Absolutely fucked off with relatives’ reaction to anything to do with bitcoin. I’m expressing the scenario here to get it off my chest as I got quite frustrated and would like your opinions.

Scenario: myself, sister and her husband attend a BBQ with Romanian neighbours. Another Romanian guest mentions bitcoin/crypto. Obviously I’m interested to engage and discuss further with this guest until my sister and husband interject (rudely I might add) and outwardly say “he’s (referring to me) not taking about bitcoin again is he” and literally put me down in front of all the guests - seriously what drives people and even relatives to feel the need to interject or dismiss a conversation that actually had nothing to do with them apart from them hearing the word “Bitcoin”.

Are their minds that negative about it?? Urrrgh!!!! At least just let me have a chat with someone else who is also interested and brought it up. Spoiled the evening entirely!

If you are lucky.

Most banks won't even allow that.

Are there any left that allow unrestricted transactions to bitcoin?

Hi, thank you! Afaiu whats novel about their suggested approach is that they propose for this data to be fed into a ML algorithm shared across institutions (and likely jurisdictions) to build a „behavioral map“. Something like Palantir‘s Gotham comes to mind, which has been penalized/ruled unconstitutional in several EU jurisdictions as it recycles data collected for specific purposes. If you ever want to talk, my DMs are open ;)

It's Sunday, I slept like shit, I woke up nervous.

Someone irritated me in my first 30 mins of the day, a period where I literally can't and don't want to talk to literally anyone.

Going to work in less than an hour and have to find internal peace before diving into a shift full of people, requests, questions and a lot of sweat.. GM.

I for one am happy you made the switch. How about we discuss how aml kyc measures erode due process?

E.g. kyc rules assume funds are illicit until you can prove Who you are and source of funds.

Completely bypasses the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. Bypasses warrants for seizure, etc

Also, all possible because the us is still in a state of emergency from 9/11?

Not sure anyone would want to admit to that one. 😉

I know I've been away for a long time but seeing the laser eyes on a self described compliance dude from legacy banking is funny af. I wonder if he was one of the dudes throwing fruit at me on the ferry in 2014 when I offered Wall Street dudes a bitcoin to open a Blockchain.info wallet.

What's the place to get back all of the people you follow on nostr?

Just had an "accident" and now I'm only following 8 accounts.

Most of the people I know who think like this don't actually have kids and many probably never will.

#HODL 🧡

How dare you?! Well I never!

28 sats incoming. nostr:note1vhlfve4tn36mpyxxk5nlt0wxqruezq2wq5d5qwqdd7py7zejwstsfenurq

Bitcoin doesn’t fix everything. It is a tool that provides people the opportunity to improve their lives if they’re smart enough to take advantage.

From the Sovereign Individual:

“In 1828, 4 percent of New Yorkers were thought to have owned 62 percent of all the city's wealth. By 1845, the top 4 percent owned about 81 percent of all corporate and noncorporate wealth in New York City. More broadly, the top 10 percent of the population owned about 40 percent of the wealth across the whole United States in 1860. By 1890, records suggest that the richest 12 percent then owned about 86 percent of America's wealth.”

Even on a gold standard, before there was a money printer, wealth accumulated in fewer hands. This seems to be the natural state for humans. During this same period, the mid 1800s, about 1/3 of Americans were considered incompetent. They could not read, write, or do simple arithmetic with a calculator. Today, most people can do these things but are still incompetent. The problem is the unwillingness to think. As power accumulated in fewer hands, it became easy to establish the federal reserve and end the gold standard. Is it reasonable to think that power won’t accumulate in fewer hands again on a Bitcoin standard? Will the “good times create weak men” cycle end? Probably not. The people that use their minds will find solutions to the world's problems. The incompetent normies will always suffer and fall for scams. You may not like it, but this is human nature. People are incredibly lazy when it comes to using their minds. Ironically, it’s the most important organ that differentiates us from wild animals.

Bitcoin is a great tool that will give people a way to gain more freedom. But Bitcoin didn’t save us. We saved ourselves. If Bitcoin didn’t exist, we would’ve found another way to gain more freedom. Maybe not as much freedom as what Bitcoin allows, but we would’ve found something. The difference between us and normies is that we used our minds to find a solution to a serious problem. We used the internet as a tool to learn and better our lives. Incompetent normies used the internet to find distractions and excuses for their problems. Bitcoin doesn’t save stupid people. It just helps people that actually use their brain. Unless you think humans will suddenly stop being dumb and lazy, the cycle will repeat. The important question is: will bitcoin reduce the damage that these cycles create? Will the cycles be shorter? I think so.

Bitcoin, like other technological advances, pulls up humanity as a whole and provides benefits to everyone. But they have to take advantage of it. Your greatest resource is between your ears, it’s not Bitcoin. Bitcoin is just a life raft in the middle of the ocean that will be there for you when you're tired of suffering and ready to use your brain to solve your problems.

It’s amazing how quickly Ai generated images became old and largely uninteresting. You can still produce really cool and fascinating images, but it takes a *Lot* of exploration and prompting to get there, but I’ve always thought the real secret of the tool is in using it to piece together a more complex artwork and composite something with an explicit vision. Not merely typing a prompt and taking the output.

The amount of work the “creator” puts into it will also be reflected in how they treat it. You can still just see the proof of work somehow. 😆🤔