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Tim Bouma
06b7819d7f1c7f5472118266ed7bca8785dceae09e36ea3a4af665c6d1d8327c
| Independent Self | Pug Lover | Published Author | #SovEng Alum | #Cashu OG | #OpenSats Grantee x 2| #Nosfabrica Prize Winner

With #nostr, the wallet is the network.

#nostoppingthistrain nostr:note19vcx8qd8p0ynwae3507rl7suc2zp0jx2ayvgt7w73hg0kv07y4pq4kdmqm

Fair point. We’re experimenting with new concepts here, so the terminology might now be 100% so we need to iterate. In the mainstream context this would be called ‘data portability’, another great concept, but mostly used in lip service without empowering the user. This is the first instance where I see the possibility of keeping data private on behalf of a user, and where they are independently empowered to remove at any time. If find this very exciting and a complete game-changer for service providers that need to provide some custodial service but with creating a big breachable honeypot.

I love this idea of using ecash as message stamps. This idea has huge potential for drawing value into the digital ecosystem versus the more scary idea of using ecash as an alternative currency.

Remember, proof of work was invented by Cynthia Dwork in 1993 to fight spam and used by Adam Back for honest digital currency.

Message stamps build on these developments and are now possible with Cashu and Lightning. nostr:note1kta54vdhagauvp3gvyur350g7x804y04kyphefn8up7wf4veg4fqj8cm2p

Agree. But that risk can be mitigated by using multiple mints and the ability to clear out to Lightning at a moment’s note. Also, by separating the mint operator from the service provider, it further mitigates a single point of failure risk.

In the end, this architecture makes a mint like a money router - if one goes down, you can easily switch. Finally there are some neat reputation services appearing like bitcoinmints.com and nostr.watch that’s where I discovered reliable relays and mints that I can use.

Sooner or later, an organization will stake their reputation on running a reliable mint and/or relay. When that time comes, we’ll be able to manage our risks accordingly.

If anything, it mitigates risks that are beyond the custodian’s control, like having their infrastructure rugged.

I was thinking this morning about how we leave LED lights on all the time and don't even care, yet our grandparents would walk around turning off the lights whenever they left a room, and it got me thinking about the real #debasement adjusted electricity cost of 1960 vs today.

In 1960 an oz of #gold was $35, and a kwh of #electricity was 2.6 cents. So you could buy 1346 kwh for an oz of gold, which you could earn with 12.7 hours of labor at the #medianwage of $2.75/hr. This also meant you could buy 105.8 kwh of electricity with an hour of your time. A #lightbulb would use 60 watts, so would use a kwh every 16.5 hours.

Today an oz of gold is about $2600, which you can earn in 76.74 hours at today's median wage of $33.88, and the cost per kwh of electricity has "gone up" to about 16.5 cents meaning you could buy 15,757 kwhs with an oz of Gold, and you can buy 205.33 kwh with an hour of your time.

Relative to gold electricity has dropped in price 91.5%. But #wages have dropped in value relative to gold by 83.45%. So relative to hourly wages, the meaningful metric to people, electricity has reduced in price by only about 1/2.

However, in addition to the price of electricity falling substantially, the #electronics we use are also much more efficient. Today an LED light bulb will use only 10 watts, 6 times less than in 1960, and gives you 100 hours of light for only 1 kwh. 6 times more light for half the price, or 12 times more light for the same price! A 91.7% reduction in cost for lighting our homes relative to our labor hours.

On the median hourly wage today you can get over 20,000 hours of light from a single lightbulb for 1 hour of labor. In 1960 you could only get just over 1700 hours of light. Not to mention the cost to replace the light bulbs going down as well, due to their longer durability. This is a substantial improvement by almost any metric.

But what if wages had stayed the same relative to Gold because the world lived on a sound monetary standard the entire time?

If in 1960 an oz of gold could buy you 1346 kwh which would give you 16.5 hours of light each, that works out to 22,209 hours of light per oz of Gold. Since it would take you 12.7 hours to earn that oz of gold, 1 hour of median labor would get you 1748.74 hours of light.

Fast forward to today, cheaper electricity + more efficient electronics, an oz of gold will give you 15,757 kwhs of electricity which can power an LED bulb for 100 hours each. So an oz of gold now gives us 1,575,700 hours of light vs 22,209 hours in 1960. This means if wages had stayed the same relative to Gold then you would get 124,070.9 hours of light from an hour of your labor, instead of the 20,000 hours you can actually get today. All vs the 1748.74 hours of light you could get for the same hour of labor 64 years ago.

124,070.9 / 1748.74 = 70.94

71 times more light for the same amount of gold, thanks to efficiency gains in our light bulbs and improvements to our electricity generating capacity bringing the cost of energy down. The world is getting incredibly cheaper all around us all the time, we just don't see it thanks to the FIAT system. Due to this FIAT debasement, 83% of the efficiency/technological gains has been taken from us all. This is the real theft.

Monetary Inflation is theft, the growth rate of the M2 is the true inflation rate, not the CPI. Inflation doesn't just rob us of our past earnings in the form of our savings, it reduces our future earnings too by debasing our wages.

₿ clears the fog of debasement we've been living under, truly revealing the world of abundance we live in TODAY. If we embrace its simplicity as the best savings instrument ever discovered and/or created by humanity, then we will all truly prosper having freed ourselves from the yoke of bondage that is the centrally controlled FIAT currencies of the world.

You really don't need to work so much. Have a new perspective, lower your time preference, live as frugally as possible within your means and do whatever you can to save as much of your money in BTC and you will be free of the drudgery much more quickly. Buy second hand whenever possible, learn how to cook at home and buy tools that assist you in that endeavor such as a quality blender / slow cooker / pressure cooker / rice cooker / bread maker etc. When you're free, you'll be able to use your time for more useful and important endeavors such as thinking / writing / inventing / volunteering and so on, and also have more time to spend with your family and friends.

Contrary to what many today feel, life is worth living and it can be much more meaningful. The future is bright and full of hope, you just have to leave the cave to see it.

Currently for the service I built, I have a custodial wallet for each user where I store the privat data in my own database. With this new component, I plan to push all that private data encrypted out to relays with reference to mints and blossom servers. So the only thing I ‘custody’ is the nsec of that wallet instance I am holding that nsec on behalf of that user who ‘trusts’ me. . I will let the user have access to that nsec, if they want it, and if they begin to distrust me, they can sweep the wallet without my permission.

As well, I am no longer storing any unencrypted personal data in my database server so that eliminates a big honeypot risk for me. As for availability, storing on redundant relay servers, is a big plus too.

I love #nutsack but it was too visual for my liking. Researching the word ‘sac’ revealed that it was the perfect (and more general) concept, hence #nsac. FWIW, I already have a prototype implemented and it is working with a mint and multiple relays. I am sending and receiving lightning payments via a cli that I have built. I am using parameterized replaceable events to store persistent and state information. All working like a charm so far.

Algos for sale to do what you need is a way better idea than having your data rented out to an algo. nostr:note1k5mfgg9lgu6ptlcgwdyhenanvm2twzf97xmanjv8gwp6uraep60s857v5r

Replying to Avatar PABLOF7z

NIP-60+61 are being implemented left and right. Love to see it 🔥🔥🔥🔥

nostr:npub1q6mcr8tlr3l4gus3sfnw6772s7zae6hqncmw5wj27ejud5wcxf7q0nx7d5 is a beast, and very clear thinker; can’t wait to see what this implementation unlocks

nostr:note1e93ac62e98l8qrlf4nc749u2hy4gzdat808fhvne2aygkvprruxs02gdgr

Thanks for this. The innovation in NIP-60+61 has put me onto an entirely new path of thinking. Grateful for this! ❤️❤️❤️

I like this simple mental model for #nostr:

#npub is your #nostr public key

#nsec is your #nostr private key

#nsac is your #nostr private wallet

The last one, #nsac, the kernel of the idea is taken from NIP-60/60 by nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft , but can be generalized to hold more types of private information than just tokens.

The genesis of any #nsac is an #nsec - you can use your own, but not recommended- just generate an #nsac for which you, and only you know the corresponding #nsec

The cool thing is that an #nsac can be instantiated across multiple relays and take advantage of multiple providers such as mint and blossom servers.

I am already implementing a Python component called ‘safebox’ which is experimenting with the #nsac concept. It is solving some problems regarding custody - I will get into that in a later post.