Nostr Web Client

Individual miners will be quick to change pools if necessary. I wouldn't be too concerned about that.

No guarantee or even precedent for that.

True, but it's so easy to change pools I see no reason miners wouldn't do it in case of real manipulation attempts.

Not so easy to change if most miners are registered and regulated.

Anti Spasti 1y ago

Nice. Lets start simple:

There is no NGU guarantee.

nokey 1y ago

- Taxes

- Fees getting higher

- selfhosted lightning is hard

Cody 1y ago

100% agree with taxes. I'm getting on 0 this month and am not looking forward to tracking cost basis bullshit

Regulatory arbitrage is highly recommended, for one country rarely meets the needs of an individual. Plant flags early because it may get harder over time.

nokey 1y ago

Are you talking about digital citizenship? More concretely, what jurisdictions would you recommend?

Not necessarily digital. You can be a "resident" in another country while not being a citizen of that country. This might give you some tax benefits depending on the country. Usually taxes are paid based on your residency. Only a handful of countries claim taxes based on your citizenship, the US being one of those. It means US citizens can get taxed by two countries at the same time if they live abroad. So called double taxation. The best deal might be to have your residency in a country where there's "territorial taxation".

Many countries have great tax policies for bitcoiner expats, for example UAE (Dubai), Malta, Paraguay, Portugal, Germany, Malaysia, Puerto Rico, Cayman Islands, Singapore, Belarus, Switzerland, Georgia.

The best combination of countries which works for you dependends on where you come from in the first place. But it's always better to "plant the flags" early, that's true for every expat. You don't need to have your bank account(s) in the country where you're a citizen. You don't need to live in the country where you're a resident, etc.

Bitcoin merchant adoption has regressed in the last 10 years.

burns 1y ago

Nominally or as a percentage?

And do you have supporting data or just a feeling?

Both.

Just a feeling. 8 years ago bitcoin was the dominant MoE in darknet markets, now it has been dethrowned.

Also there were some big merchants that accepted it, such as Steam that have since stopped.

All the coffeeshops in El Salvador pail in comparison.

Custodial bitcoin credit cards don't help this at all. There's no incentive to install bitcoin specific hardware to stores if bitcoin can be spent with the current hardware. That's how the masses will probably spend "their" bitcoin anyway.

NotBiebs and 69 others 1y ago

Have you ever been to a BitDevs meetup? Cause it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re looking for.

punk 1y ago

I like this idea. At least, I’m interested to see where the conversation goes.

I’d say my main pain point in actually using bitcoin is tracking everything for purposes of proper tax reporting (USA).

Obviously there is software that can help with this, but it’s still mostly a manual process and it sucks.

Now I’ve heard about acquiring non-kyc, whirlpool, utxo management. But I would still pay my taxes because…THEY are watching me…

makeasnek 1y ago

Agreed. It's a nightmare. We need to lobby our elected reps to adopt similar rules to other currencies where if you trade less than $x a year you don't have to worry about capital gains. There is an excellent group working on this here https://www.standwithcrypto.org/

Your seed is compromised? You're fucked.

Mess up your multisig setup? Fucked.

Get malware on your phone that pastes a bogus address? Fucked.

Buy a phony hardware device? Fucked.

Fall for a scam? Fucked.

We live on a knife's edge on Bitcoin and it's really hard to emphasize how much personal responsibility is required to self custody your life savings. Mistakes happen often and people get careless. Trusted third party custody like fedimints will be paramount for adoption.

To my understanding loss of private funds from hacking is really rare. People have mainly lost funds by messing up their backup system by making it overly complicated or not making backups at all.

It literally happened this morning. A guy here woke up to a pending outgoing transaction from his cold storage. Steel plates and all. He can't think of how it happened.

He very luckily was able to replace-by-fee it back to himself, but it was a huge wake up call.

Really? Can you link the OP?

nostr:nevent1qqsdzs73jugthyz8qevazhvqx93ehqnslne7f2qvztcqhdzk4sh3zucpr3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmqzyrw9tqja88ecy0zv2lzjx57amz3zhzqks39gxqeft9qv5rkctwl2zqcyqqqqqqgpq8fhd

Looks like he nuked his npub already

Honestly though, this is like black swan level improbability. If your seeds never touch the internet and you never have one open near a window or say it aloud, it's as secure as you can physically defend it. Most seed phrases kept offline will likely never be compromised.

I'm guessing someone gained unauthorized access to the physical plates themselves.

Either that, or he put his seed phrase in a hot wallet that was hacked. BlueWallet has been doing weird things on people's phones this week like having two icons on the home screen and bypassing Apple faceid.

I wonder how he cloned the hardware wallets as well. Might have transfered something through a internet connected device which was compromised? But yeah my guess is he either entered the seed to a "read only" wallet like you said, or someone read the plates at his house. Maybe even his kids or someone close to the family.

57

nobody 1y ago

It was an imposter mobile version of Sparrow. All I did was try to set it up as a watch-only by sharing my wallet descriptor and somehow that was enough for someone to broadcast a transaction. But the transaction couldn’t fully fly because it was not signed by my actual device for some reason. At one point I got down to ten minutes to confirmation showing for the unauthorized TX, but the ten minutes came and went and the unauthorized TX didn’t get added to a block. If I had been using a software wallet instead of a fully air gapped security model, it would have been a different story. Talk about a lesson in online security. On the bright side, I inadvertently got to learn how RBF works in Sparrow, and now get to double down on security by severely minimizing my attack surface by staying away from mobile apps and, by the end of the week, even having sparrow on a segregated server on StartOS. I am hoping all of these lessons will one day allow me to assist others in their journey and help them confidently start their Bitcoin journey with confidence. I have a fairly technical background and was able to navigate this with a couple of Google searches, but I really wonder about mass adoption of safe self custody being within reach for people that haven’t put in the work. It’s just funny that I was just reaching the threshold for what I am willing to protect with a single seed when this all went down. I had already begun a second stack elsewhere with plans to keep my assets that exist in a single place sub 15M sats. After this incident I am thinking about backing that off to no more than 7M in a single location. This whole thing still has the hair standing on the back of my neck. I wish there were some way to trace the unauthorized address to a physical person.

Thanks for the follow-up. I've never seen that scam before personally. Another tip: Always verify your downloads with PGP. If you already have Sparrow on desktop (the only legit Sparrow wallet) then you know the trusted place where to get Craig Raw's PGP keys. All wallet releases are listed there. If it's not there, it's a scam.

Wallet descriptors are used to import/export wallets by telling the new wallet how to spend from the old wallet, so that's exactly what a scammer would need to spend your UTXO's. The scam is telling the user you are setting up a "read only" wallet.

57

nobody 1y ago

I got lazy with this

No worries, I'm glad you figured it out and didn't even lose any funds in the end. That's as close as it can get!

57

nobody 1y ago

Yeah aside from some minor fees and $30 for a new set of plates, it worked out so much better than it could have. It was very interesting that despite the estimated TX confirmation time approaching and passing, the unauthorized transaction would not get added to a block. I am assuming that must be due to the air gapped nature of my signing device.

Despite being on solid ground now with a new seed for the Cold Cards, I’ve still looked at the balances like 47 times today lol. And finally got smart and divvied up assets across a couple other devices. I was due to do that this week anyway, but of course this incident occurred when everything was in one spot. Never again will I have my ass hanging out like this again.

I believe you got very lucky the tx wasn't added to a block. I don't think you could have even replaced an invalid transaction. The confirmation times are just estimates. You got really close to losing the funds. If the scammer would have set a higher fee rate, your funds would most probably be gone.

btconboard #LNHANCE or #CTV 1y ago

Totally fine with the idea and not trying to talk down on anyone. But does anyone genuinely familiar with the Bitcoin community think people are afraid to debate, share their opinions, or argue in general? Truly curious. Look at the recent conversations around lightning, scaling, soft fork proposals, and ordinals and there seems to be nothing but vociferous debate and skepticism.

Cody 1y ago

Yeah thats a good point, lately there has been a lot of skepticism, but I do think most of it comes from only a few voices, whereas this feels like a survey of plebs/users, not devs

https://damus.io/note1dpwj228lq5d8g79w678jrpk08pn52css6x0a9pmpzw3dadqvehrql2ykg4

Bitcoiners, I've found, are some of the most introspective people around. They're willing first to examine their own beliefs first and make adjustments as new information comes to light.

After all the debate and the real world case studies, what is distilled are the basic heuristics you hear everyone parrot in the community. But the double edge there is that new noobs will pick those up and blindly run with them with no deeper understanding if you're too nice, which is why I think the toxic approach is actually better for long term adoption. Met with a wall of seeming animosity is better for the noob because it represents the edge of a dark forest of personal responsibility. Only the ones with real resolve will enter and are more likely to adopt Bitcoin for the long run.

Hypnagog 1y ago

I wonder what my level of fanaticism is for bitcoin sometimes....

Most of my life savings, building a house in el salvador.... Its a passion that unites me with people who have similar values.

I feel comfortable around bitcoimers because I know they saw through fiat, and that means they are likely to see through other things as well.

But am I taking things too far? I'm disillusioned by the traditional financial system. By politics. Covid hysteria did a lot for me there. I think it may be possible I'm dealing with covid trauma and bitcoin is my lifeboat.

Who knows.

choss 1y ago

bitcoin privacy is not easy. it's been a rewarding journey figuring out coinjoins, p2p sats, etc, but that's not a journey i would expect most, if any, of my homies would have the patience or interest for.

Hoshi 1y ago

The answers to Lyn‘s question might fit here (but they are more hypothetical):

Bill Cypher 1y ago

Lately I'm annoyed with our community figures. So many even on nostr are ready to roll over and declare custody impossible to sell people on fedi. Try harder, let's figure it out.

Look no one person can rug you, great but I bet the federation is going to be you and 5 of your friends so what difference does it make to me as an end user?

Late Night Blog 1y ago

Scaling is hard. Transactions have met wire costs at times, even without the scale that wires have. Solutions may theoretically exist, but those with the power to implement them are hell bent to not do so.

I have a general question about crypto.

Let's say crypto starts gaining traction as money to the point where the govt feels threatened.

They respond by banning all business dealings with it.

Even if they can't control or even identify transactions on the blockchain, they can still see who publicly accepts crypto (by looking at website payment options, audits, investigations, etc).

This would make the vast majority of people avoid crypto, and businesses dealing in crypto illegally couldn't scale.

This seems like the likely scenario as the govt will not just let this much power slip away.

Isn't this a fundamental problem?

https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Permissionless-Principle

"As a simple matter of definition, Bitcoin operations cannot be both white market and permissionless"

Thanks for the resource!

So is the long term plan for Bitcoin to serve as tool for activism in the hopes that enough people eventually become part of the movement to where it would become political suicide not to allow it in the white market?

It's more a logical observation/description

Some people cater to the idea you are saying. A sort of political trojan horse. I personally think that is a bit naive. Bitcoin will not be allowed unrestrained in white markets. Too powerful for those in power. Over time it will be pushed out or only allowed as a shadow of itself (think ETFs, licensed custodians, and burdensome tax requirements)

Thus Bitcoin/Monero/crypto core use is ultimately for spaces outside and between white markets

Ya, it does seem like the case.

So what's the point of all this if it won't significantly impact the financial system that everyone is forced into?

Didn't say it wouldn't impact the financial system. It surely will. Just not likely from within or only to a lesser degree (jurisdictional arbitrage).

Mainly parallel economies. Before there were no decentralized permissionless digital currencies. Now those who want to have the ability to opt-out in part or fully

Ya, I can see it being useful for those who are willing to take the risk.

It seems to me that that risk will only grow as the fed's stranglehold grows tighter over time.

Whenever it becomes a significantly problem for them, it seems all they have to do is put out some propaganda and squash it down with more surveillance, regulation, and punishment.

I respect those who want to try anyways, but I don't see a path to victory even for those in the black market if they even begin to start some disruption.

It seems the best chance (even if also a low chance) has to be to win people over somehow to provide political resistance.

Maybe proving how well it works in crypto friendly countries can be a part of that.

Just my thoughts.

I'm ignorant of about 99% of all this.

Many Bitcoiners have the same opinion you do. None of us know for sure what will happen. Good thing we have multiple experiments running. I guess we'll see what happens.

Cryptoeconomics is indeed a challenging and enlightening read for a bitcoiner. Many inconvenient truths.

Felt the same way back when I first went thru it. Couldn't argue with the logic presented and changed my view.

Im trying to set up my first mobile monero wallet. The monero website lists two lightweight wallets, mymonero and cake.

Getting mymonero working from source on graphene initially eluded me so i went to try cake.

Then i saw these god awful T&Cs at cake https://changenow.io/terms-of-use

Mind if i ask what are a few well regarded lightweight wallets are? Is mymonero worth the effort to set up or are there reasonable alternatives for a small grapheneos test wallet?

http://anonero5wmhraxqsvzq2ncgptq6gq45qoto6fnkfwughfl4gbt44swad.onion/

I would avoid MyMonero. Since their servers keep you synced, they can see things wallets shouldn't be able to, so it defeats the whole point of Monero.

Cake Wallet is a solid choice and favorite of many. Open source and non custodial. It also offers a feature, that other wallets currently do not, that removes a big annoyance of Monero - autosyncs when charging

Stack Wallet and Monerujo are other good choices

If you are hardcore, check out Anonero. Security and privacy dials to the max. Can only get it on the spooky web:

Thanks Nameless. Ill give those an eye. Im not too hardcore. Mostly looking to test and get familiar.

No prob man, let me know if you have any other questions and hopefully I can help

Best site of the bunch for a pleb to get comfortable https://www.monerujo.io/

Yea, some people don't like that. And admittedly it annoys me too.

But those T&Cs are for the exchange feature since they send you to third party providers (that you can choose) if you use them.

You can just not ever use the built in exchange feature.

You can also turn off the exchange/buy/sell features in the settings so it's just purely a wallet (which I do)

mister_monster 1y ago

Try Monerujo, stack wallet, or mysu (previously mynero) if you want to dive into using i2p for it, once installed its simple and works. There's also Anonero but that's kind of a DIY hardware wallet sort of solution and it's designed to use 2 devices, definitely not simple. I usually just go with monerujo personally.

Thanks mister. We went with monerujo. Clean little wallet.

makeasnek 1y ago

Governments have tried this before, and failed. There are many reasons for this:

1. Bitcoin is international. Your government can ban it all it wants, but the blockchain still keeps making more blocks regardless.

2. Technical censorship (blocking access to the network) is impossible to do perfectly. Things will slip through and people will still be able to access their Bitcoin, just with a few extra steps.

3. Bitcoin's market cap is 850 billion dollars. You are effectively sanctioning your own country by not letting it connect to this economy which ranks in the top 25 countries by GDP. The bigger Bitcoin gets, the more true that becomes.

4. Bitcoin's promise is more efficient payment systems. By not letting your country participate in this, you will be stuck using slow, legacy payment systems. This makes your economy less efficient, which makes it less competitive on the global market all else being equal.

5. There is a lot of international investment going into crypto technology. If you don't let people tinker with and use crypto in your country, you are going to miss out on that investment and the jobs it creates.

7b

Lucky Kite 1y ago

1) This can change. Govnts agree on all sorts of things to consolidate power. If the EU/US agree to ban use of bitcoin, then it becomes less valuable elsewhere also.

2) doesn't matter because of 1) - you can spend only on dark markets, and they need to be able to change it for currency they can spend (food etc), so only in countries that allow bitcoin exchange legally.

3) True, but that's not a reason, wiping that out is actually GOOD for fiat currency. Countries ban certain foreign currencies to bolster their own. Banning bitcoin would wipe that and that would be good for fiat. At worse there will be as many winners as losers.

4) Visa is efficient. Its works fine. Bitcoin privacy is better but not good enough. Govnt's aren't not banning Bitcoin because they think its fast and efficient, no minister has ever thought that.

5) So, there's plenty of useful things govnts can invest in - you know roads/rail/hospitals/housing/manufacturing - actual things!

The OP was right to ask this question, and probably knows the answer: A govnt can block its use any time it likes with little consequence to the state. It probably won't though, because Bitcoin is a good Trojan horse, and a spying tool for govnts. It gives them immense control, and the bigger it gets the bigger the Trojan gets , until boom!

7b

Lucky Kite 1y ago

Bitcoin is a zero day Trojan, the govnt are waiting for the right time to ban it. The bigger it gets the more power they will gain when they ban it,

5d

Sandor Clegane 1y ago

One question is, are you trying to make it do too much?

There seem to be a great many who want it uncensorable, private, function in a collapse while still somehow engaging in international & interstate trade & also function while they are cut off from the mainstream economy...

Probably asking too much from any one thing...

5d

Sandor Clegane 1y ago

For instance, it requires some infrastructure somewhere & if you are in a full on collapse, you probably won't be getting much from elsewhere, even if you can pay for it, who says it is getting to you?

5d

Sandor Clegane 1y ago

I don't buy that any one thing can be the "magic bullet" for everything.

Delta Charlie 1y ago

A great idea, and I also would like to see more monero conversations happen on this platform with well known folks like yourself. The privacy and censorship resistance properties of monero align perfectly with what nostr is trying to do.

Pain points would be the following:

1. Bitcoin maximalists, or maximalists of any sort. Knowledge, training, execution, diversity of risk are all things that make a good portfolio, and a balanced lifestyle. Bitcoin is money, and money should only serve the 7 properties of money. People can create wonderful technology to use that money, but the money itself should be only doing what money does. Maximalists do not exist in the real world, only online. In the real world, bitcoin maximalists still walk around with plastic cards, folding paper currency in their pockets and tap their cell phones to transfer that fiat currency.

2. Monero, and all the other crypto currencies, are not money, they are currency. Bitcoin is money. Gold and silver are money too. Everything else is currency, credit , or a token. Monero is a currency that serves an important purpose, and can be used alongside bitcoin, just as a traveler can carry several paper fiat currencies in their wallet when traveling to different countries.

3. Ethereum is a great technology, but it is not money. The problems that smart contracts can fix are different from the problems of the monetary system. Ethereum cannot fix the monetary system.

4. Altcoins, non fungible tokens, and ordinals are speculation. They are not money. They create tremendous value in terms of discovering ways to use technology. We all benefit from the experiments we've seen in these spaces. But comparing anything else to bitcoin doesn't work because bitcoin is money, serving the functions of money.

5. Patience and sanity among crypto currency people is needed to have productive conversations. Everyone had such an exciting sugar high of dollar price speculation with bitcoin, altcoins, nfts, defi, mining, etc. that they have forgotten it has only been about 15 years. In tech that can be considered a long time, but a real world perspective is needed because all this technology is trying to disrupt or replace systems that are much, much older...while trying to deal with human nature that is much older than technology.

Monero has additional properties more in common with gold than Bitcoin:

1) privacy

2) fungibility

3) exact supply cannot be definitively known

4) small predictable inflation

So, if you consider gold as money, why wouldn't Monero also be?

Pretty much agree with all your other points

Delta Charlie 1y ago

The inflation part is where I disagree.

The only reason to mine more gold is because the USD price is more than the cost to mine it, making it profitable by traditional thinking. There is an incentive to discover the gold because of a variety of economic and human factors.

Here is a thought experiment:

Pure economics doesn't dictate any reason to mine more gold. If we were on a gold standard today, and all mining stopped forever, what happens? Currency prices adjust to economic forces, and life moves on. Pure supply and demand dictate price, not inflation. As tech improves, life improves, and currency prices continue to drop because we are more efficient. It is deflationary, and nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe explains this very well.

So why mine gold? The same reason we print currency: to be closer to the source of funds, deploy the currency and "lock in" our financial plans...all before the currency prices rise. Small inflation is tolerable when asset prices, priced in fiat currency, grow higher than inflation.

But humans do not understand money. You cannot have the USD price of your 401k go up, and the price of your house go up, yet simultaneously have lower prices at the grocery store and the gas pump.

Currently all the gold in the world makes a ~70' square cube. That is enough gold for every country, they just have to get the currency price right. What countries need to adjust is the currency and the peg to the gold. for example $1 = 1oz. silver, and $20 = 1oz. gold.

If you want to "get richer" you can lower the price of your goods and services by being efficient, and passing the savings to your customers. They now have more free currency to save or invest.

You do not get "richer" by mining for more gold because that just makes prices go up, which steals purchasing power from people who saved in the currency. You get richer by providing value people pay for, not stealing value by debasing currency.

So I personally do not see a need for inflation in gold, or Monero. Inflation is a tool created by the fiat currency system. Debasement is the predecessor, which involved coin clipping, and mixing with base metal.

Inflation is not needed for gold. You are right. My point was gold was still money *despite* small inflation for civilization for thousands of years. So obviously inflation is not an exclusionary criteria for money if you think gold was/is money.

Also, you have to contend with the fact that circulating gold supply doesn't disappear when everyone stops mining it like it does with crypto. Gold also doesn't have transaction fees that grow the more people use it and that secure the circulating supply.

Isn't the reason for mining anything (including crypto) because you can profit more than the cost to mine? This isn't unique to gold. Whether that is in terms of USD, another crypto, or stuff you can get, there is no real distinction.

Another massive difference between fiat inflation vs gold/monero mining is that fiat inflation is massive, centralized, and unpredictable.

Delta Charlie 1y ago

The reason for mining anything is because it is profitable...under the current fiat system. In our theoretical story, we are under a hard money standard.

In the distant past, I would guess, that mining wasn't an industry. No technology, and also no reason to mine. Gold and silver was circulated as money. It crossed borders and the economies adjusted accordingly with prices. Let us assume no inflation(on a worldwide scale) because there is no mining. The only way inflation could happen would be at the local level.

For example, if one wealthy family moved into a small town, then the supply of gold and silver would increase(inflate) causing higher prices. The wealthy family would open businesses, probably pay some taxes, and generally contribute to the economy, making everyone more prosperous. Prices would rise and fall to the appropriate level without external interference like a currency printer. If the wealthy family moved out of town 10 years later, you might call that deflation because now a significant part of the money supply is gone, so prices wold adjust accordingly.

You are right about fiat currency inflation being massive. I disagree that it is centralized and unpredictable.

Literally all central banks inflate their currency, so if all do it, I would not call it centralized. Because we know they all do it, and have always done it, and will always do it, I wouldn't call it unpredictable, this makes it very predictable.

nostr:nevent1qqsr84hztkdy26wugx3g99007krq3jxnyj2dp2xp3k2j4keueze7cyqpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7q3qtr4dstaptd2sp98h7hlysp8qle6mw7wmauhfkgz3rmxdd8ndprusxpqqqqqqzlluf2j

Be skeptical everyday, not just on Sundays.

#SkepticismMondays

I'll start: what's wrong with Hamas that they are trying to use fiat banks for financing? Big L for bitcoin

₿logging₿itcoin 1y ago

Lightning needs to get easier before it can be decentralized. We need more uncle jims and less censorship based on geolocation.

I think this problem is solveable, but it needs work. The lightning liquididty is too hard to balamce and plug in play nodes need a simple way to create RAID backups.

Nice and Kind Vic 1y ago

Alot of these discussions have come up in Nostr Nests and Corny Chat over the past 4 to 6 months. Mostly in adhoc fashion interjected in other random conversation. Various issues come up weekly if not daily. Theres been no concrete "solutions" to privacy concerns.

From a textual standpoint (which can be helpful for search, newcomers, posterity, etc), places like reddit are a cesspitt for discussing anything Bitcoin. Using nostr for such is wrought with high friction for communities (bad nostr design), and lost in kind 1s that arent yet searchable. The dev mailing list and github is suitable to some degree, but not for those that cant respect others, and this happens often enough that its practically irresponsible to direct people to them who would not find them on their own. That leaves Bitcoin Talk which is largely defunct.

086564b2... 1y ago

There is a bounty for a Monero Nostr Client. Bullish about this. Monero and Bitcoin should coexist.

If people only knew the benefits of Monero they would be amazed. A Bitcoin maxi perspective does not help privacy and freedom.

I care about Privacy and Freedom over all else. And want to be around others who want the same.