Thanks for the sats #[3], again. This time I used some of these to send some to a post I liked. It was my first LN payout and just as receiving some it was... EASY.
No bank with opening hours;
No delay with the transfer;
No QYC imposed to access services for my own money;
No need to know who the actual recipient is nor where he is...
*Bitcoin is Better; Better off with Bitcoin.*
Three reasons:
(1) Banks are companies whereas bitcoin is a whole financial system and a protocol. Companies do all eventually die, ideas and protocols do not: they evolve and adapt.
(2) A better comparison is between the fiat system, that banks merely apply, and the bitcoin system. The fiat one is centralized and relies on trust; the bitcoin one is centralized and trustless. Trust in a fiat system will always eventually be lost as it is at the mercy of a crisis, possibly self-generated due to its inherent contradictions and weaknesses; A decentralized system, like the internet, is more resilient.
(3) On top of the above, banks have decided to run on fractional reserves, what makes them immensely more vulnerable to any crisis. On the other hand, bitcoin is a hard currency: one bitcoin is one bitcoin.
Eggs, one lays eggs on nostr.
Like "I liked the last egg🥚 you laid on nostr, very insightful".
All internet services without the need for IP addresses, DNS servers and other such centralized gateways: P2P messaging, encrypted P2P email, P2P web servers, encrypted P2P music and video sharing, personal servers accessible from anywhere... A new decentralized P2P protocol layer on top of TCP/IP.
People have been afraid of any and all major invention: cars, electricity, trains, the metro/subway, elevators, planes, computers, robots, biotechnology, cellphones, etc.
The same currently happens with #Bitcoin and #cryptocurrencies in general, and with Artficial Intelligence ( #AI ) and Artficial General Intelligence ( #AGI ), or #biotechnology.
Every tool carries some risk that is not intrinsic to its nature but dependent on its usage. Fortunately, history tells us that inventions have overwhelmingly been put to reasonable use and improved the capabilities and wellbeing of humans; few hammers are used to break skulls.
So it was in the past and so it will be in the future.
The quest for knowledge and its application to technological development is part of human nature, but is only embraced by part of us.
Every time, the early adopters of a technology, the ones who embraced a new technology and sought to understand its possible uses, emerged better equipped and wealthier in the new paradigm created by the new technology.
People gathering thanks to #nostr, itself a novel protocol, cypherpunks exchanging views and expressing their trust in #bitcoin among others new technologies, are the scouts tracing the path for those that will themselves still be considered early adopters.
Let's be positive, let's move forward, let's build.
I did not believe they could vote such a law discriminating between financial assets, but they did...
Aren't current fiat currencies not just as "virtual", only backed by the word of governments, central banks and interstellar vacuum ?
The use of "crypto" by itself is misleading, conflating all things "crypto" as dangerous. Maybe paving the way to framing all crypted communications as bad?
The full text that will be compulsory in 2 months is, translated to English:
"Virtual currencies, real risks. In crypto, only the risk is guaranteed".
There is much more being required by the law if you read the text.
That text is actually worth a read because it contains quite a lot of background information, notably stating that the warning is necessary due to the *popularity* of cryptocurrencies with the general public.
We are winning ...
Full legal text:
http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/eli/arrete/2023/01/05/2023040640/moniteur
If you need to buy a car in Europe, buy a diesel one.
The drive towards electrical cars will push the price up of electrical cars and electricity, and incentivize governments to tax both more.
At the same time, as consumers are discouraged to buy diesel cars, you will get them cheap.
And as refineries are made to produce a certain ratio of diesel and fuel, there will be a surplus of diesel, driving it's price down.
Last bit: as neither the lithium production capacity nor the current electrical network are able to reach the 100% electrical engine target by 2035, the right to sell and use internal combustion engines will be extended.
Eventually, the right time to buy an electrical car is probably 5 years away.
Bank runs are an inevitable consequence of fractional reserve meeting unpredictable and uncontrollable world crises, magnified by human panic and self-preservation instincts when confronted with such crises.
When a crisis hits, people will want to get their money back under their control, and banks are incapable to give the cash back due to fractional reserves.
For any bank, a bank run on it is not a matter of "if", just "when".
The race to productivity, notably thanks to automation, and the race to reduce costs to 0, are 2 sides of the same coin. Eventually this results in an ever larger amount of goods and services requiring an ever smaller workforce.
Yet the goods and services that people can consume are eventually limited by how much hours there are in a day. E.g. as one French television boss once coined it "We are competing for available brain time". Inevitably, this leads us to a society of abundance were a shrinking fraction of the workforce's available time is necessary to produce in a given period of time all what humanity needs, wants or can practically consume in that same time frame.
Inevitably, this leads to the necessity of a universal revenue, as everyone needs to have sufficient money to buy all what society produces, money being eventually just the oil in the economy machine, not an output of that machine.
How much money is allocated to workers or capital owners on top of the universal revenue is not defined by economics, it is defined by politics.
The obsession of the current political (de)generation that everyone must work full days from one's twenties to one's sixties is rooted in the 20th century perception of infinite growth being necessary to satisfy an infinite thirst for goods and services.
The system will eventually collapse when the exponential efficiency trend crashes into the finite demand reality.
I use bitcoin and discover the lightning network because it is time to separate state and money.
It is time that the state stops restricting my use of my money
It is time that the state stops transferring my wealth to the rich through inflation and unfair tax loopholes.
The CERN created a black hole in 2012 during experiments on the Higg's boson and that black hole sucked the Earth.
Somehow we mere humans would not have noticed it.
Thanks for the sats ! I finally have some :)
I need to learn more about non-custodial LN wallets and managing channels, but these few sats received are an eye opener into the future of finance.
Great initiative. Nostr is exciting me like the diffusion of the personal computer (I am that old) the internet, the web and bitcoin did. Especially its integration with the LN is a game changer. Geeks and cyberpunks will join it, then the rest.
lnbc1u1p3l55vspp5rn5nd4k8kv4sln35u7pkg8zp6xr9c4mrt4xtfnwyaynqjxq0m4vqdqu2askcmr9wssx7e3q2dshgmmndp5scqzpgxqyz5vqsp5ns5ecs6zya0uhg4jrun5vuhvdal8z5hz997hwz5cp8r566cntn5s9qyyssqvsqkfnffjem4wsgs7zs7y7gunsjylqgmvtn0n64ej5dmuysw67vz5zut2x69hxq27tp66d0kp7gr7htgx684yuewaq0v5smxfxlmn9gqr3pqm4
The trend in various IT domains since the 70's has been a move from
free solutions built by the hackers, geeks and cypherpunks,
to privatization and appropriation of the commons by a greedy few,
to liberation by a new generation of
hackers, geeks and cypherpunks.
First for software.
Now for protocols.
Next for knowledge and science.
Thank you to the hackers, geeks and cypherpunks of this world for your small or large contributions.
I feel excited about Nostr just as much as I felt about the internet, linux or bitcoin.