Nostr Web Client

All of it is downstream.

• Private payments are meaningless if your value can be confiscated through arbitrary counterfeiting.

• Settlement assurances don’t exist if the supply isn’t scarce.

• Ownership of a UTXO means nothing if its relative value has no guarantee whatever because the monetary unit is arbitrarily defined by some other institution.

• Decentralization doesn’t matter if it doesn’t protect the rules for *what a bitcoin is.*

It makes no difference if people understand it or not. It’s still the simple truth. The $100 trillion value proposition is to create a verifiable, state resistant monetary system. Literally nothing else matters, nor even works if that isn’t secured.

Any particular person’s failure to understand this is irrelevant. As long as #Bitcoin continues to be 21 million, all the rest remains possible.

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Discussion

Bitcoin Belle 1y ago

When I was debanked in 2010, had my passport revoked and my 6 figure trading account levied, the value of bitcoin had zero to do with monetary policy. When I was removed from the intellectual and creative pool, stripped of access to financial services, and all privileges associated with The Plantation were revoked, monetary policy was last on my mind. But you're welcome.

Guy Swann 1y ago

None of that value can be provided without the monetary policy. You think Proof of work means anything at all if the bitcoin unit that incentivizes it can be arbitrarily created?

Monetary policy may have been last on your mind, but none of what you are concerned about exists *witjout* that secure monetary policy.

Again, not understanding it doesn’t change the fact. This is axiomatic to how #Bitcoin accomplished literally anything it does. It would be like saying you don’t care about TCP/IP because you only want to use the web.

GrumpyGardener 1y ago

I've had my accounts frozen before. It sucks beyond measure. Completely unable to transact. Suddenly impoverished at the flip of a switch as if I woke up in a foreign land without access to any banking.

Guy Swann 1y ago

Yes, and without a monetary policy secured without the state, there’s no such thing as “permissionless value transfer.” That is what I mean by “it follows” and “it’s downstream.”

You cannot have those characteristics without first securing the money. This is exactly what Satoshi realized which is why when he finally solved digital cash, he first had to figure out how to invent money without the state.

What you bring up follows from exactly what I am saying.

Bitcoin Belle 1y ago

Yes, it's quite a wake up call to those who believe monetary policy is a protection. For those of us who used bitcoin to feed ourselves before any nation (the authority of monetary policies) had decided it was money, a token, a commodity, we were pretty sure on what it was: speech packets and the last bastion of secrets. The fear boys who came in post 2014 all say the same things. They just cannot stand the idea that they are not relevant.

Guy Swann 1y ago

Still not getting it. You CANNOT have trustless payments without a monetary asset that is free of state control. Otherwise all of the plethora of precursors to Bitcoin that didn’t create their own monetary unit would’ve worked fine and we never would’ve needed the bitcoin unit.

Example: the ecash protocol was invented almost 2 decades prior to bitcoin, but what good was it if there was no permissionless monetary base to implement it on.

We are still talking past each other. You keep saying “the web is so important” and giving examples of how badly we need the web. And I am AGREEING with that, but explaining that without TCP/IP the web is meaningless and doesn’t exist.

TeslaLiberty 1y ago

You just don't it and that's ok

MickBurke 1y ago

So anybody else see literally 100 copies of this post in their feed?

Guy Swann 1y ago

lol, yeah i have that happen all the time especially if a thread gets active and it’s a little frustrating. This is probably a place where having your own “algorithm” for being able to recognize on the user side that a post has been seen or even interacted with already, that the probability of it showing vs other posts decreases.

This is where filters will be a big help as we think about them more directly and will be necessary as Nostr grows.

MickBurke 1y ago

And now they're all gone! Really weird!