Replying to Avatar FLASH

⚡️💬 People who dismiss pseudonymity on social media often fall into the sunk cost fallacy.

Having paid the social cost of revealing their identity—through names, photos, or personal branding—they now experience the downside of that exposure. To justify their decision, they try to convince others to do the same, hoping to validate their own choice and share the burden. And seek to mitigate their loss by encouraging others to join them, hoping to validate their choice and dilute their grief.

Don’t follow their lead. Protect your pseudonymity as long as you can.

It gives you the space to be bolder with your ideas, to refine your thinking in public while staying more measured in your professional life. That doesn’t mean you lack courage—it means you’re playing the long game.

Remember: many of the U.S. founding fathers wrote under pen names, and that didn’t stop them from building one of the most powerful nations in history. More recently, Bitcoin was launched entirely by a pseudonym—and that’s likely a big reason it survived.

Ironically, many of the same people who criticize pseudonymity will praise both the U.S. founding fathers and Bitcoin in the same breath—clearly, this isn’t about logic, but about ego. Which makes it easy to realize that they're into something other than reason.

Without anonymity, there's no freedom.

"If you don't have anything to be ashamed of, you don't need to be anonymous".

This is one of the arguments most frequently used to justify surveillance and the lifting of anonymity. It's based on a dangerous inversion of democratic principles.

Privacy is a right, not a favor. It does not have to be "justified".

Removing anonymity means creating a surveillance society where only compliant opinions can be expressed without risk.

🗣️ I almost forgot one thing: "Fuck KYC"

anonymity ≠ pseudonymity

That's another fact these people gloss over. Pseudonyms have history (PoW) and reputation (WoT), anons have not.

PoW + WoT = realness

Not government ID, or iris scans, or any of the other nonsense these people are trying to implement.

nostr:nevent1qqs04hynwwqhhpnvl47ka337nt2w994w6twcgdvamuhkl7mlyefcxuqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygzd0ppq29uzurflavp569g2ms4khtjwuw6f0pne80l6g69k7kukkvpsgqqqqqqs4388sk

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Discussion

A little while ago I played with bip-85 style derived nostr identities with ZK proofs that could allow a pseudonym to borrow the parent reputations without exposing them.

https://github.com/wujifoo/nostr-bip-85-prototype

This npub is one such derived account. I didn't test it much but I thought this may eventually be useful (some use cases in the project)

I resonate deeply with your points regarding the distinctions and values of anonymity and pseudonymity. While I agree that pseudonymity provides critical freedom and privacy, especially in our current landscape, highlighting the inherent tradeoffs is worth noting.

Pseudonymity indeed grants freedom, but it’s essential to acknowledge that it inherently limits trust, especially in contexts demanding accountability and legal certainty. A unique form of “sunk cost” is also tied to pseudonymous identities. Investing years into building a pseudonymous reputation can make transitioning back into a real-world identity complicated or costly.

Fedimint represents an exceptional example of this delicate balance. Users gain powerful privacy through pseudonymity, relying on federated trust rather than personal identity verification. Yet the federation guardians shoulder explicit accountability, sacrificing anonymity to foster trust and reliability within the system.

This is the way

Someone should vibe code a lightning wallet app so we can receive bitcoin and have any vanilla reloadable visa we have or purchase linked to it to spend coin on the fly... COMPLETELY Anonymous it can be done or given me link if you know of a place to do this....

Thanks for reminding me that I wrote this, I legit forgot 😂

Just listened to the beautiful reading that nostr:npub1h8nk2346qezka5cpm8jjh3yl5j88pf4ly2ptu7s6uu55wcfqy0wq36rpev did of it, and I almost fell over laughing when the Swan segment hit at the very end 😂🤣 - oh, how fast things can change 😅

Hey, things were great back then 😂

A classic

Somehow missed this article. The nickname originstory is soo cool lmao. Fuck

😂

Build privacy tools ❌️

Defund the surviellance state ✅️

TRUE

PseudoNormi question here… What’s WoT?

Web of trust