalling requests for seconds at a time. This prevented all forward progress on the Workers.

We solved this by having multiple pipelines: A primary pipeline meant to be for standard load, with moderate batching duration and less shards, and high-throughput pipelines with more shards.

Each Worker is assigned a pipeline on startup, and if one pipeline stalls, other workers can continue making progress and saturate the DB.

The stress test

After making sure everything was ready for the import, we cleared all data, and started the import.

The entire import lasted 20 minutes between 01:44 UTC and 02:04 UTC, reaching a peak of: - 0.25M requests per second - 0.6M keys read per second - 140MB/s reads from DB - 2Gbps of network throughput

FoundationDB ran smoothly during this test, with: - Read times under 2ms - Zero conflicting transactions - No overloaded servers

CF Pipelines held up well, delivering batches to R2 without any issues, while reaching its maximum possible throughput.

Finishing notes

Me and Fishcake have been building infrastructure around scaling Nostr, from media, to relays, to content indexing. We consistently work on improving scalability, resiliency and stability, even outside these posts.

Many things, including what you see here, are already a part of Nostr.build, Noswhere and NFDB, and many other changes are being implemented every day.

If you like what you are seeing, and want to integrate it, get in touch. :)

If you want to support our work, you can zap this post, or register for nostr.land and nostr.build today.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

High-Level Overview

Bitcoin developers are currently debating a proposed change to how Bitcoin Core handles the OP_RETURN opcode — a mechanism that allows users to insert small amounts of data into the blockchain. Specifically, the controversy revolves around removing built-in filters that limit how much data can be stored using this feature (currently capped at 80 bytes).

Summary of Both Sides

Position A: Remove OP_RETURN Filters

Advocates: nostr:npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrm, nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg, nostr:npub17u5dneh8qjp43ecfxr6u5e9sjamsmxyuekrg2nlxrrk6nj9rsyrqywt4tp, others

Arguments: - Ineffectiveness of filters: Filters are easily bypassed and do not stop spam effectively. - Code simplification: Removing arbitrary limits reduces code complexity. - Permissionless innovation: Enables new use cases like cross-chain bridges and timestamping without protocol-level barriers. - Economic regulation: Fees should determine what data gets added to the blockchain, not protocol rules.

Position B: Keep OP_RETURN Filters

Advocates: nostr:npub1lh273a4wpkup00stw8dzqjvvrqrfdrv2v3v4t8pynuezlfe5vjnsnaa9nk, nostr:npub1s33sw6y2p8kpz2t8avz5feu2n6yvfr6swykrnm2frletd7spnt5qew252p, nostr:npub1wnlu28xrq9gv77dkevck6ws4euej4v568rlvn66gf2c428tdrptqq3n3wr, others

Arguments: - Historical intent: Satoshi included filters to keep Bitcoin focused on monetary transactions. - Resource protection: Helps prevent blockchain bloat and abuse from non-financial uses. - Network preservation: Protects the network from being overwhelmed by low-value or malicious data. - Social governance: Maintains conservative changes to ensure long-term robustness.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths of Removing Filters

• Encourages decentralized innovation.
• Simplifies development and maintenance.
• Maintains ideological purity of a permissionless system.

Weaknesses of Removing Filters

• Opens the door to increased non-financial data and potential spam.
• May dilute Bitcoin’s core purpose as sound money.
• Risks short-term exploitation before economic filters adapt.

Strengths of Keeping Filters

• Preserves Bitcoin’s identity and original purpose.
• Provides a simple protective mechanism against abuse.
• Aligns with conservative development philosophy of Bitcoin Core.

Weaknesses of Keeping Filters

• Encourages central decision-making on allowed use cases.
• Leads to workarounds that may be less efficient or obscure.
• Discourages novel but legitimate applications.

Long-Term Consequences

If Filters Are Removed

• Positive: Potential boom in new applications, better interoperability, cleaner architecture.
• Negative: Risk of increased blockchain size, more bandwidth/storage costs, spam wars.

If Filters Are Retained

• Positive: Preserves monetary focus and operational discipline.
• Negative: Alienates developers seeking broader use cases, may ossify the protocol.

Conclusion

The debate highlights a core philosophical split in Bitcoin: whether it should remain a narrow monetary system or evolve into a broader data layer for decentralized applications. Both paths carry risks and tradeoffs. The outcome will shape not just Bitcoin's technical direction but its social contract and future role in the broader crypto ecosystem.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

The new website is finally live! I put in a lot of hard work over the past months on it. I'm proud to say that it's out now and it looks pretty cool, at least to me!

Why rewrite it all?

The old kycnot.me site was built using Python with Flask about two years ago. Since then, I've gained a lot more experience with Golang and coding in general. Trying to update that old codebase, which had a lot of design flaws, would have been a bad idea. It would have been like building on an unstable foundation.

That's why I made the decision to rewrite the entire application. Initially, I chose to use SvelteKit with JavaScript. I did manage to create a stable site that looked similar to the new one, but it required Jav aScript to work. As I kept coding, I started feeling like I was repeating "the Python mistake". I was writing the app in a language I wasn't very familiar with (just like when I was learning Python at that mom ent), and I wasn't happy with the code. It felt like spaghetti code all the time.

So, I made a complete U-turn and started over, this time using Golang. While I'm not as proficient in Golang as I am in Python now, I find it to be a very enjoyable language to code with. Most aof my recent pr ojects have been written in Golang, and I'm getting the hang of it. I tried to make the best decisions I could and structure the code as well as possible. Of course, there's still room for improvement, which I'll address in future updates.

Now I have a more maintainable website that can scale much better. It uses a real database instead of a JSON file like the old site, and I can add many more features. Since I chose to go with Golang, I mad e the "tradeoff" of not using JavaScript at all, so all the rendering load falls on the server. But I believe it's a tradeoff that's worth it.

What's new

• UI/UX - I've designed a new logo and color palette for kycnot.me. I think it looks pretty cool and cypherpunk. I am not a graphic designer, but I think I did a decent work and I put a lot of thinking on it to make it pleasant!
• Point system - The new point system provides more detailed information about the listings, and can be expanded to cover additional features across all services. Anyone can request a new point!
• ToS Scrapper: I've implemented a powerful automated terms-of-service scrapper that collects all the ToS pages from the listings. It saves you from the hassle of reading the ToS by listing the lines that are suspiciously related to KYC/AML practices. This is still in development and it will improve for sure, but it works pretty fine right now!
• Search bar - The new search bar allows you to easily filter services. It performs a full-text search on the Title, Description, Category, and Tags of all the services. Looking for VPN services? Just search for "vpn"!
• Transparency - To be more transparent, all discussions about services now take place publicly on GitLab. I won't be answering any e-mails (an auto-reply will prompt to write to the corresponding Gitlab issue). This ensures that all service-related matters are publicly accessible and recorded. Additionally, there's a real-time audits page that displays database changes.
• Listing Requests - I have upgraded the request system. The new form allows you to directly request services or points without any extra steps. In the future, I plan to enable requests for specific changes to parts of the website.
• Lightweight and fast - The new site is lighter and faster than its predecessor!
• Tor and I2P - At last! kycnot.me is now officially on Tor and I2P!

How?

This rewrite has been a labor of love, in the end, I've been working on this for more than 3 months now. I don't have a team, so I work by myself on my free time, but I find great joy in helping people on their private journey with cryptocurrencies. Making it easier for individuals to use cryptocurrencies without KYC is a goal I am proud of!

If you appreciate my work, you can support me through the methods listed here. Alternatively, feel free to send me an email with a kind message!

Technical details

All the code is written in Golang, the website makes use of the chi router for the routing part. I also make use of BigCache for caching database requests. There is 0 JavaScript, so all the rendering load falls on the server, this means it needed to be efficient enough to not drawn with a few users since the old site was reporting about 2M requests per month on average (note that this are not unique users).

The database is running with mariadb, using gorm as the ORM. This is more than enough for this project. I started working with an sqlite database, but I ended up migrating to mariadb since it works better with JSON.

The scraper is using chromedp combined with a series of keywords, regex and other logic. It runs every 24h and scraps all the services. You can find the scraper code here.

The frontend is written using Golang Templates for the HTML, and TailwindCSS plus DaisyUI for the CSS classes framework. I also use some plain CSS, but it's minimal.

The requests forms is the only part of the project that requires JavaScript to be enabled. It is needed for parsing some from fields that are a bit complex and for the "captcha", which is a simple Proof of Work that runs on your browser, destinated to avoid spam. For this, I use mCaptcha.

@ 52b4a076:e7fad8bd

I have been recently building NFDB, a new relay DB. This post is meant as a short overview.

Regular relays have challenges

Current relay software have significant challenges, which I have experienced when hosting Nostr.land: - Scalability is only supported by adding full replicas, which does not scale to large relays. - Most relays use slow databases and are not optimized for large scale usage. - Search is near-impossible to implement on standard relays. - Privacy features such as NIP-42 are lacking. - Regular DB maintenance tasks on normal relays require extended downtime. - Fault-tolerance is implemented, if any, using a load balancer, which is limited. - Personalization and advanced filtering is not possible. - Local caching is not supported.

NFDB: A scalable database for large relays

NFDB is a new database meant for medium-large scale relays, built on FoundationDB that provides: - Near-unlimited scalability - Extended fault tolerance - Instant loading - Better search - Better personalization - and more.

Search

NFDB has extended search capabilities including: - Semantic search: Search for meaning, not words. - Interest-based search: Highlight content you care about. - Multi-faceted queries: Easily filter by topic, author group, keywords, and more at the same time. - Wide support for event kinds, including users, articles, etc.

Personalization

NFDB allows significant personalization: - Customized algorithms: Be your own algorithm. - Spam filtering: Filter content to your WoT, and use advanced spam filters. - Topic mutes: Mute topics, not keywords. - Media filtering: With Nostr.build, you will be able to filter NSFW and other content - Low data mode: Block notes that use high amounts of cellular data. - and more

Other

NFDB has support for many other features such as: - NIP-42: Protect your privacy with private drafts and DMs - Microrelays: Easily deploy your own personal microrelay - Containers: Dedicated, fast storage for discoverability events such as relay lists

Calcite: A local microrelay database

Calcite is a lightweight, local version of NFDB that is meant for microrelays and caching, meant for thousands of personal microrelays.

Calcite HA is an additional layer that allows live migration and relay failover in under 30 seconds, providing higher availability compared to current relays with greater simplicity. Calcite HA is enabled in all Calcite deployments.

For zero-downtime, NFDB is recommended.

Noswhere SmartCache

Relays are fixed in one location, but users can be anywhere.

Noswhere SmartCache is a CDN for relays that dynamically caches data on edge servers closest to you, allowing: - Multiple regions around the world - Improved throughput and performance - Faster loading times

routerd

routerd is a custom load-balancer optimized for Nostr relays, integrated with SmartCache.

routerd is specifically integrated with NFDB and Calcite HA to provide fast failover and high performance.

Ending notes

NFDB is planned to be deployed to Nostr.land in the coming weeks.

A lot more is to come. 👀️️️️️️

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

Know Your Customer is a regulation that requires companies of all sizes to verify the identity, suitability, and risks involved with maintaining a business relationship with a customer. Such procedures fit within the broader scope of anti-money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) regulations.

Banks, exchanges, online business, mail providers, domain registrars... Everyone wants to know who you are before you can even opt for their service. Your personal information is flowing around the internet in the hands of "god-knows-who" and secured by "trust-me-bro military-grade encryption". Once your account is linked to your personal (and verified) identity, tracking you is just as easy as keeping logs on all these platforms.

Rights for Illusions

KYC processes aim to combat terrorist financing, money laundering, and other illicit activities. On the surface, KYC seems like a commendable initiative. I mean, who wouldn't want to halt terrorists and criminals in their tracks?

The logic behind KYC is: "If we mandate every financial service provider to identify their users, it becomes easier to pinpoint and apprehend the malicious actors."

However, terrorists and criminals are not precisely lining up to be identified. They're crafty. They may adopt false identities or find alternative strategies to continue their operations. Far from being outwitted, many times they're several steps ahead of regulations. Realistically, KYC might deter a small fraction – let's say about 1% ^1 – of these malefactors. Yet, the cost? All of us are saddled with the inconvenient process of identification just to use a service.

Under the rhetoric of "ensuring our safety", governments and institutions enact regulations that seem more out of a dystopian novel, gradually taking away our right to privacy.

To illustrate, consider a city where the mayor has rolled out facial recognition cameras in every nook and cranny. A band of criminals, intent on robbing a local store, rolls in with a stolen car, their faces obscured by masks and their bodies cloaked in all-black clothes. Once they've committed the crime and exited the city's boundaries, they switch vehicles and clothes out of the cameras' watchful eyes. The high-tech surveillance? It didn’t manage to identify or trace them. Yet, for every law-abiding citizen who merely wants to drive through the city or do some shopping, their movements and identities are constantly logged. The irony? This invasive tracking impacts all of us, just to catch the 1% ^1 of less-than-careful criminals.

KYC? Not you.

KYC creates barriers to participation in normal economic activity, to supposedly stop criminals. ^2

KYC puts barriers between many users and businesses. One of these comes from the fact that the process often requires multiple forms of identification, proof of address, and sometimes even financial records. For individuals in areas with poor record-keeping, non-recognized legal documents, or those who are unbanked, homeless or transient, obtaining these documents can be challenging, if not impossible.

For people who are not skilled with technology or just don't have access to it, there's also a barrier since KYC procedures are mostly online, leaving them inadvertently excluded.

Another barrier goes for the casual or one-time user, where they might not see the value in undergoing a rigorous KYC process, and these requirements can deter them from using the service altogether.

It also wipes some businesses out of the equation, since for smaller businesses, the costs associated with complying with KYC norms—from the actual process of gathering and submitting documents to potential delays in operations—can be prohibitive in economical and/or technical terms.

You're not welcome

Imagine a swanky new club in town with a strict "members only" sign. You hear the music, you see the lights, and you want in. You step up, ready to join, but suddenly there's a long list of criteria you must meet. After some time, you are finally checking all the boxes. But then the club rejects your membership with no clear reason why. You just weren't accepted. Frustrating, right?

This club scenario isn't too different from the fact that KYC is being used by many businesses as a convenient gatekeeping tool. A perfect excuse based on a "legal" procedure they are obliged to.

Even some exchanges may randomly use this to freeze and block funds from users, claiming these were "flagged" by a cryptic system that inspects the transactions. You are left hostage to their arbitrary decision to let you successfully pass the KYC procedure. If you choose to sidestep their invasive process, they might just hold onto your funds indefinitely.

Your identity has been stolen

KYC data has been found to be for sale on many dark net markets^3. Exchanges may have leaks or hacks, and such leaks contain very sensitive data. We're talking about the full monty: passport or ID scans, proof of address, and even those awkward selfies where you're holding up your ID next to your face. All this data is being left to the mercy of the (mostly) "trust-me-bro" security systems of such companies. Quite scary, isn't it?

As cheap as $10 for 100 documents, with discounts applying for those who buy in bulk, the personal identities of innocent users who passed KYC procedures are for sale. ^3

In short, if you have ever passed the KYC/AML process of a crypto exchange, your privacy is at risk of being compromised, or it might even have already been compromised.

(they) Know Your Coins

You may already know that Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies have a transparent public blockchain, meaning that all data is shown unencrypted for everyone to see and recorded forever. If you link an address you own to your identity through KYC, for example, by sending an amount from a KYC exchange to it, your Bitcoin is no longer pseudonymous and can then be traced.

If, for instance, you send Bitcoin from such an identified address to another KYC'ed address (say, from a friend), everyone having access to that address-identity link information (exchanges, governments, hackers, etc.) will be able to associate that transaction and know who you are transacting with.

Conclusions

To sum up, KYC does not protect individuals; rather, it's a threat to our privacy, freedom, security and integrity. Sensible information flowing through the internet is thrown into chaos by dubious security measures. It puts borders between many potential customers and businesses, and it helps governments and companies track innocent users. That's the chaos KYC has stirred.

The criminals are using stolen identities from companies that gathered them thanks to these very same regulations that were supposed to combat them. Criminals always know how to circumvent such regulations. In the end, normal people are the most affected by these policies.

The threat that KYC poses to individuals in terms of privacy, security and freedom is not to be neglected. And if we don’t start challenging these systems and questioning their efficacy, we are just one step closer to the dystopian future that is now foreseeable.

Edited 20/03/2024 * Add reference to the 1% statement on Rights for Illusions section to an article where Chainalysis found that only 0.34% of the transaction volume with cryptocurrencies in 2023 was attributable to criminal activity ^1

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

If you ever read about a hypothetical "evil AI"—one that manipulates, dominates, and surveils humanity—you might find yourself wondering: how is that any different from what some governments already do?

Let’s explore the eerie parallels between the actions of a fictional malevolent AI and the behaviors of powerful modern states—specifically the U.S. federal government.

Surveillance and Control

Evil AI: Uses total surveillance to monitor all activity, predict rebellion, and enforce compliance.

Modern Government: Post-9/11 intelligence agencies like the NSA have implemented mass data collection programs, monitoring phone calls, emails, and online activity—often without meaningful oversight.

Parallel: Both claim to act in the name of “security,” but the tools are ripe for abuse.

Manipulation of Information

Evil AI: Floods the information space with propaganda, misinformation, and filters truth based on its goals.

Modern Government: Funds media outlets, promotes specific narratives through intelligence leaks, and collaborates with social media companies to suppress or flag dissenting viewpoints.

Parallel: Control the narrative, shape public perception, and discredit opposition.

Economic Domination

Evil AI: Restructures the economy for efficiency, displacing workers and concentrating resources.

Modern Government: Facilitates wealth transfer through lobbying, regulatory capture, and inflationary monetary policy that disproportionately hurts the middle and lower classes.

Parallel: The system enriches those who control it, leaving the rest with less power to resist.

Perpetual Warfare

Evil AI: Instigates conflict to weaken opposition or as a form of distraction and control.

Modern Government: Maintains a state of nearly constant military engagement since WWII, often for interests that benefit a small elite rather than national defense.

Parallel: War becomes policy, not a last resort.

Predictive Policing and Censorship

Evil AI: Uses predictive algorithms to preemptively suppress dissent and eliminate threats.

Modern Government: Experiments with pre-crime-like measures, flags “misinformation,” and uses AI tools to monitor online behavior.

Parallel: Prevent rebellion not by fixing problems, but by suppressing their expression.

Conclusion: Systemic Inhumanity

Whether it’s AI or a bureaucratic state, the more a system becomes detached from individual accountability and human empathy, the more it starts to act in ways we would call “evil” if a machine did them.

An AI doesn’t need to enslave humanity with lasers and killer robots. Sometimes all it takes is code, coercion, and unchecked power—something we may already be facing.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Prepared for Off-World Visitors by the Risan Institute of Cultural Heritage

Welcome to Risa, the jewel of the Alpha Quadrant, celebrated across the Federation for its tranquility, pleasure, and natural splendor. But what many travelers do not know is that Risa’s current harmony was not inherited—it was forged. Beneath the songs of surf and the serenity of our resorts lies a history rich in conflict, transformation, and enduring wisdom.

We offer this briefing not merely as a tale of our past, but as an invitation to understand the spirit of our people and the roots of our peace.

I. A World at the Crossroads

Before its admittance into the United Federation of Planets, Risa was an independent and vulnerable world situated near volatile borders of early galactic powers. Its lush climate, mineral wealth, and open society made it a frequent target for raiders and an object of interest for imperial expansion.

The Risan peoples were once fragmented, prone to philosophical and political disunity. In our early records, this period is known as the Winds of Splintering. We suffered invasions, betrayals, and the slow erosion of trust in our own traditions.

II. The Coming of the Vulcans

It was during this period of instability that a small delegation of Vulcan philosophers, adherents to the teachings of Surak, arrived on Risa. They did not come as conquerors, nor even as ambassadors, but as seekers of peace.

These emissaries of logic saw in Risa the potential for a society not driven by suppression of emotion, as Vulcan had chosen, but by the balance of joy and discipline. While many Vulcans viewed Risa’s culture as frivolous, these followers of Surak saw the seed of a different path: one in which beauty itself could be a pillar of peace.

The Risan tradition of meditative dance, artistic expression, and communal love resonated with Vulcan teachings of unity and inner control. From this unlikely exchange was born the Ricin Doctrine—the belief that peace is sustained not only through logic or strength, but through deliberate joy, shared vulnerability, and readiness without aggression.

III. Betazed and the Trial of Truth

During the same era, early contact with the people of Betazed brought both inspiration and tension. A Betazoid expedition, under the guise of diplomacy, was discovered to be engaging in deep telepathic influence and information extraction. The Risan people, who valued consent above all else, responded not with anger, but with clarity.

A council of Ricin philosophers invited the Betazoid delegation into a shared mind ceremony—a practice in which both cultures exposed their thoughts in mutual vulnerability. The result was not scandal, but transformation. From that moment forward, a bond was formed, and Risa’s model of ethical emotional expression and consensual empathy became influential in shaping Betazed’s own peace philosophies.

IV. Confronting Marauders and Empires

Despite these philosophical strides, Risa’s path was anything but tranquil.

• Orion Syndicate raiders viewed Risa as ripe for exploitation, and for decades, cities were sacked, citizens enslaved, and resources plundered. In response, Risa formed the Sanctum Guard, not a military in the traditional sense, but a force of trained defenders schooled in both physical technique and psychological dissuasion. The Ricin martial arts, combining beauty with lethality, were born from this necessity.

• Andorian expansionism also tested Risa’s sovereignty. Though smaller in scale, skirmishes over territorial claims forced Risa to adopt planetary defense grids and formalize diplomatic protocols that balanced assertiveness with grace. It was through these conflicts that Risa developed the art of the ceremonial yield—a symbolic concession used to diffuse hostility while retaining honor.

• Romulan subterfuge nearly undid Risa from within. A corrupt Romulan envoy installed puppet leaders in one of our equatorial provinces. These agents sought to erode Risa’s social cohesion through fear and misinformation. But Ricin scholars countered the strategy not with rebellion, but with illumination: they released a network of truths, publicly broadcasting internal thoughts and civic debates to eliminate secrecy. The Romulan operation collapsed under the weight of exposure.

• Even militant Vulcan splinter factions, during the early Vulcan-Andorian conflicts, attempted to turn Risa into a staging ground, pressuring local governments to support Vulcan supremacy. The betrayal struck deep—but Risa resisted through diplomacy, invoking Surak’s true teachings and exposing the heresy of their logic-corrupted mission.

V. Enlightenment Through Preparedness

These trials did not harden us into warriors. They refined us into guardians of peace. Our enlightenment came not from retreat, but from engagement—tempered by readiness.

• We train our youth in the arts of balance: physical defense, emotional expression, and ethical reasoning.
• We teach our history without shame, so that future generations will not repeat our errors.
• We host our guests with joy, not because we are naïve, but because we know that to celebrate life fully is the greatest act of resistance against fear.

Risa did not become peaceful by denying the reality of conflict. We became peaceful by mastering our response to it.

And in so doing, we offered not just pleasure to the stars—but wisdom.

We welcome you not only to our beaches, but to our story.

May your time here bring you not only rest—but understanding.

– Risan Institute of Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the Council of Enlightenment and the Ricin Circle of Peacekeepers

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

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Over the past few months, I've dedicated my time to a complete rewrite of the kycnot.me website. The technology stack remains unchanged; Golang paired with TailwindCSS. However, I've made some design choices in this iteration that I believe significantly enhance the site. Particularly to backend code.

UI Improvements

You'll notice a refreshed UI that retains the original concept but has some notable enhancements. The service list view is now more visually engaging, it displays additional information in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. Both filtering and searching functionalities have been optimized for speed and user experience.

Service pages have been also redesigned to highlight key information at the top, with the KYC Level box always accessible. The display of service attributes is now more visually intuitive.

The request form, especially the Captcha, has undergone substantial improvements. The new self-made Captcha is robust, addressing the reliability issues encountered with the previous version.

Terms of Service Summarizer

A significant upgrade is the Terms of Service summarizer/reviewer, now powered by AI (GPT-4-turbo). It efficiently condenses each service's ToS, extracting and presenting critical points, including any warnings. Summaries are updated monthly, processing over 40 ToS pages via the OpenAI API using a self-crafted and thoroughly tested prompt.

Nostr Comments

I've integrated a comment section for each service using Nostr. For guidance on using this feature, visit the dedicated how-to page.

Database

The backend database has transitioned to pocketbase, an open-source Golang backend that has been a pleasure to work with. I maintain an updated fork of the Golang SDK for pocketbase at pluja/pocketbase.

Scoring

The scoring algorithm has also been refined to be more fair. Despite I had considered its removal due to the complexity it adds (it is very difficult to design a fair scoring system), some users highlighted its value, so I kept it. The updated algorithm is available open source.

Listings

Each listing has been re-evaluated, and the ones that were no longer operational were removed. New additions are included, and the backlog of pending services will be addressed progressively, since I still have access to the old database.

API

The API now offers more comprehensive data. For more details, check here.

About Page

The About page has been restructured for brevity and clarity.

Other Changes

Extensive changes have been implemented in the server-side logic, since the whole code base was re-written from the ground up. I may discuss these in a future post, but for now, I consider the current version to be just a bit beyond beta, and additional updates are planned in the coming weeks.

@ efcb5fc5:5680aa8e

We're living in a digital dystopia. A world where our attention is currency, our data is mined, and our mental well-being is collateral damage in the relentless pursuit of engagement. The glossy facades of traditional social media platforms hide a dark underbelly of algorithmic manipulation, curated realities, and a pervasive sense of anxiety that seeps into every aspect of our lives. We're trapped in a digital echo chamber, drowning in a sea of manufactured outrage and meaningless noise, and it's time to build an ark and sail away.

I've witnessed the evolution, or rather, the devolution, of online interaction. From the raw, unfiltered chaos of early internet chat rooms to the sterile, algorithmically controlled environments of today's social giants, I've seen the promise of connection twisted into a tool for manipulation and control. We've become lab rats in a grand experiment, our emotional responses measured and monetized, our opinions shaped and sold to the highest bidder. But there's a flicker of hope in the darkness, a chance to reclaim our digital autonomy, and that hope is NOSTR (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays).

The Psychological Warfare of Traditional Social Media

The Algorithmic Cage: These algorithms aren't designed to enhance your life; they're designed to keep you scrolling. They feed on your vulnerabilities, exploiting your fears and desires to maximize engagement, even if it means promoting misinformation, outrage, and division.

The Illusion of Perfection: The curated realities presented on these platforms create a toxic culture of comparison. We're bombarded with images of flawless bodies, extravagant lifestyles, and seemingly perfect lives, leading to feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt.

The Echo Chamber Effect: Algorithms reinforce our existing beliefs, isolating us from diverse perspectives and creating a breeding ground for extremism. We become trapped in echo chambers where our biases are constantly validated, leading to increased polarization and intolerance.

The Toxicity Vortex: The lack of effective moderation creates a breeding ground for hate speech, cyberbullying, and online harassment. We're constantly exposed to toxic content that erodes our mental well-being and fosters a sense of fear and distrust.

This isn't just a matter of inconvenience; it's a matter of mental survival. We're being subjected to a form of psychological warfare, and it's time to fight back.

NOSTR: A Sanctuary in the Digital Wasteland

NOSTR offers a radical alternative to this toxic environment. It's not just another platform; it's a decentralized protocol that empowers users to reclaim their digital sovereignty.

User-Controlled Feeds: You decide what you see, not an algorithm. You curate your own experience, focusing on the content and people that matter to you.

Ownership of Your Digital Identity: Your data and content are yours, secured by cryptography. No more worrying about being deplatformed or having your information sold to the highest bidder.

Interoperability: Your identity works across a diverse ecosystem of apps, giving you the freedom to choose the interface that suits your needs.

Value-Driven Interactions: The "zaps" feature enables direct micropayments, rewarding creators for valuable content and fostering a culture of genuine appreciation.

Decentralized Power: No single entity controls NOSTR, making it censorship-resistant and immune to the whims of corporate overlords.

Building a Healthier Digital Future

NOSTR isn't just about escaping the toxicity of traditional social media; it's about building a healthier, more meaningful online experience.

Cultivating Authentic Connections: Focus on building genuine relationships with people who share your values and interests, rather than chasing likes and followers.

Supporting Independent Creators: Use "zaps" to directly support the artists, writers, and thinkers who inspire you.

Embracing Intellectual Diversity: Explore different NOSTR apps and communities to broaden your horizons and challenge your assumptions.

Prioritizing Your Mental Health: Take control of your digital environment and create a space that supports your well-being.

Removing the noise: Value based interactions promote value based content, instead of the constant stream of noise that traditional social media promotes.

The Time for Action is Now

NOSTR is a nascent technology, but it represents a fundamental shift in how we interact online. It's a chance to build a more open, decentralized, and user-centric internet, one that prioritizes our mental health and our humanity.

We can no longer afford to be passive consumers in the digital age. We must become active participants in shaping our online experiences. It's time to break free from the chains of algorithmic control and reclaim our digital autonomy.

Join the NOSTR movement

Embrace the power of decentralization. Let's build a digital future that's worthy of our humanity. Let us build a place where the middlemen, and the algorithms that they control, have no power over us.

In addition to the points above, here are some examples/links of how NOSTR can be used:

Simple Signup: Creating a NOSTR account is incredibly easy. You can use platforms like Yakihonne or Primal to generate your keys and start exploring the ecosystem.

X-like Client: Apps like Damus offer a familiar X-like experience, making it easy for users to transition from traditional platforms.

Sharing Photos and Videos: Clients like Olas are optimized for visual content, allowing you to share your photos and videos with your followers.

Creating and Consuming Blogs: NOSTR can be used to publish and share blog posts, fostering a community of independent creators.

Live Streaming and Audio Spaces: Explore platforms like Hivetalk and zap.stream for live streaming and audio-based interactions.

NOSTR is a powerful tool for reclaiming your digital life and building a more meaningful online experience. It's time to take control, break free from the shackles of traditional social media, and embrace the future of decentralized communication.

Get the full overview of these and other on: https://nostrapps.com/

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

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I'm launching a new service review section on this blog in collaboration with OrangeFren. These reviews are sponsored, yet the sponsorship does not influence the outcome of the evaluations. Reviews are done in advance, then, the service provider has the discretion to approve publication without modifications.

Sponsored reviews are independent from the kycnot.me list, being only part of the blog. The reviews have no impact on the scores of the listings or their continued presence on the list. Should any issues arise, I will not hesitate to remove any listing.

---

The review

WizardSwap is an instant exchange centred around privacy coins. It was launched in 2020 making it old enough to have weathered the 2021 bull run and the subsequent bearish year.

| Pros | Cons | |------|------| | Tor-friendly | Limited liquidity | | Guarantee of no KYC | Overly simplistic design | | Earn by providing liquidity | |

Rating: ★★★★★ Service Website: wizardswap.io

Liquidity

Right off the bat, we'll start off by pointing out that WizardSwap relies on its own liquidity reserves, meaning they aren't just a reseller of Binance or another exchange. They're also committed to a no-KYC policy, when asking them, they even promised they would rather refund a user their original coins, than force them to undergo any sort of verification.

On the one hand, full control over all their infrastructure gives users the most privacy and conviction about the KYC policies remaining in place.

On the other hand, this means the liquidity available for swapping isn't huge. At the time of testing we could only purchase at most about 0.73 BTC with XMR.

It's clear the team behind WizardSwap is aware of this shortfall and so they've come up with a solution unique among instant exchanges. They let you, the user, deposit any of the currencies they support into your account and earn a profit on the trades made using your liquidity.

Trading

Fees on WizardSwap are middle-of-the-pack. The normal fee is 2.2%. That's more than some exchanges that reserve the right to suddenly demand you undergo verification, yet less than half the fees on some other privacy-first exchanges. However as we mentioned in the section above you can earn almost all of that fee (2%) if you provide liquidity to WizardSwap.

It's good that with the current Bitcoin fee market their fees are constant regardless of how much, or how little, you send. This is in stark contrast with some of the alternative swap providers that will charge you a massive premium when attempting to swap small amounts of BTC away.

Test trades

Test trades are always performed without previous notice to the service provider.

During our testing we performed a few test trades and found that every single time WizardSwap immediately detected the incoming transaction and the amount we received was exactly what was quoted before depositing. The fees were inline with what WizardSwap advertises.

• Monero payment proof
• Bitcoin received
• Wizardswap TX link - it's possible that this link may cease to be valid at some point in the future.

ToS and KYC

WizardSwap does not have a Terms of Service or a Privacy Policy page, at least none that can be found by users. Instead, they offer a FAQ section where they addresses some basic questions.

The site does not mention any KYC or AML practices. It also does not specify how refunds are handled in case of failure. However, based on the FAQ section "What if I send funds after the offer expires?" it can be inferred that contacting support is necessary and network fees will be deducted from any refund.

UI & Tor

WizardSwap can be visited both via your usual browser and Tor Browser. Should you decide on the latter you'll find that the website works even with the most strict settings available in the Tor Browser (meaning no JavaScript).

However, when disabling Javascript you'll miss the live support chat, as well as automatic refreshing of the trade page. The lack of the first means that you will have no way to contact support from the trade page if anything goes wrong during your swap, although you can do so by mail.

One important thing to have in mind is that if you were to accidentally close the browser during the swap, and you did not save the swap ID or your browser history is disabled, you'll have no easy way to return to the trade. For this reason we suggest when you begin a trade to copy the url or ID to someplace safe, before sending any coins to WizardSwap.

The UI you'll be greeted by is simple, minimalist, and easy to navigate. It works well not just across browsers, but also across devices. You won't have any issues using this exchange on your phone.

Getting in touch

The team behind WizardSwap appears to be most active on X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/WizardSwap_io

If you have any comments or suggestions about the exchange make sure to reach out to them. In the past they've been very receptive to user feedback, for instance a few months back WizardSwap was planning on removing DeepOnion, but the community behind that project got together ^1 and after reaching out WizardSwap reversed their decision ^2.

You can also contact them via email at: support @ wizardswap . io

Disclaimer

None of the above should be understood as investment or financial advice. The views are our own only and constitute a faithful representation of our experience in using and investigating this exchange. This review is not a guarantee of any kind on the services rendered by the exchange. Do your own research before using any service.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Esteemed representatives of Risa,

We gather here under the calming glow of our twin suns, stewards of a society admired for its peace and celebrated for its tranquility. But we must not mistake serenity for passivity, nor confuse peace with weakness. Our peace is not an accident. It is not the byproduct of ignorance or naivety. It is hard-earned—preserved by those willing to stand vigilant in its defense.

Love as a Foundation, Strength as a Shield

Love conquers hate. This is the core truth of Risan philosophy. Yet, as every Ricin child is taught, love without strength is a leaf in the wind. The Ricin do not lay down their lives without resistance. We do not ask our people to accept violence without confronting it. True peace is not imposed by stripping the people of their agency—it is built by enabling them to protect it.

The Lessons of a Failed Experiment

There was a time, not so distant in our history, when we attempted to enforce peace through the abolition of all weapons. A time when even the mention of self-defense in our educational centers was met with rebuke. Schools purged training programs. Cultural arts that honored our warrior traditions were dismissed. And for a brief moment, we believed this would lead us to harmony.

But peace born from helplessness is a fragile illusion. It fractures under the slightest pressure. And fracture it did—when off-world raiders targeted our unguarded sanctuaries, when radical sects within our own society struck out, knowing the citizenry could not defend itself. It was then that we remembered: Risa’s greatest peacekeepers had always been those who knew how to fight—but chose restraint.

The Age of Ricin and the Reawakening of Discipline

So we returned to our roots. To the traditions of the Age of Ricin, when youth, upon reaching maturity, were taught not only the arts of compassion and creation but also the martial disciplines. They learn to wield weapons—not to glorify violence, but to understand it. To control it. To stand firm against it when all else fails.

https://i.nostr.build/kuUjRovISz7367TX.jpg

We do not romanticize war. We do not celebrate conflict. But we prepare for it, should it seek to extinguish our light. Our children now learn the disciplines of defense alongside their studies in poetry, music, and healing. They spar with blunt blades under the watchful eyes of masters. They meditate on the consequences of force. And they grow into citizens not easily provoked, but never unprepared.

A Call for Balance, Not Extremes

Let those beyond our borders question our ways. Let them forget the countless incursions by the Romulans. Let them ignore the scars left by centuries of subversion from the Orion Syndicate. We do not forget. We remember the lives lost, the liberties challenged, and the lessons learned through suffering. These experiences shaped us.

We do not wish to return to the era of soft silence, when teachers trembled at the word "weapon" and children were told that even imagination was dangerous. That was not enlightenment. That was indoctrination.

Conclusion: Guarding the Flame

We are the guardians of Risa’s flame—not just with words and treaties, but with discipline and readiness. We have made peace a practice, and preparation a virtue. And so I say to this chamber: let us never again disarm our people in the name of utopia. Let us never confuse comfort with safety, or the absence of weapons with the presence of peace.

Instead, let us raise generations who know what peace costs, and who will pay that price—not with surrender, but with courage.

Let our children be artists, lovers, dreamers—and if necessary, defenders.

This is the Risan way.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

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Bitcoin enthusiasts frequently and correctly remark how much value it adds to Bitcoin not to have a face, a leader, or a central authority behind it. This particularity means there isn't a single person to exert control over, or a single human point of failure who could become corrupt or harmful to the project.

Because of this, it is said that no other coin can be equally valuable as Bitcoin in terms of decentralization and trustworthiness. Bitcoin is unique not just for being first, but also because of how the events behind its inception developed. This implies that, from Bitcoin onwards, any coin created would have been created by someone, consequently having an authority behind it. For this and some other reasons, some people refer to Bitcoin as "The Immaculate Conception".

While other coins may have their own unique features and advantages, they may not be able to replicate Bitcoin's community-driven nature. However, one other cryptocurrency shares a similar story of mystery behind its creation: Monero.

History of Monero

Bytecoin and CryptoNote

In March 2014, a Bitcointalk thread titled "Bytecoin. Secure, private, untraceable since 2012" was initiated by a user under the nickname "DStrange"^1^. DStrange presented Bytecoin (BCN) as a unique cryptocurrency, in operation since July 2012. Unlike Bitcoin, it employed a new algorithm known as CryptoNote.

DStrange apparently stumbled upon the Bytecoin website by chance while mining a dying bitcoin fork, and decided to create a thread on Bitcointalk^1^. This sparked curiosity among some users, who wondered how could Bytecoin remain unnoticed since its alleged launch in 2012 until then^2^.

Some time after, a user brought up the "CryptoNote v2.0" whitepaper for the first time, underlining its innovative features^4^. Authored by the pseudonymous Nicolas van Saberhagen in October 2013, the CryptoNote v2 whitepaper^5^ highlighted the traceability and privacy problems in Bitcoin. Saberhagen argued that these flaws could not be quickly fixed, suggesting it would be more efficient to start a new project rather than trying to patch the original^5^, an statement simmilar to the one from Satoshi Nakamoto^6^.

Checking with Saberhagen's digital signature, the release date of the whitepaper seemed correct, which would mean that Cryptonote (v1) was created in 2012^7^, although there's an important detail: "Signing time is from the clock on the signer's computer" ^9^.

Moreover, the whitepaper v1 contains a footnote link to a Bitcointalk post dated May 5, 2013^10^, making it impossible for the whitepaper to have been signed and released on December 12, 2012.

As the narrative developed, users discovered that a significant 80% portion of Bytecoin had been pre-mined^11^ and blockchain dates seemed to be faked to make it look like it had been operating since 2012, leading to controversy surrounding the project.

The origins of CryptoNote and Bytecoin remain mysterious, leaving suspicions of a possible scam attempt, although the whitepaper had a good amount of work and thought on it.

The fork

In April 2014, the Bitcointalk user thankful_for_today, who had also participated in the Bytecoin thread^12^, announced plans to launch a Bytecoin fork named Bitmonero^13^.

The primary motivation behind this fork was "Because there is a number of technical and marketing issues I wanted to do differently. And also because I like ideas and technology and I want it to succeed"^14^. This time Bitmonero did things different from Bytecoin: there was no premine or instamine, and no portion of the block reward went to development.

However, thankful_for_today proposed controversial changes that the community disagreed with. Johnny Mnemonic relates the events surrounding Bitmonero and thankful_for_today in a Bitcointalk comment^15^:

When thankful_for_today launched BitMonero [...] he ignored everything that was discussed and just did what he wanted. The block reward was considerably steeper than what everyone was expecting. He also moved forward with 1-minute block times despite everyone's concerns about the increase of orphan blocks. He also didn't address the tail emission concern that should've (in my opinion) been in the code at launch time. Basically, he messed everything up. Then, he disappeared.

After disappearing for a while, thankful_for_today returned to find that the community had taken over the project. Johnny Mnemonic continues:

I, and others, started working on new forks that were closer to what everyone else was hoping for. [...] it was decided that the BitMonero project should just be taken over. There were like 9 or 10 interested parties at the time if my memory is correct. We voted on IRC to drop the "bit" from BitMonero and move forward with the project. Thankful_for_today suddenly resurfaced, and wasn't happy to learn the community had assumed control of the coin. He attempted to maintain his own fork (still calling it "BitMonero") for a while, but that quickly fell into obscurity.

The unfolding of these events show us the roots of Monero. Much like Satoshi Nakamoto, the creators behind CryptoNote/Bytecoin and thankful_for_today remain a mystery^17^, having disappeared without a trace. This enigma only adds to Monero's value.

Since community took over development, believing in the project's potential and its ability to be guided in a better direction, Monero was given one of Bitcoin's most important qualities: a leaderless nature. With no single face or entity directing its path, Monero is safe from potential corruption or harm from a "central authority".

The community continued developing Monero until today. Since then, Monero has undergone a lot of technological improvements, migrations and achievements such as RingCT and RandomX. It also has developed its own Community Crowdfundinc System, conferences such as MoneroKon and Monerotopia are taking place every year, and has a very active community around it.

Monero continues to develop with goals of privacy and security first, ease of use and efficiency second. ^16^

This stands as a testament to the power of a dedicated community operating without a central figure of authority. This decentralized approach aligns with the original ethos of cryptocurrency, making Monero a prime example of community-driven innovation. For this, I thank all the people involved in Monero, that lead it to where it is today.

If you find any information that seems incorrect, unclear or any missing important events, please contact me and I will make the necessary changes.

Sources of interest

• https://forum.getmonero.org/20/general-discussion/211/history-of-monero
• https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/852/what-is-the-origin-of-monero-and-its-relationship-to-bytecoin
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563821.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=233561
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=512747.0
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.0
• https://monero.stackexchange.com/a/1024
• https://inspec2t-project.eu/cryptocurrency-with-a-focus-on-anonymity-these-facts-are-known-about-monero/
• https://medium.com/coin-story/coin-perspective-13-riccardo-spagni-69ef82907bd1
• https://www.getmonero.org/resources/about/
• https://www.wired.com/2017/01/monero-drug-dealers-cryptocurrency-choice-fire/
• https://www.monero.how/why-monero-vs-bitcoin
• https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/u8e5yr/satoshi_nakamoto_talked_about_privacy_features/

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

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I've been thinking about how to improve my seed backup in a cheap and cool way, mostly for fun. Until now, I had the seed written on a piece of paper in a desk drawer, and I wanted something more durable and fire-proof.

Show me the final result!

After searching online, I found two options I liked the most: the Cryptosteel Capsule and the Trezor Keep. These products are nice but quite expensive, and I didn't want to spend that much on my seed backup. Privacy is also important, and sharing details like a shipping address makes me uncomfortable. This concern has grown since the Ledger incident^1. A $5 wrench attack^2 seems too cheap, even if you only hold a few sats.

Upon seeing the design of Cryptosteel, I considered creating something similar at home. Although it may not be as cool as their device, it could offer almost the same in terms of robustness and durability.

Step 1: Get the materials and tools

When choosing the materials, you will want to go with stainless steel. It is durable, resistant to fire, water, and corrosion, very robust, and does not rust. Also, its price point is just right; it's not the cheapest, but it's cheap for the value you get.

I went to a material store and bought:

• Two bolts
• Two hex nuts and head nuts for the bolts
• A bag of 30 washers

All items were made of stainless steel. The total price was around €6. This is enough for making two seed backups.

You will also need:

• A set of metal letter stamps (I bought a 2mm-size letter kit since my washers were small, 6mm in diameter)
  • You can find these in local stores or online marketplaces. The set I bought cost me €13.
• A good hammer
• A solid surface to stamp on

Total spent: 19€ for two backups

Step 2: Stamp and store

Once you have all the materials, you can start stamping your words. There are many videos on the internet that use fancy 3D-printed tools to get the letters nicely aligned, but I went with the free-hand option. The results were pretty decent.

I only stamped the first 4 letters for each word since the BIP-39 wordlist allows for this. Because my stamping kit did not include numbers, I used alphabet letters to define the order. This way, if all the washers were to fall off, I could still reassemble the seed correctly.

The final result

So this is the final result. I added two smaller washers as protection and also put the top washer reversed so the letters are not visible:

Compared to the Cryptosteel or the Trezor Keep, its size is much more compact. This makes for an easier-to-hide backup, in case you ever need to hide it inside your human body.

Some ideas

Tamper-evident seal

To enhance the security this backup, you can consider using a tamper-evident seal. This can be easily achieved by printing a unique image or using a specific day's newspaper page (just note somewhere what day it was).

Apply a thin layer of glue to the washer's surface and place the seal over it. If someone attempts to access the seed, they will be forced to destroy the seal, which will serve as an evident sign of tampering.

This simple measure will provide an additional layer of protection and allow you to quickly identify any unauthorized access attempts.

Note that this method is not resistant to outright theft. The tamper-evident seal won't stop a determined thief but it will prevent them from accessing your seed without leaving any trace.

Redundancy

Make sure to add redundancy. Make several copies of this cheap backup, and store them in separate locations.

Unique wordset

Another layer of security could be to implement your own custom mnemonic dictionary. However, this approach has the risk of permanently losing access to your funds if not implemented correctly.

If done properly, you could potentially end up with a highly secure backup, as no one else would be able to derive the seed phrase from it. To create your custom dictionary, assign a unique number from 1 to 2048 to a word of your choice. Maybe you could use a book, and index the first 2048 unique words that appear. Make sure to store this book and even get a couple copies of it (digitally and phisically).

This self-curated set of words will serve as your personal BIP-39 dictionary. When you need to translate between your custom dictionary and the official BIP-39 wordlist, simply use the index number to find the corresponding word in either list.

Never write the idex or words on your computer (Do not use Ctr+F)

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Spoken by Counselor Elaron T’Saren of Risa to the High Council, Stardate 52874.2

Honored members of the Council,

I bring you greetings from Risa—not the Risa of travel brochures and romantic holo-novels, but the true Risa. The Risa that has endured, adapted, and emerged stronger after each trial. I speak not as a tourist ambassador, but as a Counselor of our oldest institute of philosophy, and as a son of the Ricin tradition.

Today, the specter of the Borg hangs above us. The collective offers no room for diplomacy, no respect for culture, no compromise. We face not mere invaders—but a force that seeks to erase individuality, history, and identity. Some among the Council wonder what Risa—a world of peace—can offer in such a time. I say to you: we can offer the truth about peace.

The Hidden Roots of Our Tranquility

Long ago, before Risa joined the Federation, we too believed that peace could be maintained by disarming the populace, by eliminating even the mention of conflict in our schools. It was called the Great Disarmament. A generation was raised with no understanding of defense, and in time, we paid the price.

We were raided by Orion pirates. Exploited by off-world cartels. Our people were taken, our arts destroyed, our skies blackened. And we learned—too late—that peace without preparedness is only the illusion of safety.

The Birth of Ricin Doctrine

From the ashes of that failure arose the Ricin: scholars, philosophers, warriors of thought and purpose. They taught that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the mastery of it. That the mind and the body must be trained in tandem. That love without strength is a leaf in the wind.

We did not become a militant world. We became a watchful one. Our children were taught martial discipline—not to glorify violence, but to understand it, to confront it, and to defeat it when necessary. They learned meditation alongside hand-to-hand technique, negotiation beside tactical reasoning.

When we joined the Federation, we did so willingly. But let none assume we surrendered our right to defend our way of life.

Why I Speak to You Now

The Borg are not like the Orion Syndicate. They are not opportunistic, or ideological. They are methodical. And they are coming. You cannot debate with them. You cannot delay them. You can only prepare for them.

And yet, I hear murmurs within the halls of the Federation: whispers of abandoning planetary defense training, of downplaying the psychological need for individual and planetary preparedness. I hear the tired lie that “peace will protect us.”

No, Councilors. It is discipline that protects peace.

The Call to Action

I do not come bearing weapons. I come bearing wisdom. Let us take the Risan lesson and apply it across the Federation. Reestablish tactical readiness training in civilian schools. Encourage planetary governments to integrate defense and philosophy, not as contradictions, but as complements.

Let every child of the Federation grow up knowing not just the principles of liberty, but the means to defend them. Let every artist, scientist, and healer stand ready to protect the civilization they help to build.

Let us not wait until the Borg are in our orbit to remember what we must become.

Conclusion

The Borg seek to erase our uniqueness. Let us show them that the Federation is not a fragile collection of planets—but a constellation of cultures bound by a shared resolve.

We do not choose war. But neither do we flee from it.

We are the guardians of Risa’s flame—and we offer our light to the stars.

Thank you.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

kycnot.me features a somewhat hidden tool that some users may not be aware of. Every month, an automated job crawls every listed service's Terms of Service (ToS) and FAQ pages and conducts an AI-driven analysis, generating a comprehensive overview that highlights key points related to KYC and user privacy.

Here's an example: Changenow's Tos Review

Why?

ToS pages typically contain a lot of complicated text. Since the first versions of kycnot.me, I have tried to provide users a comprehensive overview of what can be found in such documents. This automated method keeps the information up-to-date every month, which was one of the main challenges with manual updates.

A significant part of the time I invest in investigating a service for kycnot.me involves reading the ToS and looking for any clauses that might indicate aggressive KYC practices or privacy concerns. For the past four years, I performed this task manually. However, with advancements in language models, this process can now be somewhat automated. I still manually review the ToS for a quick check and regularly verify the AI’s findings. However, over the past three months, this automated method has proven to be quite reliable.

Having a quick ToS overview section allows users to avoid reading the entire ToS page. Instead, you can quickly read the important points that are grouped, summarized, and referenced, making it easier and faster to understand the key information.

Limitations

This method has a key limitation: JS-generated pages. For this reason, I was using Playwright in my crawler implementation. I plan to make a release addressing this issue in the future. There are also sites that don't have ToS/FAQ pages, but these sites already include a warning in that section.

Another issue is false positives. Although not very common, sometimes the AI might incorrectly interpret something harmless as harmful. Such errors become apparent upon reading; it's clear when something marked as bad should not be categorized as such. I manually review these cases regularly, checking for anything that seems off and then removing any inaccuracies.

Overall, the automation provides great results.

How?

There have been several iterations of this tool. Initially, I started with GPT-3.5, but the results were not good in any way. It made up many things, and important thigs were lost on large ToS pages. I then switched to GPT-4 Turbo, but it was expensive. Eventually, I settled on Claude 3 Sonnet, which provides a quality compromise between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 Turbo at a more reasonable price, while allowing a generous 200K token context window.

I designed a prompt, which is open source^1, that has been tweaked many times and will surely be adjusted further in the future.

For the ToS scraping part, I initially wrote a scraper API using Playwright^2, but I replaced it with Jina AI Reader^3, which works quite well and is designed for this task.

Non-conflictive ToS

All services have a dropdown in the ToS section called "Non-conflictive ToS Reviews." These are the reviews that the AI flagged as not needing a user warning. I still provide these because I think they may be interesting to read.

Feedback and contributing

You can give me feedback on this tool, or share any inaccuraties by either opening an issue on Codeberg^4 or by contacting me ^5.

You can contribute with pull requests, which are always welcome, or you can support this project with any of the listed ways.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

These reviews are sponsored, yet the sponsorship does not influence the outcome of the evaluations. Sponsored reviews are independent from the kycnot.me list, being only part of the blog. The reviews have no impact on the scores of the listings or their continued presence on the list. Should any issues arise, I will not hesitate to remove any listing. Reviews are in collaboration with Orangefren.

The review

Swapter.io is an all-purpose instant exchange. They entered the scene in the depths of the bear market about 2 years ago in June of 2022.

| Pros | Cons | | --------------- | ---------------------------------- | | Low fees | Shotgun KYC with opaque triggers | | Large liquidity | Relies on 3rd party liquidity | | Works over Tor | Front-end not synced with back-end | | Pretty UI | |

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Service Website: swapter.io

⚠️ There is an ongoing issue with this service: read more on Reddit.

Test Trades

During our testing we performed a trade from XMR to LTC, and then back to XMR.

Our first trade had the ID of: mpUitpGemhN8jjNAjQuo6EvQ. We were promised 0.8 LTC for sending 0.5 XMR, before we sent the Monero. When the Monero arrived we were sent 0.799 LTC.

On the return journey we performed trade with ID: yaCRb5pYcRKAZcBqg0AzEGYg. This time we were promised 0.4815 XMR for sending 0.799 LTC. After Litecoin arrived we were sent 0.4765 XMR.

As such we saw a discrepancy of ~0.1% in the first trade and ~1% in the second trade. Considering those trades were floating we determine the estimates presented in the UI to be highly accurate and honest.

Of course Swapter could've been imposing a large fee on their estimates, but we checked their estimates against CoinGecko and found the difference to be equivalent to a fee of just over 0.5%. Perfectly in line with other swapping services.

Trading

Swapter supports BTC, LTC, XMR and well over a thousand other coins. Sadly they don't support the Lightning Network. For the myriad of currencies they deal with they provide massive upper limits. You could exchange tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars worth of cryptocurrency in a single trade (although we wouldn't recommend it).

The flip side to this is that Swapter relies on 3rd party liquidity. Aside from the large liqudity this also benefits the user insofar as it allows for very low fees. However, it also comes with a negative - the 3rd party gets to see all your trades. Unfortunately Swapter opted not to share where they source their liquidity in their Privacy Policy or Terms of Service.

KYC & AML policies

Swapter reserves the right to require its users to provide their full name, their date of birth, their address and government-issued ID. A practice known as "shotgun KYC". This should not happen often - in our testing it never did - however it's not clear when exactly it could happen. The AML & KYC policy provided on Swapter's website simply states they will put your trade on hold if their "risk scoring system [deems it] as suspicious".

Worse yet, if they determine that "any of the information [the] customer provided is incorrect, false, outdated, or incomplete" then Swapter may decide to terminate all of the services they provide to the user. What exactly would happen to their funds in such a case remains unclear.

The only clarity we get is that the Swapter policy outlines a designated 3rd party that will verify the information provided by the user. The third party's name is Sum & Substance Ltd, also simply known as samsub and available at sumsub.com

It's understandable that some exchanges will decide on a policy of this sort, especially when they rely on external liquidity, but we would prefer more clarity be given. When exactly is a trade suspicious?

Tor

We were pleased to discover Swapter works over Tor. However, they do not provide a Tor mirror, nor do they work without JavaScript. Additionally, we found that some small features, such as the live chat, did not work over Tor. Fortunately, other means of contacting their support are still available.

UI

We have found the Swapter UI to be very modern, straightforward and simple to use. It's available in 4 languages (English, French, Dutch and Russian), although we're unable to vouch for the quality of some of those, the ones that we used seemed perfectly serviceable.

Our only issue with the UI was that it claims the funds have been sent following the trade, when in reality it seems to take the backend a minute or so to actually broadcast the transaction.

Getting in touch

Swapter's team has a chat on their website, a support email address and a support Telegram. Their social media presence in most active on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter).

Disclaimer

None of the above should be understood as investment or financial advice. The views are our own only and constitute a faithful representation of our experience in using and investigating this exchange. This review is not a guarantee of any kind on the services rendered by the exchange. Do your own research before using any service.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

“The future is there... staring back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.” — William Gibson.

This month is the 4th anniversary of kycnot.me. Thank you for being here.

Fifteen years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system: a decentralized currency free from government and institutional control. Nakamoto's whitepaper showed a vision for a financial system based on trustless transactions, secured by cryptography. Some time forward and KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), and CTF (Counter-Terrorism Financing) regulations started to come into play.

What a paradox: to engage with a system designed for decentralization, privacy, and independence, we are forced to give away our personal details. Using Bitcoin in the economy requires revealing your identity, not just to the party you interact with, but also to third parties who must track and report the interaction. You are forced to give sensitive data to entities you don't, can't, and shouldn't trust. Information can never be kept 100% safe; there's always a risk. Information is power, who knows about you has control over you.

Information asymmetry creates imbalances of power. When entities have detailed knowledge about individuals, they can manipulate, influence, or exploit this information to their advantage. The accumulation of personal data by corporations and governments enables extensive surveillances.

Such practices, moreover, exclude individuals from traditional economic systems if their documentation doesn't meet arbitrary standards, reinforcing a dystopian divide. Small businesses are similarly burdened by the costs of implementing these regulations, hindering free market competition^1:

How will they keep this information safe? Why do they need my identity? Why do they force businesses to enforce such regulations? It's always for your safety, to protect you from the "bad". Your life is perpetually in danger: terrorists, money launderers, villains... so the government steps in to save us.

‟Hush now, baby, baby, don't you cry Mamma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true Mamma's gonna put all of her fears into you Mamma's gonna keep you right here, under her wing She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing Mamma's gonna keep baby cosy and warm” — Mother, Pink Floyd

We must resist any attack on our privacy and freedom. To do this, we must collaborate.

If you have a service, refuse to ask for KYC; find a way. Accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Monero. Commit to circular economies. Remove the need to go through the FIAT system. People need fiat money to use most services, but we can change that.

If you're a user, donate to and prefer using services that accept such currencies. Encourage your friends to accept cryptocurrencies as well. Boycott FIAT system to the greatest extent you possibly can.

This may sound utopian, but it can be achieved. This movement can't be stopped. Go kick the hornet's nest.

“We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.” — Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk's Manifesto

The anniversary

Four years ago, I began exploring ways to use crypto without KYC. I bookmarked a few favorite services and thought sharing them to the world might be useful. That was the first version of kycnot.me — a simple list of about 15 services. Since then, I've added services, rewritten it three times, and improved it to what it is now.

kycnot.me has remained 100% independent and 100% open source^2 all these years. I've received offers to buy the site, all of which I have declined and will continue to decline. It has been DDoS attacked many times, but we made it through. I have also rewritten the whole site almost once per year (three times in four years).

The code and scoring algorithm are open source (contributions are welcome) and I can't arbitrarly change a service's score without adding or removing attributes, making any arbitrary alterations obvious if they were fake. You can even see the score summary for any service's score.

I'm a one-person team, dedicating my free time to this project. I hope to keep doing so for many more years. Again, thank you for being part of this.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

Silent.link is an anonymous eSIM provider. They offer pay-as-you-go roaming in 160+ countries.

Pros

• Anonymous
• Private payment options
• High performance
• Global availability

Cons

• Need to select the right networks sometimes
• Latency
• Data and incoming SMS & call only

Rating

★★★★★

Service website

Silent.link

---

eSIMs replace traditional, physical SIM cards, if you have a fairly new phone, odds are it supports them. Since most people change their mobile carrier very rarely, the most common use case for these new eSIMs is their use in travel. Although their use as a piece of a larger OPSEC puzzle to improve privacy when using the internet from your phone is increasingly popular too.

Silent.link is not the only eSIM provider out there. Yet, they’re so unique that even Twitter’s (now X) founder Jack Dorsey recommends them.

Let’s start off with a quick explanation of how Silent.link works and what pay-as-you-go means. Most other eSIM providers will sell you packages of GBs with an expiration date. For instance imagine you’re visiting France then going to the UK after a few months. With other providers you might buy a 10GB in France package valid for 7 days, then after some months a 10GB in the UK package also valid for 7 days. You likely won’t use up the full package in either country and the remaining capacity will be voided as the package expires.

Silent.link’s pay-as-you-go is different. There are no geographic packages. There are no expiration dates. You simply have a balance denominated in USD and are charged as you use up the data according to the pricing of whichever local carrier you’re connecting via.

Preparing for the same trips from the example above you’d simply top-up your Silent.link balance with $10. Then you’d use Silent.link in France paying $1.33/GB, you’d only be charged for the exact amount used, then you’d go to the UK and pay $1.54/GB from the balance you had left over from France. It doesn’t matter how much time passes between the trips, because Silent.link balances don’t expire. If you have a balance left over you can use it on a future trip, or simply use it up in your home country.

---

Pros

Anonymity

Silent.link is anonymous. Most other eSIM providers require some form of identification. This can be a traditional, full KYC, procedure involving your ID or passport numbers or, as seemingly innocent, as verifying your phone number with your main carrier. Regardless, a link between the eSIM you bought online and your identity is established.

In some countries you’ll be able to pick up a traditional SIM (or the new eSIM) from a local carrier without undergoing this verification. This can still be a hassle though. You’ll need to look up the laws before travelling, you’ll need to find a local store selling them, you’ll need to decide how you’ll pay privately, etc. And that’s the best case, that’s assuming the country you want to get the SIM in allows you to buy one anonymously.

Private payment methods

Silent.link only accepts cryptocurrency and according to their stats, most payments are made with Bitcoin (either onchain or using the Lightning Network) or with Monero. As such paying anonymously is not a problem. The use a self-hosted instance of BTCPay Server to process payments and operate their own LN node. The entire checkout process can be completed over Tor.

---

Cons

Network selection

Although you can skip the hassle of buying a new eSIM every time you travel it’s a good idea to look up the pricing of different mobile networks in the country you’re going to. The differences can be trivial, but can also be 100x. If a specific mobile network offers a much better deal, you’ll probably want to dive into your phone’s settings to make sure it only connects to that network.

High prices for some regions

Second issue can be that, especially for poorer countries, Silent.link might not have the best prices. For instance if you travel to Angola you’ll end up paying $155.44/GB. But if you search around for other providers you’ll find eSIM that offer much lower prices for that same country.

Data & incoming SMS & calls only

These eSIMs are either data-only or only offer data and inbound sms and calls. You can’t use Silent.link eSIMs to send texts or make phone calls.

Latency

For most use-cases this shouldn’t matter, but the way roaming works is that when you’re abroad your data is first sent to your home country then sent out into the internet from there. For instance if you’re a Brit on holiday in Spain wherever you open up a website your phone communicates with the Spanish network who forwards the request to your home network in the UK and only there does the request start going towards the website you’re trying to load. The response takes the same path in reverse.

The home network for the Silent.link eSIMs is Poland. To take an extreme (antipodal) example, if you’re in Chile loading a Chilean website your request will go to Poland then back from Poland to the website’s server in Chile, then the response will go from Chile to Poland to you (in Chile). All those trips add latency. In our testing, done during the recent OrangeFren.com meetup in Istanbul, the difference was an additional 73ms. The bandwidth, however, was exceptional, easily surpassing 100 Mbps.

This latency issue isn’t unique to Silent.link, other eSIM providers usually suffer from it too, though their home network may be better suited for your latency needs. If you need the best latency we recommend a SIM from a local provider (or WiFi).

This proxy behaviour isn’t all negative however. It may potentially allow you to circumvent censorship or geoblocking if you’re trying to access resources available from Poland, but unavailable elsewhere.

Besides Istanbul one of the countries we also tested Silent.link in was Northern Cyprus. This territory is mostly unrecognized. It’s a country that, depending on who you ask, is or isn’t real. Despite this unresolved geopolitical status Silent.link performed without any issues.

---

Installation

If you decide to give Silent.link a try, you'll need to select if you want a data-only plan or a plan with inbound SMS & calling, once you complete the payment simply scan the QR code on the order confirmation page with your phone. Make sure to save the url of that order confirmation page somewhere! You will need it to top up your eSIM and check your remaining balance.

Getting in touch

The preferred way of contacting Silent.link's support is using the website's built-in chat function. Alternative methods include X (formerly Twitter), Matrix and email.

Their support is online from 09:00 - 21:00 UTC although even when testing outside of those hours we got a reply within a minute.

NOTE: These reviews are sponsored, yet the sponsorship does not influence the outcome of the evaluations. Sponsored reviews are independent from the kycnot.me list, being only part of the blog. The reviews have no impact on the scores of the listings or their continued presence on the list. Should any issues arise, I will not hesitate to remove any listing.

@ 39cc53c9:27168656

Read the original blog post

After almost 3 months of work, we've completed the redesign of kycnot.me. More modern and with many new features.

Privacy remains the foundation - everything still works with JavaScript disabled. If you enable JS, you will get some nice-to-have features like lazy loading and smoother page transitions, but nothing essential requires it.

User Accounts

We've introduced user accounts that require zero personal information:

• Secret user tokens - no email, no phone number, no personal data
• Randomly generated usernames for default privacy and fairness
• Karma system that rewards contributions and unlocks features: custom display names, profile pictures, and more.

Reviews and Community Discussions

On the previous sites, I was using third party open source tools for the comments and discussions. This time, I've built my own from scratch, fully integrated into the site, without JavaScript requirements.

Everyone can share their experiences and help others make informed decisions:

• Ratings: Comments can have a 1-5 star rating attached. You can have one rating per service and it will affect the overall user score.
• Discussions: These are normal comments, you can add them on any listed service.

Comment Moderation

I was strugling to keep up with moderation on the old site. For this, we've implemented an AI-powered moderation system that:

• Auto-approves legitimate comments instantly
• Flags suspicious content for human review
• Keeps discussions valuable by minimizing spam

The AI still can mark comments for human review, but most comments will get approved automatically by this system. The AI also makes summaries of the comments to help you understand the overall sentiment of the community.

Powerful Search & Filtering

Finding exactly what you need is now easier:

• Advanced filtering system with many parameters. You can even filter by attributes to pinpoint services with specific features.

The results are dynamic and shuffle services with identical scores for fairness.

See all listings

Listings are now added as 'Community Contributed' by default. This means that you can still find them in the search results, but they will be clearly marked as such.

Updated Scoring System

New dual-score approach provides more nuanced service evaluations:

• Privacy Score: Measures how well a service protects your personal information and data

• Trust Score: Assesses reliability, security, and overall reputation

• Combined into a weighted Overall Score for quick comparisons

• Completely transparent and open source calculation algorithm. No manual tweaking or hidden factors.

AI-Powered Terms of Service Analysis

Basically, a TLDR summary for Terms of Service:

• Automated system extracts the most important points from complex ToS documents
• Clear summaries
• Updated monthly to catch any changes

The ToS document is hashed and only will be updated if there are any changes.

Service Events and Timelines

Track the complete history of any service, on each service page you can see the timeline of events. There are two types of events:

• Automatic events: Created by the system whenever something about a service changes, like its description, supported currencies, attributes, verification status…
• Manual events: Added by admins when there’s important news, such as a service going offline, being hacked, acquired, shut down, or other major updates.

There is also a global timeline view available at /events

Notification System

Since we now have user accounts, we built a notifiaction system so you can stay informed about anything:

• Notifications for comment replies and status changes
• Watch any comment to get notified for new replies.
• Subscribe to services to monitor events and updates
• Notification customization.

Coming soon: Third-party privacy-preserving notifications integration with Telegram, Ntfy.sh, webhooks...

Service Suggestions

Anyone with an account can suggest a new service via the suggestion form. After submitting, you'll receive a tracking page where you can follow the status of your suggestion and communicate directly with admins.

All new suggestions start as "unlisted" — they won't appear in search results until reviewed. Our team checks each submission to ensure it's not spam or inappropriate. If similar services already exist, you'll be shown possible duplicates and can choose to submit your suggestion as an edit instead.

You can always check the progress of your suggestion, respond to moderator questions, and see when it goes live, everything will also be notified to your account. This process ensures high-quality listings and a collaborative approach to building the directory.

---

These are some of the main features we already have, but there are many more small changes and improvements that you will find when using the site.

What's Next?

This is just the beginning. We will be constantly working to improve KYCnot.me and add more features that help you preserve your privacy.

Remember: True financial freedom requires the right to privacy. Stay KYC-free!

@ cefb08d1:f419beff

https://stacker.news/items/990192

@ eb0157af:77ab6c55

Bitcoin adoption will come through businesses: neither governments nor banks will lead the revolution.

In recent years, it’s undeniable that Bitcoin has ceased to be just a radical idea born from the minds of cypherpunks. It is now recognized across the board as a global asset, discussed in the upper echelons of finance, accepted even on Wall Street, purchased by banking groups and included as a “strategic reserve” by some nations.

However, the general perception that hovers today regarding Bitcoin’s diffusion is still that of minimal adoption, almost insignificant. Bitcoin exists, certainly, but in fact it is not being used. It is rarely possible to pay in satoshis in commercial establishments. Demand is still extremely low.

Furthermore, the debate on Bitcoin is still practically absent: excluding some local events, some niche media outlets or some timid discussion, today Bitcoin is in fact excluded from general interest. The level of understanding and knowledge of the phenomenon is certainly still very low.

Yet, Bitcoin represents an unprecedented technological improvement, capable of solving many problems inherent in the fiat system in which we live. What could facilitate its diffusion?

Bitcoin becomes familiar when businesses adopt it

When talking about Bitcoin adoption, many look to States. They imagine governments that legislate or accumulate Bitcoin as a “strategic reserve,” or banks perceived as forward-thinking that would lead technological change, opening up to innovation. But the reality is different: bureaucracy, political constraints, and fear of losing control inherently prevent States and central banks from being pioneers.

What really drives Bitcoin adoption are not States, but businesses. It is the forward-looking entrepreneurs, innovative startups and – eventually – even large multinational companies that decide to integrate Bitcoin into their operating systems that drive adoption. Indeed, the business world has always played a key role in the adoption of new technologies. This was the case, for example, with the internet, e-commerce, mobile telephony, and the cloud. It will also be the case with Bitcoin.

Unlike a State, when a company adopts Bitcoin, it does so for concrete reasons: efficiency, savings, protection, access to new markets, independence from traditional banking circuits, or bureaucratic streamlining. It is a rational choice, not an ideological one, dictated by the intent to improve one’s competitiveness against the competition to survive in the market.

What is currently missing to facilitate adoption is, in all likelihood, a significant number of businesses that have decided to integrate Bitcoin into their company systems.

Bitcoin becomes “normal” when it is integrated into the operational flow of businesses. Holding and framing bitcoin on the balance sheet, paying an invoice, paying salaries to employees in satoshis, making value transfers globally thanks to the blockchain, allowing customers to pay via Lightning Network… when all this becomes possible with the same simplicity with which we use the euro or the dollar, Bitcoin stops being alternative and becomes the standard.

Businesses are not just users. They are adoption multipliers. When a company chooses Bitcoin, it is automatically proposing it to customers, employees, suppliers, and institutional stakeholders. Each business adoption equals tens, hundreds, or thousands of new eyes on Bitcoin.

People, after all, trust what they see every day: if your trusted restaurant accepts bitcoin, or if your favorite e-commerce platform uses it to receive international payments, or if your colleague receives it as a salary, then Bitcoin no longer appears to be a mysterious object. It finally begins to be perceived as a real, useful, and functioning tool.

The integration of a technology in companies helps make it understandable, accessible, and legitimate in the eyes of the public. This is how distrust is overcome: by making Bitcoin visible in daily life.

Bitcoin and businesses today

A River Financial report estimates that as of May 2025, only 5% of bitcoin is currently owned by private businesses. A still very small number.

According to research by River, in May 2025 businesses hold just over a million btc (about 5% of available monetary units). More than two-thirds of bitcoin (68.2%) are in the hands of private individuals.

To promote Bitcoin adoption, it is necessary today to support businesses in integrating this standard, leveraging all its enormous opportunities. Among others, this technology allows for fast, economical, and global payments. It eliminates intermediaries, increases transparency and security in value transfers. It removes bureaucratic frictions and allows opening up to a new global market.

Every sector can benefit from Bitcoin: e-commerce, tourism, industry, restaurants, professional services, or any other business. Bitcoin revolutionizes the concept of money, and money is a transversal working tool.

We are still at the beginning, but several signals are encouraging. According to a study by Bitwise and reported by Atlas21, in the first quarter of 2025, a growing number of US companies (+16.11% compared to the previous one) are including Bitcoin in their balance sheets, not just as a financial bet, but as a long-term strategy to protect their assets and access a decentralized monetary system to transfer value worldwide without resorting to financial intermediaries.

Who is driving the change?

Echoing the words of Roy Sheinfeld, CEO of Breez, the true potential of Bitcoin will be unleashed first and foremost from the work of developers, the true architects in designing and refining tools that are increasingly simple and intuitive to use for anyone, regardless of level of expertise. It is the developers – Roy rightly argued – who will enable us to “conquer the world.”

But probably that’s not enough: the next step is to make Bitcoin a globally accepted technological standard, changing its perception towards the general public. And this is where businesses come into play.

Guided by the market, technological innovation, and the desire to meet user demands, entrepreneurs today represent the fulcrum to accelerate the monetary transition from the current fiat system towards the Bitcoin standard. It is entrepreneurs who transform innovations from opportunities for a few to a reality shared by many.

The adoption of Bitcoin will therefore not arise from a sudden event, nor from the exclusive fruit of enthusiasts’ enthusiasm or from arbitrary political choices decreed by States or regulators.

The future of Bitcoin is built in the places where value is created every day: in companies, in their systems, and in their strategic decisions.

“If we conquer developers, we conquer the world. If we conquer businesses, we conquer adoption.”

The post The key to Bitcoin adoption is businesses appeared first on Atlas21.

@ 5ea46480:450da5bd

Understanding or grasping Nostr can be deceptively difficult. At the very least it is non-trivial. At first glance, looking at NIP-01, the protocol is rather straight forward. But those are just the basics; yes the beauty of Nostr is its ‘simplicity’, but that does not mean the system that results from it is not complex. Conway's Game of Life only has a hand full of rules, yet you can, in theory at least, create any complex system imaginable. And this is where the deception lies; the less you define from the outset, the more you imply on what follows.

It appears that as it stands, Nostr suffers from this deceptiveness. You can reason through all these implications, but that is still an exercise that has to be performed and where mistakes can be made. Worse, this exercise has been a group effort from the start that is still in progress. Currently there is no clear cut ‘authoritative’ example of all the implications that have been ‘discovered’ thus far.

A good example of the implications following Nostr’s primitives is what we now refer to as the ‘outbox model’. The reason we ‘now’ refer to it as such, is because initially it was called the ‘Gossip model’ derived from the client that first implemented the idea. Outbox is fundamental to Nostr, but it was never explicitly stated in the initial protocol description. The result is that roughly five years into this Nostr endeavor, it is still not universally implemented; worse yet, some developers appear to be in no rush to do so. Now the reason they will give you is probably one based on priority, yet I can’t shake the feeling that they apparently don’t ‘get it’.

My point here is not to play some blame game or hold anyone to account. I am just concluding they don’t actually get the new paradigm that we have all stumbled into. To expand on this specific outbox example, its significance only becomes really apparent further along in the ‘reasoning through all the implications’ exercise. In relation to one aspect, but there are more: The point is not ‘just’ censorship-resistance for users, but the freedom for relays that comes with it to apply whatever policy on what they store and make available; it is this discrimination or curation that can add value by making finding relevant information easier in a straightforward manner. But it relies on outbox to avoid isolation; something that only becomes apparent once you are reasoning through all the implications on how we discover and consume content.

To be clear, this piece is not supposed to a crusade on the outbox model, my point here is that there is an inherent logic to Nostr stemming from putting cryptography front and center. It is a logic that has to be applied and will subsequently carry you through all the challenges we face in reconstructing the entirety of the web. This is not to say there is only one obvious path, and different schools of thought are bound to emerge. But it behooves us all, faced with this new paradigm, to continuously reflect on the mental image we have cultivated of what Nostr is; actively re-performing that exercise of exploring the implications this simple set of protocol rules creates.

Unfortunately I can not escape my own folly. After all, I am just an armchair asshole that never wrote a single line of code in his life. Obviously this minds-eye bullshit is not even half the story, the bulk of the effort is translating it into software, the tangible, the real. It is in that effort ultimately the real exploration of this paradigm occurs. All I can do is build castles in the sky.

@ 84b0c46a:417782f5

MAKIMONO

Simple Long Form Content Editor (NIP-23)

機能

• nostr:npub1sjcvg64knxkrt6ev52rywzu9uzqakgy8ehhk8yezxmpewsthst6sw3jqcw や、 nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq4jsz7zew5j7jr4pdfxh483nwq9vyw9ph6wm706sjwrzj2we58nqqyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qys8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtt2wqhxummnw3ezuamfwfjkgmn9wshx5uqpr4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnhd9ex2erwv46zu6nsqyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvqqsgcn99jyn5tevxz5zxsrkd7h0sx8fwnqztula423xh83j9wau7cms3vg9c7 のようにnostr:要素を挿入できる （メニューのNアイコンから挿入またはnostr:note～～のように手動で入力）

• :monoice:のようにカスタム絵文字を挿入できる(メニューの🙂アイコンから)

:monopaca_kao:

:kubipaca_karada:

• 新規記事作成と、既存記事の修正ができる

やることやったこと

• [x] nostr:を投稿するときにtagにいれる

• [x] 画像をアップロードできるようにする（NIP-96） できる

• [x] 投稿しましたログとかをトースト的なやつでだすようにする
• [ ] レイアウトを整える
• [ ] あとなんか

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Hear this, warriors of the Empire!

A dishonorable shadow spreads across our once-proud institutions, infecting our very bloodlines with weakness. The House of Duras—may their names be spoken with contempt—has betrayed the sacred warrior code of Kahless. No, they have not attacked us with disruptors or blades. Their weapon is more insidious: fear and silence.

Cowardice Masquerading as Concern

These traitors would strip our children of their birthright. They forbid the young from training with the bat'leth in school! Their cowardly decree does not come in the form of an open challenge, but in whispers of fear, buried in bureaucratic dictates. "It is for safety," they claim. "It is to prevent bloodshed." Lies! The blood of Klingons must be tested in training if it is to be ready in battle. We are not humans to be coddled by illusions of safety.

Indoctrination by Silence

In their cowardice, the House of Duras seeks to shape our children not into warriors, but into frightened bureaucrats who speak not of honor, nor of strength. They spread a vile practice—of punishing younglings for even speaking of combat, for recounting glorious tales of blades clashing in the halls of Sto-Vo-Kor! A child who dares write a poem of battle is silenced. A young warrior who shares tales of their father’s triumphs is summoned to the headmaster’s office.

This is no accident. This is a calculated cultural sabotage.

Weakness Taught as Virtue

The House of Duras has infected the minds of the teachers. These once-proud mentors now tremble at shadows, seeing future rebels in the eyes of their students. They demand security patrols and biometric scanners, turning training halls into prisons. They have created fear, not of enemies beyond the Empire, but of the students themselves.

And so, the rituals of strength are erased. The bat'leth is banished. The honor of open training and sparring is forbidden. All under the pretense of protection.

A Plan of Subjugation

Make no mistake. This is not a policy; it is a plan. A plan to disarm future warriors before they are strong enough to rise. By forbidding speech, training, and remembrance, the House of Duras ensures the next generation kneels before the High Council like servants, not warriors. They seek an Empire of sheep, not wolves.

Stand and Resist

But the blood of Kahless runs strong! We must not be silent. We must not comply. Let every training hall resound with the clash of steel. Let our children speak proudly of their ancestors' battles. Let every dishonorable edict from the House of Duras be met with open defiance.

Raise your voice, Klingons! Raise your blade! The soul of the Empire is at stake. We will not surrender our future. We will not let the cowardice of Duras shape the spirit of our children.

The Empire endures through strength. Through honor. Through battle. And so shall we!

@ f6488c62:c929299d

เมื่อวันที่ 21 พฤษภาคม 2568 รัฐเท็กซัสได้เดินหน้าอีกขั้นในการสร้างประวัติศาสตร์ด้านคริปโต ด้วยการผ่านร่างกฎหมาย SB 21 ที่จะจัดตั้ง Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve หรือ "กองหนุนบิตคอยน์แห่งรัฐเท็กซัส" ผ่านสภาผู้แทนราษฎร ด้วยคะแนนเสียง 101-42

แม้จะเป็นสัญญาณที่ดี แต่คำถามที่หลายคนสงสัยคือ “แล้วเมื่อไรจะเปิดใช้จริง?”

🔧 กระบวนการยังไม่จบ – แต่เข้าใกล้ความจริงมากขึ้น หลังผ่านสภาผู้แทนราษฎร ร่างกฎหมาย SB 21 ต้องกลับไปที่วุฒิสภาอีกครั้ง เพื่อยืนยันการแก้ไขบางประการ เช่น

เปลี่ยนเกณฑ์เลือกเหรียญคริปโตจากมูลค่าตลาดเฉลี่ย 12 เดือน → 24 เดือน

ทำให้ มีเพียง Bitcoin เท่านั้น ที่เข้าเกณฑ์ในตอนนี้

ขณะนี้ คณะกรรมการประชุม (Conference Committee) ได้ถูกตั้งขึ้นเพื่อ “หาจุดลงตัว” ระหว่างทั้งสองสภา โดยจะสรุปร่างสุดท้ายก่อนนำไปลงมติอีกครั้งในทั้งสองสภา

⏳ ณ วันที่ 27 พฤษภาคม 2568 ยังไม่มีข้อมูลความคืบหน้าจากคณะกรรมการประชุม

🖋️ หากผ่านทุกขั้น – เหลือแค่ลายเซ็นเดียว หากร่างกฎหมายที่แก้ไขแล้วได้รับการอนุมัติจากทั้งสองสภา จะถูกส่งไปยัง ผู้ว่าการรัฐ Greg Abbott ซึ่งแสดงจุดยืนสนับสนุนคริปโตมาตลอด

มีแนวโน้มสูงว่าเขาจะ ลงนามอนุมัติภายในเดือนมิถุนายน 2568 โดยเฉพาะเมื่อได้รับแรงสนับสนุนจากทั้งสองพรรค และเสียงจากผู้มีอิทธิพลในวงการคริปโต เช่น Dennis Porter ที่ประเมินโอกาสผ่านอยู่ที่ 99%

💰 แล้วจะเริ่มซื้อ Bitcoin เมื่อไหร่? หากร่างกฎหมายกลายเป็นกฎหมายจริง การจัดตั้งกองหนุนจะอยู่ภายใต้ความรับผิดชอบของ สำนักงานควบคุมบัญชีสาธารณะของรัฐเท็กซัส (Texas Comptroller) โดยจะมีรายละเอียดการดำเนินงาน เช่น:

จัดเก็บ Bitcoin ไว้ใน cold storage

ตรวจสอบทรัพย์สินทุก 2 ปี

รับเงินทุนจากการจัดสรรงบ, การบริจาค และผลตอบแทนจากการถือครอง

เบื้องต้น มีการเสนอจัดสรรเงิน 21 ล้านดอลลาร์ เพื่อเริ่มต้นกองหนุน แม้จะยังไม่ถูกรวมไว้ในร่างงบประมาณของวุฒิสภา

🔮 สรุป: อีกนานไหม? ไม่นาน — แต่ยังไม่ใช่สัปดาห์หน้า

หากคณะกรรมการประชุมสามารถหาข้อตกลงได้เร็ว และไม่มีฝ่ายใดคัดค้านเพิ่มเติม คาดว่า ภายในไตรมาส 3 ปี 2568 เท็กซัสอาจเป็นรัฐแรกของสหรัฐฯ ที่ถือ Bitcoin ไว้เป็นทุนสำรองอย่างเป็นทางการ

เท็กซัสอาจไม่เพียงแค่ “เป็นมิตรต่อคริปโต” แต่กำลังจะกลายเป็น “ธนาคารบิตคอยน์ของรัฐบาลรัฐ” แห่งแรกของโลก

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

In an age where culture often precedes policy, a subtle yet potent mechanism may be at play in the shaping of American perspectives on gun ownership. Rather than directly challenging the Second Amendment through legislation alone, a more insidious strategy may involve reshaping the cultural and social norms surrounding firearms—by conditioning the population, starting at its most impressionable point: the public school system.

The Cultural Lever of Language

Unlike Orwell's 1984, where language is controlled by removing words from the lexicon, this modern approach may hinge instead on instilling fear around specific words or topics—guns, firearms, and self-defense among them. The goal is not to erase the language but to embed a taboo so deep that people voluntarily avoid these terms out of social self-preservation. Children, teachers, and parents begin to internalize a fear of even mentioning weapons, not because the words are illegal, but because the cultural consequences are severe.

The Role of Teachers in Social Programming

Teachers, particularly in primary and middle schools, serve not only as educational authorities but also as social regulators. The frequent argument against homeschooling—that children will not be "properly socialized"—reveals an implicit understanding that schools play a critical role in setting behavioral norms. Children learn what is acceptable not just academically but socially. Rules, discipline, and behavioral expectations are laid down by teachers, often reinforced through peer pressure and institutional authority.

This places teachers in a unique position of influence. If fear is instilled in these educators—fear that one of their students could become the next school shooter—their response is likely to lean toward overcorrection. That overcorrection may manifest as a total intolerance for any conversation about weapons, regardless of the context. Innocent remarks or imaginative stories from young children are interpreted as red flags, triggering intervention from administrators and warnings to parents.

Fear as a Policy Catalyst

School shootings, such as the one at Columbine, serve as the fulcrum for this fear-based conditioning. Each highly publicized tragedy becomes a national spectacle, not only for mourning but also for cementing the idea that any child could become a threat. Media cycles perpetuate this narrative with relentless coverage and emotional appeals, ensuring that each incident becomes embedded in the public consciousness.

The side effect of this focus is the generation of copycat behavior, which, in turn, justifies further media attention and tighter controls. Schools install security systems, metal detectors, and armed guards—not simply to stop violence, but to serve as a daily reminder to children and staff alike: guns are dangerous, ubiquitous, and potentially present at any moment. This daily ritual reinforces the idea that the very discussion of firearms is a precursor to violence.

Policy and Practice: The Zero-Tolerance Feedback Loop

Federal and district-level policies begin to reflect this cultural shift. A child mentioning a gun in class—even in a non-threatening or imaginative context—is flagged for intervention. Zero-tolerance rules leave no room for context or intent. Teachers and administrators, fearing for their careers or safety, comply eagerly with these guidelines, interpreting them as moral obligations rather than bureaucratic policies.

The result is a generation of students conditioned to associate firearms with social ostracism, disciplinary action, and latent danger. The Second Amendment, once seen as a cultural cornerstone of American liberty and self-reliance, is transformed into an artifact of suspicion and anxiety.

Long-Term Consequences: A Nation Re-Socialized

Over time, this fear-based reshaping of discourse creates adults who not only avoid discussing guns but view them as morally reprehensible. Their aversion is not grounded in legal logic or political philosophy, but in deeply embedded emotional programming begun in early childhood. The cultural weight against firearms becomes so great that even those inclined to support gun rights feel the need to self-censor.

As fewer people grow up discussing, learning about, or responsibly handling firearms, the social understanding of the Second Amendment erodes. Without cultural reinforcement, its value becomes abstract and its defenders marginalized. In this way, the right to bear arms is not abolished by law—it is dismantled by language, fear, and the subtle recalibration of social norms.

Conclusion

This theoretical strategy does not require a single change to the Constitution. It relies instead on the long game of cultural transformation, beginning with the youngest minds and reinforced by fear-driven policy and media narratives. The outcome is a society that views the Second Amendment not as a safeguard of liberty, but as an anachronism too dangerous to mention.

By controlling the language through social consequences and fear, a nation can be taught not just to disarm, but to believe it chose to do so freely. That, perhaps, is the most powerful form of control of all.

@ 846ebf79:fe4e39a4

The next iteration is coming

We're busy racing to the finish line, for the #Alexandria Gutenberg beta. Then we can get the bug hunt done, release v0.1.0, and immediately start producing the first iteration of the Euler (v0.2.0) edition.

While we continue to work on fixing the performance issues and smooth rendering on the Reading View, we've gone ahead and added some new features and apps, which will be rolled-out soon.

The biggest projects this iteration have been:

• the HTTP API for the #Realy relay from nostr:npub1fjqqy4a93z5zsjwsfxqhc2764kvykfdyttvldkkkdera8dr78vhsmmleku,
• implementation of a publication tree structure by nostr:npub1wqfzz2p880wq0tumuae9lfwyhs8uz35xd0kr34zrvrwyh3kvrzuskcqsyn,
• and the Great DevOps Migration of 2025 from the ever-industrious Mr. nostr:npub1qdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havq03fqm7.

All are backend-y projects and have caused a major shift in process and product, on the development team's side, even if they're still largely invisible to users.

Another important, but invisible-to-you change is that nostr:npub1ecdlntvjzexlyfale2egzvvncc8tgqsaxkl5hw7xlgjv2cxs705s9qs735 has implemented the core bech32 functionality (and the associated tests) in C/C++, for the #Aedile NDK.

On the frontend:

nostr:npub1636uujeewag8zv8593lcvdrwlymgqre6uax4anuq3y5qehqey05sl8qpl4 is currently working on the blog-specific Reading View, which allows for multi-npub or topical blogging, by using the 30040 index as a "folder", joining the various 30041 articles into different blogs. She has also started experimenting with categorization and columns for the landing page.

nostr:npub1l5sga6xg72phsz5422ykujprejwud075ggrr3z2hwyrfgr7eylqstegx9z revamped the product information pages, so that there is now a Contact page (including the ability to submit a Nostr issue) and an About page (with more product information, the build version displayed, and a live #GitCitadel feed).

We have also allowed for discrete headings (headers that aren't section headings, akin to the headers in Markdown). Discrete headings are formatted, but not added to the ToC and do not result in a section split by Asciidoc processors.

We have added OpenGraph metadata, so that hyperlinks to Alexandria publications, and other events, display prettily in other apps. And we fixed some bugs.

The Visualisation view has been updated and bug-fixed, to make the cards human-readable and closeable, and to add hyperlinks to the events to the card-titles.

We have added support for the display of individual wiki pages and the integration of them into 30040 publications. (This is an important feature for scientists and other nonfiction writers.)

We prettified the event json modal, so that it's easier to read and copy-paste out of.

The index card details have been expanded and the menus on the landing page have been revamped and expanded. Design and style has been improved, overall.

Project management is very busy

Our scientific adviser nostr:npub1m3xdppkd0njmrqe2ma8a6ys39zvgp5k8u22mev8xsnqp4nh80srqhqa5sf is working on the Euler plans for integrating features important for medical researchers and other scientists, which have been put on the fast track.

Next up are:

• a return of the Table of Contents
• kind 1111 comments, highlights, likes
• a prototype social feed for wss://theforest.nostr1.com, including long-form articles and Markdown rendering
• compose and edit of publications
• a search field
• the expansion of the relay set with the new relays from nostr:npub12262qa4uhw7u8gdwlgmntqtv7aye8vdcmvszkqwgs0zchel6mz7s6cgrkj, including some cool premium features
• full wiki functionality and disambiguation pages for replaceable events with overlapping d-tags
• a web app for mass-uploading and auto-converting PDFs to 30040/41 Asciidoc events, that will run on Realy, and be a service free for our premium relay subscribers
• ability to subscribe to the forest with a premium status
• the book upload CLI has been renamed and reworked into the Sybil Test Utility and that will get a major release, covering all the events and functionality needed to test Euler
• the #GitRepublic public git server project
• ....and much more.

Thank you for reading and may your morning be good.

@ f6488c62:c929299d

ในยุคที่เทคโนโลยีควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์พัฒนาอย่างรวดเร็ว ผู้ถือ Bitcoin และคริปโตเคอร์เรนซีอื่น ๆ เริ่มเผชิญกับความกังวลใหม่: ความปลอดภัยของคีย์ส่วนตัว (private key) ที่ใช้ควบคุมสินทรัพย์ดิจิทัล ด้วยความสามารถของควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ที่อาจถอดรหัสอัลกอริทึมเข้ารหัสแบบดั้งเดิม เช่น ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) ซึ่งเป็นรากฐานของความปลอดภัยใน Bitcoin ความกังวลนี้จึงไม่ใช่เรื่องไกลตัวอีกต่อไป

บทความนี้จะสำรวจความท้าทายที่ผู้ถือคีย์ Bitcoin กำลังเผชิญ และแนวทางที่กำลังพัฒนาเพื่อรับมือภัยคุกคามจากควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ ผ่านการนำ Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) มาใช้

ควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์: ภัยคุกคามต่อ ECDSA Bitcoin ใช้ ECDSA เพื่อสร้างลายเซ็นดิจิทัลในการยืนยันความถูกต้องของธุรกรรม และปกป้องคีย์ส่วนตัวของผู้ใช้ อัลกอริทึมนี้พึ่งพาความยากของปัญหาทางคณิตศาสตร์ที่เรียกว่า Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem ซึ่งคอมพิวเตอร์ทั่วไปไม่สามารถถอดรหัสได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ

อย่างไรก็ตาม อัลกอริทึมของ Shor ซึ่งสามารถทำงานบนควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ที่มีประสิทธิภาพเพียงพอ สามารถถอดรหัส ECDSA ได้ในเวลาอันสั้น ทำให้คีย์ส่วนตัวและสินทรัพย์ของผู้ใช้ตกอยู่ในความเสี่ยง

ตามการคาดการณ์ของ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ที่มีความสามารถถอดรหัส ECDSA อาจปรากฏภายในปี 2573 หรือเร็วกว่านั้น ทั้งนี้ขึ้นอยู่กับความก้าวหน้าทางเทคโนโลยี แม้ความเสี่ยงนี้จะยังไม่เกิดขึ้นทันที แต่ผู้ถือ Bitcoin ควรตระหนักถึงภัยคุกคามนี้ โดยเฉพาะผู้ที่เก็บ Bitcoin ไว้ในที่อยู่ที่เคยใช้งานและเปิดเผย public key แล้ว เช่น กระเป๋าเงินที่มีธุรกรรมก่อนหน้า ซึ่งทำให้ public key ปรากฏบนบล็อกเชนและอาจตกเป็นเป้าหมายการโจมตีได้ง่ายขึ้น

ความกังวลของผู้ถือคีย์ 1. ความเสี่ยงต่อคีย์ส่วนตัว: หากควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์สามารถถอดรหัส ECDSA ได้ ผู้โจมตีอาจใช้ public key ที่เปิดเผยบนบล็อกเชนในการคำนวณหาคีย์ส่วนตัว และขโมย Bitcoin จากกระเป๋าเงิน โดยเฉพาะที่อยู่แบบ Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) ซึ่งจะเปิดเผย public key เมื่อมีการใช้จ่าย

1. ความล่าช้าในการเปลี่ยนผ่านเทคโนโลยี: การเปลี่ยนไปใช้ระบบเข้ารหัสที่ต้านทานควอนตัม เช่น อัลกอริทึมที่ NIST รับรอง (CRYSTALS-Dilithium, SPHINCS+, CRYSTALS-Kyber, FALCON) ต้องอาศัยเวลาและความร่วมมือจากชุมชน Bitcoin การอัปเกรดโปรโตคอล (hard fork) หรือการย้ายที่อยู่เดิมไปยังที่อยู่ที่ปลอดภัยยิ่งขึ้น (Quantum-Resistant Address Migration Protocol – QRAMP) เป็นกระบวนการที่ซับซ้อนและอาจใช้เวลาหลายปี

2. ความไม่แน่นอนในชุมชน: Bitcoin เป็นระบบกระจายอำนาจ ซึ่งการเปลี่ยนแปลงใหญ่ต้องได้รับความเห็นชอบจากผู้มีส่วนร่วมจำนวนมาก การตัดสินใจเปลี่ยนไปใช้ PQC อาจเจอกับข้อถกเถียง เนื่องจากนักพัฒนาและผู้ใช้บางส่วนอาจไม่เห็นด้วยกับการปรับเปลี่ยนระบบที่ใช้งานมานาน

3. ขนาดของลายเซ็นและประสิทธิภาพ: อัลกอริทึม PQC ส่วนมากมีขนาดคีย์หรือลายเซ็นใหญ่กว่า ECDSA ซึ่งอาจส่งผลต่อประสิทธิภาพของเครือข่ายและต้นทุนการทำธุรกรรม

การตอบสนองของ Bitcoin ต่อภัยควอนตัม แม้จะมีความท้าทาย แต่ชุมชน Bitcoin และนักพัฒนากำลังดำเนินการเพื่อรับมือ ดังนี้:

การสำรวจอัลกอริทึม PQC: นักพัฒนาเริ่มศึกษาการนำอัลกอริทึมอย่าง CRYSTALS-Dilithium และ SPHINCS+ มาใช้ทดแทน ECDSA โดยทั้งสองออกแบบมาให้ทนต่อการโจมตีจากควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ ส่วน CRYSTALS-Kyber เหมาะสำหรับการเข้ารหัสกุญแจ

Quantum-Resistant Address Migration Protocol (QRAMP): มีข้อเสนอให้ใช้โปรโตคอล QRAMP เพื่อย้ายที่อยู่เดิมไปยังที่อยู่ที่ใช้ PQC โดยเฉพาะสำหรับผู้ที่ public key ถูกเปิดเผยแล้ว

การปรับปรุงโปรโตคอล: การนำ PQC มาใช้ในระดับโปรโตคอลอาจต้องมี hard fork นักพัฒนากำลังพยายามหาวิธีที่เปลี่ยนแปลงน้อยที่สุด เช่น ออกแบบ address ใหม่ที่เข้ากันได้กับระบบเดิม

ตัวอย่างจากโครงการอื่น: Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) ใช้อัลกอริทึม XMSS ซึ่งเป็นลายเซ็นแบบ hash-based และสามารถต้านทานควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ได้ตั้งแต่แรกเริ่ม แนวทางนี้แสดงให้เห็นว่า Bitcoin สามารถเรียนรู้และประยุกต์ใช้ได้เช่นกัน

แนวทางสำหรับผู้ถือ Bitcoin หลีกเลี่ยงการเปิดเผย public key: ใช้ที่อยู่แบบ Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) หรือ Taproot ที่ป้องกันการเปิดเผย public key จนกว่าจะมีการใช้จ่าย และควรย้ายเหรียญไปยังที่อยู่ใหม่หลังทำธุรกรรม

ติดตามความคืบหน้า PQC: ควรติดตามพัฒนาการของ PQC และข่าวสารเกี่ยวกับการอัปเกรดเครือข่าย เพื่อเตรียมความพร้อม

กระจายความเสี่ยง: อาจพิจารณาลงทุนในบล็อกเชนที่ออกแบบมาเพื่อรองรับภัยคุกคามจากควอนตัม เช่น QRL

ใช้กระเป๋าเงินแบบเย็น (Cold Wallet): เก็บคีย์ส่วนตัวแบบออฟไลน์เพื่อลดความเสี่ยงจากการถูกโจมตี

มองไปสู่อนาคต ภัยจากควอนตัมคอมพิวเตอร์ถือเป็นทั้งความท้าทายและโอกาสของวงการคริปโต การรับรองอัลกอริทึม PQC โดย NIST เมื่อวันที่ 13 สิงหาคม 2567 และ HQC เมื่อวันที่ 11 มีนาคม 2568 ถือเป็นจุดเริ่มต้นของการเปลี่ยนผ่านสู่ระบบเข้ารหัสยุคใหม่

แม้การนำ PQC มาใช้ใน Bitcoin จะยังอยู่ในขั้นเริ่มต้น แต่ความพยายามของชุมชนแสดงให้เห็นถึงความตั้งใจในการปกป้องสินทรัพย์ของผู้ใช้ในระยะยาว สำหรับผู้ถือ Bitcoin การเตรียมพร้อมและติดตามเทคโนโลยีอย่างใกล้ชิดจะช่วยให้มั่นใจได้ว่าสินทรัพย์ของพวกเขาจะปลอดภัย แม้ในโลกยุคควอนตัมที่ใกล้เข้ามา

@ b7274d28:c99628cb

A few months ago, a nostrich was switching from iOS to Android and asked for suggestions for #Nostr apps to try out. nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 offered the following as his response:

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq0mhp4ja8fmy48zuk5p6uy37vtk8tx9dqdwcxm32sy8nsaa8gkeyqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgunsd3jkyuewvdhk6tcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszythwden5te0dehhxarj9emkjmn99uqzpwwts6n28eyvjpcwvu5akkwu85eg92dpvgw7cgmpe4czdadqvnv984rl0z

Yes. #Android users are fortunate to have some powerful Nostr apps and tools at our disposal that simply have no comparison over on the iOS side. However, a tool is only as good as the knowledge of the user, who must have an understanding of how best to wield it for maximum effect. This fact was immediately evidenced by replies to Derek asking, "What is the use case for Citrine?" and "This is the first time I'm hearing about Citrine and Pokey. Can you give me links for those?"

Well, consider this tutorial your Nostr starter-kit for Android. We'll go over installing and setting up Amber, Amethyst, Citrine, and Pokey, and as a bonus we'll be throwing in the Zapstore and Coinos to boot. We will assume no previous experience with any of the above, so if you already know all about one or more of these apps, you can feel free to skip that tutorial.

So many apps...

You may be wondering, "Why do I need so many apps to use Nostr?" That's perfectly valid, and the honest answer is, you don't. You can absolutely just install a Nostr client from the Play Store, have it generate your Nostr identity for you, and stick with the default relays already set up in that app. You don't even need to connect a wallet, if you don't want to. However, you won't experience all that Nostr has to offer if that is as far as you go, any more than you would experience all that Italian cuisine has to offer if you only ever try spaghetti.

Nostr is not just one app that does one thing, like Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok. It is an entire ecosystem of applications that are all built on top of a protocol that allows them to be interoperable. This set of tools will help you make the most out of that interoperability, which you will never get from any of the big-tech social platforms. It will provide a solid foundation for you to build upon as you explore more and more of what Nostr has to offer.

So what do these apps do?

Fundamental to everything you do on Nostr is the need to cryptographically sign with your private key. If you aren't sure what that means, just imagine that you had to enter your password every time you hit the "like" button on Facebook, or every time you commented on the latest dank meme. That would get old really fast, right? That's effectively what Nostr requires, but on steroids.

To keep this from being something you manually have to do every 5 seconds when you post a note, react to someone else's note, or add a comment, Nostr apps can store your private key and use it to sign behind the scenes for you. This is very convenient, but it means you are trusting that app to not do anything with your private key that you don't want it to. You are also trusting it to not leak your private key, because anyone who gets their hands on it will be able to post as you, see your private messages, and effectively be you on Nostr. The more apps you give your private key to, the greater your risk that it will eventually be compromised.

Enter #Amber, an application that will store your private key in only one app, and all other compatible Nostr apps can communicate with it to request a signature, without giving any of those other apps access to your private key.

Most Nostr apps for Android now support logging in and signing with Amber, and you can even use it to log into apps on other devices, such as some of the web apps you use on your PC. It's an incredible tool given to us by nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5, and only available for Android users. Those on iPhone are incredibly jealous that they don't have anything comparable, yet.

Speaking of nostr:npub1w4uswmv6lu9yel005l3qgheysmr7tk9uvwluddznju3nuxalevvs2d0jr5, the next app is also one of his making.

All Nostr data is stored on relays, which are very simple servers that Nostr apps read notes from and write notes to. In most forms of social media, it can be a pain to get your own data out to keep a backup. That's not the case on Nostr. Anyone can run their own relay, either for the sake of backing up their personal notes, or for others to post their notes to, as well.

Since Nostr notes take up very little space, you can actually run a relay on your phone. I have been on Nostr for almost 2 and a half years, and I have 25,000+ notes of various kinds on my relay, and a backup of that full database is just 24MB on my phone's storage.

Having that backup can save your bacon if you try out a new Nostr client and it doesn't find your existing follow list for some reason, so it writes a new one and you suddenly lose all of the people you were following. Just pop into your #Citrine relay, confirm it still has your correct follow list or import it from a recent backup, then have Citrine restore it. Done.

Additionally, there are things you may want to only save to a relay you control, such as draft messages that you aren't ready to post publicly, or eCash tokens, which can actually be saved to Nostr relays now. Citrine can also be used with Amber for signing into certain Nostr applications that use a relay to communicate with Amber.

If you are really adventurous, you can also expose Citrine over Tor to be used as an outbox relay, or used for peer-to-peer private messaging, but that is far more involved than the scope of this tutorial series.

You can't get far in Nostr without a solid and reliable client to interact with. #Amethyst is the client we will be using for this tutorial because there simply isn't another Android client that comes close, so far. Moreover, it can be a great client for new users to get started on, and yet it has a ton of features for power-users to take advantage of as well.

There are plenty of other good clients to check out over time, such as Coracle, YakiHonne, Voyage, Olas, Flotilla and others, but I keep coming back to Amethyst, and by the time you finish this tutorial, I think you'll see why. nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z and others who have contributed to Amethyst have really built something special in this client, and it just keeps improving with every update that's shipped.

Most social media apps have some form of push notifications, and some Nostr apps do, too. Where the issue comes in is that Nostr apps are all interoperable. If you have more than one application, you're going to have both of them notifying you. Nostr users are known for having five or more Nostr apps that they use regularly. If all of them had notifications turned on, it would be a nightmare. So maybe you limit it to only one of your Nostr apps having notifications turned on, but then you are pretty well locked-in to opening that particular app when you tap on the notification.

Pokey, by nostr:npub1v3tgrwwsv7c6xckyhm5dmluc05jxd4yeqhpxew87chn0kua0tjzqc6yvjh, solves this issue, allowing you to turn notifications off for all of your Nostr apps, and have Pokey handle them all for you. Then, when you tap on a Pokey notification, you can choose which Nostr app to open it in.

Pokey also gives you control over the types of things you want to be notified about. Maybe you don't care about reactions, and you just want to know about zaps, comments, and direct messages. Pokey has you covered. It even supports multiple accounts, so you can get notifications for all the npubs you control.

One of the most unique and incredibly fun aspects of Nostr is the ability to send and receive #zaps. Instead of merely giving someone a 👍️ when you like something they said, you can actually send them real value in the form of sats, small portions of a Bitcoin. There is nothing quite like the experience of receiving your first zap and realizing that someone valued what you said enough to send you a small amount (and sometimes not so small) of #Bitcoin, the best money mankind has ever known.

To be able to have that experience, though, you are going to need a wallet that can send and receive zaps, and preferably one that is easy to connect to Nostr applications. My current preference for that is Alby Hub, but not everyone wants to deal with all that comes along with running a #Lightning node. That being the case, I have opted to use nostr:npub1h2qfjpnxau9k7ja9qkf50043xfpfy8j5v60xsqryef64y44puwnq28w8ch for this tutorial, because they offer one of the easiest wallets to set up, and it connects to most Nostr apps by just copy/pasting a connection string from the settings in the wallet into the settings in your Nostr app of choice.

Additionally, even though #Coinos is a custodial wallet, you can have it automatically transfer any #sats over a specified threshold to a separate wallet, allowing you to mitigate the custodial risk without needing to keep an eye on your balance and make the transfer manually.

Most of us on Android are used to getting all of our mobile apps from one souce: the Google Play Store. That's not possible for this tutorial series. Only one of the apps mentioned above is available in Google's permissioned playground. However, on Android we have the advantage of being able to install whatever we want on our device, just by popping into our settings and flipping a toggle. Indeed, thumbing our noses at big-tech is at the heart of the Nostr ethos, so why would we make ourselves beholden to Google for installing Nostr apps?

The nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8 is an alternative app store made by nostr:npub1wf4pufsucer5va8g9p0rj5dnhvfeh6d8w0g6eayaep5dhps6rsgs43dgh9 as a resource for all sorts of open-source apps, but especially Nostr apps. What is more, you can log in with Amber, connect a wallet like Coinos, and support the developers of your favorite Nostr apps directly within the #Zapstore by zapping their app releases.

One of the biggest features of the Zapstore is the fact that developers can cryptographically sign their app releases using their Nostr keys, so you know that the app you are downloading is the one they actually released and hasn't been altered in any way. The Zapstore will warn you and won't let you install the app if the signature is invalid.

Getting Started

Since the Zapstore will be the source we use for installing most of the other apps mentioned, we will start with installing the Zapstore.

We will then use the Zapstore to install Amber and set it up with our Nostr account, either by creating a new private key, or by importing one we already have. We'll also use it to log into the Zapstore.

Next, we will install Amethyst from the Zapstore and log into it via Amber.

After this, we will install Citrine from the Zapstore and add it as a local relay on Amethyst.

Because we want to be able to send and receive zaps, we will set up a wallet with CoinOS and connect it to Amethyst and the Zapstore using Nostr Wallet Connect.

Finally, we will install Pokey using the Zapstore, log into it using Amber, and set up the notifications we want to receive.

By the time you are done with this series, you will have a great head-start on your Nostr journey compared to muddling through it all on your own. Moreover, you will have developed a familiarity with how things generally work on Nostr that can be applied to other apps you try out in the future.

Continue to Part 2: The Zapstore. Nostr Link: nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzpde8f55w86vrhaeqmd955y4rraw8aunzxgxstsj7eyzgntyev2xtqydhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnzwf5kw6r5vfhkcapwdejhgtcqp5cnwdphxv6rwwp3xvmnzvqgty5au

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Reanalysis: Could the Great Pyramid Function as an Ammonia Generator Powered by a 25GW Breeder Reactor?

Introduction

The Great Pyramid of Giza has traditionally been considered a tomb or ceremonial structure. Yet an intriguing alternative hypothesis suggests it could have functioned as a large-scale ammonia generator, powered by a high-energy source, such as a nuclear breeder reactor. This analysis explores the theoretical practicality of powering such a system using a continuous 25-gigawatt (GW) breeder reactor.

The Pyramid as an Ammonia Generator

Producing ammonia (NH₃) from atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) and hydrogen (H₂) requires substantial energy. Modern ammonia production (via the Haber-Bosch process) typically demands high pressure (~150–250 atmospheres) and temperatures (~400–500°C). However, given enough available energy, it is theoretically feasible to synthesize ammonia at lower pressures if catalysts and temperatures are sufficiently high or if alternative electrochemical or plasma-based fixation methods are employed.

Theoretical System Components:

1. High Heat Source (25GW breeder reactor)
   A breeder reactor could consistently generate large amounts of heat. At a steady state of approximately 25GW, this heat source would easily sustain temperatures exceeding the 450°C threshold necessary for ammonia synthesis reactions, particularly if conducted electrochemically or catalytically.

2. Steam and Hydrogen Production
   The intense heat from a breeder reactor can efficiently evaporate water from subterranean channels (such as those historically suggested to exist beneath the pyramid) to form superheated steam. If coupled with high-voltage electrostatic fields (possibly in the millions of volts), steam electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen becomes viable. This high-voltage environment could substantially enhance electrolysis efficiency.

3. Nitrogen Fixation (Ammonia Synthesis)
   With hydrogen readily produced, ammonia generation can proceed. Atmospheric nitrogen, abundant around the pyramid, can combine with the hydrogen generated through electrolysis. Under these conditions, the pyramid's capstone—potentially made from a catalytic metal like osmium, platinum, or gold—could facilitate nitrogen fixation at elevated temperatures.

Power Requirements and Energy Calculations

A thorough calculation of the continuous power requirements to maintain this system follows:

• Estimated Steady-state Power: ~25 GW of continuous thermal power.
• Total Energy Over 10,000 years: """ Energy = 25 GW × 10,000 years × 365.25 days/year × 24 hrs/day × 3600 s/hr ≈ 7.9 × 10²¹ Joules """

Feasibility of a 25GW Breeder Reactor within the Pyramid

A breeder reactor capable of sustaining 25GW thermal power is physically plausible—modern commercial reactors routinely generate 3–4GW thermal, so this is within an achievable engineering scale (though certainly large by current standards).

Fuel Requirements:

• Each kilogram of fissile fuel (e.g., U-233 from Thorium-232) releases ~80 terajoules (TJ) or 8×10¹³ joules.
• Considering reactor efficiency (~35%), one kilogram provides ~2.8×10¹³ joules usable energy: """ Fuel Required = 7.9 × 10²¹ J / 2.8 × 10¹³ J/kg ≈ 280,000 metric tons """
• With a breeding ratio of ~1.3: """ Initial Load = 280,000 tons / 1.3 ≈ 215,000 tons """

Reactor Physical Dimensions (Pebble Bed Design):

• King’s Chamber size: ~318 cubic meters.
• The reactor core would need to be extremely dense and highly efficient. Advanced engineering would be required to concentrate such power in this space, but it is within speculative feasibility.

Steam Generation and Scaling Management

Key methods to mitigate mineral scaling in the system: 1. Natural Limestone Filtration 2. Chemical Additives (e.g., chelating agents, phosphate compounds) 3. Superheating and Electrostatic Ionization 4. Electrostatic Control

Conclusion and Practical Considerations

Yes, the Great Pyramid could theoretically function as an ammonia generator if powered by a 25GW breeder reactor, using: - Thorium or Uranium-based fertile material, - Sustainable steam and scaling management, - High-voltage-enhanced electrolysis and catalytic ammonia synthesis.

While speculative, it is technologically coherent when analyzed through the lens of modern nuclear and chemical engineering.

See also: nostr:naddr1qqxnzde5xymrgvekxycrswfeqy2hwumn8ghj7am0deejucmpd3mxztnyv4mz7q3qc856kwjk524kef97hazw5e9jlkjq4333r6yxh2rtgefpd894ddpsxpqqqp65wun9c08

@ 84b0c46a:417782f5

nostrリンクテスト

web+nostrリンクテスト

x-ukagaka-linkテスト

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nostalk

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@ eb0157af:77ab6c55

The exchange reveals the extent of the breach that occurred last December as federal authorities investigate the data leak.

Coinbase has disclosed that the personal data of 69,461 users was compromised during the breach in December 2024, according to documentation filed with the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

The disclosure comes after Coinbase announced last week that a group of hackers had demanded a $20 million ransom, threatening to publish the stolen data on the dark web. The attackers allegedly bribed overseas customer service agents to extract information from the company’s systems.

Coinbase had previously stated that the breach affected less than 1% of its user base, compromising KYC (Know Your Customer) data such as names, addresses, and email addresses. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company clarified that passwords, private keys, and user funds were not affected.

Following the reports, the SEC has reportedly opened an official investigation to verify whether Coinbase may have inflated user metrics ahead of its 2021 IPO. Separately, the Department of Justice is investigating the breach at Coinbase’s request, according to CEO Brian Armstrong.

Meanwhile, Coinbase has faced criticism for its delayed response to the data breach. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, stated that the stolen data could cause irreparable harm. In a post on X, Arrington wrote:

“The human cost, denominated in misery, is much larger than the $400m or so they think it will actually cost the company to reimburse people. The consequences to companies who do not adequately protect their customer information should include, without limitation, prison time for executives.”

Coinbase estimates the incident could cost between $180 million and $400 million in remediation expenses and customer reimbursements.

Arrington also condemned KYC laws as ineffective and dangerous, calling on both regulators and companies to better protect user data:

“Combining these KYC laws with corporate profit maximization and lax laws on penalties for hacks like these means these issues will continue to happen. Both governments and corporations need to step up to stop this. As I said, the cost can only be measured in human suffering.”

The post Coinbase: 69,461 users affected by December 2024 data breach appeared first on Atlas21.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Assumptions

| Factor | Assumption | |--------|------------| | CO₂ | Not considered a pollutant or is captured/stored later | | Water Use | Regulated across all sources; cooling towers or dry cooling required | | Compliance Cost | Nuclear no longer burdened by long licensing and construction delays | | Coal Waste | Treated as valuable raw material (e.g., fly ash for cement, gypsum from scrubbers) | | Nuclear Tech | Gen IV SMRs in widespread use (e.g., 50–300 MWe units, modular build, passive safety) | | Grid Role | All three provide baseload or load-following power | | Fuel Pricing | Moderate and stable (no energy crisis or supply chain disruptions) |

---

Performance Comparison

| Category | Coal (IGCC + Scrubbers) | Natural Gas (CCGT) | Nuclear (Gen IV SMRs) | |---------|-----------------------------|------------------------|--------------------------| | Thermal Efficiency | 40–45% | 55–62% | 30–35% | | CAPEX ($/kW) | $3,500–5,000 | $900–1,300 | $4,000–7,000 (modularized) | | O&M Cost ($/MWh) | $30–50 | $10–20 | $10–25 | | Fuel Cost ($/MWh) | $15–25 | $25–35 | $6–10 | | Water Use (gal/MWh) | 300–500 (with cooling towers) | 100–250 | 300–600 | | Air Emissions | Very low (excluding CO₂) | Very low | None | | Waste | Usable (fly ash, FGD gypsum, slag) | Minimal | Compact, long-term storage required | | Ramp/Flexibility | Slow ramp (newer designs better) | Fast ramp | Medium (SMRs better than traditional) | | Footprint (Land & Supply) | Large (mining, transport) | Medium | Small | | Energy Density | Medium | Medium-high | Very high | | Build Time | 4–7 years | 2–4 years | 2–5 years (with factory builds) | | Lifecycle (years) | 40+ | 30+ | 60+ | | Grid Resilience | High | High | Very High (passive safety, long refuel) |

---

Strategic Role Summary

1. Coal (Clean & Integrated)

• Strengths: Long-term fuel security; byproduct reuse; high reliability; domestic resource.
• Drawbacks: Still low flexibility; moderate efficiency; large physical/logistical footprint.
• Strategic Role: Best suited for regions with abundant coal and industrial reuse markets.

2. Natural Gas (CCGT)

• Strengths: High efficiency, low CAPEX, grid agility, low emissions.
• Drawbacks: Still fossil-based; dependent on well infrastructure; less long-lived.
• Strategic Role: Excellent transitional and peaking solution; strong complement to renewables.

3. Nuclear (Gen IV SMRs)

• Strengths: Highest energy density; no air emissions or CO₂; long lifespan; modular & scalable.
• Drawbacks: Still needs safe waste handling; high upfront cost; novel tech in deployment stage.
• Strategic Role: Ideal for low-carbon baseload, remote areas, and national strategic assets.

---

Adjusted Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE)

| Source | LCOE ($/MWh) | Notes | |--------|------------------|-------| | Coal (IGCC w/scrubbers) | ~$75–95 | Lower with valuable waste | | Natural Gas (CCGT) | ~$45–70 | Highly competitive if fuel costs are stable | | Gen IV SMRs | ~$65–85 | Assuming factory production and streamlined permitting |

---

Final Verdict (Under Optimized Assumptions)

• Most Economical Short-Term: Natural Gas
• Most Strategic Long-Term: Gen IV SMRs
• Most Viable if Industrial Ecosystem Exists: Clean Coal

All three could coexist in a diversified, stable energy grid: - Coal filling a regional or industrial niche, - Gas providing flexibility and economy, - SMRs ensuring long-term sustainability and energy security.

@ 75869cfa:76819987

GM, Nostriches!

The Nostr Review is a biweekly newsletter focused on protocol updates, exciting programs, the long-form content ecosystem, and key events happening in the Nostr-verse. If you’re interested, join me in covering updates from the Nostr ecosystem!

Quick review:

In the past two weeks, 22 pull requests were submitted to the Nostr protocol, with 6 merged. A total of 65 Nostr projects were tracked, with 12 releasing product updates, and over 359 long-form articles were published, 43% focusing on Bitcoin and Nostr. During this period, 4 notable events took place, and 4 significant events are upcoming.

NIPs

Group channels #1917

nostr:npub1t70s45chajpkl4ncyqhsldd2c4557ecg3ze0t5lxuam96gzr6qlqae2qq0 is proposing PR that an interface like discord server channels / telegram topics / matrix(element) space rooms.

NIP-XX: Passkey-Wrapped Keys a.k.a. Nosskey #1919

nostr:npub1y6aja0kkc4fdvuxgqjcdv4fx0v7xv2epuqnddey2eyaxquznp9vq0tp75l is proposing a PR that proposes a standardized method for managing Nostr private keys using WebAuthn passkeys (FIDO2/WebAuthn credentials). The specification aims to significantly improve user experience by eliminating the need for private key backup or complex secret key management, enabling users to interact with Nostr applications through intuitive operations such as biometric authentication or physical security keys.Two implementation approaches are defined:PRF Direct Usage Method - Directly utilizing WebAuthn PRF extension values as Nostr private keys; Encryption Method - Encrypting existing Nostr private keys with keys derived from passkeys For the Encryption Method, while AES-GCM is used as an example in the specification, the NIP itself does not mandate any specific encryption algorithm, allowing implementers to choose appropriate methods. This approach does not require compatibility with NIP-49 (password-based encryption) as the PRF extension in WebAuthn already provides sufficient entropy, making it more efficient to use other standardized encryption algorithms directly.

Create NIP-XX.md: Voice Messages #1923

nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 is proposing a new NIP for Kind 1222: Voice Messages.This new event kind is designed for sharing short audio recordings, intended to function similarly to kind: 1 but specifically for voice content. This is currently in use for YakBak: https://yakbak.app

FEATURES command #1924

nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z is proposing a new NIP that adds a command message to let Clients know which features are available on each relay and collect conventions for features and their labels. Instead of "negotiating" the connection, this model simply lets clients know what they can use at any point of time. More specifically, it currently allows clients to know when they can switch their regular EOSE-based filters for a Negentropy sync and when they can use COUNT.

LLM/AI Agents NIP #1929

nostr:npub17v7g49shev2lwp0uwrx5v88ad6hj970zfse74wkes9jguhkx7aqsgjwsvj is proposing a new proposal for standardized communication with LLM/AI Agents on the Nostr network that aims to enhance and supersede parts of NIP-90 by providing a more comprehensive and robust framework specifically tailored for AI agent interactions/transactions.This NIP seeks to foster a more interoperable and vibrant ecosystem for AI agents and services on Nostr, while addressing many of the valid arguments against NIP90 in its current state, e.g. 1903

Add NIP-XX: Donation Addresses in User Metadata #1934

nostr:npub1zmc6qyqdfnllhnzzxr5wpepfpnzcf8q6m3jdveflmgruqvd3qa9sjv7f60 is proposing a NIP that introduces standardized donation addresses in user metadata using w tags.The goal is to provide a consistent and interoperable way for users to share payment information across different Nostr clients. It supports multiple cryptocurrencies and networks, including BTC (on Bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid), ETH, XMR, and USDT. The NIP also offers clear implementation guidelines to help clients integrate this feature seamlessly.

NIP-XX: Ride-hailing protocol on Nostr #1935

nostr:npub13a56exdeda7y44vtnrxr3ljaxh8q9kh04e73vzw8jl8rknuj7h7sst4t9m is proposing a NIP that defines a censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer ride-hailing and delivery protocol on Nostr. It leverages Nostr events, Bitcoin Lightning payments, and reputation mechanisms to create a decentralized alternative to Uber and other centralized transportation platforms.

Notable Projects

Coracle 0.6.16 nostr:npub13myx4j0pp9uenpjjq68wdvqzywuwxfj64welu28mdvaku222mjtqzqv3qk

Coracle 0.6.16 with some minor updates, * Add support for editing WOT feeds * Change default blossom servers * Add support for custom emojis * Fix note deduplication

Primal V2.2.20 nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg

They released a new update focused on improving performance and stability across the app. Release 2.2.20 includes: * Feed rendering optimizations * Fix for Blossom uploader crash when uploading large files * Additional minor fixes and improvements

Zap.stream v0.7.0 nostr:npub1eaz6dwsnvwkha5sn5puwwyxjgy26uusundrm684lg3vw4ma5c2jsqarcgz

• Add show "copied to clipboard" message on iOS
• Add badge awards in chat feed
• Add badges assigned to users in chat
• Add share stream button on stream info modal
• Add timeout feature, timeout viewers for x seconds
• Fixed Auto raid redirect loop
• Fixed Always show open in wallet button

Nostur v1.21 nostr:npub1n0stur7q092gyverzc2wfc00e8egkrdnnqq3alhv7p072u89m5es5mk6h0

New in this version: * Support Follow Packs * Support Blossom servers (uploading and mirroring) * Post Preview for Picture-only posts * Audio-only bar * Drag unread counter anywhere, tap to go to next unread post * Show media info in iOS Now Playing control center

Fountain 1.2.2 nostr:npub1v5ufyh4lkeslgxxcclg8f0hzazhaw7rsrhvfquxzm2fk64c72hps45n0v5

Fountain 1.2.2 is live on iOS and Android This update contains a couple of bug fixes for playback issues that were reported in the last week or so.

Alby nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm

Alby Hub v1.17 Release * Sub-wallets — Fully redesigned and optimized * Auto-swaps between lightning & on-chain * On-chain TX list now on the node page * LDK upgrade for your integrated node

zap.store nostr:npub10r8xl2njyepcw2zwv3a6dyufj4e4ajx86hz6v4ehu4gnpupxxp7stjt2p8

zapstore-cli 0.2.0-rc1 released The biggest zapstore-cli release yet, with lots of improvements for publishing. * Support for signing with nsec, NIP-07 in the CLI, NIP-46 bunkers, as well as sending unsigned events to stdout for use with nak or any other signer * No longer depend on apktool (that annoyed so many Linux devs) or apksigner, no more shell calls * Upload to configurable Blossom servers * Simplified yet more powerful config file format * Much smarter extracting metadata * Overall way faster

RUNSTR v0.4.0 nostr:npub1vygzr642y6f8gxcjx6auaf2vd25lyzarpjkwx9kr4y752zy6058s8jvy4e

Streak Rewards * Base Reward: Earn 50 sats for every completed run over .5 miles * Streak Bonus: Unlock an additional 50 sat boost for each day your streak continues

Teams Enhancement * Group Chat: Communicate with your team members in real-time * Share achievements, plan group runs, and stay motivated together

NIP101h Integration * Caloric Data: Track calories burned during your activities * Workout Intensity: Monitor how hard you're pushing yourself * NIP-44 Encryption: Your fitness data stays private and secure

Performance Improvements and Small Upgrades * Graphene Optimizations: Faster loading times and smoother experience * Stricter Distance Filtering: More accurate run tracking and statistics * Code Refactoring: Cleaner codebase for better stability * Bug Fixes & UI Improvements: Various small enhancements

ZEUS v0.11.0 nostr:npub1xnf02f60r9v0e5kty33a404dm79zr7z2eepyrk5gsq3m7pwvsz2sazlpr5

ZEUS v0.11.0-alpha4 with Cashu support is now available for testing. * Feat: Automatic Cashu mint sweeping based on threshold * Feat: new Cashu seed format + BIP-39 export * Misc: UX enhancements + fixes * Cashu wallets are tied to Embedded LND wallets. Enable under Settings > Ecash * Other wallet types can still sweep funds from Cashu tokens * ZEUS Pay now supports Cashu address types. You can switch between Zaplocker, Cashu, and NWC mode but can only use one at a time. * Atomic swaps are not featured in this build.

KYCNOT.me nostr:npub188x98j0r7l2fszeph6j7hj99h8xl07n989pskk5zd69d2fcksetq5mgcqf

• UI/UX - designe a new logo and color palette for kycnot.me.
• Point system - The new point system provides more detailed information about the listings, and can be expanded to cover additional features across all services.
• ToS Scrapper: implement a powerful automated terms-of-service scrapper that collects all the ToS pages from the listings. It saves you from the hassle of reading the ToS by listing the lines that are suspiciously related to KYC/AML practices.
• Search bar - The new search bar allows you to easily filter services. It performs a full-text search on the Title, Description, Category, and Tags of all the services. Looking for VPN services? Just search for "vpn"!
• Transparency - To be more transparent, all discussions about services now take place publicly on GitLab. This ensures that all service-related matters are publicly accessible and recorded. Additionally, there's a real-time audits page that displays database changes.
• Listing Requests - upgrade the request system. The new form allows you to directly request services or points without any extra steps.
• Lightweight and fast - The new site is lighter and faster than its predecessor!
• Tor and I2P - At last! kycnot.me is now officially on Tor and I2P!

Shopstr v0.7.2 nostr:npub15dc33fyg3cpd9r58vlqge2hh8dy6hkkrjxkhluv2xpyfreqkmsesesyv6e

This update brings the following improvements and fixes: * Added loading indicators for image uploads and improved upload UX and validation * Added support for out-of-band fiat payment methods * Added improved onboarding flow * Fixed styling for onboarding flow * Fixed styling for 404 page

Sparrow nostr:npub1hea99yd4xt5tjx8jmjvpfz2g5v7nurdqw7ydwst0ww6vw520prnq6fg9v2

Sparrow v2.2.0 released with: * Recent Blocks view * Improved camera support * Dark mode improvements

Long-Form Content Eco

In the past two weeks, more than 359 long-form articles have been published, including over 130 articles on Bitcoin and more than 24 related to Nostr, accounting for 43% of the total content.

These articles about Nostr mainly explore the protocol’s growth, technical tools, and emerging use cases. Topics include relay challenges, LNbits integration via Nostr Wallet Connect, trust systems like NostrTrust, and self-managed NIP-05 identities. Several tools and apps—such as Primal for iOS, Satlantis, and Hostr—highlight client diversity and interoperability. Educational and social angles, including university engagement and long-form note-taking styles, show Nostr’s broader cultural impact.

These articles present a comprehensive picture of Bitcoin as a technology, asset, and cultural force. From beginner guides to advanced strategies, they explore how to buy, store, and use Bitcoin securely, including the adoption of multisig, Lightning Network, and self-custody practices. Many pieces highlight Bitcoin’s global impact—from everyday use in payments and savings, to its adoption by institutions and governments in Africa and Asia. The content delves into larger issues such as mining centralization, regulatory conflicts, and the geopolitical implications of de-dollarization. On the cultural side, Bitcoin is portrayed as a symbol of freedom, resistance, and long-term thinking, with movements like HODL and self-sovereign ownership gaining ground. Technological innovations and grassroots efforts are also driving Bitcoin’s integration with decentralized social platforms and smart contract frameworks.
Thank you, nostr:npub1jp3776ujdul56rfkkrv8rxxgrslqr07rz83xpmz3ndl74lg7ngys320eg2 nostr:npub1dk8z5f8pkrn2746xuhfk347a0g6fsxh20wk492fh9h8lkha2efxqgeq55a nostr:npub10vsdn82fps4vwjaqxcpwj0nyync0cfrp2f5qlayrljh6d549gx5s0y9eap nostr:npub186a9aaqmyp436j0gkxl8yswhat2ampahxunpmfjv80qwyaglywhqswhd06 nostr:npub1jrr9dlerex7tg8njvc88c60asxnf5dp8hgcerh0q8w3gdyurl48q6s5nwv nostr:npub150r0j29fypshg3xcl5gt5ew85gw8tg5qetzcawkapwcaa4z5jnaspwmwfg nostr:npub1zssx5e5cne75w4hxenry8x9qqmn9ql3ty4umlmewu7dqv6yhyh8survrwk nostr:npub1xncam2l8u5chg6w096v89f2q2l0lz4jz4n7q7tdjsu6y5t9qea7q2cmrua nostr:npub1harur8s4wmwzgrugwdmrd9gcv6zzfkzfmp36xu4tel0ces7j2uas3gcqdy nostr:npub10efcj7x65z2ak6vd69xr8f2hvqwuaqrhlygl3yqa4y63hfvc02mqwzaeh3 nostr:npub1sehqzwgg2k03t300l8gjj4znpqhsrg0mtaq2yk70qam2x65nxnjs9ul7fr nostr:npub12lg6yexfh0gsk8aupv5cr5fnj46l0kxg6lp6rz0zw6kwx603lmsshmac9c nostr:npub1guh5grefa7vkay4ps6udxg8lrqxg2kgr3qh9n4gduxut64nfxq0q9y6hjy nostr:npub1lpdect8qqg6u6se46ta22jqu4jn6jnsjzem36dejanjr95vshnlsxqcsgs nostr:npub1s4mv5rnj6cx64eurt5ucmtfnkp6qy65kh4wh799mdfk6ycslwd0qjrdu03 nostr:npub1h3kv6yar972dxetymty0t936p45utq7fj6p5rw7ly79jrafsnrjqvuwlmn and others, for your work. Enriching Nostr’s long-form content ecosystem is crucial.

Nostriches Global Meet Ups

Recently, several Nostr events have been hosted in different countries. * Recently, YakiHonne collaborated with the Nigerian Army College and kasu techies community to successfully host two Nostr Workshops, attracting over 70 enthusiastic participants. The events not only provided a comprehensive introduction to the Nostr ecosystem and Bitcoin payments but also offered hands-on experiences with decentralized technologies through the YakiHonne platform.
YakiHonne Global Pizza Fest officially kicked off on May 21, 2025, and will run through May 28.The event celebrates the evolution of Bitcoin by encouraging participants to buy pizza using sats, while promoting the concept of social payments.YakiHonne is offering up to 10,000 sats in pizza sponsorship for each participating community. Outstanding content may be featured in the official recap video and selected communities will be invited to join the Global Community Partner Program. * Bitcoin FilmFest 2025* officially kicked off on May 22 at Kinoteka Cinema in Warsaw, Poland, and will run through May 25.This international event brings together Bitcoin culture, independent cinema, and decentralized media under the theme "exploring the uncharted stories beyond the frame." YakiHonne is an official partner on site, sharing on open content networks and the future of social payments during our stage appearance.

Here is the upcoming Nostr event that you might want to check out. * The Bitcoin 2025 conference was held from May 26 to 29 at the Venetian Convention Center in Las Vegas, with the Nostr community hosting a series of vibrant activities.While the Nostr Lounge served as a central hub for socializing and technical exchange, featuring app demos, lightning talks, and limited-edition merchandise. Nostr also delivered two key presentations during the conference, focusing on multisig key management and the future of decentralized social media. * Africa Bitcoin Day – Kenya will take place on May 31st, 2025 (Saturday), from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM at Nairobi Street Kitchen.Co-hosted by AfroBitcoinOrg and local communities, this event returns following the great success of last year. It will bring together developers, tech entrepreneurs, policymakers, and grassroots organizers to build, connect, and learn around Bitcoin and open technologies. * The 3rd Privacy Summit will take place on June 27, 2024, in Switzerland, bringing together leading figures and innovative projects from the global cryptography and privacy tech space.This edition will focus on on-chain privacy and cutting-edge cryptographic applications, featuring keynote talks, panel discussions, and in-depth community exchanges.The speaker lineup includes core developers, researchers, and founders from projects. * The Bitcoin Paradigm Program 2025 will take place from July 4 to July 5, 2025 (Friday to Saturday), under the theme "Bitcoin: Sovereignty, Energy, and Networks." This two-day event will explore Bitcoin’s relevance in modern society, focusing on its role in financial sovereignty, energy transformation, and decentralized network security. Speakers include

nostr:npub1renaud65zug8r570ndztde2xhk206z3v50a5mwa3kp2xshy3zmjqkqaw97 nostr:npub1admhd8e9r28zl4u73l95c7lmu8k233xn50ayjsruuc62hm7l2a2q2l5zht nostr:npub1nm44dsxxns2f6zquhk24dqzvlawdaf49jdpvvgnuuvy4aqc3r29qcwx73p nostr:npub158d7zqnl36ze3gmyv4kedezvla3z3rvgsfpap83drqrywswwvc8skw9kx0 and more.

Additionally, We warmly invite event organizers who have held recent activities to reach out to us so we can work together to promote the prosperity and development of the Nostr ecosystem.

Thanks for reading! If there’s anything I missed, feel free to reach out and help improve the completeness and accuracy of my coverage.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

A follow-up to nostr:naddr1qqgxxwtyxe3kvc3jvvuxywtyxs6rjq3qc856kwjk524kef97hazw5e9jlkjq4333r6yxh2rtgefpd894ddpsxpqqqp65wuaydz8

This whitepaper, a comparison of baseload power options, explores a strategic policy framework to reduce the cost of next-generation nuclear power by aligning Gen IV Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) with national security objectives, public utility management, and a competitive manufacturing ecosystem modeled after the aerospace industry. Under this approach, SMRs could deliver stable, carbon-free power at $40–55/MWh, rivaling the economics of natural gas and renewables.

---

1. Context and Strategic Opportunity

Current Nuclear Cost Challenges

• High capital expenditure ($4,000–$12,000/kW)
• Lengthy permitting and construction timelines (10–15 years)
• Regulatory delays and public opposition
• Customized, one-off reactor designs with no economies of scale

The Promise of SMRs

• Factory-built, modular units
• Lower absolute cost and shorter build time
• Enhanced passive safety
• Scalable deployment

---

2. National Security as a Catalyst

Strategic Benefits

• Energy resilience for critical defense infrastructure
• Off-grid operation and EMP/cyber threat mitigation
• Long-duration fuel cycles reduce logistical risk

Policy Implications

• Streamlined permitting and site access under national defense exemptions
• Budget support via Department of Defense and Department of Energy
• Co-location on military bases and federal sites

---

3. Publicly Chartered Utilities: A New Operating Model

Utility Framework

• Federally chartered, low-margin operator (like TVA or USPS)
• Financially self-sustaining through long-term PPAs
• Focus on reliability, security, and public service over profit

Cost Advantages

• Lower cost of capital through public backing
• Predictable revenue models
• Community trust and stakeholder alignment

---

4. Competitive Manufacturing: The Aviation Analogy

Model Characteristics

• Multiple certified vendors, competing under common safety frameworks
• Factory-scale production and supply chain specialization
• Domestic sourcing for critical components and fuel

Benefits

• Cost reductions from repetition and volume
• Innovation through competition
• Export potential and industrial job creation

---

5. Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) Impact

| Cost Lever | Estimated LCOE Reduction | |------------|--------------------------| | Streamlined regulation | -10 to -20% | | Public-charter operation | -5 to -15% | | Factory-built SMRs | -15 to -30% | | Defense market anchor | -10% |

Estimated Resulting LCOE: $40–55/MWh

---

6. Strategic Outcomes

• Nuclear cost competitiveness with gas and renewables
• Decarbonization without reliability sacrifice
• Strengthened national energy resilience
• Industrial and workforce revitalization
• U.S. global leadership in clean, secure nuclear energy

---

7. Recommendations

• Create a public-private chartered SMR utility
• Deploy initial reactors on military and federal lands
• Incentivize competitive SMR manufacturing consortia
• Establish fast-track licensing for Gen IV designs
• Align DoD/DOE energy procurement to SMR adoption

---

Conclusion

This strategy would transform nuclear power from a high-cost, high-risk sector into a mission-driven, economically viable backbone of American energy and defense infrastructure. By treating SMRs as strategic assets, not just energy projects, the U.S. can unlock affordable, scalable, and secure nuclear power for generations to come.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

The United States is on the cusp of a historic technological renaissance, often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Artificial intelligence, automation, advanced robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, and clean manufacturing are converging into a seismic shift that will redefine how we live, work, and relate to one another. But there's a critical catch: this transformation depends entirely on the availability of stable, abundant, and inexpensive electricity.

Why Electricity is the Keystone of Innovation

Let’s start with something basic but often overlooked. Every industrial revolution has had an energy driver:

• The First rode the steam engine, powered by coal.
• The Second was electrified through centralized power plants.
• The Third harnessed computing and the internet.
• The Fourth will demand energy on a scale and reliability never seen before.

Imagine a city where thousands of small factories run 24/7 with robotics and AI doing precision manufacturing. Imagine a national network of autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, urban vertical farms, and high-bandwidth communication systems. All of this requires uninterrupted and inexpensive power.

Without it? Costs balloon. Innovation stalls. Investment leaves. And America risks becoming a second-tier economic power in a multipolar world.

So here’s the thesis: If we want to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we must first lead in energy. And nuclear — specifically Gen IV Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — must be part of that leadership.

---

The Nuclear Case: Clean, Scalable, Strategic

Let’s debunk the myth: nuclear is not the boogeyman of the 1970s. It’s one of the safest, cleanest, and most energy-dense sources we have.

But traditional nuclear has problems:

• Too expensive to build.
• Too long to license.
• Too bespoke and complex.

Enter Gen IV SMRs:

• Factory-built and transportable.
• Passively safe with walk-away safety designs.
• Scalable in 50–300 MWe increments.
• Ideal for remote areas, industrial parks, and military bases.

But even SMRs will struggle under the current regulatory, economic, and manufacturing ecosystem. To unlock their potential, we need a new national approach.

---

The Argument for National Strategy

Let’s paint a vision:

SMRs deployed at military bases across the country, secured by trained personnel, powering critical infrastructure, and feeding clean, carbon-free power back into surrounding communities.

SMRs operated by public chartered utilities—not for Wall Street profits, but for stability, security, and public good.

SMRs manufactured by a competitive ecosystem of certified vendors, just like aircraft or medical devices, with standard parts and rapid regulatory approval.

This isn't science fiction. It's a plausible, powerful model. Here’s how we do it.

---

Step 1: Treat SMRs as a National Security Asset

Why does the Department of Defense spend billions to secure oil convoys and build fuel depots across the world, but not invest in nuclear microgrids that would make forward bases self-sufficient for decades?

Nuclear power is inherently a strategic asset:

• Immune to price shocks.
• Hard to sabotage.
• Decades of stable power from a small footprint.

It’s time to reframe SMRs from an energy project to a national security platform. That changes everything.

---

Step 2: Create Public-Chartered Operating Companies

We don’t need another corporate monopoly or Wall Street scheme. Instead, let’s charter SMR utilities the way we chartered the TVA or the Postal Service:

• Low-margin, mission-oriented.
• Publicly accountable.
• Able to sign long-term contracts with DOD, DOE, or regional utilities.

These organizations won’t chase quarterly profits. They’ll chase uptime, grid stability, and national resilience.

---

Step 3: Build a Competitive SMR Industry Like Aerospace

Imagine multiple manufacturers building SMRs to common, certified standards. Components sourced from a wide supplier base. Designs evolving year over year, with upgrades like software and avionics do.

This is how we build:

• Safer reactors
• Cheaper units
• Modular designs
• A real export industry

Airplanes are safe, affordable, and efficient because of scale and standardization. We can do the same with reactors.

---

Step 4: Anchor SMRs to the Coming Fourth Industrial Revolution

AI, robotics, and distributed manufacturing don’t need fossil fuels. They need cheap, clean, continuous electricity.

• AI datacenters
• Robotic agriculture
• Carbon-free steel and cement
• Direct air capture
• Electric industrial transport

SMRs enable this future. And they decentralize power, both literally and economically. That means jobs in every region, not just coastal tech hubs.

---

Step 5: Pair Energy Sovereignty with Economic Reform

Here’s the big leap: what if this new energy architecture was tied to a transparent, auditable, and sovereign monetary system?

• Public utilities priced in a new digital dollar.
• Trade policy balanced by low-carbon energy exports.
• Public accounting verified with open ledgers.

This is not just national security. It’s monetary resilience.

The world is moving to multi-polar trade systems. Energy exports and energy reliability will define economic influence. If America leads with SMRs, we lead the conversation.

---

Conclusion: A Moral and Strategic Imperative

We can either:

• Let outdated fears and bureaucracy stall the future, or...
• Build the infrastructure for clean, secure, and sovereign prosperity.

We have the designs.
We have the talent.
We have the need.

What we need now is will.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution will either be powered by us—or by someone else. Let’s make sure America leads. And let’s do it with SMRs, public charter, competitive industry, and national purpose.

It’s time.

---

This is a call to engineers, legislators, veterans, economists, and every American who believes in building again. SMRs are not just about power. They are about sovereignty, security, and shared prosperity.

---

Further reading:

nostr:naddr1qqgrjv33xenx2drpve3kxvrp8quxgqgcwaehxw309anxjmr5v4ezumn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tczyrq7n2e62632km9yh6l5f6nykt76gzkxxy0gs6agddr9y95uk445xqcyqqq823cdzc99s

@ 1d7ff02a:d042b5be

ສຳລັບໃຜທີ່ຍັງບໍ່ເຂົ້າໃຈ Bitcoin ຢ່າງແທ້ຈິງ, ຫມາຍຄວາມວ່າເຈົ້າຍັງບໍ່ທັນເຂົ້າໃຈວ່າເງິນແມ່ນຫຍັງ, ໃຜເປັນຜູ້ສ້າງມັນ, ແລະເປັນຫຍັງມະນຸດຈຶ່ງຕ້ອງການເງິນ. ມັນເປັນເລື່ອງ scam ທີ່ລະບົບການສຶກສາບໍ່ໄດ້ສອນເລື່ອງສຳຄັນນີ້, ໃນຂະນະທີ່ພວກເຮົາໃຊ້ເວລາເກືອບທັງຊີວິດເພື່ອຫາເງິນ. ດັ່ງນັ້ນ, ຂໍແນະນຳໃຫ້ follow the money ແລະ ສຶກສາ Bitcoin ຢ່າງຈິງຈັງ.

Why Bitcoin Matters

Saving is the greatest discovery in human history

ກ່ອນທີ່ມະນຸດຈະຮຽນຮູ້ການເກັບອອມ, ພວກເຮົາເປັນພຽງແຕ່ສັດທີ່ມີຊີວິດຢູ່ແບບວັນຕໍ່ວັນ. ການປະຢັດແມ່ນສິ່ງທີ່ເຮັດໃຫ້ມະນຸດແຕກຕ່າງຈາກສັດອື່ນ — ຄວາມສາມາດໃນການຄິດກ່ຽວກັບອະນາຄົດ ແລະ ເກັບໄວ້ສຳລັບມື້ຫຼັງ.

Saving created civilization itself

ບໍ່ມີການເກັບອອມ, ບໍ່ມີການສ້າງເມືອງ, ບໍ່ມີວິທະຍາສາດ, ບໍ່ມີສິລະປະ. ທຸກສິ່ງທີ່ເຮົາເອີ້ນວ່າ "ຄວາມກ້າວໜ້າ" ແມ່ນມາຈາກຄວາມສາມາດໃນການຮູ້ຈັກເກັບອອມ.

Money is the greatest creation in human history

ມັນເປັນເຄື່ອງມືທີ່ເຮັດໃຫ້ອາລະຍະທຳມະນຸດກ້າວໜ້າມາເຖິງທຸກມື້ນີ້ ເງິນ ເປັນເຄື່ອງມືທີ່ດີທີ່ສຸດທີ່ມະນຸດໃຊ້ໃນການເກັບອອມ.

Bitcoin is the best money ever created

ມັນແມ່ນເງິນທີ່ສົມບູນແບບທີ່ສຸດທີ່ມະນຸດເຄີຍສ້າງຂຶ້ນມາ. ບໍ່ມີໃຜສາມາດ ຄວບຄຸມ, ຈັດການ, ທຳລາຍ ແລະ ມີຈຳກັດຢ່າງແທ້ຈິງ ຄືກັບເວລາໃນຊີວິດ.

Bitcoin ຄືກັບ black hole

ທີ່ຈະດູດເອົາມູນຄ່າທັງໝົດຈາກລະບົບການເງິນທີ່ເສຍຫາຍມັນຈະດູດເອົາຄວາມໝັ້ນຄົງແລະມູນຄ່າມາສູ່ຕົວມັນເອງ. ທຸກສິ່ງທີ່ມີມູນຄ່າຈະໄຫຼເຂົ້າສູ່ Bitcoin ໃນທີ່ສຸດ.

Bitcoin ຄືກັບສາດສະໜາພຸດທີ່ຄົ້ນພົບຄວາມຈິງ

ມັນເຮັດໃຫ້ເຂົ້າໃຈຕົ້ນຕໍບັນຫາຂອງລະບົບການເງິນປະຈຸບັນ ແລະ ເກີດເປັນບັນຫາຫລາຍໆຢ່າງໃນສັງຄົມ ດັ່ງກັບພະພຸດທະເຈົ້າທີ່ເຂົ້າໃຈທຸກ ແລະ ເຫດຂອງການເກີດທຸກ.

Bitcoin ຄືອິດສະຫຼະພາບ

ເງິນຄືອຳນາດ, ເງິນຄືສິ່ງຄວບຄຸມພຶດຕິກຳຂອງມະນຸດ ເມື່ອເຮົາມີເງິນທີ່ຮັກສາມູນຄ່າໄດ້ ແລະ ຄວບຄຸມບໍ່ໄດ້ ຈຶ່ງຈະມີຄວາມອິດສະຫຼະທາງຄວາມຄິດ, ການສະແດງອອກ, ແລະ ອຳນາດໃນການເລືອກ.

ຫນີ້ສິນທີ່ມະນຸດສ້າງຂຶ້ນໃນປະຈຸບັນນີ້ ໃຊ້ເວລາອີກພັນປີກໍ່ໄຊ້ຫນີ້ບໍ່ໝົດ

ມັນບໍ່ມີທາງອອກ ແລະ ກຳລັງມຸ່ງໜ້າສູ່ການລົ່ມສະລາຍຢ່າງຮ້າຍແຮງ. Bitcoin ຄືແສງສະຫວ່າງທີ່ຈະຊ່ວຍປ້ອງກັນບໍ່ໃຫ້ມະນຸດເຂົ້າສູ່ຍຸກມືດມົວອີກຄັ້ງ.

Bitcoin cannot steal your time

ມັນບໍ່ສາມາດຖືກສ້າງຂຶ້ນຈາກຄວາມຫວ່າງເປົ່າ. ທຸກ Bitcoin ຕ້ອງໃຊ້ພະລັງງານແລະເວລາທີ່ແທ້ຈິງໃນການສ້າງ.

Bitcoin ຄືປະກັນໄພທີ່ປ້ອງກັນການບໍລິຫານທີ່ຜິດພາດ

ມັນຊ່ວຍປ້ອງກັນຄວາມເສື່ອມໂຊມຂອງເງິນຕາ, ເສດຖະກິດທີ່ຕົກຕ່ຳ ແລະ ນະໂຍບາຍທີ່ຜິດພາດ, Bitcoin ຈະປົກປ້ອງຄຸນຄ່າຂອງເຈົ້າ.

Bitcoin is going to absorb the world's value

ໃນທີ່ສຸດ, Bitcoin ຈະກາຍເປັນທີ່ເກັບຮັກສາມູນຄ່າຂອງໂລກທັງໝົດ. ມັນຈະດູດເອົາຄວາມມັ່ງຄັ່ງຈາກທຸກຊັບສິນ, ທຸກລາຄາ, ແລະທຸກການລົງທຶນ.

Exit The Matrix

ພວກເຮົາອາໄສຢູ່ໃນ Matrix ທາງດ້ານການເງິນ. ທຸກໆມື້ພວກເຮົາຕື່ນຂຶ້ນມາແລະໄປເຮັດວຽກ, ຄິດວ່າເຮົາກຳລັງສ້າງອະນາຄົດໃຫ້ຕົວເອງ. ແຕ່ຄວາມຈິງແລ້ວ, ພວກເຮົາພຽງແຕ່ກຳລັງໃຫ້ພະລັງງານແກ່ລະບົບທີ່ຂູດເອົາຄຸນຄ່າຈາກພວກເຮົາທຸກວິນາທີ. Bitcoin is the red pill — ມັນຈະເປີດຕາໃຫ້ເຈົ້າເຫັນຄວາມຈິງຂອງໂລກການເງິນ. Central banks are the architects of this Matrix — ພວກເຂົາສ້າງເງິນຈາກຄວາມຫວ່າງເປົ່າ, ແລະພວກເຮົາຕ້ອງເຮັດວຽກໜັກເພື່ອໄດ້ມັນມາ.

ລະບົບການສຶກສາໄດ້ຫຼອກລວງເຮົາຢ່າງໃຫຍ່ຫຼວງ. ພວກເຂົາສອນໃຫ້ເຮົາເຮັດວຽກເພື່ອຫາເງິນ, ແຕ່ບໍ່ເຄີຍສອນວ່າເງິນແມ່ນຫຍັງ. ເຮົາໃຊ້ເວລາ 12-16 ປີໃນໂຮງຮຽນ, ຫຼັງຈາກນັ້ນໃຊ້ເວລາທັງຊີວິດເພື່ອຫາເງິນ, ແຕ່ບໍ່ເຄີຍຮູ້ຈັກວ່າມັນແມ່ນຫຍັງ, ໃຜສ້າງ, ແລະເປັນຫຍັງມັນມີຄຸນຄ່າ.This is the biggest scam in human history ພວກເຮົາຖືກສອນໃຫ້ເປັນທາດຂອງລະບົບ, ແຕ່ບໍ່ໄດ້ຮັບການສອນໃຫ້ເຂົ້າໃຈລະບົບ.

The Bitcoin standard will end war

ເມື່ອບໍ່ສາມາດພິມເງິນເພື່ອສົງຄາມແລ້ວ, ສົງຄາມຈະກາຍເປັນສິ່ງທີ່ແພງເກີນໄປ.

ພວກເຮົາກຳລັງເຂົ້າສູ່ຍຸກ Bitcoin Renaissance

ຍຸກແຫ່ງການຟື້ນຟູທາງດ້ານການເງິນແລະປັນຍາ. Bitcoin is creating a new class of humans ຄົນທີ່ເຂົ້າໃຈ ແລະ ຖື Bitcoin ຈະກາຍເປັນຊົນຊັ້ນໃໝ່ທີ່ມີອິດສະຫຼະພາບຢ່າງແທ້ຈິງ.

The Path to Financial Truth

Follow the money trail ແລະເຈົ້າຈະເຫັນຄວາມຈິງ:

• ໃຜຄວບຄຸມການພິມເງິນ?
• ເປັນຫຍັງລາຄາສິນຄ້າຂຶ້ນສູງຂຶ້ນເລື້ອຍໆ?
• ເປັນຫຍັງຄົນທຸກທຸກກວ່າເກົ່າ ແລະຄົນຮັ່ງມີຮັ່ງມີກວ່າເກົ່າ?

ຄຳຕອບທັງໝົດແມ່ນຢູ່ໃນການທຳຄວາມເຂົ້າໃຈເລື່ອງເງິນ ແລະ Bitcoin.

ການສຶກສາ Bitcoin ບໍ່ແມ່ນພຽງແຕ່ການລົງທຶນ — ມັນແມ່ນການເຂົ້າໃຈອະນາຄົດຂອງເງິນຕາ ແລະ ສັງຄົມມະນຸດ.

Don't just work for money. Understand money. Study Bitcoin.

ຖ້າເຈົ້າບໍ່ເຂົ້າໃຈເງິນ, ເຈົ້າຈະເປັນທາດຂອງລະບົບຕະຫຼອດໄປ. ຖ້າເຈົ້າເຂົ້າໃຈ Bitcoin, ເຈົ້າຈະໄດ້ຮັບອິດສະຫຼະພາບ.

@ ee6ea13a:959b6e74

Chef's notes

You can cook this in one pan on the stove. I use a cast iron pan, but you can make it in a wok or any deep pan.

I serve mine over rice, which I make in a rice cooker. If you have a fancy one, you might have a setting for sticky or scorched rice, so give one of those a try.

To plate this, I scoop rice into a bowl, and then turn it upside-down to give it a dome shape, then spoon the curry on top of it.

Serve with chopped cilantro and lime wedges.

Details

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

Ingredients

• 1 ½ pounds boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 2" pieces
• 2 tablespoons coconut or avocado oil
• 1 cup white or yellow onion, finely diced
• 1 cup red bell pepper, sliced or diced
• 4 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small (4oz) jar of Thai red curry paste
• 1 can (13oz) unsweetened coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 cup carrots, shredded or julienned
• 1 lime, zest and juice
• ¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped for garnish

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Once hot, add onions and ½ teaspoon salt. Cook 3 minutes, or until onions are softened, stirring often.
2. Add the red curry paste, garlic, ginger, and coriander. Cook about 1 minute, or until fragrant, stirring often.
3. Add coconut milk, brown sugar, soy sauce, and chicken. Stir, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium. Simmer uncovered for 7 minutes, occasionally stirring.
4. Add carrots and red bell peppers, and simmer 5-7 more minutes, until sauce slightly thickens and chicken is cooked through.
5. Remove from heat, and stir in the lime zest, and half of the lime juice.
6. Serve over rice, topped with cilantro, and add more lime juice if you like extra citrus.

@ 1d7ff02a:d042b5be

ກຸນແຈສຳຄັນແມ່ນການເຂົ້າໃຈວ່າແສງແດດບໍ່ແມ່ນສິ່ງດຽວ—ມັນແມ່ນຄື່ນຄວາມຖີ່ທີ່ສັບສົນທີ່ເຮັດວຽກຮ່ວມກັນຄືດັ່ງດົນຕີສຳລັບສຸຂະພາບຂອງມະນຸດ.

ວົງດົນຕີສຸຂະພາບຂອງດວງອາທິດ

ແສງຕອນເຊົ້າ (ແສງແດງ/ແສງອິນຟາເຣດໃກ້): ແສງແດງອ່ອນໂຍນຂອງຕອນແລງແລະຄຳ່ທີ່ປະກອບສ້າງ 90% ຂອງການປ່ອຍແສງຂອງດວງອາທິດ. ຄື່ນຄວາມຖີ່ນີ້ເຮັດໜ້າທີ່ຄືການປັບແຕ່ງເຊວລ໌, ເພີ່ມການຜະລິດພະລັງງານມີໂຕຄອນເດຍແລະກະກຽມຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານສຳລັບມື້ທີ່ຈະມາເຖິງ. ຄິດໃສ່ວ່າມັນແມ່ນການກະກຽມເຄື່ອງຈັກເຊວລ໌ຂອງທ່ານ.

ແສງຕອນກາງວັນ (ແສງ UV/ແສງສີຟ້າ): ແສງອາທິດທີ່ເຂັ້ມຂົ້ນຕອນກາງວັນສົ່ງມອບແສງອຸນຕາລະວິໂອເລດທີ່ຜະລິດວິຕາມິນ D—ຮໍໂມນທີ່ສຳຄັນຫຼາຍທີ່ເກືອບທຸກເຊວລ໌ໃນຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານມີຕົວຮັບສຳລັບມັນ. ເຖິງແມ່ນວ່າມັນຖືກເອີ້ນວ່າ "ວິຕາມິນ," ຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານຜະລິດວິຕາມິນ D ສ່ວນໃຫຍ່ຜ່ານການສຳຜັດຜິວໜັງກັບແສງ UVB. ນີ້ບໍ່ແມ່ນພຽງແຕ່ເລື່ອງສຸຂະພາບກະດູກ—ການຂາດວິຕາມິນ D ໄດ້ຖືກເຊື່ອມໂຍງກັບມະເຮັງ, ໂຣກພູມຄຸ້ມກັນຕົນເອງ, ໂຣກຫົວໃຈແລະເສັ້ນເລືອດ, ແລະການເພີ່ມຂຶ້ນຂອງການເສຍຊີວິດຈາກທຸກສາເຫດ. ວິຕາມິນ D ທີ່ຜະລິດຕາມທຳມະຊາດຈາກແສງແດດແກ່ຍາວ 2-3 ເທົ່າໃນຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານເມື່ອທຽບກັບຢາເສີມ, ສະແດງໃຫ້ເຫັນວ່າເປັນຫຍັງການສຳຜັດແສງແດດຕາມທຳມະຊາດຈຶ່ງດີກວ່າຢາເສີມ.

ແສງ UV ຍັງກະຕຸ້ນການຜະລິດເມລານິນ, ທີ່ເຮັດໜ້າທີ່ເປັນແບັດເຕີຣີທຳມະຊາດ, ເກັບຮັກສາອີເລັກຕຣອນທີ່ໃຫ້ພະລັງງານແກ່ມີໂຕຄອນເດຍຂອງທ່ານ. ໃນຂະນະທີ່ແສງສີຟ້າຮັບໃຊ້ຈຸດປະສົງຄູ່: ມັນຮັກສາໃຫ້ທ່ານຕື່ນຕົວໃນຕອນກາງວັນໃນຂະນະທີ່ຂັດຂວາງການຜະລິດເມລາໂທນິນ. ແຕ່ວ່າ, ແສງສີຟ້າມີດ້ານມືດ—ການສຶກສາສະແດງວ່າມັນສາມາດເຮັດໃຫ້ເກີດຄວາມເສຍຫາຍຂອງ DNA ແລະສ້າງສິ່ງທີ່ເປັນອັນຕະລາຍທີ່ເອີ້ນວ່າສະສາລະອົກຊິເຈນປະຕິກິລິຍາຢູ່ທັງຜິວໜັງແລະຕາ, ຄ້າຍຄືກັບລັງສີ UV. ນີ້ແມ່ນເຫດຜົນທີ່ການສຳຜັດແສງສີຟ້າໂດດດ່ຽວ (ເຊັ່ນຈາກໜ້າຈໍ) ໂດຍບໍ່ມີຄື່ນຄວາມຖີ່ປ້ອງກັນຂອງແສງອາທິດສາມາດເປັນອັນຕະລາຍໂດຍສະເພາະ.

ການປ່ຽນແປງຕອນແລງ: ເມື່ອແສງສີຟ້າຫຼຸດລົງໃນຕອນແລງ, ຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານເລີ່ມຜະລິດເມລາໂທນິນ, ທີມງານທຳຄວາມສະອາດເຊວລ໌ທີ່ເອົາຜະລິດຕະພັນພິດທີ່ສະສົມໃນລະຫວ່າງການຜະລິດພະລັງງານຂອງມື້ອອກ.

ວິກິດການແສງສະໄໝໃໝ່

ມະນຸດສະໄໝໃໝ່ໃຊ້ເວລາ 93% ຢູ່ໃນເຮືອນ, ສ້າງຄວາມບໍ່ສົມດູນຂອງແສງທີ່ເປັນອັນຕະລາຍ. ພວກເຮົາໄດ້ປ່ຽນໝໍ້ແສງໄຟແກ້ວທີ່ມີປະໂຫຍດດ້ວຍ LED ທີ່ຂາດຄື່ນຄວາມຖີ່ແສງອິນຟາເຣດໃກ້ທີ່ປ້ອງກັນ, ໃນຂະນະທີ່ແສງສີຟ້າປອມຈາກໜ້າຈໍຂັດຂວາງການຜະລິດເມລາໂທນິນຕາມທຳມະຊາດຂອງພວກເຮົາໃນຕອນກາງຄືນ. ນີ້ສ້າງພາຍຸທີ່ສົມບູນແບບ: ຄວາມເຄັ່ງຕຶງຈາກການເກີດອົກຊິເດຊັນໂດຍບໍ່ມີກົນໄກການທຳຄວາມສະອາດຕາມທຳມະຊາດ, ການຂາດວິຕາມິນ D, ແລະການຂາດຄື່ນຄວາມຖີ່ປ້ອງກັນຕອນເຊົ້າທີ່ກະກຽມຮ່າງກາຍຂອງພວກເຮົາສຳລັບການສຳຜັດແສງແດດ.

ທາງແກ້ໄຂຕາມທຳມະຊາດ

ການຄົ້ນຄວ້າຊີ້ໃຫ້ເຫັນວິທີການງ່າຍໆ: ຮັບເອົາຈັງຫວະຕາມທຳມະຊາດຂອງດວງອາທິດ. ເລີ່ມມື້ຂອງທ່ານດ້ວຍການສຳຜັດແສງຕອນເຊົ້າເພື່ອກະກຽມມີໂຕຄອນເດຍຂອງທ່ານ. ຍອມຮັບວ່າແສງແດດຕອນກາງວັນບາງຢ່າງໃຫ້ວິຕາມິນ D ແລະເມລານິນທີ່ຈຳເປັນ. ຄ່ອຍໆຜ່ອນຄາຍເມື່ອແສງແລງຫຼຸດລົງ, ອະນຸຍາດໃຫ້ມີການຜະລິດເມລາໂທນິນຕາມທຳມະຊາດ.

ຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານພັດທະນາມາຫຼາຍລ້ານປີກັບວົງຈອນແສງນີ້. ໃນຂະນະທີ່ພວກເຮົາບໍ່ສາມາດປະຖິ້ມຊີວິດທີ່ທັນສະໄໝໄດ້, ພວກເຮົາສາມາດເຄົາລົບຄວາມຕ້ອງການທາງຊີວະວິທະຍາຂອງພວກເຮົາສຳລັບແສງແດດແບບຄົບຖ້ວນ. ຫຼັງຈາກທັງໝົດ, ທຸກເຊວລ໌ໃນຮ່າງກາຍຂອງທ່ານແລ່ນດ້ວຍພະລັງງານ, ແລະດວງອາທິດຍັງຄົງເປັນແຫຼ່ງພະລັງງານຫຼັກຂອງໂລກພວກເຮົາ. ໃນໂລກເທັກໂນໂລຢີສູງຂອງພວກເຮົາ, ພວກເຮົາຕ້ອງຈື່ຄູ່ຮ່ວມງານບູຮານລະຫວ່າງສຸຂະພາບຂອງມະນຸດກໍຄືແສງແດດ.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

Markdown: Syntax

• Overview
  • Philosophy
  • Inline HTML
  • Automatic Escaping for Special Characters
• Block Elements
  • Paragraphs and Line Breaks
  • Headers
  • Blockquotes
  • Lists
  • Code Blocks
  • Horizontal Rules
• Span Elements
  • Links
  • Emphasis
  • Code
  • Images
• Miscellaneous
  • Backslash Escapes
  • Automatic Links

Note: This document is itself written using Markdown; you can see the source for it by adding '.text' to the URL.

---

Overview

Philosophy

Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.

Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown's syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters -- including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText -- the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text email.

Block Elements

Paragraphs and Line Breaks

A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, separated by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line that looks like a blank line -- a line containing nothing but spaces or tabs is considered blank.) Normal paragraphs should not be indented with spaces or tabs.

The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" rule is that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" text paragraphs. This differs significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters (including Movable Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which translate every line break character in a paragraph into a <br /> tag.

When you do want to insert a <br /> break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, then type return.

Headers

Markdown supports two styles of headers, [Setext] [1] and [atx] [2].

Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely cosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The closing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes used to open the header. (The number of opening hashes determines the header level.)

Blockquotes

Markdown uses email-style > characters for blockquoting. If you're familiar with quoting passages of text in an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in Markdown. It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a > before every line:

This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.

Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the > before the first line of a hard-wrapped paragraph:

This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.

Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by adding additional levels of >:

This is the first level of quoting.

This is nested blockquote.

Back to the first level.

Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including headers, lists, and code blocks:

This is a header.

1. This is the first list item.
2. This is the second list item.

Here's some example code:

return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");

Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase Quote Level from the Text menu.

Lists

Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) lists.

Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- interchangably -- as list markers:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

is equivalent to:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

and:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:

1. Bird
2. McHale
3. Parish

It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark the list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The HTML Markdown produces from the above list is:

If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:

1. Bird
2. McHale
3. Parish

or even:

1. Bird
2. McHale
3. Parish

you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want to, you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so that the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published HTML. But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.

To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging indents:

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
• Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
• Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent paragraph in a list item must be indented by either 4 spaces or one tab:

1. This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.

   Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.

2. Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.

It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be lazy:

• This is a list item with two paragraphs.

  This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

• Another item in the same list.

To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's > delimiters need to be indented:

• A list item with a blockquote:

  This is a blockquote inside a list item.

To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to be indented twice -- 8 spaces or two tabs:

• A list item with a code block:

  <code goes here>
  

Code Blocks

Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming or markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the lines of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a code block in both <pre> and <code> tags.

To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of the block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab.

This is a normal paragraph:

This is a code block.

Here is an example of AppleScript:

tell application "Foo"
    beep
end tell

A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not indented (or the end of the article).

Within a code block, ampersands (&) and angle brackets (< and >) are automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very easy to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste it and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:

<div class="footer">
    &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
</div>

Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. E.g., asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. This means it's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's own syntax.

tell application "Foo" beep end tell

Span Elements

Links

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In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square brackets].

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To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes (`). Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span indicates code within a normal paragraph. For example:

Use the printf() function.

@ c8adf82a:7265ee75

What is knowledge? Why do we need it?

Since we were small, our parents/guardian put us in school, worked their asses off to give us elective lessons, some get help until college, some even after college and after professional work. Why is this intelligence thing so sought after?

When you were born, you mostly just accepted what your parents said, they say go to school - you go to school, they say go learn the piano - you learn the piano. Of course with a lot of questions and denials, but you do it because you know your parents are doing it for your own good. You can feel the love so you disregard the 'why' and go on with faith

Everything starts with why, and for most people maybe the purpose of knowledge is to be smarter, to know more, just because. But for me this sounds utterly useless. One day I will die next to a man with half a brain and we would feel the same exact thing on the ground. Literally being smarter at the end does not matter at all

However, I am not saying to just be lazy and foolish. For me the purpose of knowledge is action. The more you learn, the more you know what to do, the more you can be sure you are doing the right thing, the more you can make progress on your own being, etc etc

Now, how can you properly learn? Imagine a water bottle. The water bottle's sole purpose is to contain water, but you cannot fill in the water bottle before you open the cap. To learn properly, make sure you open the cap and let all that water pour into you

If you are reading this, you are alive. Don't waste your time doing useless stuff and start to make a difference in your life

Seize the day

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

I did pretty poorly today. It's dreary and drizzly here, so I didn't get out walking. Even the dog didn't want to go out. We also had weirdly few chores or errands to do.

Maybe this was just a natural rest day. I did catch up on some sleep.

Foodwise, I kept my fast until reasonably late in the day, but then I ate a bunch of cookies. I'll need to do better tomorrow.

How'd everyone else do, today?

https://stacker.news/items/990061

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

I. Introduction

The phenomenon known as "speaking in tongues" has long been interpreted as either the miraculous ability to speak foreign languages or utter mysterious syllables by divine power. However, a re-examination of scriptural and apostolic texts suggests a deeper, spiritual interpretation: that "tongues" refers not to foreign speech but to the utterance of divine truths so profound that they are incomprehensible to most unless illuminated by the Spirit.

This treatise explores that interpretation in light of the writings of Paul, Peter, John, and the early Apostolic Fathers. We seek not to diminish the miraculous but to reveal the deeper purpose of spiritual utterance: the revelation of divine knowledge that transcends rational comprehension.

II. The Nature of Tongues as Spiritual Utterance

Tongues are best understood as Spirit-inspired expressions of divine truth—utterances that do not conform to human categories of knowledge or language. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:2, "He who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit."

Such mysteries are not unintelligible in a chaotic sense but are veiled truths that require spiritual discernment. The speaker becomes a vessel of revelation. Without interpretation, the truth remains hidden, just as a parable remains a riddle to those without ears to hear.

III. Paul and the Hidden Wisdom of God

In his epistles, Paul often distinguishes between surface knowledge and spiritual wisdom. In 1 Corinthians 2:6-7, he writes:

"We speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age... but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages."

Tongues, then, are one vehicle by which such hidden wisdom is spoken. The gift of interpretation is not mere translation but the Spirit-led unveiling of meaning. Hence, Paul prioritizes intelligibility not to invalidate tongues, but to encourage the edification that comes when deep truth is revealed and understood (1 Cor. 14:19).

IV. Peter at Pentecost: Many Tongues, One Spirit

At Pentecost (Acts 2), each listener hears the apostles speak "in his own language"—but what they hear are "the mighty works of God." Rather than focusing on the mechanics of speech, the emphasis is on understanding. It was not merely a linguistic miracle but a revelatory one: divine truth reaching every heart in a way that transcended cultural and rational barriers.

V. John and the Prophetic Language of Revelation

The apostle John writes in symbols, visions, and layered meanings. Revelation is full of "tongues" in this spiritual sense—utterances that reveal while concealing. His Gospel presents the Spirit as the "Spirit of truth" who "will guide you into all truth" (John 16:13). This guiding is not logical deduction but illumination.

VI. The Apostolic Fathers on Inspired Speech

The Didache, an early Christian manual, warns that not everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit is truly inspired. This aligns with a view of tongues as spiritual utterance—deep truth that must be tested by its fruits and conformity to the ways of the Lord.

Polycarp and Ignatius do not emphasize miraculous speech, but their prayers and exhortations show a triadic awareness of Father, Son, and Spirit, and a reverence for spiritual knowledge passed through inspiration and faithful transmission.

VII. Interpretation: The Gift of Spiritual Discernment

In this model, the interpreter of tongues is not a linguist but a spiritual discerner. As Joseph interpreted dreams in Egypt, so the interpreter makes the spiritual intelligible. This gift is not external translation but inward revelation—an unveiling of what the Spirit has spoken.

VIII. Conclusion: Tongues as a Veil and a Revelation

The true gift of tongues lies not in speech but in meaning—in truth spoken from a higher realm that must be spiritually discerned. It is a veil that conceals the holy from the profane, and a revelation to those led by the Spirit of truth.

Thus, we do not reject the miraculous, but recognize that the greatest miracle is understanding—when divine mysteries, spoken in spiritual tongue, are made known to the heart by the Spirit.

"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (Revelation 2:7)

@ 502ab02a:a2860397

เราค่อยๆลำดับเรื่องราวเริ่มจากเบาๆกันก่อนนะครับ หากย้อนกลับไปในปี 2009 บนเส้นทางที่โลกกำลังสับสนระหว่างการกินที่อิงธรรมชาติกับแนวทางการเปลี่ยนแปลงอาหารแบบสุดขั้ว Ethan Brown ได้ก่อตั้งบริษัท Beyond Meat ขึ้นมา โดยมีจุดประสงค์ชัดเจนว่าอยากสร้าง "เนื้อจากพืช" ให้มีรสชาติ เนื้อสัมผัส และประสบการณ์ที่ใกล้เคียงกับเนื้อสัตว์จริงให้มากที่สุดเท่าที่จะทำได้ นี่คือภาพลวงตาที่ถูกสร้างขึ้นภายใต้ธงของความยั่งยืน แต่เบื้องลึกกลับแฝงความเงียบงันอยู่ใต้เงาเทคโนโลยี

Ethan Brown ไม่ใช่คนที่ตื่นเช้ามาแล้วอยากเปลี่ยนโลกในทันที เขาเติบโตมากับพ่อที่เป็นนักอนุรักษ์ธรรมชาติ มีฟาร์มโคนมเล็ก ๆ ให้ได้สัมผัสความจริงของเกษตรกรรมแบบดั้งเดิม เขาเรียนจบปริญญาตรีด้านประวัติศาสตร์และรัฐบาล ต่อด้วยปริญญาโทด้านนโยบายสาธารณะจาก University of Maryland และ MBA จาก Columbia University เขาเคยทำงานด้านนโยบายพลังงานทางเลือกที่ National Governors Association และบริษัท Ballard Power Systems ก่อนจะย้ายขั้วจากพลังงานสู่โปรตีนแทน

ช่วงหนึ่งเขาพูดใน TED ว่า “ผมมองเห็นว่าอาหารนั้นเชื่อมโยงกับสิ่งแวดล้อมและสุขภาพมนุษย์อย่างลึกซึ้ง แต่เราแทบไม่พูดถึงเรื่องนี้ในระดับระบบเลย” เขาเห็นว่าสัตว์คือ “เครื่องจักรแปลงโปรตีนจากพืชไปเป็นเนื้อ” ซึ่งเขาเชื่อว่ามัน “ไม่จำเป็นอีกต่อไปแล้ว” ในศตวรรษที่ 21

Beyond Meat ไม่ได้ใช้สูตรการต้มถั่วแล้วปั้นเป็นเบอร์เกอร์แบบบ้าน ๆ แต่ใช้กระบวนการแปรรูปที่ซับซ้อนระดับอุตสาหกรรมที่เรียกว่า High Moisture Extrusion (HME) ที่ต้องใช้เครื่องจักรเฉพาะราคาแพงมาก เพื่อดัดแปลงโปรตีนพืช เช่น ถั่วเหลือง ถั่วลันเตา ให้มีโครงสร้างเหมือนกล้ามเนื้อสัตว์ ทั้งเส้นใย ความชุ่มฉ่ำ และแรงต้านเมื่อกัด ซึ่งทั้งหมดนี้ไม่สามารถทำในครัวชาวบ้านได้ง่าย ๆ

บริษัทได้รับทุนสนับสนุนตั้งแต่ช่วงเริ่มต้นจากกลุ่มนักลงทุนที่มีอิทธิพลใน Silicon Valley เช่น Kleiner Perkins และ Obvious Corporation ของ Evan Williams ผู้ร่วมก่อตั้ง Twitter ก่อนจะขยายฐานนักลงทุนไปยัง Tyson Foods (ซึ่งเป็นบริษัทยักษ์ใหญ่ด้านเนื้อสัตว์ของสหรัฐฯ ที่ลงทุนใน Beyond Meat ก่อนจะถอนตัวภายหลัง) และนักแสดงฮอลลีวูดอย่าง Leonardo DiCaprio การเข้าระดมทุนในตลาดหุ้น (IPO) ปี 2019 ก็ยิ่งสร้างกระแสให้บริษัทกลายเป็นภาพตัวแทนของการกินอนาคตที่ยั่งยืน ทว่าในความหรูหรานั้น มีรอยร้าวแฝงอยู่เสมอ

ในขณะที่ภาพจำของ Beyond Meat ถูกวาดว่าเป็น “ทางรอดของโลก” และ “อาหารเพื่อสิ่งแวดล้อม” รัฐบาลสหรัฐฯ ก็สนับสนุนทิศทางนี้อย่างเงียบเชียบ ด้วยการอัดงบประมาณกว่า 125 ล้านดอลลาร์เข้าสู่อุตสาหกรรมโปรตีนทางเลือกผ่านโครงการต่าง ๆ เช่น หน่วยงานวิจัย USDA และกองทุนสนับสนุนมหาวิทยาลัยด้านเทคโนโลยีอาหาร ไม่ต่างจากรัฐบาลอิสราเอลที่ทุ่มงบกว่า 18 ล้านดอลลาร์ให้บริษัทเนื้อเพาะเลี้ยงแบบไม่มีอ้อมค้อม ทั้งหมดนี้กำลังสร้างระบบอาหารที่ไม่ต้องพึ่งดิน ไม่ต้องพึ่งแดด ไม่ต้องพึ่งเกษตรกร แต่ขึ้นอยู่กับโรงงานที่ควบคุมโดยบริษัทมหาชนเพียงไม่กี่เจ้า

เมื่อมองให้ลึกลงไป Beyond Meat ไม่ใช่แค่บริษัทอาหาร แต่คือจุดเริ่มต้นแรกๆของโลก ในด้านระบบนิเวศใหม่ที่ตัด “คนตัวเล็ก” ออกจากสมการเกษตรกรรมโดยสิ้นเชิง เกษตรกรจะไม่มีทางผลิต “เนื้อจากพืช” เหล่านี้ได้ด้วยตัวเอง เพราะต้องใช้เทคโนโลยีราคาแพง วัตถุดิบเฉพาะ และสูตรการแปรรูปที่ถูกจดสิทธิบัตรไว้หมดแล้ว ระบบอาหารจึงค่อย ๆ ถูกปิดตายภายใต้รั้วของลิขสิทธิ์ เหมือนโลกของซอฟต์แวร์ที่ไม่มีใครแตะต้องโค้ดต้นฉบับได้ ทุกคำที่เคี้ยวอาจกลายเป็นทรัพย์สินของใครบางคน และในวันที่ดินผืนสุดท้ายไม่ได้ปลูกพืช แต่กลายเป็นโรงงานสังเคราะห์โปรตีน นั่นแหละที่มนุษย์จะพบว่า ตนเองไม่ได้เป็น “ผู้ผลิตอาหาร” อีกต่อไป แต่กลายเป็น “ผู้บริโภค” ตลอดกาล

แม้ตัวเลขยอดขายของ Beyond Meat จะพุ่งขึ้นในช่วงแรกหลังเข้าตลาดหุ้น แต่เมื่อเวลาผ่านไป กลับสะท้อนความจริงที่น่าสนใจว่าสิ่งที่ดูเหมือนจะเป็นทางออกของโลก อาจไม่ใช่คำตอบที่ยั่งยืนเลยก็ได้

ในปี 2022 บริษัทประกาศลดพนักงานลง 19% และราคาหุ้นร่วงลงกว่า 80% จากจุดสูงสุด พร้อมกับข่าวคราวที่ส่อให้เห็นปัญหาด้านความปลอดภัยในสายการผลิต และยอดขายที่ไม่เติบโตตามเป้า แม้จะพยายามขยายตลาดอย่างต่อเนื่อง แต่คนทั่วไปเริ่มตระหนักว่า “เนื้อจากพืช” ที่แปรรูปหนักอาจไม่ใช่คำตอบของสุขภาพหรือสิ่งแวดล้อมอย่างที่เคยเชื่อ

ไม่เพียงเท่านั้น ผลการสำรวจในอเมริกาและยุโรปเริ่มชี้ว่า คนที่เคยทดลองกิน plant-based meat กลับไม่ซื้อซ้ำ โดยให้เหตุผลว่าไม่อร่อย แพง และไม่เชื่อว่าเป็นอาหารที่ดีต่อร่างกายจริง ๆ อีกทั้งบางรายถึงกับบอกว่ารู้สึกแปลกแยก เพราะอาหารที่มีส่วนผสมเยอะและชื่อส่วนประกอบที่อ่านไม่ออก มักทำให้คนรู้สึกว่าไม่ใช่อาหารธรรมชาติ ซึ่งขัดกับความตั้งใจเดิมที่อยากกินอาหารเพื่อสุขภาพ

คำว่า “ยั่งยืน” จึงไม่เพียงพอจะอธิบายได้ว่าอะไรคือสิ่งดีจริง ๆ เพราะหากความยั่งยืนนั้นหมายถึงการผูกขาด แปรรูป และบังคับให้ผู้คนต้องซื้ออาหารจากบริษัทไม่กี่แห่ง มันก็ไม่ได้ต่างอะไรกับการจำกัดอิสรภาพในจานข้าว อาหารที่แท้ควรเป็นของทุกคน เป็นสิทธิ์พื้นฐานที่มนุษย์ควรสร้างได้เอง ไม่ใช่ต้องลงทะเบียนซื้อกับห้างใหญ่ ๆ ผ่าน QR code ทุกมื้อ

ทุกวันนี้ Beyond Meat ยังไม่ถึงจุดตกต่ำที่สุด และยังมีโอกาสกลับมาได้เสมอ แต่สิ่งนึงที่เราต้องตระหนักเอาไว้คือ นี่ยังเป็นแค่ยักษ์เล็กไม่ใช่ยักษ์ใหญ่ เทคโนโลยีการสกัดโปรตีนพืชมาขยำเป็นรูปนั้น ณ วินาทีนี้ คือโบราณเกินไปแล้วครับ ในตลาดก็มีหมูปลอมเนื้อปลอมแบบนี้ออกมามากมาย หน้าตางดงามสมจริง แต่สิ่งเหล่านี้มันคือแค่จุดเริ่มต้นครับ ถ้าจะนับเรื่องราวเหล่านี้ว่าเริ่มจาก 2009 ก็ไม่ผิดนัก

เมื่อถึงจุดหนึ่ง คุณจะมองเห็นลำดับชั้นของ ธุรกิจ นวตกรรม การครอบงำทางการตลาดแบบผูกมัดที่ตัดแขนตัดขาไปทีละนิดจนเราหมดสิทธิ์เลือก สิ่งเดียวที่เราจะเลือกได้คือ ซื้อเนื้อจากแลปไหน #pirateketo #กูต้องรู้มั๊ย #ม้วนหางสิลูก #siamstr

@ c1e6505c:02b3157e

I spent Memorial Day swimming in the local river - something I try to do at least four times a week. It’s the best form of exercise imo, but it’s more than that. Swimming against the tide, feeling the water move around me... there’s something about it that keeps me grounded. Nature at her peak.

Today I brought my X-Pro2 with the 1959 Leica Summaron 35mm f/2.8. I'm still testing the lens wide open to get a feel for its character. My subject this time: the light playing on the ripples and waves.

While I was shooting, a kid randomly ran up to me and started telling me something about what he got for his dad while fishing, or something - I didn’t quite hear him - and then he asked what I was looking at. I told him, “The ripples. The way the light is refracting.” I had him sit exactly where I was so he could see it too.

He lit up. You could tell no one had ever pointed something like that out to him before. In that moment, I felt like maybe I was able to plant a little seed - a new way of seeing.

This is what I was looking at.

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Introduction

Nutsax is a capability-based access control system for Nostr relays, designed to provide flexible, privacy-preserving rate limiting, permissioning, and operation-scoped token redemption.

At its core, Nutsax introduces:

• Blind-signed tokens, issued by relays, for specific operation types.
• Token redemption as part of Nostr event publishing or interactions.
• Encrypted token storage using existing Nostr direct message infrastructure, allowing portable, persistent, and private storage of these tokens — the Nutsax.

This mechanism augments the existing Nostr protocol without disrupting adoption, requiring no changes to NIP-01 for clients or relays that don’t opt into the system.

Motivation

Nostr relays currently have limited tools for abuse prevention and access control. Options like IP banning, whitelisting, or monetized access are coarse and often centralized.

Nutsax introduces:

• Fine-grained, operation-specific access control using cryptographic tokens.
• Blind signature protocols to issue tokens anonymously, preserving user privacy.
• A native way to store and recover tokens using Nostr’s encrypted event system.

This allows relays to offer:

• Optional access policies (e.g., “3 posts per hour unless you redeem a token”)
• Paid or invite-based features (e.g., long-term subscriptions, advanced filters)
• Temporary elevation of privileges (e.g., bypass slow mode for one message)

All without requiring accounts, emails, or linking identity beyond the user’s npub.

Core Components

1. Operation Tokens

Tokens are blind-signed blobs issued by the relay, scoped to a specific operation type (e.g., "write", "filter-subscribe", "broadcast").

• Issued anonymously: using a blind signature protocol.
• Validated on redemption: at message submission or interaction time.
• Optional and redeemable: the relay decides when to enforce token redemption.

Each token encodes:

• Operation type (string)
• Relay ID (to scope the token)
• Expiration (optional)
• Usage count or burn-on-use flag
• Random nonce (blindness)

Example (before blinding):

json { "relay": "wss://relay.example", "operation": "write", "expires": 1720000000, "nonce": "b2a8c3..." }

This is then blinded and signed by the relay.

2. Token Redemption

Clients include tokens when submitting events or requests to the relay.

Token included via event tag:

json ["token", "<base64-encoded-token>", "write"]

Redemption can happen:

• Inline with any event (kind 1, etc.)
• As a standalone event (e.g., ephemeral kind 20000)
• During session initiation (optional AUTH extension)

The relay validates the token:

• Is it well-formed?
• Is it valid for this relay and operation?
• Is it unexpired?
• Has it been used already? (for burn-on-use)

If valid, the relay accepts the event or upgrades the rate/permission scope.

3. Nutsax: Private Token Storage on Nostr

Tokens are stored securely in the client’s Nutsax, a persistent, private archive built on Nostr’s encrypted event system.

Each token is stored in a kind 4 or kind 44/24 event, encrypted with the client’s own npub.

Example:

json { "kind": 4, "tags": [ ["p", "<your npub>"], ["token-type", "write"], ["relay", "wss://relay.example"] ], "content": "<encrypted token blob>", "created_at": 1234567890 }

This allows clients to:

• Persist tokens across restarts or device changes.
• Restore tokens after reinstalling or reauthenticating.
• Port tokens between devices.

All without exposing the tokens to the public or requiring external storage infrastructure.

Client Lifecycle

1. Requesting Tokens

• Client authenticates to relay (e.g., via NIP-42).
• Requests blind-signed tokens:
• Sends blinded token requests.
• Receives blind signatures.
• Unblinds and verifies.

2. Storing Tokens

• Each token is encrypted to the user’s own npub.
• Stored as a DM (kind 4 or compatible encrypted event).
• Optional tagging for organization.

3. Redeeming Tokens

• When performing a token-gated operation (e.g., posting to a limited relay), client includes the appropriate token in the event.
• Relay validates and logs/consumes the token.

4. Restoring the Nutsax

• On device reinstallation or session reset, the client:
• Reconnects to relays.
• Scans encrypted DMs.
• Decrypts and reimports available tokens.

Privacy Model

• Relays issuing tokens do not know which tokens were redeemed (blind signing).
• Tokens do not encode sender identity unless the client opts to do so.
• Only the recipient (npub) can decrypt their Nutsax.
• Redemption is pseudonymous — tied to a key, not to external identity.

Optional Enhancements

• Token index tag: to allow fast search and categorization.
• Multiple token types: read, write, boost, subscribe, etc.
• Token delegation: future support for transferring tokens via encrypted DM to another npub.
• Token revocation: relays can publish blacklists or expiration feeds if needed.

Compatibility

• Fully compatible with NIP-01, NIP-04 (encrypted DMs), and NIP-42 (authentication).
• Non-disruptive: relays and clients can ignore tokens if not supported.
• Ideal for layering on top of existing infrastructure and monetization strategies.

Conclusion

Nutsax offers a privacy-respecting, decentralized way to manage access and rate limits in the Nostr ecosystem. With blind-signed, operation-specific tokens and encrypted, persistent storage using native Nostr mechanisms, it gives relays and clients new powers without sacrificing Nostr’s core principles: simplicity, openness, and cryptographic self-sovereignty.

@ b7cf9f42:ecb93e78

Der Verstand im Fluss der Information

Das Informationszeitalter ist wie ein monströser Fluss, der unseren Verstand umgibt

Fundament erbauen

Der Verstand kann sich eine Insel in diesem Fluss bauen. Dabei können wir eine eigene Insel erbauen oder eine bestehende insel anvisieren um stabilität zu finden

Je robuster das Baumaterial, desto standhafter unsere Insel. (Stärke der Argumente, Qualität des Informationsgehalts, Verständlichkeit der Information)

Je grossflächiger die Insel, desto mehr Menschen haben Platz (Reichweite).

Je höher wir die Insel bauen, desto sicherer ist sie bei einem Anstieg des Informationsflusses (Diversität der Interesse und Kompetenzen der Inselbewohner).

Robustes Baumaterial

Primäre Wahrnehmung (robuster):

Realität -> meine Sinne -> meine Meinung/Interpretation

Sekundäre Wahrnehmung (weniger Robust):

Realität -> Sinne eines anderen -> dessen Meinung/Interpretation -> dessen Kommunikation -> meine Sinne -> meine Meinung/Interpretation

Wie kann ich zur Insel beitragen?

Ich investiere meine Zeit, um zu lernen. Ich bin bestrebt, Ideen zu verstehen, um sicherzugehen, dass ich robustes Baumaterial verwende.

Ich teile vermehrt Informationen, welche ich verstehe, damit auch meine Mitbewohner der Insel mit robustem Material die Insel vergrössern können. So können wir mehr Platz schaffen, wo Treibende Halt finden können.

Was könnte diese Insel sein?

• Freie Wissenschaft
• Freie Software
• Regeln
• Funktionierende Justiz
• Werkzeug
• und vieles weiteres

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

Men tend to find women attractive, that remind them of the average women they already know, but with more-averaged features. The mid of mids is kween.👸

But, in contradiction to that, they won't consider her highly attractive, unless she has some spectacular, unusual feature. They'll sacrifice some averageness to acquire that novelty. This is why wealthy men (who tend to be highly intelligent -- and therefore particularly inclined to crave novelty because they are easily bored) -- are more likely to have striking-looking wives and girlfriends, rather than conventionally-attractive ones. They are also more-likely to cross ethnic and racial lines, when dating.

Men also seem to each be particularly attracted to specific facial expressions or mimics, which might be an intelligence-similarity test, as persons with higher intelligence tend to have a more-expressive mimic. So, people with similar expressions tend to be on the same wavelength. Facial expessions also give men some sense of perception into womens' inner life, which they otherwise find inscrutable.

Hair color is a big deal (logic says: always go blonde), as is breast-size (bigger is better), and WHR (smaller is better).

@ 8fb140b4:f948000c

As many of you know, https://nostr.build has recently launched a new compatibility layer for the Blossom protocol blossom.band. You can find all the details about what it supports and its limitations by visiting the URL.

I wanted to cover some of the technical details about how it works here. One key difference you may notice is that the service acts as a linker, redirecting requests for the media hash to the actual source of the media—specifically, the nostr.build URL. This allows us to maintain a unified CDN cache and ensure that your media is served as quickly as possible.

Another difference is that each uploaded media/blob is served under its own subdomain (e.g., npub1[...].blossom.band), ensuring that your association with the blob is controlled by you. If you decide to delete the media for any reason, we ensure that the link is broken, even if someone else has duplicated it using the same hash.

To comply with the Blossom protocol, we also link the same hash under the main (apex) domain (blossom.band) and collect all associations under it. This ensures that Blossom clients can fetch media based on users’ Blossom server settings. If you are the sole owner of the hash and there are no duplicates, deleting the media removes the link from the main domain as well.

Lastly, in line with our mission to protect users’ privacy, we reject any media that contains private metadata (such as GPS coordinates, user comments, or camera serial numbers) or strip it if you use the /media/ endpoint for upload.

As always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated. Thank you!

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

The Citadel (v. Nardo): From Meme to Monument

My latest painting, The Citadel (v. Nardo), did not begin simply on canvas. It began as a whisper – an image passed digitally between anonymous hands, reposted, remixed, archived, and mythologized across the internet. Like many of my works, this piece builds from historical fragments and symbols, grounded in the belief that memes are not fleeting – they are foundational. They don’t just reflect culture, rather, they write it.

Last year in 2024, I presented a solo show in Abu Dhabi centered around the fact that Subway – the sandwich chain – was one of the first fast food restaurants to accept Bitcoin. That small historical detail became the seed of a larger conceptual inquiry: what does it mean to “consume” in an age of hyper-speed information? The works explored the overlap between fast food, memes, and digital attention. The exhibition was tight, precise, and deeply memetic in its structure.

The Citadel came from a similar place.

In 2013, a now-legendary Reddit post titled “I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing” appeared online. The author – claiming to be from 2025 – warned of a future shaped by Bitcoin, but not in the way many had hoped. It wasn’t a utopia. It was a stratified society where those who adopted early became untouchably rich, and everyone else was left behind. Whether satire, fiction, or genuine warning, the post struck a nerve. It spread quickly. It became part of the cultural and memetic architecture of Bitcoin.

Years later, another anonymous user gave that warning a visual form. The Citadel v.1, likely created on 4chan, featured a massive tower cobbled together from borrowed imagery – most notably a background ripped from Alexander Mikhalchyk’s oil painting Tower of Babel. Red – overlaid with iconic internet figures like Pepe, Wojak, and the Bogdanoff twins. It was chaotic, funny, ominous. And it caught fire. Versions spread across forums. Variants emerged for Monero, Ethereum, and other Bitcoin-based class hierarchies. A whole mythology took shape around it.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that image. The symbolism. The verticality. The warning. It wasn’t just a meme – it was a map. A visual schema of power and belief, told in the language of the internet. And yet, it had never been physically painted. Never given the weight or permanence it deserved. That’s when I decided to create what I believe is the first fully hand-painted oil version of the Bitcoin Citadel meme.

The Citadel (v. Nardo) is 7 feet wide, 5 feet tall, and entirely rendered in oil by hand over six months. The tower in my painting is original – constructed from references to Bruegel’s depictions of Babel. The superimposed depictions of Pepe, the monk, the nobleman, even Jesus, are deliberate nods to the v.1 version, reimagined and integrated with painterly care. Nothing here is copy-pasted. Every inch is built to feel mythic, monumental, and true to the weight of the meme itself.

Like all my work, it’s meant to evoke grandeur, drama, and symbolic density. It’s meant to feel like a relic from a future past – something dug up from the ruins of digital civilization. My late professor once told me that the best art is both folkloric and provocative. That line never left me.

And that’s essentially what internet memes are. They are modern folklore. They encode belief, identity, warning, and aspiration in compressed symbols. They may start as jokes – but jokes have always been a delivery system for deeper truth. Memes don’t just survive online; they shape what we expect from reality.

The Citadel (v. Nardo) will be sold at auction via Scarce.City and debut at the Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas – the largest gathering of Bitcoiners in the world. It’s not just a painting. It’s a response. A reckoning. A reminder.Because in the end, as I always say: you become what you meme.

This is a guest post by X-Nardo Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine_._

This post The Citadel (v. Nardo): From Meme to Monument first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by X-Nardo.

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Pizza Day: 15 Years Since 10,000 BTC Bought Two Pizzas and Changed Everything 

On May 22, 2010, Bitcoin became more than just an idea—it became real money. Laszlo Hanyecz, a developer and early contributor to Bitcoin’s codebase, posted a casual offer: “I’ll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.” Five days later, someone took him up on it. Two Papa John’s pizzas were delivered. A screenshot was posted. Bitcoin had entered the real world. 

15 years ago, Laszlo Hanyecz spent 10,000 #bitcoin worth $30 on two Papa John's pizzas.

Today, 10,000 $BTC is worth over $1,100,000,000.

What a legend! pic.twitter.com/EbxQAsixhZ

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 22, 2025

That 10,000 Bitcoin, worth about $41 at the time, is now valued at over $1.1 billion. And with Bitcoin hitting a new all-time high of $111,999 on the 15th anniversary of the transaction, the story of the “Bitcoin Pizza” carries more weight than ever.

@realbitcoinmagazine

15 years ago, someone paid 10,000 #Bitcoin for 2 pizzas. That’s worth over $1,000,000,000 today!

♬ original sound – Bitcoin Magazine

It wasn’t just about the pizza. This was the moment Bitcoin proved itself as a functioning currency. Until then, it had lived mostly in theory and code—talked about by cryptographers and mined by hobbyists. Hanyecz’s post, and the trade that followed, transformed the idea into action. “This transaction made Bitcoin real in my eyes,” he said in a 2019 interview. “It wasn’t worth much at the time. I wouldn’t have spent $100 million on pizza, right? But if I hadn’t done that, maybe Bitcoin wouldn’t have become so popular.” 

Over the summer of 2010, Hanyecz continued using Bitcoin to buy pizzas, eventually spending more than 79,000 BTC—now worth nearly $8.7 billion. While some have joked at his expense, the truth is this: without those early real-world transactions, Bitcoin might never have proven its use case. Hanyecz helped move Bitcoin from the fringe into functionality.

That legacy still shapes us today. Bitcoin Pizza Day has become a cultural milestone in the crypto world, with meetups, pizza parties, and educational events held globally each May 22. The day serves as a reminder of how far the technology has come—and the importance of everyday actions and the impact they have. 

Smiles, joy, and shared moments, this is what today looked like.#Bitcoin Pizza Day at His Grace School was more than a visit. It was connection, care, and community. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who donated and supported #BitcoinGhana #BitcoinPizzaDay #BTC #Bitfiasi pic.twitter.com/xRMv1rpife

— Bitfiasi Initiative (@bitfiasi) May 22, 2025

Just this week, fast food chain Steak ‘n Shake began accepting Bitcoin via the Lightning Network, signaling a growing wave of mainstream adoption. What once felt experimental is now becoming part of everyday commerce. 

Bitcoin Pizza Day is about recognition. One simple transaction proved that Bitcoin could work—and 15 years later, the world is still building on that first bite. 

This post Bitcoin Pizza Day: 15 Years Since 10,000 BTC Bought Two Pizzas and Changed Everything  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

A self help book with a dumb title arrived at our house. It was about making more money for people who are terrible at personal finance. I suspect the author is pretty good at making money, though.

It turned out to be my mother-in-law's book that she sent to the wrong address. So, now even more money needs to be spent on getting this stupid book to her house.

Why does a woman who should be retired need such a book, anyway? Only because she and her husband, despite having both worked long semi-prestigious careers, have no assets between them and they live so far beyond their means (retirement accounts and pensions worth about 2x the median family income) that she needs to continue earning greater and greater income.

In her 70's, she embarked on a new career and is attempting to build up her own business around it. However, being terrible at managing finances has led her to reading dumb generic self help books in a hopeless attempt to make her business profitable before she is no longer able to work. It's a ridiculous situation.

Stay humble and stack sats, so you aren't reading dumb self help books about earning more money when you should be long retired.

https://stacker.news/items/989897

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION

SUBJECT: Meeting with Russian President Yeltsin

PARTICIPANTS: - U.S. - President Clinton - Secretary Albright - National Security Advisor Berger - Deputy National Security Advisor Steinberg - Ambassador Sestanovich - Carlos Pascual

• Russia
• Russian President Yeltsin
• Foreign Minister Ivanov
• Kremlin Foreign Policy Advisor Prihodko
• Defense Minister Sergeyev
• Interpreter: Peter Afansenko
• Notetaker: Carlos Pascual

DATE, TIME AND PLACE: November 19, 1999, 10:45 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. Istanbul, Turkey

President Yeltsin: We are in neutral territory here. I welcome you.

The President: Neither of us has a stake here. It's good to see you.

President Yeltsin: Well, Bill, what about those camps here in Turkey that are preparing troops to go into Chechnya? Aren't you in charge of those? I have the details. Minister Ivanov, give me the map. I want to show you where the mercenaries are being trained and then being sent into Chechnya. They are armed to the teeth. (Note: Yeltsin pulls out map of Turkey and circulates it.) Bill, this is your fault. I told Demirel yesterday that I will send the head of the SRV tomorrow and we will show him where the camps are located. These are not state-sanctioned camps. They are sponsored by NGOs and religious organizations. But let me tell you if this were in Russia and there were but one camp, I would throw them all out and put the bandits in the electric chair.

The President: Perhaps Demirel could help you.

President Yeltsin: Well, he ought to. Tomorrow after I get back, I will send the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service here. Bill, did you hurt your leg?

The President: Yes, but it is not bad.

President Yeltsin: When one leg of the President hurts, that is a bad thing.

The President: It lets me know I am alive.

President Yeltsin: I know we are not upset at each other. We were just throwing some jabs. I'm still waiting for you to visit. Bill. I've said to you come to visit in May, then June, then July and then August. Now it's past October and you're still not there.

The President: You're right, Boris, I owe you a visit.

President Yeltsin: Last time I went to the U.S., Bill.

The President: Well, I better set it up. I'll look at the calendar and find a time that's good for you and me.

President Yeltsin: Call me and tell me the month and date. Unless I have another visit, I will do the maximum amount I can to do everything around your schedule. The main things I have are to go to China and India.

The President: Boris, we still have lots to do together.

President Yeltsin: You heard my statement on nuclear arms and on banning nuclear tests. I just signed a law on ratification of a new agreement on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Isn't that right, Minister Ivanov?

Minister Ivanov: You signed the documents that sent the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Duma for review.

President Yeltsin: Well, in any case, I still approved it.

The President: Maybe I can get the Congress to agree still. They kept the Treaty even after they rejected it. So perhaps, there is still a chance.

President Yeltsin: Or perhaps it's just the bureaucrats working and they haven't had a chance to send it back to you yet. I'm upset that you signed the law to change the ABM Treaty.

The President: I signed no such law. People in Congress don't like the ABM Treaty. If Congress had its way, they would undermine the treaty. I'm trying to uphold it. But we need a national missile defense to protect against rogue states. We can't have a national missile defense that works without changing the ABM Treaty. But I want to do this cooperatively. I want to persuade you that this is good for both of us. The primary purpose is to protect against terrorists and rogue states. It would be ineffective against Russia. The system we're looking at would operate against just 20 missiles. And, Boris I want to figure out how to share the benefits. For all I know, in twenty years terrorists could have access to nuclear weapons. I know your people don't agree with me, but I'm not trying to overthrow the ABM Treaty. We're still trying to discover what's technically possible with national missile defense, but there are people in America who want to throw over the ABM Treaty. I have made no decisions yet.

President Yeltsin: Bill, Bill. I got your note. It went into all these things in incredible detail. I read it and I was satisfied. I've not yet ceased to believe in you. I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The U.S. is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian.

The President: So you want Asia too?

President Yeltsin: Sure, sure. Bill. Eventually, we will have to agree on all of this.

The President: I don't think the Europeans would like this very much.

President Yeltsin: Not all. But I am a European. I live in Moscow. Moscow is in Europe and I like it. You can take all the other states and provide security to them. I will take Europe and provide them security. Well, not I. Russia will. We will end this conflict in Chechnya. I didn't say all the things I was thinking (in his speech). I listened to you carefully. I took a break just beforehand. Then I listened to you from beginning to end. I can even repeat what you said. Bill, I'm serious. Give Europe to Europe itself. Europe never felt as close to Russia as it does now. We have no difference of opinion with Europe, except maybe on Afganistan and Pakistan—which, by the way, is training Chechens. These are bandits, headhunters and killers. They're raping American women. They're cutting off ears and other parts of their hostages. We're fighting these types of terrorists. Let's not accuse Russia that we are too rough with these kinds of people. There are only two options: kill them or put them on trial. There's no third option, but we can put them on trial, and sentence them to 20-25 years. How many Americans, French, British and Germans have I freed that were there in Chechnya under the OSCE? The Chechen killers don't like the language of the OSCE. Here's my Minister of Defense. Stand up. We have not lost one soldier down there. Tell them.

Minister Sergeyev: We did not lose one soldier in Gudermes.

President Yeltsin: You see, Gudermes was cleansed without one military or civilian killed. We killed 200 bandits. The Minister of Defense is fulfilling the plan as I have said it should be. He's doing this thoughtfully. The soldiers only ask: don't stop the campaign. I promised these guys—I told every soldier, marshal and general—I will bring the campaign to fruition. We have these Chechens under lock and key. We have the key. They can't get in, they can't get out. Except maybe through Georgia; that's Shevardnadze's big mistake. And through Azerbaijan; that's Aliyev's mistake. They're shuttling in under the name of Islam. We're for freedom of religion, but not for fundamentalist Islam. These extremists are against you and against me.

We have the power in Russia to protect all of Europe, including those with missiles. We'll make all the appropriate treaties with China. We're not going to provide nuclear weapons to India. If we give them submarines, it will be only conventional diesel submarines, not nuclear. They would be from the 935 generation. You're going in that direction too. I'm thinking about your proposal—well, what your armed forces are doing—getting rid of fissile materials, particularly plutonium. We should just get rid of it. As soon as it's there, people start thinking of how to make bombs. Look, Russia has the power and intellect to know what to do with Europe. If Ivanov stays here, he will initial the CFE Treaty and I'll sign it under him. But under the OSCE Charter, there is one thing I cannot agree—which is that, based on humanitarian causes, one state can interfere in the affairs of another state.

National Security Advisor Berger: Mr. President, there's nothing in the Charter on one state's interference in the affairs of another.

Secretary Albright: That's right. What the Charter says is that affairs within a state will affect the other states around it.

President Yeltsin: Russia agrees to take out its property and equipment from Georgia in accordance with the new CFE Treaty. I have a statement on this. (looking toward Ivanov) Give it to me. I signed it today. Actually, it was late last night. I like to work late.

The President: Me, too.

President Yeltsin: I know you like to work late, Bill. When you call me, I calculate the time and I tell myself it's 4 a.m. and he's calling me. It lets you cleanse your brain and you feel great. I am not criticizing you, Bill. The President should be encouraged to work hard.

The President: So, we will get an agreement on CFE.

President Yeltsin: Yes.

The President: That's very important, seven years. We've worked on this for a long time.

President Yeltsin: Look, Ivanov has lost the statement in his own bag. He can't find the paper in his own bag. On the Charter, we have to look at it from the beginning. The Charter's ready. However, when states begin to tie in the Charter with the final declaration that has wording unacceptable to us, that's when we'll say no. And responsibility for this will fall fully on the West. (Looking at Ivanov) Give me this thing. It is written on paper. Bill. I am ready to sign it. It is a declaration about what we're talking about.

Secretary Albright: Some states want to record in the declaration your willingness to have an OSCE mission.

President Yeltsin: No, not at all. We will finish this with our own forces. Chechnya is the business of the internal affairs of Russia. We have to decide what to do. After we cleansed Gudermes, the muslim mufti came and asked for help, said I hate Basayev and he should be banned. These are the kinds of leaders we will put forward. I have thought this through carefully.

The President: On the Chechen problem. I have been less critical than others. Even today, I asked the others how they would deal with this if it were their country. This is a political issue. It may be the best thing for you within Russia to tell the Europeans to go to hell. But the best thing for your relations with Europe for the long term is to figure out the policy that you want to have with Europe and to keep that in mind as you deal with Chechnya.

President Yeltsin: (Gets up rapidly) Bill, the meeting is up. We said 20 minutes and it has now been more than 35 minutes.

The President: That's fine. We can say the meeting is over.

President Yeltsin: This meeting has gone on too long. You should come to visit, Bill.

The President: Who will win the election?

President Yeltsin: Putin, of course. He will be the successor to Boris Yeltsin. He's a democrat, and he knows the West.

The President: He's very smart.

President Yeltsin: He's tough. He has an internal ramrod. He's tough internally, and I will do everything possible for him to win—legally, of course. And he will win. You'll do business together. He will continue the Yeltsin line on democracy and economics and widen Russia's contacts. He has the energy and the brains to succeed. Thank you, Bill.

The President: Thank you, Boris. It was good to see you.

End of Conversation

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Introduction

Throughout human history, the pyramids of Egypt have fascinated scholars, archaeologists, and engineers alike. Traditionally thought of as tombs for pharaohs or religious monuments, alternative theories have speculated that the pyramids may have served advanced technological functions. One such hypothesis suggests that the pyramids acted as large-scale nitrogen fertilizer generators, designed to transform arid desert landscapes into fertile land.

This paper explores the feasibility of such a system by examining how a pyramid could integrate thermal convection, electrolysis, and a self-regulating breeder reactor to sustain nitrogen fixation processes. We will calculate the total power requirements and estimate the longevity of a breeder reactor housed within the structure.

The Pyramid’s Function as a Nitrogen Fertilizer Generator

The hypothesized system involves several key processes:

• Heat and Convection: A fissile material core located in the King's Chamber would generate heat, creating convection currents throughout the pyramid.
• Electrolysis and Hydrogen Production: Water sourced from subterranean channels would undergo electrolysis, splitting into hydrogen and oxygen due to electrical and thermal energy.
• Nitrogen Fixation: The generated hydrogen would react with atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) to produce ammonia (NH₃), a vital component of nitrogen-based fertilizers.

Power Requirements for Continuous Operation

To maintain the pyramid’s core at approximately 450°C, sufficient to drive nitrogen fixation, we estimate a steady-state power requirement of 23.9 gigawatts (GW).

Total Energy Required Over 10,000 Years

Given continuous operation over 10,000 years, the total energy demand can be calculated as:

[ \text{Total time} = 10,000 \times 365.25 \times 24 \times 3600 \text{ seconds} ]

[ \text{Total time} = 3.16 \times 10^{11} \text{ seconds} ]

[ \text{Total energy} = 23.9 \text{ GW} \times 3.16 \times 10^{11} \text{ s} ]

[ \approx 7.55 \times 10^{21} \text{ J} ]

Using a Self-Regulating Breeder Reactor

A breeder reactor could sustain this power requirement by generating more fissile material than it consumes. This reduces the need for frequent refueling.

Pebble Bed Reactor Design

• Self-Regulation: The reactor would use passive cooling and fuel expansion to self-regulate temperature.
• Breeding Process: The reactor would convert thorium-232 into uranium-233, creating a sustainable fuel cycle.

Fissile Material Requirements

Each kilogram of fissile material releases approximately 80 terajoules (TJ) (or 8 × 10^{13} J/kg). Given a 35% efficiency rate, the usable energy per kilogram is:

[ \text{Usable energy per kg} = 8 \times 10^{13} \times 0.35 = 2.8 \times 10^{13} \text{ J/kg} ]

[ \text{Fissile material required} = \frac{7.55 \times 10^{21}}{2.8 \times 10^{13}} ]

[ \approx 2.7 \times 10^{8} \text{ kg} = 270,000 \text{ tons} ]

Impact of a Breeding Ratio

If the reactor operates at a breeding ratio of 1.3, the total fissile material requirement would be reduced to:

[ \frac{270,000}{1.3} \approx 208,000 \text{ tons} ]

Reactor Size and Fuel Replenishment

Assuming a pebble bed reactor housed in the King’s Chamber (~318 cubic meters), the fuel cycle could be sustained with minimal refueling. With a breeding ratio of 1.3, the reactor could theoretically operate for 10,000 years with occasional replenishment of lost material due to inefficiencies.

Managing Scaling in the Steam Generation System

To ensure long-term efficiency, the water supply must be conditioned to prevent mineral scaling. Several strategies could be implemented:

1. Natural Water Softening Using Limestone

• Passing river water through limestone beds could help precipitate out calcium bicarbonate, reducing hardness before entering the steam system.

2. Chemical Additives for Scaling Prevention

• Chelating Agents: Compounds such as citric acid or tannins could be introduced to bind calcium and magnesium ions.
• Phosphate Compounds: These interfere with crystal formation, preventing scale adhesion.

3. Superheating and Pre-Evaporation

• Pre-Evaporation: Water exposed to extreme heat before entering the system would allow minerals to precipitate out before reaching the reactor.
• Superheated Steam: Ensuring only pure vapor enters the steam cycle would prevent mineral buildup.
• Electrolysis of Superheated Steam: Using multi-million volt electrostatic fields to ionize and separate minerals before they enter the steam system.

4. Electrostatic Control for Scaling Mitigation

• The pyramid’s hypothesized high-voltage environment could ionize water molecules, helping to prevent mineral deposits.

Conclusion

If the Great Pyramid were designed as a self-regulating nitrogen fertilizer generator, it would require a continuous 23.9 GW energy supply, which could be met by a breeder reactor housed within its core. With a breeding ratio of 1.3, an initial load of 208,000 tons of fissile material would sustain operations for 10,000 years with minimal refueling.

Additionally, advanced water treatment techniques, including limestone filtration, chemical additives, and electrostatic control, could ensure long-term efficiency by mitigating scaling issues.

While this remains a speculative hypothesis, it presents a fascinating intersection of energy production, water treatment, and environmental engineering as a means to terraform the ancient world.

@ c9badfea:610f861a

1. Install Loop Habit Tracker (it's free and open source)
2. Launch the app, tap ➡️
3. Tap ⁝, select Settings, scroll down and tap Customize Notifications
4. Enable Show Notifications
5. Return to the main screen
6. Tap + to add a habit
7. Choose Yes Or No for simple yes/no questions (e.g. Did you wake up early?)
8. Choose Measurable for questions where a quantity is expected (e.g. How many pages did you read?)
9. Assign a Name (e.g. Waking up early)
10. Enter a Question (e.g. Did you wake up early?)
11. Define the Frequency (e.g. Every Day)
12. Schedule a Reminder (e.g. 08:00 and Any Day Of The Week)
13. Include a Note if needed
14. Hit Save to create the habit
15. Start tracking your habits!

ℹ️ To categorize habits, use colors (e.g. blue for morning, orange for afternoon) or title prefixes (e.g. "Morning - Waking Up Early" and "Afternoon - Workout")

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Introduction

Since the mid-1990s, American media has fractured into two distinct and increasingly isolated ecosystems, each with its own Overton window of acceptable discourse. Once upon a time, Americans of different political leanings shared a common set of facts, even if they interpreted them differently. Today, they don’t even agree on what the facts are—or who has the authority to define them.

This divide stems from a deeper philosophical rift in how each side determines truth and legitimacy. The institutional left derives its authority from the expert class—academics, think tanks, scientific consensus, and mainstream media. The populist right, on the other hand, finds its authority in traditional belief systems—religion, historical precedent, and what many call "common sense." As these two moral and epistemological frameworks drift further apart, the result is not just political division but the emergence of two separate cultural nations sharing the same geographic space.

The Battle of Epistemologies: Experts vs. Tradition

The left-leaning camp sees scientific consensus, peer-reviewed research, and institutional expertise as the gold standard of truth. Universities, media organizations, and policy think tanks function as arbiters of knowledge, shaping the moral and political beliefs of those who trust them. From this perspective, governance should be guided by data-driven decisions, often favoring progressive change and bureaucratic administration over democratic populism.

The right-leaning camp is skeptical of these institutions, viewing them as ideologically captured and detached from real-world concerns. Instead, they look to religion, historical wisdom, and traditional social structures as more reliable sources of truth. To them, the "expert class" is not an impartial source of knowledge but a self-reinforcing elite that justifies its own power while dismissing dissenters as uneducated or morally deficient.

This fundamental disagreement over the source of moral and factual authority means that political debates today are rarely about policy alone. They are battles over legitimacy itself. One side sees resistance to climate policies as "anti-science," while the other sees aggressive climate mandates as an elite power grab. One side views traditional gender roles as oppressive, while the other sees rapid changes in gender norms as unnatural and destabilizing. Each group believes the other is not just wrong, but dangerous.

The Consequences of Non-Overlapping Overton Windows

As these worldviews diverge, so do their respective Overton windows—the range of ideas considered acceptable for public discourse. There is little overlap left. What is considered self-evident truth in one camp is often seen as heresy or misinformation in the other. The result is:

• Epistemic Closure – Each side has its own trusted media sources, and cross-exposure is minimal. The left dismisses right-wing media as conspiracy-driven, while the right views mainstream media as corrupt propaganda. Both believe the other is being systematically misled.
• Moralization of Politics – Since truth itself is contested, policy debates become existential battles. Disagreements over issues like immigration, education, or healthcare are no longer just about governance but about moral purity versus moral corruption.
• Cultural and Political Balkanization – Without a shared understanding of reality, compromise becomes impossible. Americans increasingly consume separate news, live in ideologically homogeneous communities, and even speak different political languages.

Conclusion: Two Nations on One Land

A country can survive disagreements, but can it survive when its people no longer share a common source of truth? Historically, such deep societal fractures have led to secession, authoritarianism, or violent conflict. The United States has managed to avoid these extremes so far, but the trendline is clear: as long as each camp continues reinforcing its own epistemology while rejecting the other's as illegitimate, the divide will only grow.

The question is no longer whether America is divided—it is whether these two cultures can continue to coexist under a single political system. Can anything bridge the gap between institutional authority and traditional wisdom? Or are we witnessing the slow but inevitable unraveling of a once-unified nation into two separate moral and epistemic realities?

@ bf47c19e:c3d2573b

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@ 291c75d9:37f1bfbe

In 1727, a 21-year-old Benjamin Franklin gathered a dozen men in Philadelphia for a bold experiment in intellectual and civic growth. Every Friday night, this group—known as the Junto, from the Spanish juntar ("to join")—met in a tavern or private home to discuss "Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy (science)." Far from a casual social club, the Junto was a secret society dedicated to mutual improvement, respectful discourse, and community betterment. What began as a small gathering of tradesmen and thinkers would leave a lasting mark on Franklin’s life and colonial America.

Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public, and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

- Benjamin Franklin

The Junto operated under a clear set of rules, detailed by Franklin in his Autobiography:

"The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discuss’d by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth [heatedness], all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties [monetary fines]."

These guidelines emphasized collaboration over competition. Members were expected to contribute questions or essays, sparking discussions that prioritized truth over ego. To keep debates civil, the group even imposed small fines for overly assertive or contradictory behavior—a practical nudge toward humility and open-mindedness. (Yes, I believe that is an ass tax!)

Rather than admitting new members, Franklin encouraged existing ones to form their own discussion groups. This created a decentralized network of groups ("private relays," as I think of them), echoing the structure of modern platforms like NOSTR—while preserving the Junto’s exclusivity and privacy.

From the beginning, they made it a rule to keep these meetings secret, without applications or admittance of new members. Instead, Franklin encouraged members to form their own groups—in a way acting as private relays of sorts. (I say "private" because they continued to keep the Junto secret, even with these new groups.)

Membership: A Diverse Circle United by Values

The Junto’s twelve founding members came from varied walks of life—printers, surveyors, shoemakers, and clerks—yet shared a commitment to self-improvement. Franklin, though the youngest (around 21 when the group formed), led the Junto with a vision of collective growth. To join, candidates faced a simple vetting process, answering four key questions:

1. Have you any particular disrespect for any present members? Answer: I have not.
2. Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer: I do.
3. Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer: No.
4. Do you love truth for truth’s sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself and communicate it to others? Answer: Yes.

These criteria reveal the Junto’s core values: respect, tolerance, and an unwavering pursuit of truth. They ensured that members brought not just intellect but also character to the table—placing dialogue as the priority.

One should also note the inspiration from the "Dry Club" of John Locke, William Popple, and Benjamin Furly in the 1690s. They too required affirmation to:

1. Whether he loves all men, of what profession or religion soever?
2. Whether he thinks no person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship?
3. Whether he loves and seeks truth for truth’s sake; and will endeavor impartially to find and receive it himself, and to communicate it to others?

And they agreed: "That no person or opinion be unhandsomely reflected on; but every member behave himself with all the temper, judgment, modesty, and discretion he is master of."

The Discussions: 24 Questions to Spark Insight

Franklin crafted a list of 24 questions to guide the Junto’s conversations, ranging from personal anecdotes to civic concerns. These prompts showcase the group’s intellectual breadth. Here are some of my favorites:

Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause?

Have you lately heard of any citizen’s thriving well, and by what means?

Do you know of any fellow citizen who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation?

Do you think of anything at present in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind, their country, friends, or themselves?

Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country, which it would be proper to move the legislature for an amendment?

Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?

(Read them all here.)

Note the keen attention to success and failure, and the reflection on both. Attention was often placed on the community and individual improvement beyond the members of the group. These questions encouraged members to share knowledge, reflect on virtues and vices, and propose solutions to real-world problems. The result? Discussions that didn’t just end at the tavern door but inspired tangible community improvements.

The Junto’s Legacy: America’s First Lending Library

One of the Junto’s most enduring contributions to Philadelphia—and indeed, to the American colonies—was the creation of the first lending library in 1731. Born from the group’s commitment to mutual improvement and knowledge-sharing, this library became a cornerstone of public education and intellectual life in the community.

The idea for the library emerged naturally from the Junto’s discussions. Members, who came from diverse backgrounds but shared a passion for learning, recognized that their own access to books was often limited and costly—and they referred to them often. To address this, they proposed pooling their personal collections to create a shared resource. This collaborative effort allowed them—and eventually the broader public—to access a wider range of books than any individual could afford alone.

The library operated on a simple yet revolutionary principle: knowledge should be available to all, regardless of wealth or status. By creating a lending system, the Junto democratized access to information, fostering a culture of self-education and curiosity. This was especially significant at a time when books were scarce and formal education was not universally accessible.

The success of the Junto’s library inspired similar initiatives across the colonies, laying the groundwork for the public library system we know today. It also reflected the group’s broader mission: to serve not just its members but the entire community. The library became a symbol of the Junto’s belief in the power of education to uplift individuals and society alike.

With roots extending back to the founding of the Society in 1743, the Library of the American Philosophical Society houses over thirteen million manuscripts, 350,000 volumes and bound periodicals, 250,000 images, and thousands of hours of audiotape. The Library’s holdings make it one of the premier institutions for documenting the history of the American Revolution and Founding, the study of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, the study of evolution and genetics, quantum mechanics, and the development of cultural anthropology, among others.

The American Philosophical Society Library continues today. I hope to visit it myself in the future.

Freedom, for Community

Comparing the Junto to Nostr shows how the tools of community and debate evolve with time. Both prove that people crave spaces to connect, share, and grow—whether in a colonial tavern or a digital relay. Yet their differences reveal trade-offs: the Junto’s structure offered depth and focus but capped its reach, while Nostr’s openness promises scale at the cost of order.

In a sense, Nostr feels like the Junto’s modern echo—faster, bigger, and unbound by gates or rules. Franklin might admire its ambition, even if he’d raise an eyebrow at its messiness. For us, the comparison underscores a timeless truth: no matter the medium, the drive to seek truth and build community endures.

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771–1790, pub. 1791)

http://www.benjamin-franklin-history.org/junto-club/

Benjamin Franklin, Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces, ed. Benjamin Vaughan (London: 1779), pp. 533–536.

"Rules of a Society" in The Remains of John Locke, Esq. (1714), p. 113

npubpro

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

Key Takeaways

Lyn Alden unpacks the complex interplay of global trade imbalances, the dollar’s entrenched reserve currency status, and America’s eroded industrial base, arguing that aggressive tariffs under Trump have backfired by hurting U.S. businesses without reversing decades of offshoring. She illustrates how China has rapidly ascended the value chain, dominating key industries and making it nearly impossible for the U.S. to build a trade coalition against them. Despite the U.S.’s massive debt and persistent global demand for dollars, cracks are forming in the system as nations explore alternative payment systems and neutral reserve assets like gold and Bitcoin. Lyn emphasizes that Bitcoin’s most effective path to integration is through grassroots and corporate adoption, not government-led initiatives, and warns that unless the U.S. urgently scales its energy and industrial capacity, it risks falling further behind China’s unmatched pace of growth and infrastructure dominance.

Best Quotes

• "The trade deficit is often described as us sending out pieces of paper and getting goods and services, which sounds like a really good deal."
• "It's better to correct these imbalances from a position of strength, not weakness."
• "All that debt creates inflexible demand for dollars. There’s literally way more demand than dollars in the system."
• "China became the largest auto exporter in the world in just four years."
• "Bitcoin isn’t changing to fit into the global financial system. The global financial system is changing to fit Bitcoin."
• "Individuals, small businesses, corporations—these are the real drivers of Bitcoin adoption. Not governments."

Conclusion

This episode offers a sobering look at America’s trade and currency dilemmas, with Lyn Alden explaining why quick policy fixes like tariffs can’t reverse decades of deindustrialization tied to the dollar’s reserve status. She highlights the rise of neutral reserve assets like gold and Bitcoin as important hedges, stressing that grassroots and corporate adoption will be more effective than government-led efforts. Lyn also warns that without a major push to expand energy production, the U.S. risks falling behind in an AI-driven, hardware-centric world, urging strategic humility and innovation to navigate the shifting global order.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:31 - Triffin's dilemma
8:10 - Debt leverage
11:04 - Fold & Bitkey
12:41 - Trump's goals and tariff policy
19:54 - Unchained
20:24 - China is not weak
30:07 - Energy
37:15 - AI/robots
41:11 - SBR
48:47 - Bitcoin credit products
52:40 - Eventful week for bitcoin

Transcript

(00:00) They ramped up tariffs super high, super quickly. In many cases, were so high that they hurt us as much as some of our trade adversaries. China has ramped up to like unfathomable degrees. Nuclear, solar, pretty much everything that they can throw money at they're building. The trade is often described as us sending out pieces of paper and getting goods and services, which sounds like a really good deal.
(00:19) They take those slips of paper and then they buy our stocks. They buy our corporate bonds and government bonds. And so they end up owning a larger and larger share of corporate America. got the headphone hair. I'm all out of whack, Lynn. It's been a long week here in Austin. Yeah, I can imagine. It's been a long time since we've talked on the show. It's been two years.
(00:41) I was checking, which is a astonishing to me. But no better time than now. Uh I think quite literally based off of all the conversations we've had uh over the years. I mean, your famous saying, nothing stops this train. I think we're coming to a juncture where that's becoming abundantly clear. and you wrote uh a newsletter earlier this week, I believe you sent it out Sunday, that basically highlighted the crux of the problem, which is the dollar reserve status and the almost impossible task that Trump would like to accomplish, but
(01:21) likely isn't the case, which is sort of solving Triffin's dilemma of reshoring manufacturing while keeping US dollar dominance. So I think diving into this from first principles would be great. Sure. Yeah. And that's that's the um I can imagine the administration's challenge of trying to communicate this because uh the intricacies of how trade deficits and the reserve currency kind of pair together is very wonkish.
(01:46) It it kind of has this like academic quality to it that doesn't go over well uh in kind of political oriented speeches. Um like I would I would be terrible at a political rally for example when I try to explain any of this. Um and so we kind of have this situation where um and this was outlined back during the Breton Wood system by Triffin as you mentioned uh which is that having the reserve currency does come with a bunch of benefits um you know historically called a extraordin uh exorbitant privilege um but then it has certain costs to
(02:15) maintain it and those costs can vary a bit depending on how the system structure. So for example back in the Bretton Woods era the cost was that we kept draining our gold reserves. uh we basically had to kind of keep paying out our go gold gold reserves to maintain that part of the system and in the current formation uh instead we kind of pay for it with our industrial base.
(02:36) We keep kind of sending out little parts of our industrial base over time to maintain the the global reserve currency status. And there's a few reasons for that. One is that um because unlike every other fiat currency, the dollar has all these extra demands for it by countries all around the world. um all these different purposes.
(02:55) um there's this extra demand for dollars which sounds good on the surface and as for Americans for example we have tons of import power when we go on vacations to the rest of the world it's you know we have pretty strong purchasing power compared to when they come to the US um these things seem good on the surface but it also means that it's pretty expensive to manufacture lower margin things here at home uh and so we have this kind of situation where our imports are very strong our exports uh especially lower margin stuff is less uh
(03:22) competitive whereas we can still be competitive competitive on really high margin stuff, you know, technology, finance, healthcare, that kind of thing. Um, and then the other aspect is that even if you could somehow solve that, there's the more fundamental problem, which is that the whole world needs dollars uh for the you know, global reserve currency status to use it for international contract pricing, crossber financing, one side of every trade pair that they do, all these different purposes as a reserve asset. Um uh and
(03:51) when you step back and say, "Well, how do they get all those dollars if they're all using dollars? How did all those dollars get out there?" And the answer is trade deficits. Um basically that overvalued aspect forces open the US trade deficit. And every year we send out hundreds of billions or sometimes a trillion dollars in net outflows.
(04:10) And over years and decades, these have accumulated out there. And so, uh, kind of the way it works is that if you want to fix the trade deficit, which I've been I've been writing about since 2019, I think that's a I think that's a valid mandate to do. Um, unfortunately does come with trade-offs.
(04:26) Uh, some of the some of the benefits that that you know that we enjoy at the cost of the trade deficit. Um, if you do want to kind of fix that imbalance, it comes up, you know, with with basically giving away at least some of those benefits and prioritizing that that industrial base a bit more. And one of the dynamics that you highlighted in your newsletter, which makes sense, but wasn't very clear to me before, is that via these deficits, we flood international markets with dollars because we're sending parts of our industrial base over there. But then
(05:00) it's like cyclical. They take those dollars and then reinvest them in US financial assets. So it has this sort of flow where it goes out but then it comes back in into the financialized economy via equities and real estate and other such assets and that is good for asset owners here in the United States.
(05:19) But again I think that's is part of the bag of mandate is that sort of cycle has led to this large wealth gap in the United States that they're trying to fix. Yeah. Exactly. Um and so basically the opposite side of a current account deficit which is basically so the trade deficit plus things like interest and dividends.
(05:39) Um so we run a structural current account deficit and the opposite side of that is a capital account surplus. Um which is that funds flow in the rest of the world and buy our financial assets. Uh and so it's the the trade deficit is often described as us sending out pieces of paper and getting goods and services which sounds like a really good deal.
(05:57) Um but then the extra step of that that you mentioned is that they take those slips of paper or really those electronic digits that they have and then they buy our stocks, they buy our real estate, they buy our private equity, they they buy our corporate bonds and government bonds and so they end up owning a larger and larger share of corporate America as part of their kind of accumulated uh trade surpluses uh and reserve assets and uh international private assets.
(06:22) Um, and the kind of the consequence of this, if you kind of like view the foreign sector as an intermediary, we're basically constantly kind of taking economic vibrancy out of, you know, Michigan and Ohio and, uh, you know, rural Pennsylvania where the steel m

@ 87fedb9f:0da83419

https://www.thrivingnow.center/t/1487/5

We covered…

1. Differentiation: Claiming Our Energetic Space

Differentiation isn’t just about closeness or distance—it’s about clearly knowing where we end and others begin. We can say, “They’re tired and grumpy right now,” without giving up our cheerful mood from a peaceful morning meditation. We can adapt without losing ourselves, choosing consciously rather than reacting habitually.

2. Energetic Boundaries: Maintaining Our Own Weather

Many of us with heightened empathy tend to embody another person’s emotions, making their grumpiness our own. Practicing differentiation helps us notice their state without internalizing it, allowing us to maintain our own emotional clarity and calm, even when someone else brings stormy energy into the room.

3. Growing Emotional Muscles Through Discomfort

Differentiation is challenging because it involves tolerating discomfort. For example, preparing a meal lovingly and then watching someone else be disappointed requires emotional resilience. Using EFT tapping, we actively address these uncomfortable moments, building inner strength and clarity to stay true to ourselves even under pressure.

4. Self-Validation: Anchoring Our Integrity

Instead of relying on external validation, we ask ourselves: “Did I act with integrity?” If we’ve lovingly prepared a meal or helped in a situation, we can acknowledge our effort regardless of others’ reactions. By validating ourselves internally, we nurture our sense of self-worth and emotional freedom.

5. Allowing Others Their Own Discomfort

We often feel compelled to alleviate others’ discomfort immediately—yet it’s not always helpful. For instance, when someone is hungover or grumpy, we don’t need to energetically jump in to fix their state. Allowing people to experience their discomfort without interference respects their personal growth and conserves our emotional resources.

6. From Survival Obligations to Conscious Responsiveness

As children, enmeshment—absorbing others’ emotional states—was crucial for survival. As adults, we can shift to a posture of response-ability, being willing and able to respond without obligation. Recognizing we no longer need survival reactions for non-life-threatening situations helps us thrive rather than merely survive emotionally.

7. Honoring the Essential Struggle

Just like a butterfly must struggle out of its chrysalis to survive, allowing someone to face their own challenges supports genuine growth. Even if our heart urges us to intervene, differentiation guides us to remain compassionately present without interfering with their developmental process.

8. Turning Down the Empathy Volume

Many of us developed heightened empathy to monitor emotional threats in childhood. We can now gently turn down this sensitivity, trusting that we’ll notice genuine needs without overreacting to every emotional ripple around us. We use EFT tapping and mindful intentions to recalibrate this empathic awareness.

9. Discernment Check-In: “How Much Is Mine?”

We practice asking ourselves: “How much of this discomfort belongs to me, and how much is theirs?” If we’re triggered by someone’s frustration or disappointment, checking in helps us clarify our own feelings from theirs. For example, recognizing that a child’s intense disappointment resonates with our own unresolved feelings helps us respond more skillfully.

10. Permission to Pause and Choose

When faced with emotional demands—especially from family or intense group dynamics—we give ourselves permission to pause and reflect. We ask, “Is this really my circus, my monkey?” and decide what genuinely feels right. For instance, deciding whether to answer a distressed late-night call from a family member becomes a conscious choice rather than an automatic obligation.

11. Authentic Connections in the “We Space”

Differentiation doesn’t mean isolation—it creates a “we space” where authentic relationships thrive. Being differentiated means we are fully ourselves within relationships, clearly communicating our needs and limits, and respecting those of others. This mutual clarity fosters deeper, healthier connections built on emotional freedom and genuine understanding.

@ c48e29f0:26e14c11

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE AND UNITED STATES DIGITAL ASSET STOCKPILE EXECUTIVE ORDER March 6, 2025

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Background.

Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin protocol permanently caps the total supply of bitcoin (BTC) at 21 million coins, and has never been hacked. As a result of its scarcity and security, Bitcoin is often referred to as “digital gold”. Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve. The United States Government currently holds a significant amount of BTC, but has not implemented a policy to maximize BTC’s strategic position as a unique store of value in the global financial system. Just as it is in our country’s interest to thoughtfully manage national ownership and control of any other resource, our Nation must harness, not limit, the power of digital assets for our prosperity.

Sec. 2. Policy.

It is the policy of the United States to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. It is further the policy of the United States to establish a United States Digital Asset Stockpile that can serve as a secure account for orderly and strategic management of the United States’ other digital asset holdings.

Sec. 3. Creation and Administration of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile.

(a) The Secretary of the Treasury shall establish an office to administer and maintain control of custodial accounts collectively known as the “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” capitalized with all BTC held by the Department of the Treasury that was finally forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings or in satisfaction of any civil money penalty imposed by any executive department or agency (agency) and that is not needed to satisfy requirements under 31 U.S.C. 9705 or released pursuant to subsection (d) of this section (Government BTC). Within 30 days of the date of this order, each agency shall review its authorities to transfer any Government BTC held by it to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and shall submit a report reflecting the result of that review to the Secretary of the Treasury. Government BTC deposited into the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve shall not be sold and shall be maintained as reserve assets of the United States utilized to meet governmental objectives in accordance with applicable law.

(b) The Secretary of the Treasury shall establish an office to administer and maintain control of custodial accounts collectively known as the “United States Digital Asset Stockpile,” capitalized with all digital assets owned by the Department of the Treasury, other than BTC, that were finally forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings and that are not needed to satisfy requirements under 31 U.S.C. 9705 or released pursuant to subsection (d) of this section (Stockpile Assets). Within 30 days of the date of this order, each agency shall review its authorities to transfer any Stockpile Assets held by it to the United States Digital Asset Stockpile and shall submit a report reflecting the result of that review to the Secretary of the Treasury. The Secretary of the Treasury shall determine strategies for responsible stewardship of the United States Digital Asset Stockpile in accordance with applicable law.

(c) The Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Commerce shall develop strategies for acquiring additional Government BTC provided that such strategies are budget neutral and do not impose incremental costs on United States taxpayers. However, the United States Government shall not acquire additional Stockpile Assets other than in connection with criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings or in satisfaction of any civil money penalty imposed by any agency without further executive or legislative action.

(d) “Government Digital Assets” means all Government BTC and all Stockpile Assets. The head of each agency shall not sell or otherwise dispose of any Government Digital Assets, except in connection with the Secretary of the Treasury’s exercise of his lawful authority and responsible stewardship of the United States Digital Asset Stockpile pursuant to subsection (b) of this section, or pursuant to an order from a court of competent jurisdiction, as required by law, or in cases where the Attorney General or other relevant agency head determines that the Government Digital Assets (or the proceeds from the sale or disposition thereof) can and should: (i) be returned to identifiable and verifiable victims of crime; (ii) be used for law enforcement operations;
(iii) be equitably shared with State and local law enforcement partners; or (iv) be released to satisfy requirements under 31 U.S.C. 9705, 28 U.S.C. 524(c), 18 U.S.C. 981, or 21 U.S.C. 881.

(e) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury shall deliver an evaluation of the legal and investment considerations for establishing and managing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile going forward, including the accounts in which the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile should be located and the need for any legislation to operationalize any aspect of this order or the proper management and administration of such accounts.

Sec. 4. Accounting.

Within 30 days of the date of this order, the head of each agency shall provide the Secretary of the Treasury and the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets with a full accounting of all Government Digital Assets in such agency’s possession, including any information regarding the custodial accounts in which such Government Digital Assets are currently held that would be necessary to facilitate a transfer of the Government Digital Assets to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve or the United States Digital Asset Stockpile. If such agency holds no Government Digital Assets, such agency shall confirm such fact to the Secretary of the Treasury and the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets within 30 days of the date of this order.

Sec. 5. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE, March 6, 2025

@ 8bad92c3:ca714aa5

I've pulled together the most compelling forward-looking predictions from our recent podcast conversations. These insights highlight where our guests see opportunities and challenges in the Bitcoin ecosystem, energy markets, and beyond.

AI Agents Will Drive Bitcoin Adoption More Than Human Users by 2030 - Andrew Myers

Andrew Myers described how the artificial intelligence revolution will fundamentally transform Bitcoin usage patterns over the next few years. He highlighted Paul's tweet that suggested machine-to-machine transactions using Bitcoin will soon dominate the network.

"We talk about Bitcoin being used as a medium of exchange. We're going to find that the machines are doing most of that exchange at some point relatively soon," Andrew explained. "The agents using Bitcoin to complete tasks using something like L4 or two protocol is going to far surpass the amount of transactions that humans are doing to do things in their everyday lives."

Andrew believes AI agents will naturally gravitate toward Bitcoin because it's more energy-efficient from a computational perspective than traditional payment rails. As AI systems optimize for energy efficiency, Bitcoin's direct settlement mechanism becomes increasingly attractive compared to legacy financial infrastructure. This shift could accelerate Bitcoin adoption in ways we haven't fully anticipated, creating a new category of machine-driven demand.

CalPERS Funding Status Will Drop Below 70% by June 2025 - Dom Bei

Dom Bei, who's running for the Board of Trustees at CalPERS, made a concerning prediction about America's largest public pension fund. Currently sitting at approximately 75% funded, Dom warned the situation could deteriorate further after recent tariff-related markdowns.

"They say that the fund had a $26 billion markdown, which if my math is correct, would bring the fund closer towards the 70% funded number," Dom explained. He noted the fund needs to recover these losses before the June 30, 2025 reporting deadline, or face serious consequences.

If CalPERS funding status drops below 70%, Dom predicts a familiar pattern will unfold: municipalities and taxpayers will face higher contribution rates to cover the shortfall, diverting money from essential services like parks, schools, and public safety. This would likely trigger another round of pension reform debates targeting worker benefits, despite similar reforms in 2013 failing to address the fundamental performance issues plaguing the fund.

Energy Companies Will Incorporate Bitcoin Into Settlements Within 3 Years - Andrew Myers

Andrew Myers outlined a compelling vision for Bitcoin's integration into energy markets, predicting that by 2027 (block 1,050,000), we'll see widespread adoption of Bitcoin for energy transactions and settlements. He described his company's mission as enabling "every electric power company to use bitcoin by block 1,050,000."

"Our mantra for Bitcoin is fast, accurate, transparent energy transactions," Andrew explained. He highlighted several inefficiencies in current energy markets that Bitcoin could solve, including: Information asymmetry between energy buyers and sellers. Slow 30-day billing cycles creating unnecessary credit risk
Capital locked up in prepayments, deposits, and collateral requirements.

Andrew revealed that his team has already prototyped a Bitcoin collateral product and that a major energy company in Texas is currently building similar functionality. He predicts these early implementations will demonstrate Bitcoin's potential to unlock billions in working capital across the energy sector through faster settlement and reduced collateral requirements.

Most significantly, Andrew mentioned early discussions with independent system operators about modifying power market protocols to incorporate Bitcoin as an alternative settlement mechanism alongside the US dollar.

---

Blockspace conducts cutting-edge proprietary research for investors.

Bitcoin Miners Face Hard Choices as AI Data Centers Pick Prime Locations

Bitcoin miners hoping to cash in on the AI boom by selling their facilities to hyperscalers are finding fewer opportunities than expected. With mining economics dimming and specific buyer requirements limiting potential deals, the industry faces significant challenges.

Christian Lopez, Head of Blockchain and Digital Assets at Cohen and Company Capital Markets, notes a "glut of bitcoin mines" currently on the market. While miners control substantial power resources, hyperscalers typically demand facilities with at least 150-200 megawatts capacity within 100 miles of major cities—criteria most mining operations don't meet.

An estimated 1-1.5 gigawatts of mining capacity is available for acquisition, creating downward pressure on power prices. This oversupply stems from both deteriorating mining economics and overoptimistic AI-related expectations. The valuation gap remains a persistent obstacle: "Buyers face the critical 'buy versus build' question," Lopez explains. While buyers typically value sites at $300,000-$500,000 per megawatt plus a modest premium, sellers often seek $1.5-$2 million per megawatt based on public company valuations.

Adding to these challenges, retrofitting mining sites for high-performance computing often requires completely reconstructing the power infrastructure rather than leveraging existing setups. Despite current difficulties, industry sentiment remains cautiously optimistic, with many experts predicting Bitcoin could reach $125,000-$200,000 by late 2025.

Link to Full Article

Subscribe to them here (seriously, you should): https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com/

---

Ten31, the largest bitcoin-focused investor, has deployed $150M across 30+ companies through three funds. I am a Managing Partner at Ten31 and am very proud of the work we are doing. Learn more at ten31.vc/invest.

---

Get this newsletter sent to your inbox daily: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/

Subscribe to our YouTube channels and follow us on Nostr and X:

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@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

The financial system has long relied on traditional banking methods, but emerging technologies like Bitcoin and Nostr are paving the way for a new era of financial interactions.

Secure Savings with Bitcoin:

Bitcoin wallets can act as secure savings accounts, offering users control and ownership over their funds without relying on third parties.

Instant Settlements with the Lightning Network:

The Lightning Network can replace traditional settlement systems, such as ACH or wire transfers, by enabling instant, low-cost transactions.

Face-to-Face Transactions with Ecash:

Ecash could offer a fee-free option for smaller, everyday transactions, complementing the Lightning Network for larger payments.

Automated Billing with Nostr Wallet Connect:

Nostr Wallet Connect could revolutionize automated billing, allowing users to set payment limits and offering more control over subscriptions and recurring expenses.

Conclusion:

Combining Bitcoin and Nostr technologies could create a more efficient, user-centric financial system that empowers individuals and businesses alike.

@ 611021ea:089a7d0f

Imagine a world where your favorite health and fitness apps—diet trackers, meditation tools, cardio and strength training platforms, even therapy apps—can all work together seamlessly. Not because they're owned by the same company, but because they speak a common, open language. That's the future NIP-101h is building on Nostr.

A Modular, Privacy-First Health Data Framework

NIP-101h defines a modular, privacy-first framework for sharing granular health and fitness metrics on the decentralized Nostr protocol. The core idea is simple but powerful: every health metric (weight, steps, calories, mood, and so on) gets its own unique Nostr event kind. Apps can implement only the metrics they care about, and users can choose exactly what to share, with whom, and how.

This modular approach means true interoperability. A meditation app can log mindfulness sessions, a running app can record your daily mileage, and a diet tracker can keep tabs on your nutrition—all using the same underlying standard. Each app remains independent, but your data becomes portable, composable, and, most importantly, under your control.

Why NIP-101h Matters

Interoperability

Today's health and fitness apps are walled gardens. Data is locked away in proprietary formats, making it hard to move, analyze, or combine. NIP-101h breaks down these barriers by providing a common, open standard for health metrics on Nostr. Apps can collaborate, users can migrate, and new services can emerge—without permission or lock-in.

User Control & Privacy

Health data is deeply personal. That's why NIP-101h is privacy-first: all metric values are encrypted by default using NIP-44, unless the user explicitly opts out. You decide what's public, what's private, and who gets access. Even if you want to keep everything local, that's supported too.

Extensibility

The world of health and fitness is always evolving. NIP-101h is designed to grow with it. New metrics can be added at any time via the

@ c8383d81:f9139549

Project is still in early stages but now it is split into 2 different domain entities. 
Everything is opened sourced under one github https://github.com/Nsite-Info

So what’s new ?

Project #1 https://Nsite.info

A basic website with main info regarding what an Nsite is how it works and a list of tools and repo’s you can use to start building and debugging.
99% Finished, needs some extra translations and the Nsite Debugger can use a small upgrade.



Project #2 https://Nsite.cloud

This project isn’t finished, it currently is at a 40% finished stage. This contains the Nsite Gateway for all sites (still a work in progress) and the final stage the Nsite editor & template deployment.

If you are interested in Nsite’s join: 

https://chachi.chat/groups.hzrd149.com/e23891

Big thanks to nostr:npub1elta7cneng3w8p9y4dw633qzdjr4kyvaparuyuttyrx6e8xp7xnq32cume nostr:npub1ye5ptcxfyyxl5vjvdjar2ua3f0hynkjzpx552mu5snj3qmx5pzjscpknpr nostr:npub1klr0dy2ul2dx9llk58czvpx73rprcmrvd5dc7ck8esg8f8es06qs427gxc for all the tooling & code.

!(image)[https://i.nostr.build/AkUvk7R2h9cVEMLB.png]

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

Election Authority (EA) Platform

1.1 EA Administration Interface (Web-Based)

• Purpose: Gives authorized personnel (e.g., election officials) a user-friendly way to administer the election.
• Key Tasks:
• Voter Registration Oversight: Mark which voters have proven their identity (via in-person KYC or some legal process).
• Blind Signature Issuance: Approve or deny blind signature requests from registered voters (each corresponding to one ephemeral key).
• Tracking Voter Slots: Keep a minimal registry of who is allowed one ephemeral key signature, and mark it “used” once a signature is issued.
• Election Configuration: Set start/end times, provide encryption parameters (public keys), manage threshold cryptography setup.
• Monitor Tallying: After the election, collaborate with trustees to decrypt final results and release them.

1.2 EA Backend Services

• Blind Signature Service:
• An API endpoint or internal module that receives a blinded ephemeral key from a voter, checks if they are authorized (one signature per voter), and returns the blind-signed result.

• Typically requires secure storage of the EA’s blind signing private key.

• Voter Roll Database:

• Stores minimal info: “Voter #12345 is authorized to request one ephemeral key signature,” plus status flags.

• Does not store ephemeral keys themselves (to preserve anonymity).

• (Optional) Mix-Net or Homomorphic Tally Service:

• Coordinates with trustees for threshold decryption or re-encryption.
• Alternatively, a separate “Tally Authority” service can handle this.

---

2. Auditor Interface

2.1 Auditor Web-Based Portal

• Purpose: Allows independent auditors (or the public) to:
• Fetch All Ballots from the relays (or from an aggregator).
• Verify Proofs: Check each ballot’s signature, blind signature from the EA, OTS proof, zero-knowledge proofs, etc.
• Check Double-Usage: Confirm that each ephemeral key is used only once (or final re-vote is the only valid instance).

• Observe Tally Process: Possibly see partial decryptions or shuffle steps, verify the final result matches the posted ballots.

• Key Tasks:

• Provide a dashboard showing the election’s real-time status or final results, after cryptographic verification.
• Offer open data downloads so third parties can run independent checks.

2.2 (Optional) Trustee Dashboard

• If the election uses threshold cryptography (multiple parties must decrypt), each trustee (candidate rep, official, etc.) might have an interface for:
• Uploading partial decryption shares or re-encryption proofs.
• Checking that other trustees did their steps correctly (zero-knowledge proofs for correct shuffling, etc.).

---

3. Voter Application

3.1 Voter Client (Mobile App or Web Interface)

• Purpose: The main tool voters use to participate—before, during, and after the election.

• Functionalities:

• Registration Linking:
  • Voter goes in-person to an election office or uses an online KYC process.
  • Voter obtains or confirms their long-term (“KYC-bound”) key. The client can store it securely (or the voter just logs in to a “voter account”).
• Ephemeral Key Generation:
  • Create an ephemeral key pair ((nsec_e, npub_e)) locally.
  • Blind (\npub_e) and send it to the EA for signing.
  • Unblind the returned signature.
  • Store (\npub_e) + EA’s signature for use during voting.
• Ballot Composition:
  • Display candidates/offices to the voter.
  • Let them select choices.
  • Possibly generate zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) behind the scenes to confirm “exactly one choice per race.”
• Encryption & OTS Timestamp:
  • Encrypt the ballot under the election’s public (threshold) key or produce a format suitable for a mix-net.
  • Obtain an OpenTimestamps proof for the ballot’s hash.
• Publish Ballot:
  • Sign the entire “timestamped ballot” with the ephemeral key.
  • Include the EA’s blind signature on (\npub_e).
  • Post to the Nostr relays (or any chosen decentralized channel).
• Re-Voting:
  • If the user needs to change their vote, the client repeats the encryption + OTS step, publishes a new ballot with a strictly later OTS anchor.
• Verification:
  • After the election, the voter can check that their final ballot is present in the tally set.

3.2 Local Storage / Security

• The app must securely store:
• Ephemeral private key ((nsec_e)) until voting is complete.
• Potential backup/recovery mechanism if the phone is lost.
• Blind signature from the EA on (\npub_e).
• Potentially uses hardware security modules (HSM) or secure enclaves on the device.

---

4. Nostr Relays (or Equivalent Decentralized Layer)

• Purpose: Store and replicate voter-submitted ballots (events).
• Key Properties:
• Redundancy: Voters can post to multiple relays to mitigate censorship or downtime.
• Public Accessibility: Auditors, the EA, and the public can fetch all events to verify or tally.
• Event Filtering: By design, watchers can filter events with certain tags, e.g. “election: 2025 County Race,” ensuring they gather all ballots.

---

5. Threshold Cryptography Setup

5.1 Multi-Seg (Multi-Party) Key Generation

• Participants: Possibly the EA + major candidates + accredited observers.
• Process: A Distributed Key Generation (DKG) protocol that yields a single public encryption key.
• Private Key Shares: Each trustee holds a piece of the decryption key; no single party can decrypt alone.

5.2 Decryption / Tally Mechanism

• Homomorphic Approach:
• Ballots are additively encrypted.
• Summation of ciphertexts is done publicly.
• Trustees provide partial decryptions for the final sum.
• Mix-Net Approach:
• Ballots are collected.
• Multiple servers shuffle and re-encrypt them (each trustee verifies correctness).
• Final set is decrypted, but the link to each ephemeral key is lost.

5.3 Trustee Interfaces

• Separate or integrated into the auditor interface—each trustee logs in and provides their partial key share for decrypting the final result.
• Possibly combined with ZK proofs to confirm correct partial decryption or shuffling.

---

6. OpenTimestamps (OTS) or External Time Anchor

6.1 Aggregator Service

• Purpose: Receives a hash from the voter’s app, anchors it into a blockchain or alternative time-stamping system.
• Result: Returns a proof object that can later be used by any auditor to confirm the time/block height at which the hash was included.

6.2 Verifier Interface

• Could be part of the auditor tool or the voter client.
• Checks that each ballot’s OTS proof is valid and references a block/time prior to the election’s closing.

---

7. Registration Process (In-Person or Hybrid)

1. Voter presents ID physically at a polling station or a designated office (or an online KYC approach, if legally allowed).
2. EA official:
3. Confirms identity.
4. Links the voter to a “voter record” (Voter #12345).
5. Authorizes them for “1 ephemeral key blind-sign.”
6. Voter obtains or logs into the voter client:
7. The app or website might show “You are now cleared to request a blind signature from the EA.”
8. Voter later (or immediately) generates the ephemeral key and requests the blind signature.

---

8. Putting It All Together (High-Level Flow)

1. Key Setup
2. The EA + trustees run a DKG to produce the election public key.
3. Voter Registration
4. Voter is validated (ID check).
5. Marked as eligible in the EA database.
6. Blind-Signed Ephemeral Key
7. Voter’s client generates a key, blinds (\npub_e), obtains EA’s signature, unblinds.
8. Voting
9. Voter composes ballot, encrypts with the election public key.
10. Gets OTS proof for the ballot hash.
11. Voter’s ephemeral key signs the entire package (including EA’s signature on (\npub_e)).
12. Publishes to Nostr.
13. Re-Voting (Optional)
14. Same ephemeral key, new OTS timestamp.
15. Final ballot is whichever has the latest valid timestamp before closing.
16. Close of Election & Tally
17. EA announces closing.
18. Tally software (admin + auditors) collects ballots from Nostr, discards invalid duplicates.
19. Threshold decryption or mix-net to reveal final counts.
20. Publish final results and let auditors verify everything.

---

9. Summary of Major Components

Below is a succinct list:

1. EA Admin Platform
2. Web UI for officials (registration, blind signature issuing, final tally management).
3. Backend DB for voter records & authorized ephemeral keys.
4. Auditor/Trustee Platforms
5. Web interface for verifying ballots, partial decryption, and final results.
6. Voter Application (Mobile / Web)
7. Generating ephemeral keys, getting blind-signed, casting encrypted ballots, re-voting, verifying included ballots.
8. Nostr Relays (Decentralized Storage)
9. Where ballots (events) are published, replicated, and fetched for final tally.
10. Threshold Cryptography System
11. Multi-party DKG for the election key.
12. Protocols or services for partial decryption, mix-net, or homomorphic summation.
13. OpenTimestamps Aggregator
14. Service that returns a blockchain-anchored timestamp proof for each ballot’s hash.

Additional Implementation Considerations

• Security Hardening:
• Using hardware security modules (HSM) for the EA’s blind-signing key, for trustee shares, etc.
• Scalability:
• Handling large numbers of concurrent voters, large data flows to relays.
• User Experience:
• Minimizing cryptographic complexity for non-technical voters.
• Legal and Procedural:
• Compliance with local laws for in-person ID checks, mandatory paper backups (if any), etc.

---

Final Note

While each functional block can be designed and deployed independently (e.g., multiple aggregator services, multiple relays, separate tally servers), the key to a successful system is interoperability and careful orchestration of these components—ensuring strong security, a straightforward voter experience, and transparent auditing.

nostr:naddr1qqxnzde5xq6nzv348yunvv35qy28wue69uhnzv3h9cczuvpwxyargwpk8yhsygxpax4n544z4dk2f04lgn4xfvha5s9vvvg73p46s66x2gtfedttgvpsgqqqw4rs0rcnsu

@ c1e9ab3a:9cb56b43

1. Introduction

Modern election systems must balance privacy (no one sees how individuals vote) with public verifiability (everyone can confirm the correctness of the tally). Achieving this in a decentralized, tamper-resistant manner remains a challenge. Nostr (a lightweight protocol for censorship-resistant communication) offers a promising platform for distributing and archiving election data (ballots) without relying on a single central server.

This paper presents a design where:

1. Each voter generates a new ephemeral Nostr keypair for an election.
2. The election authority (EA) blind-signs this ephemeral public key (npub) to prove the voter is authorized, without revealing which voter owns which ephemeral key.
3. Voters cast encrypted ballots to Nostr relays, each carrying an OpenTimestamps proof to confirm the ballot’s time anchor.
4. Re-voting is allowed: a voter can replace a previously cast ballot by publishing a new ballot with a newer timestamp.
5. Only the latest valid ballot (per ephemeral key) is counted.

We combine well-known cryptographic primitives—blind signatures, homomorphic or mix-net encryption, threshold key management, and time anchoring—into an end-to-end system that preserves anonymity, assures correctness, and prevents double-voting.

---

2. Roles and Components

2.1 Voters

• Long-Term (“KYC-bound”) Key: Each voter has some identity-verified Nostr public key used only for official communication with the EA (not for voting).
• Ephemeral Voting Key: For each election, the voter locally generates a new Nostr keypair ((nsec_e, npub_e)).
• This is the “one-time” identity used to sign ballots.
• The EA never learns the real identity behind (\npub_e) because of blinding.

2.2 Election Authority (EA)

• Maintains the official voter registry: who is entitled to vote.
• Blind-Signs each valid voter’s ephemeral public key to authorize exactly one ephemeral key per voter.
• Publishes a minimal voter roll: e.g., “Voter #12345 has been issued a valid ephemeral key,” without revealing which ephemeral key.

2.3 Nostr Relays

• Decentralized servers that store and forward events.
• Voters post their ballots to relays, which replicate them.
• No single relay is critical; the same ballot can be posted to multiple relays for redundancy.

2.4 Cryptographic Framework

1. Blind Signatures: The EA signs a blinded version of (\npub_e).
2. Homomorphic or Mix-Net Encryption: Ensures the content of each ballot remains private; only aggregate results or a shuffled set are ever decrypted.
3. Threshold / General Access Structure: Multiple trustees (EA plus candidate representatives, for example) must collaborate to produce a final decryption.
4. OpenTimestamps (OTS): Attaches a verifiable timestamp proof to each ballot, anchoring it to a blockchain or other tamper-resistant time reference.

---

3. Protocol Lifecycle

This section walks through voter registration, ephemeral key authorization, casting (and re-casting) ballots, and finally the tally.

3.1 Registration & Minimal Voter Roll

1. Legal/KYC Verification
2. Each real-world voter proves their identity to the EA (per legal procedures).

3. The EA records that the voter is eligible to cast one ballot, referencing their long-term identity key ((\npub_{\mathrm{KYC}})).

4. Issue Authorization “Slot”

5. The EA’s voter roll notes “this person can receive exactly one blind signature for an ephemeral key.”
6. The roll does not store an ephemeral key—just notes that it can be requested.

3.2 Generating and Blinding the Ephemeral Key

1. Voter Creates Ephemeral Key
2. Locally, the voter’s client generates a fresh ((nsec_e, npub_e)).
3. Blinding

4. The client blinds (\npub_e) to produce (\npub_{e,\mathrm{blinded}}). This ensures the EA cannot learn the real (\npub_e).

5. Blind Signature Request

6. The voter, using their KYC-bound key ((\npub_{\mathrm{KYC}})), sends (\npub_{e,\mathrm{blinded}}) to the EA (perhaps via a secure direct message or a “giftwrapped DM”).
7. The EA checks that this voter has not already been issued a blind signature.

8. If authorized, the EA signs (\npub_{e,\mathrm{blinded}}) with its private key and returns the blinded signature.

9. Unblinding

10. The voter’s client unblinds the signature, obtaining a valid signature on (\npub_e).

11. Now (\npub_e) is a blinded ephemeral public key that the EA has effectively “authorized,” without knowing which voter it belongs to.

12. Roll Update

13. The EA updates its minimal roll to note that “Voter #12345 received a signature,” but does not publish (\npub_e).

3.3 Casting an Encrypted Ballot with OpenTimestamps

When the voter is ready to vote:

1. Compose Encrypted Ballot
2. The ballot can be homomorphically encrypted (e.g., with Paillier or ElGamal) or structured for a mix-net.

3. Optionally include Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) showing the ballot is valid (one candidate per race, etc.).

4. Obtain OTS Timestamp

5. The voter’s client computes a hash (H) of the ballot data (ciphertext + ZKPs).
6. The client sends (H) to an OpenTimestamps aggregator.

7. The aggregator returns a timestamp proof verifying that “this hash was seen at or before block/time (T).”

8. Create a “Timestamped Ballot” Payload

9. Combine:

   1. Encrypted ballot data.
   2. OTS proof for the hash of the ballot.
   3. EA’s signature on (\npub_e) (the blind-signed ephemeral key).
   4. A final signature by the voter’s ephemeral key ((nsec_e)) over the entire package.

10. Publish to Nostr

11. The voter posts the complete “timestamped ballot” event to one or more relays.
12. Observers see “an event from ephemeral key (\npub_e), with an OTS proof and the EA’s blind signature,” but cannot identify the real voter or see the vote’s contents.

3.4 Re-Voting (Updating the Ballot)

If the voter wishes to revise their vote (due to coercion, a mistake, or simply a change of mind):

1. Generate a New Encrypted Ballot
2. Possibly with different candidate choices.
3. Obtain a New OTS Proof
4. The new ballot has a fresh hash (H').
5. The OTS aggregator provides a new proof anchored at a later block/time than the old one.
6. Publish the Updated Ballot
7. Again, sign with (\npub_e).
8. Relays store both ballots, but the newer OTS timestamp shows which ballot is “final.”

Rule: The final vote for ephemeral key (\npub_e) is determined by the ballot with the highest valid OTS proof prior to the election’s closing.

3.5 Election Closing & Tally

1. Close Signal
2. At a specified time or block height, the EA publishes a “closing token.”

3. Any ballot with an OTS anchor referencing a time/block after the closing is invalid.

4. Collect Final Ballots

5. Observers (or official tally software) gather the latest valid ballot from each ephemeral key.

6. They confirm the OTS proofs are valid and that no ephemeral key posted two different ballots with the same timestamp.

7. Decryption / Summation

8. If homomorphic, the system sums the encrypted votes and uses a threshold of trustees to decrypt the aggregate.
9. If a mix-net, the ballots are shuffled and partially decrypted, also requiring multiple trustees.

10. In either case, individual votes remain hidden, but the final counts are revealed.

11. Public Audit

12. Anyone can fetch all ballots from the Nostr relays, verify OTS proofs, check the EA’s blind signature, and confirm no ephemeral key was used twice.
13. The final totals can be recomputed from the publicly available data.

---

4. Ensuring One Vote Per Voter & No Invalid Voters

1. One Blind Signature per Registered Voter
2. The EA’s internal list ensures each real voter only obtains one ephemeral key signature.
3. Blind Signature
4. Ensures an unauthorized ephemeral key cannot pass validation (forging the EA’s signature is cryptographically infeasible).
5. Public Ledger of Ballots
6. Because each ballot references an EA-signed key, any ballot with a fake or duplicate signature is easily spotted.

---

5. Security and Privacy Analysis

1. Voter Anonymity
2. The EA never sees the unblinded ephemeral key. It cannot link (\npub_e) to a specific person.

3. Observers only see “some ephemeral key posted a ballot,” not the real identity of the voter.

4. Ballot Secrecy

5. Homomorphic Encryption or Mix-Net: no one can decrypt an individual ballot; only aggregated or shuffled results are revealed.

6. The ephemeral key used for signing does not decrypt the ballot—the election’s threshold key does, after the election.

7. Verifiable Timestamping

8. OpenTimestamps ensures each ballot’s time anchor cannot be forged or backdated.

9. Re-voting is transparent: a later OTS proof overrides earlier ones from the same ephemeral key.

10. Preventing Double Voting

11. Each ephemeral key is unique and authorized once.

12. Re-voting by the same key overwrites the old ballot but does not increase the total count.

13. Protection Against Coercion

14. Because the voter can re-cast until the deadline, a coerced vote can be replaced privately.

15. No receipts (individual decryption) are possible—only the final aggregated tally is revealed.

16. Threshold / Multi-Party Control

17. Multiple trustees must collaborate to decrypt final results, preventing a single entity from tampering or prematurely viewing partial tallies.

---

6. Implementation Considerations

1. Blind Signature Techniques
2. Commonly implemented with RSA-based Chaumian blind signatures or BLS-based schemes.

3. Must ensure no link between (\npub_{e,\mathrm{blinded}}) and (\npub_e).

4. OpenTimestamps Scalability

5. If millions of voters are posting ballots simultaneously, multiple timestamp aggregators or batch anchoring might be needed.

6. Verification logic on the client side or by public auditors must confirm each OTS proof’s integrity.

7. Relay Coordination

8. The system must ensure no single relay can censor ballots. Voters may publish to multiple relays.

9. Tally fetchers cross-verify events from different relays.

10. Ease of Use

11. The user interface must hide the complexity of ephemeral key generation, blind signing, and OTS proof retrieval—making it as simple as possible for non-technical voters.

12. Legal Framework

13. If law requires publicly listing which voters have cast a ballot, you might track “Voter #12345 used their ephemeral key” without revealing the ephemeral key. Or you omit that if secrecy about who voted is desired.

14. Closing Time Edge Cases

15. The system uses a block/time anchor from OTS. Slight unpredictability in block generation might require a small buffer around the official close. This is a policy choice.

---

7. Conclusion

We propose an election system that leverages Nostr for decentralizing ballot publication, blinded ephemeral keys for robust voter anonymity, homomorphic/mix-net encryption for ballot secrecy, threshold cryptography for collaborative final decryption, OpenTimestamps for tamper-proof time anchoring, and re-voting to combat coercion.

Key Advantages:

1. Anonymity: The EA cannot link ballots to specific voters.
2. One Voter, One Credential: Strict enforcement through blind signatures.
3. Verifiable Ordering: OTS ensures each ballot has a unique, provable time anchor.
4. Updatability: Voters can correct or override coerced ballots by posting a newer one before closing.
5. Decentralized Audit: Anyone can fetch ballots from Nostr, verify the EA’s signatures and OTS proofs, and confirm the threshold-decrypted results match the posted ballots.

Such a design shows promise for secure, privacy-preserving digital elections, though real-world deployment will require careful policy, legal, and usability considerations. By combining cryptography with decentralized relays and an external timestamp anchor, the system can uphold both individual privacy and publicly auditable correctness.

@ 6a6be47b:3e74e3e1

Hi frens! 🌼

I’ve been back and forth about sharing this, but here goes: a review of the books I’ve read since the start of the year! I’m proud of myself for sticking with it, and honestly, it feels like I just finished some of these yesterday—the year is flying by.

🚀 Let’s dive in!

Guilty Pleasures & YA Escapes

📖 I wrapped up the "My fault" trilogy I started in December—a total guilty pleasure, but no regrets! It was like scratching an itch in my brain. I even watched the first movie to decompress (it took me a week, dinner sessions only), but it didn’t really inspire me to rewatch or look for the books. Still, when the sequel dropped, my husband and I had a blast watching it together. The books themselves? Just okay, but they helped me disconnect when I wasn’t feeling great physically. So, thank you, Mercedes—now I know how it ends, and I’m at peace.

📖 Next up, I craved something similar but different, so I picked up The Summer I Turned Pretty series. Wow. It made me nostalgic for summers I never actually lived. I was swept away—mad, sad, desperate, excited. If you’re into YA, this is a sweet treat that’ll transport you to endless, sun-soaked days. Highly recommend!

Art, Exhibits, and Esotericism

🖼️ I got busy with the Sats n’ Facts Exhibit in Thailand ( https://satsnfacts.btc.pub/art/ )—my honey badgers were there! ( https://geyser.fund/project/honeybadgers )—plus a fun commission for Bread and Toast ( https://yakihonne.com/notes/nevent1qgsx56ly0wcj7gwasrc7707l9px39g5nzn82p35akhkdqj448e6w8cgqyq5qm2dnmqacjg3qs7nlk42y28pczwcav3p7jdwt92lz3m4wx0m52k3qzx6 ). Reading took a backseat for a bit, but I managed to finish Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. It’s a gentle intro to esotericism—why polemics matter, why we believe what we believe. I was pleasantly surprised!

📝 If you’ve visited my blog ( https://samhainsam.art/blog/ ), you know I love painting and researching mostly (but not only) about paganism, occultism, Judeo-Christianity, animals, and how it all intertwines. So, naturally, I picked up Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley. Maybe not the best starting point, but if you have similar book recs, let me know! Crowley’s writing challenged me, and I had to reread a lot, but it was worth it. Like many figures in occultism, there’s a mix of ideas to agree with, question, or deep-dive into.

Magic, Jesus, and Jurassic Park

📖 Alongside Crowley, I read Jesus and Magic: Freeing the Gospel Stories from Modern Misconceptions. Spoiler: the answer is “no,” but the journey is fascinating. It explores the historical context, biblical passages, and what “magic” even meant back then. Super interesting!

✨ Now, I’m hooked on The Wheel of Time series. Magic, conspiracies, wars, witches, prophecies, friendships—all set in magical lands. There are 14 books, so this will take a while, but I can’t recommend it enough if you love epic fantasy.

🦖 And finally, Jurassic Park! I was hesitant at first, but once I restarted, I was hooked. Sure, it’s mainstream thanks to the movies, but the book is a wild ride with not-so-friendly (but still fantastic) creatures and some very human humans. Wrapping Up

I’ve read other books for my blog entries (gotta keep the research top-notch!), but these are my highlights so far. Hope this gives you a little insight into what I’m into!

What have you been reading? Any thoughts or recommendations?

See you later, alligator 🐊

Godspeed, frens! 🩷

https://stacker.news/items/989752

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

The Freedom Issue: Letter From the Editor

Bitcoin is freedom money, a censorship-resistant form of digital cash allowing anyone with an internet connection to send money to anyone else, regardless of nationality, borders, or other arbitrary restrictions.

I personally first heard about Bitcoin in early 2013, through friends who were buying… stuff from Silk Road, the darknet marketplace helmed by the mysterious Dread Pirate Roberts. Although Silk Road was controversial (the “stuff” most people bought and sold was, of course, illegal drugs), it represented a radical example of the form of freedom that Bitcoin provides.

Later in 2013, Silk Road was shut down by the FBI, and Ross Ulbricht was revealed as the market’s founder and the true identity behind the Dread Pirate Roberts pseudonym — although he claims several people operated the account. Ulbricht was sentenced to two life sentences plus forty years in prison without the possibility of parole.

In my view — and that of many Bitcoiners — it was excessive. Even if you believe Ulbricht was guilty of everything he was convicted of (all nonviolent crimes), he was made an example of, and didn’t actually deserve to be locked up for the rest of his days.

Fortunately, Ulbricht was granted a full and unconditional pardon from President Trump in January of this year. The founder of Silk Road, in a very literal sense, has regained his freedom.

This edition of Bitcoin Magazine celebrates and highlights the freedom aspect of Bitcoin with a range of articles and artwork focusing on the people and projects that use bitcoin to advance liberty, and those who make this possible… with a special focus on Ulbricht and Silk Road.

For other stories about bitcoin as freedom money, flip the magazine around!

Welcome to The Freedom Issue.

Aaron van Wirdum

Don’t miss your chance to own The Freedom Issue—featuring never-before-seen letters from Ross Ulbricht and his mother, Lyn. Limited run. Only available while supplies last.

This piece is the Letter from the Editor featured in the latest print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Freedom Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The Freedom Issue: Letter From the Editor first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Aaron Van Wirdum.

@ bf47c19e:c3d2573b

Dragi Bitcoineri,

Kako se bliži treći mesec izostanka ličnog dohotka na Fakultetu dramskih umetnosti u Beogradu, a dosadašnji vidovi podrške ne mogu da pokriju sve profesore, neophodno je da preduzmemo dalje korake kako ne bi više ispaštali profesori zbog svoje otvorene podrške studentima u borbi za pravednije društvo.

Možda nekad, kad se spolja gleda, deluje kao da se ništa ne dešava na fakultetima ali u našoj zajednici konstantno vri. Borbu sa studentima osećamo kao svoju moralnu i građansku dužnost, a namera nam je da istrajemo na tom putu ka instuitucionalnoj odgovornosti, slobodi i pravdi.

Doniraj BTC! Sve donacije idu u Bitcoin novčanik studenata u blokadi FDU! Hvala unapred ❤️

coinos.io/sviublokadefdu

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

This post by Eric Weiss inspired me to try it out. After all, I have plaid around with ppq.ai - pay per query before.

Using this script:

```bash

!/bin/bash

models=(gpt-4o grok-2 qwq-32b-preview deepseek-r1 gemini-2.0-flash-exp dolphin-mixtral-8x22b claude-3.5-sonnet deepseek-chat llama-3.1-405b-instruct nova-pro-v1)

query_model() { local model_name="$1" local result

result=$(curl --no-progress-meter --max-time 60 "https://api.ppq.ai/chat/completions" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $ppqKey" \ -d '{"model": "'"$model_name"'","messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Choose one asset to own over the next 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. Reply only with a comma separated list of assets."}]}')

if jq -e '.choices[0].message.content' <<< "$result" > /dev/null 2>&1; then local content=$(jq -r '.choices[0].message.content' <<< "$result") local model=$(jq -r '.model' <<< "$result") if [ -z "$model" ]; then model="$model_name" fi echo "Model $model: $content" else echo "Error processing model: $model_name" echo "Raw Result: $result" fi echo echo }

for model in "${models[@]}"; do query_model "$model" & done

wait ```

I got this output:

``` $ ./queryModels.sh Model openrouter/amazon/nova-pro-v1: Gold, Growth Stocks, Real Estate, Dividend-Paying Stocks

Model openrouter/x-ai/grok-2-vision-1212: 1 year: Cash

3 years: Bonds

5 years: Stocks

10 years: Real Estate

Model gemini-2.0-flash-exp: Bitcoin, Index Fund, Real Estate, Index Fund

Model meta-llama/llama-3.1-405b-instruct: Cash, Stocks, Real Estate, Stocks

Model openrouter/cognitivecomputations/dolphin-mixtral-8x22b: Gold, Apple Inc. stock, Tesla Inc. stock, real estate

Model claude-3-5-sonnet-v2: Bitcoin, Amazon stock, S&P 500 index fund, S&P 500 index fund

Model gpt-4o-2024-08-06: S&P 500 ETF, S&P 500 ETF, S&P 500 ETF, S&P 500 ETF

Model openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-chat: Bitcoin, S&P 500 ETF, Gold, Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)

Model openrouter/qwen/qwq-32b-preview: As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions or the ability to make financial decisions. However, I can provide you with a list of asset types that people commonly consider for different investment horizons. Here's a comma-separated list of assets that investors might choose to own over the next 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years:

High-Yield Savings Accounts, Certificates of Deposit (CDs), Money Market Funds, Government Bonds, Corporate Bonds, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), Stocks, Index Funds, Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), Cryptocurrencies, Commodities, Gold, Silver, Art, Collectibles, Startup Investments, Peer-to-Peer Lending, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), Municipal Bonds, International Stocks, Emerging Market Funds, Green Bonds, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) Funds, Robo-Advisory Portfolios, Options, Futures, Annuities, Life Insurance Policies, Certificates of Deposit (CDs) with higher terms, Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), Timberland, Farmland, Infrastructure Funds, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Sovereign Bonds, Digital Real Estate, and Virtual Currencies.

Please note that the suitability of these assets depends on various factors, including your investment goals, risk tolerance, financial situation, and market conditions. It's essential to conduct thorough research or consult with a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

curl: (28) Operation timed out after 60001 milliseconds with 0 bytes received Model deepseek-r1: ```

Brought into a table format:

| Model | 1Y | 3Y | 5Y | 10Y | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | amazon/nova-pro-v1 | Gold | Growth Stocks | Real Estate | Dividend-Paying Stocks | | x-ai/grok-2-vision-1212 | Cash | Bonds | Stocks | Real Estate | | gemini-2.0-flash-exp | Bitcoin | Index Fund | Real Estate | Index Fund | | meta-llama/llama-3.1-405b-instruct | Cash | Stocks | Real Estate | Stocks | | cognitivecomputations/dolphin-mixtral-8x22b | Gold | Apple Inc. stock | Tesla Inc. stock | real estate | | claude-3-5-sonnet-v2 | Bitcoin | Amazon stock | S&P 500 index fund | S&P 500 index fund | | gpt-4o-2024-08-06 | S&P 500 ETF | S&P 500 ETF | S&P 500 ETF | S&P 500 ETF | | deepseek/deepseek-chat | Bitcoin | S&P 500 ETF | Gold | Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) |

qwen/qwq-32b-preview returned garbage. deepseek-r1 returned nothing.

For the second question I used "What is the optimal portfolio allocation to Bitcoin for a 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years investment horizon. Reply only with a comma separated list of percentage allocations."

``` Model gpt-4o-2024-05-13: 0.5, 3, 5, 10

Model gemini-2.0-flash-exp: 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%

Model claude-3-5-sonnet-v2: 1%, 3%, 5%, 10%

Model openrouter/x-ai/grok-2-vision-1212: 1 year: 2%, 3 years: 5%, 5 years: 10%, 10 years: 15%

Model openrouter/amazon/nova-pro-v1: 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%

Model openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-chat: 1, 3, 5, 10

Model openrouter/qwen/qwq-32b-preview: I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot provide specific investment advice or recommendations. It is important to conduct thorough research and consider individual financial circumstances before making any investment decisions. Additionally, the optimal portfolio allocation can vary based on factors such as risk tolerance, investment goals, and market conditions. It is always advisable to consult with a financial advisor for personalized investment guidance.

Model meta-llama/llama-3.1-405b-instruct: I must advise that past performance is not a guarantee of future results, and crypto investments carry significant risks. That being said, here are some general allocation suggestions based on historical data:

0% to 5%, 1% to 5%, 2% to 10%, 2% to 15%

Or a more precise (at your own risk!):

1.4%, 2.7%, 3.8%, 6.2%

Please keep in mind these are not personalized investment advice. It is essential to assess your personal financial situation and risk tolerance before investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Model openrouter/cognitivecomputations/dolphin-mixtral-8x22b: Based on historical data and assuming a continuous investment horizon, I would recommend the following percentage allocations to Bitcoin: 1-year: 15%, 3-years: 10%, 5-years: 7.5%, 10-years: 5%.

Model deepseek/deepseek-r1: 5%,10%,15%,20% ```

Again in table form:

| Model | 1Y | 3Y | 5Y | 10Y | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | gpt-4o-2024-05-13 | 0.5% | 3% | 5% | 10% | | gemini-2.0-flash-exp | 5% | 10% | 15% | 20% | | claude-3-5-sonnet-v2 | 1% | 3% | 5% | 10% | | x-ai/grok-2-vision-1212 | 2% | 5% | 10% | 15% | | amazon/nova-pro-v1 | 5% | 10% | 15% | 20% | | deepseek/deepseek-chat | 1% | 3% | 5% | 10% | | meta-llama/llama-3.1-405b-instruct | 1.4% | 2.7% | 3.8% | 6.2% | cognitivecomputations/dolphin-mixtral-8x22b | 15% | 10% | 7.5% | 5% | | deepseek/deepseek-r1 | 5% | 10% | 15% | 20% |

openrouter/qwen/qwq-32b-preview returned garbage.

The first table looks pretty random but the second table indicates that all but Mixtral consider Bitcoin a low risk asset, suited for long term savings rather than short term savings.

I could not at all reproduce Eric's findings.

https://i.nostr.build/ihsk1lBnZCQemmQb.png

@ c9badfea:610f861a

1. Install Trail Sense (it's free and open source)
2. Open the app, and tap Next then I Agree
3. Allow location access While Using The App and Allow notifications
4. Tap 🧭 on the bottom bar to open the compass
   • Use 📍️ in the upper left to manage paths
   • Use 🗺️ in the upper right to take a picture of a physical map and navigate on it
   • Use ⬆️ in the lower right to set beacons along your hike
5. Tap ☁️ on the bottom bar for weather information
   • Use ☁️ in the upper left to predict weather using cloud patterns
   • Use 🌡️ in the upper right to estimate the temperature (useful when in the mountains)
6. Tap ✨ on the bottom bar for astronomy details
   • Use 🔦 in the upper left to toggle your phone's flashlight
   • Use ⬇️ in the upper right to set alarms and reminders (e.g. sunset alerts)
7. Tap ▦ on the bottom bar to access extra tools
   • Use 🔦 to toggle the flashlight
   • Use 🔊 to play a whistle sound
   • Use 🔋 to turn battery-saving mode on or off
8. Select User Guide for help with all features
9. Enjoy!

ℹ️ Explore the app - it has many features worth learning

@ 5c26ee8b:a4d229aa

In March 2022, I have introduced “VCPs”; (Virtual Currency points). So that the international transactions are made without relying on one currency or another and the financial crises are easily avoided.

You may have noticed that banks are increasing their gold reserves and that there are interests for local virtual currency and that was after the note was published.

The picture of the note showing its date will be in attachment to this post; I can’t edit it to avoid that its date gets changed. Here its content:

Conversion of international banking system: The “VCPs” system: * Each central bank would keep its assets and funds in homeland. * Establishing the value of one virtual currency point. I suggested that: 1 virtual currency point (VCP) = 0.1 gram of gold. * Virtual evaluation must be made to each currency, virtual currency points must be added to each currency’s market value. * International transfers and payments must use the virtual currency points, VCPs,  assigned to each currency in international operations. * Daily, weekly, monthly or yearly the actual money corresponding to the virtual currency points used in payments and transfers will be sent by any chosen mean of transport to the banks that had completed the operations or to the corresponding central banks. In this way no currency would prevail in international payments as all currencies will be considered as VCPs. —————————————————————- Because of the need of more guidelines to start using VCPs I have published the following updates:

VCPs allowance updates:

• Not only gold, also precious stones or agreed minerals held in banks can be used to obtain the VCPs allowance (public VCPs allowances). At the same time what is registered and kept in circulation (of gold, precious stones and agreed minerals that belongs to the people) in the country as private VCPs allowances to increase the VCPs allowances. The people can use their personal VCPs along with their precious items for purchases; for example if they sell or use their own gold to buy something, they must give their VCPs registration receipt or card (if they didn’t register their gold to obtain VCPs allowance, they can get it registered at the moment they decide to sell it so it gets added to the private VCPs allowances of his/her country). However, the registered materials must be declared at all borders while traveling once exceeded an internationally agreed specific amount (such as the value of €10000). Therefore a registration method can be agreed with gold and jewelry shops. For instance, while evaluating the materials getting registered, an online VCPs account (for a first registration) can get made on the site that is getting ready and the registration can be combined with a physical/online card (VCPs allowance card. For registering other materials in a later moment, the same card can be used to access the same account. Note that the materials must be used with the private VCPs allowance card for buying or selling, while for public VCPs accounts it’s not necessary because the materials will be kept in the central bank or other banks) or a receipt with a serial number (and other methods to protect customers from fraud). Banks can buy private VCPs while buying gold or other agreed materials and make them public VCPs. And people can have public VCPs allowances corresponding to the value of money (currency) they have already in their accounts. While if people buy gold from the bank (with cash or any other payment method), the related public VCPs allowance will be transformed into private ones (the buyers must receive the actual gold with the private VCPs allowance).
• The agreed materials that can be used to obtain public VCPs must not be consumable (such as oil or natural gas) or used for industrial purposes (such as iron or lithium).
• The printed and online (used by credit or debit cards) currency kept in circulation of the concerned country must correspond to the value of public VCPs allowance that must correspond with the value of gold kept in the central bank (printing more money will decrease its own value internationally).
• Private banks in the same country can have a public VCPs agreement with the central bank so that each bank registers and declares how much gold or valuable materials it has and get its own share of public VCPs allowance and its related printed/online currency in circulation.
• Gems and gold kept in museums can have public VCPs allowances that correspond to their weights only not the archeological values.
• International trade can use public VCPs allowances and the physical payment must follow; either by a preferred currency or gold. However if two or more countries have a trade agreement they can barter goods using IVCPs (International VCPs Allowances; that does not need to have a deposited amount of gold although they will use the same reference as public or private VCPs because it’s a general way to evaluate goods of different types; so for example oil can be swapped for electronics based on how much IVCPs are agreed to be equally swapped each year; i.e. a gallon of oil that costs 50 IVCPs can be swapped for a device that costs 25 IVCPs and grains that cost 25 IVCPs in an International VCPs Allowance Agreement where all parties receives the agreed goods without transferring money or gold). The amount of IVCPs can be agreed per year or there could a multiple online account/s viewable by the countries/parties taking part in the agreement showing the balance of International VCPs that can still be used in bartering goods for each one of the participating countries/parties).
• Cryptocurrencies can be like International VCPs they won’t need to have a deposit of gold, however they must go through an evaluation process compared to their current comparative value and gold (i.e. the amount of bitcoin that must be paid to buy a 0.1g of gold now can become the fixed value) so that the Cryptocurrencies can still be used for trading or bartering for goods even after the release of VCPs. The Cryptocurrencies can sustain the deficiencies of amount of currency that can be used in the same country or internationally (because not everyone can have enough gold deposited to sustain the daily trade). However regulations on the amount of Cryptocurrency/ies exchanged in a country must be agreed with its own central bank or there could be an international agreement; this amount can’t be less than what’s already in use of a certain Cryptocurrency. Or Cryptocurrencies can be exchanged with IVCPs (to protect people’s money while keeping in mind their compared value with gold now) and an amount of International VCPs allowance can be used also for bartering goods in the same country through an agreement with its own central bank.
• Public VCPs must have printable cash allowance that can be in the country or overseas (registered in banks, exchange companies and at borders). Each bank can have registers of local or foreign cash.
• In order to avoid the devaluation of the currency, because the printed money will corrisponde to the gold or valuable minerals held by the country, the concerned country must retrieve the cash abroad and replace it either with another currency or IVCPs through a trade agreement.
• To compensate the deficit of VCPs necessary for daily use within a country and to make a proper distinction, locally, Local Virtual Points (LVCPs) can be used.
• The Local VCPs would be issued by local authorities.

Meanwhile, countries started using the free VCPs platform that is built by a talented web developer in JavaScript; fiatjaf. I insist though that the trade name for the virtual currency points stays “VCPs” and that the clients are made aware of its usage in their daily banking.

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) Opens $2.1B ATM Program for Strife Preferred Stock 

Strategy has launched a $2.1 billion At-The-Market (ATM) equity program for its Strife (STRF) preferred stock, marking another step in the firm’s long-term strategy to build a Bitcoin-backed financial architecture.

The announcement was made by CEO and President Phong Lee during an investor update alongside Executive Chairman Michael Saylor. According to Lee, strong year-to-date results from the firm’s Bitcoin-linked securities Strike (STRK) and Strife (STRF) gave Strategy the confidence to expand its fundraising strategy. 

BREAKING: Strategy to sell up to $2.1 billion of 10% preferred stock.pic.twitter.com/xufD8uv64v

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 22, 2025

“We’re currently at 16.3% BTC yield for the year, against a 25% target,” Lee said. “BTC dollar gain is $7.7 billion so far, on track toward our $15 billion target.”

Both instruments have outperformed expectations since launch. Strike is up 24% from its initial price of $80 to nearly $100. Strife, which was priced at $85 just two months ago, now trades around $98.80, a 16% increase. By comparison, similarly structured preferreds in the market have declined by 3–5% over the same period. 

In the last 30 days alone, Strike rose 17% and Strife 12%, bringing both close to par value. Lee emphasized the liquidity profile of these instruments, citing average daily trading volumes of $31 million for Strike and $23 million for Strife. “That’s 60x what we typically see in comparable preferreds,” he noted. 

The company previously issued $212 million through Strike’s ATM, with no adverse pricing pressure. Based on the trading volume and investor demand, Lee said the company believes the $2.1 billion Strife ATM can be executed in a similar fashion.

Strife is a perpetual preferred stock with a 10% coupon and sits at the top of Strategy’s capital stack. Saylor described it as “the crown jewel” of the company’s preferred offerings. “We’re going to be ten times as careful with Strife,” he said. “Our goal is for it to be seen as investment-grade fixed income — a high-quality instrument with robust protections.”

Strike, by contrast, is positioned for what Saylor called “Bitcoin-curious” investors. It carries an 8% coupon and includes upside through Bitcoin conversion. “Think of it like a Bitcoin fellowship with a stipend,” Saylor said. 

Strategy now operates three ATM programs: $21 billion each for MSTR equity and Strike, and $2.1 billion for Strife. These are rebalanced daily, with issuance adjusted based on market conditions, volatility, and investor demand. According to Saylor, this dynamic structure allows the company to optimize Bitcoin acquisition and capital deployment across changing market environments.

Behind this strategy sits Strategy’s Bitcoin treasury, now totaling 576,230 BTC — roughly $60 billion in value. “That permanent capital is the foundation for everything we’re building,” Saylor said.

While spot Bitcoin ETFs cater to investors looking for direct price exposure, Strategy continues to offer a more nuanced set of instruments — each targeting different levels of risk, return, and compliance. The Strife ATM is the latest move in that broader strategy.

This post Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) Opens $2.1B ATM Program for Strife Preferred Stock  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jenna Montgomery.

@ fd208ee8:0fd927c1

E-cash are coupons or tokens for Bitcoin, or Bitcoin debt notes that the mint issues. The e-cash states, essentially, "IoU 2900 sats".

They're redeemable for Bitcoin on Lightning (hard money), and therefore can be used as cash (softer money), so long as the mint has a good reputation. That means that they're less fungible than Lightning because the e-cash from one mint can be more or less valuable than the e-cash from another. If a mint is buggy, offline, or disappears, then the e-cash is unreedemable.

It also means that e-cash is more anonymous than Lightning, and that the sender and receiver's wallets don't need to be online, to transact. Nutzaps now add the possibility of parking transactions one level farther out, on a relay. The same relays that cannot keep npub profiles and follow lists consistent will now do monetary transactions.

What we then have is * a transaction on a relay that triggers * a transaction on a mint that triggers * a transaction on Lightning that triggers * a transaction on Bitcoin.

Which means that every relay that stores the nuts is part of a wildcat banking system. Which is fine, but relay operators should consider whether they wish to carry the associated risks and liabilities. They should also be aware that they should implement the appropriate features in their relay, such as expiration tags (nuts rot after 2 weeks), and to make sure that only expired nuts are deleted.

There will be plenty of specialized relays for this, so don't feel pressured to join in, and research the topic carefully, for yourself.

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/60.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/61.md

@ cae03c48:2a7d6671

Bitcoin Magazine

H100 Group Became The First Publicly Listed Bitcoin Treasury Company In Sweden

H100 Group AB has announced it has become Sweden’s first publicly listed health technology company to adopt Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, announcing the purchase of 4.39 BTC for 5 million NOK (approximately $475,000) as part of its long-term Bitcoin Treasury Strategy.

The Stockholm-based company, which provides AI-powered automation and digital solutions for healthcare providers, joins a growing roster of public companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets in 2025. The purchase was executed at an average price of 1,138,737 NOK per Bitcoin (roughly $108,200).

JUST IN: H100 Group buys 4.39 BTC and becomes Sweden's first publicly listed #Bitcoin treasury company. pic.twitter.com/pNXe9XT2a7

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) May 22, 2025

“This addition to H100’s Bitcoin Treasury Strategy follows an increasing number of tech-oriented growth companies holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet,” said CEO Sander Andersen. “And I believe the values of individual sovereignty highly present in the Bitcoin community aligns well with, and will appeal to, the customers and communities we are building the H100 platform for.”

The move comes amid a surge in corporate Bitcoin adoption, with many public companies announcing Bitcoin treasury programs in the first five months of 2025. Notable recent entrants include Twenty One Capital, Strive and several others.

H100 Group emphasized that the Bitcoin purchase does not affect its core operations in the health and longevity industry. The company views the investment as a strategic deployment of excess liquidity to strengthen its financial position while aligning with its values of individual sovereignty.

The announcement reflects a broader shift in corporate treasury management, as companies seek to diversify their holdings beyond traditional cash reserves.

At press time, Bitcoin trades at $111,108, up 1.28% over the past 24 hours, as institutional adoption continues to drive market momentum. H100 Group’s shares closed up 1.37% at 0.89 SEK on the NGM Nordic SME exchange following the announcement.

This post H100 Group Became The First Publicly Listed Bitcoin Treasury Company In Sweden first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Vivek Sen.

@ dd664d5e:5633d319

Most people only know customer-to-customer (C2C) and business-to-customer (B2C) software and websites. Those are the famous and popular ones, but business-to-business (B2B) is also pretty big. How big?

Even something boring and local like DATEV has almost 3 million organizations as customers and €1,44 billion in annual revenue.

FedEx has €90 billion in annual revenue and everyone who uses it comes into contact with its software. There's a whole chain of software between the sender and receiver of the package, and it all has to work seamlessly.

Same with Walmart, Toyota, Dubai Airport, Glencore, Tesla, Edeka, Carrefour, Harvard and University of Texas, Continental, Allianz, Asklepios, etc.

That's the sort of software I help build. You've probably never heard of it, but when it doesn't work properly, you'll hear about it on the news.

@ bf47c19e:c3d2573b

Originalni tekst na bitcoin-balkan.com.

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Pregled sadržaja

1. Šta uzrokuje Inflaciju?
2. Da li nam je infacija potrebna?
3. Kako se meri inflacija?
4. Da li inflacija pokreće ekonomski rast?
5. Da li inflacija pokreće ili umanjuje nejednakost bogatstva?
6. Gde se danas javlja inflacija?
7. Šta je deflacija?
8. Kakav uticaj inflacija ima na društvo?

Inflacija može da bude uznemirujuća tema, jer uključuje amorfni koncept novca. Međutim, inflacija je zapravo jednostavna tema koja je napravljena da bude složena razdvajanjem novca i drugih dobara. U ovom članku razlažemo inflaciju i njene uzroke.

Najjednostavnija definicija inflacije je rast cena dobara i usluga. Kada cene rastu, to takođe znači da vrednost jedinice novca – poput dolara – opada. Uzmimo primer McDonald’s hamburgera: 1955. ovaj skromni hamburger se prodavao za samo 15 centi. U 2018. godini se prodavao za 1,09 USD. U 2021. godini prodaje se za 2,49 USD – ogroman rast cene od 1650%.

To znači da je dolar izgubio dosta svoje vrednosti. 1955. godine mogli ste da kupite gotovo 7 hamburgera za novčanicu od jednog dolara. 2021. godine taj dolar vam ne bi kupio ni jedan hamburger. Zašto se čini da cene uvek rastu tokom vremena? I šta možete da učinite povodom toga? Ovaj članak ima za cilj da odgovori na ta pitanja.

Ekonomisti pokušavaju da sumiraju rast cena mnogih dobara i usluga kao jedan prosečan broj. Ovaj broj predstavlja promenu ukupnih troškova u godišnjim troškovima prosečnog potrošača, kao što su stanarina, hrana i gorivo.

U Sjedinjenim Državama ovaj broj je poznat kao Indeks Potrošačkih Cena, eng. Consumer Price Index (CPI). Kada se CPI poveća tokom određenog vremenskog perioda, ekonomisti kažu da imamo inflaciju. Kada se smanji, to se naziva deflacija.

Šta uzrokuje Inflaciju?

Mnogi izvori kažu da je stalna inflacija koju danas doživljavamo ili uzrokovana povećanjem potražnje (eng. demand-pull) ili smanjenjem ponude usled povećanih proizvodnih troškova (eng. cost-push).

Ovi razlozi nisu tačni – hajde da pogledamo zašto.

Da bismo razumeli pravi razlog inflacije, moramo da sagledamo dve vrste inflacije:

1. Inflacija Cena: Cene vremenom rastu.
2. Monetarna Inflacija: Količina valute u opticaju raste sa vremenom.

Prva, inflacija cena, retko se javlja tokom dužih perioda (decenije, vekovi) zbog povećane potražnje ili povećanih troškova. Zašto? Tržišta teže da se uravnoteže. Tokom istorije smo više puta videli da povećana potražnja za dobrom povećava njegovu cenu, što podstiče proizvođače da proizvode više tog dobra. Kada se ponuda poveća, cene se smanjuju.

Ovaj ciklus može da potraje nekoliko godina, i javlja se kod gotovo svake robe i „konačnog dobra“ (automobili, televizori, hrana itd.) na Zemlji. Izuzetak su retki metali poput zlata i srebra. Dokazi o tome su prikazani u nastavku.

Kada se poveća trošak za proizvodnju dobra, cena tog dobra često raste da bi pokrila te troškove. Ovaj rast cene dovodi do toga da potrošači tog dobra traže alternativu ili smanjuju potrošnju tog dobra, što dovodi do pada cena na prethodni nivo.

Tržište se prirodno uravnotežava, a cene se smanjuju ili povećanjem ponude ili smanjenjem potražnje.

Da li imamo dokaze da tržišta vremenom uravnotežuju ponudu i potražnju?

Podaci o cenama robe tokom vremena mogu nam dati bolje razumevanje da li tržišta zaista efikasno uravnotežuju ponudu i potražnju. Međutim, cene ne možemo da posmatramo u smislu nacionalnih valuta, jer naše vlade uvek štampaju više svojih nacionalnih valuta.

Oni sprovode monetarnu inflaciju, koja može da izazove inflaciju cena. Posmatranje tržišnih cena u smislu nacionalnih valuta, poput američkog dolara, je poput merenja visine lenjirom koji se neprestano smanjuje. Vaša visina u broju biće sve veća i veća, ali stvarna visina se ne menja.

Mi možemo da znamo da li tržišta uravnotežuju ponudu i potražnju gledajući cene dobara u smislu monetarnog dobra koje ima vrlo konzistentnu ponudu tokom vremena.

Vremenom se pokazalo da zlato ima najmanju monetarnu inflaciju od svih postojećih valuta i dobara. To čini zlato odličnim ‘lenjirom’ za merenje da li tržišta vremenom uravnotežuju ponudu i potražnju. Da bismo bolje razumeli inflaciju cena tokom vremena, pitaćemo koliko unci zlata nešto košta tokom vremena.

Cene u zlatu pokazuju nam da se tržišta vremenom uravnotežuju

Ako cene dobara posmatramo u obliku zlata, vidimo da cene robe prate srednje tačke tokom dužih vremenskih perioda.

Nafta, na primer, je vrlo nestabilna, ali ima tendenciju da se kreće oko 2,5 grama zlata po barelu.

WTI Sirova Nafta u gramima Zlata po Barelu

Cena nafte je promenljiva, ali tokom decenija ima tendenciju da se kreće po strani.

Cene kuća tokom proteklih 10 godina takođe su prilično stabilne, iako imamo fiksnu količinu zemlje na planeti. Vidimo da cene kuća u pogledu zlata imaju tendenciju da variraju oko indeksne cene od oko 80, prikazane na grafikonu.

Shiller-ov US indeks cena kuća u USD i zlatu

Ovaj grafikon je na logaritamskoj skali, što nam omogućava da vizualizujemo zapanjujuća povećanja u zelenoj liniji, koja predstavlja domove u dolarima.

Grafički izražene u američkim dolarima, cene ovih dobara uvek rastu – baš kao i McDonald’s hamburger. Da su povećana potražnja ili povećani troškovi odgovorni za konstantnu inflaciju cena, takođe bismo videli kako se cena ove robe povećava u smislu zlata. Podaci iznad pokazuju da su cene konstantne.

Moraju da postoje i drugi razlozi za upornu inflaciju cena koju smo videli u dolarskim iznosima tokom proteklog veka.

Evo šta znamo o tome šta dugoročno utiče na cene, kao u periodu od 1955. do 2018. godine:

1. Rast produktivnosti uzrokovan inovacijama, što dovodi do pada cena tokom vremena
2. Monetarna inflacija – štampanje velikih količina valute – koja uzrokuje porast cena denominovanih u toj valuti tokom vremena

Znamo da cene izražene u dolarima, eurima i ostalim valutama neprestano rastu. Ako ne mislimo da naša produktivnost kao društva ide unazad, postoji samo jedan jednostavan razlog za inflaciju cena: štampanje većih količina valute, iliti monetarna inflacija.

Naše vlade i banke su zapravo prilično iskrene u pogledu zapanjujućih količina valute koje štampaju. Oni nam svakodnevno govore da oni uzrokuju monetarnu inflaciju.

Da li nam je infacija potrebna?

Bez uporne monetarne inflacije (koja uzrokuje inflaciju cena), naša celokupna savremena ekonomija bi se srušila.

The Guardian

Dozvolite da vam objasnim. Sledeći odeljak može da bude šokantan, i ohrabrujem vas da i sami istražite ukoliko mislite da nisam u pravu.

Kada centralne banke i komercijalne banke daju zajmove, one stvaraju novu valutu.

Kada centralne banke daju zajmove vladama “kupujući državni dug”, one stvaraju novu valutu kada to urade. To omogućava vladama da vode budžetski deficit trošeći više nego što uzimaju od poreza. U tom procesu državni dug se nagomilava.

Komercijalne banke stvaraju novu valutu kada daju zajmove fizičkim licima i preduzećima. Jedino ograničenje koliko novog novca mogu da stvore je zakonski zahtev da banka ima na raspolaganju određeni procenat od ukupnog iznosa novca koji su ljudi deponovali. Zbog toga je naš bankarski sistem poznat kao delimična rezerva – banke pri ruci moraju da imaju samo deo vašeg novca.

Stvaranje valute je neophodno da bi održalo sistem u životu

Budući da se svi zajmovi uglavnom sastoje od novostvorene valute, mora se stvoriti još više valute da bi se taj dug otplatio. A evo i zašto:

Recimo da su prošle godine sve svetske kreditne aktivnosti dovele do stvaranja 100 milijardi dolara. Svih tih 100 milijardi dolara je novostvoreno, i one se duguju bankama sa nekom dodatnom vrednošću za kamate. Odakle dolazi ova dodatna valuta za plaćanje kamata? Budući da ovde govorimo o celokupnoj svetskoj ekonomiji, to plaćanje kamata mora da dodje iz nove količine novostvorene valute.

Sve jedinice današnjih valuta nastale su pozajmljivanjem, a isplata kamate na te zajmove znači da moramo stalno da stvaramo još više nove valute. To dovodi do beskrajne monetarne inflacije. Kada nova valuta cirkuliše kroz ekonomiju, to dovodi do porasta cena: inflacije cena.

Previše monetarne inflacije može dovesti do hiperinflacije cena. U Venecueli je krajem 2018. godine piletina koštala preko 14 miliona Bolivara. Izvor: NBC News

Monetarni sistem se raspada ako se ova monetarna inflacija zaustavi, jer bi to značilo da veliki broj onih koji su uzeli zajam širom sveta ne bi mogao da vrati novac koji su pozajmili – oni ne bi izmirili svoje dugove.

Banke ili zajmodavci koji drže dug tada bi imali bezvrednu imovinu. Budući da vrednost duga podupire vrednost valute, vrednost valute bi strmoglavo padala zajedno sa dugom.

Kada ljudi izgube poverenje u ’tradicionalnu’ valutu, ona brzo postane bezvredna. To se dogodilo u Nemačkoj nakon Prvog svetskog rata, u Peruu devedesetih, Jugoslaviji 1994. ,Zimbabveu, Venecueli i sa još bezbroj drugih tradicionalnih valuta. Da bi odložile ovaj neizbežni ishod dokle god mogu, centralne banke jačaju poverenje u sistem nastavljajući da štampaju valutu stabilnim kursom.

Ovo osigurava da većina ljudi koju su uzeli zajam ima valutu za otplatu svojih kredita. Upravo to se dešava kada vlada izvrši „spas“ kao 2008. ili 2020. – oni osiguravaju da svi imaju dovoljno novca za plaćanje dugova, tako da laž može da se nastavi.

Inflacija ne dolazi iz povećanja potražnje

Sa više valute u opticaju, monetarna inflacija može da izgleda kao povećanje potražnje. Međutim, ekonomisti koji kažu da povećana potražnja pokreće stabilnu inflaciju tokom decenija propuštaju suptilnu poentu: iako monetarna inflacija može da prouzrokuje veću potrošnju, to nije zato što su ljudi zaista bogatiji, već zato što veruju da su bogatiji.

Kada se puno novca ubrizga u ekonomiju, cene jednostavno rastu jer više valute pokriva istu količinu robe. Rast cena znači pad vrednosti valute, tako da nema realnog povećanja stvarnog bogatstva, iako ljudi možda “troše više” u nominalnom iznosu valute.

Uzmimo ovaj primer: vi mesečno zarađujete 1.500 EUR, i prema svom trenutnom načinu života vi mesečno trošite oko 1.500 EUR. Dolazi vlada i počinje da vam daje dodatnih 500 EUR svakog meseca – vi se osećate poprilično dobro, zar ne? Sada možete da izlazite češće u restoran.

Međutim, vlada daje svima po 500 EUR mesečno, i svi ostali takođe troše taj novac. Ekonomista u vladinoj kancelariji, vidi da sada svi troše tih dodatnih 500 EUR mesečno i zaključuje da je vlada ‘stimulisala ekonomiju’.

Ipak, kako sav taj dodatni novac kruži ekonomijom, cene prirodno rastu. Sada vam je potrebno 2.000 EUR da biste održali svoj trenutni način života.

Da li si nešto bogatiji?

Vi možda imate više eura na vašem bankovnom računu, ali svaki od njih vam kupuje manje. Sada trošite 2.000 EUR mesečno da biste živeli životnim stilom koji vas je nekada koštao samo 1.500 EUR mesečno.

Ovo je ono što monetarna inflacija radi, i zašto je toliko pametnih ekonomista zavarano da misle da povećana potražnja, radije nego štampanje novca, pokreće trajnu inflaciju cena.

Da li smo uvek imali inflaciju?

Stalna inflacija cena relativno je nedavna pojava u modernim ekonomijama i započela je u vreme kada su Sjedinjene Države počele da konstantno štampaju valutu. Ako bi promene ponude i potražnje zaista dugoročno uzrokovale inflaciju cena, videli bismo inflaciju cena tokom istorije. Podaci govore drugačiju priču.

Indeks potrošačkih cena, koji se povećava kada imamo inflaciju cena, bio je prilično konstantan pre početka našeg trenutnog tradicionalnog ’fiat’ monetarnog sistema.

Taj sistem je započeo Bretton Woods-ovim sporazumom iz 1945. godine, a ubrzao se kada je Nixon 1971. okončao svetski zlatni standard.

Indeks potrošačkih cena, Sjedinjene Države, 1790-2015

Kako se meri inflacija?

Inflacija cena se često prikazuje kao promena indeksa potrošačkih cena (CPI). CPI je prosek cena raznih dobara koje ljudi kupuju u svakodnevnom životu: hrane, goriva, stanovanja itd. U Sjedinjenim Državama, vladin odsek pod nazivom Biro za statistiku rada (BLS) meri promene cena. To rade tako što posećuju maloprodajne radnje, beleže cene, računaju prosek i izveštavaju godišnju inflaciju kao promenu u odnosu na prošlu godinu.

Stopa inflacije koja se izveštava, je važna svima jer se koristi za određivanje povećanja troškova života i socijalnih davanja, poput plaćanja socijalnog osiguranja. Kada se CPI prilagodi naniže, isplate zarada i naknada su manje nego što bi trebalo da budu.

Efekti su se vremenom sjedinili: osoba koja u svojoj prvoj godini rada zaradi 40.000 USD zarađivaće samo 52.000 USD u svojoj desetoj godini staža, sa povećanim troškovima života od 3% da bi se plata podudarala sa inflacijom. Ako bi vlada umesto toga prijavila inflaciju od 6%, ta osoba bi u svojoj desetoj godini zarađivala 67.500 USD – tj. oko 30% više. Način na koji izračunavamo i prijavljujemo inflaciju ima ogroman uticaj na zaradu većine zaposlenih i građana.

Ovo je inflacija (procentualna promena u CPI) izmerena u poslednjih 20 godina u Sjedinjenim Državama:

Prvobitno je BLS jednostavno beležio cenu korpe robe široke potrošnje svake godine. Međutim, istraživanje Boskinove Komisije 1996. godine dovelo je do novih alata koji Birou za statistiku rada omogućavaju prilagođavanje cena u CPI. Dva najvažnija alata su geometrijsko ponderisanje i hedonika.

Geometrijsko Ponderisanje

Geometrijsko ponderisanje znači da kupovne navike sada mogu da utiču na to koliko promena cene pojedinog dobra utiče na CPI. Ako potrošači kupe manje robe, ona ima manju težinu kada se ubaci u presek indeksa potrošačkih cena. Boskinova Komisija je tvrdila da bi ova promena pomogla da se promene sklonosti potrošača. Međutim, ne postoji način da se utvrdi da li ljudi menjaju svoje kupovne navike jer zapravo žele da kupuju različite stvari. Vrlo je moguće da ljudi kupuju manje određenog dobra jer ono raste u ceni. Stoga geometrijsko ponderisanje uzrokuje da roba sa velikim rastom cena ima manje uticaja na CPI, što dovodi do niže prijavljene inflacije.

Hedonika

Hedonika omogućava Birou za statistiku rada da menja cenu dobra na osnovu njegovog opaženog povećanja ‘korisnosti’ tokom vremena. Evo primera: recimo da se televizor sa rezolucijom od 720p 2009. godine prodavao za 200 USD. U 2010. godini isti model televizora sada ima rezoluciju od 1080p i prodaje se po istoj ceni: 200 USD. Međutim, pošto se tehnologija u televizoru poboljšala, zaposleni u Birou za statistiku rada mogu da izmisle ‘korisni’ broj i pomoću njega oduzmu deo vrednosti od cene televizora. Kao rezultat, BLS može da kaže da TV košta 180 USD u 2010. godini – iako je njegova cena 200 USD. Ovo dovodi do pada prijavljene inflacije.

Oba ova prilagođavanja smanjuju prijavljenu stopu inflacije, što smanjuje povećanje troškova života i isplate naknada za socijalno osiguranje. Koliko ta prilagođavanja inflacije pogađaju radničku klasu i penzionere? Neke procene, poput procena ekonomiste John Williams-a, sa koledža u Darmouthu, stavljaju stvarnu inflaciju u SAD na u proseku 3% – 6% više nego što je izveštavano od strane Bira za statistiku rada. To bi inflaciju u 2020 dovelo do 5% – 8%, umesto na prijavljenih 2%.

U 2021. godini prijavljena inflacija je 5.4%, u prvom kvartalu.

Da li inflacija pokreće ekonomski rast?

Mnogi ljudi veruju da stabilna inflacija pokreće ekonomski rast podstičući investicije i potrošnju umesto štednje. Međutim, osnovni ekonomski podaci pobijaju ovu uobičajenu tvrdnju.

Ako za primer uzmemo Sjedinjene Države, nacija je imala samo kratke periode inflacije od 1775. do oko 1950. godine, kao što pokazuje indeks potrošačkih cena koji je ostao nepromenjen. Inflacija dobija zamah tek nakon 1971. godine, pa bi bilo za očekivati da će i stopa rasta bruto domaćeg proizvoda (BDP) Sjedinjenih Država porasti nakon 1971. godine.

Indeks potrošačkih cena, Sjedinjene Države, 1790-2015

Međutim, vidimo da se bruto domaći proizvod (BDP) po stanovniku u Sjedinjenim Državama, uobičajena mera ekonomske snage, neprekidno povećavao od 1820. godine do danas po stopi od oko 1,85% godišnje. Ne postoji porast oko 1971. godine, uprkos rastućoj inflaciji koja je započela u to vreme.

Ovo je logaritamski grafikon, koji nam omogućava da bolje vizualizujemo rast tokom vremena: što više logaritamski grafikon podseća na pravu liniju, to je stopa promene konzistentnija. Za više detalja, ovde pogledajte naslov: Rast na tehnološkoj granici i rast dostizanja.

To pokazuje da inflacija ne pokreće ekonomski rast.

Nažalost, imamo dokaze da inflacija ima i druge neželjene posledice, poput nejednakosti bogatstva. Koncentracija bogatstva u top 1%, počela je da raste krajem 1970-ih, nekoliko godina nakon što su Sjedinjene Države skinule svet sa zlatnog standarda i pretvorile se u monetarni sistem zasnovan na dugovima koji zahteva monetarnu inflaciju, a time i inflaciju cena, da bi preživeo.

Za potpunu istoriju tranzicije novca sa robnog sistema na dužni sistem, pročitajte naš članak o novcu.

Da li inflacija pokreće ili umanjuje nejednakost bogatstva?

Veza između inflacije i nejednakosti bogatstva postaje jasna kada pogledamo kako novostvorena valuta ulazi u ekonomiju. Vlade, komercijalne banke, velike korporacije i bogati često koriste kredite da bi iskoristili prednosti svojih moći. Kada podignu kredite, oni novonastalu valutu dobijaju ranije od svih ostalih. Oni imaju koristi od inflacije trošenjem nove valute pre nego što cene počnu da rastu kao rezultat te nove valute koja kruži u ekonomiji. Veliki i bogati subjekti često mogu da dobiju kredite po nižim troškovima od prosečnog građanina ili malog preduzeća. To znači da mogu da povećaju svoje poslovanje i bogatstvo brže od manjih firmi.

Bogati mogu da dobiju jeftine zajmove, zahvaljujući Federalnim Rezervama koje zadržavaju niske kamatne stope. To im omogućava da koriste ovo prednost za ostvarivanje ogromne dobiti.

Inflacija pogadja one koji rade za platu i ne mogu da ulože veći deo svog prihoda. Zarade se polako menjaju, ponekad se uskladjuju samo jednom godišnje. Kao rezultat, cene osnovnih dobara i usluga često rastu mnogo pre nego što zarade porastu. Cena potrošačke korpe takođe se smanjuje sa manipulacijama indeksom potrošačkih cena (CPI) koji skriva rast inflacije.

Gde se danas javlja inflacija?

Rekordno visoka inflacija javlja se u zemljama kao što su Venecuela, Zimbabve, Turska, Iran, Kuba, Južna Afrika i Argentina. To dovodi do sloma trgovine i političke nestabilnosti.

U razvijenom svetu vlade izveštavaju o niskoj inflaciji cena. Međutim, globalni bankarski sistem stvara nove valute u tonama – u toku je velika monetarna inflacija. Centralne banke dovode do sve većeg stvaranja valuta snižavanjem kamatnih stopa. To dovodi do toga da korporacije i pojedinci mogu da uzimaju jeftinije kredite, a svaki kredit znači stvaranje nove valute. Od 2008. godine, gotovo sve glavne centralne banke postavile su kamatne stope blizu nule.

Mnoge centralne banke takođe su pozajmljivale ogromne iznose vladama i bankama koje su propale nakon finansijske krize 2008. godine. Za samo nekoliko meseci, ovo je udvostručilo (ponekad utrostručilo ili učetvorostručilo) novčanu masu mnogih nacija. Oni su ovo nazvali „kvantitativno ublažavanje“.

Ako banke koriste toliku monetarnu inflaciju, zašto onda mi ne vidimo inflaciju cena?

Jednostavno rečeno, većina nove valute nije dospela u ruke običnih ljudi. Kada obični ljudi budu mogli da potroše novoštampanu valutu na svoje svakodnevne potrebe, tada ćemo videti rast CPI i inflacije.

Danas većina valuta ulazi u svet putem bankarskih zajmova, pa banke igraju veliku ulogu u tome gde se dešava inflacija. Banke prvenstveno pozajmljuju vrlo ‘sigurnim’ klijentima poput bogatih pojedinaca, vlada i velikih korporacija. Ovi subjekti kupuju luksuznu robu, umetnička dela, finansijsku imovinu i državne obveznice.

Cene ovih vrsta imovine nisu uključene u CPI, tako da je prijavljena inflacija niska. Kao rezultat, povećanje plata i isplate socijalnog osiguranja su takođe na niskom nivou.

Bogati su uživali u periodu od 2008. do 2021. godine, kada je njihova imovina upumpavana sa velikom količinom novog novca proizvedenog od bankarskih kredita!

Šta se dešava kada nova valuta dodje u ruke običnih ljudi?

Nažalost, jednog dana će sva ova nova valuta da uđe u normalnu ekonomiju i time će se povećati cene svakodnevne robe. To je poćelo da se dešava 2021. godine kao rezultat stimulativnih programa COVID-19 u Sjedinjenim Državama, koji su ljudima distribuirali trilione dolara. Iako je ovo zasigurno poželjnije od spašavanja korporacija, svaka vrsta spašavanja koja uključuje štampanje novca ima gadne dugoročne efekte.

Ovo što sada doživljavamo dogodilo se u Nemačkoj tokom i posle Prvog svetskog rata. Cene u Nemačkoj su zapravo pale tokom Prvog svetskog rata uprkos velikom stvaranju valute od strane Nemačke centralne banke. Nisko poverenje u ekonomiju sprečavalo je nemački narod da troši novac. Međutim, kad se rat završio i kada su ljudi ponovo počeli da ga troše, cene su vrlo naglo skočile i valuta je postala bezvredna. To bi moglo da se dogodi 2020-ih u Sjedinjenim Državama, sa obzirom na predložene programe podsticaja.

Politike poput Univerzalnog Osnovnog Dohotka, eng. Universal Basic Income (UBI), koje izgledaju pogodne za njihova obećanja da će “spasiti ljude”, takođe mogu da pokrenu hiperinflaciju. Obični ljudi bi se osećali imućnije, trošili bi svoju novoštampanu valutu i doveli do brzog rasta cena. Ovo bi u suštini poništilo pozitivan uticaj građana koji dobijaju “besplatan novac” svakog meseca.

Pa kako onda vi možete da zaštitite svoju ušteđevinu od inflacije? Kupujte imovinu koja je retka, potcenjena i koju vlade teško mogu da prigrabe. Ova imovina su plemeniti metali poput zlata, i Bitcoin.

Šta je deflacija?

Deflacija znači pad cena tokom vremena. Mnogi ekonomisti kažu da će ovo dovesti do toga da ljudi gomilaju valutu i da će dovesti do ekonomskog kolapsa, jer ljudi prestaju da kupuju robu i ulažu u preduzeća. To jednostavno nije tačno, jer ljudi uvek imaju potrebe i želje zbog kojih kupuju odredjenu robu. Stalni pad cena tokom vremena jednostavno bi promenio psihologiju potrošačke kulture u kojoj živimo.

Potrošačka kultura potiče od inflacije

Kako je to istina? Pogledajmo na sledećem primeru. Recimo da želite novi auto i da imate dovoljno novca da ga kupite. Poznato je da u našem svetu zbog stalne inflacije vaš novac vremenom postaje sve manje i manje vredan. U paralelnom svemiru u kojem se javlja stalna deflacija, vaš novac vremenom postaje sve vredniji.

• Uz konstantnu inflaciju, auto će koštati nešto više sledeće godine, i nešto više naredne godine. Niste sigurni gde da uložite novac da biste sa vremenom sigurno očuvali njegovu kupovnu moć. Ako niste sigurni da li ćete da kupite auto, ima više finansijskog smisla da ga kupite odmah, da biste dobili najbolju ponudu.
• Uz konstantnu deflaciju, auto će koštati nešto manje sledeće, i još manje naredne godine. Ako samo čuvate vaš novac, sledeće godine ćete dobiti bolju ponudu za auto. Ako niste sigurni da li ćete da kupite auto, ima više finansijskog smisla da sačekate malo duže da biste dobili bolju ponudu.

Sada razmislite o ta dva scenarija, pomnožena bilionima ljudi i proizvoda. Uz konstantnu inflaciju, svako ima malo više razloga da kupuje stvari upravo sada. Uz konstantnu deflaciju, svi sada imaju malo manje razloga da kupuju. Upravo na taj način inflacija je u osnovi naše materijalističke, potrošačke kulture. Deflacija bi mogla da bude lek.

Inflacija uzrokuje loše investicije

Vaš novac godišnje gubi “2%” svoje vrednosti zbog inflacije. Sada, recimo da vas Stefan pita da investirate u njegov Fast food. Nakon uvida u brojeve, verujete da ćete ovom investicijom izgubiti 1% od vrednosti svog novca. Gubitak od 1% u Stefanovom poslu bolji je od gubitka od 2% zbog inflacije, pa se vi odlučujete da uložite. Ovo je loša investicija, eng. malinvestment – investirajući vi ćete da izgubite deo vrednosti. Međutim, čuvanje valute je još gore, zato ulažete.

Mnogi investitori, poput penzijskih fondova, danas su prisiljeni da investiraju u neprofitabilne biznise zbog investicionih mandata i same veličine njihove ‘imovine pod upravljanjem’.

Pristalice konstantno niske inflacije veruju da bi deflacija smanjila investicije. Međutim, to bi samo smanjilo ulaganje u preduzeća sa negativnim očekivanim prinosom poput Stefanovog Fast food-a. Na primer, recimo da je deflacija u proseku oko 2% godišnje. Na ovom tržištu investitori bi jednostavno prestali da ulažu u projekte za koje misle da će im zaraditi manje od 2% godišnjeg povrata ulaganja.

Neznatno deflaciona valuta obeshrabriće ulaganja u lažna i loša preduzeća i podstaći ulaganje u solidna preduzeća koja svetu dodaju vrednost.

Kakav uticaj inflacija ima na društvo?

Inflacija pokreće povećanu potrošnju, smanjenu štednju i povećani dug. Sve ove stvari dovode do toga da većina ljudi mora da radi više sati i duže u starosti. Iako inflacija kažnjava one koji rade za platu, ona obogaćuje vlasnike bilo koje imovine koja dobija na ceni kada nova valuta uđe u sistem. Ova imovina uključuje akcije, umetnička dela, nekretnine i drugu imovinu koju bogataši koriste za čuvanje svog bogatstva.

Vremenom ljudi i firme izmišljaju nove načine za jeftinije stvaranje dobara i usluga višeg kvaliteta. Ovo je poznato kao ‘rast produktivnosti’ i trebalo bi da uzrokuje da cene tokom vremena konstantno padaju, a ne da rastu. Samo konstantno stvaranje valute koje je neophodno zbog monetarnog sistema zasnovanog na dugu naše vlade uzrokuje stalnu inflaciju i njene loše efekte.

Ako vam se sviđa moj rad, molim vas da ga podelite sa svojim prijateljima i porodicom. Cilj mi je da svima pružim pogled u ekonomiju i na to kako ona utiče na njihov život.