Indeed. If you ever saw his interview with John Carvalho he boasted about how he was a multi millionaire before bitcoin. He likely bought several 1000, maybe even from martti (who makes iris, and was bitcoin's second developer for that whole first year) who gave 10s of thousands away at cost, to kickstart the bitcoin economy. I think bear whale (vinny) bought alot and started ripple, possibly Jed, and possibly Roger. Back in the early days btc was only a few cents. So he could easily have bought up to 100k, from altruistic actors.
Discussion
This thread is interesting from a nostr perspective in terms of which direction the nostr 'community' of developers will take. I am not yet dissuaded from the view that decentralisation leads to fragmentation and a gradual loss of energy. i.e. a gradual decline in nostr users and usage beyond being a system for a small niche community.
The 'wars' you describe in bitcoin, despite the negative connotation, are possibly a source of energy which actually helped bitcoin to survive.
It's my contention that some centralising 'turf wars' may be need within nostr to help it achieve the same but I don't see anything like that happening yet despite some frustration that nostr is not growing its user numbers much.
The idea of some centralising function and/or conflict being in any away positive seems to be anathema to most nostr/bitcoiners, but I wonder whether they are missing the point and projecting a personal internal preference onto a wider project?
Agreed, if we ignore the "wars" going on IRL right now. Conflict frequently brings vigor and drive and can bring new life into failing projects.
Also competition. The problem with competition in social media is that users can and often do use multiple platforms, so providing you are in the top 5, for example, your platform doesn't have to win.
Like Bitcoin, NOSTR only solves a problem that many people are unaware of or don't care about.
Bitcoin is gaining most ground in third world countries where traditional financial services struggle.
So it is for NOSTR, it is most powerful in highly censored regions due to its inability to be shutdown or censored. The interesting situation with this is that first world countries are becoming the most aggressive at censorship.
If we kill all the jews
29 out of 30 conflicts in the 20th century would not have happened
