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Jeff Booth
83e818dfbeccea56b0f551576b3fd39a7a50e1d8159343500368fa085ccd964b
Entrepreneur, Tech Leader, Author of The Price of Tomorrow - Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future, GP @EgoDeathCapital

Agreed - AND there are a lot of great people (who share your values) still stuck in that ecosystem whose voices would be fantastic here. The point was that they mostly stay because they “falsely” believe that because users are inflated there, there is more opportunity.

I posted last week about how fast the number of users on Nostr was growing and had a bunch of clarifications to the number I pulled from Primal, essential saying the number was too high.

Been thinking about this problem/opportunity all week.

1) I understand that it is really hard to get accurate numbers in a protocol like this - similar to how lightning growth is difficult to accurately gauge. (But are we making the problem worse by fighting over the number - that we can’t know?)

2) We all know and take for granted that the other bird app wildly overstates their users because it leads to more users. We know this from the court docs on a) Elon transaction, b) Elon constant drumbeat on “how fast it’s growing” c) our own user experience - ie - engagement per # connections (followers) is much higher here d) All of the bots and scams needed the reply to posts on x.

And here’s the thing - it is going to get far worse on X. I still pop in on X to see what’s going on (even though I rarely post) and besides all of the bots and noise, now most of what you see is AI driven clickbait to “win” more followers, drowning out some of the great voices I used to find there. Searching for real content is becoming increasingly difficult.

3) I suspect many of the early users here are early adopters in other areas of their lives. They could see the risks of the other centralized services and/or they wanted to be on the leading edge of something far better.

That being said, a core driver for the majority is that they feel comfort in “what everyone else is doing” meaning that a) if they think Nostr is stagnant (because people here are more honest/critical with real #’s) while b) X is growing (because of “marketing” - I wanted to use a different name for it but stopped short) then c) they will stay for longer on X, because they won’t investigate what you already know…….this is a far better experience, that is getting better every day. (While the competitor(s) are getting worse)

Users and Developers are much more likely to move their valuable time and content here if they think there is a growing community of engagement (there is) versus a stagnant one.

What restaurant are you attracted to? the one with a line of people or the empty one?

Our natural biases are hard to break and for all of Elon’s faults, he sure knows how to use these triggers to drive people to do what he wants them to do.

Really looking forward to the Oslo Freedom Forum next week and all the high signal conversations with friends I’ve met over the years here.

Through this conference @gladstein and team have created the best gathering highlighting the personal tragedy (on billions of people) of broken money. It is hard not to come away from this conference moved…..and with a deep understanding of how we are doing in the #Bitcoin ecosystem matters.

If you’re going to be there, drop me a note to say hi. If not, put it on your calendar for next year.

Replying to Avatar BitcoinOllie

nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe

https://x.com/therealmuju/status/1795944355796074840

You may find this insightful.

Unsure of the research methodology, but at face value the findings are quite revealing and they most definitely upend the mainstream narrative of bitcoiners.

Thanks for sharing Ollie!

Replying to Avatar Efrat Fenigson

🎙️Attempted Attacks on Bitcoin  - nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe

"I wanted to understand the existing financial system, I went down to the sand and I thought of; If we live in a system that we make stronger through our actions, and most people don't know they do, and it's literally theft, but most people don't know and they're dividing further and they will divide further, right? Human nature shows that that'll continue to happen.

And that system is 10,000 times bigger than Bitcoin. And many of the people that are essentially prisoners of that system also don't like Bitcoin because they're scared of it, right? and they're prisoners over here, then that system has so much power against Bitcoin.

So you would have to expect every attack to try to kill it. And I expect every attack. Cyber, pricing, manipulation, FUD, propaganda.

And look in the last 14 years, because those attacks have happened, and it's stronger today.

More decentralized, more secure, evidenced by more mining compute, more nodes, never a hack. I can prove what I just said. I don't need to guess. I can prove this. And my node, which confirms the entire network, confirms that all the time. And so for somebody to change that needs to change me. They need to be able to attack that network. They need to take me and a whole bunch of people that know what I know. And they have to get me to vote against my self interest."

https://video.nostr.build/ff19fc45fa2a76ee2e270941d6afbb5b58602932cd7023bff00520738442990c.mp4

Thanks Efrat! Enjoyed meeting you and doing this podcast in Madeira.

nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe help me understand. I just need a couple of quick clarifications from your premise on the Simply Bitcoin $92 million video:

1.) are you saying Bitcoin can capture 100% of the TAM of global wealth, including the utility value of things like gold and real estate?

Or is it that we reach everything/21 million when Bitcoin is our unit of account?

2.) I've often used this $900T as my TAM, but I can no longer find a good source for the number. While it's irrelevant to your point, I find in my own orange pill efforts, it's helpful to cite sources.

1. I don’t love the clickbait in the video because I didn’t say that. I said that the “purchasing power” of bitcoin is hard to understand because of two distinct forces 1) it is measured from USD - (so I gave a relative purchasing power of todays balance sheet of 43 million and forecasted the balance sheet growth which would be the same purchasing power at a date in the future) AND 2) the “purchasing power” of those dollars will increase forever as all prices in the free market fall to the marginal cost of production.

It doesn’t care if it’s other people’s unit of account. If it’s your unit of account, it’s all that matters.

Replying to Avatar BitcoinMike

nostr:npub1s05p3ha7en49dv8429tkk07nnfa9pcwczkf5x5qrdraqshxdje9sq6eyhe if the majority of people in a hyper bitcoin world won’t end up on layer 1, but on additional layers, will they find themselves in more centralized structures?

No!

#Bitcoin, Lightning/Liquid, Fedimint.

Federations providing an ability to scale AND provide decentralization as needed by creating millions of them. Whatever size you feel comfortable with. Ie - family federation. Completely controlled by you.

Got this note from a friend today:

“Drumbeats of war getting louder by the day...now talk of conscrin Germany and UK (news out yesterday) . Madness. And still trying to remain positive”

————————————————————-

Reminder that a system that relies on theft, coercion and control, requires fear to keep you inside it.

Truth/love/hope is the antidote (and more powerful) Yes….some things might be outside of our control, but we alone control of our thoughts and reactions to them.

Don’t let the nonsense steal your energy.

There are much better places to direct it.

#Bitcoin

#Nostr

It seems like only yesterday that #Nostr started. Was surprised to learn that we’re already over 1,600,000 users. Thanks to all people here that make this place special and all of the developers creating ever improving user experiences and utility.