Amalfi Coast,Italy 🇮🇹

Would you warn people if the pie they just ordered and were about to take a bite of was actually just shit in a pie crust? Or would you stand by and wait for them to take a bite of it?

Good morning 🫶

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One of my girlfriends just sent me this from class 😏 wanna help me respond to each point so I can send it to her and she can send to her professor (possibly read out loud to her class).

Here is my initial response to her. The goal was to keep it as basic / easy to understand as possible and as short as possible. 👇

Why cryptocurrencies are used by criminals?

🙋‍♀️ Note: cryptocurrencies are very different from Bitcoin. “Cryptocurrencies” is a general category, so I can’t defend the overall category because all of them but one are shit, and that one is Bitcoin. So I can make arguments for Bitcoin.

• Cryptocurrencies are an additional financial source for criminals

🙋‍♀️ - And so is cash. Most criminal activities are done in fiat. The amount of bitcoin used for criminal activities is less than 1%. Also I want to emphasize that while Bitcoin has been used for a few illegal transactions, its transparent and traceable nature often make it a LESS ATTRACTIVE option for criminal activities compared to untraceable cash transactions.

• Single unit can be crashed to one hundred million.

🙋‍♀️ - And… lol what’s the problem with that? This divisibility makes Bitcoin accessible and usable for small transactions, increasing its utility and inclusiveness.

For the same reasons $1 can also be split (crashed) into 100 pennies. It’s a normal feature of money.

• Round-the-clock transactions

🙋‍♀️ - Yeah this is good for criminals and for the average citizen. Because fuck the banks making me wait for their ass to show up to their 9-5 in order for me to ask them to use MY OWN money. Thank goodness for 24/7 access, should have always been this way.

• Cross-border nature

🙋‍♀️ Exactly, it’s a feature, not a a bug. This is the whole point. It’s my money and I should be able to go anywhere with it. Imagine (this won’t be hard for you to imagine 🤲) You are a Syran refugee crossing borders and you only have what’s in your bag. You can’t carry bricks of gold (too heavy), you can’t take all jewelry (someone can/ will rob you of this), you can’t take cash with you because you will have to pay a tax on anything over $10k, you can’t hope to exchange your money to your new location because who will exchange SYP for the local currency? Only with Bitcoin can you easily cross boarders and feel safe knowing that no one can rob you of your bitcoin and you can exchange it into any currency, no matter what border you have crossed.

Bitcoin facilitates financial inclusion for those without access to traditional banking systems and provides a secure way to preserve wealth in unstable political or economic environments.

• Tangled transaction chains

🙋‍♀️ - I think they are referring to mixing coins (coin join). In that case, this is also fine. It can provide privacy and security, much like how encrypted communication protects users' data and conversations.

Even if you have nothing to “hide” everyone wants privacy. Just because you close the blinds on your windows at night does not mean you have something to “hide”, it’s just that you want privacy for example when you are taking a shower or simply eating dinner with your family.

• Irrecoverability of transactions

🙋‍♀️- This is true, but if someone knows how to store it and how to use it then it’s not a risk. It was the same with gold back in the day. People just need to learn to be responsible again and this won’t be an issue.

• Relative closedness of transfers

🙋‍♀️ - While Bitcoin transactions are pseudonymous, the blockchain ledger is public and transparent. This transparency ensures a level of openness and auditability that is certainly not always present in traditional financial systems.

• Decentralized emission

🙋‍♀️ - The decentralized nature of Bitcoin is a strength, not a weakness. It means no central authority can devalue the currency through inflationary policies. It also ensures resilience and continuity, as there's no single point of failure.

• Issues with law regulation

🙋‍♀️ - There are no real issues because it is impossible to ban. No one can stop peer-to-peer use cases. Nevertheless many countries are working towards developing regulations that balance innovation with consumer protection.

I wrote a short rant called "fuck easy" a couple of days ago. I've been listening to podcasts and after the 5th person complaining that nostr is too hard (is it, really?) I was fed up and typed this out on my phone. I hope that we can return to a point, culturally, where "hard" is okay, just like the first level of the original Super Mario was hard.

Coddling everyone's mind has led us to the upside-down clown world we're currently living in, and coddling everyone's body has led to less-than-optimal health, to put it mildly. In the Bitcoin world, coddling users and making things "easy" has led to Coinbase-by-default and other stupid bullshit, and I truly am fed up with all of that.

There is a better way, but the "better" isn't necessarily "easy."

Welcome to the streets of #Nostr

The most frustrating aspect of being a computer scientist.

Good morning 🫶

Good morning bitjoon 🫶🫶

Yeah bunch of mainstream outlets in unison are suddenly talking about how bitcoin uses an entire swimming pool's worth of water to cool the miners for every transaction.

I for one am shocked by this new revelation, and I think it's an important issue that we, as Bitcoiners, must tackle.

It's important for everyone to #ThinkOfTheWater #SaveTheWater

Good morning ☕

Losing someone young, or losing an older person while you are young, is always hard.

When my father passed away from cancer while I was in my early twenties, it wasn't surprising at all. This fact had been coming for two years, slowly. But when it came, it hurt just as bad. And till this day it still hurts.

I was at work and got a call; it was a hospital. They said my father had been suddenly transferred to hospice, and it wasn't looking good. He probably had a week at most. He was in another state. The doctor transferred my father to me on the phone and my father was weakly like, "hey...." and I said hello, and I said I'm coming now. He said, "No don't... uhh.... don't worry... you are far and have work... I'm fine...." I asked then why was he transferred to hospice if things were fine. He was like, "uh well... well you know.... uh.... it's fine...." And I was like, "holy shit I'm coming right now."

So I went to my boss and looked at him. I had previously told him that there might be a moment where I would have to just immediately leave without notice, no matter how important the meetings and such, because of my father. So in this moment I literally just looked at him in the middle of a busy day and was like, "I gotta go" and he was like "of course". So I drove there, two hours away and went straight there. My father weakly said on the phone not to go, but he never sounded like that, so I went immediately.

I got there, and my father was in a hospital in the death ward, and the guy who greeted me was a pastor rather than a nurse, which was not a great sign. I asked what was going on and he told me straight up that this was not good, that my father was likely dying within a week. So he brings me to my father. My father is barely awake. His memories and statements are all over the place, but I just hold his hand and tell him that it's fine and I love him. I'm just there. He kept fading out and I was like, "it's okay, just relax". He could see me and talk in a rough sentence or two and thanked me for coming, but started to fade away.

And then after like 30 minutes, he went fully unconscious. He was still roughly gripping and shaking the bed headboard and so forth but wasn't conscious (and I was like, "Are you all giving him the right pain medicines, this doesn't look good", and even the pastor was like, "yes I have seen many and this is not comfortable" and I was like an angry 23-year-old so I went out in the center area like, "what do all of you even fucking do here?! He is shaking the bedframe and looks in pain, and even the pastor agrees. Holy shit." So I went and got medical attention to deal with this, but felt slow and ineffective at this. They gave him more morphine and it calmed him down, but while it relaxed him, he ultimately didn't wake up again.

I spent the next couple hours there, and then left and called various family members for my second round when he was unmoving. I said if they want to see him, come now, in the next day or two.

But a little while later after I left, I got a call and was told he had died. Only I (and the nurses) saw him while he was still briefly conscious.

During that call itself, I was stoic. I was like, "Yes, I understand. Okay." and then hung up. And then I sat there for like five minutes in silence... and then cried. I got over it quickly and we did the funeral in the following days. My father had been struggling with cancer for years, so this wasn't fully surprising.

But what lingered was the memory. It has been 13 years now, and yet whenever I am in my depths I still think of my father. The memory never gets weaker. I think of his love, or I think of how attentive he was, or how accepting he was, or what he would say about my current problems.

People we love, live on through us. We remember them so vividly, and we are inspired by them.

If he was a lame father, he wouldn't have so many direct memories 13 years later. But because he was a good and close father, he does.

All of those memories are gifts. All of them are ways of keeping aspects of that person alive in our world. It's how we remember them in the decades that follow. Their victories, their losses, and everything in between. Virtues they quietly did that you find out later. Virtues you realize only in hindsight how big they were.

🤘🤘

You're at a marriage retreat with your wife enjoying the hot tub, she excuses herself to the lady's room and moments later this lady pops in next to you, what do you do?

I better be able to get my btc out of your wallet.

Good morning ☕