If people who ran the platforms in the west did what they knew was right there would be no problem.

The actual problem is the people who own platforms do what is wrong, even when they know it is wrong.

“Multipolarity” will not solve the problem of western men who shy away from boldness or taking direct correct decisions for their users and companies.

Asking for other people to do the job you should be doing is the same as pushing the problem into the technical sphere through “decentralisation”; it’s failing to live up to your responsibilities.

Leaders of properly run companies are exactly that; LEADERS. They don’t do things by consensus, or defer to every opinion or allow themselves to be distracted or diverted. They have strict hierarchy where the CEO has final, absolute say on everything important.

And history shows this is correct, from Trump, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, to Steve Jobs; companies led by LEADERS succeed in serving the public through strength.

And this is all about serving the public. If you fail to do that, you’ve failed. Thankfully in Free Market Capitalism, Natural Law is the rule, not theory: LAW.

And make no mistake; all cultures at every scale are not equal. Some work better than others. Failing to accept this is suicidal.

But “You do you”!

I've been seeing a lot of talk about privacy on here recently and I want to share my two sats.

Privacy is a very important and valuable tool. Societies which respect individuals will treat privacy as a human right and enforce your ability to decline revealing information through law.

However, privacy will never and can never be perfect, and it will never be as important to a society as it's underlying monetary system.

Privacy will always consist of trade-offs. I use this platform to communicate, and that has a trade off for privacy. The reality is, most people are comfortable revealing some information about themselves if it achieves a goal they see as being more valuable than the cost.

When it comes to base layer privacy as a monetary network, Bitcoin has somehow become underrated. There is no ID system, no names, no physical addresses. Just public keys and Bitcoin addresses, which often leave tons of plausible deniability and are impossible to be proven to be yours without you signing an address or giving someone your public key. Even a simple one input, two output transaction starts to muddy the water on true ownership.

The problem Bitcoin currently has in the US is the abundance of KYC laws and the frequent use of exchanges. In a circular Bitcoin economy, it would only take a couple interactions before the whole UTXO history becomes nearly impossible to track with any level of certainty around who owns what, aside from those who participated in the specific transaction.

Evolution happens in stages. Right now, 95% of people in America use a bank which gives them exactly zero privacy. Every single transaction is surveilled with 100% confidence that you are making it, and all your balances and assets are known. Even worse, the bank knows which businesses you transact with, how frequently, and at what specific times.

Base layer Bitcoin is already an impovement on this system (with a different set of tradeoffs) and tools like lightning and ECash have the potential to destroy this surveillance. The real problem with privacy is not a technical one - it is a social one. People need to actually demand it and expect to transact freely without having to self report every time you do so.

As I stated, the ability to decline revealing information to others should be a foundational human right. But currently, our problems with privacy come from our broad cultural disinterest in it and our willingness to give up all of our information through the use of threats and coercion. Alternative monetary networks with different privacy trade-offs are not a solution to that problem, and in the process they would undermine the much more important upgrade to the monetary system which is currently taking place.

Rant over and feedback is appreciated.

So buy some… if you’re feeling bold.

nostr:note18u62ja2w5l87u4v9qxhnvqx3azafq4n7hlukmr689l7x43r8ls4skk924a

About as close as you can actually get to being James Bond:

- buzz private vault business doorbell

- enter via 2 auto locking cage doors

- retina scan to gain access into fulcrum

- escorted to personal deposit box via waiting area

- use matching key with staff member to unlock

- given box in private room to do whatever need it for

- complete 90 day key check on multi-sig hardware wallet

- think “how f*cking cool is being your own bank”

- return safety deposit box & go back via all security

Parents of younger kids (in English-dominant locations), please verify: Has the alphabet song really changed this way? I've been trying to sing it the "new" way all day and I'm so confused 🫠

#mumstr #parentstr #momstr

#bitcoin

Vlad is stacking privacy coins now

@TheVladCostea

All this bullishness for banks built on top of Bitcoin (Fedi, cashu) makes me wanna buy more Litecoin, Monero & Zcash.

I didn’t get into Bitcoin to surrender freedom of transactions for convenience.

I didn’t become a Bitcoin maximalist because I want the network to scale & become private through custodians.

I was genuinely hoping that all the cool features would come to Bitcoin in a trust-minimized & self-custodial fashion.

If I can’t get what I want, I will find it elsewhere & pay fees to other miners. It’s in the nature of free markets to enable competition and provide options.

Until Bitcoin improves, every complimentary altcoin is more than welcome & useful.

We are going to start seeing multiple solo mined blocks over the next couple of months.

Another question… why is no wallet using Liquid instead of Coinjoin for privacy? I’m aware of the trust trade-off, but it seems like a workable solution for a spending wallet. At least until Fedimint has all the bugs ironed out and we’ve figured out a good onboarding UX to select a default mint. nostr:note133ld36tn30nqpk7qclwlsq4m5e5at4l4n094f0szhl347hl46fzqp7vry3

Why is the poor thing trapped? Won't it overheat?

A stable Lightning channel

GM! NerdAxe goes brrr.