Maybe the cyberpunk likes solutions that scale. I know, weird, right?

Sometimes I run into a tech guy on Twitter, who talks about how cypherpunk he is.

I’m just a financial analyst and investor, so that’s cool to hear. The more cypherpunks, the better. I like to fund cypherpunks.

But then I look around, and he’s not active on Nostr for over a year. He’s only active on centralized social media.

So then I am confused at how supposedly cypherpunk he is. Is he really that reliant on centralized media? Often, it turns out yes. If not, what other cryptographic proof does he have for his work?

As Nostr increasingly gains network adoption, it becomes weirder when I analyze why someone who is techie is highly active on Twitter but not at all on Nostr.

I think a thousand physical qubits? Logical qubits can require just as many physical qubits though for error correction. But this may get better with improved error correction tech. This is a hot research area that I follow closely 👀

Nostr's freedom of speech is so strong that it doesn't even have a blockchain for miners to censor you out of the consensus chain.

The cure for that is for you to click "unfollow", my good sir.

Lol it's just like socialism. It'll succeed next time we try it.

I recently did an internal corporate Q&A with a $100B+ tech company about bitcoin. I do it more often with financial institutions but this one was tech.

One of their executives personally runs a lightning node and asked all sorts of great questions. Really based stuff.

There are bitcoiners in all sorts of positions in institutions, corporations, government, banks, etc. but they are usually not the majority in terms of decision makers, and without that majority (or the CEO being one of them) is basically why most of them haven’t gone from zero to one in terms of getting involved with bitcoin as a company.

Basically from the outside it seems like no progress, but from the inside it’s a gradual growth of more bitcoiners but still at a sub-majority level for action. Important distinction. It’s like having a lot of plants quietly growing fruit but little of it is ripe yet.

One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.

- Thomas Sowell

Woa! I just made the first atomic multinut payment on mainnet and it worked!

I paid a 10 sat Lightning invoice with ecash from two different Cashu mints at the same time, each making a (partial) multi-path payment of 5 sat to the destination.

Oh my god.

Nah, sometimes the government gets in the way even in terms of moving bitcoin privately non-custodially. In many recent rulings they've defined moving non-fiat assets that they don't issue as monetary, and thus subject to their various monetary laws. They've got guns. That's in the West, let alone authoritarian places.

So it's important to work around them or get them less hostile to you where possible, or move to friendly jurisdictions.

You would do well to educate yourself more on this subject prior to commenting. Stay humble, post less.

Nah, sometimes the government gets in the way even in terms of moving bitcoin privately non-custodially. In many recent rulings they've defined moving non-fiat assets that they don't issue as monetary, and thus subject to their various monetary laws. They've got guns. That's in the West, let alone authoritarian places.

So it's important to work around them or get them less hostile to you where possible, or move to friendly jurisdictions.

You would do well to educate yourself more on this subject prior to commenting. Stay humble, post less.

You tolerate other people ten times more if you know ahead of time that you have a shared principal with them. You'll disagree around the margins but realize you're basically on the same page.

Back in like the 1950s USA, people felt that sense with their neighbors, church, and even government. They might disagree on things, and there were some shitty downsides to that (anyone not in the majority) but they were like, flag-waiving Americans. So a question is how to recreate that, and more broadly than it once was.

And ironically, as shitty as the authoritarian economic and legal situation is in many ways, people in Egypt today feel that way today. There's a substantial sense of unity or shared ideals, aside from a small percent of extremist outliers. That's true for many developing places.

One of the major strengths of the "bitcoin community" is this set of shared identity. Bitcoiners will loudly argue with each other, but they know they have at least one foundational shared agreement. That's healthy.

There were times, at like conference side-parties, where I noticed I was standing in a friendly discussion circle with like an anarcho-capialist to the literal right of me, a progressive to the literal left of me, a human rights advocate from an authoritarian state in front of me, a billionaire capitalist with pragmatic politics also in front of me, and us standing in a circle happily talking and basically friends. It's because we have at least one shared major principle that brings us there. A unifying factor for which, as we enter discussions for which we might disagree, we know we can build common ground upon.

As certain countries get hollowed out, and as neighborhoods become more remote and distinct, I continue to believe that local in-person bitcoin communities are absolutely profound. Regular meetups help exchange local fiat with bitcoin P2P, help educate people on the latest tech, help bring people from different viewpoints together, etc. Absolutely essential.

Nothing shows the little respect he has for Bitcoin more than this quote 😂😂😂

"Have a good time with your bitcoin, your crypto, and everything else that you’re playing with"

Trump

YOU COULDNT END A SPEECH ANY WORSE AT A BITCOIN CONFERENCE 😂

Bitcoin doesn't need governments to win. It doesn't need governments to stack it. It doesn't need to ask for help.

Instead, the bar is much lower. Bitcoiners, in their preferred jurisdiction, would benefit by not being hassled by their government. They'd like to be able to buy it without problems. They'd like to be able to pay for energy and equipment and mine it in peace. They'd like be able to write open source code without facing legal problems. They'd like to be able to operate reputable businesses related to it. If they can't, then some of them will move as necessary.

It's helpful for the ecosystem to have non-hostile jurisdictions in the world. And for those that can't move without great sacrifice (i.e. most people), it's helpful for them that whatever jurisdiction they are in, is non-hostile.

So it's good that bitcoin is getting into the Overton window. The industry has some power now. Bitcoin benefits from builders and educators and advocates. It benefits from those who do their best to prevent the worst legislative outcomes against self-custody, against privacy, against running a business, against mining, etc.

But Bitcoin doesn't need to pander to them to proactively support us, and bitcoiners should recognize the sliminess of politician incentives when they come to pander to us. While it's in their best interest to build national reserves if they actually figure this thing out, we don't need them to build reserves.

I think that's the helpful line. That's where the signal is. To the extent that we minimize how much we are tread on, and build multi-national accepting footholds to pivot around, we gradually build what we want to exist.

We ask to be treated fairly, we use our resources to help ensure that we are, and to the extent that we are not then we adjust as necessary.