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Nancy Biddle
5b5c665cd835a0d04e0992a8d4b644352d2466826e227e195a956efa7d59eb98
Montreal pleb

Fountain needs to be connected to my Nostr. Here to find my Nostr. Oh well. It is still not easy. Next.

Monthly check in. See you next month (or two.)

Twitter locked me out of my handle @ ndev_support so I am not bothering to fix it. Get I am here now.

Replying to Avatar Mandrik

Ever wonder what it was like working for a Bitcoin company in the early days? Did you know users back then were part crazy, part generous?

I started working at BitInstant late 2012, which allowed people to buy Bitcoin with cash. In the fall of 2013, I joined Blockchain(dot)info (BCI). The early days at BCI is what I want to focus on here.

BCI was the biggest non-custodial web wallet & the most used block explorer. I wore many hats as the first employee, but my main job was handling the support tickets.

My first day at BCI was chaos. I logged into Zendesk and saw THOUSANDS of tickets as old as January 2013. There was one guy, Ben Reeves, doing everything since inception. Support wasn't the highest priority.

After initially feeling overwhelmed, I decided to clean things up. I closed all tickets older than a few weeks, and included a message apologizing for the lack of response. I assured people this would no longer be the norm, and to open a new ticket if their issue was ongoing.

I had free reign over my job, and became obsessed with making sure users received help in a reasonable amount of time. It started as a goal to respond within 24 hours of a new ticket, which turned into 12 hours. Within a few months, the average response time was down to 2-4 hours, only because I had to sleep at some point! šŸ˜‚

I didn't realize how little I knew about Bitcoin until I had to answer tickets about the Bitcoin network itself. After all, we weren't just a web wallet, but a block explorer! I spent many late nights digging around on BitcoinTalk, trying to learn more, so I could help users with their questions. Learning about Bitcoin back then wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy.

Many early users were shocked to receive a response to their questions. To hear back so quickly was unheard of. There were many Bitcoin projects back then, but most didn't have dedicated support staff. If you received a response, it would be from the founder or some other developer. These guys didn't have the resources to tackle support, especially in a timely manner.

I quickly learned about the generosity of bitcoiners. Many users requested a btc address from me so they could send a tip for the help provided. Even when I told them it was unnecessary, as I was a paid employee, they insisted on tipping.

Many of these users were nuts. šŸ˜‚ Here's an example that didn't happen frequently, but it happened:

A user opens a ticket during the time I'm actively watching the queue. I see it come in, respond within minutes with a solution, and he insists on tipping. I'm like, "Bro it's cool, don't sweat it," but this madlad won't leave me alone until he tips me.

I look at my tip jar - 0.5 BTC, which is worth a few hundred USD at the time. WTF, ARE YOU INSANE?! 🤯

Part of this generous attitude was about saying thank you, but I believe a bigger part was about the early proliferation of Bitcoin.

We preach the HODL mentality today, but Bitcoin wouldn't be what it is without the generosity of early adopters. So many bitcoins were given out freely so people could learn about it firsthand.

I believe many of the tips I received were from people who, at one point, also received free btc. It felt wrong to HODL these tips, so I paid it forward. I purchased work related items so I could do my job better. I tipped people on Reddit. I donated towards bitcoin-backed fundraisers, including when Andreas fundraised for Dorian Nakamoto. I did everything I could to keep that spirit of giving alive.

The landscape today has changed, but that spirit of generosity lives on. The best example is zapping on Nostr, where people are tipping each other via LN for posts and comments. It's beautiful to see!

Thank you, early adopters, for your generosity. You're a big part of why Bitcoin is what it is today. 🧔

Be kind, be generous, and be a little crazy. šŸ˜„

You have just described the job I am excellent at, and I so want to find work in this area and be paid in bitcoin . I did the Support work for LNTXBOT (Fiatjaf’s telegram based LN wallet project he started in 2019 and closed 2024.) He announced in January 2023 that the wallet was closing, and he took it off bolt11 and 12. He had to figure out a way for folks to empty their wallet and claim their sats. Between January and March, there were a lot of angry people. I stepped up because I am a customer support rep, with a specialty for handling irate clients. I assisted clients to claim their sats. I did not know much about lightning at that time, but I dug right into all the resources that I could possibly find understand more about it, so I could answer questions. March 2023 through to January 2024, I was on call almost 24/7 Serving clients from all over the world. I loved it. And I want more! I do go through the job listings in the Bitcoin job marketplace and I never or at least rarely see calls for CSR/support.

Replying to Avatar corndalorian

Quite the kerfuffle at X about his total departure including history. Word on the ground is that he withdrew everything because he was assigned the blue chip against his wishes.

If the wind blows a buck from an undisclosed source and I pick it up, is the wind the transmitter?

Orange pilling is addictive. Antonopoulos might have been better at it.

Am on it, now. My plebstr just morphed. One bonus so far: so. much. easier. to. share!

I can only answer this from the perspective from somebody who has been trying to get started, I haven’t become Nostrized until today, I can finally follow timelines and mess around here and engage. I finally see this as something I can get involved in. Something is very different suddenly, and it’s a appealing.

Replying to Avatar fiatjaf

xonsh

Lntxbot is down. Please address us.

Why I do not post anymore on Stacker News nostr:npub1jfujw6llhq7wuvu5detycdsq5v5yqf56sgrdq8wlgrryx2a2p09svwm0gx

Background

My last post on SN: https://stacker.news/items/350693

Yes, I was an early stacker on SN from item #166 see my SN bio https://stacker.news/DarthCoin

I am still on top with 619 posts, 13.3k comments, 113 referrals, stacked 2.1M sats and zapping 691k sats. I don’t want to brag about this aspect. I did that just as a proof of work, to show others that if you put effort you can be rewarded. I did that to show all haters and shitcoiners that my voice always speak truth and call out scams in idiocy.

Do not follow me, just to be another influenced sheep, follow my words looking for wisdom and experience that I am sharing with you.

My main focus was on Bitcoin ONLY and trying to educate many noobs with guides about Bitcoin and LN, nodes, economy, sovereignty.

I wasn’t posting on SN to earn sats, I have enough. The sats I received on SN I donate them anyways to people in El Salvador and onboarding more nocoiners (see my SN posts about these kind of actions, as examples).

I saw SN evolving every day, I saw it growing and I tried to maintain it with a good level of information provided.

Yes, many of my views, opinions are quite extreme for many. But are extreme exactly because those people are living inside a bubble and reject to see the reality. My views are literally the pin that explode that bubble and show them the real world. Some are opening their eyes, some are still lost in the new space and some are desperately looking for another bubble to get in, because the real world is so scary for them that is impossible to live in.

The following reasons why I decided to not post anymore on SN:

1. The rewards system on SN became dangerously an ā€œassmilkingā€ system and the founders/maintainers still keep it in place and encourage it.

Yes, it was nice in the beginning to attract more people to post content. But this reward system is flawed: for more you reward – more trash content you get. More trash content – less good discussions you get.

I know, is very hard to maintain that balance between reward good content and remove the trash without censoring.

But the amount of bots, AI content, shitcoineries and garbage makes it almost impossible to have good discussions about things that MATTER. Sometimes you miss good posts just because there’s too much garbage.

2. SN is a good alternative to reddit r/Bitcoin but lately with the new ā€œterritoriesā€ became a new shity reddit. Instead of leaving all the garbage on reddit, SN brings all the garbage from reddit to SN.

SN is far superior to reddit, but it got too high expectations. I don’t know maybe are some other ā€œhigher interestsā€ behind the scenes, some VCs are pushing another agenda, but SN is not anymore that niche platform ā€œBitcoin onlyā€. And is sad to see it how slowly is shitcoinized.

I thought SN will became a kind of new substack too, but it failed. It became just another crap reddit.

Bitcoin needs a STRONG platform to keep high values of Bitcoin maximalism. We are at media war with all the shitcoining garbage and many people still don’t want to see it.

Maximalism = purity and defence against idiocy of shitcoiners.

3. Another particular reason is that I don’t want to became an ā€œinfluencerā€ on SN. My ONLY mission is to speak truth about Bitcoin and Sovereignty. I do not want fame, I do not want sats, I do not want dumb followers.

I want people to read and pay attention to all my words, because each word I said on SN is pure truth and wisdom. Each post and comment I’ve done, have true meanings and you need to read them twice to really understand them. And yes, I didn’t delete any of my posts/comments. Are there for the history of truth.

I consider myself more as a mentor, educator, truth speaker. But meaningless as an individual, just another bitcoiner with more experience.

So I decided to stop posting on SN when I saw that many were considering me as a stupid ā€œinfluencerā€.

And haters had a strong influence on making strong voices to became ā€œinfluencersā€. Is about physics: the reaction to a force will be directly proportional with the energy pushed against. For more hate I got, more popular I became… More hate I got = more toxic I became.

4. As I said in my last post on ā€œSN Saloonā€ , I got tired of speaking truth when almost nobody wants to hear the truth. Yes are few exceptions of stackers on SN that are paying attention to my words. But the majority of stackers are kind of lost in the space and are only looking for engagement and useless discussions and even just assmilking sats (some of them even jus6t for being controversial to me).

If the majority of readers don’t want to hear the truth, why should I bother preaching the truth? As I explained in my old post https://stacker.news/items/277326 I had a mission in this world and I think a part of it (preaching truth on SN) is over.

I wrote over 70 guides about Bitcoin and I think could be a base for any nocoiner to start.

I also have another project to finish – My Citadel. I will keep posting on that Citadel substack once I will have news about.

Closing note: and NO I will not post under ā€œanonā€ on SN, as many think I do. Some ā€œanonā€ comments are trying to impersonate me but will fail pathetically. Nobody can be DarthCoin on SN. So haters and shitcoiners, don’t try to imitate me or even posting lies about me in my absence. I will not answer to any provocation or threats. As I said many times: I never debate with shitcoiners, haters.

Those that are missing me, thank you for your love and appreciation. You will always be in my mind and heart. Don’t worry, you already assimilate my teachings and I am proud of you that you can take my words forward to more people. You can use as many times you want my guides and posts as base for your own way of teachings. I am sure you learned a lot from me.

May The Bitcoin Be With You… ALWAYS

When one door closes, another opens wide. Do drop by for farewells at the TG Lntxbot dev group and claim remaining sats if not done yet. Was just pleased to see you like we are old friends, but only by association. Peace.