It's a long and pretty boring conversation, and nobody's fault per se. But the phrase "tyranny of structurelessness" comes to mind. Incentives on the development side are not really aligned for longterm success IMO. Bitcoin's project structure is very much an experiment; basically every other major opensource effort has clear leadership structure (if not a BDFL). In bitcoin this would obviously be An Issue (unless there were multiple competing implementations), but the sclerotic and meandering development cycle demotivates talented devs all the same. I've spent five years working on a project that, in commercial settings, would have been merged within a month. It just gets really old.

Sats are always on sale. nostr:note1lyj85986xezmkcy0gdnnhhty9ckxw0kcxj7cgww4afaz2fnc48dq3wmh5j

Was there not something called Netscape navigator?😜

I’ve always been amazed that people go cashless, meaning they literally walk around and even travel without cash, and just rely on cards to pay.

Credit and debit cards are centralized and can be shut off or denied for all sorts of reasons, or can run into technical issues. BTC/LN is better because it’s decentralized, although it still needs power+internet and merchant acceptance. Cash as physical bearer asset money is great. Of course I wish cash was redeemable for something sound, but maybe in the future that’ll be the case again. In the meantime it’s good to have a few meals or taxis or hotel rooms worth of cash on hand.

I always have a diverse mix of digital and physical payment methods on hand, so I never get caught unable to pay.

So far in life I have only had one instance where I couldn’t pay. I was at a restaurant in Cairo a few years ago and their card machine/connection was down, and were only accepting cash. I had physical US dollars but they were part of a bigger corporate restaurant chain and so didn’t have the flexibility to accept them. My husband normally carries Egyptian currency but didn’t have any on him that day, and since he carried it, I previously did not. Neither did our friend that was with us. So we had to go on an awkward search for an ATM for a while and then come back and pay. And from that point I iterated, so I always carry Egyptian currency in Egypt as well as my other methods. And it has come in handy a bunch of times, when my husband needs some spare cash for tips or something I always have a little stockpile ready to go since I am a stickler about always having a certain amount whereas he is more flexible.

I always have a kind of “prepare for everything” type of mentality and like to be in control of my situation, and thus always have like backups for my backups in various contexts, including payment or being able to access various types of value anywhere, even when such preparation is not really needed.

When I was a kid, I used to watch Batman Beyond, which was set in the future.

The money they used was called “credits” and was digital, with no banknotes/coins. People would swipe cards like credit cards, but also when doing a bearer asset payment, they would hand a card with credits on it to someone who would take possession of it. The same type of card could be loaded with various amounts of credits for various sizes of transactions. Normal people used the money (it was ubiquitous) but also criminals used it, implying the funds couldn’t be frozen or taken back or anything like that, much like cash.

Turns out they were satscards, I guess.

^-^

Why is this better than a typical block explorer?