Burn.

ACINQ is the parent company of Phoenix Wallet. ACINQ is a French company.

Sadly running a lightning routing node is not the same as an LSP, and more routing nodes doesn’t solve the LSP problem.

I like to think I'm pretty smart. I've had a very hard time running my own LN node. Starting with raspibolt.org my node froze up without me noticing and all my channels were force closed.

Tried again with a small lenovo thinkstation, my ssd Mount didn't persist after restarts, didn't notice for almost a year, again channels are force closed.

I can hear the "skill issue" in the distance. But the truth is running a LN node is hard. Even without the sys admin problems, I never figured out who I should open channels to, how much in those channels to be a good peer on the network. Tbh, I just don't have the time or interest in running a routing node. I much prefer the LSP model.

It’s that or custodial, so it seems much better 🤷‍♂️

For the non-custodial lightning case you kinda need a fixed counterparty, so your options are move or vote. For other use cases of bitcoin this does not apply (but also vote anyway, it doesn’t hurt).

Vote

It’s weeks like this that you have to wonder whether Bitcoin has a real shot at all.

* We thought mining was centralized but it was worse than we thought, and the ideas we have to improve it don’t seem to be making progress. Will Bitcoin be censorship resistant in a decade or will censorship be the norm with one or two pools deciding what enters the chain.

* With ACINQ pulling out of the US they’re signaling they don’t think it’s worth the risk. With few LSP alternatives in the US today will noncustodial lightning make it in the world’s biggest market?

It’s important to keep building but it’s also important to keep an eye on the biggest problems - best to work on the biggest problems in Bitcoin to maximize the chance it’s still a useful system with properties we’d be proud of in another decade.

I set my zaps to Anonymous by default because privacy is important. Yet I feel like some of the community building and signal is now lost with each zap. There is an element of connection when you know who the zap comes from.

Thinking I will leave zaps public for the standard 21 sats zaps but go anon for larger ones.

What do y’all think? #asknostr #onlyzaps #privacy

With #SamouraiWallet and now #PhoenixWallet going down plus #Metamask being sued by the #SEC all in the same week, it’s clear that Operation Choke-Point 2.0 is in full force, targeting #privacy tech and self-custody of #crypto. The compromise the government is willing to make:

- Buy #Bitcoin ETF if you want exposure to #BTC price

- Buy #MicroStrategy if you want exposure to leverage BTC

Acceptable?

Damn! We got played very hard! like a kids in the kindergarten

Oh I totally agree and we are entering a period of heightened centralised projection of power. And giving up won’t help and there’s no one coming to “save us”. Freedom has to be fought for constantly against bad actors. But my point does stand to a degree still on the flaunting. If you’re going to walk through a poor neighbourhood with a Rolex, make sure you protect yourself or simply choose initially not to wear the Rolex. Work around rules where you can and identify the battles. A good silly example is the bat boxes on the dystopian cameras in Uk. People were angle grinding them down. You could get prosecuted. Stick a box for bats to nest and they’re wrapped up in contradictory “laws”

The real issue with Samurai is that devs building none custodial wallets get arrested for writing code.

To elaborate, the flip side of this is the point you are making well: you can't use your sats for anything big/useful unless they are tagged and bagged. Sats visible enough to use in a jurisdiction are subject to jurisdictional risk. My take away: you need both. Private and public. Hard to confiscate and even harder to confiscate.

You think that we “win” if you cold store our Sats because they cannot make us give it up?

We still “lose” if you are not able to spend it. You will have 35M$ on your Coldcard and still “lose” if it’s not usable.

They will “win” unless you comply.

I rather KYC, buy BTC, put it on my Cold Storage. Wait for appreciation, sell a portion of it on a registered exchange/broker, pay my taxes on the gain and pay off my house.

Being able to accumulate registered/KYC/Play by the rule Bitcoin and sell it with a registered company to be debt free IS the way to show the finger to banks and governments and exit the system.

Not by being a dreaming No-KYC rebel thinking it’s cool to skip class.

Wow.