when a customer pays a merchant with lightning they have nearly perfect privacy from the merchant.

they do not know what utxo funded the payment.

they do not know transaction history.

wallets such as bull bitcoin and phoenix make it incredibly easy to move from onchain to lightning without running your own node or managing channels.

few appreciate this.

Power Grid is a fantastic game

Of course!

If my bank ever paused withdrawals, even temporarily, I'd find a new bank immediately. 🤷‍♀️

In this case, I'm less worried (invested). But still, something to ponder.

my super lib aunt finally became pro bitcoin two months ago because “elon has access to our bank accounts”

she just found out “trump is pro bitcoin” and is against it again, loudly 😂😂😂

Who even writes your name out like that, voters are likely confused. It's "ODELL" 🤌

Lol what a joke 😂.

I complained to NVK once in a podcast though!

Today I was listening to one of my favorite macro podcasts talk about the Fed's meeting from yesterday. One of the best interviewers in the space, and one of his top interviewees.

And I couldn't finish it. So boring.

They were literally noting the tiniest details. The Fed's prepared statement didn't mention a rate cut in September. And then Fed chairman Powell's prepared press talk also didn't mention it. However, when asked about a September rate cut, he flipped to a page where he had a prepared statement indicating that yeah they're kind of leaning toward a September rate cut, and read it.

So they were like, "Huh! I wonder what the significance of that is. He had a prepared written statement about September, but only when asked!"

People literally judge the Fed chair's body language, facial movements, details like whether he has a prepared statement for a given question, etc. Omg.

For my work I need to note the basics of what the Fed said and all that, like the 3-minute summary of all that stuff. But the sheer excitement that these people had when discussing details like that for an hour was so banal. It seemed like satire.

Zoom out.

Penis

What if Bitcoin isn't enough to preserve liberty in the digital age?

We need a constellation of freedom-oriented tools to empower the individual.

Tomorrow at the Minneapolis meetup, we're focusing on "freedom tech." Outside of Bitcoin here is what we might cover:

- Nostr

- Keet

- Open Source hardware (seedsigner, etc)

- TOR

- VPNs

- encrypted messaging (signal, simpleX, etc)

- GPG/PGP (verifying signatures and messaging)

- de-googled cell phone OSs (Graphene/Calyx)

- Linux

- Open Source ethos/Open Source Licenses

Hey nostr:npub1guh5grefa7vkay4ps6udxg8lrqxg2kgr3qh9n4gduxut64nfxq0q9y6hjy are we even living in a free country?

nostr:note1m3p3r0dn4spepvtx23fa4dk06nem5n6l6np346kh47n9zafxqqsswrqecc

Mr E is on a mission to do iron man or something similar in the future so we’re training. Second hike this weekend. 2 hrs round trip and he sprinted the last bit with nostr:npub1v0hxq27mg9e9rcvqegscneklzzgzefjwzmumzmf63wurl5x26pmsytzcpa #hikestr #beautifulbc

The official (basically pegged) Egyptian pound to dollar exchange rate is currently 31-to-1, but on the black market it's about double that.

People naturally try to arbitrage that difference, and so the country has to start enforcing capital controls in order to reduce the ways that the fake exchange rate can be arbitraged.

A vicious cycle that inevitably leads to major devaluation.

Very irritating how people seem to be handwaving this concern. Economic weight matters, especially if fees go out of control

Apple, Google, Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, Amazon must be anxious about the implications of the gift the OpenAI board gave to Microsoft.

Why is nostr purple?

Any other #graphene users having wifi issues after this last update?