Sad but true.
I think technically, legally you do own your money in the bank, you just are not in a possession of it.
And indeed, it means they can take it away from you with one click.
You need their permission to withdraw it.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, if it is in your wallet, you really own and fully control it.
A breakthrough technology.
Looks great. OK, hopefully in the future, where I live, services like this will be available, too
Thanks for sharing
Maybe, for some infrequet transactions, if I wanted to support the merchant, if asked, yes
That's also my plan
However, I have one worry... To borrow money, take a loan, using Bitcoin as a collateral, I will have to give up on self custody, right?
The future lending institution that will lend me money, will need to get control over my Bitcoin, right?
So that they can sell it in case I do not pay back...
Unless there is going to be sone multisig future solution, I guess.
But even then, it will not be trustless anymore. On the other hand, how could it be, if I want someone to give me money...
Until I live in a country that has no capital gains tax on Bitcoin sales... nothing.
It's sad and frustrating. But this is a reality I need to deal with.
I very much want Bitcoin to succeed, to become widely accepted money, to separate money and state.
But as long as there is a tax, if I buy anything for Bitcoin, I have two options.
One, evade the tax. But I'm at risk they will find me. And even if I'm careful and buy non-kyc and conjoin and so on, there is a risk. And I don't want to have to worry.
Option two, calculate and pay the taxes. Accounting nightmare, waste of time, loss of money.
So, for now, I buy nothing with Bitcoin.
I save in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is my hope for financial safety when I'm old.
Ideally, I will be rich, or, at least, I hope, the value, the purchasing power, of my savings, will be protected.
And for day to day stuff I buy, as much as I hate the fact I'm tracked and I could be censored and my money could be confiscated and so on, Mastercard and revolut work ok for me, as a payment network. Transactions are generally instant and free.
So, for payment rails, my needs are met by Visa or Mastercard.
For long term savings, I use Bitcoin and I don't sell it, that is, also, I don't buy anything with it.
Maybe except zaps :-)
Does my approach make sense?
Do you think I should start trying to buy things for Bitcoin, just to encourage merchants to adopt and so on, and sacrifice my time or money to deal with taxes?
This is amazing.
A side question: for some reason, Amethyst shows, below this post, and your other posts, a note "automatically translated from Chinese to English".
Any idea why is that?
Beautifully said
Thank you
Honest question.
I want to understand.
BitVM supporters say that they do not need any change to Bitcoin, and could do things like drivechains.
Drivechain supporters say that a soft fork is needed, a small change, to use some op code, but I guess it will be difficult to convince core developers to merge it or node operators to run it.
Is it true that BitVM can achieve the same thing without a need for Bitcoin soft fork?
If true, it looks promising, right?
Or, if not the same thing but less, what additional capabilities will be unlocked by drivechains that cannot be done with BitVM?
Thank you. Interesting.
Perhaps you can create a new wallet, send it there, and throw away the keys.
I have also read somewhere that there are, in Bitcoin, some addresses that, due to some historical error, are provably unspendable.
Perhaps you could find such address and send it there.
What do you mean by dust attacked?
I guess it depends on what role you would like ETH to play in your investment portfolio.
For the role of the digital gold, a vehicle for long term savings, a way to preserve value, I think there is no second best. Buy Bitcoin.
On the other hand, if you treat ETH as like a stock, a security, which by the way it probably is, an unregistered security, like a company, and you use ETH as a way to invest in this company, then it may be an OK idea.
If a small size, like you said, and you are okay with the risks coming from the fact ETH is not decentralized, not censorship resistant and has no guaranteed scarcity, and you want to bet on its price increase, I'd say it is, or it may be a valid idea, a small part of the portfolio part for risky stocks.
But even then, price of ETH is anyway highly correlated with Bitcoin price, do you might not get much more alpha from it.
Good luck with your investments.
And of course, I don't know your situation so I'm not in a position to give any investment advise.
I do not know enough to have a conclusive opinion, at least yet, whether drivechain is a good or bad idea.
I will say this: I find the rationale shared by drivechain proponents to be... quite reasonable. Convincing to me, I'd say.
At the same time, I see many bitcoiners, including people I respect a lot and consider experts and leaders of the movement, being strongly against it.
I so much want Bitcoin to succeed.
My life's future and savings depend on it.
I want Bitcoin protocol and network to stay safe.
At the same time, I like things like privacy and scale ideas promised by drivechains.
I'm unsure I understand or can evaluate the risk or validity of key reasons against this BIP.
There is this miner incentive thing, perhaps the biggest one, hard to predict the impact.
And this risk that people will receive Bitcoin on drivechain and will find out this is not real on chain Bitcoin. I'm less worried about this.
Anything else?
I see a lot of people reacting negatively to it.
And, while, for sure it means something, I want to understand the rationale against it.
Well, that my current thinking about this.
In short, I need to learn more I guess, to form an opinion.
I agree
Thanks for saying this
It made me realize I have this good fortune, too
Nice! Yes that's all you need to do, Amethyst should start using it now.
I run strfry, it feels very light on resources: https://github.com/hoytech/strfry
My relay has been mostly idle until now so hard to say what it will look like once more people use it, but so far it needed very little resources:
Ignore the CPU spike as that's a CRON job that updates strfry to the latest build.
Based on this I'd say 1CPU/1GB RAM is probably OK, maybe 2GB of RAM to be more comfortable.
Thank you
I guess I'll experiment on weekend
If my relay is up, I will let you know
Well, I guess I also need a domain and a static IP address...
Thank you
I have just added it to my relays list on Amethyst
Looks green
That's it, right?
If I wanted to run my own relay, to support the NOSTR network, what are the hardware requirements?
Will a cheap VPS for $5 a month do?
Like 1CPU, 1GB RAM?
Or something more powerful if needed?
Just curious, please let me know
