Politicians do nothing and should get no credit. Stop simping for them.

Today is a big day, I finally exhausted the 250 sqft roll of Aluminium Foil I bought from Costco 5-6 years ago

Bitcoin Conversions is officially rolling out today!

Square 🤝 Cash App 🤝 Bitcoin

Soon millions of Square sellers will be able to automatically stack sats from their card sales, passively accumulating bitcoin simply by running their business.

A historic day for Block, Square sellers, and bitcoin!

Congrats to the team and everyone involved 🚀

Sounds like a French 76

Vodka, lemon juice, simple, champagne topper. Lemon expression. 🍻🍻🍻

I remember this drink. It turned me into pretty hardcore lesbian.

It's not for pussies.

*ROFLing after that pun*

Years ago I bought into the idea that deflationary currency was unworkable because it would make raising capital too hard—that inflationary money was a necessary evil because to do otherwise would be to set a floor on interest rates equal to the real purchasing power accrued simply by holding the currency. I would guess that this remains the number one misconception among informed, intellectually honest critics of bitcoin.

Cool. I think the analogy works. ‘It’s not the spin rate, it’s the miles that count.’

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. An imperfect analogy, perhaps, but an ideal monetary system is like the gearing system of a bicycle. The most important factor is to develop a system that can adjust to variable conditions such as going uphill/downhill, headwinds/tailwinds using a finite input of power (leg muscles). A fixed single speed bike (like Bitcoin Layer 1) is the simplest, but it won’t get you very far on a 100km ride through the mountains. This is where the gearing helps.

So, Layer 1 (Bitcoin) is the pedal assembly that takes the power and turns it into torquing power. Layer 2 Lightning is the bicycle chain and freewheel assembly that enables the transmission of power to a useful place, namely the rear wheel. And finally ‘Layer 3’ Cashu (there is a debate whether it is a Layer, but we’ll set that aside), is the gearing cassette/chainring that allows for selective leverage to match the conditions demanded of the road before you.

If you’re an experienced cyclist, you know how much strategy goes into selecting the right gear combo, when to preserve/expend energy. For a particular ride, you know that comes from a finite source - your legs. If you want more power, you need to do additional training to increase the power available for your next ride.

As I said at the outset, this is an imperfect analogy, but IMHO is is better than the simple ‘scaling’ that the layers provide. Instead, in the spirit of the First Law of Thermodynamics, you are not creating any new energy (i.e., money) but rather adjusting the power (money) system to best suit road (economic) conditions ahead.

i think when corruption becomes part of culture, its very difficult to combat it head on.

A couple of years back when I took on my first job, one of the first things I did was to buy my dad a new car. My dad has only driven old cars. I remember when we were kids, he had this old Morris Marina and on the way to church there was a thunderstorm, the wiper stopped working and the bonnet flew up covering the window. I have no idea how he managed to pull over and close the bonnet back, but that was probably the best car we had growing up. And so it was really nice to get him a brand new car. He was so happy.

After a few months, the new car had a small dent (it happens) so my dad sent it to a workshop for a paint job. Unfortunately at the workshop, a 3 tonne lorry smashed into the car.

Coincidentally the workshop claimed to represent the car manufacturer and the police were there recognizing the credibility of the workshop. They claimed to be able to replace all brand new parts as the car was under manufacturer's warranty. I agreed to the repair.

Unfortunately they half-cut the car and patch it with another junk car. It only cost them 10% of the insurance amount they filed for the repair.

It was fraud and an illegal move but they paid off the car legal inspection to claim it was safe. There are certain angles that you can half cut the car so that it won’t split open, but they did not abide by any engineering rules either.

I refused to take the car and filed a police report but they also paid off the cops. I filed 11 reports, and no actions were taken. There was a time I remembered the cops just laughed.

And all throughout this time I served the car loan for my dad’s car (and my car) so that my credit scores didn't get hammered. And I also had to pay off the numerous summons under my name and parking tickets the workshop caused me as they were using it.

I asked the bank to repossess the car but they could not enter private premises. I spoke to the car insurance and that’s when they told me they had many cases like this and it was a massive car scam.

Eventually I took the case to court. I won the case, and was awarded a very decent sum of money as reimbursement. My dad passed away before this so he never knew I won the case.

But I soon learned that winning a case and getting the money is two different things.

The workshop filed for bankruptcy, as they also defaulted payments to the banks.

There is a gov’t insolvency agency who is in charge of liquidation and after 4 years of me following up on the money, they sent a letter 2 weeks ago saying the workshop has no assets and they will not be pursuing liquidation.

I don’t know if they were paid off too but corruption is so common here, it won’t be surprising to me.

The workshop is humongous, with a lot of tractors and big machinery. Ironically, they are still in operation, just registered under a diff company name.

A lawyer friend of mine asked me to go down the path of engaging the courts to hire private liquidators instead.

It would be nice to have the money but the thought of another legal process is just overwhelming. I have not been able to decide.

Sometimes I want to stand for what I believe in, but sometimes I’m so beaten down I just want to give up and move on.

Trustless in the sense of "unilateral exit", not in the sense of "no tradeoffs".

LN would be "trustless" in this context but unfortunately it does not survive sustained high fees.

If we get to that stage, the high fees are sustained (more than 1 month) and no trustless L2 works, then we have failed. It would be time to pack things up and move on.

I'm not some bitcoin religious fanatic. I'm here for the freedom, not the cult.

Fees could be a million sats/vbyte, I still wouldn't touch Liquid, fedimints or cashu.

From the moment you loose custody and the ability to exit unilaterally, it's over for me.

we are watching the heat death of the wokieverse