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GM ALLš«”
WISHING YOU ALL AND YOUR FAMILIES A HAPPY THANKSGIVING.
You donāt have give a damn about Ethereum to appreciate how important the Tornado Cash decision is for #Bitcoin and #freedomtech in general. Times are changing. Weāre winning - but we havenāt won.
Nonetheless, celebrate victories like this. This is a good day for developers - and thus a good day for all of us.
GMš«”
GIVING THANKS FOR FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND EVERYONE BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE.
GMš«”
My daughter is home from college. Last night she saw me scrolling through #Nostr, asked what it was and whether it was the same as X. Fortunately she has been spared the social media obsession that has afflicted much of her generation. She gets the nature of the deal with the devil users make with social media companies when they use those products.
What really caught her attention was Zaps, reminding me how radical an idea they are to someone not already playing in this space. So we scrolled through my Zaps and sent a few sats out to show how stupid simple it is for the user.
This scroll through Zaps provoked a question I didnāt expect - who is nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx and why does he send you so much money?
What do you say? I told her he was a man on a mission to make #Nostr available to everyone.
Sheās now the second #Primal user in the family!
Had drinks with an old buddy tonight. Sign of the bull market, he asked me about #Bitcoin. Apparently heās done some reading, gets the basics of why most of us find ourselves here. But he was stuck on the fact that he couldnāt drop $100k in cash to buy one coin.
Thereās a lot of talk about the need to be a whole coiner, often causing people to infer that if that is out of reach, thereās no point in getting in.
What my friend hadnāt heard was that enjoying the benefits of #bitcoin doesnāt require a numberā¦.there are no mandatory minimums in this club.
Rather, what gets you your membership card is changing how you prioritize your money and time. My friend is well off, if probably not a bit leveraged like most other people. My point to him was, even if you only have $5 to spare a day, if you decide that Bitcoin is how you want to save that money, youāre in.
He got it. And Iām certain that once he makes that commitment, and his understanding of what Bitcoin offers him and his family matures, heāll really learn to appreciate that even those few dollars a day or week he might be able to invest will change his life in ways he has until now been unable to anticipate.
A great description of Economic Nodes in https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/. Demonstrates why the consensus discussion is critical for protecting the integrity of the protocol. Large institutional players and governments could hold significant sway as adoption among these actors grows. Fortunately the interests of these actors are not necessarily aligned, which of course brings a different set of challenges for positive evolution.
I wish I had some answers - learning as I go.
Economic Nodes
Economic Nodes play a critical role in bitcoin's consensus mechanism. Economic Nodes are full nodes that not only validate and relay transactions but also receive and send substantial amounts of bitcoin payments. These nodes are distinct from nodes just validating blocks and transactions. These Economic Nodes are typically operated by businesses and institutions that handle significant volumes of bitcoin transactions and often serve as bridges between the bitcoin network and the traditional financial system (providing a venue to swap BTC for fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies).
Economic Nodes, or nodes that regularly receive bitcoin, have power and influence which is proportional to the frequency and volume of payments received. For example, a high volume exchange has power in that if their nodes reject blocks mined by Miners, it would devalue the chain that Miners are building upon.
They include:
Cryptocurrency exchanges
Payment processors
Custody providers
Large merchants and service providers who accept Bitcoin as payment
RPC providers (manage and host nodes for application developers)
Powers:
Ability to define which fork is bitcoin by choosing which version of the software to run and set ticker symbols
Reject blocks they consider invalid, potentially causing chain splits
Ability to list or not list markets for spot and derivative markets for forks
Ability to sell fork coins on behalf of users without their permission
Incentives:
Maximize transaction volume and trading activity
Maintain the security and stability of the network
Comply with regulatory requirements in their jurisdictions
May have equity investments in bitcoin businesses
#bitcoin #consensus #freedomtech
GM AND HAPPY FRIDAYš«”
ENJOY THE WEEKEND, REST UP, SPEND TIME WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS, AND GET READY TO CRUSH IT ALL AGAIN NEXT WEEK.
Yes, the price is niceā¦.
But itās not really the price that matters. Itās watching the green shoots of a new and better financial system pushing through toward the proverbial sunlight.
There are some ideas that just wonāt be assimilated. There are some ideas that unalterably change the story once they become part of the plot.
I believe history will reveal that #Bitcoin played a key part in the rebuke voters across the globe levied against out of touch institutions. People everywhere are talking about sound money, the insidious effects of inflation, the dangers of out of control debt. These were not common points of discussion five years ago.
Institutions failed themselves. People knew it, but they just couldnāt put their finger upon the why. Bitcoin showed them the why by showing the alternative.
The feeling of change is palpable. The best thing we can do is to stay humble, stack sats, and play whatever constructive role we can in building the system that is emerging.
#Bitcoin #freedomtech
Some of my friends who have resisted #Bitcoin are actually becoming angrier as we approach $100k. I've tried to explain to them - (nearly) every time I've bought bitcoin it felt expensive - a few months later, it looked really cheap. One friend is particularly miffed because his teenage son is tumbling down the rabbit hole.
I've also told them - you can buy it or not....but I guarantee your kids will!
Excellent paper providing an analysis of bitcoinās consensus mechanism.
https://github.com/bitcoin-cap/bcap
#Bitcoin
Here we are now - entertain us!
My wife and I stopped by the Nespresso boutique in Tysons Corner after a workout (the new boutique is actually quite nice). When we stepped up to the counter, the saleswoman asked for my telephone number, to which I politely responded "no thank you!" She asked why and told me this was how they were able to track my purchase history. Again politely, I told her that absent a discount, I didn't want to give away marketing data for nothing. Then she asked, "Is that like a bitcoin thing?"
Apparently she recognized the "B" on my hat. I answered that it was more about controlling what you want the world to know about you, especially when people want to profit from your personal information while offering nothing in return. My wife smiled, offered a friendly "Don't get him started," along with a robust pinch on my left tricep. The woman chuckled.
Maybe she learned something?
#bitcoin #nostr #freedomtech #coffeestr