I used to hate bitcoin for all the crimes it was involved in. I should disclaimer this by also adding that I had experienced "what bitcoin is" through the general media I used (i.e. Germany's public media). I saw all the scammers get away with so much money and never anything good, which isn't a surprise, and eventually got myself a ransomware attack on my server that killed my PostgresDB and later another that hid a miner on my server. Especially the last one got me really angry. And thus, I started to hate it.

Over the years - and becoming older - I started to question certain things; like, how come Bitcoin is always involved in this stuff? This can't be right. A coin has two sides, not one. So I started to read a little more into that, learned what Tor does, how it works and how it helps people and circled back to Bitcoin. But, that was that for a good decade, and I decided I had read enough.

After joining Nostr and seing a whole whirlpool (pun intended) of opinions and statements about Bitcoin and the concept of Zaps, I decided to just go "fuck it, I am digging a hole!" and decided to just take the full trip from bitcoin core full node, to lightning, to CLN plugins, to zaps. This has taught me a lot about how things work, why it is used and what it does to help people. After all, I had gone the self-sovereign route, because I did not want any rugpulls on me - but rather the ability to just `rm -rf` and leave.

As to what people are saying? "Bitcoin is the future!" "Fiat is the devil" Statements that range all the way from tame, to extreme - and then there are also the conspiracy theories being "supported" by Bitcoin. Especially the last one just makes me want to hurl. x.x I am sure there are many things the average person doesn't know (either fron literally not knowing or due to information being hidden) but I still believe that not everything that sounds "extremeist-y" is even remotely close to true - especially when there is no source. But unfortunately, this is the kind of crap that is just about everywhere and it kinda pisses me off.

Bitcoin CAN do good, but if people like that are the loudest, I am far from surprised about "normal people" not wanting to give it a shot; it sounds too far fetched, too conspiracy-y and potentially dangerous.

And, then there is trading. I don't want to go into the depths of "gambling vs trading", but to make a long story short: I could do with a few traders less in this world, or at least this platform.

So yeah o.o I've been enjoying zaps and do think it's fun! But some people really know how to ruin it for others, I guess...