Opting out of captured systems

Is anyone else tired of being product? Tired of subscriptions? Tired of having the default be a form of market capture?

What im talking about is things like Windows and Facebook or Netflix. The value is not really to the consumer. It seems like my email is full of stuff i dont want or need and i cant unsubscribe fast enough. Your storage is full but have no fear, we will sell you cloud storage to keep all this useless crap! WHAT!! No! Absolutely no!

Im a little past my prime, and after being a windows user all my life im learning(well thats a strong word) Linux. I have a FB account still because i use messenger for my side work. I can move back to an old forum but i also use market place. That has netted me more sweet deals than i ever hoped or dreamed craigslist ever could.

Amazon is another one. Ugh, i hate that the shipping costs and the convenience are just too good to let go. Could i? Yes. But in tight financial times in my household, every bit of savings is critical.

But otherwise, I'm opting out of everything. Lol when i first heard about Nostr i got excited thinking this is gonna be how i can claim ownership of my online identity and data. Eventually nobody will be able to sell and profit off of my data. At least not without my permission which i will then gladly accept a percentage of profits.

Ive always been this way. I told a credit card processor i was canceling back about 15 years ago. I moved to paypal. They asked why, and i told em. You charge me 80 bucks a year for the account, you charge me a percentage of each transaction, and you charge a processing fee.

You get paid 3x in this transaction. You get money from me, the purchaser and your probably owned by the card company they use so youll get interest on that balance. No, this is wrong. If you want me to bring you customers, you can oay me to do it. Ill not pay you. And then i happily paid my 3% to paypal which saved me a nice amount over the years.

Is anybody else cutting the parasitic drain from their lives? Im trying to find every open source option i can. Will somebody let those folks know to accept zaps so we can support them? If i do it i will mess it up. This is a Mallers conversation to be sure. Sorry to name names, i dont want to disrespect all the hardworking people out there. Its a team effort to grow a community. We all do our part, big or small.

So am i alone in bucking the system? Anybody else shedding the dead weight? What are you doing?

BTC and small businesses

Hello to all the podcasters and great minds that share their time and knowledge on them!

As of late ive been listening to quite a few chats about how big corporations have been adopting Saylor's strategy and all that entails. And thats awesome! It seems to me its saved and will save a number of them and the people who work in them while also making a new sort of bank or investment vehicle that investors can hitch their wagon to.

What i dont hear but desperately want to is how small businesses can adopt a BTC strategy and implement a payment system. Theres way more small businesses, startups, sideworkers, gig workers, hobbyists, etc out there.

I would like to be an early adoptor for my sidehustle. I know there exist some companies that accept and help you manage crypto payments but it seems to me the amount of sales dont justify the cost of entry. Or maybe i just dont know what i dont know? Im sure theres easy ways to p2p like wallets that accept multiple coin types but i worry that buyers either wont have or want to spend crypto, ill have to convert "other" to BTC, ill mess it up, ill expose myself and lose money, theyll mess it up and send it elsewhere(that one really sucks, now im not selling anything and their out money-ouch) not to mention the tax ramifications of all those transactions and swaps, what money did i extract to purchase stuff etc.

I just posted a thread about what adoption might look like over time and this sutuation plays a part of that. I cant force BTC adoption but i can enable it! Having a side hustle pay me in BTC allows me to continue stacking but it also will be a motivator to spend in BTC. Actually, you know what? We should all be using sats. Pretty sure none of us are doing whole coin transactions on the regular. Its sats, say it, use it, be the grammar police and make everyone else do the same. Normalize talking about sats, what things cost in sats. Think in sats. Dream in sats. Is there a symbol for a sat?

Anyway, please, can we start talking about day to day adoption, how to do it, why to do it, create new ways to let small businesses do it? The regular person needs some guidance and discussion around sats. Anybody wanna help me create a pod? We can call it "Sats talk" or "Lets talk about Sats" or "How to Satoshi" (that one sounds like a dance style) or something.

I do realize i can do this on paypal, cashapp, and others but id like to remove myself from a custodial type situation. I also use a credit union and that has restricted me from utilizing alot of the tech that is SATS😉 based. Like somehow not using a predatory bank is penalized. I know, its the regulations. Just saying, its not like i didnt at least try a few things.

I hear all my podcasters talking to big tech and mining companies, wheres the small fry? Not as exciting i know but definitely more relatable to the listener. Im ready to be bored to tears about how Jan from Sheboygan sells her doylies on Etsy and gets paid in SATS and has now found out she can get her groceries from the local small independant grocer and is just tickled she can pay in SATS. I mean ill hate it eventually but by that time it will be the norm.

Have a fantastic day! 🚀🌙

FEAR

With all the great minds sharing info and pods dissecting everything, the one thing that we dont hear much about is what adoption looks like. We talk alot about what Bitcoin is, how it works, what it can do. We talk about the future and what the inevitable failure of fiat will look like and we even discuss what a future on a bitcoin standard is and how that could work at scale.

But what i ponder is how do we get there? What does that look like? Is there something more we could or should be doing? Things we should not be doing?

After many hours of shallow thinking with a small amount of drool, heres what i arrived at. This will be a slow process. So slow that you and everyone else might miss it if you arent paying attention. I equated it to the old days when we paid cash and wrote checks for everything. Credit cards were a thing but really werent for everyday use.

The places i first think i noticed card use was the grocery store and gas station. Remember the knuckle buster the cashiers used to make imprints of the card? Does anyone remember layaway?After a time the cards had readers and then debit came along. Thats when things really started moving. You didnt really notice that now people were swiping everywhere for everything until "that person" pulled out a checkbook and everyone in line groaned. Just swipe your card!!! Jeez. Now nobody really has cash or rarely do we use a check.

Thats what adoption looks like. I understand there are places that this is normal and there are circular BTC economies. But i dont feel comfortable with the sats i have, spending them seems like just giving away a valuable resource never to be seen again. I need to be able to get paid in BTC before i can think of spending in BTC. The same reason we all didnt rush out and charge up our credit cards when they first came out. Theres a cost associated with that use. Over time that hurdle will become less and the cost ignored. Can i pay cash or check? Probably. Do i? No. All my banking is digital. Get ready for cbdc. We are moments away from that being forced on us. I think as soon as the powers that be figure out how to hide their digital footprints it will happen. I hope it doesnt, but we are mostly digital already.

With this government pushing crypto, not BTC, i can see that increasingly being available on more pay platforms. I can see them having giftcards at the kiosks. Until one day, its as if it were always that way. Now that the shitcoins can rude along, they will push for this. And since they can manipulate their coins it will be just like the stock market. Insiders will pump and dump over and over. The masses will get fleeced until hopefully one day they realize, "hey! BTC doesnt get rugpulled" and now all those options on the touchscreen on choice of crypto will slowly become less and less relevant as they start to go to zero.

Thats all i could come up with, i still have to devote at least a year of mental energy to think about what the U.S. government could do that might help or hinder this path and why.

Oh and as always, we SHOULD be talking about this. And should be finding ways to promote this. As for the reasons not to? I got nothin.

Last thing, the only place ive ever spent any BTC is right here. Wasnt much but i really wanted to try it and i wanted to thank somebody for sharing a good thought. It felt good.

Right after this im gonna post a request on a topic about small businesses. This IS the place that all the podcasters, innovators and known personalities frequent.

Have a great day.🚀🌙

do my best Chapelle impersonation of Lil john(hand cupped behind ear),"Hhhwwwaatt?!!!"

heavy metal, rock, classic rock and i dabble in old school rap, punk, industrial

I believe you mean Craig Wrong, no? 🤣

In case nobody has said it recently, thank you! first comment I made as soon as I got on here. without you and the other devs we would not be as safe or as educated as we are. Never compromise! you even think you might start to want to bend, hit me up and I'll smack you upside the head to remind you why you can't. but I honestly believe that is not in you. in all the pods I've heard that does seem to be your core principal, never sacrifice security.