Not open source tho right?

About the #travelrule in Europe.

A rant to end the year.

Close to no one actually seems to care.

Three years ago, my podcast started because the first proposals for this law were being worked on in the EU Commission.

Since then, only a handful of people have reacted.

The rest just shrugged it off with some nonsense like, "I'll be outside the EU by then," or even worse: "Who cares? Some tech mumbo jumbo will solve it if you run 15 tools and use 15 compiled solutions that only 100 nerds really understand."

This is about our entire Bitcoin space being overrun by middlemen selling lies, bullshit, shitcoin casinos, credit cards backed by venture capitalist garbage, or even worse: untested solutions or toy-grade hardware wallets with buggy software or attached middleman services.

And now our main man, Jack Mallers, whose company rolls over to deliver the EU the Strike honeypot data by implementing the travel rule?

I remember

@Trezor

taking a huge shitstorm online a few years ago for unilaterally implementing the #travelrule, but now... hardly anyone reacts.

Yes, I get it—you can’t expect a bigger company to just ignore the law and continue without repercussions. But the Strike app is no longer an onboarding tool (we saw this coming, of course). Still, try onboarding someone to Bitcoin in Europe after January 1, 2025, and it’s either going to be:

KYC + criminalization + high taxes and a mountain of paperwork,

or

Just tell them, "Don’t bother with Bitcoin. It’s over. We live in the European Union—you should move elsewhere if you want freedom."

The fact that Europeans aren’t even organizing a single protest, a single act of defiance, or any resistance is telling of the sort of total patsies we’ve become. I see no end to this.

We now live in a totalitarian state as of January 1, 2025.

We should either resist or run.

But resistance at this point requires many brave people to stand up, instead of wasting time on Netflix or TikTok.

Unfortunately, for many of us, running is not an option or a desired outcome.

The travel rule is here, and for me personally, it feels like defeat—while the ones I should be fighting alongside in the trenches are rolling over like trained poodles.

Guess the dish

Is this mysterious fog poison or wut

lnbc20250n1pnhglvjpp5ps0e55uqgp805ljhza6vg0syxpr246umxw5fj2pht75xmae9d0esdqqcqzzsxqyz5vqsp5ssrh733pq0ea3t747m0z7hred0d9e342dfj4fr7xwalenmhulrkq9p4gqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqpqysgqs66d8l0u70zg4nzzpdf5nec8kxa0c36gkvpzlj58pmzdj2973re5338xapx5almgzqyf2tdh94ttdykkyjecpel3gjzr0x93p3cc3hsqtldmhp

lnbc20250n1pnhgldypp5dz3sp0qpcammykwcvjvh9nzm79zcsanahay0exwr2r4vclfmxd0sdp8fpshqureyp8x2aeqt9jkzu3pyrcflrd77z06tqscqzysxqyz5vqsp5ccj3u6pq8sp0kk73j6luj789zh7xdwjnygfw48ax7zh8yy2ny7ls9p4gqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqpqysgq9y3umxqjvvljy9268s8xujgpvjcqcztzpq6t9xceluqkstx0qz54r72hh9pzpkenh0j5wf8yv6hr4ffxx95xutcut2ec7tq448mda2qq5ttrgf

Powell is hopelessly fighting inflation, already. Longer end is headed up, no matter what he does.

Why would Trump cause rates to go down? 😂

Gm my friends are you back to work today or still have a week off?

Some might wonder why Nostr needs a bridge to Bluesky or the Fediverse, but that's not the right question. The real question is: what’s holding us back from building them? Open protocols are far superior to centralized, closed platforms. Nostr is powerful.

During the ride down from $69k Bitcoin, I took out 0% interest credit cards to Stack Sats.

I didn't buy as low as I could have and have been paying ~25% interest on these for about a year.

It was a good investment, but now it's hurting my mental health and I still can't justify selling.

The bottom of the Bear Market was DARK and I can't wait to throw that weight off my shoulders finally.

This is not true. This is false. I implemented an ActivityPub server that behaves exactly like other ActivityPub servers.

I am surprised that the people behind "fediblock" suddenly don't know how to defederate a server.

Is it bad that I don't want to let any Sats go?

I understand that by spending them I'm encouraging the BTC economy, but its hard to part with them...

OK Nostr, I'm 100% BTC now & 100% off Coinbase!

Going forward, the best strategy is just to keep stacking and never look back??