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jimmysong
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Bitcoin Expert Open-Source Coder Follow me to learn #BTC Author of 5 Bitcoin books Fiat Ruins Everything: https://fiatruinseverything.com PGP: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C D70C FAA6 17E3 2

AI is an amazing servant but a terrible master.

Makes me wonder if guitars have improved over the past 20 years. Do they stay tuned longer? Do they have low action without fret buzz? How bright are different strings? Do pickups have a USB interface?

I haven't played guitar in almost 20 years, but this makes me want to pick it up again.

God, give me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change (Twitter)

The courage to change the things I can (Nostr)

And the wisdom to know the difference (closed source and centralized vs. open source and decentralized)

Some shower thoughts, thinking about what to build on Nostr as someone who runs a centralized OTC app.

When selling Bitcoin on a P2P marketplace, the seller is at high risk of these kinds of scams especially of the buyer is using a non-cash payment (paypal, bank transfer, fiat payment apps). Sellers often get super rekt by the scams mentionned above. P2P or OTC bitcoin sellers will either charges a big premium as insurance, or does their own KYC (often either ultra invasive or hopelessly inadequate). Fraudulent buyers hurt the UX of P2P marketplaces, and ironically the fraud detection tools of centralized exchanges, whether KYC or pattern analysis, would be the solution.

As a seller of Bitcoin, the only thing you really need to know about the buyer is "will this guy fuck me over and will the fiat be clawed back". As a buyer, you only want to give the minimum information possible, but enough that the seller will trust you and not charge you exhorbitant fees and put you through outrageous verification processes to make sure you're not a scammer.

Bull Bitcoin's low-hanging fruit value proposition for Nostr: we have sophisticated fraud detection and KYC tools with varying degrees of due dilligence. Most of our tools are minimally privacy intrusive. The end result is that we have can have an extremely high degree of certainty that a given user "is not scammer", and a high degree of certainty that a user is "likely not a scammer". Our users already obtain a kind of "trust score" internally, which basically means they are not likely to do a chargeback, are not frausters stealing someone's bank account or a con artist performing some man-in-the-middle scam.

So it seems like doing NIP-05 verifications, or some variation, giving broad labels (risk score very low, risk score low) based on internal that we have would be useful for people that want to show good reputation on Nostr-based marketplaces. And we could do this well. Bull Bitcoin users that are whitelisted by us could then "port" the reputation they have with us to a P2P exchange.

Then again, I really don't want to be "the KYC guy" on Nostr. I hate the fact that KYC is one of our expertise (even if a lot of what we do is minimally invasive). I also don't want to be liable for "endorsing" people that aren't scamming Bull Bitcoin, but that may scam others.

I wanna do something fun on Nostr, not replicate something that sucks from legacy Fiat-Bitcoin world. But there is demand for it and we're good at it.

Final thought: just because you can, and just because people want, doesn't mean you should.

I wish there was something like a web of trust, which is a decentralized version of KYC

Democracy is a great idea. We should try it sometime.

This week, we explore the age of average, the striking parallels between America & the Byzantine Empire, WWII's Operation Barbarossa, and much more. Don't miss my recent BOB interview and upcoming meetups in Taipei & Seoul.

Bitcoin Tech Talk #338

https://jimmysong.substack.com/p/bitcoin-tech-talk-338

Honestly wish zaps were much much easier. Switching to a wallet and confirming the payment and waiting for it to go through is just too much of a pain.

What clients have a more integrated fast zapping experience?

There are those that think Bitcoin needs marketing and promotion so people will adopt it. Unsurprisingly, these are generally marketers and promoters. They start promoting altcoins when they realize Bitcoin doesn't need them.

Then there are those that believe Bitcoin is the best money and that it's adoption is inevitable and prepare accordingly.

I have lived my whole life in a fiat money world. So has everyone under 52.

Bull market confirmed!

Bitcoin doesn't need your approval, shitcoiners' approval, nocoiners' approval, government approval, or Keynesians' approval.

Bitcoin won't win because it becomes popular. Bitcoin will become popular because it will win.

Few.

The best opportunities in the US all revolve around Cantillon effects.

The best opportunities in the developing world revolve around providing value.

Incentives rule everything around me.

I miss the early COVID days when there was no traffic and popular places had no people.

Too soon?

USD and Twitter losing market share to BTC and Nostr.

They're making similar centralized mistakes to alienate their users.

What if Tether is the only full reserve bank?

How do you tell the difference between an affinity scammer and a genuine convert?