I've donated a decent bit of money to Zeus development. I will no longer be supporting Zeus.

It's morally bankrupt to respond with derision to a Zelenskyy and others signing bombs that are keeping Ukrainians alive by killing Russian invaders. I'm in Kyiv right now – those bombs are part of the reason why I can even be here relatively safely. They're why people I know got their houses back after the occupation was pushed back; sadly they couldn't get their friends and neighbors back, because there's no fixing being murdered.

Disgusting.

While this is a very fair point, it is also worth noting that this action has explicitly transformed it from one of the most dangerous and violent countries in the world, to one of the safest.

It’s extremely difficult to have a course of action to solve a problem that is so intractable as to have corruption invade every level of the system that is supposed to “adjudicate” the process and have it actually be fair or just. When the system itself is so poisoned that even its design can’t protect it, what do you do?

Again not excusing it, just sharing my thoughts on why “a fair process” doesn’t make a just outcome when it’s completely corrupted from top to bottom.

I’ll point to Jeffrey Epstein as the example for those in the US. How well did it work out to have a system as corrupt as he is, adjudicate and punish his actions? Oh that’s right, they defended him, protected him, funded him, and let him walk around free for decades and then when there was even a hint of the degree of his evil and malice getting out to the public, he was murdered in a cell, behind guards, and under surveillance in a system who’s SOLE purpose was to keep him alive so he could stand trial and we could see some semblance of justice.

So it’s not so black and white as “did they get a fair trial.” Even as someone who holds that as a paramount right of every human. I wish it was, but the world is a messy place. nostr:note1x8z4lwzjknfq7p30p20t3e5yttj0lzjzkywv2hv9388k9cgwma8qn8xq0v

Amethyst on-boarding is freaking awful if a highly technical cypherpunk is left saying this.

nostr:note19fez60r40jfgrjwadxyfd86yzgzgvqyz96dxspm045ctyqhvcwnsdp0h0r

In a Bitcoin standard what happens if I’m 22 and have no capital but what to buy a car. You don’t think leasing or auto loans will exist?

Didn't the CIA create Bitcoin? An analysis >>>>>

Although I haven't seen any credible evidence of this, let's just assume for a minute that it was, similar to how the NSA created the Tor network.

The NSA created the Tor network in order to allow operatives to communicate from unfriendly territories without the possiblity of being traced. But, for it to work, enough people had to actually use Tor so that communications could blend in with the crowd to avoid detection.

In order to get people to use it, they had to put it out there in the open. The Tor network is just a piece of open source software that anyone is free to read, analyze, use, fork, copy, and alter. There's no secret sauce. Anyone with the capability of reading computer code can understand the design of the Tor network.

One could draw similar parallels to Bitcoin. The CIA could've created Bitcoin in order to allow funding of programs without touching traditional financial systems of unfriendly countries. But, for it to work, enough people would have to actually use Bitcoin so that transactions could blend in with the crowd to avoid detection.

But, if that were true, then why would they design Bitcoin to have all transactions be publicly visible in a blockchain? To me it seems like they would've designed it similar to other cryptocurrencies, which obfuscates transaction details on the ledger. In short, how does the CIA benefit from having a publicly viewable immutuable leder of their dirty business?

If it were true, why would they design a system that is resistant to censorship? To me it seems like they would've designed it with censorship capabilities, for example with the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, which would allow the person with the most of the coin to censor transactions at will. In short, how does the CIA benefit from having a tool that their enemies can also use freely?

If it were true, why would they design a system that incentivizes decentralization? To me it seems like they would've designed it with centralization in mind, enabling them to leverage that into control over the network. For example, wouldn't they prefer to launch Bitcoin as a business using In-Q-Tel (the venture capital arm of the CIA that invested in Facebook early on)? If a single company "owned" the Bitcoin network, this would enable them to leverage more control over the network and future development.

Just like with Tor, Bitcoin is just computer code. It's open source software that anyone in the world is free to read, analyze, use, fork, modify, or do anything they want with it. There is no secret sauce behind Bitcoin. It has been analyzed, studied, and attacked for 15 years by many of the world's top mathemeticians, cryptographers and security researchers. To date, the Bitcoin network has not been broken.

It's clear when studying the source code of Bitcoin that it's design goals were decentralization, transparency & censorship resistance. Why would the CIA design Bitcoin with these design goals?

There's a quote "A sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic.", known as Clarke's Third Law. The technology behind Bitcoin may appear mysterious and magical to non-technical people, but it is grounded in sound mathematical principles and open-source development.

I fully support the motto "Don't trust, verify", and encourage you to perform your own research from first principles. Maybe you do want to go so far as to learn programming to be able to inspect the source code of Bitcoin first hand. But, even if you don't, I would recommend starting with the Bitcoin whitepaper which explains the design of the network. It's only 8 pages long. I've attached the Bitcoin Whitepaper here. I invite you to read it, study it, and join us at our events around the area to come and discuss with others!

i sometimes try to pretend that my inner voice is other voices

sometimes it is, and i know because it knew stuff i couldn't have known

but really, how do people not understand the idea of thinking? i mean, that's what it is, thinking, like, speaking to yourself = thinking, how is that not widely understood?

Serious question at you.

I started asking people I know well enough to no be awkward if they had an inner dialogue.

The answers I get are astounding.

I meet people all the time that don't know what tf I'm talking about.

"You mean like when the TV narrative tells you what the person is thinking?"

me: yeah. like that but Its just me talking in my head.

They often think I'm kidding.

People are starting to figure out that Saylor is a fiat larp

Gm,

I still see dozens of people daily on the brink of leaving because of spam, but it's effectively solved if people use the tools we already have

Use these as your relays:

wss://wot.utxo.one

wss://nostrelites.org

wss://wot.nostr.party

wss://wot.sovbit.host

wss://wot.girino.org

wss://relay.lnau.net

wss://wot.siamstr.com

wss://wot.sudocarlos.com

wss://relay.otherstuff.fyi

If you are running a relay not on this list please add it to the GitHub repo

Well the Muslims did it back then and it was a success. If you're rich you lend interest-free with cost/gain sharing model. Why would you do that? Because your nominal stack of money will be depleted every year by 2.5% because of the obligatory Zakat (wealth tax). So you are encouraged to make your money work for you, hence the circular economy. If you are poor you are a recipient of that wealth tax. This was done in a gold/silver standard.

There's a famous story of a Muslim leader named ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Al-ʿAzîz who ruled Muslims for just thirty months. During this time, rich men used to come to the state Treasury, Bayt Al-Mâl, with great amounts of money, saying: “Spend this on the poor.” But they would return to their homes with their charity in hand, for it was said to them: “There are no poor that we know of”

I think saylor understands this deep down. His actions reflect this and are incongruent with his words.

@saifedean is calling a spade a spade regardless to who’s listening

@saylor objective might be to not create added barriers to adoption. If the bankers know they’re doomed if Bitcoin wins they might fight it.

If they think it’s a great investment (in fiat terms) and that they can co-exist with Bitcoin, then they might support it to the detriment of their fiat banks but to their gain in Bitcoin terms. A Trojan horse with a net win for everyone.

The harm I see in saylor’s rhetoric is his support of Bitcoin backed US dollar. As @jeffbooth mentions, this will allow the fiat games to continue in the same way that has been done before with US dollar & gold.

Regardless it won’t matter in the end. Bitcoin will win. Because the human spirit will never accept oppression. It never has but it had no choice.

But now, as long as Bitcoin exists and for the first time in history, it gives every single person on earth an exit from oppression.

@bitdoc

People are leaving because of the spam, and the outbox model might be making it worse. We’ve always blocked spammers, so something odd is definitely happening.

There's a strong possibility that the next bull market will begin, in earnest, at 2pm ET on Sept 18, 2024.... Although it may start slowly at first while market participants wrap their heads around the FOMC statement over the ensuing days/weeks.

Late 1990s style.

Could be a humdinger for #bitcoin.