Nostr Web Client

This is exactly like banning SSL for all applications where the owner of the user's app isn't identified.

The French tried to impose this in the 1990s, but once SSL was everywhere, it was impossible for France to implement it, despite building a regulatory and storage framework to register all SSL private keys.

SSL keys can be generated at will almost instantly by anyone without any technical skill. It happens every time you install a browser or set up a server.

Sound familiar?

That's what happens when you download and open a Bitcoin Wallet. It's exactly the same in nature.

Now an absurd ban is proposed for Bitcoin wallets, and it's pretty obvious this would happen in the, "Then they fight you" stage.

This is why I've been harping on about spreading bitcoin everywhere as quickly as possible, so that it becomes a global default that cannot be revoked without killing the internets.

This is also why I've been working to re-contextualize bitcoin away from what people mistake it for to something more like what it actually is.

No one thinks SSL is "encryption"; they think it is "security". Similarly if people think bitcoin is money, then they will think about it as if it is money, as if you "receive" bitcoin, and all other money analogies.

If this false categorization by Google of Bitcoin wallets doesn't go through, the next attempt surely will. Unfortunately, people with power can't seem to understand long term strategic thinking in this area, despite the history of Public Key Encryption tool adoption being widely known.

A necessary prerequisite to bitcoin being everywhere is the distribution of it to billions of people. That's what we're doing at Azteco. When we succeed in doing this, bitcoin will be a common as SSL Certs in your browser.

And no, it will not be enough to simply build tools that use bitcoin; you can't use bitcoin without getting it, and that is the task many people simply run away from rather than confront head on.

Things that seem to be very large, very bad problems can be completely eliminated. Faketoshi is the most recent example, but there have been many others, like the RSA Munitions Export case. Bitcoin can win and come out unscathed.

It will take dedication to make it happen and people who can think for themselves and make up their own minds about what sort of future they want to be a part of building for mankind.

The bitcoin distribution problem is being effectively solved by Azteco, with 700m people being given access to bitcoin in a way that no real bitcoiner could possibly oppose.

It didn't take many people to solve the big problems; technical ones like Public Key Cryptography, PGP (Zimmerman), Bitcoin (Satoshi), BitTorrent (Bram Cohen) and many others. Your only question for yourself is this, "Am I a part of the solution or the problem?".

And if you think you can build a paralell society on App Store Apps that will help billions of people, you are completely delusional.

If App stores can ban Bitcoin wallets, they can ban your sneaky chat app, which, because it doesn't mediate bitcoin, can't change the world, and even if it could mediate bitcoin transactions, cant do so unless people can get bitcoin to use on it, and if they can, that will surely cause an App store ban, because it will be an "Unlicensed Bitcoin Wallet", however they want to define that.

At some point, as has been in the past, a problem must be solved directly. With SSL, it was the rapid proliferation of browsers and the browser as the default interface to all eCommerce.

The same thing needs to happen with Bitcoin; bitcoin must be the default way billions of people spend online, and the way to do that is to seed the global population with small amounts of bitcoin.

When commercial interests merge with the interests of billions of people, you get a platform that completely resists arbitrary change that doesn't serve the people's or commercial interests.

This is what must happen with bitcoin, and it can happen, and happen very rapidly.

Duvel 4mo ago 💬 2

I agree that Google will probably try it again including others.

What could also help is the terminology. A Bitcoin wallet isn't a wallet. Also there are no bitcoin send to other people. Only ownership changes. Changing these things could prevent inevitable regulations/bills that prevent people from issuing self-custody Bitcoin/Lightning/ Cashu wallets.

It would be great if a Bitcoin wallet could be made so popular, but that it isn't in the app store. You can only download it directly. So it should probably contains interesting features that people like.

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Discussion

Beautyon 4mo ago

You’re right about the terminology, and this is why I’ve been saying for years that no one should call bitcoin “money”.

Where you are wrong however, is to say that “ownership” changes, which is categorically not true, and also, there is no such thing as “self custody” in bitcoin either.

And there are no “Bitcoin Wallets” either [SPOON BOY IMAGE]

Nomenclature shapes people’s perception; it doesn’t change reality. Unfortunately, even intelligent people don’t understand this, and demonstrate surface thinking as their primary entry point in almost all matters.

Duvel 4mo ago 💬 2

I'm interested in "ownership" doesn't change and there's no "self-custody" either. Could you elaborate?

Beautyon 4mo ago

“Ownership” and “self custody” are analogies and not descriptions of process, and should absolutely cannot be the basis of any real understanding and never the basis of legislation.

Mischaracterising Bitcoin by analogising is commonplace which is why, even this week, I had to spend an hour in front of a panel of compliance lawyers explaining that addresses in bitcoin wallets on iPhones are not at all like bank accounts.

The toxic analogising that’s mistaken for reality is everywhere, and it distorts the market, because the people who build businesses must contend with computer illiterates who have been grossly mislead by advertising copy.

Duvel 4mo ago 💬 2

Can you explain how "ownership", when you are in the possession of the seed phrase and therefore a number of UTXos, that that is not ownership?

I have the same question for "self-custod".

Beautyon 4mo ago 💬 1

You are conflating terms and misusing English. You even do it in the question itself when you say “possession of the seed phrase”.

You can understand that if you steal a car, you don’t own that car; similarly knowing a secret doesn’t mean you own it.

The problem here is that if you start using the correct language, and accurately, your whole mental framework that’s been handed to you to contextualise bitcoin is destroyed.

No Bitcoin user owns UTXOs. UTXOs are database entries that your private key can be used on to make a signature using someone else’s public key. All UTXO’s are copied in tens of thousands of places; by no stretch of the imagination does anyone own them.

This is like saying because you have a copy of “The Godfather” on your hard drive that you own the copy. You have a copy, you don’t own the film. It’s exactly the same with Bitcoin. You control your private keys that are strings of characters. That string can be used in a mathematical function to produce a mathematical result. Information works differently to physical matter.

No one “owns” math or any string of characters; exclusive use of a secret string of characters is not “ownership”.

https://medium.com/@beautyon_/the-bitlicense-is-a-bad-idea-that-must-die-cb413c076d85

Bitcoin is special because it makes it trivially easy to conflate and superimpose ownership analogies on mathematically generated strings that have utility in a single context. Normal people need analogies to interface with almost everything in modern life, especially where software is concerned.

“Self Custody” is a multi layered analogy set, designed to help you understand how a Private Key works in the Bitcoin context without referring at any time to math or signing processes or the chain of blocks, or databases other people’s Public Keys or anything to do with the actual processes involved with who gets to sign messages and their in context meaning.

Bitcoin is never owned; it’s an entry in a massively replicated public database.

Bitcoin is never sent or received. It is reflected in the public database.

Bitcoin is not money. It is a database.

None of these absolute facts have any bearing on Bitcoin’s utility; analogies are used to help you understand and accept bitcoin as a full replacement for fiat currency and banking services.

Without this contextual help, no member of the public would accept Bitcoin, and in the end, if people can’t use Bitcoin without the need to understand it, it will never change the world at scale.

DRE 4mo ago

Calling Bitcoin “just a database” is a category error. Money isn’t defined by what it’s made of but by the role it plays such as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. Gold, shells, paper, and bank ledgers have all served as money when widely accepted. Bitcoin is a public ledger whose native units perform those functions; the fact that it’s a database is precisely how its money works.

Duvel 4mo ago 💬 1

Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a comprehensive answer. Your examples has made it clear to me that you indeed can't own bitcoin. If you can't own it, how can you take self-custody of it?

Maybe you can say that you have access to a specific set of UTXOs and nobody else has.

Beautyon 4mo ago

All you have to be able to say is I can send you $50 worth of bitcoin. That’s all that’s required nothing else is needed to make bitcoin super useful to everybody. The idea that everybody has to understand bitcoin in order to use it is just crazy and they don’t apply to thinking to anything else.

I’m happy I could help have a nice day !