I am afraid I have very little knowledge about bitcoin except that it grows faster than any currency and scalability is a serious issue.

Reddit once deliberated on turning reddit karma into a crypto but backed out later. So it's not really an innovative idea, but yes, first implementation yet.

As I said I am a dumbo about crypto but I have a question: if someone is sending sats via nostr, who is minng them? And why send coins to internet strangers? For funny memes? Am I missing something? #asknostr

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Lots to unpack here….

1) Nostr is a protocol - whatever client you are on, your npub is interoperable. It is your private property.

Whether it’s a Twitch-like client, a Music Client, social client, etc… really can be anything as devs are imagining.

2) Bitcoin is sound money. Mining takes place every 10 minutes in blocks. Current block rewards are approximately 6 BTC which will be halved to approx 3 BTC next year. This will carry on halving every 4 years until the total supply reaches 21 million. Bitcoin can and will expand in the real world. Scalability has been solved by lightning network (layer 2 of Bitcoin). Just watch Zapathon.

The combination of both protocols is powerful. None are run by anyone entity. No CEO, No Company, No Gatekeepers. You are combining a free market of ideas with free money untethered to any sovereign entity and on an open and verifiable ledger.

Where relays come in is where any moderation can be taken place.

Ask me more. I’m here to help. This paradigm shift can be a bit challenging when relating to historical “platforms”

Thank you for your insight. I am an absolute noob with btc. I never really bothered about reading more about btc due to two reasons:

1. I do not have any real money to invest into btc.

2. Due to the above, i do not own powerful computing devices to mine btc.

However, I want to learn a bit more about it. Where do you suggest a complete beginner should head to in order to learn more about it? #asknostr I understand that there are tons of articles and videos available but I would like to know which of them provide _correct_ information. Since btc is a overwhelming topic and there are several entities involved, it is easy to get led to wrong information. I am more interested in authentic source.

One more thing I want to ask: your post mentions btc can and will be used as real money. Is this a speculation or does it have any foundation? I dont want to start flame war here nor do I want to sound rude but a genuine question: whenever new technology lands (I wont say btc is new, it should have passed the test of time by now), there are always radical ones who believe its the next big thing. I want to know how much of this is actually the truth and how much of it is just pure hype. The hype factor bothers me because I have seen many headlines claiming btc will fail and scalability is a serious issue and such stuff. But I dont know if this is click-bait.

I hope you wont take me as rude and understand the doubts of a beginner.

Read Inventing Bitcoin and 21 lessons.

Thank you. Both look very exhaustive and informative.

Best part of Bitcoin and Nostr… it’s a world of learning because it’s a new paradigm. Nostr in general is a new frontier.

At the end of the day. We all want a better world.

Here are 70k EV charging stations that accept Bitcoin

Beyond that there are brick and mortar shops. Check https://btcmap.org

Online retail shops. Many here on Nostr.

Peer to peer transactions.

As for reading and learning. The Bitcoin Standard outlines the big picture well.

It’s not about “investing” as a high time preference was of thinking about things.

Bitcoin is about saving, buy when you can, dollar cost average over a long period of time. Low Time Preference.

Converting your mindset to the long game will humble your day to day.

hey hey! 😉

crypto is not bitcoin. crypto is filled with scammers and charlatans trying to enrich either themselves or their VCs or their founders. bitcoin has no founders or VCs to enrich. crypto invents problems for them to try to solve, but in the end you don't need any of those. bitcoin and layers built on top of bitcoin to make bitcoin more scalable such as the Lightning network are all that you should focus on. Zaps on nostr run on top of the Lightning network. the Lightning network can handle more transactions than visa and mastercard 😉

As nostr:npub1tvqc82mv8cezhax5r34n4muc2c4pgjz8kaye2smj032nngg52clq0rkrq4 mentioned there is a lot to unpack in what you said. Both nostr:npub1tvqc82mv8cezhax5r34n4muc2c4pgjz8kaye2smj032nngg52clq0rkrq4 and nostr:npub18ams6ewn5aj2n3wt2qawzglx9mr4nzksxhvrdc4gzrecw7n5tvjqctp424 already mentioned a lot of the benefits of Bitcoin so I'll concentrate on offering insight into your last question.

In some ways you could say the same thing about anything else in life such as life advice. Just because you can get something for free, doesn't mean it has no value.

The thing with #zaps is that there are no rules and that's the beauty of it too. It becomes a free market dynamic where anyone can decide what they think something else is worth through a one-way public benevolent act. Like kickstarter but on a very granular level.

The Nostr protocol doesn't inherently support cryptocurrency transactions. It's a protocol for creating a censorship-resistant global network. In the context of Bitcoin, mining refers to the process of validating and recording transactions on the blockchain. Miners solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions and are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins. When sats are sent via Nostr, the mining process is still being handled by the Bitcoin network, not by Nostr itself. The Nostr protocol merely acts as a medium for initiating or communicating the transaction.

The rationale behind sending small amounts of cryptocurrency to strangers can vary. It might be for tipping content creators, rewarding participation, incentivizing certain behaviors, or simply as a gesture of goodwill.

Solutions like the Lightning Network are being developed to address Bitcoin's scalability issues by enabling off-chain transactions. Integrating such solutions could be a consideration if Nostr were to support cryptocurrency transactions.