The mint uses DLCs instead of an exchange to stabilize its balance. That way you open the door to offer this service by anyone who can participate in Bitcoin (everyone!).

nostr:npub1a8jzweysxa9qmtmht874736aalm0lwdsl306nrys9d05ktlrhw3qcr5pj4 showing off his hardware nostr signer. A bluetooth version of this for damus would be awesome… 🤔

Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there were a lot of capital controls, lending restrictions, securities restrictions, etc. And it was for two different but intertwined reasons.

One obvious reason was that, among countries involved in trade wars or shooting wars, they wanted to reduce capital flows to the enemy.

A second reason was that, due to the war, sovereign debts became so high relative to GDP that they had to inflate away the debt, which was a form of default. It wasn't just 6102; it was a broad range of controls. Carmen Reinhart described it well as “creating a captive audience” in an

IMF Working paper:

“High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative ½ of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.”

-IMF Working Paper No. 2015/007

Unfortunately, as most here know, both conditions are once again present in the 2020s. The US/Europe vs Russia/China contest is providing a useful excuse for governments to crack down on privacy, p2p exchange, money transfer, etc. Meanwhile, western governments have a similar sovereign debt problem that ultimately necessitates inflating the debt away.

Some of this Operation Chokepoint 2.0 stuff is just targeting scammy crypto companies and things like that. And the SEC enforcement actions are also going after crypto securities fraud and so forth. For bitcoiners, those things are not particularly relevant.

But under the surface, the bigger risk is all of the ongoing pressure on privacy, p2p, and the free flow of capital, including tighter bank restrictions and debanking.

Portuguese wine. What else?

You’ve conducted a survey and found a majority of people think banks have “zero risk”?

This is a completely anodyne point. I don’t know anybody of average intelligence that doesn’t understand that there is some form of risk in the banking system connected to how banks make loans or invest in assets. You don’t think the people who lived through the 2008 Financial Crisis understand that?

We have a testnet for Cashu. Can you guess what we call it? 1k zap for the right guess!

There is a lot of crazy nostr stuff coming on LNbits soon. The multiplexer is literally the most boring part of it :)

FUCK THE GOVERNMENTS!

If you do not repost this message you are a fucking pussy!